Mystery-detective drama · CBS / NBC
The Adventures of Sam Spade
July 12, 1946 – April 27, 1951 · 264 broadcasts
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946-1951) turned Dashiell Hammett's stone-cold Maltese Falcon private eye into radio's most likable tough guy. Where the novel and the Bogart film played Spade grim, the radio show played him with a grin: each week Spade dictates the latest 'caper' to his adoring secretary Effie Perrine (Lurene Tuttle), greeting her with "Me, sweetheart" and signing off "Goodnight, sweetheart" over the closing strains of that same standard. Howard Duff, an unknown just out of the Army's radio service, won the part after producer-director William Spier -- fresh from Suspense -- and his wife, singer Kay Thompson, heard the bored snarl in his audition and decided it was exactly right. Duff's Spade was a hit almost overnight, and with writers Bob Tallman, Jason James and Gil Doud spinning bright, self-mocking mysteries, the show took a 1947 Edgar Award and settled into a long CBS run under sponsor Wildroot Cream-Oil. The Red Scare ended the good times. Hammett's name was stripped from the credits while he was investigated as a Communist, and Duff -- listed in the Red Channels pamphlet -- was dropped when the series moved to NBC. Steve Dunne stepped into the trench coat for a final season in 1950-51; the tongue-in-cheek tone survived, but the chemistry of Duff and Tuttle did not, and Spade signed off for the last time in April 1951.
Collection status:
92 of 264 held (35% 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 (1 episodes)
- 1946 (29 episodes)
- 1947 (52 episodes)
- 1948 (61 episodes)
- 1949 (58 episodes)
- 1950 (46 episodes)
- 1951 (17 episodes)
1943
A bonus in the OTRR collection rather than a series entry: the Lux Radio Theatre restages the film The Maltese Falcon, with Edward G. Robinson stepping in as Spade on the hunt for the priceless black bird.
1946
Another pre-series bonus -- Academy Award Theater's half-hour of The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart reprising his screen Spade as the deadly statuette draws its circle of liars and killers.
The series premiere: hired to recover a stolen gem called the Guiana Sovereign from a murdered man's partner, Spade finds the 'victim' alive in hiding and a tangle of betrayal and blackmail behind it -- a debut played in the key of The Maltese Falcon.
July 19, 1946
Sam and the Farewell Murders
From Hammett's 'The Farewell Murder': hired to guard a wealthy man threatened by a poison-pen letter, Spade unmasks the daughter-in-law who engineered two deaths to seize the inheritance.
July 26, 1946
Sam and the Unhappy Poet
A doom-haunted poet asks Spade to hold a sealed envelope and open it only when the newspapers report his death.
A blackmailed psychiatrist is thrown to his death from an apartment window, and when the blackmailer turns up strangled Spade must work out which of the doctor's secrets was worth two killings.
From Hammett's 'Death and Company': a kidnapping ransom and a separately hired search for a wanted husband prove to be one scheme meant to pin a killing on the wrong man -- and the Blue Bottle Bar makes its first appearance.
August 16, 1946
Two Sharp Knives
From Hammett's 'Two Sharp Knives': an old friend's death in Spade's office sends him back to his days as a small-town detective and a partner who framed and murdered a man to inherit a fortune.
August 23, 1946
Zig Zags of Treachery
From Hammett's 'Zig Zags of Treachery': a doctor's stolen envelope and sudden death lead Spade to a fifteen-year fraud -- a medical license sold to a drifter, kept quiet by blackmail and murder.
August 30, 1946
Sam and the Scythian Tiara
September 6, 1946
The Corporation Murders
September 13, 1946
Dot Marlow Caper, the Part 1
September 20, 1946
Dot Marlow Caper, the Part 2
September 27, 1946
The Count on Billy Burke
September 29, 1946
The Blood Money Caper
October 4, 1946
Gutting of Couffignal
October 6, 1946
The Unwritten Law Caper
October 13, 1946
The Ten Clues Caper
October 20, 1946
The Fly Paper Caper
October 27, 1946
The Midway Caper
November 3, 1946
The Certified Czech Caper
November 10, 1946
Sam and the Farewell Murders
November 17, 1946
The Hot Ice Caper
November 24, 1946
Kandy Tooth Caper, the Part 1
December 1, 1946
Kandy Tooth Caper, the Part 2
A Suspense crossover bundled into the set (not a series episode): in 'The House in Cypress Canyon,' Howard Duff plays a detective named 'Sam' who hears a young couple's recorded account of the werewolf haunting their new home -- one of Suspense's most celebrated chillers, and a William Spier in-joke.
