Private-detective drama · Mutual-Don Lee
Let George Do It
October 18, 1946 – September 27, 1954 · 470 broadcasts
Let George Do It is a West Coast private-eye drama that ran on the Mutual/Don Lee network from 1946 to 1954, sponsored the whole way by Standard Oil of California (today's Chevron). Every week a stranger answers George Valentine's newspaper ad -- "Danger is my stock in trade... Write full details!" -- and hands him a case: a vanishing corpse, a framed client, a treasure map, a killer who wants to be caught. Bob Bailey plays Valentine as a wisecracking optimist who sank his last dime into an office, some furniture, and that classified ad; the show opened as a near-sitcom (studio audience and all) before hardening into tough, twist-loaded noir. Bailey went straight from this role to the one he is best remembered for, insurance investigator Johnny Dollar -- and Olan Soule took over George for the final three broadcasts in September 1954. Valentine works his cases beside secretary Claire "Brooksie" Brooks (Frances Robinson, then Virginia Gregg, then Lillian Buyeff), with Eddie Dunstedter's music -- a full orchestra early on, pared to a lone organ by 1949 as television drained radio budgets. The scripts, by David Victor and Jackson Gillis (both bound for major TV careers), favor a clever hook and a sting in the tail.
Collection status:
211 of 470 held (45% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1946 (15 episodes)
- 1947 (52 episodes)
- 1948 (51 episodes)
- 1949 (52 episodes)
- 1950 (52 episodes)
- 1951 (53 episodes)
- 1952 (63 episodes)
- 1953 (93 episodes)
- 1954 (39 episodes)
1946
George's very first client is shot dead in the new detective's office -- and then the body, the client's wife, and George's own secretary all vanish.
Business is slow when George's long-lost cousin Jeff turns up wanting one thing found: a woman willing to marry him and his fifty-seven pigs.
A cowboy movie star who does a yearly benefit for the orphanage that raised him comes to George with a humiliating secret -- he is terrified of his own horse.
November 1, 1946
(untitled)
George is set to recover the fortune a peculiar rare-book collector left hidden at his death, with the nursery rhyme about Mary's lamb as his only lead.
November 22, 1946
(untitled)
December 6, 1946
(untitled)
December 13, 1946
(untitled)
December 20, 1946
(untitled)
December 27, 1946
(untitled)
1947
January 3, 1947
(untitled)
January 10, 1947
(untitled)
January 17, 1947
(untitled)
January 24, 1947
(untitled)
January 31, 1947
(untitled)
February 7, 1947
(untitled)
February 14, 1947
(untitled)
February 21, 1947
(untitled)
February 28, 1947
(untitled)
March 7, 1947
(untitled)
March 14, 1947
(untitled)
March 21, 1947
(untitled)
March 28, 1947
(untitled)
April 4, 1947
(untitled)
April 11, 1947
(untitled)
April 18, 1947
(untitled)
April 25, 1947
(untitled)
May 2, 1947
(untitled)
May 9, 1947
(untitled)
May 16, 1947
(untitled)
May 23, 1947
(untitled)
May 30, 1947
(untitled)
June 6, 1947
(untitled)
June 13, 1947
(untitled)
June 20, 1947
(untitled)
June 27, 1947
(untitled)
July 4, 1947
(untitled)
July 11, 1947
(untitled)
July 18, 1947
(untitled)
July 25, 1947
(untitled)
August 1, 1947
(untitled)
August 8, 1947
(untitled)
August 15, 1947
(untitled)
August 22, 1947
The House That Jack Built
August 29, 1947
It's a Mystery to Me
September 5, 1947
(untitled)
September 12, 1947
(untitled)
September 19, 1947
(untitled)
September 26, 1947
(untitled)
A strange run-in over a snapped pearl necklace and the woman who dropped it lands George somewhere very awkward -- first a sewer, then a tree.
October 10, 1947
The Joke Was on the Killer
October 17, 1947
(untitled)
October 24, 1947
(untitled)
October 31, 1947
(untitled)
November 7, 1947
(untitled)
November 14, 1947
(untitled)
November 21, 1947
(untitled)
November 28, 1947
(untitled)
December 5, 1947
(untitled)
December 12, 1947
(untitled)
December 19, 1947
(untitled)
December 26, 1947
(untitled)
1948
January 5, 1948
(untitled)
January 12, 1948
(untitled)
January 19, 1948
(untitled)
January 26, 1948
(untitled)
February 2, 1948
(untitled)
February 9, 1948
(untitled)
February 16, 1948
(untitled)
February 23, 1948
(untitled)
March 1, 1948
(untitled)
March 8, 1948
(untitled)
March 15, 1948
(untitled)
March 22, 1948
(untitled)
March 29, 1948
(untitled)
George's old army buddy is confined to a sanitarium in Egypt, and the smuggled diamonds that start the case turn out to be cover for something far worse.
