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Mystery, Crime & Detective · ABC

Pat Novak, For Hire

September 12, 1946 – June 25, 1949 · 27 broadcasts

Jack Webb before Dragnet, talking a mile a minute on a fogbound pier. Pat Novak rents boats out of a shack on Pier 19 on the San Francisco waterfront, and tells a few white lies when the price is right. Every week a stranger offers him strange money for a simple errand, a body turns up, and Novak is the patsy -- beaten once by the hoods and again by Inspector Hellman, who enjoys it more. He hauls his friend Jocko Madigan, a drunk ex-doctor, out of a bar to do the legwork, and it all ends in violence. Nobody tuned in for the plots. They tuned in for the talk: the most gloriously overheated similes radio ever put on the air, delivered by a young Webb in a register he would abandon entirely for Sergeant Friday a few months later. The show ran first as a West Coast regional out of KGO San Francisco from 1946, sponsored by Gallenkamp's Shoes, with Ben Morris taking the lead when Webb left for Hollywood. Webb came back for a national ABC run in 1949 -- twenty sustaining half-hours from KECA Los Angeles, with Raymond Burr as Hellman seven years before Perry Mason came calling, Tudor Owen most often heard as Jocko, George Fenneman heading a rotation of announcers, and Basil Adlam's orchestra. Variety called the dialogue crisp and racy and predicted steady listener interest. It lasted twenty weeks, and people have been quoting it ever since.

Collection status: 24 of 27 held (89% complete)
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Episode Spine

Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.

1946

September 12, 1946 Jack of Clubs
A stranger's thousand dollars lands in Novak's bank account, and the woman waiting at his door wants him to lift a playing card off a passenger on a docking ship.
October 13, 1946 John St. John Listen (MP3)
A man is run down in the street outside Novak's office and spends his last breath handing over two envelopes -- one of cash, one to be delivered to a stranger.
November 24, 1946 Dixie Gillian Listen (MP3)
Lee Underwood will pay Novak to deliver one sentence to a man named Dixie Gillian: Adrian says be gone by noon tomorrow. It is a generous fee for sixty minutes of work, and a poor one for what the gun he was told was empty turns out to do.

1947

August 3, 1947 Johnny Brown Gambling Ring Listen (MP3)
Broke after the Tahoe tables cleaned him out, Novak hires on as bodyguard to a jumpy little man making the drive to San Francisco. Somewhere along the road the man is gone; a woman is in the trunk.
August 10, 1947 Mysterious Set of Books Listen (MP3)
A nervous woman phones asking for company. Novak arrives to find Hellman opening the door, a bookkeeper dead, the landlady gone, and a thousand dollars offered for one envelope.
November 23, 1947 The Lydia Reynolds Case Listen (MP3)
A bad tip at Bay Meadows leaves Novak flat, so the rich woman in the fast car who wants a bodyguard looks like luck. It stops looking that way at the dead end, with a body behind him.
November 30, 1947 Death in Herald Square Listen (MP3)
A man in a hurry wants his apartment watched overnight and cannot explain why he had to break into it. Novak's doubts arrive with two guns, a badge, and a year-old murder.

1949

February 13, 1949 John Singer
February 20, 1949 Jack of Clubs Listen (MP3)
A thousand dollars Novak never earned turns up in his account, and the woman in his apartment wants a playing card off an incoming ship. The corpse in the closet came free.
February 27, 1949 Marcia Halpern Listen (MP3)
A woman collides with Novak outside a cafe, sits down for coffee, tells him she cannot remember who she is or what the police want her for, and dies on the floor.
March 6, 1949 Fleet Lady Listen (MP3)
A jockey has lost the horse he rides tomorrow and offers two hundred to find her. At the stables Novak finds no horse and one body.
March 13, 1949 Rubin Callaway's Pictures Listen (MP3)
Novak pulls a shot man out of the bay alongside his boat. Dying, the stranger asks him to carry a locker key to a girl at the Empire Club and tell her it did not work out.
March 20, 1949 Rory Malone Listen (MP3)
A redhead in a convertible pays Novak three hundred to stay away from a prizefighter he has never met. She seems very sure he is about to meet him.
March 27, 1949 Joe Candono - Blackmail Pictures Listen (MP3)
A woman offers a hundred dollars to hand a gambler ten thousand and bring back the photographs he is holding over her brother. Novak dislikes everything about it, and wakes beside a body.
April 2, 1949 Father Lahey - Joe Feldman Listen (MP3)
A priest walks into the office -- very tall, and startlingly deep-voiced -- with what he calls an errand of mercy: be waiting when a man named Joe Feldman breaks out of Alcatraz tonight. One small stop on the way back leaves a man with his throat cut and a policeman dead.
April 9, 1949 Sam Tolliver Listen (MP3)
An old friend Novak has not seen in years wants to borrow a boat, and Novak with it, to pick up a package. Handing it over and saying goodbye does not go to plan.
April 16, 1949 Go Away Dixie Gillian Listen (MP3)
The same client, the same three hundred dollars, the same errand -- frighten a man with an unloaded gun. This time Novak knows better, and it happens anyway.
April 23, 1949 Rita Malloy Listen (MP3)
Novak wakes to a man on his bed holding a gun and wanting to borrow a boat. The boat turns up next morning in pieces, and what is still aboard it -- a corpse, and a key from a hotel -- puts him on the trail of a woman named Rita Malloy.
April 30, 1949 Wendy Morris Listen (MP3)
A lawyer thinks the husband who came home from the army five years late is not the husband who left. Novak is hired to watch the wife -- and Hellman is away on his honeymoon.
May 7, 1949 Shirt Mix-Up at the Laundry Listen (MP3)
Ticket 428 buys Novak two shirts that are not his. The man holding his shirts has three friends who want the exchange very badly, and one shirt is missing.
May 14, 1949 Geranium Plant Listen (MP3)
Fifty dollars to collect a geranium from a flower stand and carry it to an address, and no explanation. A car tries to run him down, and the flower shop turns out not to exist.
May 21, 1949 Give Envelope to John St John Listen (MP3)
An old man is hit by a car at the corner and dies with two envelopes in his hand: one of money for Novak, one sealed for a man he never lives long enough to describe.
May 28, 1949 Lola Madden Killed on a Train
June 4, 1949 Agnes Bolton Listen (MP3)
A stranger interrupts Novak's shave to hire him: follow a woman from the bowling alley to her boat and find out which vessel takes the green leather bag off her.
June 11, 1949 Georgie Lampson Listen (MP3)
An old flame needs a boat to meet a freighter in from Shanghai, and wants to be sure her stepmother collects the right package. It looks far too easy.
June 18, 1949 The Only Way to Make Friends Is to Die Listen (MP3)
The name Joe Denine meant nothing to Novak until he found the body in one of his own boats. Two gunmen are still looking for Denine, they are sure Novak knows where to find him, and nobody has told them there is no longer anywhere to look.
June 25, 1949 Little Jake Siegel Listen (MP3)
A priest asks Novak to the church. A stranger fires at him there, a nine-year-old altar boy steps into it, and Novak goes looking for the man who meant the bullet for him.
The Story

Jack Webb before Dragnet, talking a mile a minute on a fogbound pier. Pat Novak rents boats out of a shack on Pier 19 on the San Francisco waterfront, and tells a few white lies when the price is right. Every week a stranger offers him strange money for a simple errand, a body turns up, and Novak is the patsy -- beaten once by the hoods and again by Inspector Hellman, who enjoys it more. He hauls his friend Jocko Madigan, a drunk ex-doctor, out of a bar to do the legwork, and it all ends in violence. Nobody tuned in for the plots. They tuned in for the talk: the most gloriously overheated similes radio ever put on the air, delivered by a young Webb in a register he would abandon entirely for Sergeant Friday a few months later. The show ran first as a West Coast regional out of KGO San Francisco from 1946, sponsored by Gallenkamp's Shoes, with Ben Morris taking the lead when Webb left for Hollywood. Webb came back for a national ABC run in 1949 -- twenty sustaining half-hours from KECA Los Angeles, with Raymond Burr as Hellman seven years before Perry Mason came calling, Tudor Owen most often heard as Jocko, George Fenneman heading a rotation of announcers, and Basil Adlam's orchestra. Variety called the dialogue crisp and racy and predicted steady listener interest. It lasted twenty weeks, and people have been quoting it ever since.

Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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