The three driving forces of Inner Sanctum: Producer Himan Brown and hosts Raymond Edward Johnson and Paul McGrath.
INNER SANCTUM
Spook shows were a minor but decidedly scary element that came to Network Radio shortly after the beginning of the Golden Age.
The Witch’s Tale was first. It debuted on WOR/Newark in 1931, about the time that Universal Pictures was scaring movie audiences and setting box office records with Frankenstein and Dracula. The Witch’s Tale graduated to Mutual in October, 1934, where it had a three year run. The anthology of horror stories was created by Alonzo Dean Cole, best known for his later series on CBS, Casey, Crime Photographer. What set Witch‘s Tale apart - aside from its weekly ration of murder and mayhem - was the show hostess, Nancy The Witch, who admitted to 113 years old as she stroked her black cat, Satan and told her grisly tales.
The role of Nancy was originated by Adelaide Fitz-Allen who died in 1935 at age 79. She was succeeded by Miriam Wolfe who was only 13 but had the uncanny ability to sound a hundred years older - as if anyone really knew what a 113 year old witch sounded like. When The Witch’s Tale left the air in 1938, the precocious Wolfe returned to her “regular” job on the Saturday morning children’s series, Let’s Pretend.
Lights Out had the distinction of being the longest running post-midnight series of the Golden Age. It was created by Wyllis Cooper for WENR/Chicago in 1934 for broadcast at midnight. In April, 1935, Lights Out was promoted to NBC for a four year, 12:30 a,m, ET run on Wednesdays. Cooper left for a screen writing career in 1936 and Arch Oboler took charge of the sustaining series until it left the air three years later and the horror genre was laid to rest until 1941. (1)
It was during this lull in that producer Himan Brown came up with Inner Sanctum Mysteries - the title taken from Simon & Schuster’s imprint for its series of mystery novels. (2) Brown was only 30 and already had over a half dozen Network Radio credits including The Gumps, (1931-35), Marie, The Little French Princess,(1933-35), Dick Tracy, (1935), Flash Gordon, (1935), Grand Central Station (1937-54), Terry & The Pirates (1937-39) and Joyce Jordan, M.D., (1938-55). And he was just getting started! (3)
Brown envisioned Inner Sanctum as a new and stylistically uptown version of the spook show - one that would combine the elements of good stories, famous names, humor and precise, dramatic scoring to the genre pioneered by The Witch’s Tale and Lights Out.
Then Brown claimed to have come across a neglected studio door that issued a nerve wracking creak when opened or closed slowly. He instinctively knew that he had found the signature sound effect for his program that listeners were sure to remember - a grotesque, creaking insult to the ears that recalled musty dark cellars where dangers and death lurked - the perfect attention-getting opening and closing to his Inner Sanctum. (In reality, the creaking door effect was created with an old swivel chair that needed oiling.)
With most of his elements in place, Brown’s audition of his program for Carters Products was recorded in December, 1940 and is also posted below. It was bought immediately and Inner Sanctum’s Network Radio debut on Blue came a month later on Tuesday, January 7, 1941. The show was moved to Sundays at 8:30 two months later against NBC’s One Man’s Family and Crime Doctor on CBS.
The most expensive element of Brown’s concept for Inner Sanctum, famous names from films, lasted for less than two seasons. By that time Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Paul Lucas and George Coulouris had starred in episodes of the show and Boris Karloff had logged over a dozen appearances. However, ratings were discouraging during the show’s first (half) season of 1940-41, a meager 4.0 which put it in 126th place among all programs for the year. The show’s popularity more than doubled over its second season with a rating of 8.9 which moved it up to 69th place but Carter put the screws to the budget and big name guest stars were replaced by actors from the New York radio community.
Brown’s concept of bringing famous names into his chilling radio stories was shared and validated by the team who made Suspense the most successful mystery anthology on Network Radio with that formula. (See Sus…pense! on this site.)
