Calling All Cars
Volume 7

Crime does not pay...but, during the Great Depression, some might have argued that it DID pay - and pay very well, too. After the 1929 stock market crash, bank failures, Midwestern crop disasters, and mass unemployment became a daunting part of everyday life, resulting in the rise of the bank robber and gangster as folk hero rather than criminal threat. It would take the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the appointment of such charismatic crime fighters as Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, and Elliott Ness to finally turn the tide against the criminal element, turning lawmen into heroes and, eventually, the common man against the criminal element.

In the 1930s, radio played a part in stemming the tide against crime - and never more so than in Calling All Cars, one of the earliest and most influential police procedural shows. Dramatizing true crime exploits and introduced by real-life law enforcement officials, Calling All Cars offered the gritty details of criminal activity in true "ripped from the headlines" style. Led by writer/director William N. Robson, the weekly series gave listeners the audio equivalent of a tough, down in the streets Warner Brothers crime drama, complete with car chases, low-life gunmen, high-crime bosses, frightened victims, and criminal cases that often hit very close to home. Kidnappings, petty thefts, murders, prison breaks, bunco schemes...all were raw materials for the creators of each show and details of all these crimes and more were used as the basis for the realistic dramas presented.

The influence of Calling All Cars extended far beyond its six-year run, acting as a blueprint for such later-day radio series as Dragnet and This is Your FBI. And, although this seventy-year-old series may seem a bit primitive to modern-day audiences, listening to the programs today instantly brings to mind such timeless movie classics as The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and Scarface.
 

For its entire run, Calling All Cars was sponsored by the Rio Grande Oil Company and their patented brand of "cracked" gasoline. Luckily, thanks to the limited and expensive network lines of the 1930s, recordings of all of the programs were made for redistribution to the Southwestern states. This is marvelous news for radio buffs, since it means that most of the entire run of Calling All Cars still exists for us to enjoy today. Earlier, Radio Archives issued six volumes of the series, with all of the programs transferred directly from the original transcription recordings. Now, we're proud to offer Calling All Cars, Volume 7, a ten hour set which, like our other collections, has been professionally restored for impressive audio fidelity. These rare and exiting shows are sure to occupy a special place in your personal library.