Night Beat (Digitally Restored) with Frank Lovejoy CORRECTED - Old Time Radio

Category: Crime, Full Cast, Radio Productions
Language: English
Keywords: Celebrity Narrated Frank Lovejoy Full Cast Hard-Boiled Investigator Newspaper Man Noir Pulp Reporter

Written by Old Time Radio
Read by Various, Celebrity Narrated, Frank Lovejoy, Full Cast
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Dramatization

Digitally restored over several years from every source that I could find, including Vinyl, Cassette and Digital. Each episode sounds very good/excellent beginning to end. Audio has been cleaned and the Volume normalized throughout so you can easily hear the dialogue and action scenes are not 10x louder.

Night Beat, sometimes spelled Nightbeat, is an NBC radio drama series that aired February 6, 1950 – September 25, 1952, sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and Wheaties.

Frank Lovejoy starred as Randy Stone, a reporter who covered the night beat for the Chicago Star, encountering criminals, eccentrics, and troubled souls. Listeners were invited to join Stone as he “searches through the city for the strange stories waiting for him in the darkness.” Most episodes leaned towards suspense, crime and thriller themes, but Night Beat also featured occasional humorous or sentimental stories. Each episode ended with Stone at his desk as he finished typing a news story based on his latest exploits, and shouting for the copy boy to deliver his story to an editor.

Radio historian John Dunning described Nightbeat as a “superior series”, carried by vivid writing and Lovejoy’s sympathetic performance.

Nightbeat … starred Frank Lovejoy as Randy Stone, a tough and streetwise reporter who worked the nightbeat for the Chicago Star, looking for human interest stories. He met an assortment of people, most of them with a problem, many of them scared, and sometimes he was able to help them, sometimes he wasn’t. It is generally regarded as a “quality” show, and it stands up extremely well. Frank Lovejoy (1914–1962) isn’t remembered today, but he was a powerful and believable actor with a strong delivery, and his portrayal of Randy Stone as tough guy with humanity was perfect. The scripts were excellent, given that they had to cover much in a short time. There was a good supporting cast, orchestra and sound effects.

Supporting actors included Joan Banks, Parley Baer, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, Lawrence Dobkin, Paul Frees, Jack Kruschen, Peter Leeds, Howard McNear, Lurene Tuttle, Martha Wentworth, and Ben Wright. The announcer was Donald Rickles.