The Mysterious Traveler Radio Program

Background

The Mysterious Traveler was the second outing for the prolific writing team of Robert Arthur, Jr. and David P. Kogan, two successful pulp fiction writers and publishers. Their first effort was a 27-program run of Dark Destiny (1942-43). Most of the Dark Destiny scripts are heard again in The Mysterious Traveler (1943), The Sealed Book (1945) and The Teller of Tales (1950).

The team of Robert Arthur, Jr., David Kogan, producer/director Sherman 'Jock' MacGregor, and actor Maurice Tarplin was a very successful one for both The Mutual Broadcasting System and Radio station WOR. Between 1944 and 1952, The Mysterious Traveler eventually became one of the sixteen highest rated Radio programs of their era. WOR and MBS took great pride in putting together a program that could rival Radio giants CBS, ABC, and NBC throughout the era. During its heyday The Mysterious Traveler spawned several similar thriller genre programs such as The Strange Dr. Weird (1945), The Sealed Book (1945), Dark Venture (1946), Murder By Experts (1949), and The Teller of Tales (1950).

The thriller genre was not new to Radio in the 1940s. The Witch's Tale had aired from 1931 to 1938 over The Mutual Broadcasting System and WOR. CBS had tried--and failed--at their own The Witching Hour for three months in 1932. Oklahoma Radio station WKY had successfully aired their own Dark Fantasy (1941) anthology of thrillers, which was immediately picked up by NBC for a national run. But clearly, The Mutual system and WOR appear to have acquired the inside track for the thriller genre for almost two decades during The Golden Age of Radio.

This is not to discount in any way the suspense thrillers from CBS and NBC during the same period. Inner Sanctum (1941-1952) aired very successfully over NBC Blue, ABC, and CBS during much the same period as The Mysterious Traveler. Arch Oboler brought Lights Out! (1936-1952) to the air as well for NBC Red, CBS, NBC and ABC. But for much of the period during which it aired, The Mysterious Traveler was providing most of the competition to 'the big three's' more widely heard and promoted thrillers. Enough competition that the same big three networks were forced to continually shuffle their offerings back and forth on the Radio dial to continue to fend off the upstart Mysterious Traveler.

The proliferation of such late afternoon and late night thrillers on the radio dial didn't seem to discourage the listening audience in the least. These programs were so popular that people reminiscing about the era tend to conflate Maurice Tarplin and Raymond Edward Johnson in their repsective roles as narrator for many of these scary programs from The Golden Age of Radio. The formula was so popular that it played a role in the restructuring of the type of Radio programming that could be heard during prime-time. With the voluntary adoption of curfews on thrillers and crime-based mysteries by The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), these programs were forced to air after 9:30 p.m. Eastern time from 1948 on. This is the reason behind the many anecdotal stories from the era of young children listening to their radios under the covers during the Post-World War II era. It was the only way they could continue to hear their favorite thrillers on school nights.

The Mysterious Traveler had much to recommend it for atmospherics alone. Maurice Tarplin opened each program with the following mood setter:

"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the strange and terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip . . . that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable . . . if you can . . . ."

That introduction, accompanied by the now famous sound of the rushing train and its whistle served as the chilling prologue to every episode of the run. The train whistle and doppler sound seemed to improve with each new season--as did much of the foley work throughout the series. Maurice Tarplin for his part, leant a provocatively nuanced sense of anxiety to each new program, both framing the script to follow and interjecting key exposition during most episodes. The Mysterious Traveler was apparently a former medical doctor, a history Tarplin refers to a few times throughout the broadcasts.

The Mysterious Traveler eventually found itself up against an even more daunting body than the National Association of Broadcasters and their programming guidelines. Both Robert Arthur, Jr. and David Kogan were activist members of the Radio Writers' Guild, a popular writer's union that was deemed subversive by the infamous House Un-American Activities Committees (HUAC) between 1945 and 1954. This was by no means unusual for the era. The HUAC systematically attacked most significant collective bargaining organizations of the era for their union and organizing activities, which the predominantly right-wing Republicans in control of Congress at the time, deemed a threat to Big Business in any form. The larger, older unions managed to weather the scrutiny of the HUAC. It was predominately the smaller artists' and trade unions that the HUAC seemed most successful at bullying throughout the era--with Hollywood moguls' full support.

Arthur and Kogan's very visible lobbying, organizing and picketing efforts on behalf of the Radio Writers' Guild during the late 1940s and early 1950s ultimately brought the HUAC down on Radio station WOR and the Mutual Broadcasting System. Both WOR and MBS predictably caved under the innuendoes and allegations of the HUAC and terminated The Mysterious Traveler at the arc of its national success. While simply a road-bump to MBS, the blacklisting of one of Radio's greatest writing teams effectively ended their Radio writing careers with the cancellation of The Mysterious Traveler.

Though having broken up the team of Arthur, Kogan and MacGregor, Jock MacGregor appears to have weathered the storm, continuing on to a modestly successful career in Television. Arthur and Kogan for their part, launched the Mysterious Traveler Magazine with relative success for a year; both writing and publishing the magazine on a shoestring. Some of Hollywood's less intimidated Television producers continued to employ Robert Arthur's services for another ten years. David Kogan continued to manage and publish the magazine.

