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Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearances in Film, Television and Other Media. By Jim Harmon. McFarland, 1992.
Jeremy Brett
Errata: (pg. 182, index) ...down to the currently shown series from the BBC starring Jeremy Britt...
Correction: The actor who portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series was Jeremy Brett. Since this mispelling occurs both in the text and in the index, it must be regarded as an errata and not a typo.
Source: Knowledge of the career of Jeremy Brett and the Sherlock Holmes television program referred to above.
Raised on Radio. By Gerald Nachman.
Buck Rogers in the Twenty-fifth Century
Errata: (pg. 190) …in which a boy winds up in the fifth dimension and awakens five centuries hence on the planet Niagara.
Correction: Buck Rogers was an adult astronaut, not a boy, who was put into suspended animation and woke up five centuries later, on Earth (the capitol of which was Niagara).
Source: Steranko's History of Comics, by Jim Steranko, Volume 1, Tune in To Yesterday, John Dunning.
Errata: (pg. 191) Buck’s faithful Tonto was Black Barney, a doltish Martian and reformed space pirate.
Correction: The author gives the impression that Black Barney was always Buck's sidekick. The pirate did not reform and join the side of the good guys until late in the series' run.
Source: Tune in To Yesterday, John Dunning.
Escape
Errata: (pg. 310/11). … Escape, which ran from 1947 to 1954, with and without sponsorship and always without stars….[comparing it to Suspense which for most of its run brought in big name guest actors to play its leading roles].
Correction: For a season or two,Escape did have ‘stars’ come on the program. Vincent Price starred in ‘’Present Tense’’ on January 31, 1950, ‘’Three Skeleton Key,’’ on March 17, 1950, and in ‘’Blood Bath’’ on June 30, 1950, to name just one star.
Source: Listening to the programs.
Fibber McGee and Molly
Errata: (pg. 86). McGee’s main bit, usually opposite Gale Gordon (as Otis Cadwallader) was confused alliteration….
Correction: Gale Gordon played Mayor La Trivia. There was no ‘main bit,’ for Fibber. Each supporting character on the program had their five minutes or so with the McGees. Each supporting character had a ‘main bit.’ This show lasted for 20 years and many supporting characters came and went, many of them played by the same actors (for example Gale Gordon was also weatherman 'Stormy' Weathers.)
Source: Listening to the programs.
Errata: (pg. 86). Quinn was able to work another switch on his alliteration skills by having fat-headed, blustering La Trivia get snarled up in a sentence….
Correction: Gale Gordon’s Mayor La Trivia was by no means ‘fat-headed’ (meaning stupid) or ‘blustering.’ A very intelligent man, as played by Gordon, his ‘main bit’ was that, after Fibber and Molly teased him by misunderstanding a word he’d said, he’d go into confused alliteration, ending with a long pause and then a long drawn out ’’McGee….’’ which always got a laugh .
Source: Listening to the programs.
Green Hornet, The
Errata: (pg. 186) After Pearl Harbor, Kato underwent a miraculous nationality transplant, from Japanese to Filipino. On TV, a suddenly energized, karate-chopping Kato was played by a newcomer named Bruce Lee.
Correction: Pearl Harbor took place in 1941. Television didn’t come into widespread use until the 1950s, and The Green Hornet did not appear on television until 1967. It is therefore careless writing of Mr. Nachman to mention the TV version in the next sentence, giving the uninitiated the idea that the radio and tv programs were running simultaneously. Was he Japanese or Filipino in the tv program? Mr. Nachman doesn’t say. (Bruce Lee himself was Chinese).
Source: General knowledge.
Saint, The
Errata: (pg. 308). …its concept [The Shadow] was soon shadowed by other phantom figures: The Whistler, The Saint, and the oily guardian of Inner Sanctum’s unoiled door.
Correction: The Whistler and Inner Sanctum were anthology series which used a narrator, similar to the original ‘Shadow’ who was a narrator for the anthology series Detective Story. The Shadow did not get his own program as a crime fighter until seven years later (although The Shadow Magazine, with The Shadow as crimefighter, debuted months after the popularity of the narrator was established). The Saint , on the other had, was never a narrator, and still less a shadowy figure. He was always a ‘do-gooder’, always known to all by his real name of Simon Templar, always the main character on his program, helping out people in distress because he felt like it.
Source: Listening to The Saint; the books by Leslie Charteris.
Sherlock Holmes
Errata: (pg. 303) Rathbone’s classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which ran for six years, was again the exception, but then it was a literary classic and a movie spin-off.
Correction: An error of omission. While Basil Rathbone did play the role of Holmes on radio for six years, the radio program itself was not ‘his.’ It had existed before him, and continued after he left the role in 1946, up until 1950 with Tom Conway, John Stanley and finally Ben Wright as Holmes. Nigel Bruce continued playing Watson until 1947, then it was Alfred Shirley, Ian Martin, Wendell Holmes, and finally Eric Snowden.
Source: Old Time Radio’s Greatest Detectives: An Anecdotal Guide to Old Time Radio’s Greatest Detectives, by Anthony Tollin. 1998. Radio Spirits, Inc.
Suspense
Errata: (pg. 315). Among its staff of eight regular writers were John Dickson Carr and Ray Bradbury…
Correction: Again, more an error of omission. John Dickson Carr only wrote scripts for the first season of the program’s 20 year long run. The author's phrasing makes it seem as if he was there in its entirety.
Source: Suspense, Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills
Errata: (pg. 315). Its most famous drama, ‘’Sorry, Wrong Number,’’ about an invalid housewife (Agnes Moorehead) who hears her murder being plotted over a party line and tries in vain to alert somebody…
Correction: She overhears a murder being plotted over a crossed line, tries to warn the police that someone’s life is in danger, and only learns at the very end of the episode whose life it is .
Source: Suspense, Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills, ''Sorry Wrong Number'' and ''The Hitchiker'' play scripts by Lucille Fletcher.
Errata: (pg. 316). It was initially narrated by ‘’the man in black,’’…and after 1948 by Robert Montgomery.
Correction: Robert Montgomery was host of the program only in 1948, when it was expanded to an hour long format. The experiment was not a success.
Source: Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills.
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