DAMON RUNYON THEATRE, THE Volume 1

Starring John Brown (12 half-hour episodes / 6 hours via digital download)

Damon Runyon was a newspaperman and writer. He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. He created a little world of characters that live on even today in his classic movies “Little Miss Marker,” and “Guys and Dolls.” Alan Ladd’s Mayfair productions brought Runyon’s short stories to radio in the early 1950s. Each episode of The Damon Runyon Theatre was told through the eyes of a hood with a heart of gold named “Broadway” who took the listener inside the world of some of the Big Apple’s toughest, yet most charming perpetrators. “Broadway” and the many thugs and touts, dames and palookas he encountered spoke in a thick present-tense vernacular of Brooklynese that was a delight for the listener. John Brown played “Broadway” and the supporting casts were a who’s who of radio including Alan Reed, William Conrad, Frank Lovejoy, Sheldon Leonard, Hans Conried, Anne Whitfield and Ed Begley. Radio Life wrote: Runyon mobsters are naïve, easily hurt, and endowed with hearts of gold and the childlike whimsies of Margaret O’Brien. The radio series made a brief transition to television.

10/3/50 The Hottest Guy in the World

10/10/50 All Horseplayers Die Broke

10/17/50 Princess O’Hara

10/24/47 For a Pal

10/31/50 A Piece of Pie

11/7/50 Barbecue

12/12/50 The Brain Goes Home

12/19/50 Hold ‘em Yale

12/26/50 Old Em’s Kentucky Home

1/2/51 Blood Pressure

1/9/51 Lonely Heart

1/16/51 Broadway Complex