Philo Vance featured in 12 crime novels written by S. S. Van Dine (the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright), published in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, movies, and on the radio. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant possessing a highly intellectual bent.
Three radio drama series were created with Philo Vance as the title character. The first series, broadcast by NBC in 1945, starred José Ferrer. A summer replacement series in 1946 starred John Emery as Vance. The best-known series (and the one of which most episodes survived) ran from 1948-1950 in Frederick Ziv syndication and starred Jackson Beck. The radio series uses only the name, and makes Philo a pretty normal, though very intelligent and extremely courteous gumshoe. Joan Alexander is Ellen Deering, Vance's secretary and right-hand woman.
All of our Old Time Radio Programs are in MP3 format. You
can play them on your computer, you can transfer them to MP3
players (like the IPod), but, by and large, you cannot play
them on stereos, walkmen, or car radios.
The sound quality of Old Time Radio Programs can vary greatly.
Some episodes are excellent, others you have to turn up the
volume a little and ignore the static. All of the episodes can
be listened to and enjoyed. You can listen to our free samples
to get a feel for how the programs sound.
You can purchase these episodes on CD or you can
download them.
To purchase on CD:
To download:
Click on the Buy on CD button. A few dollars will be added
for shipping depending on your zip code and how many CDs you
order. Pay with Paypal (you can use a credit card even if you
do not have a Paypal account). You will receive a receipt from
Paypal. We will mail you the CD(s) within a few days. Usually
we get the CDs in the mail the next day. Shipping usually takes
2-3 days via USPS. The episodes will be in mp3 format.
You save money on the cost of the episodes and you don't
pay any shipping.
Click on the Download button. Pay with Paypal (you can use
a credit card even if you do not have a Paypal account).
After you pay you will be returned to our site to a page
with a series of links to zip files. Click on the links to
download the zip files. These episodes are downloadable in
large zip files.
To open a zip file you need software to "unzip"
it. Your computer may already have unzip software, if this
is the case, just click on the file and your software will
automatically open up and you can unzip the files. If your
computer doesn't have an unzip program, you can get one from
the internet. The most popular is probably winzip (www.winzip.com),
however, we use Zip Wizard by Coffeecup Software because its
pretty good, easy to use, and free. (http://www.coffeecup.com/zip-wizard/)
The files are large - it will take you a few minutes to
download each file. Each zip file is around 40MBs. A full
CD worth of episodes takes about 14 large files. if you are
on a dial-up connection, we highly recommend you buy a CD.
You will receive an e-mail receipt from Paypal, and we will
send you an additional e-mail with the links.
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Podcasts on Itunes:
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