Hired to find a man's black-sheep brother, George reaches the missing man's room only to find a dead bookie stuffed in the closet.
An amateur bird-watcher trains his binoculars on a distant penthouse and sees one man shove another off the roof -- exactly the sort of case George gets pulled into.
In a tenement district ruled by a pack of street kids, George takes on the job of steering a sixteen-year-old fresh out of reform school away from a serious crime.
George and Brooksie go underground as sandhogs to learn why a string of accidents keeps halting a million-dollar river tunnel -- and dredge up sabotage and buried treasure.
A frightened man begs George to expose the fake medium bleeding his fiancee dry -- so George enlists a ghost of his own to trap the real killer.
May 17, 1948
(untitled)
A society wife needs her missing sister found quietly, before an old scandal reaches the newspapers and wrecks a respectable marriage.
A meek little movie comic, about to be handed his first starring role, hires George to give him a taste of real excitement -- and gets murder instead.
A glamorous trapeze star hires George to guard her against threatening letters he's sure she wrote herself for publicity -- until she turns up strangled.
A former chorus girl is about to be branded an unfit mother and lose her daughter, and swears the front-page scandal that damned her was a frame.
A gentle immigrant who wants only to become a citizen is beaten, kidnapped, and killed by a racket that preys on frightened little people.
A hated drama critic hires George to solve an old crime, then dies with a letter-opener in his chest -- just before his wife rushes in and shoots the corpse.
A woman hires George to publicly romance her so a big-game hunter will drop his affair with George's client's fragile best friend -- and the hunter promises to kill any rival.
A private eye mails George a hundred dollars and one instruction: cry murder if he turns up dead. By morning he's been run down, and a corpse is fingering him as the killer.
A man admits he faked a robbery to hide gambling losses from his wife -- then someone confesses to the phony crime, and a real murder turns up at the same hour.
A paper-mill man begs George to recover reams of stolen paper, insisting the theft could decide the fate of an entire nation he dare not name.
A respected doctor has been quietly paying blackmail for months to his own son, and now a note has arrived promising the exact time and manner of his death.
A neighborhood insists a murdered man's empty house is haunted, and George is hired to prove there's no ghost -- and maybe finally solve the killing.
A young model writes George that she means to kill herself; he races over to find her already dead, then steps out to call the police and returns to an empty room.
A social club is sure one of its own didn't knife his stepfather, and hires George to prove the jailed young man innocent.
A beer heiress can't understand why the Spanish nobleman she loves keeps his distance, and hires George to uncover the terrible family curse she's certain is to blame.
An intense young man wants George to settle it once and for all -- is his father truly guilty of the ten-year-old murder that put him away?
George is paid handsomely to romance a nightclub singer, then learns she's a pawn in a shooting war between two racketeers -- and their leverage is the woman he loves.
A wealthy woman is being driven toward madness by a bespectacled little man who appears everywhere she goes, staring and sending threats -- as fires break out around town.
October 4, 1948
(untitled)
October 11, 1948
(untitled)
Four people in one neighborhood have been killed, each time by a man in the same loud sports jacket, and an anonymous client leaves George a fee and a name.
An insurance man, out of time and money after chasing a wife-killer for nearly seven years, asks George to help before the murderer collects a $200,000 payout.
A botany student is convinced someone means to murder her professor, but no one will take the warnings of the girl named -- of all things -- Miss Brooks seriously.
A pious old man plans to give his rare Bible to whichever relative most deserves it, and to enjoy their joy while he lives -- until he's found drowned in six inches of bathwater.
November 15, 1948
The Room That Killed
A tormented husband writes George that his beautiful wife Sylvia may be slipping away from him -- or he may be going mad with jealousy -- and a fishy suicide follows.
A small-time racketeer is being blackmailed by the mob into committing a crime he can't escape, and the crime is murder.
A frightened wife asks George to explain her husband -- a retired millionaire who shoots his dog, shoplifts for the thrill of arrest, and seems to relish becoming a monster.
December 13, 1948
The Fabulous Fatso
December 20, 1948
(untitled)
A man whose only crime is a harmless private hobby has begun receiving threats on his life, and a blackmailer may be behind the murder that follows.
1949
Hired to trace a forgotten silent-screen star, George finds her living on Skid Row -- and someone has already tried to kill her twice.
