It’s a Karloff-fest tonight as we prepare to celebrate Halloween.  We start off with an episode of “Information Please” that originally aired on Christmas Eve, but features Boris Karloff as one of the guests.  Are you up on literary skulls, crossers of the English Channel, and poems that feature murder?  Then Boris drops by “Duffy’s Tavern” in an effort to scare off a potential buyer.

Episodes

Information Please
December 24, 1945
“Guests:  John Mason Brown and Boris Karloff”
2:00

Duffy’s Tavern
October 5, 1951
“Duffy Wants to Sell the Tavern”
32:17

We start off tonight with an episode of “Broadway Is My Beat.”  If you think the sophisticated avenues of Time Square to Columbus Circle are free from murder and crime, you’re dead wrong.    It’s “the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world."  “Broadway Is My Beat” ran from February of 1949 to August of 1954 on CBS.  For most of that run, it starred Larry Thor as New York City detective Danny Clover, whose assigned “beat” was the theater district.  Not that that made his job any easier.  Then we drop in on “The Great Gildersleeve.”  Tonight, Gildy stumbles upon the upcoming wedding of a young lady and Marine about to ship out.  They just want a nice, quiet, simple wedding.  Of course, that soon balloons into … well, you can guess.  This is actually a very sweet story with some really good laughs.  And we get to hear Lillian Randolph as Birdie sing.  That’s always a treat.

Episodes

Broadway Is My Beat
February 17, 1950
“Dion Hartley”
3:44

The Great Gildersleeve
May 27, 1953
“Witness at the Wedding”
33:33