The Adventures of Sam Spade

The Adventures of Sam Spade  -  Listen to Episodes, Below

The Adventures of Sam Spade was an extremely popular radio show, starring Howard Duff in the lead role. It was so popular that the show's sponsor, Wildroot Hair Oil, ran a series of clever ads they disguised as comic strips and placed in newspapers, magazines, and comic books. The strip featured radio's Sam Spade promoting the hair tonic. 

Of course most people know Sam Spade was introduced in the book The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hamett. The book was a huge success and was made into a major motion picture.  The end of the book was quite unsettling, however, because the audience never was told what happened to the elusive falcon.

During the early part of the run on radio, William Spier, producer, offered a one-hour episode of Suspense that featured Howard Duff as Spade.  It was called "The Khandi Tooth Caper" and the story was actually a sequel to The Maltese Falcon that answered many of the unanswered questions from the book. That program was later offered as a two-part episode on The Adventures of Sam Spade.

Come now and listen to one of the most popular detective shows on radio in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Duff is tremendous as Spade and Lurene Tuttle plays Effie, his ever-loyal, ever-efficient office staff of one.