Cirrus@Austlit

'LARRY KENT, the private investigator, is an American detective operating in Australia. Next Wednesday this series presents the unusual story of three confessed “murderers” whom Detective Daniels is quite convinced are innocent.

'This conviction is so pronounced that he co-opts Larry Kent, his friend, to help him, and to this end a sensational story is released to the Press about the first two murders. But it didn’t bring anything to light except the knowledge that both murdered men had been in the theatrical business, and that, ten years ago, they had organised a vaudeville chain that crashed.

'Immediately on publication of the story there is another murder. This time an attractive young woman, manifestly innocent, confesses to the crime. A hurried air-trip to Melbourne from Sydney important interviews with a theatrical agent and theatre personality, provide the clue to the motive, and a tense finale, in which Larry Kent is nearly murdered, satisfactorily rounds off a play for listeners who like “suspense.”'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 8 April 1950, p.27.

'“THIS is Miss Van Smeeton speaking” are the words that usher in one of Larry Kent’s strangest cases. Kent is the private detective with a weakness for pretty girls who comes from the United States to Australia to fight crime.

'Mrs. Van Smeeton is a wealthy Sydney resident who owns the fabulous Eastern Star —a diamond neck lace worth £150,000. Larry is engaged to protect it when Mrs. Van Smeeton wears it to a ball she is giving in her North Shore home. His devotion to duty is somewhat strained by the presence of his employer’s lovely niece. Nevertheless, he recognises among the guests a confidence man well known to the police.

'He is consequently not surprised when the lights of the house go out and the necklace is stolen, although it is not found in the possession of the crook or any of the other guests. He is profoundly shocked, however, when on arriving home he finds the necklace in his pocket.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 15 April 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, U.S. private investigator, operating in Australia, takes a milk-shake on a wet night in an amusement arcade. He is spoken to by a stranger, who gives him a package, saying: “You’ll deliver, won’t you?’’ “I always deliver,” replies Kent, and takes the package home to find it contains £50,000.

'He hides it and goes back to the city, where he is accosted by a man not unlike himself and dressed similarly. This man, who is one of a band of kidnappers, demands the parcel handed to Larry Kent by mistake. There is a fight, during which the gangster is knocked out.

'The £50,000 was ransom money for Sir John Ashley’s son, who has been kidnapped. A plan is arranged through which it is hoped to recover the child unharmed.

'Kent meets the head of the kidnapping gang, and the play works excitingly and tensely to a satisfactory conclusion.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 22 April 1950, p. 27.

'WHEN Larry Kent, Crime Investigator, visits the Hearts Club, a gambling house run by Cy. Kendall, he wins £100 in his first hand at pontoon. As he is leaving with his winnings he is called into Kendall’s office, who hands him £500.

'When Kent asks what the £500 is for, Kendall tells Kent someone has attempted to murder him. However, the £500 is not a protection fee, but payment in advance for Kent to trace the murderer when the murder is committed.

'A few days later a beautiful woman enters Kent’s office and confesses to having murdered Kendall. Her name is Betty Werner. She says she killed Kendall in a cottage out of town over another woman. She drives Kent out to where there is a newly dug grave, which he commences to reopen. Betty says she has confessed to Kent be cause she knew of the £500 fee, and hoped Kent would save her from gaol.

'He carries on with his investigations, and unearths an extraordinary bet and an organisation of a gang of dope peddlers.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 29 April 1950, p.27.

'TWICE an attempt had been made in Sydney to kill Joe Rawlins, The Montana Mauler, so he hired Larry Kent as his bodyguard but he was insistent that he didn’t want Kent “to solve anything—just stop me being bumped off.”

'Kent “gate-crashes” a party being given in a society woman’s home, and meets up with her beautiful daughter —and trouble with a butler.

'Enquiry at the C. 1.8. reveals that the woman’s husband had been murdered nine years previously in Ohio, U.S.A., where he was endeavouring to finance a company to exploit oil he was sure he had discovered in Central Australia.

'Kent breaks with Rawlins when he discovers Rawlins is trying to extort £50,000 from the woman for the return of her husband’s aerial photographs which give the location of the oil field.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 6 May 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT’S reputation as a judge of feminine figures earns the crime investigator the position of judge in a beach-girl beauty competition—The Miss Down-Under Beauty Quest. The finalists include Miss Redfern, Miss Balmain, and Miss Surry Hills.

