Boston Blackie — 1949
26 episodes broadcast in 1949.
A wealthy friend is fleeced at a fourth-floor gambling den that has vanished by the time Blackie returns, so he stakes out the bank to trace the crooked check.
A man pays $5,000 to sleep at Blackie's and is shot dead in a panic over the time when all the clocks are broken, in a nightclub-option murder that draws real-life columnist Dorothy Kilgallen -- Kollmar's wife -- in for the scoop.
A body turns up on a boat marooned in the middle of a street as a movie publicity stunt, but the corpse is the film's own director, and the case is weird enough that Farraday wants Blackie.
A man in Africa reads that he's been declared dead by a brother grabbing the money, and as he asks Blackie to prove his identity, the witnesses who could vouch for him are murdered.
Mary asks Blackie to get a songwriter to publish her cousin's tune, and when one of the publisher's writing team is shot, suspicion swirls around a partner's wife.
A man holding $50,000 in bonds to be split among his gang vanishes from a rooftop and is found ten miles away full of bullets, leaving a cryptic 'pepper and salt' clue.
Blackie cancels a cruise to nail a waterfront crime boss after a stevedore who wouldn't pay protection is crushed by a cut-rope crate, and the trail ends in a shootout at the boss's hideout.
A slot-machine racket's bagman fakes a $25,000 holdup and hides the cash in a subway locker, whose key his girlfriend loses in a slot machine, and Blackie's new recorder gets the proof.
A newsboy steers Blackie to a staged-accident racket run out of the Polk Street Mission, which Blackie infiltrates under an alias to expose its unorthodox money-making.
A woman who faked her own death and hid $600,000 is killed before she can double-cross her old gang, and Blackie is shot as the whole affair converges in a wine cellar.
Blackie snatches a murder suspect from Farraday at gunpoint to force out the truth, only to have gangsters kill the man, landing Blackie in jail to solve it with Mary's help.
A perfume-loving swindler runs a crooked charity roulette game and murders his own henchman, and Blackie recognizes the rigged wheels as one craftsman's handiwork.
A collector advertises that he'll store his priceless Amadon pearls overnight, so Blackie steals them to teach him a lesson -- only to find them, and two other stolen sets, all worthless paste.
A gangster fears a fellow mob member who is safely in jail, yet is murdered anyway, and Blackie gets himself locked up to prove the jailed man somehow did it.
Two crooks kill a jewelry-store owner just to grab Blackie's watch left for repair, then steal his gun and frame him, until Farraday's closet mishap turns the tables.
A carnival fortune teller foretells a death with Blackie at its center, and murder duly strikes amid a pickpocket, a monkey-costumed performer, and a deaf carnival owner.
A contractor keeps losing bids to a rival who somehow knows his numbers and is then shot, and the rival's alibi collapses when his witnesses turn up dead over a cliff.
A man is stabbed to death on a Chinatown sightseeing bus, and when the killer tries to blackmail the auction-house boss who hired him, he's barreled into the river.
A small-time racketeer sends proof of a crime kingpin's misdeeds to Blackie's door, but his double-crossing stooge tries to blackmail 'the Senator' instead and pays with his life.
A phony oil-stock ring hires a woman to kill Blackie after an informer is murdered, and Mary and a well-timed whiff of perfume save the day.
Blackie and Mary register under false names at a dude ranch to investigate a lonely-hearts racket behind two disappearing guests, and a search for a coat button ends a murderer's run.
Trailing a stolen-tire racketeer who tacks Blackie's tires flat, Blackie commandeers a faulty motorcycle, crashes, and after the hospital eavesdrops his way to the gang's garage.
Two crooks work a perfume racket, killing the real salesman so one can impersonate him, and a gang member's murder -- and her strangled cat -- expose a suspect's animal phobia.
An elaborately planned bank robbery blows the safe and kills the night watchman, and the mastermind's boast that he planned it that way becomes his undoing.
June 22, 1949
(untitled)
June 29, 1949
(untitled)
◆ ◆ ◆