Top 10 Titles About the Golden Age of Radio

Radio news bulletins form a key part of Jens Meurer's splendid documentary, Seaside Special, which is currently in cinemas. They serve to place events behind the scenes at the 2019 edition of Cromer's famous end-of-the-pier show in a Brexit context and remind us of the role that broadcasts play in daily life. In a two-part survey, Cinema Paradiso reflects on the century-long relationship between radio and film.

Can You Hear Me, Mother?

Cinema is a few months older than radio. The first moving pictures were projected to a paying audience by Louis and August Lumière in Paris in December 1895, while Gugliemo Marconi transmitted the first radio signal from Weston-Super-Mare in May 1897. Regular broadcasts didn't begin until Dutch scientist Hanso Idzerda launched entertainment station PCGG in The Hague in November 1919. Similar stations hit the airwaves in the United States in 1920, while the British Broadcasting Company went live at 6pm on 14 November 1922, with a news bulletin and a weather forecast.

Charlie Chaplin became the first film star to make a special radio broadcast on 3 October 1923. In New York to promote A Woman of Paris, he began his talk with the words, 'This is the first time I have spoken over the radio. It is to me, ghastly to think of you in your homes with Tom, Dick, Katherine, Harry and the baby all gathered around, and me here by this funny little thing, perforated with holes (the thing, not I), my knees trembling, my hands tightly clasped.' As motion pictures were still silent, Hollywood's biggest stars were first heard on the radio, often at the glitzy premieres that were covered by stations in Los Angeles and New York. These broadcasts were the forerunner of the red carpet interviews that are still a key part of promoting a new movie a century later.

Once talkies arrived with Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), films about show business frequently depicted these encounters with roving radio reporters. But the medium generated its own stars and, as we shall see, the studios were quick to base films on popular shows, particularly those showcasing crime, comedy, and crooners. Documentarist Ken Burns recalled these pioneering days in Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of Ken Burns' America (1997).

Nobody's thought to release Otto Schray's Radio's Childhood (1949), even though this short about the birth of Danish radio was co-directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Other worthwhile actualities with radio content are Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames (1983), which recalls the underground feminist radio stations, Phoenix Radio and Radio Ragazza, and Tim K. Smith's Sex and Broadcasting: A Film About WFMU (2014), which profiles Ken Freedman in his bid to keep a radical New Jersey station on air.

The finest documentary about broadcasting, however, is Nicolas Philibert's La Maison de la Radio (2013). Eavesdropping on a range of in-studio spoken word and musical programmes, as well as discovering how outside broadcasts are produced, this is a compelling account of 24 hours in the life of Radio France. Philibert is one of the masters of observational documentary and Cinema Paradiso users are fortunate in having access to such earlier works as La Ville Louvre (1990), Land of the Deaf (1992), Every Little Thing (1997), Être et Avoir (2002), Back to Normandy (2007), and Nenette (2010). Philibert's latest outing, On the Adamant (2023), is currently in cinemas and should be on disc soon. As always, this study of an arts centre for Parisians with mental health issues is perceptive, humane, and compelling.

Old Time Radio

It's hard to imagine how central radio was to people's lives in the 1930s. In the US, the number of households with wireless sets rose from 12 million in 1930 to 28 million by 1939, while the UK saw licence sales increase from five to nine million over the same period. In this country, the renamed British Broadcasting Corporation was the sole provider, with the National Programme going out on the long wave and Regional Programmes on the medium wave. After the war, these wavelength bands were renamed the Home, Light, and Third programmes and they remained in place until numbered channels were introduced in 1967.

In addition to being a source of news and information, radio also carried sporting commentaries, comedy shows, quizzes, crime serials, literary adaptations, and classical and contemporary music hours. No film better captures the variety on offer or the impact that the medium had on shaping opinion and taste in 1930s America than Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987). What the film doesn't highlight, however, is the connection between Hollywood and the big city stations, with many singing stars landing recording and screen contracts as a result of their popularity.

