"LOST" Episodes of SERGEANT PRESTON OF THE YUKON

Sergeant Preston of the Yukon premiered in January of 1939 as Challenge of the Yukon and it was not until the spring of 1943 that the radio programs were recorded on a regular basis. Because of this, the first few years of the radio program does not exist in recorded form. Thankfully we have the radio scripts and, slowly but surely, we are progressing through them for proper documentation. Below, for your enjoyment, are the plot summaries (rough draft, mind you) for four of those "lost" episodes.

Episode #206 “ONE NIGHT IN DAWSON”

Broadcast November 19, 1941

Copyright Registration D-78572, script received at Registration Office December 8, 1941.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Mark Sawyer at the Palace Hotel asked Sergeant Preston to look at half a map, left to him by his father, Jim Sawyer, who died in Whitehorse Rapids last year. Chic Farrell, nephew of the late Johnny Farrel, is has the other half of the same map because Jim and Johnny hid a cache of gold dust – a small fortune. Mark discovered his room was ransacked but nothing taken – suggesting someone is after his half of the map. Later, on route to meet Chic, Mark is almost shot at and Sergeant Preston begins an investigation to discover the man masquerading as Chic is an imposter. It seems Doctor Caxton and his crooked partner attempted to shoot Mark and steal his map, using a splint and the false claim of a broken leg to form an alibi while attempting to shoot to kill. But the guilty culprit could be heard walking in the next door, giving himself away long enough for Preston to form suspicion and make an arrest. 

 

Episode #207 “PRISONER’S BASE”

Broadcast November 26, 1941

Copyright Registration D-78573, script received at Registration Office December 8, 1941.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Dressed out of uniform, Preston travels north of Pine Ridge to investigate a report from the natives that a white shaman (a medicine man) has been committing a number of robberies along the trail. At Armand LeClair’s post, the Sergeant learns that an outlaw camp nearby is run by Dan Morgan, who harbors the crooks who have been committing the crimes. Armand has been suffering: they take his supplies, they threatened him and his daughter with death. Preston travels two miles further north, along with Rose and Pete, who work for Armand. But Preston was caught off guard, his guns stolen, and his true identity recognized by Louie Moran, a traveler Preston once met along the trail. Hoping to make it look like an accident, not murder, the Louie and Bat (his right hand man) lock Preston and Pete into the storehouse for the night. Inside the warehouse, Preston not only realized he was trapped but could view the evidence of trail robbery. A short time later, King sniffed out the location of his master. Armand and Rose, who followed behind with King, let Preston and Pete out of their temporary jail. Louie Moran and his outlaw gang, unsuspecting of backup assistance, are caught off guard and apprehended.

 

Episode #208 “MATERIA MEDICA”

Broadcast December 3, 1941

Copyright Registration D-78849, script received at Registration Office January 9, 1942.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Ray Harvey and Doctor Bob Graham drove up the Klondike from Dawson as far as Buckhorn Creek. Inside the cabin, when the doctor discovers the young man in pain needs to be taken to the hospital where the necessary tools and anesthetic can be administered, Dan pulls a gun and orders the doctor to remain. Ray rides back into town to fetch the necessary equipment, but the nurse suspects something wrong when two words written in Latin on the list suggested the doctor needed help. Sergeant Preston agreed with the nurse and rode north. At the cabin, the two crooks insist on superstition against hospitals, but Preston suspects they were hiding something. With authority the Sergeant forces the men to get the boy ready on a sled, per instructions from the doctor. The trail back was treacherous as the ice cracked wide open from behind as they sped toward Dawson. In town, the crooks attempted to flee but Preston, with the assistance of King, placed them under arrest. With evidence to suggest they tried to kill Preston and nurse Jane back on the ice, the Sergeant questioned the youth, Jim Taylor, who was being nursed back to health. Jim explains the men tried to make him sign over his claim to them. They kept him a prisoner in his own cabin. 

 

Episode #209 “REUNION”

Broadcast December 10, 1941

Copyright Registration D-78850, script received at Registration Office January 9, 1942.

Written by Tom Dougall.

