Thrillers, Chillers and Killers by Frank Krutnik (Book Review)

Frank Krutnik’s "Thrillers, Chillers and Killers: Radio and Film Noir" is an absorbing exploration of how noir sensibilities seeped across mediums, particularly from Hollywood films to the golden age of radio. What struck me most is how Krutnik dismantles the idea of noir as just a cinematic style, showing instead how it functioned as a broader cultural mood of paranoia, desire, and fatalism. His comparisons between hard-boiled detective fiction, shadow-soaked film aesthetics, and radio thrillers like "Suspense" and "The Whistler" really help illustrate how noir adapted to the intimacy of sound—where voices, music cues, and silence itself could achieve the same dread that chiaroscuro lighting did on screen.

I have always believed certain crime programs for radio such as "Broadway Is My Beat" is pure noir. I enjoy watching film noir and have said many programs (not just adaptations of film noir movies on "Lux Radio Theater") are enough to wet the appetite of those who cannot get enough of film noir but feel they have seen it all. Radio drama from the 1940s and 1950s explores that alternative. Krutnik proves an academic feel but connects the dots between the various aspects that make up film noir to remind us how much fun these radio dramas are. 

While some sections veer into academic theory, the book never loses sight of the pulpy entertainment value that drew audiences in the first place. Krutnik does a fine job of balancing cultural analysis with detailed case studies—whether tracing Barbara Stanwyck’s archetypal femme fatale across both visual and audio storytelling or noting how wartime anxieties shaped the narratives. For anyone fascinated by how noir became a shared language of mid-century America, this book delivers both scholarship and readability. It’s a rewarding read for cinephiles, radio buffs, and anyone curious about how popular culture built and recycled the darker corners of its imagination.

INTERVIEW WITH MICKEY MOUSE

Amidst the two decades of research at various archives across the country, I would frequent across an obscurity from time to time. Normally I would be at a specific archive for a specific subject, but those obscurities raised my curiosity and prompted me to make a quick copy. The thought often crossed my mind that another historian may be interested in this factoid, but more often than not the curiosity fell into my filing cabinet. 

As I now clean through my research files to scan and digitize those obscurities, I realize that those bizarre unexplainable curiosities would be best suited for my blog. So allow me to share this one for your amusement.  

In March of 1935, Julius Selig wrote a brief stage play titled "Interview with Mickey Mouse." It appears to be a stage play of sorts. This only spans a few pages so if you are a Disney fanatic, enjoy this historical amusement.

Link to download:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c98ovx9s1gzj3pm/Interviewing%20Mickey%20Mouse%20%28March%201935%29.pdf?dl=0

LIGHTS OUT: Radio Horror "The Phantom Meteor"

In the summer of 1942, Sterling Products bought Lights Out to replace its current series, Board of Missing Heirs, for Ironized Yeast. CBS at that time had always banned horror stories, being more stricter than NBC in that regard, but the network decided to relax their position because playwright Arch Oboler was involved. Having made a name for himself as one of the top ten playwrights on network television, his stock in trade as a "stream on consciousness" style often first person singular applied. Oboler was scripting for weekly patriotic programs and wanted to return to his favorite genre -- horror. And because Oboler was already providing scripts for Everyman's Theater over NBC for Procter & Gamble, and just signed with NBC Blue for To the President, CBS wanted to compete.

 

The Continuity Department (the official name for the censorship department) at CBS looked at a handful of the radio scripts proposed and stamped them “acceptable” before the premiere on the evening of October 6, 1942. The series was contracted with the sponsor and the network for a total of 52 weeks. Many of the radio broadcasts that exist in recorded form originate from this 1942-43 series, which is one of the reasons why the playwright has been unjustly labeled as the creator of Lights Out. 

