Crime docudrama (LAPD case files) · CBS West Coast / Mutual-Don Lee (regional + syndicated)
Calling All Cars
November 29, 1933 – September 8, 1939 · 305 broadcasts
One of radio's very first police dramas, Calling All Cars opened with the crackle of real dispatch -- "Calling all cars..." -- and then dramatized actual case files of the Los Angeles Police Department. Premiering November 29, 1933 on the CBS West Coast network (and later the Mutual-Don Lee Network), each 30-minute episode laid out the facts of a crime, built to the criminal's arrest, and often closed with a recap of how justice was meted out. Sponsored by the Rio Grande Oil Company, it ran through September 8, 1939. The show was produced in Los Angeles in close cooperation with the LAPD and hosted by the sitting chief himself, the controversial James E. Davis -- making it as much favorable PR for a force later notorious for its heavy-handed tactics as it was entertainment. A young William N. Robson wrote and produced it (Robert Hixon directing) using an uncredited West Coast stock company; the topicality was striking, with the "Execution of Dillinger" episode assembled roughly 72 hours after the event. Rio Grande even built a promotional empire around it, including a 400,000-circulation magazine and a kids' badge club. John Dunning called it "a crude forerunner" of the type that reached its zenith on Dragnet, and that is its lasting claim: the acknowledged ancestor of the modern police procedural. It won the Institute of Audible Arts Trophy in 1938, and it launched Robson, who became a major CBS director of Suspense and Escape -- and who would later helm the East Coast Whistler.
Collection status:
300 of 305 held (98% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1933 (5 episodes)
- 1934 (53 episodes)
- 1935 (53 episodes)
- 1936 (53 episodes)
- 1937 (52 episodes)
- 1938 (52 episodes)
- 1939 (37 episodes)
1933
Tom White and his girlfriend Burma go on a crime spree that ends with the killing of deputy sheriff Cookie Vejar.
Three armed men in a La Salle coupe rob a Terminal Island bank customer, touching off a robbery-and-murder manhunt.
A lone dynamite terrorist seizes the chief's office and threatens to level Central Police Station.
A deputy sheriff's murder traces back to a good-hearted young woman drawn into the underworld by the wrong man.
1934
A daylight jewelry-store holdup on Terminal Island sends detectives after two dark-complexioned robbers.
Two shadowy figures break into a San Diego Ford agency in the dead of a May night.
The abduction of a USC music dean's child triggers a major Los Angeles ransom hunt.
An almost hopeless murder case is cracked by the clue of three grooved bullets.
An alert amateur detective helps police solve a famous holiday-season diamond robbery.
The murder of a policeman in Laurel Heights hangs on the trail of a battered old Ford.
Detectives investigate the bombing of the Los Angeles Times offices.
The real robbery of Mae West's jewels and cash is dramatized, with Martha Wentworth impersonating the star.
March 7, 1934
The William Tallman Case
A woman's body in a vacant lot opens a case rooted in a late-summer family dinner.
The show dramatizes the manhunt for the armed and dangerous Dillinger gang.
A pyromaniac's fire does $147,000 in damage and launches a hunt for the arsonist.
A young woman needed as a federal witness is mysteriously poisoned.
A young woman is murdered on 99th Street.
The mutilated body of a young woman is found on Montecito Street.
One honest cop breaks a narcotics deal his superiors had ordered him to ignore.
Southgate's first-ever murder draws detectives to San Gabriel Avenue.
A police lieutenant is murdered by an unknown assailant.
The abduction of wealthy William Gettle sparks the biggest manhunt in the Southwest's history.
A shooting on Echo Park Avenue shows how the identification bureau's routine work cracks crimes.
The Police Record Department tracks a pair of robbers who have worked the Wilshire district for months.
An immigrant's brother arrives from the old country in a true case that ends in murder.
A bank-robbing gang guns down a brave Los Angeles officer in the line of duty.
A help-wanted ad for a man with nerve turns out to be recruiting for a payroll robbery.
An Independence Day ride-along in a police radio car -- a slice of actual life on the beat.
July 4, 1934
July Fourth, 1934
Fingerprints identify the two men who shot and robbed Officer 734.
A smuggling gang runs a new form of morphine into California.
Federal agents stake out and gun down Public Enemy Number One, just seventy-two hours before broadcast.
Robbers blow the safe of the Fifth Street Department Store with nitroglycerine.
A young woman's body turns up in the Mojave Desert near Lancaster.