Plot: Jed Kramer’s way cabin, half-way between White Horse and the White Pass, was the last stop for most travelers on their way out of the Yukon. Sergeant Preston stopped there one night as he headed North from the border. There, he meets Frisco, the son of Millie Cardwell, who owns the restaurant up north. It seems Frisco is fed up with the Yukon Trading Company and Henry Graham and White Horse, and wants to go elsewhere to start all over. His mother, however, will not leave his side. Soon after, Henry Graham arrives, as does Nick Collins, a smooth gambler. After hearing Graham accuse the boy of stealing $50,000 in gold and attempting to flee the countryside, Nick confesses to the crime. Preston suspects Nick of covering for the boy so he asks both Graham and Frisco to write out the combination on separate pieces of paper. Nick is unable to match the same, proving Nick was lying. Preston forces Graham to take off his coat, finding $50,000 in gold dust on his possession. Preston explained that the manager lied to him. If he had gone to Inspector Conrad with his story, there would have been a constable on Frisco’s trail. Millie confessed to her son that Nick had a personal reason for lying… Nick is Frisco’s son, who traveled up north to meet his boy for the first time since he left the United States.

 

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE GREAT GOLD STEAL

The second of the very first novelizations of a Marvel superhero was this 1968 novel, Captain America: The Great Gold Steal. (The first was The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker in 1967.) Today there are multiple novels published based on the characters from Marvel comics, some good -- some bad. Some are adaptations of comic book story arcs, others are original stories. This 1968 novel was a hybrid of both.

One-third of this novel contains an adaptation (or rather a summarization) of Captain America's battles against the Red Skull, the death of Bucky, and other historic moments of his past, the remaining two-thirds is an original story that was simply so thin that I suspect the summary of the past events in the comic book issues was to help pad the novel. Three phantom figures of depravity, The Eagle, The Starling and The Raven, hatch a scheme on the entire gold reserve of the United States, estimated to be twelve billion dollars.

Oddly, the origin of a super serum for Captain America is replaced with a reference to having all of his bones replaced with steel rods, and when he loses one of his shields, he simply goes over to the Avengers Tower to grab another one. Endowed with extraordinary physical and mental powers, Steve Rogers, better known to the world as the invincible Captain America, races into action -- and into destruction -- to thwart the scheme.

Sincerely, this story came off like a made-for-TV movie or, had there been a live action weekly television series, this would have made up one of those hour-long episodes. Usually novels of this length have time periods that extend beyond a few hours and comes off like an epic. Instead, I felt like I watched an hour-long TV episode remnant to the 1970s Wonder Woman type of adventures.

As a fan of Captain America, however, it made for entertaining reading at the beach. 

The Lost Radio Adventures of "RENFREW OF THE MOUNTED"

After a healthy run over CBS as a five-times-a-week serial, Renfrew of the Mounted returned to the air as a weekly half-hour adventure program over NBC-Blue. Launched on the evening of January 7, 1939, the network agreed to produce a 30-minute weekly program with the hope that a sponsor would be interested in signing on the bottom line. Producer Phil Goldstone of Criterion Pictures, responsible for the big screen adventures of Renfrew, created a momentary stir when he consulted the network about a clause in his contract that stipulated his rights to have a market tie-in with the cast of the motion pictures. To avoid conflict of interest with the movie studio, executives at NBC-Blue agreed to allow James Newill, the screen Renfrew, to play the starring role if the program moved to the West Coast. In the meantime, the new half-hour format would originate from the studios in New York City, known to all interests as “a substitute cast,” although House Jameson and Brad Barker were merely reprising their roles from the 1936–37 series.

 

George Ludlam was hired to write the scripts, based on 14-page plot summaries by Laurie York Erskine, who had no time to write two drafts of a weekly half-hour radio script. Ludlam, an experienced script writer with such credits as For Men Only and Spy at Large under his belt, would eventually go on to establish The Adventures of Superman for radio in early 1940. Without the continuation format of a daily serial, these half-hour stories were superior on many levels.

 

The adventures dramatized during the half-hour rendition of Renfrew of the Mounted consisted of both single-episode adventures and multi-episode story arcs. A number of recurring characters bridged continuity even when Renfrew was solving cases within one radio broadcast. Some of the half-hour adventures were adaptations of short stories written years prior by Erskine, others recycled material from short stories with revisions, and a number of them were originals. The episode “Redheads Won’t Stay Down,” broadcast February 18, 1939, was adapted from a story in Renfrew Rides North (1931). The episode “Signals in the Dark,” broadcast June 29, 1940, was inspired by the seafaring stories of the ships that mysteriously wrecked in the fog at San Francisco Bay — one in particular that disappeared without a trace but today is assumed to have wrecked and sunk.

