Three key names to remember are Howard McNear, Parley Baer, and Virginia Gregg, Gregg is the go-to female voice in just about every role requiring a female voice Howard McNear and Parley Baer show up in the cast list of so many radio dramas that I lost count.

One of the fun things about listening to a lot of old-time radio is getting to associate the voices of certain characters as they pop-up in roles on Johnny Dollar or Sam Spade or Gunsmoke. Radio is my constant companion and with the advent of the internet, my radio is always on and I don’t ever watch television or go to the movies (except streaming on Netflix). I’ve probably heard them all, including the early Van Heflin episodes, and I now have a real enthusiasm for the voice work of Gerald Mohr whom I long considered one of the greasiest B-movie actors in movies. Parker, the author Benjamin Black (who is in reality John Banville) is keeping the tradition of the wise-cracking hard-boiled shamus alive with the latest installment in the Philip Marlowe legacy, The Black-Eyed Blonde.īut before discussing Black’s book I need to admit that I regularly listen to rebroadcasts of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe streaming on internet radio. Over seventy years later, following two excellent examples by Robert B. For those that have forgotten, it was titled The Big Sleep and, as one review described it, The Big Sleep is an unavoidable masterpiece of modern literature. Raymond Chandler wrote his first novel relating the adventures of Philip Marlowe in 1939.

The black eyed blonde