Detective drama · NBC / ABC / CBS
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
May 1, 1949 – September 20, 1953 · 157 broadcasts
Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1949-1953) is radio's one and only crooning private eye. Created by a young Blake Edwards -- years before Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Pink Panther -- it starred Dick Powell, the 1930s musical idol who had reinvented himself as a film-noir tough guy, and the show gleefully fused both sides of him. Diamond is a wisecracking ex-cop turned New York PI who takes cases at a hundred dollars a day and seems to get knocked on the head in every one. The signature touch came at the end: nearly every episode closed with Diamond singing a popular standard to his wealthy girlfriend Helen Asher (Virginia Gregg) in her Park Avenue penthouse -- a finish only a genuine crooner-star could pull off. Powell whistled the theme, "Leave It to Love," over each opening, and the supporting bench rotated fine character actors through Lt. Walt Levinson, among them Ed Begley and Alan Reed. Light, breezy, and full of banter, the show bounced happily across NBC, ABC, and CBS over four years. It later became a TV series with David Janssen in the title role -- but Janssen never sang, and that missing song is exactly what made Powell's Diamond unforgettable.
Collection status:
104 of 157 held (66% complete)
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1949
April 24, 1949
The earliest surviving episode (the true premiere a week earlier is lost): wealthy Richard Barton brings Diamond a desperate job -- exonerate his imprisoned son Roger, framed for murder -- as two hoods warn the detective off.
May 8, 1949
Ralph Chase wants Diamond's help with his two resentful stepchildren, but a gangster's bullet finds Chase first, tangling Diamond in a fight over the family money.
A frail old woman leaves Diamond a shabby black purse that looks worthless -- yet half the city seems ready to kill to get it back.
The tidy murder-suicide of wealthy Betty Moran looks staged to Diamond, who traces the death back to a blackmailer's squeeze.
June 5, 1949
June 12, 1949
A jealous husband's rage over a gossip-column item about his socialite wife pulls Diamond into a killing.
A mail bomb kills Tom Waxman and his brother takes the blame, but Diamond suspects a shadowy pressure group behind the blast.
A bloodied hat marked B.K. turns up in a gutter and frames a man for a murder that has no corpse -- an early twist on a classic swindle.
Two lifers break out of Sing Sing bent on killing Diamond, and open their campaign by kidnapping Helen Asher.
A killer is slashing women across the city, and the failure to stop him threatens Lt. Levinson's job.
A wife hires Diamond to shadow her straying husband -- and the trail leads straight to a corpse and an adulterous frame-up.
July 30, 1949
A former nightclub photographer hires Diamond to keep her alive; the reason someone wants her dead is buried in her old job.
August 13, 1949
A young man is accused of running down his sweetheart in Central Park -- he swears she was pushed -- as a gangland killing plays out nearby.
A condemned prisoner's last request sends Diamond to death row, then racing to keep the man's teenage brother off the same road to the chair.
A shoplifting widow's suicide, a husband's office affair, and a $300,000 jewel robbery knot together into a single Long Island murder.
A phony spiritualist milks the wealthy Van Dyke family through staged seances, and Diamond is hired to expose the racket.
A cheerfully unhinged visitor named Jerome J. Jerome hires Diamond as a bodyguard -- and it turns out he really does know where a body lies.
Thugs keep beating Diamond for a $200,000 'bundle' he knows nothing about, with a mysterious black bag at the center of it all.
A woman reports a corpse in a room locked from the inside -- the loose end of a blackmail plot against a rich old man.
A newsstand boy stuck with a counterfeit five-dollar bill puts Diamond onto a ring of forgers.
A French hat designer hires Diamond to guard his new fall line from thieves, then turns up murdered before the show.
A mother asks Diamond to find her missing private-eye son, who soon surfaces dead -- with two hard cases hunting for one of his shoes.
A lighter outing built around a song-hating neighbor and an affectionate send-up of radio's other detectives.
Diamond is framed with a fortune in diamonds stolen from the Police Commissioner's own home.
A man deported years earlier is back in the country and the bodies are stacking up -- with Diamond marked as the next name on the list.
A patient treated for amnesia confesses to murder under narcotics, and Diamond digs into what really happened during the man's lost days.
A dreamlike, self-mocking case for a scatterbrained client -- Diamond himself pronounces it the hokiest job he has ever taken.
A newly widowed woman is tormented by her late husband's ghost in a mansion built for mysticism, in a comic haunted-house tale.
A stranger calmly tells Diamond he intends to commit a murder; it takes a yo-yo to disarm the little gunman sent to stop him.
For Christmas Eve, Diamond and his friends stage their own hard-boiled retelling of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol.'
A retired stockbroker is convinced his stepdaughter and sole heir means to kill him, and Diamond trails the frightened man into an asylum.
1950
An immigrant butcher asks Diamond to help break a neighborhood protection racket, and it comes down to fists and gunfire.
A powerful publisher sets out to expose the numbers racket, and his headstrong daughter complicates Diamond's assignment.
