Drama & Anthology · NBC
Adventure Ahead
August 5, 1944 – November 4, 1944 · 14 broadcasts
Adventure Ahead! was NBC-Red's adventure anthology for young listeners in the summer of 1944 -- fourteen self-contained half-hours, Saturday mornings from August 5 to November 4, most of them dramatizing classic adventure fiction (Dana, Defoe, Buchan, Dumas, Benet, Henty) under a wartime through-line of defending freedom at home and abroad. There were no continuing characters; each week brought a fresh story and a fresh cast drawn from New York's radio bench -- which is where the show earns a second look today, catching performers like Joseph Wiseman (a decade before Dr. No), Alexander Scourby and Juano Hernandez early in their careers.
Eleven of the fourteen broadcasts survive as OTRR-certified recordings; three -- The Arrival of the Lily Bean, Have You Seen Tom Thumb? and the finale, Dumas' The Three Musketeers -- are missing. The series never reached a planned ending: NBC-Red gave the air over to the Sixth War Loan Drive in November 1944, and Adventure Ahead simply stopped.
Collection status:
11 of 14 held (79% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
1944
August 5, 1944
Two Years Before the Mast
Listen
(MP3)
August 12, 1944
The Arrival of the Lily Bean
August 19, 1944
The Story of a Bad Boy
Listen
(MP3)
A young New England lad and his friends find life in their small town shaken up when the sailor Ben drops anchor and stays awhile -- from Thomas Bailey Aldrich's boyhood classic.
August 26, 1944
Inside the FBI
Listen
(MP3)
A boy is given a guided tour of the FBI's laboratories and watches a typical case worked from first clue to solution.
September 2, 1944
Robinson Crusoe
Listen
(MP3)
Defoe's shipwrecked castaway survives alone on his island year after year, and at last gains a companion in the man he names Friday.
September 9, 1944
A Tooth for Paul Revere
Listen
(MP3)
Stephen Vincent Benet's tall tale of a Yankee who rides into Boston meaning only to get a bad tooth pulled -- and finds himself helping to start the Revolution.
September 16, 1944
Toby Tyler or 10 Weeks with a Circus
Listen
(MP3)
An orphan boy runs away to join the circus, only to discover that the glamour of the big top hides a harder and lonelier life than he had imagined.
September 23, 1944
The Talking Drums
Listen
(MP3)
On the Gold Coast, the son of a railroad chief learns to read the code of the native drums and uses it to uncover a plot stirring against the project.
September 30, 1944
The Biscuit Eater
Listen
(MP3)
Two boys in the rural South take in the runt of a litter and, against every expectation, train him into a prize-winning bird dog. (Broadcast for National Dog Day.)
October 7, 1944
Have You Seen Tom Thumb?
October 14, 1944
Hill Lawyer
Listen
(MP3)
A small, freshly minted attorney arrives in a backwoods community and sets about untangling a string of stagecoach holdups and a bitter feud over a coal mine.
October 21, 1944
One of the 28th
Listen
(MP3)
A rousing sea-adventure in which a young lad, plucked from the water by a feared pirate, is held prisoner aboard the raider's ship -- from G. A. Henty's historical fiction.
October 28, 1944
Greenmantle
Listen
(MP3)
British secret agents work to break up an enemy scheme to turn the nomads of the Crimea against Russia -- adapted from John Buchan's Richard Hannay spy novel.
November 4, 1944
The Three Musketeers
The Story
Adventure Ahead! was NBC-Red's adventure anthology for young listeners in the summer of 1944 -- fourteen self-contained half-hours, Saturday mornings from August 5 to November 4, most of them dramatizing classic adventure fiction (Dana, Defoe, Buchan, Dumas, Benet, Henty) under a wartime through-line of defending freedom at home and abroad. There were no continuing characters; each week brought a fresh story and a fresh cast drawn from New York's radio bench -- which is where the show earns a second look today, catching performers like Joseph Wiseman (a decade before Dr. No), Alexander Scourby and Juano Hernandez early in their careers.
Eleven of the fourteen broadcasts survive as OTRR-certified recordings; three -- The Arrival of the Lily Bean, Have You Seen Tom Thumb? and the finale, Dumas' The Three Musketeers -- are missing. The series never reached a planned ending: NBC-Red gave the air over to the Sixth War Loan Drive in November 1944, and Adventure Ahead simply stopped.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery