Jeff Regan - The Gambler And His Ladies

(4.5 stars; 11 reviews)

Best. Kiss-Off. Ever. Jeff Regan, Investigator - The Gambler and His Ladies December 11th, 1948 "They call it The Havenwood.  It sags in the middle like a tired frankfurter.  That's where I live, Apartment 3K. Two rooms with a pull-down bed and a pair of windows that stick when it's hot ... Beyond is the city: L.A. Spread out on the map like a raw egg with a broken yolk. Oh, the town's all right, I guess, if you can afford the sedatives..." Jeff Regan is not a 'gentleman detective'.  He is not Philo Vance; neither is he Nick Charles.  Most days, he has enough trouble just being Jeff Regan.  Regan is a guy trying to make an honest dollar in a dishonest business, dealing with dishonest people.  He's not rich and he never will be, but he does value his ability to live with himself, by never letting the dirt of his profession stick too closely to him. In The Gambler And His Ladies, the dirt is everywhere.  First is a mother who can't go to the police because of something in her past.  Then there's her daughter, who has run off with a gambler.  The gambler, a notorious gangster, is involved in some rather questionable business dealings.  Topping the list is a woman from the gambler's past, who doesn't want him to have much of a future.  Added to the mix is a handful of shady minor characters, on all sides of the equation. Louis Desmond, the gambler of The Gambler And His Ladies, should have realized that he was playing a risky game.  Just eighteen months before the airing of this episode, another gangster and gambler, Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel, had come to a gruesome end courtesy of nine rounds from a .30 calibre M1, fired through the window of his girlfriend Virginia Hill's Beverly Hills home.  The shooter was never identified.  There were several parallels between the life of Bugsy Siegel and the character of Louis Desmond; we can only assume that the writers of this episode, using the literary technique roman à clef *, were counting on the collective memory of the audience for the recently-demised Siegel to flesh out the Desmond character. * French for novel with a key, a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the 'key' is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. (Wikipedia) More than one character meets their maker in The Gambler And His Ladies.  It would be inaccurate to refer to these as 'untimely ends', as most were predestined well before Regan's involvement in the case.  Some of the most memorable lines in radio drama, or the entire field of crime fiction, are delivered just prior to the final death of this episode.  The claws-out exchange between Stella Desmond and her rival, interposed between the first three and last three slugs from a .32 revolver, undoubtedly constitutes the Best Kiss-Off Ever . Violence and The Mind's Eye: It may be common to think of radio shows from the mid-twentieth century as quaint relics from a more innocent era, but The Gambler And His Ladies is anything but.  This is a very violent story from a very violent decade. In this episode, you will hear a woman being beaten.  The beating only lasts a few seconds, but leaves an indelible mark on the listener.  Today, a scene such as this would be deemed distasteful, and would be softened appropriately.  The scene was equally distasteful in 1948, but it wasn't softened. It has been said of Tennessee Williams' opus A Streetcar Named Desire that when watching the film, one can dispassionately view the emotional and physical violence inflicted on Blanche Dubois, having distanced oneself from it through the medium of cinema.  When watching the play, however, there is no barrier that stands between the audience and the brutality of Stanley Kowalski, and the viewer is filled with an aching guilt at their own inaction in preventing the violence. Listening to a radio show such as The Gambler And His Ladies falls somewhere between these two situations.  We have no control over the story or the actions of the protagonists, but we are responsible for the images that form in our mind's eye as the story progresses.  The images that form during the woman's beating are not pretty.  These come from within the mind of each of us, rendering it impossible to distance ourselves from them, thereby making them more real and more lasting. To reiterate, The Gambler And His Ladies is a very violent story, told in an unremittingly violent manner.  This one may be for you, but not your kids. The Title: While this episode is almost always known on the internet as 'The Gambler And His Lady ', the true title is 'The Gambler And His Ladies '. The confusion likely stems from the fact that on September 18th 1948, nearly three months before our featured episode, Jeff Regan, Investigator aired the similarly-titled 'The Gambler And The Lady' (that episode does not seem to be available on the internet).  Despite the similar titles, these two episodes were completely different stories. * Thanks to OTR researcher and Jeff Regan superfan Stewart Wright for clearing up this misinformation; be sure to check out his very informative review below. Glossary: Arthur Godfrey: "You're a kick.  Arthur Godfrey'd love to get ahold of you." Radio host and commentator known for pointed humour and a folksy image.  His image was tarnished by several scandals in the 1950s, but none had touched him by the airing of The Gambler And His Ladies in 1948. Cubebs: "Somebody had been there before me, who smoked cubebs."   Indonesian berry used in traditional cuisine, drinks, medicine, and until the mid-twentieth century, cigarettes.  Cubeb and cubeb cigarettes were recommended for treatment of catarrh, asthma, throat irritation, and hay fever.  One noted smoker of cubeb cigarettes was the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, who joked that if it weren't for his high consumption of cubeb, there might never have been a Tarzan. Fisk Tire Ad: "He was wearing a nightgown, and he looked like a poor imitation of the Fisk Tire ad."   Iconic ad campaign dating back more than a century, featuring a child in nightwear with a candle holder in his hand, with the slogan 'Time To Re-Tire?'  A Fisk Tires ad from 1922 can be seen below; a larger (800x1032) version can be found behind the JPEG link on this page. Upper Berth: "Sanducci picked me. He had a grouch on like a fat lady in an upper berth." A sleeping space extending from the wall like a wide shelf, with only a curtain for privacy, found in a train's sleeping car. A train would have berths arranged like bunk beds, one about a foot off the ground and the upper berth about five feet high, and much more difficult to climb into. Platine: "She smelled like she'd just crawled out of a bottle of Platine."   Platine (French for platinum) was a scent introduced in the 1940s by The House Of Dana, the perfumery that produced the infamous 'forbidden fragrance' , Tabu. Shamus: "Beat it, shamus, or I'll split you."   Slang for detective, usually referring to a private detective.  Its earliest literary use could be in the 1920 detective story 'The Shamus' by Harry J. Loose.  'Shamus' may have come from a Yiddish word (as does much detective story slang), meaning 'a sexton of a synagogue', from the Hebrew word shamash, for servant.  It may also have come from the given name Seamus, a homonym of 'shamus', and a stereotypical name for an Irish cop. Links:   To listen to more Jeff Regan episodes starring Jack Webb, click here . To hear the second episode of Jeff Regan, 'The Prodigal Daughter', click here . To hear the final Jack Webb episode of Jeff Regan, 'The Man Who Lived By The Sea', click here . To hear actor Frank Graham taking on the role of Jeff Regan, after Jack Webb had departed to create the role of Sgt. Joe Friday of 'Dragnet', click here . For two more episodes with Frank Graham as Jeff Regan, not found in the main collection linked above, click here . To visit Introduction To Old Time Radio's Jeff Regan, Investigator page, click here . To view the entire ITOTR collection, click here . Fisk Tires advertisement from 1922 Text © 2016 W.H.Wilson (exclusive of public domain quotes from Jeff Regan, Investigator) Photograph of Bugsy Siegel's right foot from the Los Angeles Herald-Express. 50 points if you noticed that the coroner spelled his name wrong. Photo by Herald-Express legend William 'Bill' Walker (bio) .     

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.