Sure Thing Caper: The Adventures of Sam Spade (February 9, 1951)

“Sure Thing Caper” is an episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, the old-time radio show, first broadcast February 9, 1951. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Sam Spade is hired by $5 Frankie, a horse player, to track down Gentle Joe Higgins, a washed-up horse trainer who took $1,500 from Frankie and two associates to place on a sure thing racehorse bet, then disappeared. When Spade finds Gentle Joe, he's doped and learns the real story: Joe has been working for five years to buy a horse as restitution for a jockey named Sandy Bean he accidentally killed through a doping incident years earlier, and he used the investors' money to purchase a mare for Bean's widow and son.

San Francisco, including Sam's detective office, Patterson Smokeshop, a rooming house on Clark Street, and Sunset Stables near Bay Meadows.

Characters: Sam Spade, $5 Frankie, Gentle Joe Higgins, Evelyn (Sam's secretary), Dinosaur Pirelli, Bones Moltan, Fanny (the landlady), Mr. Kemp (stable manager)

Listen for: A lighthearted mystery with colorful horse-racing characters, dope and deception, a redemption plot involving a mysterious racehorse named Sure Thing, and comic exchanges between Spade and Frankie about gambling and ethics.

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.