Jeff Regan, Investigator

About Jeff Regan, Investigator

Jeff Regan, Investigator is the old time radio private eye show Jack Webb starred in just before Dragnet, and here you can listen free online or follow the free podcast. CBS aired it from 1948 to 1950. Every episode opens with Regan's own introduction: "My name's Regan. I get ten a day and expenses from a detective bureau run by a guy named Anthony J. Lyon. They call me the Lyon's Eye."

Regan works out of the International Detective Bureau, Suite 308 of the Cosmopolitan Building in Los Angeles, for a boss who keeps the only desk in the office and a typewriter "Remington dropped from their catalog back in 1915." In the 1948 shows Jack Webb plays Regan with the same tough, clipped narration and pulp-fiction similes that made Pat Novak, for Hire famous, in stories written by E. Jack Neuman. When the series came back in 1949, Frank Graham took over as Regan and Frank Nelson, the "Yesss?" man of The Jack Benny Program, played Lyon.

The later shows lean toward comedy, and their titles say so: "A Streetcar Named Schultz," "Some Enchanted Carhop," "A Tree Grows in Encino" and "There's Nothing Like a Pork Chop When Supper Rolls Around." Regan bickers with Lyon over expenses and gets mixed up with Hollywood drive-ins, circuses, carhops and con men all over postwar Los Angeles. For fans of Dragnet, Pat Novak or Johnny Dollar, this is a short, lively series well worth hearing in order.

What you’ll hear

• Jack Webb as Jeff Regan in 1948, a year before Dragnet.
• Frank Graham's Regan and Frank Nelson's fussy, penny-pinching boss Anthony J. Lyon (1949 and 1950).
• The opening every week: "They call me the Lyon's Eye."
• Postwar Los Angeles: drive-ins on Sunset, Beverly Boulevard, Burbank and Encino.
• Some broadcasts in their Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) versions, and two rehearsal recordings from 1949.
• Episodes from July 1948 to September 1950, in the order they first aired.

Where to start

• Start with "The Prodigal Daughter" (July 17, 1948), the oldest Jack Webb show here.
• "Man Who Lived by the Sea" (1948) was repeated by special request, as the announcer says at the end.
• For the Frank Graham and Frank Nelson years, try "Some Enchanted Carhop" (1949), a Christmas-week case, or "No Sad Clowns for Me" (1950), set at a small-town circus.
• The podcast releases a new episode every week, in broadcast order, and released episodes play free right on this page. Plus members can play every episode now.
• For more of Jack Webb on radio, try Pat Novak, for Hire, and for private eyes around the clock, Gumshoe.

Questions