When sound was first introduced into cinema in the late 1920s, critics dismissed the resulting talking pictures as 'canned radio'. Looking back, it's surprising there weren't more talkies about radio, as audiences were familiar with the concept and sitting characters in a studio behind a microphone would have reduced the problems of early sound recording. But, as we'll see in the next section, Hollywood was quick to import household names and formats because they knew they would have a pre-sold audience.

Stories about radio personalities could be made relatively cheaply and quickly, as they didn't require lots of sets or backlot shooting. This means that titles like Nick Grinde's Remote Control (1930), Harry Beaumont's Are You Listening, Victor Schertzinger's My Woman (1932), and William A. Seiter's Professional Sweetheart (1933) have all largely been forgotten, even though the latter marked Ginger Rogers's debut at RKO, the studio that would team her later that year with a man whose screen test had produced the verdict: 'Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.'

This was the time of the Great Depression, when Americans tuned in to listen to the Fireside Chats of New Deal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Joel and Ethan Coen wittily convey the state of the nation in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which sees escaped prisoners Pete (John Turturro), Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson), and Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) join forces with blues musician Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) as The Soggy Bottom Boys to record 'I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow' at a radio tower in 1930s Mississippi.

One of the biggest radio stars of this period was Bing Crosby, who headlined Frank Tuttle's The Big Broadcast (1932), with George Burns and Gracie Allen. This was Der Bingler's first leading role and British import Bob Hope would make his feature debut opposite W.C. Fields in Mitchell Leisen's The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938), which provided him with his theme tune, 'Thanks For the Memory'. Completing this quartet were Norman Taurog's The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) and Leisen's The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936), which saw Burns and Allen team respectively with Jack Oakie and Jack Benny, who had become one of the country's biggest radio stars.

Burns would make his final screen appearance in Mel Smith's Radioland Murders (1994), a wonderful pastiche of the 1930s screwball style that really should be on DVD. Hope and Crosby, of course, would memorably hit the highway in a series of Paramount comedies: Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and The Road to Hong Kong (1962). Crosby also cropped up on Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel (1932-33), which starred Groucho and Chico Marx as a pair of Hollywood talent agents. There was no Harpo, as he didn't have a voice for radio, but guests included Al Jolson, Betty Grable, Lucille Ball, and Johnny Weissmuller, as Cinema Paradiso users will discover if they rent The Marx Brothers: Radio Days.

Typical of the radio movies Hollywood churned out as the decade progressed were William Clemens's Here Comes Carter, William C. McGann's Two Against the World (both 1936), and Alfred E. Green's Mr Dodd Takes the Air (1937). Also known as One Fatal Hour, the middle picture starred Humphrey Bogart, who was still paying his dues in Warner Bs. This isn't available to rent and neither is Nick Grinde's The Radio Murder Mystery (1937), in spite of it starring Ronald Reagan. But two clicks on Cinema Paradiso can bring a double bill to your doormat consisting of Allan Dwan's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Mark Sandrich's Carefree (both 1938), which respectively follow radio executive Randolph Scott's bid to make orphan Shirley Temple a star and Ginger Rogers as a radio singer who has her dreams analysed by psychiatrist Fred Astaire.

Not everyone found appearing on the radio a piece of cake. Suddenly finding himself needing to broadcast to the empire after his brother's abdication, the stuttering George VI (Colin Firth) had to seek the assistance of Australian therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010), which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor. By contrast, Orson Welles was a radio natural, as Chuck Wortman and Mark Cousins respectively make clear in Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014) and The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018). On Halloween 1938, Welles's radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds was so realistic that people thought they were listening to a news bulletin about a Martian invasion. In the absence of Jody Lambert's Brave New Jersey (2016), click on John Ross's The Night That Panicked America (aka The H.G. Wells War of the Worlds Scandal, 2005) to learn more.