 

Despite all the publicity, however, the radio program expired after the broadcast of October 12, 1940, with Renfrew riding the range on the silver screen courtesy of second-run theatres. The final movie in the franchise was released nationally back in July. On October 3, 1940, L.H. Titterton, manager of the Script Division at NBC, wrote to Douglas Storer with an official verdict: “Renfrew has been with us through thick and thin for several seasons now and much effort and time on everybody’s part has been expended to find a sponsor. We have not succeeded and for this we are very sorry. However, time is so precious on the air that we feel that we will just have to kiss Renfrew goodbye and make the last broadcast October 12. I want to thank you for your courtesy during the long months of the Renfrew programs and tell you that we want to be able to work out another program arrangement with you sometime in the future.”

 

According to production and call sheets in the NBC files, every half-hour episode was recorded. Sadly, like the fifteen-minute radio serial before it, recordings of the radio broadcasts were subject to the ravages of time. Fewer than half a dozen recordings from the 1939–1940 series are known to exist in collector hands, and the transcription discs for the remainder of the broadcasts are presumed “lost.”

 

The following are plot summaries gleaned from review of the radio scripts, filling in the gap that “lost” recordings would not be able to provide.

 

EPISODE #6, “CHIEF CALF ROBE’S HIDDEN TREASURE”

Broadcast February 11, 1939

CAST: Jackson Beck, Bill Boren, Walter Bryan, Harold de Becker, Peter Donald, Bob Dryden, Carl Eastman, Juano Hernandez, and James Monks.

PLOT: Inspector Renfrew and Constable Sheehan are on an exploring expedition to a strange country of high peaks and foaming torrents, where rivers flow north and east to join the greater rivers that empty into the Arctic Sea. There they stumble upon Klondike Peebles, beaten and kicked like a dog, who claims three years of prime silver fur was stolen by Chief Calf Robe and the Kachikas. When the Mounties arrive at the village, the medicine man quickly bewitches the Mounties’ guns, so they will never fire again — and if they do, they will never shoot straight. As the rifle champion of the force, Renfrew challenges the Indians to a duel in an effort to dispel the witchcraft, braving the best sharp-shooter in the village — and gets shot in the chest by the young competitor. Renfrew appears to use his own magic by removing the bullet which had torn at his tissue and throwing it with all his might in the face of the startled Indian. With pain in his chest, Renfrew shoots the bullseye in the white caribou hide, marked into circles. Having won the respect of Calf Robe, the concealed pelts are retrieved and returned. Later, as the men ride out of the Indian village, Renfrew confesses to his friends that no such magic exists — the bullet had hit the small mirror in his breast pocket, saving his life. Weak from the bullet wound, however, Renfrew confesses that such bluffs are not meant to battle Indian magic.

 

NOTES: The announcer closes the episode revealing next week’s episode as “The Affair of Strawberry Bill.” This episode was adapted from “Meebles’ Magic,” originally published in the November 1932 issue of American Boy magazine, and later reprinted in Renfrew’s Long Trail (1933).

 

EPISODE #8, “THE LOST RIVER MINE”

Broadcast February 25, 1939

CAST: Fred Barron, Phyllis Creore, Milton C. Herman, William Johnstone, James Krieger, Joe Latham, and Ralph Locke.

PLOT: Far in the High North, where the Dead Bear River winds through the mountains of British Columbia, in the narrow canyon of the hills known as Dead Ghost Pass, three men had been mining for gold — and two of the men planned to kill the third. Red Greve and Harmon Blackwood, a.k.a. “Blackie,” masterfully executed premature dynamite, creating a landslide that also blocked the river and turned the canyon into a lake where the victim’s body would never be found. Joining Inspector Renfrew up north to investigate is Jeff Collins, a boy of 18, son of Steve Collins, the prospector and miner who had disappeared. Finding Steve’s duffle, the men examine a map that is accurate except for the man-made lake and Pulpit Rock, which is nowhere to be found. Finding the hat of Red Greve, floating in the water, Renfrew suspects the miners are upstream, keeping close tabs on the investigators. The crime, which had happened a year prior, is unearthed when the prospectors blow up a section of the lake so the water would drain, giving them access to return to the rich vein in the cave. Their guilty conscience gives themselves away, in the presence of the Mountie, when they swear they’d seen Steve Collins walking toward them. Imagine their surprise when they learn that the tunnels lead completely through the mountain, and out into a valley beyond — old volcanic craters full of berries and small game. Steve Collins had lived in the valley for almost a year until the recent explosion, then he came down to investigate, only to discover his only exit from the valley to be the tunnel that reopened into Dead Ghost Pass.