And Brown’s format elements of good stories, humor and haunting music were obviously making fans for Inner Sanctum. Story titles like The Corridor of Doom, Death Has Claws, Horror Hotel, Murders In The Morgue, The Shriveled Head, The Walking Skull and The Touch of Terror were among the 526 programs in the series.
For humor, Brown enlisted young radio actor Raymond Edward Johnson, 29, to host and narrate the series, delivering ghostly jokes and macabre puns in its opening and closing segments - the closing always capped with a cheerfully haunting, “Goodnii…iiight… Pleasant…dreeeeammmms…Hmmm?”
Johnson became more menacing with each of his four seasons in the role, but he was also partnered in the delivery of commercials as he does in the two episodes posted below from 1941-43’s run on Blue for Carters Little Liver Pills with Ed Herlihy and the 1945-46 CBS run for Lipton Tea with Mary Bennett. Listeners will agree with Brown’s assessment that participation in commercials took the edge off Johnson’s routines.
Hi Brown also recognized the necessity of music to set and sustain the moods of Inner Sanctum. For that job he recruited Lew White, the 36 year old organist at the Roxy Theater in New York City. White was no stranger to radio, sharing musical duties on Dr. Christian, Grand Central Station and Nick Carter, Master Detective. White also wrote the themes for longtime soap operas Portia Faces Life and Young Widder Brown. White‘s scoring of Inner Sanctum became an integral part of the program - his stings and cresendos sometimes as suddenly frightening as a crazed killer jumping out from behind a door.
In 1942-43 - still against the Sunday competition of One Man’s Family on NBC and Crime Doctor on CBS - Inner Sanctum’s rating jumped to a 9.7 which moved it up to 62nd place and edged out Crime Doctor in its time period. But the progress it wasn’t good enough for Carter and the patent medicine manufacturer cancelled.
Colgate promptly picked up the show and moved it to CBS on Saturdays against NBC’s ratings champ, Truth Or Consequences. Inner Sanctum stumbled slightly in the ratings to a 9.2 and 73rd place for the 1943-44 season and was moved in January, 1945, to Tuesdays at 9:00 opposite another mystery anthology, Molle Mystery Theater, on NBC - puzzling programming to say the least.
Inner Sanctum's growing popularity was helped along in December, 1943, when Universal Studios released Calling Dr. Death starring Lon Chaney, Jr., the first in its string of six B movie thrillers based on the program.
Inner Sanctum lost the 1944-45 duel with Molle by Hooperatings of 11.6 to 10.0, and lost Colgate as its sponsor in January, 1945. But the show was immediately picked up by Lipton Tea, had finally cracked double digit ratings and the best was yet to come.
Raymond Edward Johnson left for the Army at the end of the 1944-45 season and Brown replaced him as Inner Sanctum’s resident (g)host with veteran radio actor Paul McGrath, 40. McGrath took the grisly giggles to new heights with an over the top delivery evident in the episode from 1946 posted below.
NBC moved Amos & Andy into the half hour against Inner Sanctum for the 1945-46 season. By this time the spook show was on a roll and broke into the Annual Top 50 at 42nd place with an 11.9 rating.
The 1946-47 season saw a strange and major change affecting Inner Sanctum. Lipton Tea and Emerson Drug swapped their CBS programs. Lipton took Vox Pop and moved it to Tuesday at 9:00 - and, beginning on July 29, 1946, Emerson’s Bromo Seltzer moved Inner Sanctum to CBS’s blockbuster Monday schedule at 8:00 p.m. ET, against the prestigious but low rated Cavalcade of America on NBC. The time change would help make Himan Brown’s anthology a Top 25 Program and one of Monday’s Top Five Programs for the next four consecutive seasons.
Inner Sanctum steadily climbed up the Annual Top 50 lists in its Monday night berth. It jumped from 42nd to 24th place in 1946-47, then up to 22nd in 1947-48 with a whopping 18.6 rating. To add frosting on the cake, Himan Brown was awarded the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his popular series.
