Crime docudrama (FBI case files) · ABC
This Is Your FBI
April 6, 1945 – January 30, 1953 · 411 broadcasts
Endorsed by J. Edgar Hoover himself as "the finest dramatic program on the air," This Is Your FBI was the Bureau's own radio show -- a weekly crime docudrama that dramatized real-style FBI cases of espionage, kidnapping, fraud, and war profiteering in a crisp semi-documentary style. A case-file anthology with no fixed dramatic lead, only a rotating narrator framing each week's case, it debuted on ABC in April 1945 as a wartime program promising to show "exactly how enemies of the United States" operated and were brought down. What set it apart was access. Creator-producer Jerry Devine was a welcome guest at FBI headquarters, researching closed cases with the editing help of Assistant Director Louis Nichols -- an unusual degree of agency oversight for a drama. Hoover's initial reluctance, the story goes, "turned to paternal pride," and he took to calling the ABC program "our show," carefully distinguishing it from the rival, unsanctioned CBS series The FBI in Peace and War. The casts drew on Hollywood radio's deepest bench: William Conrad, Harry Morgan, Parley Baer, Paul Frees, Bea Benaderet, and Jeanette Nolan among them, with narration by Frank Lovejoy, Dean Carleton, and William Woodson and music from Van Cleave and Fred Steiner. Sponsored across its entire eight-year run by Equitable Life, it ran 409 broadcasts through January 1953. The New York Times praised its credible characterizations and "subtle twists" -- while noting the praise for Hoover was "a bit overdone" -- making it one of the most successful official law-enforcement dramas of the radio era.
Collection status:
358 of 411 held (87% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1945 (40 episodes)
- 1946 (52 episodes)
- 1947 (53 episodes)
- 1948 (53 episodes)
- 1949 (52 episodes)
- 1950 (52 episodes)
- 1951 (52 episodes)
- 1952 (52 episodes)
- 1953 (5 episodes)
1945
March 8, 1945
Skyway Swindle
The series premiere follows the Bureau's pursuit of enemy agent Willie Sebring, with J. Edgar Hoover and Equitable's president appearing on the broadcast.
April 13, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
Agents hunt escaped Nazi prisoners of war at large on American soil, cast as a threat to the nation's wartime internal security.
A swindler in an Army officer's uniform preys on lonely women with bad checks while a Chicago businessman is fleeced in a rigged horse-racing con.
The FBI moves against a war profiteer suspected of turning out defective hand grenades for the front.
A mild salesman by day is a safecracker by night, until the Bureau runs him down.
A quack doctor sells dangerous pills to teenagers hoping to fail their Army physicals.
Bank robber Arthur Clinton and his explosives-packed box named 'Betsy' become the object of a federal manhunt.
Three letters returned to senders who never wrote them lead agents through a doll shop to enemy spy Cora Lee Williamson.
A crew of professional con men fleeces a Chicago businessman in an elaborate horse-racing sting.
With cars nearly impossible to buy in wartime, the FBI tracks a skilled auto thief named Charles Meade.
July 6, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
The Bureau pursues a 'misery chiseler' who profits by preying on the grieving and the unfortunate.
Agents break up a ring of white-collar extortionists squeezing wealthy targets with threatening letters.
A petty crook posing as a government chicken inspector draws federal attention in a deceptively small case.
Bank robber Arthur Clinton and his explosives-laden 'Betsy' return as the FBI closes in.
August 24, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
August 31, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
September 7, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
September 14, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
A menacing stranger with a suitcase and a violent secret intrudes on an old woman and her granddaughter in an isolated house.
September 28, 1945
?? Title Unknown ??
When a wealthy man receives a death-threat extortion letter, the Bureau must sort genuine danger from crank mail.
A prosperous Iowa farmer brings home a new bride whose warm welcome conceals a marriage racket.
A bank robber's desert escape collapses when a bullet punctures the fuel tank of his getaway car.
A down-on-her-luck New Yorker is pulled into a scheme cheating the government out of servicemen's allotment checks.
Convict Earl Dixon treats his prison term as a chance to prove himself smarter than the law by breaking out.
A special broadcast for the attack's fourth anniversary recounts how the Bureau guarded America's security before and after Pearl Harbor.
With wartime travel curbs lifted, an international thief returns to the sea lanes and meets the FBI after a killing aboard an American vessel.
1946
The story follows a First World War delinquent's rise into a seasoned gangster of the roaring twenties.
From the Bureau's Alaska files, a woman alone in a remote trading post during a blizzard faces a threatening stranger.
A family of modest means is targeted in a small-ransom kidnapping the FBI pursues as fiercely as any headline case.
Ordinary middle-class life along the Hudson River is upended when crime intrudes on a quiet household.
