Sat 2 Nov 2019
An Old-Time Radio Review: THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY JORDAN “The Man from Cairo” (1950).
Posted by Steve under Old Time Radio , Reviews[17] Comments
THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY JORDAN “The Man from Cairo.” CBS, 01 January 1950. Cast: Jack Moyles as Rocky Jordan, Jay Novello as Captain Sam Sabaaya of the Cairo police. Guest cast (uncredited): Parley Baer. Sponsor: Del Monte Foods.
When I started collecting radio shows on reel-to-reel tape, back in the early 70s, there were only a haphazard scattering of shows available, with very little in the way of documentation available for the anything you gladly picked up here and there from other traders and collectors.
Things change. For many year I had only one show from this series (1948-50, 1951), plus two fifteen minutes episodes from its predecessor A Man Named Jordan (1945-47), which took place in Istanbul, rather than Cairo, the setting of the later series. Today almost all of the second run are available online, at the click of a mouse. Check out, for example the links here at archive.org.
Whether Istanbul or Cairo, either setting was to listeners here in the US as exotic a place as they’d ever hope to be, and the producers of the show made sure the stories they told took full advantage of it. There also was no mistaking the resemblance to the movie Casablance: all of Rocky Jordan’s adventures were always based in and around the Cafe Tambourine, always the center of nefarious business.
The writers of “The Man from Cairo” had a bit of extra fun with this one. The hapless tourist who happened to stop by Jordan’s cafe is not from Cairo, Egypt, but from Cairo, Illinois. A taker of home movies, he has enjoyed his stay, but he has one complaint: nothing exciting has happened. And of course as soon as says that, action begins, but he’s never on the scene when it does. Does he believe Rocky when he’s told that his life may be in danger? In a word, No.
As the man from Cairo, Parley Baer is not credited in the role, but no one who’s listened to a lot of OTR, including his role as Chester Proudfoot in the long-running Gunsmoke on radio will mistake his most talented voice. A lot could be told in only 30 minutes on the radio, and this particular episode is no exception. Follow the link above to hear it for yourself.
November 2nd, 2019 at 4:22 pm
I relish seeing a fine serial like this reviewed. It’s a fun radio program. Reliably written, solidly produced, glibly performed. Jay Novello as the gruff Cairo police captain has a memorable, salty rapport with the tough US expatriate Jordan. It bewilders Sam Sabaaya how Jordan so frequently winds up in some kind of trouble.
Overlooked character: on Sabaaya’s staff is a sniveling Detective Sergeant or head-of-detectives who has-it-in for Jordan’s character. Nice touch.
Jordan takes some real beat-downs during the course of the show and yes, the story setting offers unlimited exotic criminals to tangle with. Not even the standard ‘Mister Big’ types: Jordan mixes in with street beggars, purse-snatchers, all the lowest varieties of street punk in his town. It’s really seedy and grimy in a way no American-based program can match.
Also, (on the distaff side) there’s a toothsome array of husky-voiced, cigarette-puffing, absinthe-sipping femme fatales. No other show comes close to the sultriness of these characters. The opposite type also appears: squeaky-voiced, gasping and wide-eyed ingenues; (usually looking for their missing kid brother, missing religious artifact, etc). Good-hearted to the core and bringing out Rocky’s protective instincts.
Now, I don’t know how far out of town the Sphinx is, but thankfully there are no Rocky Jordan installments which take place anywhere near the Great Pyramid.
Let’s see, fave episodes …first, one where Sabaaya’s nefarious assistant frames Jordan for murder for the sake of some Coptic sect he is a member of. (How often do you find religious motives in a US-bases crime yarn?)
Another winner: Sam Sabaaya receives political pressure to arrest Rocky and boot him out of the country. Rocky has to burgle the Dept of State offices to get the falsified evidence.
In one of these, (or maybe another) the burly-voiced Sabaaya reveals he is an amateur wrestler and strips down to the waist for a locked-room mano a’ mano battle for the sake of his unspoken affection for Jordan. Touching installment there.
American guest stars (like the great Parley Baer), yes –very effective in the series. I agree. Definite ‘parody’ element to the show, sorta like Huston’s ‘Beat the Devil’.
Ah well. Good clean fun. Thanks for airing a discussion of Rocky Jordan! Theater-of-the-mind, at its best.
November 2nd, 2019 at 4:36 pm
Oh –forgot to add–the program has one running gag. Whenever deep in the swirling mists of some crooked imbroglio, Rocky will usually find a few seconds to ring his PD captain pal from a payphone and jabber out a frantic plea for aid. Sabaaya splutters and fumes on the other end of the line, naturally able to make no sense of the message. Nevertheless it is often enough of a scrap of info to -maybe- enable him to show up at the climax and save Rocky’s life/reputation. The writers don’t overdo this, sometimes he doesn’t make it until Rocky is a bloody mess.
November 2nd, 2019 at 7:36 pm
I haven’t listened to the show in a long time — this was the first in maybe ten years — so I appreciate your telling us about some of running gags and other bits of business that only a regular listener would know about. I’d love to be able to start with show one and go through the entire list of those at archive.org. There’s not enough time in the day!
November 2nd, 2019 at 5:06 pm
Jack Moyles himself, makes a guest-appearance on ‘Gunsmoke’ at least 18-24 instances. His drawl wasn’t too bad at all.
November 2nd, 2019 at 7:31 pm
Moyles had a gritty sounding voice, perfect for radio, but it’s one I’m not sure I’d easily identify outside of his Rocky Jordan role. He was in a handful of movies and TV episodes, but not many.
November 2nd, 2019 at 7:16 pm
My review of one of radio’s best series. https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=12982
November 2nd, 2019 at 7:27 pm
Yes. The definitive history of the series, masterfully done, if you don’t mind my saying so. An article even more complete than Wikipedia’s.
