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Vintage Radio Shows brings you the golden age of entertainment with classic comedies, mysteries, dramas, westerns, and serials from the 1930s–1950s. Enjoy restored recordings from over 40,000 episodes of old time radio, plus historic newsreels, film serials, and vintage cartoons.

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Yesterday · 29 min
Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "The Osage Bank Robbery" (1938) | Full Episode
The Brogan brothers, two of the most wanted killers in the West, rob the bank at Osage and shoot the banker for no reason at all, then vanish without leaving a trail. The sheriff's posse rides out without Sleepy and Missouri, two broke old prospectors who once gave away every dime from their played-out silver mine to the poor families of the county. So the Lone Ranger, posing as an Eastern mining expert, sends the old partners back to their abandoned tunnel with a hint of a new silver vein, a plan, and a bundle of blasting powder. A January 24, 1938 broadcast from radio's golden-age Western, with Earle Graser as the masked man and John Todd as Tonto, and the William Tell Overture riding in the opening. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
Monday · 29 min
Old Time Radio Mystery — Suspense: "The Lodger" (1940) | Full Episode
London, 1888. A quiet, soft-spoken man takes the upstairs room at the Buntings' boarding house, pays in advance, keeps odd hours, and asks that his landlady never touch the black bag he carries. Out in Whitechapel, a killer the papers call the Avenger is working his way through the fog. Herbert Marshall plays the mysterious lodger and Edmund Gwenn is the landlord who slowly begins to wonder whom he has let into his home, in a CBS audition broadcast that helped launch Suspense, the long-running anthology of 'radio's outstanding theater of thrills.' Adapted from Marie Belloc Lowndes' 1913 novel, the same story Alfred Hitchcock filmed in 1927. Broadcast July 22, 1940. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
Sunday · 29 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — John Steele, Adventurer: "Cargo Unknown" (1949) | Full Episode
Lou Cardone flew 71 fighter missions over Europe and came home too restless to sit still, so he bought a surplus twin-engine ship and called it the Anything, Anywhere Airline. Then a soft-spoken stranger with a file on every quiet cargo Lou ever flew offers him twenty thousand dollars to carry a man with a bandaged face to Argentina. An engine quits over the Atlantic, and the pilot, the passenger, and a young woman from Vienna spend two weeks on a twelve-foot raft with one revolver, food for two, and a game only one of them can win. From John Steele, Adventurer, Mutual's pulp-style anthology of stories 'taken from the files' of a roving soldier of fortune, with Don Douglas as Steele and a young Ross Martin in the cast. Broadcast July 12, 1949. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 10 · 23 min
Old Time Radio Horror — Escape: "Dead of Night" (1947) | Full Episode
Before Escape ever became CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, it was auditioned with this: a chilling half hour adapted from the ventriloquist segment of the 1945 British horror classic Dead of Night. Eric Hickson has clawed his way up from cheap music halls to London's fashionable Kit-Kat Club with his wooden partner Toby. Then the American star Mel Baxter turns up in the audience with his beautiful wife, and Toby starts saying things Hickson never put in his mouth. Berry Kroeger is Hickson and a young Art Carney is the voice of Toby, in the March 21, 1947 audition directed by John Moseman. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 9 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — Escape: "The Man Who Would Be King" (1947) | Full Episode
Escape was CBS radio's half hour of high adventure, and this is the night it began: the series premiere of July 7, 1947, produced and directed by William N. Robson. Les Crutchfield adapts Rudyard Kipling's tale of Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, two loafers who sign a contract to swear off liquor and women until they become kings of Kafiristan, a land no Englishman has entered and left alive. With twenty smuggled Martini rifles and a working knowledge of Freemasonry, they find their kingdom in the snowbound mountains. Then Dravot decides a king needs a queen. Raymond Lawrence is Peachy, Eric Snowden is Dravot, and Herbert Rawlinson is Kipling, the newspaperman who hears the story told. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 8 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — The Green Lama: "Adventure of the Perfect Prisoner" (1949) | Full Episode
