"The Golden Age of Radio"
(As originally broadcast on WTIC, Hartford, CT)



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Program 6 - September, 1970 - John Gibson
  


John Gibson, Dick Bertel, and Ed Corcoran
in front of Broadcast House
John Gibson was a network radio actor who portrayed Ethelbert on radio adaptation of the pulp fiction series “Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer.” Originally, Flashgun wasn't a cameraman. But during the first decade of his serialization, author George Harmon Coxe toned down the character's roughness and reinvented him as a hunch-following photographer with a knack for capturing crime scenes.

In 1943, he was a tame enough character to make a CBS radio debut as "Casey, Crime Photographer." The stately Staats Cotsworth played the lead, and audience was captivated more by the character than the crime (a trend that the crime-investigation-as-entertainment genre has seemed to stray from just a bit in recent years). The adventures of Casey, crack photographer for The Morning Express, were told in this series. Casey hung out at the Blue Note Café, and was friendly with Ethelbert, the bartender, to whom he recounted his various exploits. John Gibson portrayed the role of Ethelbert on radio, and when the series premiered on television in April, 1951.

Mr. Gibson was also a broadway, film, and television actor who might be best remembered by non-OTR buffs for his continuing role on CBS's "Edge of Night."

On this installment of  "The Golden Age of Radio" we'll hear Mr. Gibson performing in excerpts from "The Magnificent Montague," "Nick Carter," "Milton Berle," and "The Columbia Workshop."

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