The Dion Hartley Murder Case: Broadway Is My Beat (February 17, 1950)

“The Dion Hartley Murder Case” is an episode of Broadway Is My Beat, the old-time radio show, first broadcast February 17, 1950. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Detective Danny Clover receives an urgent summons to the apartment of Dion Hartley, a wealthy magazine satirist who claims he will be murdered within a week. Hartley reveals he has deliberately manipulated a group of people into emotional turmoil for his own amusement and now wants Clover to prevent his death while he watches the drama unfold like a play. Clover begins investigating the suspects Hartley hints at, including a writer named Camden Drake and a woman named Joan York.

New York City, primarily Manhattan including Dion Hartley's luxurious apartment in a prestigious neighborhood and Gramercy Park.

Characters: Detective Danny Clover, Dion Hartley, Camden Drake, Joan York

Listen for: The peculiar dynamics between Clover and Hartley as Hartley describes his cruel emotional games, and the cryptic references to various people who might want Hartley dead, particularly the revelation about Joan York.

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.