It was about this time that the program featured one of the most memorable commercials of the Golden Age - Bromo Seltzer’s “Talking Locomotive” that every week encouraged listeners to, “Fight headaches threeee waaays…Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer…” Emerson Drug’s ad agency, BBDO, is credited with the sponsor’s unforgettable signature, produced with engineer Gilbert Wright’s Sonovox process in which sounds were given speech by placing handheld speakers against the larynx of an actor mouthing the desired words. (4)
Like the Bromo Seltzer locomotive, Inner Sanctum was on a roll. It moved up to 20th place in 1949-50’s rankings and by the spring of 1950 it was cruising along in 19 place. Then Emerson Drug abruptly cancelled the show and on April. 24th Inner Sanctum was gone - replaced by Hollywood Star Playhouse, another mystery anthology with big names from the movies - just like Hi Brown’s original concept for Inner Sanctum a decade earlier.
Hollywood Star Playhouse hit the air running with original plays starring Academy Award winners Jimmy Stewart, Broderick Crawford, Ray Milland and Claire Trevor. Despite the expensive Hollywood star power, its ratings sank into single digits. The show opened the 1950-51 season featuring lesser names from the movies like Richard Widmark, Mercedes McCambridge, Anne Bancroft and Ida Lupino, many of whom had previously appeared on Inner Sanctum. Hollywood Star Playhouse lost 20% of Inner Sanctum’s ratings and Bromo Seltzer cancelled at the end of the season.
Meanwhile, Inner Sanctum was picked up by Mars Candy and moved to ABC in the 8:00 p.m. Monday timeslot opposite Hollywood Star Playhouse on CBS and NBC’s high powered musical comedy series, The Railroad Hour. Inner Sanctum lost 65% of its audience in the move and was cancelled after one season. Its final broadcast was June 18, 1951, replaced the following week by The Man From Homicide starring Dan Duryea.
Inner Sanctum’s creaking door had slammed shut for the last time. But Hi Brown was far from finished. He tapered off his activites over the next 20 years but came roaring back at age 64 when most of his contemporaries were retired. Brown was made producer of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater - a 55 minute mystery anthology that ran every night at 10:00 ET from January 6, 1974, until December 7, 1982, a total of 1,399 episodes - all opened and closed with Hi Brown's signature, the Inner Sanctum creaking door. For his work on the revival series, Brown was given his second Raven Award and a Peabody Award. An episode from 1976 hosted by E.G. Marshall is posted below.
Himan Brown, Network Radio’s most prolific producer, died in June, 2010, just six weeks short of his 100th birthday.
(1) Ironized Yeast revived Lights Out on the CBS Tuesday night schedule in 1942-43, but it failed to crack the Top 50 and was cancelled.
(2) In return for use of the Inner Sanctum title, Simon & Schuster received a promotional spot and the end of each episode for its current novel in the mystery series.
(3) Known for his great capacity for work, Himan Brown also produced: Adventures of The Thin Man, (1941-1950), Bulldog Drummond, (1941-49), City Desk, (1941), Inner Sanctum, (1941-51), Green Valley, U.S.A., (1942), The Adventures of Nero Wolfe, (1943-44), The Affairs of Peter Salem , (1949-53), Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, (1951-54), The Private Files of Rex Saunders, (1951), The NBC Radio Theater, (1955-56 & 1958), The CBS Radio Mystery Theater , (1974-82) and The Adventure Theater, (1977-78).
(4) The Sonovox process is used frequently in the storyline of the 1940 RKO comedy-mystery starring Kay Kyser, You’ll Find Out, and is demonstrated in the film’s closing musical number, I’d Know You Anywhere. Over 20 years later the Sonovox technique was heard across America by pop music stations employing Sonomagic jingles produced by PAMS Productions of Dallas.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Spook shows were a minor but decidedly scary element that came to Network Radio shortly after the beginning of the Golden Age.