'Various threats of violence and offers of bribes to influence Kent in favour of Miss Surry Hills and Miss Redfern has its climax when Kent is assaulted savagely by some thugs, but when his choice, Miss Balmain, is also assaulted, he knows that the evil influence at work is far more serious than threats and bribe offers.

'Miss Balmain’s mother had been a schoolteacher. That she worked at Glendale School at the same time as one of the other judges, the elderly Professor Bigelow, gives Kent a clue, which when followed up unmasks a maniac who was a rejected suitor of Miss Balmain’s mother.

'The fact that the rival basher gangs sponsoring the other candidates in the quest pursue their feud so strenuously that the leaders end up in the casualty ward of the hospital is shaded completely by a sensational suicide which brings the play to a close.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 13 May 1950, p.27.

'A STRANGER introduced himself to Larry Kent, the Private Investigator, with a knock-out blow to the chin. When Kent describes his assailant to Inspector Daniels, he la identified as Sam Cranbrook, sly grogger, forger, night-club operator, and gangster. Kent looks Cranbrook up and re-introduces himself, and is again slugged.

'He discovers that it was not Cranbrook, but that gangster’s double, who had delivered the first knock-out introduction, an unsuccessful radio actor called Tom Andrews. Andrews, because of his twin likeness to Cranbrook, is employed by a rival gangster, Leo Levine, to get the inside news by doubling for Cranbrook and passing the information about the gangster on to the police.

'Kent brings the play to a very exciting conclusion through a gun battle, which has very satisfying results —including Kent getting Cranbrook’s girl in lieu of Levine’s unpaid fee.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 20 May 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, the private investigator from U.S.A., keeps a mysterious appointment with a stranger “on the Hill” at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

'While trying to puzzle out the intricacies of cricket in comparison with baseball, he doesn’t blame the man next to him falling asleep. “I looked at him again,” says Kent. “He was the first sleeper I’d ever seen who kept his eyes open.” He was dead —murdered.

'From the flimsy clue of the appointment message written on a piece of paper used in the private loans section of a certain bank, Kent unravels a very ingenious plot and brings to book a gang of international crooks.

'The beautiful daughter of one of the world’s most famous atomic scientists is impersonated by another beautiful woman —the scientist is himself impersonated and tortured, Kent is twice nearly murdered, and his reward is to help the scientist’s real daughter, Anna, to forget some very harrowing experiences, and, as Kent says, “It was a nice job—so was Anna.”'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays of the Week', ABC Weekly, 27 May 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, Private Investigator, is invited to a palatial home in the Blue Mountains for a week-end party. During the first evening it is decided to play Murderers.

'The hostess, Tammie Sullivan, explains the game to her guests: “Well, after dinner to-night my butler, Williams, will give someone a card. On the card is printed ‘Murderer.’ Only Williams will know who the murderer is. His choice among the six of us will be decided by picking one of our names from a hat. He will then give the ‘murderer’ the card so none of the others will see—the method must be left to him. After that job is done, Williams will, at any time he chooses, hit the gong in the next room, which will be the signal for the game to begin.”

'There is, of course, a real murder during the game. Two shots are fired, from two different guns, but only one bullet is found, and that in the body of a beautiful model, Barbara Bell. Various suspects include a woman who has been three times a widow, a playwright, a producer, and the butler.

'When the butler is found dead, apparently through suicide, it appears that the case is solved, but through Kent’s tenacity the real murderer is brought to book, and Kent completes a very happy week-end in the true Larry Kent manner.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 3 June 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, the Private Investigator, is approached by the C. 1.8. to help them on the Marijhuana Case in an effort to break up a ring of dope-peddlers who are selling the drug to teen-agers. He is also engaged by an elderly millionairess, Mrs. Farnsworth, whose young grandson, Brian, is in the toils of the gang.

'In an attempt to murder Kent, Brian kills two of the gang. Subsequently, Mrs. Farnsworth receives by post a photograph and a blackmailing letter which reads: “Your grandson is in trouble. The picture enclosed will show how much trouble. The gun you see on the floor, beside the dead man, has Brian’s fingerprints on it. If you want that gun and the negative of the photo, it will cost you £50,000. I will phone you at seven to-night.”

'Police records show the dead man to be a small-time gangster. Kent’s investigation locates the scene of the murder as the flat of an attractive, respectable girl who was travelling in the country when the murder occurred.

