The Port-au-Prince Matter: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (May 30, 1950)

“The Port-au-Prince Matter” is an episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, the old-time radio show, first broadcast May 30, 1950. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

Listen to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar free, live around the clock: every episode, in the order it first aired. No sign-up.

What happens

Insurance investigator Johnny Dollar is sent to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to investigate a $150,000 policy on Ralph Gordon, a wealthy man's dissolute son who is reportedly dying from a voodoo curse. Dollar travels to the island to debunk the curse claim and discover what is actually wrong with Gordon, meeting the mysterious boatman Cap Riggen, Gordon's sharp-tongued wife Edwina, and Gordon's brother Dr. Thomas Gordon who first reported the curse.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Ralph Gordon's yacht anchored in the harbor

Characters: Johnny Dollar, Cap Riggen, Ralph Gordon, Edwina Gordon, Dr. Thomas Gordon, Papa L'Oyle

Listen for: The colorful boatman Cap Riggen's warnings about the island and Gordon's drinking; Edwina's hostile reception of Dollar and her biting remarks; the mystery of why Dr. Thomas Gordon reported the voodoo curse to the insurance company.

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.