Spoiler : That was one of my absolute favorites growing up!!!! I listened to the tapes till they were wore out!!!

Spoiler : I really enjoy this program.

Spoiler : Frank Lovejoy was one of the best voice actors on radio.

Spoiler : "The Whistler" probably is my FAVORITE old-time radio show. I know the opening quote by heart. Thank you for sharing this. I'm saving this on my time line.

Spoiler : "The Whistler" probably is my FAVORITE old-time radio show. I know the opening quote by heart. Thank you for sharing this. I'm saving this on my time line.

Spoiler : Love this show! I listen when I know it will be on Sirius. "I am the Whistler..." Great stuff!

Spoiler : Listen to it just about every time it come on

Spoiler : I'm in my 50s. A few years ago, I mentioned (in two different conversations) to neighbor men in the 70s that I had been listening to radio shows of The Whistler. Each of them began to whistle the theme, remembered from when they were kids!

Spoiler : I love the Whistler!

Spoiler : the Whistler was always one that could get to me if I let my imagination go, really the scariest OTR episode.

Spoiler : I love "The Whistler". I live in upstate NY and hear old time radio shows broadcast from Hamilton, Ontario.

Spoiler : Always loved this program

Spoiler : The Whistler is a personal favorite

Spoiler : The Whistler was one of those shows that were great to keep you guessing.

Spoiler : The Whistler is my favorite show!

Spoiler : Great consistent sometimes very noir show. Excellent writing and acting.

Spoiler : Love The Whistler! Great stuff!

Spoiler : Love the Whistler and the twisty endings

Spoiler : The Whistler is one of my favorites!

Spoiler : I always enjoy The Whistle

Spoiler : The Whistler is my favorite

Spoiler : My sister and I would sit on the floor by the radio listening to the Whistler and The Shadow.

Spoiler : Week in and week out one of the best of the OTR programs ever. Always entertaining.

Spoiler : You mention in your foreward that the Whistler was only heard on the West Coast in the Fifties. I heard it in New Hampshire circa 1950-51 at 6 p.m. Sunday nights over CBS. I assume Signal Oil was the sponsor although that was not sold in the New England states. I am fairly sure that I still heard the Whistler when I moved out to Ohio in the early Fifties.

Spoiler : The Whistler had many different runs that confound collectors. It was a West coast show but had a national run in Summer 1946, a non-West coast run sponsored by Household Finance from 1947-1948, and as radio drama was dying in the 1950s, it finally became a truly national show. But the most curious of the series history is its "Chicago run" from 1946-1948 sponsored by Meister Brau beer produced with a Chicago cast in front of a live audience!

Spoiler : Right now, I'm listening to the Whistler...It usually ran on Sunday evenings, about 6 pm. on CBS, right before Our Miss Brooks. It was sponsored by Signal Oil Company, which was a West Coast business that had independent dealerships that were popular with ex-GI's wanting to start their own business. One thing I cant figure is how I could hear it on the East Coast where there were no dealerships. This would have been around 1949-52. The program ran on different time slots until 1955. The programs were written in the classic surprize ending format where the criminal who thought he had covered his tracks was exposed in the finale after the last commercial. I usually listen to these in the streaming format so that the programs follow each other in succession so I dont have to reprogram them.

Spoiler : The show aired in other markets, with different sponsors. The only East Coast episode I ever heard was sponsored by Household Finance, so I assume there were others. I think there was also a Chicago/MIdwest version, but I'm not totally sure about that.

Spoiler : I knew about the Household Finance sponsor and the Chicago version, but I hadnt figured on the other sponsors....I was referring to John Dunning's book and Jerry Haedges' Vintage radio logs.

Spoiler : In 1942, CBS started two series, Suspense, and The Whistler. Suspense was produced on the east coast and its initial episodes were in the tradition inspired of British mysteries and horror. These were presented to a national audience using actors with high name recognition, especially from the theater. The show's theme would change in its next months to its more familiar use of Hollywood stars and more intriguing stories. The Whistler, however, stood steadfast in its purpose, focusing on people with a streak of greed, envy, entitlement, and most every evil that could be imagined, followed by a surprise, O. Henry inspired, ending. The program proved extremely popular to its exclusively west coast audience. CBS knew it had a good property in The Whistler, and did its best to find sponsors beyond the CBS Pacific Network. In 1946, The Whistler ran on the other CBS regional network (which we commonly call "East") as a summer replacement series for Jack Carson. From March 1947 to September 1948, Household Finance was as sponsor. The Midwest had its own series from February through December 1946, produced in Chicago (WBBM) in front of a live audience, sponsored by Meister Brau beer. For many years, Whistler collections did not properly identify these many variety of series, so sorting all of that out gave collectors a much better understanding of the history of the series. It is likely some parts of the country could hear multiple versions of The Whistler in the same week depending how good their receivers were and how the weather affected long distance listening. Some newspaper listings reflected this, listing distant stations, which made researching the series confusing for those who were not aware of these different and independent broadcast formats. Because of the breakup of Standard Oil, there was great legal sentiment against national oil companies and distributors. So, if your program was sponsored by an oil company, it was unlikely for your production to get a national footing. Both the Whistler and Let George Do It had such sponsorship (LGDI's was one of the Standard Oil companies, Chevron). Selling the "balance of the US" to an advertiser (essentially telling a big national advertiser that they could not advertise in fast-growing California) meant that they could not support their western US distributors and dealers, if that was they channel they used to the market, and it meant that their brand could not be associated with a national program. This created a marketing challenge for advertisers, so it is understandable that regional sponsorship was a hard sell for CBS because it was an unattractive idea. The idea that companies could be limited by law to selling only to certain regions, and that there were big budget programs that only had regional broadcasts can be hard for us to understand today. I remember as a new collector thinking that if it was a regional program and not national, it probably wasn't very good. When you look at the writers, producers, and talent in these programs, that first impression is very wrong. The Whistler may not have been built as a showcase for stars the way Suspense was, but it had radio's best talent behind it. The 1970s rebroadcasts were done by Audio Arts. At that time in collecting, there were many episodes of The Whistler that could only be heard (recorded and traded) in their format. I believe they were syndicated using LP records, but they may have been on full-track tape. You can often tell from the recordings that they used the drama portions of the programs with Signal Oil commercials edited out, of course, and then added common openings and closings to the recordings. The programs are generally from the 1949-1952 era of the run which were probably the best productions of the Pacific series. There were collectors who believed that this took away from the authenticity of the presentations, so they clipped the Audio Arts closing from them. This resulted in many "pretender" network recordings in circulation among collectors. As transcriptions of more of the Pacific Network series came into circulation, many of these rebroadcasts fell out of circulation. Others, however, remained, because there were no other recordings available of certain episodes. Notice how the newspapers picked up the CBS information that promoted the show as being popular on its Pacific network. The first clip is about the Summer 1946 replacement series, the second about the Household Finance series. I think it's fascinating that they had to "explain the show" to the new audience. When you really think about it, The Whistler was quite different than other programs, which helps explain why it is still popular among collectors today.

Spoiler : One of radio's best psychological anthology mysteries. The first host was Gale Gordon, followed by Joseph Kearns, Bill Forman and Marvin Miller. The eerie whistling was performed by Dorothy Roberts. During the 13 odd years (1942- 1955) this series was on radio, While it was mostly a West Coast CBS program sponsored by Signal Oil, but at times it was broadcast on the full network.