A college student swears a soldier he watched die in the war is alive and sitting in his classes, and hires Diamond to find the 'dead' man.
A comic turn: Diamond signs on to bodyguard Timothy -- a performing seal.
The search for the missing Elaine Tanner turns up murder, mayhem, and a valuable item nobody can find.
A $100,000 jewel theft and a killing lead to an odd assignment for Diamond -- romancing the widow.
After a policeman is gunned down, a blind man and a narcotics ring hold the key to the killer.
An escaped convict marches into the police station with a bomb and a demand that an official leap from a City Hall window.
A famous actress is shot at -- then menaced by a snake -- and hires Diamond while desperate to avoid bad publicity.
Sitting his license-renewal exam at the precinct, Diamond stumbles over the body of a fellow detective.
A street photographer snaps Diamond's picture on the sidewalk, and the negative proves worth killing for.
A dying man presses a newspaper-wrapped statue of Kali into Diamond's hands, in a case that plays like 'The Maltese Falcon.'
A hired messenger is shot dead on Diamond's doorstep before he can hand over an envelope whose contents are the whole mystery.
A woman's body is fished from the water off Pier 14, and an escaped convict's jailbreak appears to be behind it.
June 21, 1950
A lawyer says his client is terrified for her life; Diamond comes to from a blow on the head lying beside her corpse.
A truck driver is killed in a hit-and-run, and his wrestler friend is certain the 'accident' had a helping hand.
A man collapses in Diamond's office, an icepick between his shoulders, and gasps one dying clue: 'Juice Bar.'
A wealthy woman is kidnapped and then murdered, with Diamond and a squad of police powerless to save her.
A promoter friend's boxer takes a suspicious dive, and the next day the promoter takes one of his own -- off a bridge.
A wife hires Diamond to dig up divorce evidence on her husband, and he lands squarely in a murder frame.
A night at the carnival with Helen turns into a midway killing, with a clown, a hula dancer, and a strongman all in the frame.
A doctor offers Diamond $1,200 to solve a mysterious death, then plunges from a high window himself.
'Big Foot' Grafton is pulled from the river as the second baseman of a women's softball team goes missing.
A mix-up over a bundle of laundry flushes a hiding killer into the open.
A man is found both shot and stabbed, with a woman standing over him holding a smoking gun.
A blackmailer is murdered mid-treatment at a men's hair salon run by an old friend of Diamond's.
Diamond saddles up to solve a wild-west killing for a man hunting his brother's murderer.
An escaped killer vows to murder Diamond, so the man's own mother hires the detective to put her son back behind bars.
A blackmailer's threat to expose a man's bigamy turns on an unlikely witness -- a homing pigeon.
Lt. Levinson is kidnapped by a man whose brother is set to be executed that very night.
October 25, 1950
Rifle Case - German Gun Maker
November 1, 1950
Traffic Ticket Case
A vicious gang tears the city apart hunting for a single envelope.
A famous art collector needs help with a divorce, and a certain smiling lady may be hiding thoughts of murder.
A madman calmly telephones the police to announce each murder before he commits it.
November 29, 1950
The Calypso
1951
January 5, 1951
Nathan Beeker Case
A bride wants Diamond's protection once her new husband makes parole -- yet it is the husband who ends up shot in the head.
A scarred man is murdered, and the son of a parole-board member becomes the prime suspect -- or is meant to.
A wealthy man sends his secretary to hire Diamond to find his brother, an embezzler fresh out of prison and hungry for revenge.
A gambler's wife is murdered moments after retaining Diamond to guard her -- or so the scene is staged.
A fashionable haberdasher is baffled when a vandal steals nothing but a single blue serge suit -- and then another.
An ashen-faced man in a grey overcoat pays Diamond $5,000 to find someone within five hours, then dies.
A mink-coated woman steps into Diamond's office, retains him, and collapses dead where she stands.
A man who paid to have himself killed loses his nerve and turns to Diamond for protection from the assassin, marked by a red rose.
Diamond throws his weight into a protection racket that is squeezing the city's independent butchers.
Sent to collect a sample of face cream from Monsieur Bouchon, Diamond discovers the sample is a bomb.
In Haiti, Diamond squares off against a voodoo racket and the powerful Englishman running it, with a giant called Little Chiva at his side.
A carnival's self-styled 'thinnest man in the world' hires Diamond and draws him into murder on the midway.
April 6, 1951
The Dead Heiress
April 13, 1951
The Right Fix
April 20, 1951
Tug
April 27, 1951
The Barrio Case
May 4, 1951
The Boy Who Made Bad
May 11, 1951
Danny Denver
May 18, 1951
Lonely Hearts
May 25, 1951
Longest Short-Cut in the World
June 1, 1951
The Montelli Case
June 8, 1951
The Darby Affair
June 15, 1951
The Poise Magazine Story
June 22, 1951
The Masteron Case
June 29, 1951
The Monkey Man
October 5, 1951
Pete Rocco Case
October 12, 1951
Lou Turner Case
October 19, 1951
Jackson Case
October 26, 1951
Registered Letter
Levinson brings Diamond a grim case: small-timer Smiley Brill has shot a veteran cop during a pawnshop break-in.
