Season #1-Show #15 - "Philip Marlowe", "Blackstone, the Magic Detective" & "Five Minute Mysteries"

We run the gamut of radio detectives this week, starting with one of the most famous fictional detectives - in any medium - Philip Marlowe, and then going on to the lesser light of Blackstone, the Magic Detective, and ending with a radio curiosity called Five Minute Mysteries.

"Where There's a Will" is an early show from the Adventures of Philip Marlowe series, and the famous show intro - "Get this and get it straight. Crime is a sucker's road and those who travel it end up in the gutter, the prison, or the grave."- hadn't yet been introduced.  Those lines set the tone for the next 30 hard-boiled minutes as listeners could almost picture Marlowe spitting those words through clenched teeth and a cigarette.  (Left: Gerald Mohr portraying Philip Marlowe in a lighter moment).

Blackstone is certainly no Marlowe, but is a fun listen, if only for the magic tricks.  Most of the shows take the same tack, with Blackstone showing off a trick to his friends, which reminds him of a mystery, and then he ends by teaching the good folks at home a magic trick. 

We fill the show out with Five Minute Mysteries, though with a good two minutes dedicated to fill music (space where a local commercial would go), this may as well have been called Three Minute Riddles.  It's a neat little show, though, and one wonders how many little filler programs like this existed, but were never recorded.