It's worth noting that the success of the Robert Arthur/David Kogan team resulted in national awards during the early 1950s. Both The Mysterious Traveler and Murder By Experts garnered Edgar awards--Murder By Experts for 1950 and The Mysterious Traveler for 1953. In the end, the overarching influence of both The National Association of Broadcasters and the HUAC ultimately disintegrated. But they did result in a premature demise for many of Radio's thrillers from the era.

From the April 30th 1951 edition of the Janesville Gazette:

 

Thankfully, The Mysterious Traveler remains one of the highly collected examples of the genre from the era, in many instances introducing new fans to The Golden Age of Radio for the very first time.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances for this effort were newspaper listings.

Contrary to Hickerson, The Mysterious Traveler's first timeslot change occured on April 23, 1943 not the widely reported April 30, 1943. How did we uncover and correct this widely reported inaccuracy? We actually listen to our recordings; a novel and ground-breaking approach, we're sure you'll agree. And why is actually listening to one's recordings important? If the answer to that question eludes you, perhaps you need to find another hobby.

Contrary to Hickerson, The Mysterious Traveler's next day and timeslot change moved it to Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. ["half past ten, Eastern War Time"] on October 7, 1944, not the widely reported 9:30 p.m. slot on Saturdays. The program didn't move to the 9:30 p.m. slot until November 11, 1944. We, yet again, employed our technique of actually listening to our recordings to correct this second, almost universally logged, inaccuracy. It's a regrettable fact of vintage radio collecting--especially in the commercial otr sector--that the overwhelming number of collectors who also catalog their recordings simply don't listen to them. Why bother collecting and cataloging recordings you don't have the time, patience, or integrity to listen to?

Here's what we feel should be the accurate transitions for most of The Mysterious Traveler's widely varying airing date spans and times --

Original, 1943 'chapter announced' run over WOR:

43-12-05 to 44-04-16 - Sundays at 7:00 p.m.
44-04-23 to 44-09-24 - Sundays at 3:30 p.m.
44-10-07 to 44-10-28 - Saturdays at 10:30 p.m.
44-11-11 to 45-03-31 - Saturdays at 9:30 p.m.

The 1946-1951 Runs over the entire Mutual Network [almost a year and a half after the end of the original, 1943 run]:

46-07-14 to 46-09-29 - Sundays at 4:00 p.m.
46-12-01 to 47-09-21 - Sundays at 7:00 p.m.
47-09-30 to 48-10-26 - Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m.
48-11-11 to 49-03-24 - Thursdays at 9:30 p.m.
49-03-29 to 51-02-27 - Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.

This is where things start to get hinky for tracking The Mysterious Traveler for 1951 and beyond. Owing somewhat to the growing influence of the Mutual-Don Lee network in California--and other regional Mutual powerhouses as well--Mutual could no longer sustain a coordinated, network-wide broadcast of The Mysterious Traveler, as well as several of its other popular programs. Over a period of nine months of 1951, Mutual staggered its broadcasts of The Mysterious Traveler in New York and other regional centers of its then 540+ network member stations :

51-03-07 to 51-12-07 - [N.Y. region] Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
51-12-11 to 52-09-16 - [Mutual Network] Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.

We qualify the last two entries by stating that the Mutual-Don Lee Network did a great deal of its own schedule changing throughout 1951 and 1952. But with only two circulating exemplars of Mutual-Don Lee aircheck recordings we didn't feel it helpful--yet--to attempt to log all of the several permutations in the Mutual-Don Lee Network runs. When more Mutual-Don Lee airchecked exemplars surface, we'll revisit our log and update it accordingly.

Some of you will undoubtedly note several significant changes we uncovered vis a vis the schedules above. Almost all of them have the consequence of effectively challenging virtually all of the neat, cookie-cutter logs of The Mysterious Traveler currently in almost universal use. Most obvious is the conclusion that there were not 370, but rather approximately 384 broadcasts of The Mysterious Traveler. In addition, the myriad inaccurate citations of pre-emptions for the series currently in wide circulation are almost uniformly in error. We can't actually refer to them as citations since none of them have yet to be backed up by substantiating proof--or even a mention of what they may have represented. What's apparent as of this writing is that as many as five actual network-wide preemptions have been mischaracterized. Another three episodes have never been even accounted for, let alone disclosed. The series did not end on the widely reported 52-09-02 date. It ended on 52-09-16. If anyone is in possession of a recording of The Treasure of Superstition Mountain, and it announces itself as the final broadcast in the series, then it should almost certainly be re-dated 52-09-16, unless someone can demonstrate that WOR aired two more rebroadcasts after 52-09-02.

We have no idea of the methodology that Mr. Hickerson employs in vetting the thousands of submissions he compiles for every issue of his comprehensive logs and updates. It has to be a daunting task. What we do notice most often are the same huge commercial houses or collectors submitting and re-submitting their misinformation to continue to prop up cassette, book and CD sales. There must be a better way to vet those submissions. We're at a loss to understand why any serious vintage recording collector would trust any of the huge commercial vintage recording houses any longer. They have no motivation whatsoever to set production, recording or broadcast history straight. And of course there's that backlog of CD's and cassettes all neatly labeled with misinformation that would have to be either relabeled or reduplicated. That's an expense, isn't it? An expense as in, a tax deductable expense, but an expense nonetheless.

