Old Time Radio Theater

Welcome Old Time Radio Fans,

Here is what you'll find on this website:

• One of the largest collections of Old Time Radio shows on the Internet.
• Many rare shows that can't be found anywhere else.
• Mystery show podcast and easy podcast player page.
• Many old music shows.
• Pictures of Old time radio actors.
• Old Time radio discussion forum.

Some Things To Do Here

Enjoy our collection of Halloween shows.

Listen to the shows

Listen to our audio message for our blind visitors.

Visit our Old-Time Radio Discussion Forum

See a full listing of our OTR shows and old music shows: PDF version of shows.

Listen to our featured shows from all our previous podcasts.

Listen to our Old-Time Radio Mystery Podcast with Itunes.

Listen to our Old-Time Radio Mystery Podcast on YouTube.

Listen to our Old-Time Radio Mystery Podcast on our online player.

Read Our Old Time Radio Blog

Read some comments about our old time radio club, sent in by members.

Listen to our favorite OTR song while you browse this page.

Listen to some of our favorite old music shows

See our Old Time Radio Pictures folder

Learn About Old Time Radio

Listen to the latest shows uploaded by our club members.

Join our old time radio club and enjoy full access to over 50,000 shows. Many are donated by our members and can only be found here.

A Message To Our Blind Visitors

A free life-time club membership is offered to all of our blind visitors. No need to sign up for anything. Just enjoy the shows.

Listen To Our Featured Show

A couple finds themselves stranded on an isolated country road at night in the middle of a storm. If that's not bad enough... There is a murderer on the loose that just escaped from a mental institution! Original broadcast 1950.

Click link to listen    Suspense - On A Country Road

Club Members Area

Go to the "Club Members Area" if you are a club member and would like to listen to or download OTR shows.

All of our shows are in standard mp3 format and may be listened to online or downloaded to your computer to listen to later or put on your mp3 player. See the list of shows in the club members area.

If you'd like to join our Old Time Radio Club, see the details further down this page.

We Invite You To Join Our Old Time Radio Club

It's our goal to bring the joy of old time radio to as many people as possible. We think it's especially important to get young people interested. We'd hate to see something this wonderful just fade away. By helping us keep this website going, you'll be playing an important part in this effort.

This is a "not for profit" website. We raise money via donations to pay for our web server, bandwidth and new sets of shows for everyone to share and enjoy. We truly need and appreciate your help. It's your generous support that allows us to maintain and improve this website.

If you are blind, you may have a membership at no cost. We use a high contrast color scheme for the visually impaired. It was intentionally created as a very basic website from day one. We've tried to make it accessible to people using text to speech web browsers.

Here is a nice letter we received from one of our club members. It's a great feeling knowing that people are enjoying these shows. The passing of many years has not altered the fun and excitement of old time radio!

Read more comments about our OTR club, sent in by members.

Privacy Policy:

We promise never to bother our club members with sales emails (or any other type of emails) after joining the club. We have nothing to sell. We are an old time radio hobby club. We sell no products and do NOT mass email our club members with spam or junk mail. We never sell, rent or give our club members email address to anyone for any reason. There are absolutely no ads anywhere in the club members area.

We don't want to bother our club members. We only want everyone to enjoy their experience here.

If you have any questions, email Brad (Webmaster / Site Admin).

Please select the donation amount that is right for you

If you truly can not afford to make a donation, We understand. Go ahead and enjoy the shows. If you are in a position to help out, We'd appreciate it. Thanks!

We know everyone has a different size budget. You may donate the amount that is right for you. All club memberships are exactly the same. There are NO different membership levels. All members enjoy the same full time access to every show we have in our collection. Everyone who makes a donation of any amount receives a lifetime membership in our club, which includes full access to over 50,000 OTR shows (download to your computer or listen online).

You do NOT need a Paypal account to make a donation. Paypal can also process credit card and check donations for us. No waiting for your check to clear.

For other donation options, such as mailing a check or money order, email Brad (Webmaster / Site Admin).

No donation is requested for Blind users, Veterans or Nursing homes. You may have free access.