An officer is shot on Stanford Avenue.
An officer is shot and killed during a bank holdup.
Police hunt a well-dressed young man passing worthless checks.
After a holdup and shooting on 50th Street, an officer works to free a wrongly held man.
Three men scale a San Francisco house on Filbert Street and make off with $25,000 in loot.
Two women's bodies found in trunks at an Arizona depot lead to the Ruth Judd murder case.
A hit-and-run in Long Beach.
A dope ring operates out of San Francisco's Skid Row.
The occupants of a black coupe shoot a San Jose police officer.
An unidentified man's body is found beside the highway near Oxnard.
A burglary at a North Broadway grocery company is cracked by a trouser-cuff clue.
A murder in Walnut Creek turns on ex-convict Frank Carney, hardened by fifteen years in prison.
A murder on Riverside Drive, solved under the direction of the Los Angeles sheriff.
Detectives chase a narcotics ring working out of a Hollywood Chinese restaurant.
An unidentified body in monogrammed cufflinks is found under a bridge.
Opening its second year, the show follows Det. Lt. Joe Philkus on a case where the victim wasn't murdered at all.
Two sharp-eyed citizens help police hunt two robbery suspects.
A poisoning murder in a schoolhouse.
A holdup and murder in San Diego.
A Christmas broadcast on the human side of the beat cop -- complete with a red-suited, fur-trimmed suspect.
1935
A patrolman is found shot in the back, in a case framed around juvenile delinquency.
Six men hold up the Chrysler Creamery.
A highway robber and killer does his work disguised as a policeman.
A Tucson bank vice president is kidnapped from his home.
A Stockton murder points detectives toward a suspect named Pete Heliopolis.
A masked man wrecks and robs a train.
Two masked men rob a bank -- the opening move of a crime spree.
A female narcotics-squad undercover agent is found dead.
A case built around deadly traffic accidents on the city's streets and highways.
A rebroadcast of the Mae West jewel-robbery case, one of the show's outstanding early episodes.
March 19, 1935
The Mae West Jewel Robbery
The story of a talented man who could not cope with life, hosted from Oakland by Chief Bodey Wallman.
The Secret Service enlists four local officers to break up a planned revolution in Mexico.
A kidnapping by two men and a blonde ties into the case of the first woman electrocuted in Pennsylvania.
A burglar is discovered on Hollywood Boulevard.
Three young men steal a car in San Francisco and shoot three men dead.
A body wearing a gold ring and a silver belt buckle is found buried in a basement.
A wife and baby vanish, and a dead infant is found buried under a heap of tin cans.
A rancher is found murdered near Fresno.
The disappearance of Father Patrick Heslin in San Mateo.
Three Tulsa high-schoolers start down the road to murder.
A Long Beach bank holdup and a free-spending Russian immigrant suitor.
Stolen Liberty Bonds are being unloaded for the remnants of Pretty Boy Floyd's gang.
A merchant is found hatchet-murdered in his San Diego store.
A con artist poses as a European nobleman.
A train robbery in Contra Costa County.
Mrs. Maude Ross is found murdered in her home.
An unidentified woman's body is found near San Fernando.
A narcotics raid closes the last opium den in Los Angeles's Chinatown.
A plane smuggles undocumented immigrants across the California border.
A plane smuggles undocumented immigrants across the California border.
A man is murdered during a produce-market holdup.
A woman's torso in the Los Angeles River leaves a single hair as the only clue.
A man is shot down by an unknown assailant.
A Fresno murder and robbery, made harder to crack by the area's many migratory workers.
A bank robbery at the corner of Adams and Figueroa.
Two convicts escape the Stockton jail in the San Joaquin Valley.
A young woman last seen with a gray-haired man is kidnapped near Brownell Avenue.
Nineteen-year-old Henry Stevens escapes from the county jail.
Arson and dynamite destroy a building -- and, unusually, the suspect is cleared and the crime left unsolved.
Two robbery-and-murder suspects flee up Topanga Canyon in a Chrysler roadster.
A theatre holdup in Westwood kills an officer, as Chief Davis marks the show's 100th broadcast.
Four men commit a murder at Eleventh and Maple.
Petty criminal Nails Cronan climbs to big-shot status in the dope rackets.
A man hires an out-of-town killer to murder his wife -- with film star Charles Bickford guesting.
Two armed and desperate men rob the Pasadena National Bank.
