Yours Truly Johnny Dollar

[krledu]

I'm looking for info on the supporting cast for Yours Truly Johnny Dollar. I'm trying to find who played each character in different episodes.Does anyone know where I can find that kind of info?

[Mandolynn]

There are some sites out there with good info on YTJD, but I don't know of a place that goes into that much detail per episode.
I wonder which era of YTJD are you interested in? If you are listening to the five-a-week episodes that Bob Bailey did, they only tell the supporting cast after the conclusion of the week-long case, so if you want to know about those shows you have to catch the last in the series. For the thirty minute stand-alone shows, I thought they usually mentioned the others in the cast at the end. For the Bob Bailey shows, you had a lot of the radio regulars, Harry Bartel, Parley Baer, Howard McNear, Virginia Gregg, etc.

If you are listening to the post-Bob Bailey episodes, the ones from New York with Mandel Kramer, you would have a different set of actors because of the change in location.

Pre-Bob Bailey, the ones with Charles Russel and Edmund O'Brien, I'm not as familiar with.

[krledu]

I am listening to the five episodes a week portion of YTJD. I know they list the cast members at the end. Sometimes I can't always place the name with the character. So thats why I was wondering if anyone had ever gone through (kinda like Laura Leff did with Jack Benny) and tell which character plays each part. If anyone knows a place to find this, I would be most grateful.

[scottp]

On the YTJD page of otrcat.com, it refers to five-a-week, 15 minutes, but then it claims in the Bob Bailey era it was a 75 minute show!
Was there ever a repackaging of the 5x15minute story lines? (Without all those openings and closings and the recaps, it would be more like 67 minutes.)

[Mandolynn]

I think it might be splitting hairs a little to say that the five-a-week shows didn't add up to 75 min. The storylines were definitely longer and more involved than we got in the half-hour versions, which, of course, were not really 30 min either. They were proportionately longer, considering.

The last of those episodes was spread over nine days. I don't know why it wasn't ten; maybe whatever was going to take its place debuted on the last Friday? I thought that one was a bit too long. The solution to the mystery become painfully obvious long before Johnny caught on, and that made him uncharacteristically obtuse, IMO. It would be interesting to know the story behind that set of shows.

When they play the five-a-week shows on OTRNOW.com, they play the five episodes consecutively, but they do not cut out the openings and closings, which is admittedly annoying when you hear them over and over again in rapid succession.

Ed Walker on The Big Broadcast out of Washington DC on WAMU played all of them not long ago. It took well over a year the way he did it, (maybe two, I'm not sure) playing them two at time, cutting out the closing of the first and the introdution to the second (beginning it, with the ringing of the telephone that usually opened the show). This filled one of his half-hour slots. Then he played the next two episodes the next week, the finale the third week, plus starting the first episode of the next case. It was quite enjoyable that way.

Regarding the OP, I might be able, by process of elimination of the actors I definitely know, to match most of them up with the characters they played. I wonder if there are particular characters you are interested in identifying? I think I will also e-mail Ed Walker and sees if he knows of a reference source for this information. He really loves those episodes.

[krledu]

I can start to pick out distinct voices such as Virginia Gregg, Pauley Bauer, Howard Mcnear and such. But sometimes its hard to tell. There is one voice I cant place. He has a booming voice. Usually He plays the loud American tourist/business man thats overbearing and a bafoon. I will try to find an episode in which he plays. Does anyone have any ideas?

[epeterd]

Like you I can only identify the "usual suspects." What bothers me about the later shows with BB after they return to the half hour format is how short they are without the commercials. They're more like 17 minutes. That's entirely too short, especially when you consider how good the week-long shows were. YTJD is my favorite non-JB show.

peter

[krledu]

What bothers me about the later shows with BB after they return to the half hour format is how short they are without the commercials. They're more like 17 minutes. That's entirely too short, especially when you consider how good the week-long shows were. YTJD is my favorite non-JB show.

I totally agree. I like how the weekly shows could flesh out a story and the characters in the story. Beside Jack Benny, these are my favorite shows. I think the early Let George Do it also is another favorite. If you like Bob Bailey in YTJD you would like the Let George Do It. Listen to something before 1950 though. Later they turn into more of a horror/detective story and get kinda weird. But Bob Bailey, Virginia Greg, Pauley Bear, Howard McNear and company for an all-star cast. I wish they had story telling this good nowadays.

[scottp]

I'm not a "whodunit" fan (my mind wanders) but I like the mind-pictures painted in the Bob Bailey shows. I'm not sure I've heard any with the actors who played it later-- in fact I'm not sure I knew Bailey wasn't the last one.
There's something fascinating (morbidly?) about the very late radio series. "Hardly anyone was listening anymore" but this is what they were listening to. And I was alive when YTJD and Suspense ended!