Numerous films, including John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987), have used Neville Chamberlain's infamous radio broadcast about the outbreak of war on Sunday 3 September 1939. The attack on a Polish radio station that sparked the conflict is recalled in East German Gerhard Klein's The Gleiwitz Case (1961) and compatriot Frank Beyer also produced the original 1975 version of Jakob der Lügner, the story of a Jewish shopkeeper in the Polish ghetto in 1944 who overhears a radio message that Germany is losing the war. Robin Williams memorably took the lead in Peter Kassovitz's Hollywood remake, Jakob the Liar (1999).

Radio microphones are very much in evidence as Adenoid Hynkel addresses the people of Tomainia in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), which culminates in a lookalike Jewish barber making an impassioned speech of his own. Wartime broadcasts were employed by the Axis to sap morale, with the crimes of Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose informing Ray McCarey's Passport to Destiny (1944) and Lew Landers's Tokyo Rose (1946). Despite Brian Gilbert's documentary, Hitler's Irishman: The Story of Lord Haw-Haw, 2005), no one has made a biopic of William Joyce, although the use of coded messages in Nazi radio broadcasts was explored in Keith Gordon's Mother Night (1996), a troubling take on the Kurt Vonnegut novel about an American playwright (Nick Nolte) struggling in later life to prove that he was an undercover agent rather than a collaborator. British novelist P.G. Wodehouse - whose much-loved characters are played by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster (1990-93) - found himself in a similar predicament after being persuaded to make humorous broadcasts in Occupied France, as Tim Fywell reveals in Wodehouse in Exile (2013), which deserves a release, if only for Tim Piggott-Smith's thoughtful lead.

Radio had a vital role to play in keeping citizens informed and entertained during the Second World War, with Hollywood producing several radio-related variety showcases, including John H. Auer's Hit Parade of 1941 (1940), Albert S. Rogell's Hit Parade of 1943 (1942), Howard Bretherton's Up in the Air (1940), and David Butler's Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), in which the ego of radio star Eddie Cantor threatens to spoil a charity show that boasts Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Humphrey Bogart, and Errol Flynn on the bill. Keeping things light, radio personality Bob Hope travels to Cuba with heiress Paulette Goddard when she inherits a supposedly haunted house in George Marshall's The Ghost Breakers (1940). But the power of the media to influence opinion was laid bare in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1941), which sees reporter Barbara Stanwyck create a focal point for discontent by hiring Gary Cooper to play a suicidal jobless everyman.

Monty Woolley excels as the radio celebrity billeted on an Ohio family after breaking his hip in William Keighley's The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), while Red Skelton amused as the radio mystery writer who gets to solve real crimes in S. Sylvan Simon's Whistling in the Dark (1941), Whistling in Dixie (1942), and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943). These would all prove popular on disc, as would Alfred L. Werker's Whispering Ghosts (1942) and George Marshall's True to Life (1943). But Cinema Paradiso can bring you Erle C. Kenton's Who Done It? (1942), in which radio station soda jerks Bud Abbott and Lou Costello dream of becoming writers on the Murder At Midnight show.

Just as cinema's profits were threatened by the emergence of television in the immediate postwar period, radio stations also lost advertising revenue to the new TV channels. Nevertheless, films about radio continued to find an audience, among them Sidney Lanfield's Where There's Life and Leslie Goodwins's Genius At Work. Also released in 1947, Irving Pichel's Something in the Wind (1947) had Deanna Durbin spinning discs on a local radio station until she has to defend her honour after she's accused of being a rich man's mistress. The same year also saw Michael Curtiz's The Unsuspected, an adaptation of a Charlotte Armstrong novel that follows the efforts of New York radio mystery presenter Claude Rains to cover his tracks after he murders his secretary.

The ever-versatile Curtiz was also behind My Dream Is Yours (1949), which really should be on disc, as it stars Doris Day as the jukebox factory worker who talent manager Jack Oakie hopes will become the new star of the radio show, Hour of Enchantment. It's also frustrating that we can't offer you Walter Lang's The Jackpot, in which James Stewart's life is turned upside down when he wins $24,000 on a radio quiz, or William A. Wellman's The Next Voice You Hear... (both 1950), which follows America's reaction when God uses the radio to pass messages to humankind.

