The First Letter: Box 13 (1948)

“The First Letter” is an episode of Box 13, the old-time radio show, first broadcast in 1948. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Dan Holiday, a freelance writer who accepts adventures through classified ads, meets Carla Williams at a French restaurant. She reveals she has been paying blackmail for five years and asks Dan to witness her final payment to the blackmailer tonight at his apartment, where she expects to recover the letters being held over her. Dan agrees to help, and they arrive at the apartment to find the blackmailer is not there.

A city newspaper office, a French restaurant on Lege Street, and the apartment of an unknown blackmailer, all on a rainy night.

Characters: Dan Holiday, Carla Williams, Susie, Ed, Bartender

Listen for: The mysterious absence of the blackmailer when Dan and Carla arrive at his apartment, and what they discover inside with the lights on.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.