Broadway Is My Beat

About Broadway Is My Beat

Broadway Is My Beat is an old time radio police drama from CBS, broadcast from February 27, 1949, to August 1, 1954, and here you can listen to it free online, around the clock, or as a free podcast. Larry Thor stars as Detective Danny Clover of homicide, who works the stretch of Manhattan "from Times Square to Columbus Circle," which he calls "the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world." Each show opens with "I'll Take Manhattan" and closes with Clover's quiet sign-off: "Broadway... my beat!"

What sets it apart is the writing. Clover's narration often borders on poetry, a sharp contrast with the clipped style of Dragnet, and the stories usually end not with a wrap-up but with Clover musing on the city. Writers Morton Fine and David Friedkin, who also came up with the name "Matt Dillon" for Gunsmoke, kept that style going, and Elliott Lewis produced and directed from late 1949. It took three sound effects artists working together to build the noise of Manhattan around Clover.

The show began in New York with Anthony Ross as Clover and a young John Forsythe in the cast, then moved to Hollywood in July 1949, where announcer Larry Thor took the lead. Charles Calvert plays Sergeant Gino Tartaglia and Jack Kruschen, later an Oscar nominee for The Apartment, plays Sergeant Muggavan. The music is by Alexander Courage, who went on to write the theme for Star Trek. Fans of film noir will feel at home.

What you’ll hear

• Larry Thor's Danny Clover, a homicide detective who narrates the city as much as the case.
• The theme, "I'll Take Manhattan," and the sound of Times Square built by three sound effects artists at once.
• Sergeants Gino Tartaglia (Charles Calvert) and Muggavan (Jack Kruschen) at Clover's side.
• Endings that are quiet and melancholy rather than tidy.
• Hollywood radio's best in guest roles: Virginia Gregg, Harry Bartell, Sheldon Leonard, Howard McNear and Cathy Lewis.
• Music by Alexander Courage, conducted by Wilbur Hatch.

Where to start

• Start with "The Jimmy Dorn Murder Case" (1949), the first Hollywood show, in which a man who just won $17,000 in a sweepstakes apparently kills himself.
• "The Sherman Gates Murder Case" (1949) is the show RadioGOLDINdex singled out for Thor's opening monologue over a single trumpet note: "Great radio!"
• At Christmas, play "Nick Norman and Santa Claus" (1949), in which an ex-con hired to play Santa vanishes the day before Christmas.
• Listen live any time, or follow the podcast, which releases a new episode twice a week in broadcast order.

Broadway Is My Beat on the radio

CBS, 1949-1954. With Larry Thor, Anthony Ross, Jack Kruschen.

Where the recordings come from

The these recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' Broadway Is My Beat Singles set (153 episodes), hosted by the Internet Archive. Our thanks to the Old Time Radio Researchers, the volunteers who found, dated and assembled the set, and to the Archive and the collectors whose uploads it rests on. The sound is our remaster of those files (rumble, hiss and hum cleaned out, levelled to steady broadcast loudness); the recordings themselves are theirs. About our sources.

Every Broadway Is My Beat episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

• Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
• Let George Do It
• Boston Blackie
• Nick Carter, Master Detective
• The Adventures of Philip Marlowe
• Christmas on old-time radio

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