But there's always a silver lining and it comes in the form of four British films about radio. Ian Hunter plays the Scotland Yard detective called in following an on-air murder in Reginald Denham's Death At Broadcasting House (1934), while rival reporters Robert Beatty and Rona Anderson link Rudyard Kipling's mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, to a killing in Paul L. Stein's 'The 20 Questions Murder Mystery' (1950), which was inspired by a BBC show that ran until 1976. Raising a smile or two, Arthur Askey and Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch take root on the roof of Broadcasting House after being invited to an audition and promptly being forgotten about in Marcel Varnel's Band Waggon (1940), which took its inspiration from the duo's popular BBC showcase. Also keep an eye out for Terry-Thomas's glorious 'Technical Hitch' skit as Carol Marsh heads to the BBC in the hope of curing her hiccups in Ralph Thomas's splendidly bonkers romp, Helter Skelter (1949).

Plucked From the Air - US-style

As we discovered in the Cinema Paradiso articles, From Small Screen to Silver Screen: Films Based on TV and Top 10 Films Turned into TV Series, film has long had a working association with television. The same is also true of radio, with numerous performers making the transition from the airwaves, while series such as Crime Doctor, Dr Christian, Big Town, I Love a Mystery, Inner Sanctum, Mr District Attorney, and The Whistler were plundered for B-movie franchises. In 1994, Alec Baldwin took on the role of Lamont Cranston, who had made his radio debut in 1930, in Russell Mulcahy's The Shadow (1994). It wasn't well received, but maybe the time has come to reawaken some more of these old-time crime busters and put a bit of retro chic back into the film and TV release schedules.

The most frequently revisited radio series featured The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet, which were linked on Detroit's WXYZ station by the fact that the former, John Reid, was the great-uncle of the latter, Britt Reid. Although Earle Graser voiced the troubleshooting Texas Ranger in 1300 radio episodes, Clayton Moore made the role his own on television, alongside Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Cinema Paradiso users can access three volumes of classic adventures on The Lone Ranger (1949), as well as the feature spin-offs, The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958). James Keach donned the mask in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) before Armie Hammer sought to reinvent the character in Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger (2013), which co-starred Johnny Depp as Tonto.

From 1936, Al Hodge voiced Daily Sentinel publisher Britt Reid, while Tokutaro Hayashi (who was renamed Raymond Toyo) played valet Kato, who ferried his boss around in the gadget-laden Black Beauty. Hodge dubbed Gordon Jones in The Green Hornet (1940), but Warren Hull required no audio assistance in the serial sequel, The Green Hornet Strikes Again! (1941), which co-starred Keye Luke, who had made his name as Warner Orland's No.1 Son in the Charlie Chan crime series, five of which can be ordered via Cinema Paradiso: Charlie Chan in Paris; Charlie Chan At the Circus; Charlie Chan in Shanghai; Charlie Chan At the Opera (all 1936); and Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937).

Van Williams assumed the mantle on television in The Green Hornet (1966-67), although he was upstaged by Bruce Lee as Kato. Such was their popularity that the pair guested in a two-part episode of Batman (1966-68), a teaming recalled in the 1989 documentary, Holy Batmania. Guy Scutter's Bruce Lee: Martial Arts Master (1994) and Rob Cohen's Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) also show how Kato launched the Lee legend, although Quentin Tarantino slipped a less flattering reference to the series into Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019). Following Lee's untimely death, The Green Hornet (1974) and Fury of the Dragon (1976) were cobbled together from existing episodes. Seth Rogen and Jay Chou headlined Michel Gondry's comic spin, The Green Hornet (2011), but a superhero reboot that was announced in 2016 is still on the cards.

Comedy series involving Henry Aldrich, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, The Goldbergs, Lum and Abner, and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson were also drawn from radio shows. Along with many other transfers, these have never been released on disc in this country, as they were programmers aimed squarely at US audiences. But the prospect of seeing Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor together might have made Richard Thorpe's A Date With Judy (1948) a viable prospect, while there's a cult kudos to Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Barbara Stanwyck is also on fine form as the bedridden hypochondriac being menaced over the telephone in Anatole Litvak's Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).

