Old Time Radio Theater

Welcome Old Time Radio Fans,

If you love old time radio, this is your lucky day. We've got thousands of vintage radio programs for you!

Here is what you'll find on this website:

• 2,500 old time radio mystery shows, free download for everyone
• 48,000 shows of all genres for download to everyone who supports this website with a small donation
• Many rare shows that can't be found anywhere else on the Internet
• Friendly, active old time radio discussion forum
• Mystery show podcast and easy podcast player page
• Club news blog to stay updated when we add new shows
• Many old music shows
• New shows being added all the time
• Lot's of fun!

Important Tip:
It's best to always right-click on the filename of the show and then select "Open in new window".
This way, you can still browse the page you're on while the show is loading.

Some Things To Do Here

Listen to our favorite mystery series, CBS Radio Mystery Theater

Listen to our audio message for our blind visitors.

See a full listing of our old time radio shows and old music.

Read some comments about our old time radio club, sent in by members.

Listen to our favorite old time radio song while you browse this page.

Listen to some of our favorite old music shows

See our Old Time Radio Pictures folder.

Visit Our Old Time Radio Facts Blog

Listen to our mystery podcast on our Old Time Radio Mystery Theater Podcast Page

Read our News Blog

See Our Frequently Asked Questions Page

Join our old time radio club and enjoy full access to over 48,000 shows. Many are donated by our members and can only be found here.

Follow us on Twitter   Follow @mysteryshows

If you enjoy this website, please "Plus One" us with Google by clicking the "Plus One" button. It helps other OTR fans find us in Google easier. Share the Joy of Old Time Radio! Thanks!

A Message To Our Blind Visitors

A free life-time club membership is offered to all of our blind visitors. Just and request a "free membership for blind visitors" and you'll receive your club membership via email at no cost. Enjoy the shows.

Listen To Our Favorite Old Time Radio Show Right Now

Tip: The best way to listen to all of the old time radio shows on this website is to "Right-Click" the name of the show and then select "Open in New Window". This way you can continue to read the site while the show is downloading in the other window. When the show is done downloading it will start playing automatically.

If you like, you can give it a try right now with my favorite show, Suspense - "On A Country Road" Starring Cary Grant. A couple finds themselves stranded on an isolated country road at night in the middle of a storm. If that's not bad enough... There is a murderer on the loose that just escaped from a mental institution! Original broadcast 1950. 501116_On_A_Country_Road.mp3

This is the complete 30 minute show and is 5 MB in size. All of our shows are in the standard mp3 format and can be listened to online or downloaded to your computer or mp3 player for later listening.

Listen To Our Featured Show

Listen to this months featured show (picked by our club members) while you browse this page.

Click here to hear all of our previously featured shows.

Club Members Area

Go to the "Club Members Area" if you are a club member and would like to listen to or download old time radio shows.

All of our shows are in standard mp3 format and may be listened to online or downloaded to your computer to listen to later or put on your mp3 player. Click here to see the list of shows in the club members area.

OTR Discussion Board

What is the OTR forum and discussion board? This is our "On-line Clubhouse". It's where the club members and I hang out. What do we do here? We talk about vintage radio shows, recommend good old time radio downloads to each other, post club news, talk about our latest OTR download, ask and answer questions about old time radio programs, trade shows and lot's more!

Please visit our OTR forum Everyone Welcome! All club members and visitors to our website are welcome to participate.

Recent Club News

To See more club news items, please visit our News Blog or subscribe to our News Blog Feed.

Or click a button shown below to add our News Blog Feed to one of these services.

We Invite You To Join Our Old Time Radio Club

Our mission is to provide these fine old time radio shows to the folks who grew up listening to them and still enjoy hearing them today. Also to introduce old time radio to young people and provide them with the chance to enjoy these great shows as well. We can do it with your help.

This is a "not for profit" website. We raise money via donations to pay for our web server, bandwidth and new sets of shows for you to enjoy. We truly need and appreciate your support.

If you want old time radio right now, you've come to the right place. No waiting for the mailman. Just start listening. We'll be adding more shows all the time.

The donation buttons shown below are one time donation button (Not a recurring subscription). Thank you for your donation. It's your generous support that allows us to maintain and improve this website.

If you enjoy listening to these old time radio shows, please let us know by making a donation of any size, big or small. You'll not only be supporting this website but you will be helping us to bring these fine shows back into public circulation and preserving the enjoyment of old time radio for everyone. You'll also receive a lifetime membership in our Old Time Radio Club, which includes access to thousands of other Old Time Radio shows in our Club Members area. Thank you for your support!

Please see the donation buttons further down this page.

If you are blind, you may have a membership at no cost. Just email us. This is a vision impaired friendly site. We've tried to make it accessible to readers with text to speech web browsers. Just let us know if you have any trouble listening to the site and we'll try our best to fix it.