Since the time we started this website in 2007, the suggested donation to join our club has always been $10.00 - Which includes a lifetime club membership (full access to over 50,000 Old Time Radio shows). If you can not afford to donate $10.00, any amount would be appreciated. Anyone who makes any size donation may have a club membership. Thank you for helping us in our mission to keep Old Time Radio alive and well. We appreciate you! Payments processed by PayPal If you have any questions about our club, please don't hesitate to contact me. Just, email Brad (Webmaster / Site Admin) and I'll be happy to help you. Brad (webmaster)

Read some comments about our OTR club, sent in by members.

See what we have in our club members area.

Thank you in advance for your donation. This will greatly help us in our efforts to keep old time radio alive.

Mystery Section

Please note: These OTR shows are in .mp3 format. Just click the show's title to play it in your browser. Or you can right-click on a show and save it to your computer, tablet or smartphone. They can be played with Windows Media Player (comes free with Windows), Apple Itunes (Free from Apple) and almost any modern audio playing software. If you need a great free mp3 player, you can use VLC Media Player. If any of these shows don't sound right, try adjusting or turning off the equalizer in your player's software. These radio shows are old, so please forgive any little sound problems you may encounter.

Read Our Latest Old Time Radio Articles

CBSRMT on Mysteryshows.com, Explore Old Time Radio on the Internet, Old Time Radio Mystery Shows, Old Time Radio's Best Actors, The Joy Of Listening to Old Time Radio on the Internet

Try Our Mystery Podcast

  We and our club members hand pick a great mystery show every now and then and add it to our Old Time Radio Mystery podcast. Give it a try!

Podcast Instructions:

Note: If you have no idea or care about podcasts and rss feeds and you just want to hear the shows in our podcast, we've set up a podcast player on our server. Just go there and enjoy the shows. You might want to bookmark that page and visit it again to hear the new shows as we add them. Simply click the following link to enjoy our podcast. Old Time Mystery Theater Podcast Player. Or listen to it on our Apple Podcasts page.

The URL of our podcast is: https://www.mysteryshows.com/Podcasts/Mystery-Shows-Feed.xml Just copy and paste it into your rss feed reader.

The podcast is totally free. You don't even need to sign up to use it. Just click and enjoy.

Mystery Shows

How to listen to these shows: Pick the series of shows you'd like to listen to by clicking on the radio picture next to the series name or click on the link called "Listen to these shows now". This will take you to the folder of shows for that series. click on the name of the show to listen to it. (example: 5MM_000_Carnival_Murder.mp3 is the first show listed in the "5 Minute Mysteries" folder).

Helpful Tip: If you right-click with your mouse on the shows file name (such as: 5MM_000_Carnival_Murder.mp3) a little menu will pop up. Then click "Save Target As" to save the show to your computer and listen to it whenever you want or put it on your mp3 player. It's best to turn your bass down on your player. This makes the shows sound the best.

5 Minute Mysteries

(1947-1950)

ABC Mystery Time

(1957-1958)

ABC Mystery Time was hosted by Don Dowd and starred Sir Laurence Olivier.

Amazing Mr. Malone

(1947-1951)

Mr. Malone is our amazing hero, a Chicago lawyer who's hobby is collecting cliches, and each weeks show is based off of one.

Barry Craig Confidential Investigator

(1951-1955)

Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator was a radio detective drama heard on NBC from October 3, 1951 to June 30, 1955. Detective Barry Craig (William Gargan) worked alone from his Madison Avenue office. Unlike his contemporaries Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Craig had a laid-back personality, somewhat cutting against the popular "hard-boiled detective" stereotype. Others in the cast included Parley Baer and Betty Lou Gerson.

Box 13

(1948-1949)

Box 13 was a syndicated radio series about the escapades of newspaperman-turned-mystery novelist Dan Holliday, played by film star Alan Ladd. Created by Ladd's company, Mayfair Productions, Box 13 premiered August 22, 1948, on Mutual's New York flagship, WOR, and aired in syndication on the East Coast from August 22, 1948, to August 14. 1949. On the West Coast, Box 13 was heard from March 15, 1948 to March 7, 1949.

To seek out new ideas for his fiction, Holliday ran a classified ad in the Star-Times newspaper where he formerly worked. "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything -- Box 13." The stories followed Holliday's adventures when he responded to the letters sent to him by such people as a psycho killer and various victims.

