Crime Crime Classics:

The Boorn Brothers & The Hangman – A study in Nip and Tuck(01/27/54).

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Lights Out:

Knock at the Door (12/15/42 ).

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X Minus One:

Early Model (07/11/57).

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Arch Obolers Plays:

The Ways of Men; Past,

Present and Future (04/15/39).

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Is Crime Crime Classics – “The Boorn Brothers & The Hangman – A study in Nip and Tuck” which originally aired on January 27, 1954.

Crime Classics is sometimes called a, “Docudrama“( I know I’ve been guilty of that myself).  But I have come to think that this is a bit too grand a claim. To start off with you have, in the person of the host, a completely fictional “expert”. There is not now nor was there ever a ,”Thomas Hyland” (played by Lou Merrill ). Also, I have found while researching backgrounds of individual programs the historical content to be a bit dodgy; with the show willingly repeating legends and interesting anecdotes as well-established facts. Nonetheless, I will rise in defense of the program (of which I am very fond), to remind you that the entertainment industry of the 1950s was not different from that of our own time when inconvenient facts are simply not allowed to interfere with a good story. 

I do not think that producer/writer Elliott Lewis intended for these shows to be taken as historical documents. He was, after-all, a producer of popular entertainment using the vehicle of tongue-in-cheek re-creations of some of history’s more interesting crimes.

The fact is Crime Classics freely mixes fact and fiction and tosses in apocryphal and anecdotal details as garnishments. I don’t think the producers were attempting to create an historically accurate account but entertainment. In this they succeeded, for entertaining they were and are.

And so we are off…

“The Boorn Brothers and the Hangman–A study in Nip and Tuck” which takes place in early 19th-century New England presents itself as the true tale of a wife who, with her two brothers, plot to dispose of her rather lack-wit husband.

I Have to say that the series, in this case, exhibits a somewhat loose connection to the facts. The story is based on something that actually did happen and it happened to the people named in the location given. But, in several of the details should not be trusted.

If you’re interested in knowing more about this case I ran into a pretty good, not overly verbose discussion:

Here.

Segment two is from Lights Out for December 15th of 1942, “Knock at the Door”.

 Light’s Out, is one of the most famous radio shows of all time. Pretty much everyone has heard of it. Although , I admit sometimes this awareness is limited to Bill Cosby’s Chicken Heart routine.

Created by Willis Cooper in 1934, and passed on to Arch Oboler in 1936. Lights Out as a radio series would finally succumb to its own mortality in 1947. The franchise did not end with the demise of the radio show. Lights Out would  turn up as a TV series from 1949 to 1952. There have been occasional attempts to revive the series that never had any notable success.

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