Club Member Benefits

We've got tons of great old time radio shows for you to enjoy. Shows like, The Inner Sanctum, Charlie Chan, Father Knows Best, The Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes and many, many more.

Folks, We really appreciate our supporters. It's you who make it possible to maintain and improve this website. Everyone who supports our efforts with a donation will receive a lifetime membership in our Old Time Radio Club and receive access to our Club Members area.

The Club Members area is a special web directory where we keep all of our mystery and non-mystery radio shows we've collected over the years. Here you'll find Mystery, Adventure, Comedy, Detective, Drama, Historical, Holiday, Musical, Horror, Sci-Fi, Serials, Westerns, Old Radio Commercials and more!

We currently have over 290 Gigabytes (over 48,000 shows) in .mp3 format in the Members area (Many more shows to come, we are constantly adding to our online collection). We work on this site daily. It's our goal to make this the best Old Time Radio site on the Internet and the biggest single online collection of old time radio shows available. Thanks for helping to make it possible.

If you are wondering what our club area looks like, it is exactly like what you see if you go into any of the mystery show folders listed at the bottom of this page. We use a simple directory structure format. What you see in the folder is exactly what is on the server in that particular directory.

You will be given your username and password to the Members area immediately after making your donation. Thanks for supporting Old Time Radio Mystery Theater! You will also receive a downloadable membership certificate, suitable for printing (located in the club members area) when you join. Click Here to see what we have in our club members area.

Here is a nice letter we received from one of our club members. It's a great feeling knowing that people are enjoying these shows. The passing of many years has not altered the fun and excitement of old time radio!

To Join our Old Time Radio Club, Just click one of the "Donate" buttons shown below

It's our goal to bring the joy of old time radio to as many people as possible. We think it's especially important to get young people interested. I'd hate to see something this wonderful just fade away. By helping us keep this website going, you'll be playing an important part in this effort.

Also, joining our old time radio club is a great way to enjoy the fun and excitement of old time radio for way less than a penney per show! How many shows do you get with your club membership? If you listened to these great old time radio shows eight hours per day, seven days a week, you'd have enough shows to last you over six years! Plus, we're adding more shows all the time! You'll never run out of great shows to listen to!

Privacy Policy:

We promise never to bother our club members with sales emails (or any other type of emails) after joining the club. We have nothing to sell. We are an old time radio hobby club. We sell no products and do NOT mass email our club members with spam or junk mail. We never sell, rent or give our club members email address to anyone for any reason. There are absolutely no ads anywhere on our website or in the club members area.

If you send us an email, we will answer it via email. If you submit a support ticket, we will answer with our support ticket system. All other communication with our club members is done by messages posted on our discussion forum and posts we make to our Club News blog. You are free to read, or not read these posts as you see fit.

Some of our club members like to actively participate in our club by donating shows we don't already have, giving show recommendations to other club members in our forum or picking a good mystery show for our mystery podcast. Club member participation is strictly voluntary. Just contact me in the discussion forum if you are interested.

We don't want to bother our club members. We only want everyone to enjoy their experience here.

Please don't think your donation doesn't matter. It does! We get thousands of visitors each month coming to listen to and download our shows. Less than "a tenth of one percent" of visitors bother to make a donation. Each and every donation is very important to us. These donations help us to maintain and improve our website and buy more shows for everyone to enjoy. Please assist us in our efforts to preserve old time radio. You can make a difference.

One-Time Donation = Lifetime Club Membership

Please select the donation amount you are comfortable with:

Donate $10.00 - Includes lifetime club membership Donate $15.00 - Includes lifetime club membership Donate $20.00 - Includes lifetime club membership Donate $25.00 - Includes lifetime club membership I stand behind the quality of our club 100%. If you aren't totally satisfied with your club membership for any reason, just and I'll return your entire donation.

Mystery Section

Please note: These old time radio shows are in .mp3 format. They can be played with Windows Media Player (comes free with Windows), Apple Itunes (Free from Apple) and almost any modern audio playing software. If you need a great free mp3 player, you can use VLC Media Player. If any of these shows don't sound right, try adjusting or turning off the equalizer in your player's software. These radio shows are old, so please forgive any little sound problems you may encounter.

Try Our Mystery Podcast

Podcast Instructions:

Some web browsers support RSS feeds. Just click the orange podcast button and see.

The rss feed URL of our podcast is: http://www.mysteryshows.com/Podcasts/Mystery-Shows-Feed.xml Just copy and paste it into your "Google feed reader" or "My Yahoo RSS feed reader". Or you can use a desktop software feed reader such as "Greatnews". It works great and it's free. You can get a copy at: http://www.curiostudio.com/

If you use Itunes. Just click on the "Advanced" menu item at the top of the Itunes program. Then select "Subscribe to Podcast". Paste in the link shown above.

Or click a button shown below to add our podcast to one of these services.

Note: If you have no idea or care about podcasts and rss feeds and you just want to hear the shows in our podcast we've set up an rss feed reader on our server. Just go there and enjoy the shows. You might want to bookmark that page and visit it again to hear the new shows as we add them. Simply click the following link to enjoy our podcast. Old Time Radio Mystery Theater Podcast Player

The podcast is totally free. You don't even need to sign up to use it. Just click and enjoy.

Mystery Shows

5 Minute Mysteries

(Date Unknown)

ABC Mystery Time

(1957-1958)

ABC Mystery Time was hosted by Don Dowd and starred Sir Laurence Olivier.

Amazing Mr. Malone

(1947-1951)

Mr. Malone is our amazing hero, a Chicago lawyer who's hobby is collecting cliches, and each weeks show is based off of one.

Barry Craig Confidential Investigator

(1951-1955)

Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator was a radio detective drama heard on NBC from October 3, 1951 to June 30, 1955. Detective Barry Craig (William Gargan) worked alone from his Madison Avenue office. Unlike his contemporaries Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Craig had a laid-back personality, somewhat cutting against the popular "hard-boiled detective" stereotype. Others in the cast included Parley Baer and Betty Lou Gerson.

Box 13

(1948-1949)

Box 13 was a syndicated radio series about the escapades of newspaperman-turned-mystery novelist Dan Holliday, played by film star Alan Ladd. Created by Ladd's company, Mayfair Productions, Box 13 premiered August 22, 1948, on Mutual's New York flagship, WOR, and aired in syndication on the East Coast from August 22, 1948, to August 14. 1949. On the West Coast, Box 13 was heard from March 15, 1948 to March 7, 1949.

To seek out new ideas for his fiction, Holliday ran a classified ad in the Star-Times newspaper where he formerly worked. "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything -- Box 13." The stories followed Holliday's adventures when he responded to the letters sent to him by such people as a psycho killer and various victims.

Candy Matson

(1949-1951)

"Candy Matson, YU 2-8209" aired on NBC from March 1949 to May 1951 and featured Natalie Parks as Candy Matson, PI. Each job took her from her apartment on Telegraph Hill to numerous specific locations in San Francisco.

Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater

Jack London declared nothing could match the pleasure of curling up with a good book and a bag of candy on a Saturday afternoon. While nothing can match it, one thing that can surpass it is driving down a moonlit road, bathed in the green glow of the dash lights and listening to a riveting radio thriller!

Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater is a grass-roots theater troupe established in 1982 with the purpose of continuing the fine tradition of Old Time Radio through a series of original mysteries and thrillers set on Cape Cod. The series features suspense shows and Captain Underhill whodunits.

Series author, Steven Thomas Oney, is recipient of the prestigious Raven Award given by the Mystery Writers of America. Past winners have included Alfred Hitchcock, Edward Gorey, Vincent Price, Angela Lansbury, Eudora Welty and Steven Bochco. Publishers Weekly called the series "Audio Mystery at its finest."

The publisher of this series of original mystery thrillers has graciously provided three complete episodes of this well written and produced show for the enjoyment of our visitors and club members. Excellent sound quality and suspenseful mysteries. A club favorite!

Carter Brown Mysteries

(Date Unknown)

Adventures in excitement and suspense based on the best-selling novels by Carter Brown.

Casebook of Gregory Hood

(1946-1950)

Originally heard over Mutual from 06/03/46 to 12/25/49, then the series moved to ABC from 01/25/50 to 08/31/50.

Gale Gordon starred as the amateur detective / antique dealer Gregory Hood. The show was a summer replacement for Sherlock Holmes. Only a very few episodes of "The Casebook of Gregory Hood" survive.

Casey Crime Photographer

(1943-1955)

Casey, Crime Photographer (aka Crime photographer; Flashgun Casey; Casey, Press Photographer; Stephen Bristol, Crime Photographer) was a media franchise, in the 1930s through the 1960s. Created by George Harmon Coxe, the photographer Casey was featured in radio, film, theater, novels, magazines and comic books.

Launched in a 1934 issue of the pulp magazine Black Mask, the character Jack "Flashgun" Casey, was a crime photographer for the newspaper The Morning Express. With the help of reporter Ann Williams (portrayed on radio and TV by Jan Miner), he solved crimes and recounted his stories to friends at The Blue Note, their favorite tavern.

Begun as stories in Black Mask, the stories were brought to radio under multiple names. The series aired on CBS for all its entirety. 07/07/43 - 11/16/50 and 01/13/54 - 04/22/55.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

(1974-1982)

(The CBS Radio Mystery Theater (or CBSRMT) was an ambitious and sustained attempt in the 1970s to revive the great drama of old-time radio. Created by Himan Brown (who had by then become a radio legend due to his work on Inner Sanctum Mysteries and other shows dating back to the 1930s), and aired on affiliate stations across the CBS Radio network, the series began its long run on January 6, 1974. The final episode ran on December 31, 1982.

The show was broadcast nightly and ran for one hour, including news and commercials. Typically, a week consisted of three to four new episodes, with the remainder of the week filled out with reruns. There were 1,399 original episodes broadcast. The total number of broadcasts, including reruns, was 2,969.

The format was similar to that of classic old time radio shows such as The Mysterious Traveler and The Whistler, in that there is a host, E.G. Marshall, who introduces each episode and provides pithy wisdom throughout; but, unlike the hosts of those shows, Marshall is fully mortal, merely someone whose heightened insight and erudition plunge the listener into the world of the macabre.

The show began with the ominous sound of a creaking door, slowly opening to invite listeners in for the evening's adventure, accompanied by Marshall's disturbing intonation of, "Come in! ... Welcome; we am E.G. Marshall." At the end of each show, the door would creak and slam shut, followed by Marshall's classic signoff, "Until next time, pleasant ... dreams?," segueing into the show's haunting woodwind theme music.

Marshall hosted the program every year but the final one, when actress Tammy Grimes took over, maintaining the format.

Ellery Queen & EQ One Minute Mysteries

(1939-1948)

On radio, The Adventures of Ellery Queen was heard on all three networks from 1939 to 1948. During the 1970s, syndicated radio fillers, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries, began with an announcer saying, "This is Ellery Queen..." and would go on to describe a case in one minute. The radio station would then encourage callers to try to solve the mystery and win a sponsor's prize. Once they got a winner, the solution part of the spot would be played as confirmation.

Mystery Is My Hobby

(1947-1948)

Told in first person by Barton Drake (played by Glen Langan), Mystery is My Hobby is played before a live audience.

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe

(1950-1951)

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe began October 20, 1950, with "Stamped for Murder." Sydney Greenstreet starred as Nero Wolfe.

"Rex thought Greenstreet a splendid choice for the role and Greenstreet did, in fact, fill every reasonable expectation," wrote Stout biographer John McAleer. A succession of Archies included Gerald Mohr, Herb Ellis, Larry Dobkin, Wally Maher and Harry Bartell. The series ended April 27, 1951, with "The Case of Room 304."

Nick Carter Master Detective

(1943-1955)

Nick Carter, Master Detective was a Mutual radio crime drama based on tales of the famed detective from Street & Smith's dime novels and pulp magazines. Nick Carter first came to radio as The Return of Nick Carter, a reference to the character's pulp origins, but the title was soon changed to Nick Carter, Master Detective.

With Lon Clark in the title role, the series began April 11, 1943, on Mutual, continuing in many different timeslots for well over a decade. Between October 1944 and April 1945, it was heard as a 30-minute program on Sunday afternoons at 3pm, sponsored by Acme Paints and Lin-X, with a 15-minute serial airing four or five times a week in 1944 from April to September. In April 1945, the Sunday series moved to 6pm, continuing in that time slot until June 1946, and it was also heard in 1946 on Tuesday from March to August.

Philo Vance

(1945-1950)

Philo Vance is a fictional American amateur detective who appeared in twelve novels written by S. S. Van Dine (the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright) published in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, movies, and on the radio. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant possessing a highly intellectual bent. The novels were chronicled by his friend Van Dine (who appears as a kind of Dr. Watson figure in the books as well as the author).

Superman

1942-1951

Listen, as Superman solves baffling mysteries and fights crime! The Adventures of Superman, adapted from the DC Comics character created in 1938 (see Superman), came to radio as a syndicated show on New York City's WOR on February 12, 1940. On Mutual, it was broadcast from August 31, 1942, to February 4, 1949, as a 15-minute serial, running three or, usually, five times a week. From February 7 to June 24, 1949 it ran as a thrice-weekly half-hour show. The series shifted to ABC Saturday evenings on October 29, 1949, and then returned to afternoons, twice-a-week on June 5, 1950, continuing on ABC until March 1, 1951.

True Detective Mystery

(1937 - 1957)

True Detective Mystery ran in various years, In 1937 it was Syndicated by Trans American Syndication. In 1946 It was again on the air. This time It was on the Mutual Network where it ran in various years until 1957. Its stories were based on stories which appeared in True Detective Mystery Magazine.

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar

(1948-1962)

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a radio drama about the "fabulous freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account". It aired from February, 1949 to September 30, 1962 on CBS, giving it an amazing 14-year run.

Charles Russell was the first to star as Johnny Dollar, followed by a succession of actors including Edmund O'Brien, John Lund, Bob Bailey, Bob Readick, and Mandel Kramer. Each new star gave Johnny a slightly different persona.

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