November 27, 1935
The Killer Returns
Parolee Clyde Stevens fails to report to his San Francisco parole office.
A body under a Westwood bridge stems from a diamond-ring robbery gone wrong.
Trigger-happy holdup man Jules Rubin robs actress Polly Moran and goes on a rampage with girlfriend Burma White.
1936
Safecrackers disguised as carpenters are undone by an alert citizen.
A Ford roadster is the getaway car in the Arizona murder of Frank Szell.
A burglar leaves burned matches at the scene of every crime.
A shotgun-mutilated body in a canyon leads detectives to killer John Vittore.
Boxer Bull Kelly is wanted for a crime of passion.
A violent disturbance stirs memories of San Francisco's old Barbary Coast.
Eddie Griffith flees to California after killing a Seattle policeman -- no relation to the famous Dillinger.
A jeweler is murdered and robbed; police hunt a man with blood still on his hands.
John Hassle is sought for questioning in the murder of his wife.
A lighter case carried by the comic character Joe Murphy.
The killing of a streetcar conductor and a parolee who exploits a lenient system.
A gang of housebreakers works the countryside near San Francisco.
Motor-officer Tom Kramer is killed, and police hunt a black touring car.
Two men hold up the Pacific Theatre in San Jose.
A murder in a haberdashery, framed by Chief Davis's talk on the police complex.
A body at the Holmes Hotel in a case that nearly solves itself.
A woman is found murdered on Arlington Street.
A burglar works the Marina district and Nob Hill.
The Bunko Squad targets swindlers and bookmakers as Chief Davis orders ex-convicts to register.
A long stakeout for two men who robbed a Clovis bank of $30,000.
A routine forgery case spirals into three graves after Andy Holman kills a detective.
A body in an Arcadia irrigation ditch sends detectives across the county.
Two prospectors vanish from Yuma, Arizona.
A body is found in a car trunk on the Newhall Grade.
Police hunt Mexican Jim, who runs the state's largest marijuana fields.
A murder-suicide on Grand Avenue that is nearly the perfect crime.
A young woman in a green dress is murdered near San Francisco.
A cross-eyed, ego-driven man is wanted for murder.
In Arizona's Maricopa County, Ben Knight is wanted for murder.
A short man in a checked cap is hunted for murder.
A detective's hunch cracks a Chinatown opium operation.
An ideal officer solves a brutal crime near Pasadena Avenue.
A man is seen dragging a body down from Franklin Avenue.
Two elderly brothers' hidden gold becomes a motive for murder on their farm.
James Kip has been missing for eight days.
A carpenter's helper, Dale Slater, has been missing since June.
A couple finds a woman with her throat cut, bludgeoned with a beer bottle.
A woman is found murdered in her office in the Dillman building.
A bloodied man waves a red lantern to stop cars in Huntington Beach.
A pyromaniac sets fire to Brandon Street.
A shooting on Francis Avenue.
A stakeout squad sets out to catch the Phantom Bomber terrorizing a San Francisco church.
Two men run a bunco racket, borrowing large sums against phantom properties.
A woman is found murdered in her room at the Prescott Hotel.
Fifteen-year-old Pete Galitson and two pals are wanted for safe robbery.
On the show's third anniversary, a body is found in a canyon wearing nothing but a necktie.
Two armed boys hold up gas stations and flee by car.
An arson fire breaks out in Oakland.
A gangland-style killing on the Ninth Street Bridge and a man lured by easy money.
A man's body is found in Bootlegger's Canyon.
A man arrested for stealing a bottle of milk kills the arresting officer.
Hosted by the Oakland sheriff, Patrolman O'Brien finds a lost boy on his beat.
1937
A bank robbery at 40th Place and Figueroa, as Chief Davis talks up traffic fatalities.
Two men rob and flee in a stolen Laguna Beach cab.
A holdup and shooting at the Forum Theatre.
A gang of safe-blowers strikes again.
The narcotics squad closes in on a dope ring.
A gas-station operator is held up by two -- or three -- overcoated men.
Robbers torture an attorney and his family when the job yields little money.
A robbery and shooting at an El Monte bank.
A shooting on Hampshire Street in Los Angeles.
Two soldiers wanted for murder run for the Mexican border.
Police hunt a smashed-up red Ford truck after a hit-and-run.
An explosion and fire on Overland Avenue.
The Million Dollar Theatre is robbed.
Charlie Johnson shoots Marge Johnson and confesses -- a crime of unbridled passion.