George reluctantly agrees to escort a college girl's body home to her wealthy Mexico City family; then the corpse is stolen, two thugs work him over, and the signing doctor is murdered.
A club fighter's wife doesn't want her husband to take a dive, so George rigs a disc recorder to talk the fixer out of his crooked bet.
A woman fears her scatterbrained older sister has married a ruthless charmer half her age who can only profit from her death, and hires George to dig into his past.
Answering an urgent plea from a terrified stranger, George walks into a birthday trap -- Lt. Riley and five mystery writers with a phony corpse.
A crusading newspaper editor asks George to help break the three-man ring that quietly runs the crooked town of Sharondale.
A humble mother fears her son is in danger, and she's right -- a private detective with no ethics has been selling combustible secrets to two rival racketeers.
Answering a plea relayed by her twin, a woman sends George on a long trip to an islet near Honolulu, where his instincts scream the whole errand is a setup.
George isn't surprised to find a hard case running a loan-shark racket -- what rocks him is that the wealthy, beautiful woman behind it all is the real kingpin.
A condemned man swears to George that he killed a woman but did not murder her, and stakes his one slim hope of proof on a bottle of poisoned liquor.
A killer mails George three hundred-dollar bills and a boast: his murders share a hidden theme, and he craves an intelligent man's appreciation of his art.
The only way to show that a death eight months back was really murder is for George to pose as a visiting Canadian novelist.
A crooked politician will finally return from Mexico to testify -- for a price -- and George arrives with the cash to find three other men bidding for the same man.
April 4, 1949
(untitled)
April 11, 1949
(untitled)
A nightclub owner fronts George fifteen thousand dollars to acquire a rare Etruscan vase and resell it at a hundred-grand markup -- then a car tails him home with the cash.
Sent chasing a client who turns out not to exist, George returns to find Brooksie has taken a case of her own -- and landed herself beside a dead man on a murder charge.
Two sisters bicker over their love for a fake mind-reader who has been dosed with poison yet stubbornly lives, while a second lethal bottle circulates through the house.
A glamorous client sends George to trade twenty thousand dollars for a painting, and the treachery over the canvas keeps compounding until her husband is stabbed to death.
A man hires George to prove that he himself is a murderer -- his perfect crime is so perfect that no one will believe his confession.
A famous novelist's jealous wife pays George to prove her husband has fallen for the heroine of his own bestseller.
Posing as a cruise ship's athletic director, George tries to keep three jittery smuggling musicians alive while someone aboard works to get him thrown off.
A dying old man hires George to see that the three heirs to his fortune reveal their strange secrets -- the last joke of a man who liked to play devil.
June 27, 1949
(untitled)
July 4, 1949
(untitled)
July 11, 1949
(untitled)
July 18, 1949
(untitled)
A doll-like house deep in the woods has a habit of killing anyone who tries to live there, including the nervous teacher who died of fright before she could reach George.
A letter reaches George from a woman married to the town's top gangster: she loathes him enough to kill, and thinks her chance is near.
A man just out of prison wants George to prove his wife's fatal accident, a week before his release, was really murder -- and slugs him for suggesting otherwise.
A South American firm wants to hand Joe Martin $10,000, but the reckless loner won't take it -- and the keeper who watched over him has just turned up dead.
George's fishing holiday lands a corpse -- a small man shot three times -- and a woman styling herself the Empress of Fish Falls whose grand circus history may be invented.
As summer fades toward autumn, George crosses paths with an artist named Frederick Gentle -- and a case of murder.
A worried father hires George to protect his red-headed daughter from unknown trouble; soon the girl is shot dead, and the same gun kills the father.
A fourteen-year-old girl on a vast, sun-baked farm begs George for help -- she's being held prisoner by a family whose love of the land is matched only by their hatred of one another.
A man branded a wartime coward for betraying thirty-seven refugees is found dead after a threatening telegram -- and the writer who told the tale is dead too.
An attempt on a harmless old boarder, a slain insurance man, and a forty-thousand-dollar payout thicken the puzzle in sleepy Little Mayfield.
October 3, 1949
(untitled)
October 10, 1949
(untitled)
A man who never got on with his wife hires George to find her, but the clues are so plentiful -- and so convenient -- that George suspects the husband killed her himself.
A crippled man cared for by two spinster sisters is killed on the ornamental staircase built long ago for beauty and marriage, now a setting only for tragedy.
A screen cowboy asks George to stop a killing; George is too late, the victim drops to one flawless shot, and the likeliest suspect happens to be blind.
A widow pleads for George's help against her simple-minded neighbor, a huge man with a child's mind, and the theft of her mother's brooch.