'But it is this very clue which leads Kent to the real murderer and the smashing of the marijhuana ring.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 10 June 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, the Crime Investigator, received an unusual message after interviewing a woman client—a bullet in his body.

'The woman, Eve Benson, happened to be the daughter of a bank robber who had double-crossed his partner-in-crime by disappearing with the £50,000 proceeds of a bank robbery. The partner had him murdered, but not before the money had been hidden.

'The gang after the loot has Eve Benson kidnapped. Kent also is being kidnapped after his discharge from hospital, but, through a clever code signal, as arranged with a lift driver, Kent is able to turn the tables on his thug-kidnappers and, by rough-arm tactics, forces a confession from one of them, which, al though it enmeshes him in further trouble, enables him to contact Eve in the gang’s hideout. The finding of the hidden money is still the problem, which Kent solves in an unexpected manner at an unexpected source.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 17 June 1950, p.27.

'RUSSIAN POKER is played by two men with a revolver. A bullet is placed in the gun cylinder, which is twisted. The next step is to cut a pack of cards. The man drawing the higher card gets his choice. Usually he lets the other fellow test the law of averages first.

'When two men, Holden and Pricey quarrelled in a club over a business they agreed to settle their differences, with a side-bet of £25,000 each, by Russian poker. Holden is killed. Price arrested and subsequently released, for it appeared obvious that Holden died of his own hand.

'With a woman’s intuition, Elaine, his daughter, is sure it was murder, and engages Larry Kent, the crime investigator, to prove it.

'It is at first a hopeless task. However, Kent’s enquiries show that as an officer in World War I Price quit after ordering his men to take a certain objective. Kent found out also that Price was a notorious card cheat, and was, as well, very clever at sleight-of-hand tricks, which is, nevertheless, hardly enough to substantiate a murder charge.

'A cleverly planned trap is prepared—as Kent puts it, “a rat-trap, and £50,000 is a lot of cheese.” But before the trap is sprung Elaine and Kent themselves are nearly murdered.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 24 June 1950, p.27.

'WHEN a street photographer showed Larry Kent, the Crime Investigator, a candid shot, Kent had it published as a competition to identify “the man with whiskers’’ in the background of the photograph.

'Helen Jeffreys sent in a correct entry, but was found murdered be fore she could collect the prize.

'A Canberra special agent contacts Kent and explains that the bewhiskered individual was a wartime traitor who is about to hand over to the headquarters of a subversive organisation plans which could cause a world cataclysm.

'At a low night-club where Helen had worked, one of her club girl friends tells Kent that the bewhiskered fellow-traveller had given Helen a blue brooch as a present.

'Kent locates the shop which sold the brooch, and from a chance remark by the shopgirl secures a vital clue. He gets in touch with the head of the subversive organisation, and, at the same time, far more trouble than he ever bargained for.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 1 July 1950, p.27.

'HE was only a little man—five feet two and skinny—and he was also a very frightened little man. Yet he walked into Larry Kent’s office with one of the most incredible stories Kent had ever heard.

'A commercial traveller, he had returned from an eight weeks’ trip to his flat in Maroubra to find a reception committee of four dead men seated on his lounge. Each was a stranger, and each had been strangled with a blue necktie.

'Larry and the little man call on Inspector Daniels, whose men waste little time in making an arrest.

'Daniels is elated and loses no time in telling his rival, Kent, how he broke the case by approved police methods.

'He is interrupted by a call to tell him that another body has been found —a woman, with a blue neck tie knotted about her neck. Larry goes along with the Inspector and makes a bet with him that he will prove that the woman was murdered, not by the psychopathic killer the police held, but by someone else. His attempt to do this results in a surprising discovery which leads to the solution of the mystery.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 8 July 1950, p.27.

'WHEN Private Investigator Larry ’ Kent was fishing at Bondi he saved the life of Frank Scranton, as that candidate for murder was toppling over a cliff. Actually it had been an attempt on his life.

'A few nights later Scranton was shot dead. Next morning his solicitor delivers a letter from him to Kent with £500 enclosed and the news that the doctors had given him but six months to live. The £500 was a reward for saving his life, but Kent takes it as a retainer to track down the murderer.

'In his investigations he revisits the scene at Bondi of the near-murder, where an attempt is made to murder Kent, but the would-be killer falls over the cliff and is himself killed.