Three men are wanted for murder in Missouri.
Pegleg Lusig, armed and dangerous, is wanted for murder in Marin County.
A holdup on Third Street.
A holdup at the Union Ice Company leaves three men dead.
A missing man may have been murdered.
A gang breaks into The Turf cigar store in Phoenix and pulls other jobs.
Witnesses describe a short bank robber with a deep facial scar.
A Chinatown shooting, which Chief Davis frames with a note that most of its residents are law-abiding.
A gun runner uses a woman to smuggle heroin.
A burglar-murderer is marked by a butterfly tattoo on his arm.
A body near a Valley Boulevard detour may be murder.
George Fulhausen is abducted from his home by men posing as police.
A man supposedly washed overboard near Catalina turns out to be murdered.
A dangerous holdup man robs a streetcar motorman.
An attempted murder in Santa Barbara, the suspect bearing a bitten hand.
A West Coast Theatre robbery, the suspect fleeing in a Packard sedan.
A narcotics smuggler is on the loose.
A body found on Sixth Street may be murder.
A gray-suited bank robber, carrying an automatic, is wanted.
A stolen bank note betrays two bank robbers after a girlfriend talks.
A holdup at Fifth and Market leaves only a $100 bill as a clue.
An escaped criminal is on the run from Memphis.
A courtroom drama in which a bone button convicts a hit-and-run killer.
The show's 200th program wipes out a Reno dope ring.
A West 42nd Street fire proves to be arson.
A heavy-set man is sought in a murder.
A fight at Grand and Jefferson sends both men to prison.
The murder of Theodore Wallman in Leona Canyon.
A murder in Hayward, Alameda County.
A studio accident and an actress's shooting draw a reporter's suspicion.
Hard case William Floyd, armed and dangerous, is bound for Alcatraz.
A society bandit learns crime does not pay after an escape into the Tehachapi Mountains.
A body in the San Bernardino desert near Langsford Wells.
A million-dollar drug shipment crosses from Mexico into the U.S.
A wronged businessman, jailed over a sugar-extraction process, heads overseas after his release.
An eleven-year-old boy vanishes, last seen with a man bound for Long Beach.
1938
A descendant of pirate Henry Morgan runs amok aboard a chartered yacht.
A motiveless killing leaves a body in a burned building on 112th Street.
A body is found in San Luis Creek.
A kidnapper-murderer is caught by the trail of the ransom money.
A hardened criminal's downfall, dramatized in the network edition with film's Chester Morris at the microphone.
An Arlington Theatre holdup; the bandit flees toward Ventura in a Ford coupe.
The owner of a Portola railroad restaurant is shot and wounded.
A stolen Nash and its murdered owner point to the harbor district.
A green Chevrolet coupe used in a gas-station holdup, the attendant kidnapped.
A menacing figure stalks a mother and child on Rowena Street.
A blonde in mink and diamonds is suspected of burglary.
An officer risks his life to break up a drug ring at Third and Flower.
The missing-persons case of a French Basque man.
A cafe holdup in progress on South Broadway.
Armed highway robbers strike near Tupman.
Trouble at the San Pedro pier as the show announces its move to Thursday nights.
A chattering parrot helps solve an old man's confession to killing and burning his wife.
Lizzie English is found dead in her burning apartment; sound films convict the killer.
Three suspects are wanted for the holdup of a garage.
A missing-persons report that may be a kidnapping.
Ray Oswald vanishes from an isolated cabin near Camarillo.
An undercover bluff cracks a dope gang led by a supposedly respectable doctor.
A murder on First Street, Long Beach.
A murder with no description of the killer to go on.
A holdup and kidnapping apparently committed by a young man.
A phony Hollywood producer proves to be an unscrupulous promoter.
A Fresno bank robbery where poor eyewitness descriptions jail the wrong men.
An old man's wife is beaten to death and found in a burning house -- and his story sounds suspicious.
A dentist reports his wife missing with $10,000 in bonds, though nothing points to a crime.
John Parker cheats four banks with forged Liberty Bonds -- but makes two mistakes.
An injured woman is found in a burning San Pedro building, with few clues.
A doctor reports his wife vanished in what proves a carefully constructed scheme.
Quiet small-town banker John Parker plots to live off the fat of the land.
A seventy-two-year-old Fresno man is reported missing.
Dapper Don, a slippery criminal since 1911, proves very hard to capture.