The Witch’s Tale was first. It debuted on WOR/Newark in 1931, about the time that Universal Pictures was scaring movie audiences and setting box office records with Frankenstein and Dracula. The Witch’s Tale graduated to Mutual in October, 1934, where it had a three year run. The anthology of horror stories was created by Alonzo Dean Cole, best known for his later series on CBS, Casey, Crime Photographer. What set Witch‘s Tale apart - aside from its weekly ration of murder and mayhem - was the show hostess, Nancy The Witch, who admitted to 113 years old as she stroked her black cat, Satan and told her grisly tales.
The role of Nancy was originated by Adelaide Fitz-Allen who died in 1935 at age 79. She was succeeded by Miriam Wolfe who was only 13 but had the uncanny ability to sound a hundred years older - as if anyone really knew what a 113 year old witch sounded like. When The Witch’s Tale left the air in 1938, the precocious Wolfe returned to her “regular” job on the Saturday morning children’s series, Let’s Pretend.
Lights Out had the distinction of being the longest running post-midnight series of the Golden Age. It was created by Wyllis Cooper for WENR/Chicago in 1934 for broadcast at midnight. In April, 1935, Lights Out was promoted to NBC for a four year, 12:30 a,m, ET run on Wednesdays. Cooper left for a screen writing career in 1936 and Arch Oboler took charge of the sustaining series until it left the air three years later and the horror genre was laid to rest until 1941. (1)
It was during this lull in that producer Himan Brown came up with Inner Sanctum Mysteries - the title taken from Simon & Schuster’s imprint for its series of mystery novels. (2) Brown was only 30 and already had over a half dozen Network Radio credits including The Gumps, (1931-35), Marie, The Little French Princess,(1933-35), Dick Tracy, (1935), Flash Gordon, (1935), Grand Central Station (1937-54), Terry & The Pirates (1937-39) and Joyce Jordan, M.D., (1938-55). And he was just getting started! (3)
Brown envisioned Inner Sanctum as a new and stylistically uptown version of the spook show - one that would combine the elements of good stories, famous names, humor and precise, dramatic scoring to the genre pioneered by The Witch’s Tale and Lights Out.
Then Brown claimed to have come across a neglected studio door that issued a nerve wracking creak when opened or closed slowly. He instinctively knew that he had found the signature sound effect for his program that listeners were sure to remember - a grotesque, creaking insult to the ears that recalled musty dark cellars where dangers and death lurked - the perfect attention-getting opening and closing to his Inner Sanctum. (In reality, the creaking door effect was created with an old swivel chair that needed oiling.)
With most of his elements in place, Brown’s audition of his program for Carters Products was recorded in December, 1940 and is also posted below. It was bought immediately and Inner Sanctum’s Network Radio debut on Blue came a month later on Tuesday, January 7, 1941. The show was moved to Sundays at 8:30 two months later against NBC’s One Man’s Family and Crime Doctor on CBS.
The most expensive element of Brown’s concept for Inner Sanctum, famous names from films, lasted for less than two seasons. By that time Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Paul Lucas and George Coulouris had starred in episodes of the show and Boris Karloff had logged over a dozen appearances. However, ratings were discouraging during the show’s first (half) season of 1940-41, a meager 4.0 which put it in 126th place among all programs for the year. The show’s popularity more than doubled over its second season with a rating of 8.9 which moved it up to 69th place but Carter put the screws to the budget and big name guest stars were replaced by actors from the New York radio community.
Brown’s concept of bringing famous names into his chilling radio stories was shared and validated by the team who made Suspense the most successful mystery anthology on Network Radio with that formula. (See Sus…pense! on this site.)
And Brown’s format elements of good stories, humor and haunting music were obviously making fans for Inner Sanctum. Story titles like The Corridor of Doom, Death Has Claws, Horror Hotel, Murders In The Morgue, The Shriveled Head, The Walking Skull and The Touch of Terror were among the 526 programs in the series.
