Fred MacMurray stars in a story set during 1920s Prohibition. It has speakeasies, bootleggers, and gangsters and a vintage Dixieland jazz band that’s doing its best to go from gig to gig but gets caught in the crossfire of a gangland hit and a police raid. MacMurray plays the band’s drummer, and becomes an accidental witness to the murder during the chaotic scene. When he gets back to his apartment a girl is waiting for him. He had eyes for her all night as she sat in the audience, but it was clear she was a gangster’s girl and that any involvement would her would only get him in trouble. The gangster, “Red Rocks” Farrell, sent her to “invite” the drummer and the band to play for a private party at his mountain hideout. It’s clear that it’s an invitation he can’t refuse without dangerous consequences. It’s the gangster’s trick to find out who witnessed the murder. In that process, one of the innocent band members is needlessly executed. Will MacMurray’s character be next?
MacMurray’s solid performance owes much to another well-crafted script story by E. Jack Neuman & John Michael Hayes. They develop the feel of the era by using the natural language and idioms of that time combined with the entertaining slang of jazz musicians. Some of that jargon and many of the cultural references need additional context for today’s listeners. Neuman and Hayes were writing this script in 1950, not even 25 years after the period of the story. That slang was still in much of the listening audience’s memory and vocabulary. For today’s classic radio enthusiasts, that period as of this writing is almost 100 years ago, and many of those references and words are long forgotten. These are some of the key ones in the story:
2:15 Moonlight on the Ganges was a very popular fox trot melody, released in 1926.
2:19 ...“when ‘Ah, nurse!’ was considered snappy repartee” refers to the old vaudeville gag of a voluptuous nurse in a doctor’s office. Actor and classic radio researcher Patte Rosebank explains that it “...is a censored version of the saucy old expression, ‘Hello, nurse!’. Many 1990s kids first heard that old expression on Animaniacs, where it was a recurring gag (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ezonRf5lZeI).” A more scholarly explanation can be found at https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/24324304. It is also a scene in the Neil Simon play The Sunshine Boys. [A thank you hat tip to Patte].
2:40 “...it was a ‘speak’” means the venue was a “speakeasy,” a bar during Prohibition where if you knew somebody or “the password” you could get access to a back room or club and buy liquor.
2:55 the licorice is a clarinet; the Baldwin is a piano and refers to its manufacturer, known mostly for its upright models; slapping refers to playing the upright bass; the skins refers to drums.
4:40 Marcel bob and fingerwave were hairstyles with curls or waves, popular in the 1920s; more details are at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelling
4:50 upstate Scotch refers to liquor from an illegal and hidden distillery run by gangsters; they would often barter with others or other businesses to get things or favors they wanted in exchange for their liquor.
7:23 “Isham Jones was busy” was a minor insult since the Jones band was at a height of their popularity with top of the charts record sales and concerts. The insult was that the gangsters were rich and influential enough to get Jones if they wanted to, but they were telling the Windy City Six that they would settle for them. In this story, there was an ulterior motive to the invitation.
7:40 “Isadora Duncan’s finale” refers to the famous dancer and choreographer’s tragic and brutal death in 1927 in France; her long scarf became entangled in the wheel and axle of the car in which she was a passenger, strangling her and nearly decapitating her; in the script, this is a threat that the invitation to perform had a bad and terminal consequence if refused.
15:45 “the years of the big thirst” refers to the years of Prohibition, which spanned from 1920 to 1933.
18:25 “I was going to write him a bread and butter letter first thing in the morning”; such a letter was a brief thank you for hospitality, very functional, with no flourishes or embellishments.
25:20 “This is a job for the John Laws” means that some honest police officers would be handling the aftermath of the crash; this is contrast to the corrupt cops who would look the other way about Donovan’s rackets.
25:40 “Mike Donovan in vital statistics” is a reference to demographic statistics related to births and deaths (“vital” coming from the Latin vita, which means “life”). This means that Mike Donovan died in the crash, and therefore was listed in the numerical statistics of deaths in a locality.
25:50 “complete with old shoes and new rice” means that MacMurray’s character and Cora were married. There was a very old tradition of throwing shoes at weddings to symbolize that the care and upbringing of a bride’s family, especially the protection by her father, was was now turned over to the financial and emotional support of her new husband. By the 1920s, no one was throwing shoes, but the expression was widely known and used. Rice is still used at many weddings as a wish of good fortune and the fertility to raise a family.
There is a particularly brutal scene in the story at about 13:30 when the gangster shoots into a snowman. Blood appears. It was clear that the murdered band member’s body was hidden inside that snowman. The act was designed to intimidate the surviving members of the band into revealing the identity of the witness. (Suspense is not for kids, in case you needed a reminder). It’s a real turning point in the story, especially for the character Cora. It turns her against life with the gangsters, and she wants to leave and will do what it takes to do so.
At 23:00 the car has trouble starting. It’s a crank engine. Though Auto-Lite did not invent the electrical starter for cars (Charles Kettering did around 10 years prior to this story’s setting), it was a major part of their business. The ad agency reviewers and any Auto-Lite executives who read the script probably chuckled when they read this scene. It may have been devilishly tempting to stick an Auto-Lite commercial in that spot.
The inclusion of Red Nichols and his Five Pennies certainly enhances the setting of the story and also the show publicity. His band was a very popular recording act in the 1920s and 1930s. He is a member of the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. More details on his notable career and his band can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Nichols?wprov=sfti1 and there is a film of his band in 1950 at https://youtu.be/EqlSQ5Q8qEo and an earlier film at https://archive.org/details/RED_NICHOLS_HIS_FIVE_PENNIES_Entrance_of_the_Gladiators
For jazz jargon, this site might be helpful https://www.the-jazz-cat.com/jazz-slang-dictionary.html
This was Fred MacMurray’s first appearance on the series. How fitting it was in the casting that he was a saxophone player before turning to acting. He played a wide range of movie roles, including comedies, but his role as the unscrupulous insurance sales representative in 1944’s Double Indemnity was strongly embedded in public memory at the time of this broadcast. Among baby boomers he is known as the star of the 1960s sitcom My Three Sons. He was also known to be one of Hollywood’s best investors. An overview of his long and successful career is at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_MacMurray
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP510208
THE CAST
FRED MACMURRAY (Carstairs “Ham” Hamilton), Mary Jane Croft (Cora Lee), Jack Kruschen (Chick), Eddie MacDonald (Big Mike Donovan), Hy Averback (Corny), Clayton Post (Bull Hurley), Frank Richards (Red Rocks Farrell), Lee Millar (Policeman / Thurber Jones), Jerry Hausner (Rip), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Tony Barrett (Pepito), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
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