Cinema Paradiso users can see James Stewart in a rare musical turn as a health food shop assistant who forms his own band and takes to the airwaves in George Marshall's Pot o' Gold (1941). The action has a Lake Wobegon feel that wouldn't have been out of place in Robert Altman's final feature, A Prairie Home Companion (2006), which re-imagined the last edition of the long-running Garrison Keillor show and included Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as a couple of cowboys and Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Lindsay Lohan as a family singing group.

Plucked From the Air - The UK Way

Several British variety stars found a new outlet on the radio and we have already seen how film studios snapped up the likes of Will Hay, Gracie Fields, and George Formby in 'Topping the Music Hall Bill'. Among the most popular acts to cross the divide were Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen, who were part of The Crazy Gang along with Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton, Jimmy Gold, and 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray. Their madcap brand of fun can be enjoyed in Marcel Varnel's The Frozen Limits (1939) and Gasbags (1941), while the bulk of the troupe was reunited for Val Guest's Life Is a Circus (1960). Flanagan and Allen also proved an irresistible twosome after they appeared in the 1932 short, The Bailiffs, which can be rented on The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection: Vol.12. Also available from Cinema Paradiso are John Baxter's Dreaming (1945) and Here Comes the Sun (1946), and the wartime short, Listen to Britain (1942), which can be found on both Humphrey Jennings's I Was a Fireman (1943) and The Complete Humphrey Jennings, Volume 2: Fires Were Started (2012).

Flanagan sang the theme for the BBC sitcom, Dad's Army (1968-77), which made its way on to radio in 1974. Among the other successful TV shows find a home on BBC radio were Dr Finlay's Casebook (1962-70), Steptoe and Son (1962-74), Doctor Who (1963-), The Likely Lads (1964-66), All Gas and Gaiters (1966-71), Fawlty Towers (1975-79), To the Manor Born (1979-81), Yes, Minister (1980-84), Yes, Prime Minister (1986-88), and One Foot in the Grave (1990-2000).

Numerous shows have made the opposite journey, including Dear Ladies (1983-84), After Henry (1988), KYTV (1989-93), An Actor's Life For Me (1991), Second Thoughts (1991-94), Goodness Gracious Me (1998-2000), The League of Gentlemen (1999-2017), Jam (2000), Dead Ringers (2002-07), Absolute Power (2003-05), Little Britain (2003-06), The Mighty Boosh (2004-07), That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006-10), and Count Arthur Strong (2013-17). Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris's On the Hour (1991-92) also came to television as The Day Today (1994). This gave viewers their first sight of Alan Partridge, who would be played by Steve Coogan in Knowing Me, Knowing You (1994), I'm Alan Partridge (1997-2002), Mid-Morning Matters (2010-16), Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle (2016), and This Time (2019-21). He would also reach the cinema screen in Declan Lowney's Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013).

Tommy Handley would surely have made the move from radio to television, but the splendidly irreverent Liverpudlian comedian died in 1949 while his hit radio show, ITMA (1939-49), was still going strong. Cinema Paradiso members can relish his performance as the mayor of Much-Foaming-in-the Mouth in Walter Forde's It's That Man Again (1943). They can also engage with Ben Lyons and Bebe Daniels in Val Guest's Life With the Lyons (1954) and The Lyons in Paris (1955). Sadly, we can't bring you Gordon Parry's The Navy Lark (1959) and can offer no explanation as to why a sitcom like Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (1944-54) or the Kenneth Horne sketch duo of Beyond Our Ken (1958-64) and Round the Horne (1965-68) never managed to make it to a screen of any size.

