50 episodes listed below
A radio private eye who jokes his way through murder.
Dick Powell plays Richard Diamond, a private detective who answers trouble with jokes, even while pinned under a desk. Recent episodes keep their Rexall drugstore commercials for mouthwash and antacid in place, ahead of cases involving murder, a kidnapping and a wife who cannot find her husband.
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Richard Diamond, Private Detective is a radio crime series with Dick Powell in the title role, and the recordings here keep the sponsor's commercials in place. That turns the first stretch of each episode into a small period piece of its own. A Rexall family druggist comes on to speak for the independent druggists who carry the Rexall name and recommends one product at a time. Sometimes it is MI-31, sold as a mouthwash, gargle and breath deodorant that kills germs on contact. Other times it is Bismorex, an antacid, or a multivitamin capsule that promises liver concentrate and iron alongside the vitamins. The sign-off barely varies: good health to all from Rexall. Then comes the promise of another exciting half hour, and the register flips. Diamond's agency greeting is a joke that changes from one episode to the next. One version rhymes: 'when it's murder or less and you're caught in a mess, if you can't pay my fee, my advice is confess.' Another offers to swap a little corpse in your home for something useful, and a third sounds like a product slogan until it lands on strangling. The comedy is physical as well as verbal. In the excerpt from 'Ice Pick Murder', a man named Seymour apologises for knocking Diamond over, and Diamond, with a desk on his chest, insists he feels great and wonders who needs teeth. Clients arrive wanting to hire him, and when one asks, he replies, 'Well, bless your little heart.' An old acquaintance, Frank Bowers, gets back in touch and calls him Rick. Even the billing is played for laughs: in 'Mrs X Can't Find Her Husband', the introduction of a special guest star stalls because the guest will not give a name. The case titles lay out the beat, running from murder to a kidnapping to a fixed fight. Names sit right in those titles, among them Mary Bellman, Martha Campbell and Edna Wolfe. The draw is the contrast between grim subject matter and a lead who meets it with one-liners. For a first listen, 'The Fixed Fight Case' has the rhyming greeting, and 'Ice Pick Murder' has the desk mishap. Anyone curious about how radio advertising once sounded gets the Rexall reads as a bonus.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes vintage radio detective stories with jokes in the dialogue. It also suits someone who hears the period drugstore commercials as part of the charm, not an interruption.
What sets it apart: The detective plot comes wrapped in comedy: the hero cracks wise from under a desk and even the agency greeting is a gag. The original Rexall sponsor reads are still attached.
Dick Powell starred in the Richard Diamond, Private Detective radio series as a wisecracking, former police officer turned private detective. Episodes typically open with a client visiting or calling cash-strapped Diamond's office and agreeing to his fee of $100 a day plus expenses, or Diamond taking on a case at the behest of his friend and former partner, Lt. Walter Levinson. Diamond often suffers a blow to the head in his sleuthing pursuits. Most episodes end with Diamond at the piano, singing a standard, popular song, or showtune from Powell's repertoire to his girlfriend, Helen Asher, in her penthouse at 975 Park Avenue. Levinson was played variously by Ed Begley, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ted D…
Dick Powell's Diamond can take a gun butt to the head and still give you the better comeback.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Richard Diamond's comic narration gives this seance case a light private-eye bounce.
Richard Diamond's Van Dyke seance case starts with a private detective sizing up the daily costs of women, money, milk, fights, and dancing before explaining how a seance dragged him into trouble.
A crooked lead turns Diamond's laundry errand into a comic surveillance job.
A prankish Richard Diamond starts with a grotesque electric-chair contest, a flirtatious phone call, and a laundry interruption that nudges the smiling gumshoe toward George Vail.
A haunted-house job gives Richard Diamond blood, an empty coffin, and room for dry detective patter.
Richard Diamond's paid overnight job at Julia Bates's house starts with a simple fear of the place and soon turns into blood on the floor, a missing body, and Kane insisting the trouble comes from another world.
A baseball gag turns into a murder case where one letter may count for more than the gun.
Richard Diamond begins with a private detectives-versus-police baseball game, a lopsided 37-to-4 loss, and a comic rhythm that soon gives way to murder.
A butcher-shop shakedown leaves Diamond bruised, annoyed, and closing in on Carl and Red.
A shakedown targeting independent butcher shops lands in Richard Diamond's office through Angelino, who is rattled after two men wreck his place. He brings Diamond a hundred dollars, then tries to pull the job back once the risk starts to look less theoretical.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Richard Diamond, Private Detective follows Richard Diamond after Charles Walsh and Bob Wells escape Sing Sing and target Diamond in New York.
Richard Diamond investigates Bill Garrett's final request: keep his 17-year-old brother Eddie from following him into crime before Bill's execution at Sing Sing.
George Victor hires private detective Richard Diamond after acquiring controlling interest in a major city newspaper and preparing an expose of Aaron Ziegler’s numbers racket.
Richard Diamond investigates a visitor calling himself Johns who says he will commit a murder that evening and carries a gun.
A classic radio detective drama featuring private eye Richard Diamond taking on cases with wit and charm.
A private detective gets knocked over by his client in a comedic opening scene of a radio drama.
A private detective takes on a new case after a client visits his office.
A classic radio drama episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective, featuring a client who refuses to reveal her name.
Richard Diamond, Private Detective opens with Dick Powell's baseball riff before a murder case involving June Hires, Martin Heyer, Sally Maxwell, and Leon Fisk.
Richard Diamond receives a tiny negative from a frightened sidewalk photographer who says he is being tailed, then hides it in his office.
Dick Powell's Richard Diamond takes Julia Bates's $100-a-day job to stay overnight in a Temple Street house with secret passages, a basement crypt, and a three-month inheritance deadline tied to Warner Bates's will.
Leon Jacoby is back in New York after a six-year deportation, and Richard Diamond inherits a case already tied to three dead men.
Dick Powell's Richard Diamond opens with a monologue about "women, money, more women, and more money" before a Park Avenue séance case begins.
Giuseppe Angelino tells Richard Diamond that independent butcher shops pay a protective association 25 dollars a week, and a blackjack attack left him with three stitches.
A classic radio detective drama featuring private eye Richard Diamond taking on a new case.
A classic radio detective drama where private eye Richard Diamond takes on cases, often with humor and a piano finale.
A private detective takes on a new case after a client visits his office.
A private detective takes on a new case after a client visits his office.