Boston Blackie
Crime/detective radio dramas that ran from June to September 1944 on NBC and June 1945 to June 1949 syndicated over various stations using the Mutual Broadcasting System. It became a television broadcast in 1951 and ran for two years to 1953 syndicated over various local stations. There were numerous silent and sound-era motion picture films from 1919 to 1949 that were considered to be "B" movies.
Boston Blackie, that shimmering gem in the pantheon of solid “B-grade” entertainment, began life in the 1910’s as the character “Boston Black” in Jack Boyle’s short story series of the same name. In Boyle’s original work Black was just your typical young, charming, handsome, educated, “hardened-criminal” serving out his time in a hellish California prison.
The year 1919 saw the premier of Blackie’s Redemption, the first of several silent films featuring the likes of Bert Lyell, David Powell, Forrest Stanley, and Lionel Barrymore in the starring roles of “Blackie,” the professional thief with a heart of gold. The last of these Blackie-silents was released in 1927.
Then in 1941 Boston Blackie films were revived with the release of Meet Boston Blackie featuring Chester Morris in the leading role of the former thief now freelance-detective and adventurer, Blackie. Over the next eight years, Morris would go on to star in 14 films as Boston Blackie, as well as act in a summer radio-run of the character for NBC in 1944.
Morris brought to the Blackie role (according to hallowed movie-critic Leonard Maltin) a lively offhand sense of humor that “kept the films fresh even when the scripts weren’t.” By the Chester Morris-era, a main nemesis/foil had developed in the Blackie storyline, a Police Inspector Farraday, played by the actor Richard Lane, whose dislike of the ex-jewel thief was only surpassed by his abilities at misreading a case.
In 1945 a long-running radio version of Boston Blackie was launched by producer and television syndication pioneer, Fredrick Ziv. In this later radio version Richard Kollmar played the role of Blackie, with Maurice Tarplin as the vindictive and bungling Inspector Faraday, and Jan Miner as Blackie’s love interest, Mary Welsey. The radio program would run for five years syndicated over various radio stations, usually within the Mutual Network, with over 200 episodes produced.
In 1951 Fredric Ziv developed a television version of Boston Blackie to add to his growing collection of syndicated programs that included such timeless classics as Sci-Fi Theater, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt and The Fugitive. B-movie acting greats Kent Taylor and Lois Collier were hired to play the roles of Boston Blackie and Mary Welsey for the television series, which ran until 1953.
Recently the Boston Blackie story has been resurrected once more, in comic format. Just last year comic publisher Moonstone Books released Boston Blackie as a part of its retro “Moonstone Noir” comic series, also featuring such crime/detective classics as Johnny Dollar, Bulldog Drummond, Jack Hagee P.I., and The Mysterious Traveler.
For today’s Sound From the Past we bring you an episode of Boston Blackie from Chester Morris’ stint on the radio series, which was designed as a summer fill-in for the Amos and Andy program in back in 1944. The episode you’ll hear, by pressing on the button above, first aired on July 14th of that year. -CP