'From clues unearthed concerning an ex-chorus girl who became Scranton’s wife while she had ambitions to become a famous actress, an unsuccessful theatrical producer who was in love with Mrs. Scranton before and after her marriage, Kent solves the murder itself, but experiences unusual complications as regards an accessory to the murder, with very unexpected and tragic results.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 15 July 1950, p.27.

'WHEN Larry Kent, the private investigator, undertook to trace the murderer of Peter Larrimer, blackmailer and worse, he did it at cut rates—£200 if he succeeded, £20 in advance, but no more if he failed. His inquiries took him to a girl’s flat, and very nearly to gaol for battery and assault on a police officer, to say nothing of murder.

'This Peter Larrimer was more than somewhat of a no-good individual. Innumerable people would have been glad to see him dead, anyway, even if it did mean murder, and those people included a number of pretty women, including show girls and actresses. All of which, of course, did not make Kent’s job any easier, especially when he further complicates things by killing a man in the girl’s flat. However, his hatred of crime, plus the connivance of an underworld confederate, sees the “rap” brought home where it be longs.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 22 July 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, the private investigator, is retained by the “Queen of Sydney’s Underworld,” one Molly Mavis, to recover a diamond necklace, which was an engagement present from Skinner Hokum, and discover the thief.

'The diamonds were “hot,” and Skinner tells Kent he paid £3000 for them, although their real value would have been £20,000. Kent visits a King’s Cross dive-cafe and is slugged unconscious. However, before he finally passes out he gets a glimpse of a pair of pointed-toe tan shoes. It’s this that leads to his finding out the name of the thief, but not without the assistance of some rough-arm tactics on a phiz-gig member of Sydney’s underworld—Bluey Mason.

'Kent eventually is launched on yet another of his apparently interminable love affairs.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 29 July 1950, p.27.

'IT had to happen—Larry Kent, Private Investigator, cooling his heels in a cell, with the cancellation of his licence imminent. And all because of Judith, whose husband’s eyes Kent had blackened during an interrupted flirtation.

'Judith finds her husband dead in his armchair. She calls on Kent as an old friend to enlist his help to move the body from the flat. But Kent refuses, for the Commissioner has warned Kent that if there are any more of his too unorthodox methods of showing his hate of crime he will lose his licence.

'Ever susceptible to a pretty woman’s charms, he agrees to at least visit the flat to see if there are any clues to the murder. However, the sound of the shooting has been reported to the police, and one member of the force discovers Kent with the body and the murdered man’s wife—and in he goes!

'Through the intervention of friend Inspector Daniels, he is given a chance to trace the murderer. His routine is to check on all Judith's admirers, which is quite a job. Rough-arm tactics on the lovely, if fickle, Judith bring unexpected results, and flirtatious Larry Kent retains his licence to flirt another day.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 5 August 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT is in gaol again in this play. This time for burglary. His new imported car was the cause of it all. He had owned it for three hours only when it was stolen, which was very much of an affront to a smart private investigator. Hence his more than usual keen enquiries land him in a police cell, unconscious.

'The head of the gang of car thieves is a rather ruthless individual who is in love with his secretary, who in turn gets very fond of Kent. In fact, she saves his life—by being murdered.

'A slight case of justifiable homicide brings to a tense conclusion an exciting episode in the career of Larry Kent'.

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 12 August 1950, p.27.

'WHEN Larry Kent, the private investigator, was commissioned to track down the purchaser of one of the first jazz recordings ever cut, The Georgia Blues, he embarked on a train of events that included the murder of Peter Cummings, his friend and a famous “disc jockey” of popular records.

'Kent becomes more than ever in tense in his campaign of crime hating, for Peter was not only a good friend but a good fellow. Kent calls on his client, gets bludgeoned into unconsciousness, and comes to to find his client also murdered.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 19 August 1950, p.27.

'WHEN a friend of Private Investigator Larry Kent has to murder a partner, nearly murder another, and gets murdered himself, all over a little chamois leather bag, it can be taken for granted that the black pearls in that bag are of fabulous value.

'Similarly it can be taken for granted that Kent should become very much interested, especially when, in his role of custodian of the chamois bag, he is forced to kill two men in order to prevent his own murder.