Candy Matson

(1949-1951)

"Candy Matson, YU 2-8209" aired on NBC from March 1949 to May 1951 and featured Natalie Parks as Candy Matson, PI. Each job took her from her apartment on Telegraph Hill to numerous specific locations in San Francisco.

Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater

Jack London declared nothing could match the pleasure of curling up with a good book and a bag of candy on a Saturday afternoon. While nothing can match it, one thing that can surpass it is driving down a moonlit road, bathed in the green glow of the dash lights and listening to a riveting radio thriller!

Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater is a grass-roots theater troupe established in 1982 with the purpose of continuing the fine tradition of Old Time Radio through a series of original mysteries and thrillers set on Cape Cod. The series features suspense shows and Captain Underhill whodunits.

Series author, Steven Thomas Oney, is recipient of the prestigious Raven Award given by the Mystery Writers of America. Past winners have included Alfred Hitchcock, Edward Gorey, Vincent Price, Angela Lansbury, Eudora Welty and Steven Bochco. Publishers Weekly called the series "Audio Mystery at its finest."

The publisher of this series of original mystery thrillers has graciously provided three complete episodes of this well written and produced show for the enjoyment of our visitors and club members. Excellent sound quality and suspenseful mysteries. A club favorite! Visit our friends at Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater for more of these great shows.

Carter Brown Mysteries

(1957-1958)

Adventures in excitement and suspense based on the best-selling novels by Carter Brown.

Casebook of Gregory Hood

(1946-1950)

Originally heard over Mutual from 06/03/46 to 12/25/49, then the series moved to ABC from 01/25/50 to 08/31/50.

Gale Gordon starred as the amateur detective / antique dealer Gregory Hood. The show was a summer replacement for Sherlock Holmes. Only a very few episodes of "The Casebook of Gregory Hood" survive.

Casey Crime Photographer

(1943-1955)

Casey, Crime Photographer (aka Crime photographer; Flashgun Casey; Casey, Press Photographer; Stephen Bristol, Crime Photographer) was a media franchise, in the 1930s through the 1960s. Created by George Harmon Coxe, the photographer Casey was featured in radio, film, theater, novels, magazines and comic books.

Launched in a 1934 issue of the pulp magazine Black Mask, the character Jack "Flashgun" Casey, was a crime photographer for the newspaper The Morning Express. With the help of reporter Ann Williams (portrayed on radio and TV by Jan Miner), he solved crimes and recounted his stories to friends at The Blue Note, their favorite tavern.

Begun as stories in Black Mask, the stories were brought to radio under multiple names. The series aired on CBS for all its entirety. 07/07/43 - 11/16/50 and 01/13/54 - 04/22/55.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

(1974-1982)

(The CBS Radio Mystery Theater (or CBSRMT) was an ambitious and sustained attempt in the 1970s to revive the great drama of old-time radio. Created by Himan Brown (who had by then become a radio legend due to his work on Inner Sanctum Mysteries and other shows dating back to the 1930s), and aired on affiliate stations across the CBS Radio network, the series began its long run on January 6, 1974. The final episode ran on December 31, 1982.

The show was broadcast nightly and ran for one hour, including news and commercials. Typically, a week consisted of three to four new episodes, with the remainder of the week filled out with reruns. There were 1,399 original episodes broadcast. The total number of broadcasts, including reruns, was 2,969.

The format was similar to that of classic old time radio shows such as The Mysterious Traveler and The Whistler, in that there is a host, E.G. Marshall, who introduces each episode and provides pithy wisdom throughout; but, unlike the hosts of those shows, Marshall is fully mortal, merely someone whose heightened insight and erudition plunge the listener into the world of the macabre.

The show began with the ominous sound of a creaking door, slowly opening to invite listeners in for the evening's adventure, accompanied by Marshall's disturbing intonation of, "Come in! ... Welcome; we am E.G. Marshall." At the end of each show, the door would creak and slam shut, followed by Marshall's classic signoff, "Until next time, pleasant ... dreams?," segueing into the show's haunting woodwind theme music.

Marshall hosted the program every year but the final one, when actress Tammy Grimes took over, maintaining the format.

Ellery Queen & EQ One Minute Mysteries

(1939-1948)

On radio, The Adventures of Ellery Queen was heard on all three networks from 1939 to 1948. During the 1970s, syndicated radio fillers, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries, began with an announcer saying, "This is Ellery Queen..." and would go on to describe a case in one minute. The radio station would then encourage callers to try to solve the mystery and win a sponsor's prize. Once they got a winner, the solution part of the spot would be played as confirmation.

