Casey's Thanksgiving - Old Time Radio (Casey, Crime Photographer)

On this week of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a wonderful item that you can listen to as you are preparing your meal at home.  I will be doing the same. If you have Sirius/XM, you can listen to Greg Bell's Old time radio channel (#82). He has a number of great Thanksgiving-themed programs available this week. You can also get a large number of these programs at a variety or resources on the web.

Columbia Square in Hollywood - the home of all CBS radio programs after World War II.  This picture was taken on October 31, 2013.

On a lark, I decided to search the Internet Archive for shows that have Crime in the name. I stumbled across Casey, Crime Photographer, which is a cool series that follows...wait for it...a crime photographer. As a budding photographer myself, I love the idea of following a cameraman through the rough streets of the city. The series was sponsored by Anchor Hocking glass company of Lancaster, Ohio.

From another page on the Internet Archive, the series was described as follows: "Casey, whose first name was never revealed, was the major crime photographer at the fictional Morning Express newspaper. With the help of reporter Ann Williams, he tracked down criminals and solved numerous crimes on this popular mystery-adventure series. Often a picture snapped at a crime scene led Casey to play detective."  The show went by many names over the years - including Flashgun Casey; Casey, Press Photographer; Crime Photographer; and Casey, Crime Photographer.  The characters remained mostly the same, with Casey and his constant companion Ann Williams setting out to solve the mysteries that the police could not figure out.  Their evenings would almost always end up at the Blue Note Tavern with its great bar keep - Ethelbert.

The voice talent was primarily Staats Cotsworth as Casey, Jan Miner as Ann Williams and John Gibson as Ethelbert the bartender.  The two Thanksgiving Themed episodes are linked below.  They include 1947's "After Turkey, The Bill" when an ex-con is framed for a robbery on Thanksgiving and 1948's "Holiday" when a reformed ex-con is forced to pull one last safe-cracking job.  You can see a trend here.  The series is often cited as an example of a second-rate series - but I generally like it.  This is good radio detectives - not great!  But, unlike the incident in Missouri this summer, Casey would never show up unprepared!  He always had his equipment.

Here are additional links to Casey, Crime Photographer items on the web.

• Casey, Crime Photographer (radio) - page on the Wikipedia
• Thanksgiving Episode - Holiday (November 25, 1948)
• Thanksgiving Episode - After the Turkey - The Bill (November 27, 1947)
• List of Casey Stories by George Harmon Coxe in Black Mask Magazine (from Wikipedia)
• Read about Casey Crime Photographer (page 7) in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of The Old Radio Times (#52)
• Casey, Crime Photographer (on the Internet Archive)
• Casey, Crime Photographer (Single Episodes on the Internet Archive)
• Casey, Crime Photographer (information on Digital Deli - not working today, hopefully soon)

Here are links to other Thanksgiving themed shows available on the Internet Archive:

• Thanksgiving and Christmas specials sponsored by the Elgin Watch Company via the Internet Archive. 
• Elgin's 6th Annual Thanksgiving Show (November 27, 1947) 
• Elgin's 7th Annual Thanksgiving Show (November 25, 1948)
• Elgin's Thanksgiving Shows (article by Jim Ramsburg)
• 100 OTR Thanksgiving Holiday Shows from the Internet Archive