A racketeer walks free from the grand jury, a witness against him dies, and the crusading prosecutor vanishes -- while a cautious stranger hires George for a small, urgent task.
A box of poisoned chocolates kills a cat, then a publisher's secretary, as it passes from hand to hand -- and George means to learn who sent it, and who was really meant to die.
A lonely roadside waitress hires George to look into the death of a shy truck driver who, she's sure, was murdered before his rig was ever wrecked.
Invited to a party in a dead man's thirty-second-floor penthouse full of weapons and death masks, George and Brooksie climb to find no party at all -- just a widow and her brother.
George carries $50,000 to a supposedly dead gangster in Panama who's now threatening to sue a studio over a film about his life -- and the guide sent to meet him is murdered first.
A doctor's wife, certain her husband is in danger from another woman at a mountain hotel, asks George to intervene before a ski trip turns deadly.
1950
A frantic collector's most priceless possessions -- twelve prize roses -- are stolen just before the Rose Bowl, and the thorny theft soon threatens to bloom into murder.
A wealthy woman who cannot hear and will not speak summons George to her isolated home, and is found dead by the waterfall on her own land.
A hated woman on Juniper Lane lives in constant danger of murder, and the warning letter meant for George is mistakenly sent to the very victim it describes.
At a Mexican-border motel that collects the desperate like flies, George finds a couple thought to be suicides -- until he realizes both were murdered, and his client has vanished.
A dying composer leaves behind a secret sonata, and the friend of his broken, joyless wife begs George to uncover the fear that has stolen her ability to smile.
An antiquarian curio dealer who studies old crimes as a hobby mails George a mystery he cannot crack -- one that may cost him his life.
A man in trouble with a gambler won't ask for help, and neither will the gambler who's already had George thrown out of his club -- but the beaten man they carry in changes everything.
February 20, 1950
(untitled)
February 27, 1950
(untitled)
March 6, 1950
(untitled)
March 13, 1950
(untitled)
March 20, 1950
(untitled)
At a desert motel run by an angry cook and his roving-eyed wife, the only cheerful man keeps a silver coffin in his room -- and George won't believe his death was anything but murder.
Of two brothers -- one loathed, one everyone's friend -- it's the beloved Mervyn who turns up dead, exactly as his brother and their strange butler both foretold.
A stolen portrait leads George to take a dead man's place at a meeting, only to learn that both the woman in the painting and the man who owned it have been murdered.
Hired to steal a diamond necklace from his own client in a Mexican town, George is jailed, framed, and congratulated on a theft he hasn't even been told to commit yet.
A gangster and a dignified suburban doctor are shot dead by the same .45 in peaceful River Vista, and George can find no thread connecting the houseboat to the barge.
A small-town editor reports that the local witch has been burned, and George arrives to hear the supposedly dead woman scream as she flees him into the dark.
A doctor paid $5,000 to commit an inventor to an asylum is struck down with an iron cat, and a tape recorder holds the key to a case George must crack fast.
An operatic phonograph record whispers a death sentence to the singer who mailed it, and both she and an aging opera star die like the doomed figures in the operas they loved.
At a class reunion, the perennial joker of the class of 1930 dies of his own prank -- undone by a suicide note he wrote in advance and never lived to laugh at.
An amnesiac woman may be a drowned heiress whose body was never found, but the one man who could say for sure has been killed in a traffic accident.
A Mexican detective is shot dead while writing to George for help on a fire-insurance job, and George finds himself locked out of Mexico as the real angle surfaces.
At a women's college, one girl disappears at eleven o'clock and another is thrown from a tampered-with saddle -- and the psychology professor behind it freely admits his hypnosis experiments.
Sent to Acapulco to buy an impoverished playboy's yacht, George can't shake the feeling behind two men who came for the same boat and died -- one drowned, one seemingly a suicide.
Under a huge tower clock, the daughter of a man supposedly felled by a heart attack now claims she killed him -- and George is certain she is the one who needs help.
A dashing bachelor who's a fixture of the gossip columns turns out to be a fiction invented by a publicity man -- until the imaginary man turns up as a very real corpse.
A millionaire couple die in a car crash everyone calls an accident, but when the photographer who shot the scene is murdered, George starts to doubt.
At a seaside town George meets a shot-at parrot, a woman dreaming of sunken Spanish galleons, and a ship's captain who knocks him cold -- then turns up drowned in a diving helmet.
An unsolved murder, four suspects the police gave up on, and a marked deck in a club card room draw George into the killing of Dorothy Fullman.
A convicted killer is shot dead in the street while handcuffed to a policeman, and his murderer walks straight up to surrender, content to face the chair for a crime he wanted to commit.
