GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #55

MARTIN KANE, PRIVATE EYE


 "Martin Kane, Private Eye" was a radio series on the Mutual Broadcasting System from August 7, 1949 to June 24, 1951.  William Gargan starred as Martin Kane.  When the crime drama moved to NBC on July 1, 1951, Lloyd Nolan took over the role.  Nolan left in mid-1952 and Lee Tracy assumed the part until the series ended on December 21, 1952.  The show was created by J. Walter Thompson & Co., the advertising agency of the United States Tobacco Company, who sponsored the show with ads for Old Briar pipe tobacco and Encore and Sano cigarettes.  At the same time as the radio show was airing, a television series was launched on NBC.  The TV series ran September 1, 1949 to June 17, 1954.  Gargan, Nolan, and Tracy all took turns playing Martin Kane on TV, just as they did on the radio series.  The last actor to portray the sleuth was actor Mark Stevens.  The U.S. Tobacco Company integrated commercials into the show when, usually at the halfway point, Kane would enter his favorite tobacco shop and discuss pipe tobacco and cigarettes with shop owner Tucker "Happy" McMann.  At the start and finish of the show Kane was shown in shadow, lighting his pipe.

The radio shows were not audio rebroadcasts of the TV series but original episodes produced for radio.  This meant that the actors did two different shows every week - one on radio and the other on TV.  "Martin Kane" was the first private eye series to appear on television.  Gargan played Kane in both mediums as an affable investigator who sported a bowtie and smoked a pipe.  As Gargan portrayed him, Kane was less hardboiled and more like somebody's uncle.  But he was resolute in pursuing his cases to their end.  By 1950 the TV show had reached the number 12 spot in the ratings and in the next two seasons placed in the top ten.  The radio show premiered three weeks before the TV series began and both were very popular.  Each actor to portray Kane brought a different and slightly tougher spin to the character.  Gargan was the world-weary but avuncular shamus who worked closely with the NYPD.  As the series progressed Kane started to show more grit and his buddy-buddy relationship with the cops started to fade.  Nolan was a wise-cracking private eye, and Tracy was a hardboiled cynic with a streak of sentimentality.  Handsome Mark Stevens, star of numerous movies, added a certain youthfulness and rugged appeal that his predecessors lacked.

RADIO

"Martin Kane, Private Detective" produced about 175 episodes.  Today, only 29 are known to still exist.  It began on Mutual from August 7, 1949 to June 24, 1951.  It then moved to NBC, July 1, 1951 to December 21, 1952.

TELEVISION

"Martin Kane, Private Eye" aired on NBC, September 1, 1949 to May 20, 1954.  120 episodes were produced.  When the series first began it was broadcast live.  The half-hour shows were all done in black & white.

"The New Adventures of Martin Kane, Private Eye" was a syndicated series with William Gargan returning to the role.  The 39 episodes were produced by Tower of London for ABC-TV with Kane now in London plying his trade.  The show aired September 14, 1957 until June 8, 1958.  After its initial run it was re-syndicated as "Assignment: Danger".

COMICS

Fox Features published two issues of "Martin Kane, Private Eye".  The issues were numbered #2 and #4 - there was no #1 or #3.  And issue #4 was dated two months before #2.  The covers portrayed a small picture of William Gargan as Kane, though the books themselves had nothing to do with the character.  The contents were reproductions of Fox's true-crime comic book "Crime Does Not Pay".  #2 was dated August 1950, and #4 was June 1950.  More curious was Blue Circle Comics #4 that was published by Rural Home Publications in 1945.  Copies of this comic book were reprinted in the early 1950s (by Fox?) and "Martin Kane, Private Eye" was stamped across the cover.  It was possibly intended to be a third issue of "Martin Kane", but the content had nothing to do with the private detective whose name was on the cover.

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