The Adventures of Philip Marlowe

About The Adventures of Philip Marlowe

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe is the old time radio series based on Raymond Chandler's private eye, and here you can listen to it free online, around the clock, or as a free podcast. Van Heflin played Marlowe first, in NBC's summer series of 1947. Then CBS brought the show back on September 26, 1948, with Gerald Mohr as Marlowe, and ran it until 1951. By 1949 The Adventures of Philip Marlowe had the largest audience in radio, and Mohr was voted radio's most popular male actor.

Marlowe on radio is a 38-year-old Hollywood private detective who tells his own story, as he does in Chandler's novels, starting with The Big Sleep in 1939. Radio historians Robert C. Reinehr and Jon D. Swartz found it more hard-boiled than most detective shows of its day, with few quips and few quaint characters. Chandler stayed out of the writing and took weekly royalties instead; he said he was "moderately pleased" with Mohr. Both series opened with Chandler's short story "Red Wind."

The CBS show was produced and directed by Norman Macdonnell, and it led straight to Gunsmoke: CBS chairman William S. Paley loved it so much that he asked for "a Philip Marlowe of the Old West." The scripts came from Gene Levitt, Robert Mitchell, Mel Dinelli and Kathleen Hite, CBS's first woman staff writer, and Jeff Corey played Marlowe's police contact, Lieutenant Ybarra. If you know Bogart's Marlowe from The Big Sleep, this is the Marlowe who was on the air every week.

What you’ll hear

• Gerald Mohr's deep baritone as Marlowe, narrating his cases in Chandler's first-person style.
• Van Heflin's 1947 NBC Marlowe, for comparison.
• Two versions of Chandler's "Red Wind," the story that opened both series.
• Los Angeles crime with a hard edge; newspapers teased one case with a blonde corpse and a butler who walked on his knuckles.
• Hollywood radio regulars Jeff Corey, Howard McNear, Parley Baer, Lawrence Dobkin and Virginia Gregg.
• A surprise or two, such as Gracie Allen waiting in Marlowe's apartment at the end of one case.

Where to start

• Hear "Red Wind" twice: Van Heflin's version from 1947 and Gerald Mohr's from 1948.
• "The Birds on the Wing" (1949) has Marlowe reading "Chandler's latest," The Little Sister, and ends with Gracie Allen asking him to find George Burns a radio show.
• "The Anniversary Gift" (1950) is the one CBS episode with William Conrad, later radio's Matt Dillon, as Marlowe.
• Listen live any time, or follow the podcast, which adds a new episode every week in broadcast order.

The Adventures of Philip Marlowe on the radio

NBC (1947), CBS (1948-1951), 1947-1951. With Gerald Mohr, Van Heflin, Jeff Corey, William Conrad, Raymond Chandler.

Where the recordings come from

The these recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' Philip Marlowe Singles set (105 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. 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 The Adventures of Philip Marlowe episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

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• Nick Carter, Master Detective

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