December 8, 1946
The Minks of Turk Street
December 15, 1946
The Picture Frame Caper
December 22, 1946
Sam and the Three Wise Men
December 29, 1946
The Golden Horeshoe
1947
January 5, 1947
The Liewelyn Caper
January 12, 1947
The Cremona Clock Caper
January 19, 1947
The False Face Caper
January 26, 1947
The Agamemnon Caper
February 9, 1947
The Girl with the Silver Eyes
February 16, 1947
Inside Story on Kid Slade
February 23, 1947
The Big Production Caper
March 2, 1947
The Uncle Money Caper
March 9, 1947
Orpheus and His Lute
March 16, 1947
The Ingnorance About Bliss
March 23, 1947
Too Many Spades
March 30, 1947
The Dancing Pearl Caper
April 6, 1947
The Poisonville Caper
April 13, 1947
The Double-Scar Caper
April 20, 1947
The Scrooge of Portrero Street
April 27, 1947
The Debutante Caper
May 4, 1947
Duet in Spades
May 11, 1947
Yule Log Caper
May 18, 1947
The Assistant Murderer
May 25, 1947
Jury Duty
June 1, 1947
The Mishakoff Emeralds
A worried sister sends Spade chasing halfway around the world aboard the S.S. Lurene to stop a fortune-hunting 'Bulgarian bluebeard' from marrying -- and murdering -- a wealthy bride.
A stolen convertible turns out to be worth a million dollars, and the frightened woman who lifted it dare not call the police, or the man she took it from will know just where to find her.
June 22, 1947
The Greek Letter Caper
June 29, 1947
The Cosmic Harmony Caper
July 6, 1947
The Simile Caper
July 13, 1947
The Buff-Orpington Caper
July 20, 1947
Sam and the Unhappy Poet
July 27, 1947
The Gold Rush Caper
August 3, 1947
The Crooked Neck Caper
August 10, 1947
The Commonwealth Tankard
August 17, 1947
The Doctor's Dilemma Caper
August 24, 1947
The Jade Dragon Caper
August 31, 1947
The Corkscrew Caper
September 7, 1947
The Forty-Nine Cent, Caper
September 14, 1947
The Cinderella Caper
September 21, 1947
The April Caper
September 28, 1947
The Madcap Caper
Hired to keep a sickly millionaire alive through the night, Spade weathers gunshots and screams at a gloomy estate while Effie's malfunctioning gift 'office robot' keeps breaking Duff up.
October 12, 1947
The Tears of Buddha Caper
October 19, 1947
The Untouchable Caper
October 26, 1947
The Bonnie Fair Caper
November 2, 1947
The Wrong Guy Caper
A woman told she has only a month to live doesn't get even that -- she is found murdered, and Spade works out who could not wait.
November 16, 1947
The Purple Poodle Caper
November 23, 1947
The Caper with Eight Diamonds
November 30, 1947
The Full House Caper
December 7, 1947
The Palermo Vendetta Caper
December 14, 1947
The Gumshoe Caper
December 21, 1947
The Nick Saint Caper
December 28, 1947
The Perfect Score Caper
1948
A hit-and-run killing points Spade toward a Dutch cigarette case and a bullet engraved with his own name.
January 11, 1948
The Short Life Caper
January 18, 1948
The Pike's Head Caper
A single gold key -- and the question of what door it opens -- pulls Spade into a tangle of greed, machine guns and half a million dollars.
February 1, 1948
The Nimrod Caper
February 8, 1948
The Great Drought Caper
February 15, 1948
The Goldie Gates Caper
February 22, 1948
The Mason Grayson Caper
February 29, 1948
The Grim Reaper Caper
March 7, 1948
John's Other Wife's Other Husband
March 14, 1948
The Ides of March Caper
March 21, 1948
The Nightmare Town Caper
March 28, 1948
The Blood Money Payoff
April 4, 1948
(untitled)
April 11, 1948
The Judas Caper
April 18, 1948
The Night Flight Caper
April 25, 1948
The Great Lover Caper
May 2, 1948
The Double-S Caper
May 9, 1948
The Curiosity Caper
May 16, 1948
The Girl Called Echs, Caper
May 23, 1948
The Navarraise Falcon
May 30, 1948
The Prisoner of Zenda Caper
June 6, 1948
The I.q. Caper
June 13, 1948
The Honest Cop Caper
Summoned to witness a dying man's last words, Spade ends up standing over two deathbed statements and a client whose own brother names him a murderer.
A million-dollar armored-car robbery lands Spade in a spot so tight he needs bail of his own, with Sandra Gould filling in for the vacationing Effie.
Hired to guard a cursed wedding diamond, Spade can only watch as both bride and groom are murdered -- the groom stabbed with a pair of garden shears.
A woman with no memory and a corpse cut down by a buzz saw send Spade digging into who she is and who wanted her forgotten.
A cantankerous editor hires Spade to find his missing star crime reporter; Spade finds him, all right -- stabbed to death.
A half-mad inventor hires Spade to recover his stolen wonder-plastic formula 'Pentron,' and Spade winds up committed to an asylum for his trouble.
A wealthy man named Martini is shot in broad daylight after a botched kidnapping -- and phoned Spade only minutes before, in what may be coincidence or bait.
A worried brother begs Spade to save his sister from her fiance, a smiling charmer whose three previous wives all died on their honeymoons, each heavily insured in his favor.
A grieving heiress vanishes on the way to her father's country house, and the stepmother who needs her signature hires Spade to find her, with a mystery novelist somehow at the heart of it.
Spade is paid to carry an ancient Greek gold cup safely by train to Los Angeles, which naturally makes him the bull's-eye for every double-crosser after it.
Fresh out of prison, gangster Johnny Lawless hires Spade -- and a body turns up in Spade's own bed, then promptly vanishes, dragging him into a wartime frame-up.
A dusty, gray-faced stranger asks Spade to 'bring him back from the dead': a story of a faked death, a phony insurance claim, plastic surgery and a return no one will believe.
A wealthy wife thinks her husband is being blackmailed; Spade trails him to a casino and watches him drop a hundred thousand dollars at the roulette wheel.
An old detective friend asks Spade to shadow a vengeful ex-con; the ex-con turns up dead and Spade ends the night floating in San Francisco Bay.
A beautiful young woman is set to marry into the wealthy Cavanaugh family, but a hoodlum, an old scandal and a sudden death say the wedding will not go smoothly.
October 10, 1948
The Bostwick Snatch Caper
October 17, 1948
The Rumanian Con Game Caper
A screaming neighbor, her violent boyfriend and a midnight knock at the door rob Spade of a night's sleep and hand him a murder.
Hired to keep the peace at a Halloween masquerade, Spade cannot stop the party's big engagement announcement from turning into the bride-to-be's murder.
Spade turns down a shabby divorce job, only to have it curdle into a killing at the Belvedere Hotel.
November 14, 1948
The Gin Rummy Caper
November 21, 1948
The Golden Fleece Caper
The murder of a gum-machine tycoon who feared rivals were smashing his machines gives Spade plenty to chew on.
December 5, 1948
The Neveroff Masterpiece Caper
Posing as a chauffeur to guard a threatened heiress, Spade discovers the deadly 'Betty' at the center of the case is not a woman at all.
December 19, 1948
The Giveaway Caper
December 26, 1948
The Nick Saint Caper
1949
January 2, 1949
The Three-Sided Bullet Caper
January 9, 1949
The Double Negative Caper
Spade's quiet evening with a Western novel is shattered by a fast, rowdy case its own cast seems to be enjoying -- the 'Betrayal in Bumpass Hell.'
January 23, 1949
The Main Event Caper
January 30, 1949
The Double Life Caper
February 6, 1949
The Firebug Caper
February 13, 1949
The Brothers Keeper Caper
February 20, 1949
The Attitude Caper
February 27, 1949
The Three Cornered Frame Caper
March 6, 1949
The Waltzing Matilda Caper
March 13, 1949
The Underseal Caper
March 20, 1949
The Trojan Horse Caper
An anonymous love letter -- crank note, bait, or a cry for help? -- leads Spade to Ella Comstock, a suitcase of jewels and a three-million-dollar inheritance.
April 3, 1949
The Vacation Caper
Threatening letters call Spade to a decaying mansion of poisonous plants and a Frankenstein-like butler, where every watch in the house has stopped at the very same moment.
A psychoanalyst hires Spade to draw a confession from a beautiful, guilt-haunted woman convinced she glimpsed her son's supposed killer on the street -- and Spade falls for her instead.
April 24, 1949
The Hot Cargo Caper
On an island in San Francisco Bay an eccentric artist is murdered in a locked room, and the man who hired Spade fears an old enemy has finally tracked him to the house next door.
