Tales of the Texas Rangers

About Tales of the Texas Rangers

Tales of the Texas Rangers is an old time radio crime show from NBC, broadcast from July 8, 1950, to September 14, 1952, and you can listen free online here, around the clock or as a podcast. Hollywood film star Joel McCrea plays Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who is called in by local sheriffs and police to crack hard cases, nearly always murders. Every episode was presented as a dramatized version of a real Texas Ranger case, and each opened with the boast of "fifty men who make up the most famous and oldest law enforcement body in North America."

Despite the cowboy hats, this is a police procedural, built much like Dragnet but set in Texas. The cases run from the 1920s to the early 1950s, and Jace solves them with lab work and small physical clues as often as with his horse, Charcoal, which he hauls behind his car in a trailer. Producer-director Stacy Keach Sr. won the cooperation of the publicity-shy Rangers, and real Ranger captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who had run the state's crime lab, served as technical adviser.

Each story ends the Dragnet way, with the announcer telling you what became of the culprit, often a trip to Huntsville, home of the Texas state penitentiary. Then McCrea comes back with a bit of real Ranger lore. The theme is "The Eyes of Texas Are upon You," and the supporting casts include William Conrad, Howard McNear, Parley Baer, Virginia Gregg and Tony Barrett. It is a good pick for anyone who likes true crime, westerns or Joel McCrea's films.

What you’ll hear

• Joel McCrea as Jace Pearson, a modern Ranger who works crime scenes with the newest scientific methods.
• Clues you won't forget: hoofprints in the frost, a weapon at the bottom of a cattle tank, a dead rattlesnake that saves a man from a lynch mob.
• Real Texas places and real Texas history, including a story set against the 1947 Texas City disaster.
• Hal Gibney, the voice that also introduced Dragnet, as announcer.
• Hollywood radio regulars such as William Conrad, Howard McNear, Parley Baer, Virginia Gregg, Peggy Webber and Ed Begley.
• McCrea's short talks on real Ranger lore at the end of each show.

Where to start

• Try "Room 114" (1950), in which the dead man at the Alamo Motel seems to be the same rancher who killed him.
• "Cold Blood" (1952) and "The Hatchet" (1951) show how Jace builds a case from small clues; "Christmas Present" (1950) is a crime story with a happy ending.
• "Death Shaft" (1951) includes an on-air salute to Captain Gonzaullas as he retired after 31 years with the Rangers.
• Listen live any time, or follow the podcast, which adds a new episode every week in broadcast order.

Tales of the Texas Rangers on the radio

NBC Radio, 1950-1952. With Joel McCrea, Tony Barrett, Virginia Gregg, Lurene Tuttle.

Where the recordings come from

The Tales of the Texas Rangers recordings here come from the Old Time Radio Researchers' Tales of the Texas Rangers Single set (91 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 Tales of the Texas Rangers episode: the full list, with air dates and stories

More to listen to

• Gunsmoke
• Have Gun, Will Travel
• Frontier Gentleman
• The Six Shooter
• Fort Laramie
• Christmas on old-time radio

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