A little old lady indifferent to her own life offers George $1,000 to catch her murderer, and survives a poisoning only because two people dosed her with cancelling poisons at once.
Locked in a closet by a messenger boy, George opens it onto a dead man carrying his own name and papers -- leaving Lt. Riley to ask how the corpse came to be George Valentine.
A lisping voice runs a deadly game: phony contest prizes lure wealthy winners to collect, and each one is marked for murder the moment she answers.
A stranger other men fear -- and who seems to work for a mobster the police have chased for years -- hires George without explaining why, and George means to find out.
Two secretive newlyweds guard their fenced estate against every eye, and refuse all help when a neighbor is struck down at their gate.
A week after remarrying, a man in a wheelchair goes over a two-hundred-foot drop to his death; the police shrug it off as an accident, and George does not.
The police bring in a terrified boy of ten who can't or won't speak, and George grasps the reason once a man's body surfaces in the water near where the child was found.
A legendary honest old recluse loses his guide dog and then his life to what looks like an accident, as vultures with claims on his fortune gather -- and one of them is murdered.
A great actress is terrorized by a blackmailer who smashes the master records of her performances and demands $10,000, and George senses far more than blackmail in her strange household.
A rare edition of Robert Burns's poems draws burglars, an eager buyer, and finally murder to a quiet bookshop.
The police call Abel Merton's death a suicide, but his nephew insists it was murder, and George questions why the dead man's partner should suddenly faint.
A Christmas episode turning on a roast-duck dinner and an 'other woman' whose identity is the surprise, capped by Bob Bailey stepping out of character to wish listeners a merry Christmas.
1951
January 1, 1951
(untitled)
A visiting businessman asks George to clear a young employee jailed for the murder of a woman the young man says he only just met -- a woman it turns out the businessman knew.
A press agent dupes George into a rooftop-rescue publicity stunt with a trapeze star, and he can't back out because the aerialist's jealous strongman husband is holding George's gun.
The proud manager of a luxury apartment building sees his luck curdle when one tenant is poisoned and, minutes later, another is electrocuted fifteen floors up.
A gossip columnist who celebrates Christmas out of season for the presents is murdered under his own tree by one of the many hangers-on who aren't nearly as loyal as they seem.
Is a 'tongalani' the title of a book, the name of a woman, or both? George has to untangle it before an unhappy client is hurt any worse.
A smitten young man asks George's help with a girl named Lucy, and can't say who threatened to kill him for seeing her -- especially once it turns out there are two Lucys.
Protecting a politician's reputation goes badly wrong: the blackmailer is found dead, George is accused of murder and arson, and a fugitive George tries a little blackmail of his own.
A friend of George's is shoved under a train, and the trail of the elusive robber-killer the papers call the Prairie Dog leads to a pawn shop.
The police think a man murdered his wife, but George can't see how he managed it in the brief window with no alibi -- and the suspected accomplice next door is already dead.
A Rangoon rubber chemist pays George to trace a vanished partner, and a counterfeit black-pearl necklace and a bogus traveler knot into a very tangled corpse.
Three men want George to expose their town as a racket clearing-house before a grand jury moves in, but he's stuck behind the eight ball -- wanted for murdering himself.
When Uncle Harry's bones finally surface, the search only begins, for the five-year-old murder makes a suspect of everyone in a town that liked him least of all George's client.
Two reclusive brothers whose friend hanged himself years ago start seeing nooses knotted around the house -- and then George comes to with a rope around his own neck.
Sent to stop sabotage at a company's Bolivian tin mine, George and Brooksie are shot out of the sky over a wrecked ore train before they ever reach the diggings.
A man is murdered in a room sealed by barred windows and a burglar alarm, amid a cuckoo clock that keeps terrible time, a cleaning woman who reads psychology, and a talkative thief.
An uncle who swears by the maxim 'once a crook, always a crook' feels vindicated when his paroled nephew robs him and bolts -- but a shady investigator's role makes George doubt the tidy case.
A foolproof gambling system that enriched no one has left two men dead, and the case drags George thousands of miles to a strange little town where a bullet may be next.
An old college crush asks George to deliver four priceless miniatures; his car is run off the road, the paintings vanish, and a $20,000 check he never earned turns up in his pocket.
A killing at a lonely beach house spreads suspicion in widening circles -- an alibi-armed widow with a motive, the young man who came between the couple, and the dead man's enigmatic lawyer.
Beneath a giant tower clock, a daughter claims she killed her father, and George sends Brooksie to try where he failed to reach the girl he's sure needs help.