For humor, Brown enlisted young radio actor Raymond Edward Johnson, 29, to host and narrate the series, delivering ghostly jokes and macabre puns in its opening and closing segments - the closing always capped with a cheerfully haunting, “Goodnii…iiight… Pleasant…dreeeeammmms…Hmmm?”
Johnson became more menacing with each of his four seasons in the role, but he was also partnered in the delivery of commercials as he does in the two episodes posted below from 1941-43’s run on Blue for Carters Little Liver Pills with Ed Herlihy and the 1945-46 CBS run for Lipton Tea with Mary Bennett. Listeners will agree with Brown’s assessment that participation in commercials took the edge off Johnson’s routines.
Hi Brown also recognized the necessity of music to set and sustain the moods of Inner Sanctum. For that job he recruited Lew White, the 36 year old organist at the Roxy Theater in New York City. White was no stranger to radio, sharing musical duties on Dr. Christian, Grand Central Station and Nick Carter, Master Detective. White also wrote the themes for longtime soap operas Portia Faces Life and Young Widder Brown. White‘s scoring of Inner Sanctum became an integral part of the program - his stings and cresendos sometimes as suddenly frightening as a crazed killer jumping out from behind a door.
In 1942-43 - still against the Sunday competition of One Man’s Family on NBC and Crime Doctor on CBS - Inner Sanctum’s rating jumped to a 9.7 which moved it up to 62nd place and edged out Crime Doctor in its time period. But the progress it wasn’t good enough for Carter and the patent medicine manufacturer cancelled.
Colgate promptly picked up the show and moved it to CBS on Saturdays against NBC’s ratings champ, Truth Or Consequences. Inner Sanctum stumbled slightly in the ratings to a 9.2 and 73rd place for the 1943-44 season and was moved in January, 1945, to Tuesdays at 9:00 opposite another mystery anthology, Molle Mystery Theater, on NBC - puzzling programming to say the least.
Inner Sanctum's growing popularity was helped along in December, 1943, when Universal Studios released Calling Dr. Death starring Lon Chaney, Jr., the first in its string of six B movie thrillers based on the program.
Inner Sanctum lost the 1944-45 duel with Molle by Hooperatings of 11.6 to 10.0, and lost Colgate as its sponsor in January, 1945. But the show was immediately picked up by Lipton Tea, had finally cracked double digit ratings and the best was yet to come.
Raymond Edward Johnson left for the Army at the end of the 1944-45 season and Brown replaced him as Inner Sanctum’s resident (g)host with veteran radio actor Paul McGrath, 40. McGrath took the grisly giggles to new heights with an over the top delivery evident in the episode from 1946 posted below.
NBC moved Amos & Andy into the half hour against Inner Sanctum for the 1945-46 season. By this time the spook show was on a roll and broke into the Annual Top 50 at 42nd place with an 11.9 rating.
The 1946-47 season saw a strange and major change affecting Inner Sanctum. Lipton Tea and Emerson Drug swapped their CBS programs. Lipton took Vox Pop and moved it to Tuesday at 9:00 - and, beginning on July 29, 1946, Emerson’s Bromo Seltzer moved Inner Sanctum to CBS’s blockbuster Monday schedule at 8:00 p.m. ET, against the prestigious but low rated Cavalcade of America on NBC. The time change would help make Himan Brown’s anthology a Top 25 Program and one of Monday’s Top Five Programs for the next four consecutive seasons.
Inner Sanctum steadily climbed up the Annual Top 50 lists in its Monday night berth. It jumped from 42nd to 24th place in 1946-47, then up to 22nd in 1947-48 with a whopping 18.6 rating. To add frosting on the cake, Himan Brown was awarded the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his popular series.
