I Love a Mystery
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I Love A Mystery was an old-time radio program that ran from January, 1939 to December 1944 on NBC. Following its cancellation the show show was revived, and ran from 1949 to 1952. I Love a Mystery was a serial drama with one fifteen minute episode airing each day, Monday through Friday. For a time the show switched to the more conventional schedule of one half hour broadcast each week, but eventually returned to the five program a week model. The Valse Triste by Jean Sibelius serves as the theme music.
The premise of the show was three adventurous friends who ran a detective agency. Jack Packard, Doc Long, and Reggie York had met as mercenary soldiers fighting the Japanese in China. Some time later they met again in San Francisco where they decided to form the A-1 Detective Agency. Their motto was, "no job too tough, no adventure too baffling."
The agency served as a plot device to involve the three friends in a wide variety of stories. These straddled the genres of mystery, adventure and even supernatural horror. Generally the adventures took the three detectives to exotic locales.
Jack was the leader of the group. He was a tough charismatic man and was usually the first to figure out the solutions to the mysteries. Jack had more of an edge than the typical radio hero of the period. He distrusted the attractive women who always seemed to show up at the group's door and professed to dislike women in general. The series writer claimed that Jack's problems of women had to do with his youth. He had gotten a girl pregnant and had to leave his home town in shame. This was only a back story detail and was never made explicit on the show.
Doc and Reggie were slightly less edgy characters. The Texas born Doc was a hard-fighting, boastful, high-spirited character who provided much of the show's comic relief. Reggie was an Englishman noted for his great strength. He competed with Doc in trying to romance the women the three met.
The series was distinguished by the writing of Carlton E. Morse, who was considered one of the best writers in radio. Morse took delight in creating the vividly imagined settings for the show and the elaborate, often bizarre plots. In a medium whose heroes tended to be serious and straight-laced he created three who were wonderfully reckless and exuberant. Jack, Doc and Reggie were more interested in the thrill of adventure than in righting wrongs. When they collected a fee their only goal was to spend it as quickly as possible.
There were several movie versions of I Love a Mystery Morse, none of which had the success of the radio show. Surviving recordings of the show are very rare. They are considered something of a holy grail for fans of old time radio.
Jack, Doc and Reggie were played by a number of actors over the years. Jack was played by: Michael Raffetto, Russell Thorson, Jay Novello, and John McIntyre. Doc was played by Barton Yarborough and Jim Boles. Reggie was played by Walter Patertson and Tony Randall.