A dashing man-about-town proves to be a fiction cooked up by a publicity man to build his business -- a phantom that comes back to haunt him as a very real body.
Everyone insists a millionaire couple's fatal crash was just an accident, but when the man who photographed the scene is murdered, George stops arguing and starts digging.
At Millie's Wharf, a shot-at parrot, a woman chasing sunken galleons, and a ship's captain who knocked George cold all lead back to a body in a diving helmet.
A generous man known as Lorenzo the Great is shot dead as a stranger confesses that a year ago he drew the high card and killed Dorothy Fullman -- a case George knows was never solved.
A convicted killer is gunned down while handcuffed to a policeman, and his murderer surrenders on the spot, willing to die in the chair for a crime he simply wanted to do.
July 30, 1951
(untitled)
August 6, 1951
(untitled)
September 10, 1951
(untitled)
September 17, 1951
(untitled)
A stolen payroll, a nervous replacement watchman, and a dead 'prowler' leave even George stumped -- but he can't believe the shooting was anything but murder.
A badly frightened young man caught up in a racket begs George's help, and just as George learns how rough the game is, the young man is jailed for a shooting.
October 8, 1951
(untitled)
October 15, 1951
(untitled)
A hired killer dumps a body, is shot by the Coast Guard, and dies with his secrets, leaving a crime so simple George hasn't a single clue -- so he sets out to make his own.
A faded crystal-ball showman is dragged out of twenty years' obscurity by a hard-boiled publicity woman who now fears what she's revived, and hires George to find out what he's up to.
November 5, 1951
(untitled)
November 12, 1951
(untitled)
A mysterious client sends George and Brooksie to Panama on a hazy errand, and after a drugged flight and a nightclub shooting, George is inclined to believe the warnings of danger.
A frightened teenager drags George into an aging matinee idol's staged suicide, and when the girl's mother dies in a convenient car accident, a silly suicide starts to look like a perfect murder.
A fearless radio commentator hires George over threatening letters, then is shot dead on the air just as he's about to break a scandal -- with a show-recording hobbyist among the suspects.
A paroled man striving to reform hires George after his room is torn apart, and the job knots up with an unidentified body and a pillar of the community as chief suspect.
Someone tucks a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace into Brooksie's parcel from a department store; the gambler who did it turns up dead, and Brooksie herself vanishes.
Brooksie had hoped to share Christmas Eve with George, until a lonely soldier in Japan mails him twenty dollars and a single request: escort the loveliest girl alive.
December 31, 1951
(untitled)
1952
A newspaperman driven to suicide by loan sharks sends George undercover after two suspects, but his plan is jeopardized when his contact is warned to drop him or die.
An art collector's gruesome new idol brings a wave of threats, and when George takes charge of the god he finds at least three people willing to kill for it.
At a convention of famous magicians, the debut of a new illusion called the Deadly Avenger ends in a scream and a real corpse -- a little man who kept muttering about honor.
George's client has an unnerving gift for predicting murders, and her first two premonitions come true on schedule -- but he interrupts the third with a gun in his hand.
A dying uncle who never did his niece a kindness promises her a surprise in his generous new will, then vanishes from his deathbed -- one surprise too many for George.
Dispatched to a Pacific island to find a woman's treasure-hunting husband, George turns up a ring of dope smugglers instead.
A menacing voice foretells three accidents to a wealthy couple, and after a night watchman dies as the predicted third, the couple call it closed -- but George is far from satisfied.
Accidents keep striking an amusement pier every Friday, and George is hired to find the cause -- after nearly becoming a victim of one himself.
A wave of pointless forest fires pulls George into a lumber town boiling with resentment, its suspects running from an embittered crippled logger to a sheriff who wants no help.
A young woman insists her lawyer write her will at once, certain she has only three days to live, and the sole thread George turns up is a buried secret between her and her sister.
Warren Sage survives tainted milk, a bomb in his car, and a bullet, and George waits, ready, for the killer's next try.
An architect's widow needs George to rid her moated house of a ghost he's sure is a man, and she may have solved the case herself by shooting a night prowler.
March 31, 1952
(untitled)
April 7, 1952
(untitled)
A dogged old spinster pays George to settle a killing fifteen years cold, and the case reaches a South American mine owner who may be a man long presumed dead.
A gentle toymaker takes the blame for a fatal hit-and-run, and a row of toy soldiers carries George from that murder into a sabotage plot.
Chasing the famous Romany diamonds, George and Brooksie run from Paris to Istanbul, and George sets his trap with greed for bait.
Working for the French government in Algeria, George is tipped by an old OSS friend that he may be serving the wrong side, the answer waiting in the Hand of Fatima.