Mystery Is My Hobby

(1947-1948)

Told in first person by Barton Drake (played by Glen Langan), Mystery is My Hobby is played before a live audience.

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe

(1950-1951)

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe began October 20, 1950, with "Stamped for Murder." Sydney Greenstreet starred as Nero Wolfe.

"Rex thought Greenstreet a splendid choice for the role and Greenstreet did, in fact, fill every reasonable expectation," wrote Stout biographer John McAleer. A succession of Archies included Gerald Mohr, Herb Ellis, Larry Dobkin, Wally Maher and Harry Bartell. The series ended April 27, 1951, with "The Case of Room 304."

Nick Carter Master Detective

(1943-1955)

Nick Carter, Master Detective was a Mutual radio crime drama based on tales of the famed detective from Street & Smith's dime novels and pulp magazines. Nick Carter first came to radio as The Return of Nick Carter, a reference to the character's pulp origins, but the title was soon changed to Nick Carter, Master Detective.

With Lon Clark in the title role, the series began April 11, 1943, on Mutual, continuing in many different timeslots for well over a decade. Between October 1944 and April 1945, it was heard as a 30-minute program on Sunday afternoons at 3pm, sponsored by Acme Paints and Lin-X, with a 15-minute serial airing four or five times a week in 1944 from April to September. In April 1945, the Sunday series moved to 6pm, continuing in that time slot until June 1946, and it was also heard in 1946 on Tuesday from March to August.

Philo Vance

(1945-1950)

Philo Vance is a fictional American amateur detective who appeared in twelve novels written by S. S. Van Dine (the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright) published in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, movies, and on the radio. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant possessing a highly intellectual bent. The novels were chronicled by his friend Van Dine (who appears as a kind of Dr. Watson figure in the books as well as the author).

Superman

1942-1951

Listen, as Superman solves baffling mysteries and fights crime! The Adventures of Superman, adapted from the DC Comics character created in 1938 (see Superman), came to radio as a syndicated show on New York City's WOR on February 12, 1940. On Mutual, it was broadcast from August 31, 1942, to February 4, 1949, as a 15-minute serial, running three or, usually, five times a week. From February 7 to June 24, 1949 it ran as a thrice-weekly half-hour show. The series shifted to ABC Saturday evenings on October 29, 1949, and then returned to afternoons, twice-a-week on June 5, 1950, continuing on ABC until March 1, 1951.

True Detective Mystery

(1937 - 1957)

True Detective Mystery ran in various years, In 1937 it was Syndicated by Trans American Syndication. In 1946 It was again on the air. This time It was on the Mutual Network where it ran in various years until 1957. Its stories were based on stories which appeared in True Detective Mystery Magazine.

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar

(1948-1962)

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a radio drama about the "fabulous freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account". It aired from February, 1949 to September 30, 1962 on CBS, giving it an amazing 14-year run.

Charles Russell was the first to star as Johnny Dollar, followed by a succession of actors including Edmund O'Brien, John Lund, Bob Bailey, Bob Readick, and Mandel Kramer. Each new star gave Johnny a slightly different persona.

Continue to the Club Member's Area for over 50,000 more shows in .mp3 format.

If you would like to convert our mp3 files to another format, we recommend a free program called fre:ac. It's the fastest we've been able to find.

Our favorite audio player is VLC. It's free and Open Source.

If you have any questions, email Brad (Webmaster / Site Admin).

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Contact Information:

If you have any questions, email Brad (Webmaster / Site Admin).

View our Privacy Policy

This is a "not for profit" OTR show trading club. Any money received in the form of donations or advertising revenue will be used to purchase new shows from OTR disk catalogs and web hosting related expenses. None of these shows are being offered for sale. The purpose of this site is to bring the joy of old time radio to anyone who is interested in this subject and to further the hobby of collecting old time radio shows. These OTR recordings are intended for personal use only. No license for public performance is intended or implied.

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All of the show descriptions in the club member's area were written by our long time member Frank Bell.

Many show descriptions on the homepage are from Wikipedia and were created under the creative commons license.

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