Mon 20 Mar 2023
An Old Time Radio Review: COUNTERSPY “The Case of the Blackmailed Hijacker†(1949).
Posted by Steve under Old Time Radio , Reviews[9] Comments
COUNTERSPY. “The Case of the Blackmailed Hijacker.†ABC, 09 August 1949. Don McLoughlin (David Harding), Mandel Kramer (Peters). Available on many sites online, including this one.
Counterspy was a totally fictitious anti-espionage agency whose case files began on the radio in 1942, telling tales about the Nazis and how their efforts in setting up spy operations here in the US were always thwarted. After the war ended, the series continued, up through 1957, but the enemies of this country became more general.
In this episode from 1949, for example, truckers driving through the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania with payloads of dynamite and other explosives are being held up and robbed. The bounty is then shipped off and sold to rebels in post-war hotspots around the world, threatening world security.
As it turns out, the title of this episode is incorrect. When one driver escapes being kill in one such hijacking, he is at first willing to testify against one of the thugs he could identify, but when the rest of gang threaten to reveal his past life as a convict, and worse, threaten his wife, he finds that his memory of the incident is not as sharp as he thought it was.
It’s a fairly straightforward thriller of a mystery, in other words, but it’s also one with a very effective final scene taking place in the quiet of the night when the men of Counterspy move carefully in on the truck that has been blown to bits.. Who was caught in the explosion – the good guy, or the bad ones? Pictures in the mind can be a lot more effective than those seen acted out on the screen of a black and white TV set.
Each of the two stars, Don McLoughlin and Mandel Kramer, went on to have long careers in TV soap operas. Both had very effective voices for radio, though, and I suspect the many listeners thought Counterspy was a real honest-to-goodness organization acting on the behalf of Americans everywhere.
March 20th, 2023 at 7:39 pm
The two David Harding Counterspy films didn’t quite come up to the radio series. Ron Randell starred in one as a British agent working undercover for Harding in a city somewhat modeled on Los Alamos that had a decent enough twist.
Character actor Jeff Corey appeared in both films as one of Harding’s agents.
March 20th, 2023 at 8:21 pm
Willard parker was the male lead in the other David Harding film, but Howard st. John played that part in both pictures.
March 20th, 2023 at 8:33 pm
So far, I’ve found only three or four minute clips from COUNTERSPY MEETS SCOTLAND YARD.
March 22nd, 2023 at 7:25 pm
Neat-o. Always like to see a radio serial mention.
In the case of this program however, I wasn’t ever truly captivated by the concept.
Never found a deep reason to either like or dislike it. Seemed passable enough, but just never excited strong feeling in me of any kind.
To my ears, ‘David Harding’ was always just slightly too earnest, too forthright, to clean-cut to be credible. Similar to the LEA in “This is Your FBI” or even, “The Line-Up”.
And the tropes in ‘Counterspy’ were frequent. You get characters named things like, “Agent X-9”.
I’m sure it was a decent show but just hasn’t hooked me.
If I want to give an ear to some international intrigue, I would usually sample some Brian Donlevy (‘Dangerous Assignment’) or even Dana Andrews (‘I was a Communist for the FBI’).
March 22nd, 2023 at 7:44 pm
Yes, I’d have to agree. COUNTERSPY was milk toast. Well constituted milk toast, but still milk toast. (Comfort food, easy to digest.) And yet, it stayed on the air for an awfully long time. Long enough to for me to have been able to listen to it, and remember it still, before it finally went off the air for good, in 1957, to end a fifteen year run.
March 22nd, 2023 at 11:18 pm
Britt Reid of the Daily Sentinel was really the go-to guy for defending us against ‘the enemies who would destroy OUR America’.
He’s relentless compared to the orderly, business-like David Harding. Britt Reid is ready to punch a racketeer the moment he rolls out of bed in the morning.
Candidate for most rousing show-intro ever.
March 23rd, 2023 at 4:07 pm
I’ve always assumed that THE GREEN HORNET was a show meant for kids, but as I kid, i almost always found the stories boring. The business of secret identities, Kato and the big flashy car were all fine, but when the villains were racketeers and political grifters of various kinds, as they so often were, Dullsville.
I’ve not listened to one in a long time, and it’s about time I did, now that I’m no longer ten years old.
March 24th, 2023 at 1:20 am
Ah, I think you are in for a treat when you re-visit that serial.
“Superman” is a program which strikes me as child-like. I’d agree about the Man-of-Steel.
But “Hornet” is a different kettle of fish.
It’s meticulous, grown-up, and (for lack of a better word) manic in intensity.
It has the eerie quality of Lamont Cranston’s “Shadow” but something else very sober and J. Edgar Hooverish about it which –one might say –makes it one of the deftest parodies of our culture.
Unlike Batman or Superman, maybe the most appealing aspect is that Reid –whenever chasing crooks –is always within a hair’s-breadth of being captured himself as a crook. The local PD are constantly hunting for him. They think he is the local kingpin of crime.
It’s really a romp! The plots are intricate, to say the least!
March 30th, 2023 at 6:53 pm
Agree with you, Lazy about The Green Hornet. My feelings are always aroused by the Hornet’s relationship to The Lone Ranger. I assume everyone on this board understands, Britt Reid is John Reid’s grand nephew, and his father Dan spent time away from school with his uncle and Tonto. My reference is not to the Ranger of television, but to Brace Beemer on the radio. In any case, the opening that I truly loved then and now, goes: ‘He hunts the biggest of all game. Public enemies who try to destroy our America’
It wouldn’t fly now.