The Mystery House Radio Program

Background

Mystery House was a production of radio station W-G-N, Chicago, one of the charter stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System. W-G-N was owned by The Chicago Tribune--by their own lights, the World's Greatest Newspaper, hence the call letters 'W-G-N.' Consisting of a canon of approximately one-hundred thirty distinct scripts, W-G-N recorded the vast majority of the programs before a live audience from their W-G-N Studio Theater. As noted in the spot ad at the left, W-G-N encouraged listeners to order tickets for the recording sessions by simply requesting them from the station.

Mystery, detective, and crime drama productions that were broadcast in the early to mid-1940s hadn't yet fallen under the stricter curfew guidelines established by the broadcasters' self-policing National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Indeed, even if Mystery House had been produced and aired during the curfew era, it's unlikely that it would have been assigned a curfew in any case. Mystery House was a mystery series, to be sure, but for the most part fairly wholesome compared to other exemplars of the genre during the World War II years.

The premise of Mystery House is relatively unique for the era. The main protagonists were a married couple, Dan and Barbara Glenn, owners and publishers of mystery novels via their Mystery House publishing firm purportedly located on Park Avenue in New York City. As a further twist, the firm had a policy of acting out their proposed novels prior to publication. This was an admittedly unrealistic concept--even for the 1940s--given the fast paced, frenetic business of publishing, but with a bit of suspension of disbelief the concept captures the listener's imagination.

The premise of the series also has all of the employees of the publishing house taking part in these 'trial runs' of a novel under development, an even more engaging twist that conveniently provides additional 'actors' to assist in stepping through every detail of an evolving novel until it's deemed ready for publication.

As best as we can determine at present, Rye Billsbury announced and narrated the series, Forrest Lewis portrayed Dan Glenn and Nannette Sargent portrayed Barbara Glenn. Production values are as might be expected of an in-house produced program. The live audience can occasionally be heard in the background of some recordings and the local productions were apparently well-received. Running continuously for almost three years, the series ran for the most part uninterrupted for the duration of the run.

Once one accepts the underlying premise, the program's format is entirely engaging. The underscore and accompanying incidental music is provided by traditional organ music to nostalgic effect. In that respect alone, the series remains a time capsule of sorts of the type of studio-mystery fare that enjoyed its heyday throughout The Golden Age of Radio. Indeed, even though the production was a home-grown product, it would seem that residents of Wisconsin enjoyed the series even more than local Chicagoans, judging by the abundance of information available as far away as Madison, Wisconsin in the newspapers of the era. Local newspapers, by contrast--The World's Great Newspaper among them, while actively promoting the series, provided little in the way of program synopses or even titles for the vast majority of the broadcasts.

The series was apparently so popular that a second airing was offered on Saturday mornings at 11:00 a.m., as well as its normal airing on Sunday, Friday or Monday evenings. This is yet another indication of the relatively mild violence and mayhem underlying most of the production's scripts.

W-G-N was, and remains, a powerhouse station of the upper midwest, and it's clear that this production was well-supported by--and a point of great pride to--the station itself. As evidence of the production's staying power, the Harry S. Goodman syndication firm apparently recorded most of the programs for later syndication. Under Goodman syndication the program enjoyed a subsequent run in 1951 and beyond. Virtually all of the circulating exemplars are from the Harry S. Goodman canon of recordings. It is as yet unknown if Goodman recorded the entire W-G-N canon of Mystery House programs, but the circulating exemplars appear, for the most part to have come from Canadian-syndicated Goodman transcriptions.

The programs were apparently recorded earlier in the day or week of their scheduled broadcast timeslot, since the Wisconsin broadcasts often aired an hour prior to the broadasts in Chicago itself. This lends further credence to our hypothesis that Harry S. Goodman was recording the programs for syndication from at least 1945-on, since that was the period during which the Wisconsin broadcasts began to be heard earlier than the local Chicago broadcasts.

When we undertook this article and log, the conventional wisdom was that there was little further to discover about this interesting, locally produced program. The previous known canon contained some fifty titles out of a possible 130+. The canon now contains some one-hundred-two titles with only 30+ unknown. Unfortunately most of the production details remain yet to be discovered. But we're certain that they'll soon surface. One thing certain about history is it's immutability. Some may attempt to reinvent it, rewrite it, or twist it, or distort it, but history ultimately reasserts its integrity, no matter what artificial forces act against it. History's facts, no matter how arcane or esoteric want to surface. It's simply a matter of bringing enough interest--and resources--to bear to facilitate the rediscovery of those facts.

We undertook the challenge of this conceptually unique program to uncover even more about a series that, to all appearances, enjoyed great popularity--at least regionally--for almost three years. We also hoped the effort might reassert the immutable history of The Golden Age of Radio in the process. We feel we've accomplished both purposes. And now that the canon is nearing complete rediscovery, perhaps those collectors holding back some of the thousands of transcriptions that almost certainly survived, will feel more inclined to release a few of them into wider circulation. We can only hope as much. The canon deserves it and Chicago's rich broadcasting history has earned it.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were the log of the RadioGOLDINdex and newspaper listings.

We invite you to compare our fully provenanced research with the '1,500 expert researchers' at the OTRR and their Mystery House log, which the OTRR claims to be correct according to their 'OTTER log' they represent as the "most authoritative and accurate vintage Radio database in the world.

While it's too late to point out their earlier log, we've provided a screen shot of their current log for comparison, HERE to protect our own further due diligence and intellectual property.