Warned off a case before it's even offered, George traces stolen documents from a restaurant safe to a big-time gangster -- and finds a girl beaten senseless and the rest of the papers gone.
George is hired to fly to a South Pacific island and bring back a writer held prisoner by a Communist outfit called The Group -- against the wishes of the man he's meant to rescue.
May 26, 1952
(untitled)
June 2, 1952
(untitled)
George's errand to tell a hot-tempered island captain that his niece has secretly married ends in murder, the old man stabbed with a souvenir Japanese knife, and a second Van Patten shot dead.
A worried niece asks George to attend a seance and expose the mystic who has her wealthy aunt in his grip, and though the medium's manifestation seems impossible, George isn't buying it.
June 23, 1952
(untitled)
June 30, 1952
(untitled)
July 7, 1952
(untitled)
July 14, 1952
(untitled)
July 21, 1952
(untitled)
July 28, 1952
(untitled)
August 4, 1952
(untitled)
August 11, 1952
(untitled)
A respectable married man vanishes after a mysterious phone call, and though the evidence says he ran off with another man's wife, both George and the missing man's wife have their doubts.
Hired to uncover sabotage at a company's Bolivian tin mine, George is shot down over a wrecked ore train before he can even reach the works -- and glad just to be on solid ground.
September 1, 1952
(untitled)
September 8, 1952
(untitled)
A cleaning woman suspects her boss is a fence, and when he's murdered in a room sealed by bars and an alarm, George faces a puzzle thick with a bad cuckoo clock and a too-talkative thief.
A paroled man stands accused of robbing the very uncle who lives by 'once a crook, always a crook,' and his sister's faith -- plus a crooked investigator -- makes George reopen the shut case.
A supposedly foolproof gambling scheme that enriched nobody has already claimed two lives, drawing George far from home to a strange little town where his own odds look grim.
An old college crush asks George to deliver four priceless miniatures, but his car is run off the road, the paintings vanish, and a $20,000 check he never earned appears in his pocket.
A slain man leaves a note blaming his wife -- but the note is forged -- and suspicion widens from a lonely beach house around a rewritten will.
October 17, 1952
(untitled)
A routine trip to Cuba to bid on tobacco curdles when George winds up captive in a shabby Havana house, evidently to keep him away from the auction.
October 24, 1952
(untitled)
October 27, 1952
(untitled)
November 3, 1952
(untitled)
A gentle gray-haired man in a bus station won't remove his overcoat, and when George does it for him he finds the man shot dead -- then watches two 'friends' walk the body out in broad daylight.
November 14, 1952
Prairie Dog
George is hired to impersonate a man about to inherit a fortune and marry a beautiful woman, and the dream job sours fast once he learns the real man is marked for murder.
November 21, 1952
Tonight the Mayhem's Going to Be Different
November 24, 1952
(untitled)
November 28, 1952
The Eight Ball
December 1, 1952
(untitled)
December 5, 1952
Every Shot Counts
December 8, 1952
(untitled)
December 12, 1952
The Anthill
December 15, 1952
(untitled)
December 19, 1952
Touched by an Angel
December 22, 1952
(untitled)
December 26, 1952
Drop Dead
December 29, 1952
(untitled)
1953
January 2, 1953
Uncle Harry's Bones
January 5, 1953
(untitled)
January 9, 1953
This Ain't No Way to Run a Railroad
January 12, 1953
(untitled)
January 16, 1953
No Escape from the Jungle
January 19, 1953
(untitled)
January 23, 1953
Murder on Vacation
January 26, 1953
(untitled)
January 30, 1953
Man Behind the Frame
February 2, 1953
(untitled)
February 6, 1953
Big Brother
February 9, 1953
(untitled)
February 13, 1953
What Became of Terry Cable
February 16, 1953
(untitled)
February 20, 1953
The Discovery of Ponce the Lion
February 23, 1953
(untitled)
February 27, 1953
The Fearless Clown
March 2, 1953
(untitled)
March 6, 1953
The Man from French Guiana
March 9, 1953
(untitled)
March 13, 1953
Sucker Stunt
March 16, 1953
(untitled)
March 20, 1953
The Marauder
March 23, 1953
(untitled)
March 27, 1953
The High Price of a Penny
March 30, 1953
