Michael Shayne, Private Detective, 954 Classic Old Time Radio Shows OTR DVD

Don't be fooled by other collections that claim to contain more episodes.  Many of these shows were aired on multiple dates in reruns, so you have plenty of sellers out there padding their collections with reruns!  We feature all known episodes in existence and do not add "fluff" to our collections to increase our claimed episode count like many others. 

NOTICE: This collection is all in MP3 format supplied on DVD.  You play this in your computer and then can copy all the MP3 files to your MP3 player of choice.  This DVD will NOT play in a regular CD player in your car, or your TV's DVD player, it is intended for your computer only which will allow you to transfer the MP3 files to any device that can play MP3's.  This collection remains the largest most original collection on ebay.

Jungle Jim:

Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began in 1934 as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim. The character also trekked through radio, film, comic book and television adaptations.  Notable was a series of films and television episodes in which Johnny Weissmuller portrayed the safari-suit wearing character, after hanging up his Tarzan loincloth. The strip was created by King Features Syndicate in order to compete with the popular United Feature Syndicate comic strip Tarzan, by Hal Foster.

Illustrator Alex Raymond and pulp magazine author Don Moore created the original strip as a topper to run above Raymond's Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon were launched simultaneously on January 7, 1934. The character was named after Alex's brother Jim Raymond.

Unlike the protagonists of Tarzan, Ka-Zar, Kaanga and other comics with jungle themes, Jim Bradley was based in Southeastern Asia rather than Africa, and he was a hunter rather than a wild man in a loincloth.

Other characters included the large, strong native Kolu (who served his white comrade Jim in a manner somewhat similar to the character of Lothar in Mandrake the Magician). The femme fatale Lille DeVrille was added to the cast two years after the strip's debut.

The comic's early years generally featured stories revolving around pirates, slave traders and other common jungle antagonists. As World War II approached, Jungle Jim, like many American comics, developed a wartime theme, with Jim fighting the Japanese, and it moved from its position as a topper strip to its own independent Sunday page.

During World War II, artist Raymond enlisted as a Marine. Successors included John Mayo (creator of Future Eye) and Paul Norris (creator of DC Comics' Aquaman). Don Moore continued to script through the succession of artists. The strip, which never ran as a daily, came to an end in 1954.

From 1937 to 1947, the comic strip was reprinted in Ace Comics, published by David McKay. From 1949 to 1951, there were 11 original Jungle Jim comic books produced by Standard Comics. Dell Comics published 20 issues of Jungle Jim from 1953 to 1959; the last eight issues (#13–20) were written by Gaylord Du Bois.


King Features Syndicate published a single issue of Jungle Jim in 1967. This was designated #5 and was a reprint of Dell's issue #5 with a new cover by Wally Wood. Charlton Comics then picked up Dell's numbering for another seven issues (#22–28) in 1969–70 with stories scripted by Wood, Pat Boyette, Bhob Stewart, Joe Gill and others. Artists on the Charlton stories were Wood, Boyette, Steve Ditko, Roger Brand and Tom Palmer.

Michael Shayne, Private Detective:

Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fox, four films from the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with Hugh Beaumont, a radio series under a variety of titles between 1944 and 1953, and later in 1960–1961 in a 32-episode NBC television series starring Richard Denning in the title role.

In 1939, Miami-based Private Detective Michael Shayne was first published in paperbacks by Davis Dresser (writing under the pseudonym Brett Halliday) and quickly became a sensational hard-boiled private eye who would appear in 77 novels and 300 short stories enduring from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Shayne quickly made the leap to films with Lloyd Nolan playing Shayne in seven well-made B-movies between 1940 and 1942. There was another film series made in 1946-47 from the poverty row PRC films starring Hugh Beaumont.

Shayne was also big over radio. The first series of Michael Shayne Adventures aired over the West Coast Mutual network as Michael Shayne Private Detective and starred Wally Maher as the lead. The series took its lead in many ways from the Nolan movies with a lighter touch. It officially had the Shayne character in Oakland rather than Miami. It featured well-characterized tales, solid mysteries, and great chemistry amongst the regular cast that was reminiscent of a later West Coast Mutual show Let George Do It.

The second radio series was The New Adventures of Michael Shayne, produced by Bill Rousseau and starring Jeff Chandler. In contrast to Mutual’s series, the New Adventures was one of the most hard-boiled radio detective series produced during the golden age of radio and was set in the mysterious city of New Orleans. The series was syndicated from the mid-1940s and for decades afterwards.

The final Michael Shayne radio series was The Adventures of Michael Shayne which aired from 1952-53 over ABC. It managed to have three different leads in its first fourteen weeks but had the virtue of being set in Miami.

Michael Shayne made his way to television much later. In the late 1950s on an episode of the TV anthology series, Decision, Mark Stevens played the detective and the episode was repackaged as a pilot for a TV series that was never made. In 1960, the series was produced with former Mr. and Mrs. North star Richard Denning starring as the lead. It was a well-made detective series. Unfortunately, it aired in an era that was awash in great detective shows and it wasn’t exactly faithful to the books, a fact that many Michael Shayne novels of the era poked fun at.

In addition, Michael Shayne had a comic book tied into the TV show.

Like many characters of the era, Michael Shayne went through a wide variety of iterations to please various audiences: from the tough private eye of the books and New Adventures series, to the lighter approach of Lloyd Nolan and Wally Maher, to the typical early 60s PI played by Denning, there are many different interpretations of the character. Yet, to those who know, the name of Michael Shayne is still remembered for quality detective fiction regardless of the iteration.

And more Bonus Radio Shows:

As a sampler of our old time radio library, we are including these classic old time radio shows on this DVD-ROM at no extra charge: