Vintage Classic Radio

Tonight on Sunday Night Playhouse — the very first dramatization of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in any medium, broadcast 9 December 1938 as the debut episode of Campbell Playhouse. Orson Welles stars as Maxim de Winter and Margaret Sullavan as the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, with Mildred Natwick as the formidable Mrs. Danvers and Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Van Hopper.

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This week on Saturday Matinee, three of the finest half-hours in golden-age American comedy, back to back. We open with The Jack Benny Program's "The Racetrack" (12 March 1950), home to the most famous silence in American comedy — the pause after a mugger demands "your money or your life," which held a studio audience in laughter for nearly a minute. Then Bud gives Lou no end...

This week on Friday Night Noir, two broadcasts from the same landmark month of CBS's Suspense — aired one week apart in May 1943, at the moment the series was establishing itself as the finest anthology drama on American radio.

We begin with "The A.B.C. Murders," broadcast 18 May 1943, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 Hercule Poirot novel. A killer stalking Engl...

Tonight on Tuesday Night Detectives, two great radio detectives take on cases separated by nearly a decade of the golden age of radio.

First, Gerald Mohr stars as Raymond Chandler’s private detective Philip Marlowe in “The Panama Hat,” from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. CBS’s Gerald Mohr series began in September 1948 and became the definitive radio incarn...

After a summer's rest, Vintage Classic Radio is back on the air.

Tonight on Sunday Night Playhouse — the hour-long Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Casablanca, broadcast 24 January 1944, a little over a year after the film's release. Hedy Lamarr stars as Ilsa Lund and Alan Ladd as Rick Blaine, with John Loder as Victor Laszlo.

Lux Radio Theatre was the most prest...