 

Lights Out premiered over NBC Chicago in January of 1934, created and scripted by Wyllis Cooper. NBC, under a specific term in the contract, owned the program and when it was decided to take the late-night horror series coast-to-coast in 1936, Cooper lost control of his own program. A number of authors began submitting radio scripts, including Arch Oboler, who was at that time writing brief sketches for such prestigious programs as Rudy Vallee and Edgar Bergen. Cooper had no objections; he still owned the rights to his own scripts and he was being lured to Hollywood. But with Cooper leaving in 1936, new writers were necessary. Enter stage left: Arch Oboler. 

 

For Arch Oboler to broadcast a weekly primetime horror series of the same name, he had to secure permission from NBC. Executives at NBC had no objection, considering they did not want horror programs and they wanted to retain first option on Oboler for future patriotic programs. CBS was delighted to have their first weekly program written and directed by Arch Oboler, described in the trades as “experimental drama.” The price tag was a reported $1,325 a week. Arch Oboler was able to get by with that figure by not only writing and directing, but hosting as emcee and confining himself to small casts and covering the absence of any music by elaborate sound effects. For many of the episodes, the cast consisted of only two people. 

 

Oboler always felt his Lights Out series was never horror, but was instead a “psychological chiller.” Wyllis Cooper, who created the program, always described his stories as “fantasy” (with a slight touch of horror). 

Cooper’s 1934-1936 concepts, incidentally, would be expanded from the 15-minute format to 30 minutes and a number of them repeated for some of the 1936-39 national run, then recycled for use on the 1945, 1946 and 1947 summer revivals of Lights Out on NBC, then again under a new format, Quiet, Please, from 1947-1949.

 

As for Cooper's Hollywood career... that was short-lived. After arriving in Hollywood in 1937, he found work at 20^th Century Fox and Universal Studios, contributing for such classics as Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937), Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937), Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), The Phantom Creeps (1939) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His experience with brutal last-minute re-writes at Universal for Son of Frankenstein gave Cooper sour grapes – he promptly left Hollywood after production concluded and returned to script writing for radio. (He expressed his displeasure for Universal and production of that movie very specifically, including references to Boris Karloff, in the Quiet, Please episode, "Rain on New Year's Eve.")

 

Beginning in 1946, some of his Lights Out and Quiet, Please radio scripts were adapted for television for such programs as Quiet Please: Volume One, Lights Out, and Escape.

 

Thankfully, the 1936-1939 radio scripts for the NBC national run of Lights Out was recently scanned into PDF. This allows us to enjoy such dramas as “The Blood of the Gorilla,” “Satan’s Orchid,” “Queen Cobra,” “The Legion of the Dead,” “Black Zombie” and “One Day it Rained Blood.”

Enclosed below is a link for you to download a copy of the April 19, 1939, broadcast titled “The Phantom Meteor.”

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dj9fvsmqgbmo64/Lights%20Out%20%28April%2019%2C%201939%29%20The%20Phantom%20Meteor.pdf?dl=0

The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Digital Collection

The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, was a comedy radio program which ran on NBC from 1948 to 1954 starring Alice Faye and Phil Harris. Harris had previously become known to radio audiences as the band-leader-turned-cast-member of the same name on The Jack Benny Program  while Faye had been a frequent guest on programs such as Rudy Vallee’s variety shows. After becoming the breakout stars of the music and comedy variety program The Fitch Bandwagon, the show was retooled into a full situation comedy, with Harris and Faye playing fictionalized versions of themselves as a working show business couple raising two daughters in a madcap home. But what few do not know is that the comic adventures were – in some aspect – based on their real-life family adventures. The season opener of 1952-1953 had the narrator open with an explanation that Phil Harris had just returned from England with his new automobile and was working on the engine in the drive-way. Turns out Harris really was in England that summer and he did buy a roadster.

 

A few years ago over 2,000 photographs were scanned from an archive containing Phil Harris and Alice Faye’s family and publicity photos, including awards and achievements. We have been digitally restoring the images for a future book project. Below, for your amusement, are a few of those photos chosen at random. (Almost random. I did select the one with the roadster so you can see what it looked like.) The photos, by the way, were the initial scan and not the digitally restored renditions.