Here's their original 'Certified Accurate' log, prior to stumbling upon our research. You'll note that this is the 'Certified Accurate' log upon which the OTRR made their absurd recommendation that everyone in the vintage Radio collecting community with other, differing recordings destroy what they already had, in favor of this log. You simply can't find more bombastic arrogance than that.

You'll note that they cite Mystery House as a "1950s" series that "Sadly, not a lot is known about . . ", on their archive.org page--at least not until they discovered our research into the series. Below are our fully provenanced research results. One need but go to archive.org to see theirs. That 'certified accurate' nonsense of theirs has been sitting on archive.org for four of years now, with every novice or casual vintage Radio collector visting archive.org having taken it as gospel--simply because the OTRR said so. No proof. No provenances of any kind. No substantiation whatsoever. Simply 'certified accurate' because they say so. Even worse, they suggest that anyone downloading their 'certified set' destroy any other Mystery House recordings already in a collector's possession.

We regret having to ask the obvious, but are vintage radio collectors truly that gullible? We fully realize that this is--and will continue to be--an uphill struggle.

Even more to the point, how long are we going to be the only voice pushing back against continued misinformation and total absence of peer-reviewed scholarship--or integrity? Our only claim to the historical integrity of our logs and articles is that we actually listen to what we log--and we provenance every entry we can find to substantiate what we actually hear in these recordings. Neither do we foolishly and bombastically refer to ourselves as the 'worldwide authority on otr research' as the OTRR does. Clearly, if the OTRR is truly being perceived as such a distinguished body, then something's gone very amiss in this entire pastime, since nothing could be further from the truth--by any measure.

The OTRR used to cite a 1947 run of some eight months or so in its 'certified accurate' log. Those 1947 entries appear to be Mystery Playhouse episodes broadcast over MBS, not an actual rebroadcast run of Mystery House.

The OTRR maintained that the 1951 rebroadcasts were yet another unique run of Mystery House, but offered no proof of that assertion. It's our belief that the 1951 run was simply a subsequent Harry S. Goodman run of rebroadcasts from transcriptions. Indeed, the radioGOLDINdex -- a site that can be trusted -- cites eighteen reputed Harry S. Goodman transcription numbers from the 1951 run, all of which are recordings from 1946, which simply buttresses our conclusion that the 1951 run was simply a subsequent rebroadcast of the earlier Mystery House canon--from transcription--or possibly a completely different run entirely. Upon their discovery of these assertions, the OTRR's OTRRpedia site updated their log results.

The OTRR also suggested that the earliest airings of an NBC program also named Mystery House was a direct antecedent to W-G-N's independent production. From our own research we find no correlation--however tenuous--between the concept of the 1929 and 1940 runs to the concept of the W-G-N run.

Nor do we believe that the circulating exemplar of an NBC-produced episode of a program also named Mystery House was either an audition or a sales promotion vehicle for the W-G-N series. Indeed if, as the OTRR alleges, the NBC vehicle was a trial balloon for some sort of 'Mystery House' series based on the macabre plays of Paris' famous Grand Guignol then the concept itself bears no resemblance--by whatever tortured logic--to W-G-N's Mystery House production or its concept.

The OTRR also maintains there was to be some sort of tie-in from NBC's proposed Mystery House Radio production to 'several' Mystery House shorts or television film features being undertaken by Universal Pictures during that era--also starring Bela Lugosi. That no such series from Universal ever materialized doesn't seem to dissuade the OTRR in the least. Nor, apparently did any spin-off series of Mystery House periodicals or magazines ever materialize during that period. Nor, quite frankly, do we believe that a network of the acuity--and ruthlessness--of NBC would have seriously undertaken a Radio series anchored around Bela Lugosi during that period in his career--for all too obvious reasons. We personally adored Bela Lugosi's Film work--even the worst of it--and greatly admired his stoic, life-long suffering from thrice-inflicted World War I wounds. But the harsher realities of that era of his career were that no mainstream broadcast network executive in his right mind would have risked an entire series anchored on the Bela Lugosi of the mid-1940s and beyond. Sad? Yes. Regrettable? Absolutely. But all too self-evident.

By way of explaining the color coding of our log (below), we offer the following:

• The dark red entries refer to information we can't substantiate as yet. For example:
  • In the case of titles or dates we had to 'back into' we also indicate our lack of complete assurance with the dark red encoding.
  • And of course in the case of pre-emptions, since we weren't there to hear the announcements--and in the absence of any 'as broadcast' exemplars, we have no irrefutable proof as to the actual pre-emption or how wide its effect, hence the red coding for those entries.

We are, however, reasonably comfortable with our evolving episode sequencing. We recognize that a station as experienced with syndicated transcriptions as W-G-N, would almost certainly have ordered or scheduled broadcasts in sets of thirteen t0 twenty-six programs at a time. Our best and current count of unique episodes of the canon is 133, excluding the three most likely actual pre-emptions over the three years of the run. That number is so close to 130 (e.g., ten sets of 13 or five sets of 26) to beg the question as to at least three additional possible pre-emptions over the course of the three year run. But given the current absence of some fifty remaining titles and their provenances we've necessarily had to qualify our episode counts and their effect on episode sequencing. With only thirty-two exemplars currently in circulation--and only nine with verifiable dates--we feel entirely comfortable assigning the existing exemplars with episode numbers from those below.

What you see here, is what you get. Complete transparency. 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 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 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.