The Crime Club:

“The Sun Is a Witness”

(04/03/47 ).

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NBC Short Story :

“The Lottery”

(03/14/51).

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Alien Worlds:

Seeds Of Time

(4/8/79).

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Murder at Midnight:

“Island Of The Dead”

(12/20/46).

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Produced and directed by Willis Cooper (Lights Out, Quiet Please) The Crime Club was a series that ran in 1946 and 1947, featuring murder and mystery stories.

The radio series opens as a phone rings and a voice answers, “Hello, I hope I haven’t kept you waiting. Yes, this is the Crime Club. I’m the Librarian…” (Actually it’s Raymond Johnson (best known as the host of Inner Sanctum).

Although there exists no evidence of a contractual arrangement between the Mutual Network and Doubleday publishing even a casual exploration of the titles in  this series makes it clear that the inspiration for the series has to be  the literary imprint, The Crime Club.  As most of the stories told were adaptations from this Doubleday series.

This imprint of books began in 1928 with the publication of The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan (creator of one of the first female fictional detectives).

The imprint continued to publish until 1991.

From April 3rd of 1947 by way of the Mutual network. We have, “The Sun Is A Witness”.

Aaron Marc Stein (1906-1985), provided the novel of the same name (published in 1940) from which this radio play is adapted. Stein who specialized in mystery fiction enjoyed considerable success with many of his works being translated into German, French, and Spanish.

In this story an old man and his fortune are the subject of interest and, in the end, a motivation for murder. A murder and murder who are undone by shadows on a roll of film.

This program stars, Raymond Edward Johnson, Sidney Smith, Stedman Coles (adaptor), Roger Bower (producer, director).

This is a pretty good story, mostly quite well presented and reasonably well acted. It moves right along, but unfortunately, as often happens with attempts to adapt a full-length novel to a 25 or 26 min. format for radio shortcuts were taken. And I at least, end up not entirely satisfied with the pacing. The ending in particular feels rushed.

NBC Short Story – The Lottery (03/14/51).

N.B.C Short Story was not a commercial success lasting as it did only one season in 1951..

That’s a hell of a way to start an introduction isn’t it? Well it is true. But then, we all know that commercial success and artistic success do not necessarily ride the same horse. That was certainly the case with this series.

One thing this series does do is to provide evidence of how compatible the short story and the half hour anthology format so common in radio was . Utilizing as it did the short stories of many of the best writers of the era, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, many others.

Very high on any list of suspense/horror writers would be Shirley Jackson. This is her timeless short story, “The Lottery”. A justifiably famous story that takes  place in a small town Probably one not unlike Bennington, Vermont, where Jackson lived  and worked.

The strength of this story lies in Jackson’s ability to expose the unexamined evil in everyday lif