Nick Corona, fleeing deportation, is pulled from the sea by a fishing trawler and hunted by federal agents.
Investigator Bill Renton exposes a scam selling shares in a nonexistent chain of airports and flying schools.
The Bureau tracks a coldly professional killer who murders simply as a tool of his trade.
A kidnapping case draws agents deep into the reptile-infested Florida Everglades.
A husband-and-wife team makes its living as smiling professional murderers.
A phony Army officer and his girlfriend try to unload two hundred stolen military radios on a shady store owner.
A blackmail plot against a dead businessman's wealthy family turns deadly when the private detective on the case is murdered.
A double-crossed hijacker is left for dead in a burning truck, and a Puerto Rican banana plantation becomes a murder scene.
Two young delinquents use a stolen pair of walkie-talkies to launch a crime spree, until a brother informs on them.
A witness to a hit-and-run blackmails a mayoral candidate to buy his silence.
Two women and a baby rob a grocery store and flee across a state line into federal jurisdiction.
A little old lady breaks her son out of prison with a book of matches and a red Packard ambulance.
A hitchhiker in a sailor suit robs the jewelry salesman who gives him a ride, and the robber's accomplice is later found dead.
An amateur trumpeter and a partner kidnap a famous musician and hold him for a $25,000 ransom.
Aging gangster King Brown, paroled from a life sentence, is offered a chance to start over.
A case of modern cattle rustling in the West escalates into murder.
A bogus doctor's deadly 'treatments' to keep young men out of the Army bring in the FBI.
A vicious young man murders his stepfather, robs an amnesiac of his jewels, and betrays his own mother to the Bureau.
Two vacationing working girls are swept into a night of gangsters, murder, and a high-speed chase.
An escaped German POW uses an Indian-head penny to signal old friends in the Bund.
A con man's sugar-rationing swindle falls apart when a recipe-collecting wife grows suspicious.
An extortionist recruits an admiring ex-convict to blackmail a politician, then disposes of him.
An elderly bank embezzler goes on the run, traveling with a threadbare carnival.
A crooked builder turns to arson and kidnapping after an honest inspector refuses to overlook his shoddy bridge.
Two boys flee a hit-and-run across a state line and become interstate fugitives, in the show's first broadcast before a live studio audience.
A seemingly kindly old farm couple prove to be hardened criminals.
Escaped convict Thompson flees toward Cleveland with a double-crossing girlfriend.
When a prospective juror refuses a $5,000 bribe to sway a verdict, his daughter is kidnapped.
1947
January 10, 1947
The Fugitive Guest
Shaken by her parents' divorce, a girl falls in with car-thieving delinquents who rob a gas-station attendant.
Three crooks kidnap a high-school girl, intending to kill her once the ransom is paid.
July 4, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
July 25, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
August 29, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
September 19, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
October 3, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
October 31, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
November 21, 1947
?? Title Unknown ??
The Bureau mounts a cross-country hunt for a stolen fortune in bonds.
1948
The case turns on a fugitive's flight to avoid prosecution.
February 6, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
February 13, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
February 20, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
February 27, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
A case of interstate theft draws the FBI.
April 9, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
April 16, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
April 23, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
April 30, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
A bank clerk suspected of embezzling $60,000 vanishes under a new identity to bury his past.
The case centers on a prison break.
May 28, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
July 2, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
July 9, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
July 16, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
July 23, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
October 8, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
October 15, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
October 22, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
October 29, 1948
?? Title Unknown ??
The Bureau investigates a jewel theft.
In this Christmas case, a boy from a settlement house asks Agent Jim Taylor to help find the settlement's missing Santa Claus.
1949
The FBI works to clear an innocent man accused of armed robbery.
The Bureau untangles a jewel robbery built around a frame-up.
March 4, 1949
?? Title Unknown ??
March 25, 1949
?? Title Unknown ??
The case involves a hijacking and a frame-up.
April 8, 1949
?? Title Unknown ??
The Bureau investigates a blackmail scheme.
June 10, 1949
?? Title Unknown ??
August 19, 1949
?? Title Unknown ??
In this Christmas case, the FBI searches for the settlement-house Santa Claus who has gone missing.
1950
May 5, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
May 12, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
May 19, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
May 26, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
June 2, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
June 9, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
June 16, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
June 23, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
June 30, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
July 7, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
July 14, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
July 21, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
July 28, 1950
?? Title Unknown ??
August 4, 1950
(untitled)
Phony stock certificates and forged checks draw agents into a stock swindle worked by a well-dressed couple and an elderly printer.
The FBI races to get a kidnapped witness before the grand jury in time.
The theft of a government coffee barge during wartime rationing sends the FBI after black-market hijackers.
