Friday's Favorite OTR

 Richard Diamond: "The Barton Case" (aka "Diamond in the Rough")--5/1/49

The series got off to a strong start with this premiere episode--it establishes Diamond's smart aleck character while thrusting him into the middle of a dangerous case.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Richard Diamond: "Rifle Case" 6/28/53

Someone is trying to steal a new rifle from the gunmaker who designed it. Diamond is hired to protect the man until the gun can be tested. Not surprisingly, the job turns out to be less than straightforward.

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This episode was remade in 1959 as an episode of the TV show Peter Gunn, which was also created by Blake Edwards. Peter Gunn is currently streaming on a number of services--it's worthwhile to watch that episode and compare it to the original radio version.

Friday's Favorite OTR

 Richard Diamond: "Photographer's Card" 3/26/50

Diamond gets possession of a small photographic negative that people are willing to kill for.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Richard Diamond: "The Ivory Statue" 4/5/50

The plot of this episode riffs off of The Maltese Falcon. A dying man stumbles into Diamond's office, carrying an ivory statue that several other men are willing to kill to obtain.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond: "House of Mystery Case" 12/10/49

Rick is hired to watch over a woman who must spend one more night in a large mansion in order to inherent her dead husband's fortune. It seems her husband is planning on returning from the dead.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond: "The Louis Spence Case" 3/5/50

Diamond has less than an hour to either reason with a madman who can't be reasoned with--or disarm a bomb that can't be disarmed.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond: "Joyce Wallace" 3/12/50

Diamond is hired by a Broadway actress after someone tries to shoot her. Her ex-husband is the obvious suspect, but in Richard Diamond's world, the obvious suspect is rarely the guilty one.

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Friday's Favority OTR

Richard Diamond, Private Eye: “The Gray Man” 2/16/51

Richard Powell’s acting career took an interesting turn in 1944. He’d been a song-and-dance man, appearing in musical comedies. But in ’44, he took the part of P.I. Philip Marlowe, starring in the excellent film noir Murder, My Sweet. He was really, really good at the tough guy role and this opened new acting opportunities for him.


One of those opportunities was taking the tough private eye role to radio. Richard Diamond, Private Eye was an entertaining and affable show. It was a nice balance between playing straight with the stories and parodying the genre. Powell, playing the title role, narrated the stories in the traditional private eye manner, with the writers supplying him with snappy, funny dialogue and some sharp one-liners. Powell’s amiable line-readings were a perfect fit for the scripts. Often, he got to show off his ability to carry a tune at the end of an episode, when he would sit down at the piano at his girlfriend’s home and treat her to a song. Powell exuded just enough charm to make these potentially corny endings seem appropriate.


On top of this, the stories were very well-constructed in terms of plot, with Diamond following up clues in a logical manner to get to the bottom each case. In “The Gray Man,” Diamond is hired by a dying man to find a missing college professor. This soon expands outward to involve murder and blackmail, leading Diamond to question the motivations of his client. It all leads up to a really nice twist at the denouement. The case is resolved satisfactorily, with all the plot elements being properly explained. And we get to listen to a lot of snappy dialogue along the way. That’s a very pleasant way to spend a half-hour.

Listen or download HERE.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond: "Private Eye Test" 3/19/50

Diamond has to pass a private investigator test at the police station to keep his license. The test includes solving a hypothetical homicide, but the body in the precinct basement proves to be anything but hypothetical.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond, Private Eye: “William Logan and the Ivory Statue” 4/5/50

A man delivers a package to Diamond just before collapsing and dying with a bullet in his back. All this snowballs into a case involving a 7-foot-tall master criminal being chased by the chief strangler from a cult of Thuggees.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond, Private Eye: "Charles Walsh" 7/9/49


A pair of thugs break out of prison. One of them is determined to kill Richard Diamond, the man who sent him to the pen. After an abortive attempt to snatch the smart-mouthed P.I., they decide to set him up by kidnapping his girl friend first.

This episode gives several supporting characters--Diamond's gal Helen and comic relief police desk sergeant Otis--more time "on screen" than they normally get. Also, OTR fans will have a ball listening to Larry Dobkin and Paul Frees team up to play the bad guys.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Richard Diamond, Private Eye: “Timothy the Seal” 2/5/50


Dick Powell started his career in movies playing in light-weight musicals. In 1949, he suddenly grabbed some tough guy cred by playing Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (adapted from the novel Farewell, My Lovely—the studio changed the title so no one would mistake it for another Powell musical).

Powell proved himself quite adept at playing a tough P.I. A few years later, he began a run on radio playing another tough guy—Richard Diamond. Maybe not quite as tough as Marlowe, though. He usually ended each episode singing a song to his girlfriend. I can't picture Marlowe ever doing that. The scripts had an element of tongue-in-cheek to them as well. The show was similar in a very general way to Sam Spade, in that it injected humor and self-awareness into hard-boiled stories without sacrificing good storytelling.

In this episode, Diamond is hired to protect someone named Timothy, who will be brought to his office later. The client will not tell him Timothy’s last name or describe him in advance. Diamond doesn’t like it, but the client is paying too much to turn the job down.

Diamond is being threatened by thugs even before he meets the guy he’s supposed to protect. And when he does meet him, Timothy turns out to be… well, the episode title gives that away.

Soon there’s a murder and someone snatches Timothy away from Diamond. What’s going on? Diamond manages to figure it all out in the end, leaving time for him to still get in a song before the episode closes.

Click HERE to listen or download.