It was about this time that the program featured one of the most memorable commercials of the Golden Age - Bromo Seltzer’s “Talking Locomotive” that every week encouraged listeners to, “Fight headaches threeee waaays…Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer, Bromo Seltzer…” Emerson Drug’s ad agency, BBDO, is credited with the sponsor’s unforgettable signature, produced with engineer Gilbert Wright’s Sonovox process in which sounds were given speech by placing handheld speakers against the larynx of an actor mouthing the desired words. (4)
Like the Bromo Seltzer locomotive, Inner Sanctum was on a roll. It moved up to 20th place in 1949-50’s rankings and by the spring of 1950 it was cruising along in 19 place. Then Emerson Drug abruptly cancelled the show and on April. 24th Inner Sanctum was gone - replaced by Hollywood Star Playhouse, another mystery anthology with big names from the movies - just like Hi Brown’s original concept for Inner Sanctum a decade earlier.
Hollywood Star Playhouse hit the air running with original plays starring Academy Award winners Jimmy Stewart, Broderick Crawford, Ray Milland and Claire Trevor. Despite the expensive Hollywood star power, its ratings sank into single digits. The show opened the 1950-51 season featuring lesser names from the movies like Richard Widmark, Mercedes McCambridge, Anne Bancroft and Ida Lupino, many of whom had previously appeared on Inner Sanctum. Hollywood Star Playhouse lost 20% of Inner Sanctum’s ratings and Bromo Seltzer cancelled at the end of the season.
Meanwhile, Inner Sanctum was picked up by Mars Candy and moved to ABC in the 8:00 p.m. Monday timeslot opposite Hollywood Star Playhouse on CBS and NBC’s high powered musical comedy series, The Railroad Hour. Inner Sanctum lost 65% of its audience in the move and was cancelled after one season. Its final broadcast was June 18, 1951, replaced the following week by The Man From Homicide starring Dan Duryea.
Inner Sanctum’s creaking door had slammed shut for the last time. But Hi Brown was far from finished. He tapered off his activites over the next 20 years but came roaring back at age 64 when most of his contemporaries were retired. Brown was made producer of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater - a 55 minute mystery anthology that ran every night at 10:00 ET from January 6, 1974, until December 7, 1982, a total of 1,399 episodes - all opened and closed with Hi Brown's signature, the Inner Sanctum creaking door. For his work on the revival series, Brown was given his second Raven Award and a Peabody Award. An episode from 1976 hosted by E.G. Marshall is posted below.
Himan Brown, Network Radio’s most prolific producer, died in June, 2010, just six weeks short of his 100th birthday.
(1) Ironized Yeast revived Lights Out on the CBS Tuesday night schedule in 1942-43, but it failed to crack the Top 50 and was cancelled.
(2) In return for use of the Inner Sanctum title, Simon & Schuster received a promotional spot and the end of each episode for its current novel in the mystery series.
(3) Known for his great capacity for work, Himan Brown also produced: Adventures of The Thin Man, (1941-1950), Bulldog Drummond, (1941-49), City Desk, (1941), Inner Sanctum, (1941-51), Green Valley, U.S.A., (1942), The Adventures of Nero Wolfe, (1943-44), The Affairs of Peter Salem , (1949-53), Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, (1951-54), The Private Files of Rex Saunders, (1951), The NBC Radio Theater, (1955-56 & 1958), The CBS Radio Mystery Theater , (1974-82) and The Adventure Theater, (1977-78).
(4) The Sonovox process is used frequently in the storyline of the 1940 RKO comedy-mystery starring Kay Kyser, You’ll Find Out, and is demonstrated in the film’s closing musical number, I’d Know You Anywhere. Over 20 years later the Sonovox technique was heard across America by pop music stations employing Sonomagic jingles produced by PAMS Productions of Dallas.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
| inner_sanctum__1940_audition.mp3 |
| inner_sanctum_12_21_41__the_man_from_yesterday.mp3 |
| inner_sanctum_06_05_43__death_across_the_board.mp3 |
| inner_sanctum_02_03_47_death_bound.mp3 |
| cbs_mystery_theater_4176_white_ghost.mp3 |