Two jazz musicians who stop to help an injured man at a wreck find themselves captives of an armed robber.
A factory gambling ring turns to murder, and the FBI traces the gang through a safe-deposit box.
A body in an alley leads agents to an $11,000 embezzler.
A wartime con man sells draft exemptions to wealthy young men for a fee.
A robber tunnels into a bank vault during a small town's 'Gold Rush Days' celebration.
The Bureau uncovers a wartime fifth column plotting to blow up a Navy ship for the Nazis.
A man who recognizes a bank robber in a roadhouse vanishes along with the robber when his wife returns with the FBI.
Two escaped convicts get unexpected help from a greedy farmer's wife.
A ring smuggling stolen cars into Mexico commits a double murder to protect the racket.
A former stripper, now respectably married, disappears after an extortion threat.
A tough kid hardens into a worse hoodlum, and good intentions end in tragedy.
A gang of bank robbers plans each job from newspaper classifieds and careful rehearsal.
A fugitive from the FBI hides out aboard a crooked showboat.
Agent Taylor goes undercover as a hobo, living in the camps to stalk a killer.
The FBI once again searches for the settlement-house Santa Claus gone missing at Christmas.
1951
A trio of swindlers cheats mothers by selling forged draft cards to keep their sons out of the Army.
A policewoman is used to trap a deported killer who has slipped back into the country aboard a freighter.
A paroled convict pressured back into his old gang is shot down by police.
A wanted murderer holes up on an isolated island through a winter storm.
A skid-row murder leads agents to the loot from a $37,000 bank job.
A $50,000 jewel theft traces to a washed-up boxer willing to take a dive for a price.
A plane crash on an Indian reservation leads to murder, and a bullet and a tin can give the FBI its clues.
A drunken sea captain is caught holding a large cache of stolen goods.
A movie actor is blackmailed while shooting on location, and the FBI steps in.
Two tough kids climb from bootlegging to gangland and finally to a veneer of respectable business.
Four Nazi saboteurs land from a U-boat, with four more expected from a second submarine.
Two children from broken homes drift into delinquency, and their farmer-targeting protection racket ends in kidnapping.
A young woman is forced by her boyfriend into a robbery that leaves a policeman dead.
A racketeer runs a slot-machine empire and more with the help of crooked politicians.
A maker of Army telephone wire ships an inferior product that costs GIs their lives, in a case of wartime fraud.
A corrupt bridge builder resorts to arson and kidnapping when an honest official refuses a bribe.
An actor turns to blackmail, and a suicide brings down the curtain.
Stolen watches and binoculars are the trade of the fun-loving Berian brothers and their mother.
An American draws a series of harbor maps of European ports for a foreign power.
Con artists keep a young woman isolated by 'astral control' as part of a jewel-theft scheme, until a beekeeper interferes.
A big warehouse robbery nets hundreds of cases of bourbon.
A jockey saving for his daughter's schooling is framed for a racetrack robbery.
An FBI agent goes undercover in a seedy hotel to head off a gang of hijackers.
A phony Army officer swindles grieving families by claiming their dead soldiers are alive and need bribe money.
Bank robbers hiding out in a western ghost town have their plans upset by a visiting movie crew.
A robbery and the murder of a yacht skipper aboard 'The Queen' draw the Bureau's attention.
Four saboteurs enter the country on false papers, and the FBI moves to stop the infiltrators.
The FBI suspects a sunken barge was scuttled as part of an aspirin-and-fraud scheme.
The holdup and murder of a bank messenger leads agents to a crew of migrant farm workers.
A young bank teller flees town by freight train, fearing a murder, while $12,000 is missing from his accounts.
A truck-hijacking gang's trail leads south of the border to a banana plantation.
An anonymous accusation of Communist ties launches a loyalty investigation of Thomas Caldwell.
The rise and fall of 'Curly,' a criminal who thrived because no one would testify against him.
Two women run a racket marrying servicemen to collect their allotment checks.
An escaped convict forces his way in on a former cellmate and the man's wife.
A counterfeit-check ring uses a teenager to pass its bad paper, and the boy hangs himself after his arrest.
A meek, flower-loving bank teller of eighteen years embezzles $8,000 and slips away on vacation.
The FBI counters Communist activity with the help of a loyal secretary born in Russia.
A professional burglary gang uses a manicurist to gather intelligence on its targets.
A washed-up vaudevillian who finally lands work as a party Santa finds himself accused of a crime.
A young woman learns the hard way what her flashy, exciting boyfriend really is.
1952
An alcoholic carpenter with a taste for speechmaking robs a bank using a toy gun.
Production at an aircraft plant sags after it hires a new guard firm running a federal-scale protection racket.
