Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

About Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is the classic old time radio detective show about "the man with the action-packed expense account, America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator." It ran on CBS Radio from 1949 to September 30, 1962, and here you can listen to it free online, around the clock, or follow the free Johnny Dollar podcast. Johnny works out of Hartford, Connecticut, the insurance capital, and insurance companies send him after suspicious deaths, frauds and missing persons all over the United States and abroad.

Every case is told in flashback as Johnny reads off the items on his expense account, down to "Item nine, 10 cents. Aspirin. I needed them." Each report ends with the sign-off that gave the show its name: "End of report... Yours truly, Johnny Dollar." Johnny has no partner and no secretary, just a phone that rings with the next job and a weakness for a client who mentions good fishing nearby. Six actors played him on the air: Charles Russell, Edmond O'Brien, John Lund, Bob Bailey, Bob Readick and Mandel Kramer.

Most fans rank Bob Bailey as the best Johnny, with Mandel Kramer a close second. Bailey's era began in October 1955 with producer-director Jack Johnstone's best-remembered format: a 15-minute serial five nights a week, so each case unfolded over 75 minutes. The show outlasted almost everything else on network radio. Its final broadcast, followed immediately by the last Suspense, is often cited as the end of radio's golden age, and it was the last continuing detective series of that era.

What you’ll hear

• The expense-account format: every scene change is a line item, and the bottom line tells you how Johnny felt about the case.
• Six different Johnnys, among them film star Edmond O'Brien, who had already played an insurance investigator in the 1946 film noir The Killers, and Bob Bailey's quick, sometimes impatient Johnny.
• Bob Bailey's five-part serials from 1955 and 1956, the show's most celebrated stretch.
• Cases that take Johnny all over the United States and abroad, by train from Hartford's Union Station or by plane from Bradley Airport.
• Hollywood's top radio players, including Virginia Gregg as Johnny's girlfriend Betty Lewis, Larry Dobkin as Pat McCracken and Harry Bartell.
• The final years in New York with Bob Readick and Mandel Kramer, up to the last broadcast in 1962.

Where to start

• Begin at the beginning with "The Parakoff Policy" (1949), Charles Russell's first case, or with Dick Powell's unaired 1948 audition, "Milford Brooks III."
• For Bob Bailey at his best, play the five parts of "The Macormack Matter" (1955), his first serial, in a row. "The Todd Matter" (1956) is the one Johnny ended with "Remarks: nil!"
• "The Low Tide Matter" (1961) is Mandel Kramer's first case, and "The Tip-Off Matter" (1962) is the very last.
• The podcast releases a new episode every day in broadcast order. Plus members can play any episode now.

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on the radio

CBS Radio, 1949-1962. With Bob Bailey, Edmond O'Brien, John Lund, Charles Russell, Dick Powell, Mandel Kramer.

Where the recordings come from

The Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' YoursTrulyJohnnyDollar Singles set (696 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. Also from the Old Time Radio Researchers' YoursTrulyJohnnyDollar Singles Bob Bailey 2 set (17), the Old Time Radio Researchers' YoursTrulyJohnnyDollar Singles Bob Bailey set (3), the Old Time Radio Researchers' YoursTrulyJohnnyDollar Singles John Lund set (1). 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 Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

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• Boston Blackie
• Broadway Is My Beat
• Nick Carter, Master Detective
• The Adventures of Philip Marlowe
• Christmas on old-time radio

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