November 2nd, 2019 at 10:17 pm
I feel there’s a ‘purity’ in radio dramas which sets itself above anything cinematic, I might go so far as to say. How many times do we receive a movie or tv show through our peepers and wind up dismayed, always finding something to moan about with regard to mis-casting, limp performances, poor editing, weak wardrobes, cheap sets? We are very critical about anything we get via our eyes. Humans are naturally visual-centric. But successful, powerful radio serials were banged out largely without any such flaws. It’s pristine storytelling: just the spoken word and a few sound effects.
I’d like to see ‘The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen’ reviewed by the capable brain-trust around here. Now there was an adventure show.
Gonna go read now the link cited above. Thanks!
November 2nd, 2019 at 10:28 pm
Swell technical summary of the history of the concept at the link above. Impressive. Tantalizing hint re: Sinatra’s ‘Rocky Fortune’.
I was mulling all this over a Guinness tonight and it struck me that the Rocky Jordan character had one flaw which rendered him unfortunately tepid. He had no overweening passion. No paralyzing regret like Rick Blaine. No ‘love of his life’. No ‘gun-running’ in his past. No drinking problem. No sorrow and no yearning. Maybe the show couldn’t accommodate this. Every episode is about someone else’s troubles; Rocky Jordan himself seems to have no personal tragedy. It’s a noticeable gap.
By the way, someone asked me my nationality in a bar two weeks ago (perfect straight line) and I replied, “I’m a drunkard” and they didn’t get it. Ouch.
November 2nd, 2019 at 11:41 pm
Del Monte ads (on this show), somehow much less annoying than many other sponsor spots like “Johnson’s Car Nu” (Fibber/Molly) Liggett & Meyers (Gunsmoke), Lucky Strike/Jello (Jack Benny) ‘Swan soap’ (Burns & Allen). I myself had never known that it was pineapple vinegar which made Del Monte catsup so zesty.
November 3rd, 2019 at 1:03 am
The theater of the mind seemed ideally made for some forms of entertainment, and mystery/adventure was one of them. A few deft words, surprisingly little actual description, a bit of atmospheric music, and a good Foley Man and they could whisk you away to the most exotic location and establish the most fantastic setting based on nothing but what you had seen in the movies, read in books, or spied in an issue of National Geographic.
Radio drama may have been the most immersive and personally involving form of escape ever created, and unlike television you really couldn’t do ten other things while listening and still follow along. It engaged the mind in ways nothing short of virtual reality can.
November 3rd, 2019 at 1:38 am
9. Lazy Georgenby, if I am remembering right Rocky Jordan wanted to return home to St. Louis but had accepted he would never be able to. It was hinted he was involved (on one side or the other) with organized crime.
Funny about the character trope of not wanting to get involved but always caught in the middle. Bob Newhart made a career from that character. Watch his TV series – he would trying to stay out but always be dragged in and blamed for the problem.
As for ROCKY FORTUNE TV series, nearly every radio series at the time was considered for TV. But Sinatra had two different Variety series in the 50s, BULOVA WATCH TIME in 1950 and FRANK SINATRA SHOW (1957. Both have episodes on YouTube.
November 3rd, 2019 at 9:56 am
Ah yeah? St. Louis? Interesting. Curious that Jordan might’ve really been a former crook. In the radio series the aspect which marks him, (I think so, anyway) is his zeal for fair play and square-dealing. Otherwise, the police Captain would probably never gain any respect for him. Agreed, Jordan never seeks out trouble but once he sees someone downtrodden he typically ‘sticks his neck out’ without hesitation. I wonder how the writers imagined his transformation from hood to hero.
Sinatra was a dynamo in those years. His ‘Rocky Fortune’ is really evocative of the “old New York” of Damon Runyon. It’s lighter on thrills and danger than is Rocky Jordan.
Cinema vs radio: not to take anything away from cinema –you could fill a library with books on the all-enveloping experience movies provide. But yes I kinda think radio does get overlooked. To me, the ‘best moments’ in a really well-photographed, well-scored noir or horror film puts me in exactly the same state of ‘rapt’ attention that a radio play does. Strong visual compositions and long cuts slow down the eye’s blink-rate –while you wait for the assassin’s finger to tighten around the trigger, or the unseen maniac’s blade to swish down on the teenager’s neck. It’s in this ‘poised’ state that, if a kid sitting in the dark row behind you decides to blow-up and detonate his empty pop-corn bag, that you might shriek and leap out of your seat. It goes back to the days of the hunter-gatherers: visibility can be limited in the wilderness; a big animal you’ve been stalking might now be stalking you, and so your ears will save your life faster than your eyes will. Audio is tied right into our involuntary reflexes.
Same thing if you are sitting up late, watching a great horror flick on TV, and you know you are alone in the house but suddenly you hear some tiny noise from the basement. It might be nothing, but…
November 3rd, 2019 at 6:26 pm
Lazy Georgenby, I wish I could remember the episode I heard the St Louis stuff or what version of JORDAN.
He could be hiding from the mob. Cleveland and Kansas City were major spots for the mob at that era.
November 8th, 2019 at 10:20 am
BTW, the best line of dialog I ever heard on ‘Gunsmoke’ (a program with many great lines) was this:
“What’s that shotgun for, ma’am?”
“To put folks where cold weather won’t bother ’em.”
January 8th, 2021 at 12:52 am
Parley Baer guest cameo in Rocky Jordan, I’m hearing him right now in a (different? same?) episode called, ‘Passport for Vivi’. Not sure why the title is different than described above.
January 8th, 2021 at 12:19 pm
I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but sometimes when the title of a show isn’t announced on the program itself, collectors have often made up their own. The real title is what was on the script or other official archives.