The Girl from Pitchfork Corners: The Adventures of Philip Marlowe (July 5, 1950)

“The Girl from Pitchfork Corners” is an episode of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, the old-time radio show, first broadcast July 5, 1950. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by Donna Rollins to trail a man named Arnold Latimer to San Francisco, but discovers the case is far more complicated than it appears. When Marlowe returns to Donna's house, he finds her dead—shot twice in the back—and becomes entangled in a blackmail scheme involving a small-town girl named Beverly Cheskin, her lover Doug Sattler, and a gambling racketeer named Herbert Ring.

Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, including a train to San Francisco, Donna Rollins' house on North Bronson Drive in Hollywood, the Old Mexico Club in Studio City, Vista Point in the valley, and police headquarters.

Characters: Philip Marlowe, Donna Rollins, Beverly Cheskin, Doug Sattler, Herbert Ring, Arnold Latimer

Listen for: A hard-boiled detective story with multiple layers of deception, blackmail, and murder. Listen for the relationship between the idealistic country girl and her sophisticated city boyfriend, and how a simple case of surveillance becomes a deadly tangle of crossed loyalties and secrets.

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.