45-04-06 Espionage - This is Your FBI




Radio America show

Summary: Affordable Web Hosting $5.99 A month This Is Your FBI was a radio crime drama which aired in the United States on ABC from April 6, 1945 to January 30, 1953. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave it his endorsement, calling it "the finest dramatic program on the air." Producer-director Jerry Devine was given access to FBI files by Hoover, and the resulting dramatizations of FBI cases were narrated by Frank Lovejoy (1945), Dean Carleton (1946-47) and William Woodson (1948-53). Stacy Harris had the lead role of Special Agent Jim Taylor. Others in the cast were William Conrad, Bea Benaderet and Jay C. Flippen. The show was created by producer-director Jerry Devine, a former comedy writer for Kate Smith and Tommy Riggs, who had turned his scripting talents to radio thrillers like Mr. District Attorney. This is Your FBI received the full cooperation of J. Edgar; Hoover gave Devine carte blanche to closed cases in the Bureau’s files for inspiration in writing the show’s weekly dramatizations. They were prefaced, of course, with the Dragnet-like disclaimer “All names used are fictitious and any similarity thereof to the names of persons or places, living or dead, is accidental.” (This led Jim Cox, author of Radio Crime Fighters, to observe: “Some listeners must have pondered that for a while—‘So did these events happen or not?’”) Debuting over ABC Radio on April 6, 1945, This is Your FBI broadcast from New York in its early run (1945-47), showcasing the talents of New York radio veterans like Mandel Kramer, Karl Swenson, Santos Ortega, Elspeth Eric, Joan Banks, and Frank Lovejoy (who narrated many of the shows). In 1948, though, the program relocated to Hollywood, and with the move established a regular weekly character in Special Agent Jim Taylor, a representative of all of the Bureau’s special agents, played by actor Stacy Harris.