May 8, 1949
The Fast Talk Caper
May 15, 1949
The Darling Daughter Caper
May 22, 1949
The Cartwright Clip Caper
May 29, 1949
The Jane Doe Caper
A society wife hires Spade to quietly recover her stolen -- and secretly uninsured -- necklace before her husband learns it is gone, which soon puts a corpse in the Murphy bed.
June 12, 1949
Sam and the Guiana Sovereign
A battered woman named Eve Adams begs Spade for help; minutes later her rival storms in, the two come to blows, and Eve turns up dead.
June 26, 1949
The Goat's Milk Caper
July 3, 1949
The Hamburger Sandwich Caper
Called in over a rash of thefts at an exclusive girls' school, Spade is handed a suspect with no evidence against her -- until formic acid turns the case to murder.
A gambling-hall owner asks Spade to return a fabulous 'Tears of Night' necklace put up as collateral, but its rightful owner is already wearing one exactly like it.
July 31, 1949
The Hot-Foot Caper
Hired to protect a wealthy man from a newly freed ex-employee, Spade ends the case at the morgue -- knowing exactly who did the killing and wishing he did not.
August 14, 1949
The Sourdough Mountain Caper
August 21, 1949
The Silver Key Caper
A silent multimillionaire, a daughter who is really a gangster's moll, and a corpse killed twice draw Spade deep into the Scully family fortune.
September 4, 1949
The Flashback Caper
September 11, 1949
The Costume Caper
Effie is at Sam's own funeral when he telephones the office very much alive -- his wry account of how Sam Spade came to be reported dead.
An oil-rich chief hires Spade to find a vanished engineer, who is promptly found scalped with a valuable wampum belt gone -- the caper with the near-unpronounceable name.
October 2, 1949
The Junior G-Man Caper
October 9, 1949
The Hot Hothouse Caper
October 16, 1949
The Pretty Polly Caper
October 23, 1949
(untitled)
October 30, 1949
(untitled)
Spade finds fifty dollars and a photograph of a blonde tucked inside his sandwich, three words scrawled on the back: 'Find the girl!'
November 13, 1949
The Blues in the Night Caper
November 20, 1949
The Peacock Feather Caper
November 27, 1949
(untitled)
A washed-up Chicago detective muscles in on Spade's oddest job yet -- crashing a costume party dressed as white rabbits, at a hundred dollars a head.
December 11, 1949
(untitled)
December 18, 1949
The Whispering Death Caper
December 25, 1949
The Canterbury Christmas Caper
1950
January 1, 1950
The Gorgeous Gemini Caper
January 8, 1950
The Third Personcille Caper
January 15, 1950
The Phantom Witness Caper
January 22, 1950
The Wedding Belle Caper
January 29, 1950
The Too Many Leads Caper
February 5, 1950
The Black Magic Caper
February 12, 1950
Crossword Puzzle Caper
February 19, 1950
The Valentine's Day Caper
February 26, 1950
The Cornelius J. Morningside Caper
March 5, 1950
The Homicidal Husband Caper
March 12, 1950
The Barbary Ghost Caper
March 19, 1950
The Emerald Eyes Caper
March 26, 1950
The Bay Psalm Caper
April 2, 1950
The Endurance Caper
April 9, 1950
The Picture Frame Caper
April 16, 1950
The Kansas Kid Caper
April 23, 1950
The Caldwell Caper
April 30, 1950
The Hamite Curse Caper
May 7, 1950
Caper with Marjorie's Things
Preserved only as a rehearsal tape for the May 28 broadcast, this NBC-era case follows the arrest of Ben Comiskey for a liquor-store holdup and the old story of a good brother and a bad one.
May 14, 1950
The Prodigal Son Caper
June 4, 1950
The V.i.p. Caper
June 11, 1950
The Color Scheme Caper
June 18, 1950
The Elmer Longtail Caper
June 25, 1950
The Toytown Caper
July 2, 1950
The Beryl Green Caper
July 9, 1950
The Runaway Redhead Caper
July 16, 1950
The Man Who Knew Almost Everything Caper
July 23, 1950
The Stormy Weather Caper
July 30, 1950
The Rod and Reel Caper
August 6, 1950
The Bell of Solomon Caper
August 13, 1950
The Missing Persons Caper
August 20, 1950
The Preposterous Caper
August 27, 1950
The Too Many Clients Caper
Needing a room for the night, Spade stumbles into a strange tourist court complete with a man buried alive, gunshots in the dark and a beautiful woman waiting in his room.