Is it any wonder why, from our inception in 2001, we established an FTP service for providing updates, fills, and entire sets of Vintage Radio recordings in .mp3 format? We knew from the get-go that virtually none of the majority of circulating sets of digitized vintage radio recordings would ever be absolutely, positively complete. We took what we thought was the more intelligent route: continually acquiring fills and upgrades to the holdings we were making available through our FTP service.

Here's a simple question any of you reading this can answer: "Do you know of any vintage radio recording CD or cassette vendor that provides an update service via FTP should any of the thousands of CDs and cassettes they sell become obsoleted by new recording, dating, labeling or encoding that becomes available after that sale?" We'll help you with the answer. The answer is 'NO,' none of them do.

We find it the definition of insanity to continually purchase the same CD compilations over and over and over again from widely varying--and questionable--sources when virtually no one can guarantee with any certainty that the compilation will not be rendered obsolete by the very next historical discovery regarding that canon. Indeed the entire notion of 'distros' is absolutely nuts on the face of it--let alone "Distro Version 2.0 to infinity" of the same, continually evolving canon. 'Certified' according to whom or what?? And when that same 'certifying' group or agency issues Vers. 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and on and on ad absurdum? What does that say about their certification process??

We plowed through about 200 of The Mysterious Traveler's broadcast dates, confirming what we suspected all along; some commercial OTR seller or collector has been deliberately salting most circulating sources with misinformation. Presumably with an eye toward yet another 'reveal all' OTR book about The Mysterious Traveler. What's apparent at this juncture is the following:

• All circulating episode sequence numbers beyond Episode No. 67 are flat wrong. As we've already demonstrated, there is at least one additional broadcast of The Mysterious Traveler out of WOR New York that hasn't been accounted for in any previous catalog.
• None of the previously circulating information about time and date changes is accurate.
• Continuing the Episode numbering from December 4, 1943 to the very end of the last logged broadcast is a fool's errand. It's utter nonsense to even attempt to contiguously log the overwhelming number of program broadcasts beyond a two-year run in the first place. In the second place, it's obvious that The Mysterious Traveler, in particular, has been improperly sequenced for as long as twenty years, due to either someone's mischief during that period, or absence of historical facts--one or the other . . . perhaps both.
• As a case in point, it was over 16 months between the end of the first broadcasts of The Mysterious Traveler and its next appearance. Can anyone logically conclude that broadcasts fully a year and four months apart were a direct continuation of The Mysterious Traveler's first run?
• Given the extraordinary number of individuals who've attempted to log The Mysterious Traveler we find it either a statistically impossible coincidence--or collusion and plaigerism--that virtually all other circulating logs omit all correct 'The's' from their titles.

You're welcome to continue to misnumber and misdate your canon of The Mysterious Traveler . . . or you're welcome to do what we did: question every log that's ever been published about The Mysterious Traveler and do some more fact-checking--and listening--yourselves. We can state quite confidently as of this latest update that virtually no one reading this has a correctly dated or sequenced canon of The Mysterious Traveler in their holdings--and that includes Radio Spirits and their thousands of supporting legal documents as well.

All of the above having been said, we still have little faith in at least sixty of the log entries we've posted below. In our own defense, there's a very good reason why: we have no confidence whatsoever in the widely circulating base of title and date associations for this canon. We've mated up as many of the advertised and announced titles for this canon as we could uncover as of this update. We have little faith in the remainder of them.

What you see here, is what you get. Complete transparency. We have no 'credentials' whatsoever--in any way, shape, or form--in the 'otr community'--none. But here's how we did it--for better or worse. Here's how you can build on it yourselves--hopefully for the better. Here's the breadcrumbs--just follow the trail a bit further if you wish. No hobbled downloads. No misdirection. No posturing about our 'credentials.' No misrepresentations. No strings attached. We point you in the right direction and you're free to expand on it, extend it, use it however it best advances your efforts.

We ask one thing and one thing only--if you employ what we publish, attribute it, before we cite you on it.

We continue to provide honest research into these wonderful Golden Age Radio programs simply because we love to do it. If you feel that we've provided you with useful information or saved you some valuable time regarding this log--and you'd like to help us even further--you can help us keep going. Please consider a small donation here:

We don't pronounce our Golden Age Radio research as 'certified' anything. By the very definition, research is imperfect. We simply tell the truth as best we know it. As is our continuing practice, we provide our fully provenanced research results--to the extent possible--right here on the page, for any of our peers to review--or refute--as the case may be. If you take issue with any of our findings, you're welcome to cite any better verifiable source(s) and we'll immediately review them and update our findings accordingly. As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

All rights reserved by their respective sources. Article and log copyright 2009 The Digital Deli Online--all rights reserved. Any failure to attribute the results of this copywritten work will be rigorously pursued.

Mysterious Traveler Radio Log