OTR researchers have struck gold again:

   Peter Salem was a private eye whose cases were dramatized on the Mutual radio network from May 1949 to April 1953, but for over 50 years not a single copy of the program seemed to have survived. The voice of veteran radio actor Santos Ortega was Peter Salem for the entire run; playing his assistant Marty was Jack Grimes, another radio actor whose voice, once heard, you would never mistake for another’s ever again.

   About four years ago a five-minute opening clip finally turned up in a college archive in Arkansas, a story called “The Affair of the Murderous Mirror,” a tale which apparently had the same plot line as “Reflection of Death,” an episode of The Shadow not surprisingly written by the very same author, Louis Vittes.

   And the five minutes of that clip was all that was until just recently, when Mark Lavonier, the host of an old-time radio program airing in upstate New York, discovered in his station’s collection of recordings the first fifteen minutes of an episode of The Affairs of Peter Salem dated 14 December 1949 and entitled “The Affair of the Horrible Hitch.”

   Both of these brief excerpts can be found online with links at http://www.otr.com/affairs.shtml. A very nice way for OTR fans to celebrate the end of the year.