Kenneth Williams was a stalwart member of the latter pair and he would also enliven Hancock's Half Hour (1954-61). This made a star of Anthony Alyosius St John Hancock of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam. Written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the show transferred to BBC television between 1956-60, with the final series simply being called Hancock (1961) after Sidney James was fired because Hancock felt they were becoming a double act. The Lad Himself also made films, being part of the company in David Paltenghi's Orders Are Orders (1954), Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), and Bryan Forbes's The Wrong Box (1966). However, he was the undisputed star of Robert Day's The Rebel (1961) and Jeremy Summers's The Punch and Judy Man (1963), which are long overdue reappraisal for being ahead of their comic time.

The same is even more true of The Goon Show (1951-60), which saw Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe strike it lucky in teaming up with Spike Milligan, the genius who created and wrote a show that transformed the face of British comedy. Cinema audiences got a hint of the madcap mayhem in Tony Young's Penny Points to Paradise Alan Cullimore's Let's Go Crazy (both 1951), and Maclean Rogers's Down Among the Z Men (1952), which also featured occasional contributor, Michael Bentine. Milligan and Sellers also joined forces in Joseph Sterling's The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn (1956), which can be found on The Renown Comedy Collection, Volume 2 (2017), and Richard Lester's The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959), which is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso on The Lacey Rituals (2012).

Geoffrey Rush gives a hint of how the BBC phase fits into the wider picture in Stephen Hopkins's The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), while Goon fans can also seek out his reunions with Milligan in Joseph McGrath's The Magic Christian (1969) and Peter Medak's Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973). Also worth catching is Cathy Henkel's documentary, The Life and Legacy of Spike Milligan (2005), which explores his impact on landmark programmes like Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74). Another bearing the Milligan imprint is Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started out as a BBC radio comedy in 1978. Director Alan Bell brought it to television in 1981, with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent and David Dixon as Ford Prefect. Martin Freeman and Mos Def took the roles in Garth Jennings's feature adaptation, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in 2005).

Despite there being a feature-length special, The Promised Land (2020), there has yet to be a big-screen spin-off of Red Dwarf, which ran on the BBC from 1988-99 before reviving on Dave in 2009. This started out as the 'Dave Hollins: Space Cadet' sketches on radio's Son of Cliché (1983-84) and linking the series are cast regulars Craig Charles (Dave Lister), Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), and Norman Lovett (Holly). It's all a far cry from the first sci-fi show to travel from radio to the cinematic universe. Indeed, this year marks the 70th anniversary of Terence Fisher's Spaceways (1953), which sees MI5 investigator Alan Wheatley become convinced that Howard Duff has murdered his wife and her biologist lover aboard the world's first orbiting space station.

Created for radio in 1938 by Francis Durbridge, Paul Temple was a much more down to earth kind of troubleshooter. Several actors would voice this suave novelist during his 30-year radio stint, while Francis Matthews would play him in the fondly recalled TV series, Paul Temple (1969-71). But Cinema Paradiso also has a soft spot for the postwar quickies that started with Anthony Hulme in the title role of John Argylle's Send For Paul Temple (1946) before the always reliable John Bentley took over for the Maclean Rogers's trio of Calling Paul Temple (1948), Paul Temple's Triumph (1950), and Paul Temple Returns (1952).

By the time these Bs were made, radio had a new action hero in Dick Barton, whose exploits held millions in thrall between 1946-51. Noel Johnson, Duncan Carse, and Gordon Davies took the role on the BBC before producer Val Gielgud (brother of Sir John) replaced the serials he had always considered a bit racy with The Archers, which is still going strong on Radio 4 over 72 years later. Don Stannard landed the cine-gig when Hammer picked up the rights. But, having kept matinee audiences on the edge of their seats in Alfred J. Goulding's Dick Barton: Special Agent (1948) and Godfrey Gregson's Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949) and Dick Barton At Bay (1950), the decision was taken to cancel John Gilling's Dick Barton in Africa when Stannard was killed in a car crash. Three decades later, Anthony Vogel was cast in an ITV revival and all 32 of the 15-minute episodes are available on Dick Barton: Special Agent (1979), which wisely recycled Charles Williams's driving signature theme, 'Devil's Galop'. Hands up those who would like to see this classic espionage franchise dusted down for the 2020s?