September 10, 1950
The Big Little Woody Caper
September 17, 1950
The Femme Fatale Caper
Steve Dunne debuts as Spade: an undertaker certain he is being followed hires the detective, and the shadowing leads, naturally, to the 'death' of Sam Spade.
A nervous little man named Tom Turkey is convinced somebody means to kill him for Thanksgiving, and hires Spade to see that they do not.
Three bullets finish off I.J. Barco in mid-drink, launching a knotty case of murder and extortion that has nothing whatever to do with dog beds.
'Marshal Spade' of the California Rangers rides into a ghost town to face down Blackie Tolliver and his gang in a tongue-in-cheek Western caper.
From a sick man at Mama Pizza's to a swim in San Francisco Bay to a postcard meant for Boris, Spade follows an oddly numbered trail.
December 22, 1950
The Caper Concerning Big
An eight-year-old hires Spade to catch the armed pair who stole his little brother's toy panda -- and to stop a poisoner along the way.
1951
A true-crime radio show offering $50,000 for a killer's conviction hires Spade, who finds a recording tape disguised as a typewriter ribbon that cracks a three-year-old murder.
At a packed lecture, a famous foreign correspondent warning about Red China is shot dead the instant the auditorium lights go out, and Spade hunts the killer in the crowd.
A cloak, a dagger, a scar-faced man, a veiled woman and two corpses add up to a first-class piece of international intrigue for Spade.
A skiing weekend at a wealthy man's winter lodge turns into the deadliest slope Spade has ever worked.
A dancer named Kelly Green sets Spade searching for a mysterious 'Captain,' a hunt that turns up rose-colored pearls and a body or three.
Cheated by a known horse-doper, 'Five Dollar Frankie' brings Spade a charming, crooked saga of racetrack players and one very unusual 'sure thing.'
A soap-opera writer hires Spade to find her husband, who vanished after a mysterious telegram from Mexico -- a case with its own dose of murder, blackmail and amnesia.
A newspaper hires Spade to solve a murder captured in one of its news photographs but never reported to the police.
A fisherman hires Spade to learn how his son died when his boat sank -- an accident, or murder by the one man who went out with him.
Spade has no patience for the old 'Spanish Prisoner' swindle, the con that dangles a jailed relative and a casket of family jewels in exchange for bribe money.
A beautiful redhead circles six names in the phone book, and one by one those six are murdered -- with half a million dollars' worth of reasons behind it.
An insurance man pays Spade simply to 'baby-sit' the Kimberley Cross -- a piece of jewelry -- for 24 hours, which of course never stays simple.
A modern revenge tale straight out of Dumas: a client hires Spade to dig up everything on the wealthy 'Monty Cristoff' who seems bent on ruining his life.
A sixteen-year-old girl asks Spade to find her criminal brother Denny Shane, and once Spade fingers the man, she commits murder.
After an auditorium collapses, its young architect hires Spade to find out why -- and the town's building inspector is shot four times in the back.
A former client at a North Tacaloma bank asks Spade to trace $53,000 that has vanished, with a purse-snatcher as the prime suspect.
The series finale: a frail, desperate man attempts suicide while an innocent waits to die at San Quentin, and Spade races to prove the real killer is named Hail and Farewell.
The Story
The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946-1951) turned Dashiell Hammett's stone-cold Maltese Falcon private eye into radio's most likable tough guy. Where the novel and the Bogart film played Spade grim, the radio show played him with a grin: each week Spade dictates the latest 'caper' to his adoring secretary Effie Perrine (Lurene Tuttle), greeting her with "Me, sweetheart" and signing off "Goodnight, sweetheart" over the closing strains of that same standard. Howard Duff, an unknown just out of the Army's radio service, won the part after producer-director William Spier -- fresh from Suspense -- and his wife, singer Kay Thompson, heard the bored snarl in his audition and decided it was exactly right. Duff's Spade was a hit almost overnight, and with writers Bob Tallman, Jason James and Gil Doud spinning bright, self-mocking mysteries, the show took a 1947 Edgar Award and settled into a long CBS run under sponsor Wildroot Cream-Oil. The Red Scare ended the good times. Hammett's name was stripped from the credits while he was investigated as a Communist, and Duff -- listed in the Red Channels pamphlet -- was dropped when the series moved to NBC. Steve Dunne stepped into the trench coat for a final season in 1950-51; the tongue-in-cheek tone survived, but the chemistry of Duff and Tuttle did not, and Spade signed off for the last time in April 1951.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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