BW - EP130—007: Philip Marlowe Comes To Radio—The King In Yellow

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

On July 8th, 1947, NBC broadcast an adaptation of “The King In Yellow,” originally published in Dime Detective Magazine in March of 1938. It’s a seedy saga of a hot trumpet player whose boorish behavior gets him killed. Among those featured in this episode were Gerald Mohr, Gloria Blondell, Bill Johnstone, Willard Waterman, and Howard McNear. By the late 1940s many of Chicago’s radio stars had migrated to Hollywood, working on shows across all four networks. By the end of July, Marlowe’s 8.0 rating was seventh overall, and the show’s production cost just one dollar per the number of urban listeners.