November 9, 1951
Buried Treasure
November 16, 1951
Hollywood Story - G.l. Harvey Case
November 23, 1951
Mickey Farmer Case
November 30, 1951
Goodnight to Nocturne
A fender-bender and a stray brown envelope set Diamond chasing a $600,000 robbery's stolen haul -- and cost him his trousers.
December 14, 1951
Night Club Case
A bail-jumper in a plaid overcoat keeps knocking Diamond cold, and the detective is determined to learn why.
1952
Diamond's old friend Ben Johnson, still on the force, is shot by Smiley Brill, and the trail winds to a merry-go-round.
Diamond is hired to fetch a valuable antique called 'The White Cow' from Florida, in another 'Maltese Falcon'-style chase.
A wife hires Diamond to guard her wealthy husband after a shot is fired at him, and a strange request ends in an explosion.
Diamond teams with a disreputable partner, 'Tiny' Gillespie, to collect the reward on a bail-skipping fugitive.
A tearful young woman talks Diamond into finding Tony Garibaldi, the only man who can keep an innocent off death row.
Beaten over a package he never got, Diamond hunts down Eddie Burke and the counterfeit plates behind it.
February 15, 1952
Jerry Wilson Case
February 22, 1952
Miami Case
February 29, 1952
Hired Killer Case
March 7, 1952
Winthrop & Co.
A husband hires Diamond to find the blackmailer squeezing his wife, and there is far more to the job than a beating.
From his deathbed, a jewel thief pays Diamond to find the woman who double-crossed him.
A plumber pays Diamond for three days' work and promptly gets himself killed, in a case lifted from 'The Red-Headed League.'
'Big Ed' wants to know why a string of fatal accidents keeps crippling his factory, and puts Diamond on it.
April 11, 1952
Fred Montelli Affair
April 18, 1952
Jack Murphey Case
April 25, 1952
Trixie Hart Case
May 2, 1952
Eddie Ducheck Case
May 9, 1952
Barber Shop Case
May 23, 1952
George Dale Case
May 30, 1952
Carpenter Case
June 6, 1952
Black Doll Case
June 13, 1952
Frank Taylor Case
June 20, 1952
Ed Lloyd Case
June 27, 1952
Danny Revere Case
1953
Sent to Bolivia to trace the vanished William Holland, Diamond and Lt. Levinson instead uncover a Russian agent mining pitchblende.
A rerun of the Cover-Up case: a madman calmly telephones the police to announce each murder before he commits it.
A jewelry firm is robbed of $50,000 in gems and its night watchman vanishes, later found dead -- the clue hidden inside a Buddha.
Gustav Heiden, a German immigrant gunmaker, hires Diamond to guard his newly invented rifle.
July 5, 1953
Buried Treasure
July 12, 1953
Pete Rocco Case
A rerun of the Pete Rocco case: an escaped killer vows to murder Diamond, so the man's own mother hires the detective to return her son to prison.
July 19, 1953
Chapel Hill Police Officer Symposium Speech
A police convention in North Carolina turns deadly, and the killing yields an unexpected answer.
A rerun of the Mona Lisa Murder: a wealthy art collector needs help with a divorce, and a certain smiling lady may be hiding thoughts of murder.
A rerun of the Kidnapped Policeman: Lt. Levinson is seized by a man whose brother is set to be executed that very night.
A rerun of the Oklahoma Cowboy case: Diamond saddles up to solve a wild-west killing for a man hunting his brother's murderer.
'Big Foot' Grafton is pulled from the river as the second baseman of a women's softball team goes missing.
September 6, 1953
George Lexington Fears for His Life
A rerun of the George Lexington case: a man is found both shot and stabbed, with a woman standing over him holding a smoking gun.
September 13, 1953
Charles Johnson Matter
The series finale, a rerun of the Edna Wolf case: a wife hiring Diamond for divorce evidence lands him squarely in a murder frame.
The Story
Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1949-1953) is radio's one and only crooning private eye. Created by a young Blake Edwards -- years before Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Pink Panther -- it starred Dick Powell, the 1930s musical idol who had reinvented himself as a film-noir tough guy, and the show gleefully fused both sides of him. Diamond is a wisecracking ex-cop turned New York PI who takes cases at a hundred dollars a day and seems to get knocked on the head in every one. The signature touch came at the end: nearly every episode closed with Diamond singing a popular standard to his wealthy girlfriend Helen Asher (Virginia Gregg) in her Park Avenue penthouse -- a finish only a genuine crooner-star could pull off. Powell whistled the theme, "Leave It to Love," over each opening, and the supporting bench rotated fine character actors through Lt. Walt Levinson, among them Ed Begley and Alan Reed. Light, breezy, and full of banter, the show bounced happily across NBC, ABC, and CBS over four years. It later became a TV series with David Janssen in the title role -- but Janssen never sang, and that missing song is exactly what made Powell's Diamond unforgettable.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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