Threatening letters to a Hollywood producer lead to murder in Baja California.
A criminal is wounded while committing a holdup.
A woman's missing sister and her strange, meek husband -- crime does not pay, even in the imagination.
The killing of John German turns on why Mildred took a dog to the dance.
A missing woman with a strong accent may be heading for Yugoslavia.
A used brick becomes a murder weapon.
Two men set off a bomb in Seattle with two thousand sticks of dynamite.
A Portuguese immigrant's murder leads detectives to Newark, New Jersey.
A Wyoming train robbery introduced on air by the actual robber, William Carlisle.
The first murder trial to use ballistics science, told through trial and gallows.
Christian Meyer and his bride-to-be are shot by a rasping-voiced gunman.
A robbery unravels when the thieves fall out.
Two girls die of arsenic poisoning after their mother buys a bottle of arsenic.
Suicidal Dorothy Nelson vanishes after receiving strange letters.
Bill Williams is reported missing.
Three armed sixteen-year-old boys commit murder.
1939
A holdup in San Francisco.
A Santa Monica police chief introduces the story of a troubled woman.
A holdup man is marked by a ring with a blue stone.
A Greek baker's body is found in the woods after his wife reports him missing.
A seemingly dim janitor makes monkeys of the police after $74,000 vanishes from a bank.
A holdup at a Los Angeles bar.
A murder at Ninth and Wall Street in Los Angeles.
Poisoned candy mailed from Stockton kills a congressman's daughter in Delaware.
A fourteen-year-old girl is arrested for shoplifting.
A bullet-riddled body in the bay, and a ghostly voice that prompts a confession.
March 10, 1939
The $20.00 Bill
Outlaw Jack Weston shoots a lawman and ties a kidnapped sheriff to a desert tree.
Earl Durand escapes from jail in Cody, Wyoming.
Mail clerks find a body in a trunk, and an armed woman is wanted for murder.
An unusually ugly man assaults two women.
A murder in El Centro sends police after three suspects.
A murder in Baldwin Park.
The Highway Patrol uses modern methods to trace a Laguna Beach hit-and-run.
Two bandits pull a holdup in Oregon.
A parolee from Walla Walla poses as a wealthy gambler and sportsman.
Eighteen-year-old Marion Williams is reported missing.
Narcotics agents move to break a drug ring.
Roy Sherwood, armed and dangerous, is suspected of passing forged checks.
A murder and robbery in Nogales.
Al Foster is wanted for a murder in Salem, Oregon.
Carl Harden, missing two days, may have been murdered.
A Washington man known as The Flea is suspected of forging payroll checks.
An armed and dangerous man escapes from San Quentin.
Suspicious men are spotted around Los Angeles.
Joseph Walsh goes missing in Orange County.
Death visits the offshore gambling boat Johanna Smith, anchored in the waters off Long Beach.
A murder in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
An armed and dangerous man is wanted for murder in Portland.
A man named Lin Yung is wanted for murder.
A mad-dog killer is loose after a murder in Bremerton, Washington.
The series' final broadcast: a murder in Oakland, as the show announces a move to Tuesday nights.
The Story
One of radio's very first police dramas, Calling All Cars opened with the crackle of real dispatch -- "Calling all cars..." -- and then dramatized actual case files of the Los Angeles Police Department. Premiering November 29, 1933 on the CBS West Coast network (and later the Mutual-Don Lee Network), each 30-minute episode laid out the facts of a crime, built to the criminal's arrest, and often closed with a recap of how justice was meted out. Sponsored by the Rio Grande Oil Company, it ran through September 8, 1939. The show was produced in Los Angeles in close cooperation with the LAPD and hosted by the sitting chief himself, the controversial James E. Davis -- making it as much favorable PR for a force later notorious for its heavy-handed tactics as it was entertainment. A young William N. Robson wrote and produced it (Robert Hixon directing) using an uncredited West Coast stock company; the topicality was striking, with the "Execution of Dillinger" episode assembled roughly 72 hours after the event. Rio Grande even built a promotional empire around it, including a 400,000-circulation magazine and a kids' badge club. John Dunning called it "a crude forerunner" of the type that reached its zenith on Dragnet, and that is its lasting claim: the acknowledged ancestor of the modern police procedural. It won the Institute of Audible Arts Trophy in 1938, and it launched Robson, who became a major CBS director of Suspense and Escape -- and who would later helm the East Coast Whistler.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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