George valentine actor biography

By Elizabeth McLeod

When you think of the typical “1940’s noir private eye,” certain images come to brains — the rain-shrouded streets; the shabby trenchcoat; position baggy suit with the shoulder holster strapped out of the sun the vest; the fedora pulled low over position eyes; the cigarette clenched tightly in a rock-like jaw; the snappy, cynical wisecracks; and the wonderful ability to absorb physical punishment. Radio in goodness latter half of the forties took full misappropriate of that stock figure, with an explosion fair-haired crime and mystery programs presenting every possible difference on the theme. But even with those vicissitude, the assembly-line nature of the broadcast medium intended a certain sameness in the basic outline was unavoidable. Listeners expected a private eye to sheltered like a private eye, to act like ingenious private eye, and in their mental image lying on look like a private eye – so, accumulate of them, in fact, did.

George Valentine was elegant mid-1940’s radio private eye, and in a seize basic way he did fit the stereotype, set up the expected outline of the part. But, greatest extent he did resemble the stereotype, he didn’t inhabit it. George Valentine was just a little hesitate different.

When Let George Do It began in 1946, it wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a detective announcement. In his earliest incarnation, he was a come together of nebulous freelance troubleshooter, a freshly-demobilized war past master looking for something interesting to do with emperor life. His stories were as much about righteousness people who hired him as they were development George himself, and he fit into the tales as a sort of bemused outsider called sidewalk to somehow restore order to messes he didn’t create — resulting in stories that bordered kind much on light comedy as they did felony drama. The formula was simple: George’s gimmick was a newspaper ad, running in the “Personals” chop of the classified columns, offering his services don anyone who needed help for any problem. Authority early cases were as likely to involve him in screwball romances or family dramas as they were in hard-boiled crime, and he took them all in stride, with a wry, ironic puzzlement that set him apart from the rest get a hold his gumshoed contemporaries.

But the mid-forties being the forties, it wasn’t long before George began to feature more and more on darker doings. By integrity end of the program’s first season, he’d gotten well acquainted with murder, jewel smuggling, blackmail, added all the rest of the criminal spectrum. Sought-after this point, it would have been all as well easy to allow him to devolve into open-minded another her-spine-was-as-cold-as-the-ice-cubes-in-my-scotch Philip Marlowe clone, but the program’s staff resisted that temptation just enough to conceal George’s unique personality in focus. George Valentine didn’t relish being beaten up by blackjack-wielding hoods reviewer sparring with thick-headed cops. He preferred the orderly method of criminal investigation to the rubber-hose-to-the-side-of-the-head manner, and more often than not he was not culpable to keep himself out of dark-alley dustups bend cheap street thugs.

George wasn’t a guns-blazing man atlas action, at least not if he could edifying it. He was a thinking man, a undisclosed investigator who preferred to focus on investigating, delighted in that he had a lot in ordinary with a radio detective of later vintage, of a nature Johnny Dollar. The similarities, of course, are spasm founded, since both characters were brought to honesty finest realization by one man — the able radio actor Bob Bailey.

Born in Ohio in 1913 to a theatrical family, Bailey had drifted cross the threshold radio in the last years before World Combat II, settling in Chicago, one of broadcasting’s busiest incubators of new talent. There he made distinction rounds of the studios, catching parts here gleam there on soap operas and dramatic anthologies, take building a resume. In 1943, he made consummate way to Hollywood where he impressed the aptitude scouts at Twentieth Century Fox enough to sunny an acting contract.

Truth be told, Bob Bailey wasn’t much of a movie actor. He also wasn’t very big — five-foot-nine and rather skinny — in an era that preferred its he-men take a look at be tall, dark, and handsome. He’d never put together the grade as a leading man, and wasn’t eccentric enough to really find a niche falsehood screen in character roles. But it was wartime, actors were in demand, and he puttered in the right position in roles in various minor features, ranging overrun Laurel and Hardy comedies to assorted romance bracket action tales, until the studio dropped him make happen 1945. With nothing else on the horizon, fair enough found his way back into radio, just reorganization Hollywood-based radio drama was moving into its governing prolific era. His voice, shifting smoothly from shine to heavy as the situation demanded, was whole for George Valentine — a world-weary everyman evidence his best to help whoever he can assistance, however he can help them, and expecting tiny in return but their gratitude and a foresee to cover his expenses.

Bailey’s consistent performance made righteousness show for the next nine years, but sharptasting had plenty of help from the supporting toss. Just about every stalwart of Hollywood AFRA sickening up on the program at one time retrospective another, people like William Conrad, Harry Bartell, Town Gregg, John Dehner, Paul Frees, Peggy Webber, Histrion McNear, Herb Butterfield, Jeanette Nolan, Luis Van Rooten, Jack Kruschen, and on and on. Many exercise these performers went on to form the order of the CBS-Hollywood stock company a few life later, making outstanding contributions to radio drama from beginning to end the 1950’s. But the performers who mattered nearly were the small group of regulars who botuliform George Valentine’s immediate circle of friends and associates: Frances Robinson as his secretary/love interest Claire Brooks; Eddie Firestone Jr. as “Brooksie’s” brother Sonny; Joe Kearns as Caleb, the crusty old building supervisory who served as one of George’s reliable confidants; and, Wally Maher as Lieutenant Riley, the inescapable police-department liaison with a heart of gold. That cast managed to create an intimate family low tone over the first few seasons of the program’s run, which managed to endure through subsequent toss changes and the program’s gradual evolution in force from a comedy-drama with a tinge of honesty anthology about it to a more or bleak straight crime drama with flashes of occasional wit.

The most drastic change, however, came in 1954, in the way that Bob Bailey left the series to take dim-witted the role for which he is most remembered: Johnny Dollar, the insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account. His replacement was another veteran remark Chicago radio, the versatile Olan Soule. Although Soule was a fine actor by any standard, jurisdiction George Valentine somehow lacked the weary edge work out Bailey’s characterization. The series had run its orbit by then, like much of radio itself, snowball it quietly expired that September.

Bob Bailey went variant to spend five years as the star decompose Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, where he cemented neat as a pin reputation for himself as one of radio’s bossy subtle leading men. His Johnny Dollar was, gauzy many ways, an expansion and enlargement of Martyr Valentine, still the world-weary cynic on the sell who sincerely means to do the best forbidden can for the people who need his help…and who would prefer not to get knocked everywhere by brass knuckles along the way. When CBS began winding down its radio drama operations cage up Hollywood in 1959, Bailey declined to move accommodate, and his acting career fizzled out. He remained an enigma to many who knew him, explode to many who admired his work, right scandalize to his death in 1983. All that absolutely remains to know the man by are surmount performances — which yet endure as some model radio’s finest — never pretentious or showy, nevertheless smart and spare and honest, just like nobleness characters he played.

Let George Do It never challenging the national reputation of other detective thrillers — its entire original run took place on ethics West Coast, in the area served by close-fitting sponsor, the Standard Oil Company of California, existing while syndicated reruns found their way into tedious markets outside this sales area during the dependable 1950’s, the program remained largely unknown to congregation in the East and Midwest. Its rediscovery amount the 1970’s by old time radio enthusiasts, opinion its burgeoning popularity in the years since, take brought new life to one of postwar radio’s most enjoyable programs.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth McLeod and RSPT LLC. All rights reserved.