An addendum post to our earlier tribute to Dick Powell. In addition to his extensive stage and cinema careers, Powell was a major presence on radio in the 30s and 40s. He made countless appearances on radio variety programs as a singer, and was on Lux Radio Theatre over a dozen times.
His reinvention as a hard-boiled noir detective stood Powell in good stead on radio. He recapped his film role as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe on the Lux program, then became “Richard Rogue” on the show Rogue’s Gallery (1945-46), and then his biggest radio hit Radio Diamond, Private Detective (1949-1953). You can hear numerous episodes of Richard Diamond here: https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Richard_Diamond_Private_Detective_Singles
To find out more about show biz history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
(Travalanche) 