A gang of fight-fixing promoters branches into bank robbery, and the FBI scores a knockout.
A couple holds up a savings and loan at gunpoint during New Orleans Carnival, then brazenly settles down in town.
A pair of college bank robbers draw the FBI, and a class schedule supplies the key clue.
A young man with a simian face turns to crime after society rejects him.
A prescription for blood-pressure pills sends agents up a mountain, and the FBI lab helps recover stolen government blueprints.
A gangster who decides to slip back into America is quietly turned in by a loyal friend.
After businessman Floyd Elmore is kidnapped, a typewriter, a camera, and a background newspaper give the FBI its clues.
Safecrackers hire a down-and-out stunt pilot to crack a carnival safe and fly them clear.
An agent takes a horse-drawn buggy over a snowy pass to stop a payoff man from reaching a fugitive.
A corrupt bridge builder resorts to arson and kidnapping when an honest official refuses a bribe.
A hitchhiker returns to a roadside restaurant near a national park flush with cash and the threat of murder.
A movie actor is blackmailed while shooting on location, and the FBI takes a hand.
An impostor scatters broken promises and bad checks across the country, even selling a farmer a toll booth.
Paroled makeup expert Don Conway robs a bank, a solitary man whose only passion is a horse-betting system.
A drama based on the film 'Walk East on Beacon' tells how Soviet agents sought America's atomic secrets, with guest George Murphy.
The FBI suspects fraud after the McDonald Wholesale Grocery Company declares bankruptcy.
Cartons of watches and nylons are stolen from a train, and a sheriff investigating the theft is murdered.
The FBI tracks the interstate transport of slot machines.
Agents pursue a ring selling stolen cars to honest buyers, and the FBI lab traces a lump of red clay.
A vaudeville comedian helps the FBI hunt an escaped killer who has kidnapped two showgirls.
A newsreel puts a gang of jewel thieves on the trail of an accomplice holding their loot.
A robber tricks a deep-sea diver and his wife into helping him recover loot from a sunken ship.
$78,000 in missing bank loot and a tangle of double-crosses draw the FBI.
A scheming couple convinces their victim he has gotten married, then blunders by trying to handle the fallout themselves.
A typewriter is the clue that lets the FBI catch a blackmailer whose extortion turns to murder.
An alcoholic cartoonist unwittingly sketches a truck full of government property being pushed off a pier.
A bank-robbery team blackmails a prominent socialite into hiding them while the heat is on.
A desperate man kidnaps two elderly sisters who run the Echo Cave Lodge.
A younger brother uses a war-souvenir pistol to kill a watchman during a robbery.
A wealthy couple downed in a small plane are held captive by two killers on an Indian reservation.
The boomtown of Riverdale finds its crime booming too, kidnapping included.
A movie actor's wife goes into business selling her own baby.
A bank robber hiding from the FBI in the Alaskan wilds finds romance.
A gang of jewel thieves includes a practical joker who leaves clues for the FBI.
1953
Shaken by her parents' divorce, a girl falls in with car-thieving delinquents who rob a gas-station attendant.
January 16, 1953
Old Lady Larceny
The Wallace brothers hole up in the desert after a bank robbery, one of them badly wounded.
The Story
Endorsed by J. Edgar Hoover himself as "the finest dramatic program on the air," This Is Your FBI was the Bureau's own radio show -- a weekly crime docudrama that dramatized real-style FBI cases of espionage, kidnapping, fraud, and war profiteering in a crisp semi-documentary style. A case-file anthology with no fixed dramatic lead, only a rotating narrator framing each week's case, it debuted on ABC in April 1945 as a wartime program promising to show "exactly how enemies of the United States" operated and were brought down. What set it apart was access. Creator-producer Jerry Devine was a welcome guest at FBI headquarters, researching closed cases with the editing help of Assistant Director Louis Nichols -- an unusual degree of agency oversight for a drama. Hoover's initial reluctance, the story goes, "turned to paternal pride," and he took to calling the ABC program "our show," carefully distinguishing it from the rival, unsanctioned CBS series The FBI in Peace and War. The casts drew on Hollywood radio's deepest bench: William Conrad, Harry Morgan, Parley Baer, Paul Frees, Bea Benaderet, and Jeanette Nolan among them, with narration by Frank Lovejoy, Dean Carleton, and William Woodson and music from Van Cleave and Fred Steiner. Sponsored across its entire eight-year run by Equitable Life, it ran 409 broadcasts through January 1953. The New York Times praised its credible characterizations and "subtle twists" -- while noting the praise for Hoover was "a bit overdone" -- making it one of the most successful official law-enforcement dramas of the radio era.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
Gallery
Art pending