'Enter the lovely Amanda, who proves to be a decoy of bad man Plant, who must have those pearls. Kent comes in for some of the strong-arm stuff that he is accustomed to hand out, and finds himself trussed up in a chair for the night.

'During the night many things happen, including an unusual incident in which he saves his own life once again. This time, however, it is not in the usual gallant Kent manner, and has a surprising sequel which closes the play on a sad note.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 26 August 1950, p.27.

'FRANCES MANNERS is a new client of Larry Kent, because her father has been murdered.

'Another client’s wife, Mildred Perkins, is being blackmailed out of a fortune by a phony mind reader and medium. The only clue Kent has of Manners’ murderer is the fact that when he was battered to death one of his assailants left the mark of the letter “N,” evidently from an engraved ring.

'After Kent has started his campaign to unmask the fake Swami, Kent is himself nearly battered to death, and the mirror reveals a similar mark on his face. Thus the murder and the fortune-teller cases become one and the same, and Kent encounters his full share of adventures before he gets his reward in a double solution of his cases and his double fees, to say nothing of the gratitude of two very lovely ladies.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 2 September 1950, p.27/

'WHEN the famous radio producer Saul Jackson invites the private detective Larry Kent to watch a radio play being produced, he makes Kent an eyewitness to an actual murder. Radio actor John Freely is playing his part opposite radio actress Marie Marsh when he slumps in front of the microphone, dead, with a bullet through his brain.

'Six people saw the murder, but only one knew who was the murderer—and it wasn’t Kent.

'Inspector Daniels is very interested in a gun used for sound effects and the silencer he finds in the studio. The evidence points to sound-effects man Tiny Bishop, until the Ballistics Division of the C. 1.8. reveals that the sound-effects gun did not fire the bullet.

'Kent becomes intrigued, and without his usual fee, because he hates crime, goes ahead to solve the murder, which entails co-opting Marie Marsh, the radio actress, to do some realistic love-making with the man Kent suspects.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 16 September 1950.

'WTHEN Larry Kent, the private investigator, gets an S.O.S. from a lovely lass, he races to her apartment in time to knock her would-be murderer unconscious with the butt of his gun.

'While he is in the next room pouring out a drink, Maggie gives the semi-conscious gangster another nudge with a pistol butt and he is dead. But Maggie hadn’t meant to kill him. Her fiance had been murdered a fortnight before, and Maggie is in the middle of telling Kent about that murder and her half-murder and the motives when murder No. 2 takes place—Maggie is stabbed to death.

'Kent is hard put to it to save himself from being bumped off, but he does so with the connivance of Inspector Daniels and at the same time traps the murderer.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 23 September 1950, p.27.

'TWO days before the murder, Larry Kent was sitting in a night club “watching the dames dance by.”

'A gambler friend, Lloyd Marble, hails him and they swap notes about women and such, the “such” including a nice little game of poker in which Lloyd had taken Sam Aarons, an unsavoury character, for £30,000. Sam has to delay settling by giving Lloyd a promissory note at 60 days for £30,000.

'The next time Kent sees Lloyd, he is surrounded by a lot of people—at his funeral.

'The promissory note is, of course, missing, and as Kent liked Lloyd quite a lot, and hates crime, he gets on the job without fee —and quite a job it proves.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 30 September 1950, p.27.

'Larry Kent, the private detective, was interviewed by Noni James, a very beautiful reporter from a magazine called Faces, he could not know that it was a prelude to murder.

'Immediately the interview is completed, he is invited by a receiver of stolen goods to be his bodyguard. The new assignment lands him in hospital under arrest for the murder of Limpy White. He escapes from hospital to do some sleuthing for his life, and tracks the murderer down, actually through the article in the magazine, only to be nearly murdered himself.

'Once more Noni comes into his life and is indirectly responsible for saving it and for the charge of murder being correctly sheeted home.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 7 October 1950, p.27.

'LARRY KENT, on his way to the Blue Mountains, shares a compartment with a man who is clutching tightly a brief-case with a scratch beneath the lock. After fruitlessly trying to make conversation Kent falls asleep. When he awakens, his compartment companion is dead—murdered. Kent is commissioned by the insurance company, which had insured the jewels contained in the brief case for £10,000, to recover the loot and thus earn £2000. He co-ops Basher Hayes of the underworld as a rumour-spreader to promote certain developments.'

Source: 'Commercial Radio Plays for Next Week', ABC Weekly, 14 October 1950, p.27.