 

EPISODE #9, “BRASS KNUCKLES”

Broadcast March 4, 1939

CAST: Somer Alberg, Tony Berger, Joe Curtin, Roger DeKoven, Joe Granby, Jackie Kelk, Bennett Kilpatrick, and Wilmer Walter.

PLOT: Inspector Renfrew is sent to Saffron Bay, a small lumber shipping and fishing port on the coast of British Columbia, nicknamed “Brass Knuckles Town” by the captain of a schooner. Constable Allison insists Renfrew return to his post, following a deadly ambush in the streets, resulting in murder. When Renfrew makes note that the victim of the murder had been a gun-toter from the United States, this gives the crime International significance and puts the case within the jurisdiction of the Mounted Police. Allison reluctantly agrees to assist, only to discover that his son Jim, working for the Connolly Gang, is being used as bait in a failed trap for Renfrew. Late one evening the Mountie educates the lad with the law of the jungle, using him to help smash the illegal operations of Connolly, the foreman of the mill and claimant of Saffron Bay.

 

NOTES: This episode was adapted from “Brass Knuckles,” originally published in the August 1931 issue of American Boy magazine, later reprinted in Renfrew Rides North (1931).

 

EPISODE #13, “THE SHIP WITHOUT A MASTER”

Broadcast April 1, 1939

CAST: Somer Alberg, Horace Braham, Joe Granby, George Herman, Juano Hernandez, William Johnstone, and Chester Stratton.

PLOT: Buck Garrity, sailing for the United States with a cargo of furs he’d collected over the course of three winters of hunting, worth thousands of dollars, is the victim of piracy from the Folger mob, operated by a man known as Boss Folger. Under orders, Finn Gerson and Redeye Folger make sure the Jackdaw schooner is moored at the wharf, with Frank and Buck Garrity helpless against piracy of the seas. Inspector Renfrew happens to be cruising in the same waters, along with Irving Brewster, on a trip north toward Skagway. With the wounded body of Buck Garrity on board, the men tow the Jackdaw back to Prince Rupert to get the man to the hospital. Knowing the thieves would have to trade with the Indians — and with that much stolen loot, they would leave a trail even a blind man could follow — Renfrew questions an Indian Chief to learn that the bandits are traveling across the mountains along a trail haunted by spirits. After a day’s ride our heroes catch up with Frank Garrity, who explains that he had escaped the schooner with the best of the pelts and is being followed by the Folgers. Renfrew uses the pelts as bait to lure the outlaws into a trap, with Finn Gerson (who went straight years ago and tried to disassociate from the Folger gang) playing the role of an evil spirit to spook the outlaws into giving up. 

 

NOTES: Muriel Pollock supplied the piano music for a sequence in this broadcast. This story was adapted from “The Cruise of the Jackdaw,” published in the October 1934 issue of American Boy magazine.

NOTE: Plots are reprinted with permission from Renfrew of the Mounted: A History of Laurie York Erskine's Canadian Mounted Franchise by Martin Grams, Jr. 

THE LONE RANGER BUBBLEGUM CARDS

A collection of 48 bubblegum cards were produced in 1940, given away in packs of bubble gum, featuring the artwork of Charles H. Steinbacher. Produced by Gum, Inc., the candy and card combo was sold for a penny. The original concept was to consist of 60 different cards so that fans of the radio program could buy the candy with the intent of collecting all 60. Children who mailed in five of their wrappers could also receive 8 x 10 a photo from the series. Children who sent in 25 wrappers would receive a complete set of those five photos. Those large prints are today considered among the rarest of Lone Ranger premiums.

In the early-to-mid 1990s, the art for all 60 cards was discovered in the personal safe of the late Steinbacher, so the cards were reproduced by Dart Flipcards, Inc., in 1997, not with a reproduction of all 48 cards, but also the 12 that were never produced.

Steinbacher was the art director for the George Moll Advertising Agency, which handled the Gum, Inc., account. Steinbacher became a legend in the field of non-sports cards for producing the art for the Horrors of War set for Gum, Inc., which was produced in 1938. Steinbacher’s watercolor-on-board paintings, 7 x 6 inches, were sold off separately over the years for sums even larger than the cost of the original bubble gum cards.