Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Fritz Lang used an similar premise in his s German movie with Peter Lorre playing M , a psychopathic murderer of children. But the American radio series was even creepier.
The unseen Whistler didn't kill anyone that we know of , but he certainly loved watching murders take place, narrating them for us, and chuckling at the suffering of others instead of doing anything to stop it. Unlike M , he was never caught. He kept walking the streets every week for thirteen long years, whistling his ominous thirteen notes and telling us another tale of bizarre fate. Perhaps Fate is who the Whistler really was? He never provided any sir name, and the killer was usually punished by some twist of fate that only The Whistler seemed to expect.
It is very likely The Whistler was inspired by The Shadow , which began nearly a decade earlier. Like the Shadow, the Whistler seemed to enter and exit the criminal underworld without ever being seen. He would watch the evil doers carry out their schemes, yet they never saw him, even though he would tell us what they were thinking in their presence.
His voice sounded equally sinister to The Shadow, too. It was was a slithering tenor, hissing the "s's" and often laughing "heh-heh-heh-hehheh! Both series had similar opening lines: The Shadow "knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men", whereas The Whistler "knows many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows.
Also like The Shadow , several different actors played the title role over the course of The Whistler series. Bill Forman played it the most, but his announcer Marvin Miller substituted for him during the six months of his army duty Buxton, The last similarity was the saddest one.
Both series ended about the time frame in the mid s. Crime increased in the following decades, maybe because the guilty felt they were no longer being watched and could get away with murder. Or could it be that the Whistler is saving up some more great stories to tell us about in the future? Which we know now was a promise we were ready to keep by early August Reviewer: Balletpink - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 17, Subject: Always great to hear these!
Love, love, love this. I am thrilled that all these wonderful old radio programs are preserved. They sure don't make stuff like this anymore :.
Reviewer: AncientAxim - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 10, Subject: the audio is pretty good "Wait a minute Spier was editor, producer, director. A lifelong radio man, he had broken in during the primitive days of and earned his stripes serving on such pioneering shows as The March of Time. He was impressed by the deep, cynical, tough qualities in Howard Duff's voice. Duff had long experience as an actor, a career that traced back to his high school days in Seattle.
He had originally wanted to be a cartoonist, but the sound of applause in a senior-year play at Roosevelt High changed all that. Suddenly stagestruck, Duff began hitting the boards. He worked in local theatre groups and craked radio as an announcer on a local station.
When the war came, Duff went with Armed Forces Radio as a correspondent, a job he held for more than four years. He emerged in Hollywood in , a seasoned but unsung microphone veteran. With his perfect voice and polished delivery, it wasn't long before Duff was playing supporting parts in top dramas of the air. Sam Spade shot him to national fame. The character, as Spier saw it, would Have many easily identifiable traits. The first thing Spade usually wanted to know was, "How much money you got on you?
Okay, I'll take that and you can pay me the rest later. Spade favorite way to travel was by streetcar; it took him almost anywhere for a dime. He disliked cabs and liked cheap booze. You didn't need more than an occasional, subtle reminder: those glasses clinking every week as Sam opened his desk drawer and began dictation were enough.
We knew Sam and Effie weren't toasting each other with Sal Hepatica. Sam was a man who worked out of his desk, and the thing closest at hand in that top drawer just might be a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad.
His clients got bumped off with startling regularity. Then Sam sent his report and presumably his bill to the widows. He dictated his cases to his faithful secretary, Effie Perrine, a babbling, man-hungry female who might have been the adult Corliss Archer. Each case came out as a report, dated, signed, and delivered.
Spade license number - - was always included in the report. The cases unfolded in chronological order, the scenes shifting between Sam and Effie and the dramatization of Sam's dictation. Effie, who always seemed on the verge of tears whenever Sam became involved as he did weekly with a curvy client, was beautifully played by Lurene Tuttle, Jerry Hausner played Sam's lawyer, Sid Weiss.
Lud Gluskin directed the music and Dick Joy announced. Soon after the series began, Ann Lorraine dropped her writing duties, and Gil Doud became Bob Tallman's writing partner. The show ran in its original format through the episode of September 17, Then Howard Duff quit for a fling at movies, and Sam Spade languished for two months.
On November 17, , it returned on NBC. Duff's absence was handled in usual network form: by importing a new voice. Spier and Miss Tuttle followed the series over, and for a time so did Wildroot. Wildroot and the listeners all got wise around the same time. Dunne was a good radio man, but he sounded like Sam in knee pants.
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