Mystery, Crime & Detective · NBC
Crime and Peter Chambers
April 6, 1954 – September 7, 1954 · 23 broadcasts
Peter Chambers charges five hundred dollars a day, works out of Manhattan, and -- unusually for a radio private eye -- gets on rather well with the police. His closest friend is Homicide Lieutenant Louis Parker, and the two of them talk their way through a murder a week in wisecracks.
What makes this short NBC run worth keeping is how completely it belonged to one man. Henry Kane created Chambers in his 1947 novel A Halo for Nobody, wrote the radio scripts, and produced the series himself -- so these twenty-one surviving broadcasts are a rare direct sample of a working private-eye novelist's own idea of how his character should sound. Dane Clark, the Warner Bros. tough guy who called his screen persona "Joe Average," plays him; Bill Zuckert is Parker.
It was made by good hands: Fred Weihe, who directed it, also directed NBC's two great science-fiction anthologies, Dimension X and X Minus One. And because the show carried no sponsor, its closing minutes were given over to plugging NBC's own schedule -- which is how a modest summer detective series ended up with Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Fibber McGee and Molly, James Stewart, Eddie Cantor and, once, President Eisenhower in its credits.
NBC, 6 April to 7 September 1954. Twenty-three broadcasts; twenty-one survive.
Collection status:
21 of 23 held (91% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
1954
April 6, 1954
Bruce Burke Murder Frame-Up
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(MP3)
A millionaire nightclub owner sends a beautiful woman to kill Chambers -- except the millionaire is already dead, and the one person who can alibi Chambers is murdered too.
April 13, 1954
Charles Avon, Druggist
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(MP3)
A pharmacist with a sideline in illegal drugs hires Chambers to find out who killed the man who had been blackmailing him.
April 20, 1954
Cemetary Attack
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(MP3)
Paid a thousand dollars to carry a quarter-million-dollar ransom into a graveyard at midnight, Chambers walks into an elaborate kidnapping aimed at a notoriously tight-fisted millionaire.
April 27, 1954
Joan Bradly
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(MP3)
An opera singer is killed in a theatrical boardinghouse and her hundred thousand dollars in cash disappears. Chambers begins by examining every suspect's shoes.
May 4, 1954
Abigail Chrisenberry
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(MP3)
Chambers falls into conversation with a beautiful stranger in a bar, and shortly afterwards finds himself accused of her murder.
May 11, 1954
Old Man Krause's News Stand
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(MP3)
A newsstand operator is beaten up twice and a woman of ninety is shot dead. Someone called The Dancer may be behind it.
May 18, 1954
La Grand Mezon - 3rd Booth
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(MP3)
A doctor's affair with one of his own patients surfaces over dinner at a French restaurant -- and ends with her husband dead.
June 1, 1954
Angela Wentworth's Uncle
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(MP3)
A client asks Chambers to call on her uncle. He finds the uncle dead, and a costly piece of jewellery gone.
June 15, 1954
Stoney Carter
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(MP3)
A contessa is knifed to death and Jack March is the obvious suspect, but Chambers keeps his attention on the flowers.
June 22, 1954
Cafe' Tropical - Bruce Eldridge
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(MP3)
June 29, 1954
Bubbles Greko - the Bubbles Club
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(MP3)
July 6, 1954
Cufflink Is ...
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(MP3)
July 13, 1954
Masquerade Party
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(MP3)
July 20, 1954
Donald Sloane - Embezzler
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(MP3)
A bank teller loots his own accounts and then, for no reason anyone can see, walks away leaving twenty-eight thousand dollars behind.
July 27, 1954
Nursemaid to Three Beautiful Women
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(MP3)
Hired to guard the fifty-thousand-dollar prize of a beauty contest, Chambers is left with a stabbed employer and three finalists, one of whom must have killed him.
August 3, 1954
Rhonda Duffy's Race Horse
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(MP3)
A horse called Gray Dancer loses its race and the jockey is found murdered. Who did it, and why?
August 10, 1954
Tina Diaz - Utopia Ballroom
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(MP3)
August 17, 1954
Elaine Janis - School Teacher
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(MP3)
August 24, 1954
Winston Carr
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(MP3)
A wealthy client pays Chambers two hundred dollars to deliver a single envelope -- an easy errand, until the man it was addressed to turns up murdered.
August 31, 1954
Clair Connely - the Hot Spot
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(MP3)
A well-known bandleader is murdered inside a fashionable nightclub called The Hot Spot.
September 7, 1954
Irene Wilson's Dead Uncle Stanley
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(MP3)
Max Daley's death looks like suicide, and proving it was not is worth two hundred thousand dollars. The last broadcast of the series.
The Story
Peter Chambers charges five hundred dollars a day, works out of Manhattan, and -- unusually for a radio private eye -- gets on rather well with the police. His closest friend is Homicide Lieutenant Louis Parker, and the two of them talk their way through a murder a week in wisecracks.
What makes this short NBC run worth keeping is how completely it belonged to one man. Henry Kane created Chambers in his 1947 novel A Halo for Nobody, wrote the radio scripts, and produced the series himself -- so these twenty-one surviving broadcasts are a rare direct sample of a working private-eye novelist's own idea of how his character should sound. Dane Clark, the Warner Bros. tough guy who called his screen persona "Joe Average," plays him; Bill Zuckert is Parker.
It was made by good hands: Fred Weihe, who directed it, also directed NBC's two great science-fiction anthologies, Dimension X and X Minus One. And because the show carried no sponsor, its closing minutes were given over to plugging NBC's own schedule -- which is how a modest summer detective series ended up with Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Fibber McGee and Molly, James Stewart, Eddie Cantor and, once, President Eisenhower in its credits.
NBC, 6 April to 7 September 1954. Twenty-three broadcasts; twenty-one survive.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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