Old Radio

How do you describe a program that placed the listener in the actors skin? What could possibly pass beyond the adventure being portrayed...as a deeper message? That answer has to come in the form of listening to the program at hand. each storyline was always different on Escape . The results maybe the similar, but never identical. Escape brought the message intent home through a different form each week. The message might be a moral conundrum or a realization of our humanity. The stories that Escape chose to air were either popular or new, but never dull. " Escape ! Designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure!" was the calling card of this weekly episodic. It performed beautifully the mission of driving out the patterns of routine and created a world of intrigue and adventure. Escape capitalized on the dream of every man, woman and child to go to the far off reaches of this globe or to taste the excitement of breaching the envelope...

September 27: Happy Birthday, William Conrad ! A great voice that during an era seemed to be everywhere on radio including the the role of Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke , and appearances in Escape , Lux Radio Theater , Suspense , This is Your FBI , Nightbeat , and Suspense . An amazing voice actor, his radio roles were most memorable when he toned his "deep, tough-guy voice down", and when he played an effeminate Emperor Nero in Crime Classics  or a Chinese merchant in Escape 's Misfortune Isle. Although he missed his shot to be Matt Dillon on TV, he brought us Cannon and Jake and the Fatman and his narration of The Fugitive with David Janssen and Rocky & Bullwinkle voice-over.   He was so much more than that fat detective, with a phone in his Mark IV, named 'Cannon' on TV.  He was quite versatile. He was a heavy in the movie THE KILLERS and did the voice of the Steward of Gondor in the Rankin Bass animated RETURN OF THE KING.