The Protection Matter: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (September 26, 1951)

“The Protection Matter” is an episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, the old-time radio show, first broadcast September 26, 1951. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Insurance investigator Johnny Dollar arrives in New York to investigate a warehouse fire that killed an old man. Benny Waxman, the store owner, is under suspicion, but his behavior is puzzling—he refuses the insurance money and acts terrified of something beyond the police investigation. Lieutenant Parkinson believes a protection racket is behind the fire, and Dollar begins to suspect there is far more to the case than a simple arson.

New York City, 1951—a tenement building where Waxman's store burned, the 15th precinct police station, and the streets of the city during a rainstorm.

Characters: Johnny Dollar, Benny Waxman, Lieutenant Parkinson, Angelino Giuseppe

Listen for: The tense interrogation of Waxman in his apartment, Dollar's growing suspicion that a protection racket controls the area, and the mystery of Waxman's missing daughter and the five thousand dollars he gave her.

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.