Episodes
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
The Adventures of Frank Race, Pgm 5
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
Sunday Feb 01, 2009
And now our weekly look at the action-packed "Adventures of Frank Race", a Bruce Eells and Associates syndicated program that was first distributed in 1949.
In program 5 of the series, "The Enoch Arden Adventure", Race, played by star Tom Collins, takes on an insurance case for a woman whose husband has been missing for six years. The title of the story might give you a clue to how the case will unfold if you're familiar with the famous poem. The mp3 was transferred to digital directly from an original vinyl Bruce Eells and Associates transcription, matrix numbers UR-139177 and UR-139178.
Sunday Jan 25, 2009
The Adventures of Frank Race, Pgm 4
Sunday Jan 25, 2009
Sunday Jan 25, 2009
Here's another in our weekly series, "The Adventures of Frank Race", starring Tom Collins and originally recorded and syndicated in 1949.
Program 4 in the series is titled "The Adventure of Seventeen Black" and Race investigates an embezzlement case that, like all noir crime stories, involves an attractive woman with a dark side. The show was transferred from an original set of Bruce Eells and Associates vinyl transcriptions, matrix numbers UR-138635 and UR-138636.
Friday Jan 16, 2009
The Adventures of Frank Race - Pgm 3
Friday Jan 16, 2009
Friday Jan 16, 2009
We continue our weekly visit to Tom Collins in "The Adventures of Frank Race", a program recorded and first syndicated in 1949, from a near-complete run of the series in my collection. In this week's exciting episode, Race encounters a woman in Istanbul who is being pursued by killers and is mixed up with some smugglers. It's program 3 in the series, "The Istanbul Adventure". Dames! Bullets! Fisticuffs! Now that's the stuff to get a post-War male audience on the edge of their seats.
The show was transferred from an original set of Bruce Eells and Associates vinyl transcriptions, matrix numbers U-137477 and U-137478-N. Oh, and be sure to check out the labels of these discs as we progress through the series. You can see rubber stamps and notations from the different stations that ran the series from this set of discs all the way through 1957.
Saturday Jan 10, 2009
The Adventures of Frank Race - Pgm 2
Saturday Jan 10, 2009
Saturday Jan 10, 2009
Well, some readers of the blog like the idea of running my discs of "The Adventures of Frank Race", so here we go with episode two of this Bruce Eells and Associates series originally recorded and initially broadcast circa 1949.
Program two of the series is untitled, but is referred to as "The Adventure of the Darling Debutante" in some listings. Frank wakes up from a restful sleep to find a down on his luck ex-GI whose English wife has turned up dead. The show was transferred from an original vinyl Bruce Eells and Associates transcription set, matrix numbers U-137407 and U-137478-N.
Friday Jan 02, 2009
The Adventures of Frank Race - Pgm 1
Friday Jan 02, 2009
Friday Jan 02, 2009
I'm trying something a little different on the blog for the next few months. In the past, I've posted a brief run - perhaps four of five episodes of a series - over a period of weeks when I'd run into some discs from a series. A couple of months back, I wound up buying an almost complete run of the syndicated series, "The Adventures of Frank Race". So, the plan is to post one episode per week, from beginning to end of the show, in addition to the usual mix of things you'll hear on the blog. If I get a lot of negative feedback about this experiment, I may end the series early, so let me know in the comments if this is something you're interested in. "The Adventures of Frank Race" was produced in 1949-1950 by Bruce Eells Productions in Hollywood. Tom Collins played Race for the first half of the episodes, then Paul Debrov took over the role. Forty three episodes were produced; I'm missing a few programs from the middle of the run of the show.
Race was a two-fisted adventurer and investigator. Although his office was in New York, he and his sidekick, Mark Donovan, would travel to exotic locations in search of crooks trying to rip off insurance companies. The show intro pretty much sums up the premise: "Before the war, Frank Race worked as an attorney, but he traded his law books for the cloak-and-dagger of the OSS. When the war was over, his former life was over too. Adventure became his business!" The program was written by Joel Murcott and Buckley Angel and the organ music was composed and performed by Ivan Ditmar. I'm a fan of film noir and detective radio shows, so "Frank Race" was a fun program to transfer to digital. The shows are always action packed - Race gets into at least a couple of fists fights and gets shot at a time or two in each episode. It sounds like the sound effects guys were having a fun time with this one. Program 1 in the series is titled "Audition" in the vinyl trail-off. The story concerns Race's investigation of some disappearing ships, so in some listings the story is called "Victory Ship Adventure", "The Adventure of the Hackensack Victory" or other titles. The show was transferred from an original Bruce Eells Productions vinyl transcription, matrix numbers U-133761 and U-133763. Next week: The Adventure of the Darling Debutante!