The Joan Fuller Murder Case: Broadway Is My Beat (November 17, 1950)

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

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What happens

A young woman's body is discovered in Central Park Lake, and detective Danny Clover must identify her. The dead girl is revealed to be Joan Fuller, a secretary who borrowed her employer's expensive clothes to impress a young man from her hometown of Muncie, Indiana. Clover tracks down the man and questions him about his connection to the victim.

New York City: Central Park Lake, police headquarters and morgue, an exclusive dress shop on Park Avenue, Gladys Hampton's mansion on Fifth Avenue, and a shabby hotel room.

Characters: Danny Clover, detective, Joan Fuller, the victim, Gladys Hampton, advertising executive and Joan's employer, Johnny Barrett, young man from Muncie, Roderick, exclusive fashion designer

Listen for: The atmospheric opening that evokes the loneliness of Broadway at night; the morgue scene where several people fail to identify the body; the fashion designer's revelation that the expensive clothes belonged to his client Gladys Hampton; and the tense hotel room confrontation between Clover and the mysterious Johnny Barrett.

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.