Perhaps a pilot for a possible series, this is the only episode of “The Fabulous Mr. Manchester” I have seen in radio collectors’ logs online. It was an ABC broadcast on May 06, 1950. Fortunately, YouTube channels about radio mysteries have posted it, so I can embed it here. (Alas, the recording is not very high quality. It even repeats 12 minutes of the 30 minute story.)

Mr. Manchester is not a journalist, but this episode features a foreign correspondent named Scott O’Hara, played by Howard Culver — not to be confused with another foreign correspondent named “O’Hara” who was the subject of a different radio series!

Culver’s OHara narrates this tale of foreign intrigue with subtle dialogue like, “I had been asking too many questions, and I was in trouble.”

He is digging into a story about the man of mystery who seems to be the power broker on an small island called Lepara… the “Mr. Manchester” of the series title, played by Sidney Greenstreet with echoes of his international man of mystery character in “The Maltese Falcon.”

Mr. Manchester tells his minions that O’Hara works for a “great American news syndicate,” the Universal News Bureau, and is a “very capable newspaperman, efficient, courageous…” 

However, the tale O’Hara tells makes me want a different writer, with lines like, “their pockets were bulging, and it wasn’t with candy bars…” and “Sebastian and his stony-faced sidekicks weren’t taking me for a ride to look at the mountain scenery.”

I don’t think journalism students will learn much from this episode, except that in post-war America, 1950, the life of a foreign correspondent was still something popular culture portrayed as exciting, potentially dangerous, and well funded. O’Hara even had his own private airplane.

There is also a plot twist about the power of mysterious international news publishers who wield inordinate power, and might actually be criminals… but telling more than that would be a spoiler. I am not even sure whether the character O’Hara would have appeared in a second episode of the series.

However, that same year, Sydney Greenstreet took on the role of the brilliant, eccentric detective Nero Wolfe, whose adventures generally did not involve newspaper reporters.

Note: this is my first post to the blog using the Android app Jetpack as a replacement for the original WordPress app.