(untitled)
April 3, 1953
Tune on a Triangle
April 6, 1953
(untitled)
April 10, 1953
Red Spots in the Snow
April 13, 1953
(untitled)
April 17, 1953
(untitled)
April 20, 1953
(untitled)
April 24, 1953
(untitled)
April 27, 1953
(untitled)
May 1, 1953
(untitled)
May 4, 1953
(untitled)
May 8, 1953
(untitled)
May 11, 1953
(untitled)
May 15, 1953
(untitled)
May 18, 1953
(untitled)
May 22, 1953
(untitled)
May 25, 1953
(untitled)
May 29, 1953
Nothing but the Truth
June 1, 1953
(untitled)
June 5, 1953
High Card
June 8, 1953
(untitled)
June 12, 1953
(untitled)
June 15, 1953
(untitled)
June 19, 1953
(untitled)
June 22, 1953
(untitled)
June 26, 1953
Angels Grotto
June 29, 1953
(untitled)
July 3, 1953
The Hand in the Coconut
July 6, 1953
(untitled)
July 10, 1953
The Sedan from the City
July 13, 1953
(untitled)
July 17, 1953
Tag You're It
July 20, 1953
(untitled)
July 24, 1953
The White Elephant
July 27, 1953
(untitled)
July 31, 1953
Deal Me Out and I'll Deal You In
August 3, 1953
(untitled)
August 7, 1953
The Blue Plate Special
August 10, 1953
(untitled)
August 14, 1953
The Noose Hangs High
August 17, 1953
(untitled)
August 21, 1953
The House That Jack Built
August 24, 1953
(untitled)
August 28, 1953
It's a Mystery to Me
August 31, 1953
(untitled)
September 4, 1953
And Hope to Die
September 7, 1953
(untitled)
September 11, 1953
The Treasure of Millie's Wharf
September 14, 1953
(untitled)
September 18, 1953
Is Everybody Happy
September 21, 1953
(untitled)
September 25, 1953
See Me Once You've Seen Me Twice
September 28, 1953
(untitled)
October 2, 1953
(untitled)
October 5, 1953
(untitled)
October 9, 1953
(untitled)
October 12, 1953
(untitled)
October 19, 1953
(untitled)
October 26, 1953
(untitled)
November 2, 1953
(untitled)
November 9, 1953
(untitled)
November 16, 1953
(untitled)
November 23, 1953
(untitled)
November 30, 1953
(untitled)
December 7, 1953
(untitled)
December 14, 1953
(untitled)
December 21, 1953
(untitled)
December 28, 1953
(untitled)
1954
January 4, 1954
(untitled)
January 11, 1954
(untitled)
January 18, 1954
(untitled)
January 25, 1954
(untitled)
February 1, 1954
(untitled)
February 8, 1954
(untitled)
February 15, 1954
(untitled)
February 22, 1954
(untitled)
March 1, 1954
(untitled)
March 8, 1954
(untitled)
March 15, 1954
(untitled)
March 22, 1954
(untitled)
March 29, 1954
(untitled)
April 5, 1954
(untitled)
April 12, 1954
(untitled)
April 19, 1954
(untitled)
April 26, 1954
(untitled)
May 3, 1954
(untitled)
May 10, 1954
(untitled)
May 17, 1954
(untitled)
May 24, 1954
(untitled)
May 31, 1954
(untitled)
June 7, 1954
(untitled)
June 14, 1954
(untitled)
June 21, 1954
(untitled)
June 28, 1954
(untitled)
July 5, 1954
(untitled)
July 12, 1954
(untitled)
July 19, 1954
(untitled)
July 26, 1954
(untitled)
August 2, 1954
(untitled)
August 9, 1954
(untitled)
August 16, 1954
(untitled)
August 23, 1954
(untitled)
August 30, 1954
(untitled)
September 6, 1954
(untitled)
The Story
Let George Do It is a West Coast private-eye drama that ran on the Mutual/Don Lee network from 1946 to 1954, sponsored the whole way by Standard Oil of California (today's Chevron). Every week a stranger answers George Valentine's newspaper ad -- "Danger is my stock in trade... Write full details!" -- and hands him a case: a vanishing corpse, a framed client, a treasure map, a killer who wants to be caught. Bob Bailey plays Valentine as a wisecracking optimist who sank his last dime into an office, some furniture, and that classified ad; the show opened as a near-sitcom (studio audience and all) before hardening into tough, twist-loaded noir. Bailey went straight from this role to the one he is best remembered for, insurance investigator Johnny Dollar -- and Olan Soule took over George for the final three broadcasts in September 1954. Valentine works his cases beside secretary Claire "Brooksie" Brooks (Frances Robinson, then Virginia Gregg, then Lillian Buyeff), with Eddie Dunstedter's music -- a full orchestra early on, pared to a lone organ by 1949 as television drained radio budgets. The scripts, by David Victor and Jackson Gillis (both bound for major TV careers), favor a clever hook and a sting in the tail.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending