Mystery-detective drama · NBC / ZIV syndication
Philo Vance
April 29, 1943 – July 4, 1950 · 108 broadcasts
Philo Vance brought S. S. Van Dine's celebrated amateur sleuth -- the monocled, art-collecting dilettante who had dominated detective fiction and film through the 1920s and '30s -- to radio across three separate runs. John Emery first played him in a short 1943 NBC series for Raleigh Cigarettes, and Jose Ferrer took the role in a summer 1945 NBC replacement sponsored by Lifebuoy Soap; only a handful of episodes from either run survive. The Vance most listeners remember is the one Frederic Ziv syndicated from 1946 to 1950, with Jackson Beck -- radio's voice of Superman -- as Vance and Joan Alexander as his sharp secretary Ellen Deering, who needled him toward his solutions. Ziv's Vance shed the novels' insufferable superiority to become a courteous, quick-witted working detective, trading deductions with District Attorney Markham (George Petrie) and Sergeant Heath over a self-contained 'Murder Case' every week -- more than a hundred of them, from cover girls and prizefighters to locked rooms and impossible crimes. Brisk, formula-perfect and knowingly tongue-in-cheek, the ZIV series is a tidy showcase of postwar syndicated mystery, and the bulk of its run survives to stream today.
Collection status:
95 of 108 held (88% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1943
May 6, 1943
The Mystery of the Missing Cat
1945
A young woman turns up at a wealthy widower's door insisting she is his long-lost daughter; he swears he has never seen her, yet Vance takes her side. (AFRS 'Mystery Playhouse' rebroadcast.)
A man is knifed in the back and his body propped up as an exhibit in a wax museum, leaving Vance three suspects with reasons to want him gone.
1948
Murder inside a moving ambulance opens the ZIV run's first case for Jackson Beck's Vance and his new secretary, Ellen Deering.
One dead man, three shooters, three guns and three bullets -- a killing so overdetermined it leaves even Vance baffled.
July 27, 1948
(untitled)
August 3, 1948
(untitled)
August 10, 1948
(untitled)
August 17, 1948
(untitled)
Drama critics keep turning up dead with scraps of verse pinned to their chests, and the only 'suspect' the poems point to is Longfellow.
A millionaire fly-fisherman is found floating in his own swimming pool with a fishing knife in his heart.
A theatrical manager is shot with a tiny pistol, and Vance's suspects run to a midget, a giant, a trapeze artist and a magician.
A striking woman who dresses only in a single color muscles her way into running the city's rackets, and trouble follows her in.
After a theatre is robbed, its leading lady receives a death threat -- and it is her understudy who ends up murdered.
A compulsive gambler vanishes aboard an offshore gambling ship, radioing a frantic plea for help before she is found dead.
A reporter sent to interview Vance is murdered, and so is the cab driver who discovered her body.
A glamorous photographer's model is strangled with a strand of wire the detective thinks was once a costume-jewelry bracelet.
October 19, 1948
(untitled)
October 26, 1948
(untitled)
November 2, 1948
The Best Seller Murder Case
November 9, 1948
The President Murder Case
A prizefighter keels over in the ring, and Vance finds he was doped and poisoned rather than simply outboxed.
Vacationing in a small town, Vance and Markham find a man crushed beneath the trunk of a freshly felled tree.
A woman begs Vance to drop the case of a murdered sanitarium guard, which only guarantees he takes it; three black hairs are his sole clue.
An astronomer honored for discovering a new planet is threatened, and his assistant is soon found murdered at the observatory.
A stable trainer is killed and an exercise boy follows, as Vance races to keep a quiz-show jockey from getting away with murder.
A soda jerk is found dead beside a syrup pump marked vanilla, drawing Vance into a tangle of loan sharks and threats.
A Latin dance instructor is found knifed in her studio, leaving Vance a jealous dancer, a rival teacher and a blackmailed woodcarver to sort out.
1949
A thoroughly nasty magician is knifed inside a locked, bolted dressing room -- an impossible killing a rival illusionist all but dares Vance to solve.
January 11, 1949
The Midway Murder Case
January 18, 1949
The Supreme Murder Case
Rival collectors covet a supposedly copper idol that Vance suspects is solid gold, and one of them soon turns up dead.
The crooked executor of a young heiress's estate is shot, after a fortune-teller's crystal ball seemed to foretell it.
An airline pilot is stabbed in the ready room, with his co-pilot and a jealous passenger both holding strong motives.
A blackmailing 'professor' tries to squeeze $100,000 from a dentist who dies before he can pay. (The surviving recording is very crackly.)
A dress-shop owner is shoved under a truck, and a passing news photographer's snapshot of the crowd holds Vance's clue.
The operator of a phony-charity racket is murdered, and Vance is certain the killer will be nursing a bruised cheek.
A widely loathed stage actor is murdered, leaving nearly everyone in the company with a motive.
A rich recluse guarded by a high wall, an alarm beam and a gun is murdered anyway, and Vance disputes the tidy solution the police reach.
A stockbroker who ruined a client with bad advice -- while romancing a gangster's girl -- is found murdered.
A long-overlooked woman who has just come into money predicts her own murder and asks Vance not to avenge it.
A cowboy movie star is thrown from his horse and dies on set as a ring vanishes from his finger -- an 'accident' Vance reads as murder.
One Green sister is murdered, then the second is killed in exactly the same way, as Markham is warned to keep Vance off the case.
An ex-racketeer's girlfriend is shot dead in his imported car, and the answer turns on a British motor and an English manservant.
One holdup man shoots his own partner, who dies clutching a coded note reading 'Live On.'
Markham prosecutes a man caught over a corpse with the murder weapon, even as he grows sure the defendant was framed.
A universally despised man announces his own murder at police headquarters -- then drops dead of poison.
A torch singer moonlighting as a blackmailer -- the so-called Broadway Butterfly -- turns up dead, and one of her marks offers Vance $20,000 for some letters.
A racket boss is gunned down despite his bodyguard, and the organ-grinder who might have witnessed it is murdered too.
Bloodied ducks spotted on the golf course put Vance onto a counterfeiting ring -- and a murderer.
A wealthy man is run down on Mistletoe Road with all the evidence aimed at his brother -- keep an eye on a freshly painted 1942 Plymouth.
A gambling-house owner reports she is about to be murdered, but it is her gardener and ex-fiance who die; watch the sandwich.
Vance is beaten to warn him off a man he has never met, who then dies right after boasting his burglar-proof safe was cracked.
A racing driver is killed at the wheel of a tampered car, pulling Vance into the rivalries of the speedway.
Kidnappers seize Vance himself, and the man he was meant to protect is killed while the detective is held blindfolded.
The blackmailing owner of a penny arcade is shot dead as Vance and Markham stand in his shop; a single cent is worth watching.
The murder of a small men's-shop owner draws Vance into a gambling operation built on numbers and horse bets.
A 'cheesecake' photographer is killed and his fleeing 'murderer' dies in a crash, but Vance doubts the dead man behind the wheel is the killer.
Racketeer 'Tick-Tock' Maxwell is murdered, and a crook cheerfully confesses to robbing the safe -- as his alibi.
An eccentric millionaire bent on landing a giant tuna goes missing, and two murders follow before Vance reels in the killer.
A shotgun-happy gang boss dies in a bombing just as his former sweetheart leaves the country for South America.
A newspaperman's wife is strangled, and the motive hides in the sheet-music trade and a song called 'The Blue Penny.'
A false brother joins forces with a real one to claim a $250,000 inheritance, and a killing follows the family quarrel.
A millionaire is robbed and murdered and his butler vanishes, the case tied to an old woman in the park who refuses all help.
A man in a checkered suit seems to commit three robberies in three places at once and vanish from each.
At a southwestern dude ranch, a shooting leads Vance to a machine that supposedly prints genuine dollar bills.
A suspected smuggler is killed and a famous diamond stolen, the culprit pausing for a cup of tea.
A business executive is knifed in his office, with his wife, his assistant and a clerk all under suspicion.
A man claiming to be 400 years old tries to sell his secret of long life, and Vance cannot yet prove him a fraud.
November 1, 1949
The Revealing Ring Murder Case
November 8, 1949
The Mental Murder Case
A manufacturer is shot surprising a safecracker whose combination only he and his secretary knew; a cab ride to nowhere is the clue.
A woman tells Vance two of her dreams have already come true -- and the third is that she will kill a man.
A man on the telephone during a thunderstorm remarks 'What a night for murder' and is shot on the spot.
A married guest at his ex-girlfriend's engagement party is murdered under cover of a magician's disappearing-birdcage trick.
In a locked bedroom, a man is strangled by a disembodied gray glove glimpsed through the keyhole.
A Chinatown robbery-murder sets Vance after a killer who demands a single $15,000 dish of Din Yip Har.
A hood named Tommy Orchid murders a man who merely resembled Vance -- and does not forgive his own mistakes.
1950
A broke chorus girl is blackmailed for $5,000 and then murdered.
A gangster is killed moments after coming to Vance for protection; the giveaway is that the killer is left-handed.
A widow swears she passed her husband on the street ten months after burying him, and one stray cat hair cracks it for Vance.
Two wealthy men are strangled and robbed of their antique music boxes, a bride-to-be nudging her fiance toward murder.
A political boss is murdered while two little old ladies keep confessing to every killing in town.
A woman fingers a scar-faced hood for her husband's murder, but Vance and Markham can place the accused man elsewhere -- dining out -- when it happened.
A practical joker fond of exploding cigars is shot, and his obvious suspect is then found wounded too.
A dancer who wanted out of his partnership is knifed, putting his partner in step for the crime; a number trick hides the answer.
A slot-machine racketeer leaves a trail of bodies -- an informer, a morgue keeper and more -- and Vance takes a beating to trap him.
A killing that began in Africa ends in a locked workshop, fought over a fortune in elephant tusk and a vengeful tribesman.
Held captive by a mobster, Vance hears his own voice faked over the phone in a ploy to force Markham into dropping the charges.
A torn nylon stocking is Vance's only lead to a gang of women robbing wealthy homes.
A mysterious key arrives in the mail, and Vance finds a dead man at his own desk clutching its twin.
A racketeer is found poisoned in an unlocked bathroom -- why did the dying man throw a brush through the window instead of simply opening the door?
A man's rooftop 'suicide' comes complete with a genuine note, but Vance is convinced it is murder.
A blackmailed couple is shot as the killer whistles 'Comin' Through the Rye,' the evidence pointing at a banker's wayward son.
A dying scientist insists on a manicure before he goes, and the brothers who killed him are blown apart chasing 'Experiment X.'
Con men peddle machines that supposedly manufacture real dollar bills, and the scheme turns deadly.
A man is found with a broken neck at an outdoor carnival, and a fire on the grounds gives Vance his idea of the killer.
A man is shot dead while on the phone to the D.A., and then Markham himself is shot; the obvious killer has a solid alibi.
A derelict is found knifed and dressed in full evening clothes, telling Vance exactly where to start looking.
A fight manager is stabbed tending his boxer in the ring, though Vance suspects the fighter was the intended victim.
A body turns up in brand-new clothes but for a pair of argyle socks -- the one thin clue Vance needs to name him.
In the series' final case, a racketeer is shot in a house ringed by mud that shows no footprints.
The Story
Philo Vance brought S. S. Van Dine's celebrated amateur sleuth -- the monocled, art-collecting dilettante who had dominated detective fiction and film through the 1920s and '30s -- to radio across three separate runs. John Emery first played him in a short 1943 NBC series for Raleigh Cigarettes, and Jose Ferrer took the role in a summer 1945 NBC replacement sponsored by Lifebuoy Soap; only a handful of episodes from either run survive. The Vance most listeners remember is the one Frederic Ziv syndicated from 1946 to 1950, with Jackson Beck -- radio's voice of Superman -- as Vance and Joan Alexander as his sharp secretary Ellen Deering, who needled him toward his solutions. Ziv's Vance shed the novels' insufferable superiority to become a courteous, quick-witted working detective, trading deductions with District Attorney Markham (George Petrie) and Sergeant Heath over a self-contained 'Murder Case' every week -- more than a hundred of them, from cover girls and prizefighters to locked rooms and impossible crimes. Brisk, formula-perfect and knowingly tongue-in-cheek, the ZIV series is a tidy showcase of postwar syndicated mystery, and the bulk of its run survives to stream today.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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