John Tefteller and radio historian Dr. Joe Webb are back with another “lost and found” classic: a 1948 episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade. This one was missing for decades until it turned up on an Armed Forces Radio Service transcription disc, and it’s based on Dashiell Hammett’s short story The House in Turk Street. John and Dr. Webb dig into the behind-the-scenes history, from the show’s production quirks and cast lineup to Hammett’s rocky relationship with the people adapting his character.
SHOW NOTES
The Adventures of Sam Spade
1948-05-18 The Girl Called Echs
The lead actors: Howard Duff as Spade, Lurene Tuttle as Effie
Howard Duff had a long and successful, and sometimes rocky, radio, film, and television career. He was not an expected candidate to become Sam Spade. The then-wife of producer William Spier, Kay Thompson, suggested that he be given better consideration. Thompson was a musical coach at MGM and was an important behind-the-scenes influencer in encouraging stars to appear on Suspense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Duff
Lurene Tuttle was one of the top radio actors of her time. She might be best known for playing Spade’s dizzy secretary, Effie, but she appeared in hundreds, if over a thousand, radio roles, often uncredited, in soaps, dramas, westerns, comedies, and other programs. Tuttle had a successful television career, often playing the busybody next-door neighbor, as well as many film roles.
The supporting cast of this episode:
Jeanette Nolan (Elvira Echs / Eliza), Jay Novello (Sgt. Benson), Lurene Tuttle (Old landlady), Sidney Miller (Doc) , Joe Kearns (Laundry Man / Warren Beeding), John McIntire (Monty), UNKNOWN (Eddy Echs)
The title Girl Called Echs is a lampoon of the popular espionage NBC radio series Man Called X. It was often comedic and generally unserious spy drama in spite of the many important and weighty post-WW2 topics at the core of its plotlines. The later popular NBC spy show Dangerous Assignment took things much more seriously. At about the 4:15 mark of this Spade episode, there is a Man Called X not-so-inside joke. Spade says “I am looking for a man called ‘Echs’ and I don’t mean Herbert Marshall.” The star of that series was Herbert Marshall, indeed, one of the favorite performers for the Suspense series during the time that Spade producer William Spier guided that series to its prominence. Even though Man Called X was an NBC series, numerous actors and writers for Suspense and Sam Spade appeared in that series in supporting roles. When the cast arrived for their rehearsal of this Spade script, they likely all got a good chuckle out of the references.
One of the in-joke reasons for chuckling at the title is that in the East and Central time zones NBC schedule, The Man Called X followed the Spade broadcasts! Many regular listeners of NBC and devotees of both series would have picked up on the joke. So much of the Spade series was tongue-in-cheek with many inside jokes that only the crew and actors detected them. This title and Duff's comment about Herbert Marshall at around the 4:00 minute mark was one that everyone could understand.
The plot is partially based on Dashiell Hammett’s short story The House on Turk Street. There is a reading of the original story at YouTube https://youtu.be/gtHskjWNXRo?si=uk8w-
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Sam Spade profile and history at Thrilling Detective
https://thrillingdetective.com/2018/11/18/sam-spade/
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