Jethro Dumont spent ten years in a Tibetan monastery and came home as the Green Lama, a crime fighter who never carries a gun. In the final broadcast of the 1949 CBS series, starring Paul Frees with Ben Wright as his servant Tulku, a reform-minded warden invites Dumont to see a model prisoner pardoned, but the convict sculptor is found with a knife in his back. Then a hundred armed men seize the prison arsenal, a hard-line captain readies the machine guns, and Dumont walks alone and unarmed across the yard to talk them out. The killer turns out to be closer to the warden's office than anyone suspected. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 8 · 28 min
Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "The Magic Belt" (1942) | Full Episode
The Lone Ranger is an iconic radio western serial about a masked former Texas Ranger and his Native American companion Tonto who right wrongs in the Old West. In this classic episode, the masked hero and his loyal companion face danger and intrigue in their mission to bring justice to the frontier. Featuring Brace Beemer as The Lone Ranger and John Todd as Tonto, with the legendary William Tell Overture as its theme. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 7 · 32 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — The Green Lama: "The Man Who Never Existed" (1949) | Full Episode
Jethro Dumont spent ten years in a Tibetan monastery and came home as the Green Lama, a crime fighter who refuses to carry a gun. In this audition recording of the CBS series' premiere story, starring Paul Frees with Ben Wright as his loyal servant Tulku, an old friend, archaeologist Harlan Hendricks, phones Dumont for help and is cut off mid-sentence. By nightfall Hendricks is in the morgue with a bullet in his head and every trace of his existence erased: no birth record, no driver's license, nothing. The only clue is a stolen Maya carving of the feathered serpent Kukulkan, and the trail leads from a New York museum to a moonlit excavation outside Mexico City. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 7 · 55 min
Old Time Radio Drama — Biography In Sound: "Meet Ernest Hemingway" (1954) | Full Episode
Biography in Sound, a CBS documentary series produced by Norman Corwin, presented biographical profiles of notable American figures through dramatizations, interviews, and narration. A pioneering program that brought the lives of American heroes, artists, and leaders to radio audiences. This episode profiles meet ernest hemingway, exploring his life, literary career, and lasting impact on American letters. Originally broadcast on 1954-12-19. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 6 · 28 min
Old Time Radio Mystery — Lives of Harry Lime: "Mexican Hat Trick" (1951) | Full Episode
Orson Welles reprises Harry Lime, the charming racketeer of The Third Man, in this 1951 series that tells the con man's adventures before that fatal night in Vienna. In "Mexican Hat Trick," a broke Lime in Mexico City is handed a dying pickpocket's confession to a 17-year-old murder, and sells a grieving widow and her daughter Alicia on a search for the lost affidavits that could clear her father's name. The trail leads to the sleepy mountain town of León, a church bell that lost its music the year of the killing, a ragged beggar who tries to kill Harry, and a midnight climb up the bell rope. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 5 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — Challenge of the Yukon: "The Stolen Pups" (1947) | Full Episode
Challenge of the Yukon follows Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his lead sled dog, Yukon King, as they keep the peace in the Klondike. In "The Stolen Pups," a simple-minded old café handyman longs for a puppy to replace the dog he lost, and two crooked bank clerks use that longing to get their hands on a prospector's $10,000. When the money and two newborn Malamute pups vanish from a cabin, Preston puts King on the scent through the melting northern snow. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 4 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Adventure — Challenge of the Yukon: "Sam's Gold" (1947) | Full Episode
Challenge of the Yukon follows Sergeant Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his lead sled dog, Yukon King, as they keep the peace in the Klondike. In "Sam's Gold," a kindly prospector once nursed a cantankerous hermit through a winter, and years later the old man's hidden gold nuggets resurface. Now a trading post owner raising his young granddaughter finds his past catching up with him, and Preston must sort out a moral dilemma and a daring kidnapping attempt in the brutal northern cold. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
October 3 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "Double For An Outlaw" (1942) | Full Episode
The Lone Ranger is an iconic masked western hero who fights for justice alongside his Native American companion Tonto. Broadcast throughout the 1930s-1950s, this classic radio serial featured thrilling adventures across the American frontier with the legendary William Tell Overture as its theme. In this episode, In 'Double For An Outlaw,' the Lone Ranger faces a daring case of mistaken identity and deception. Someone is impersonating the masked hero, causing trouble and endangering innocent people. The Lone Ranger and Tonto must work together to expose the imposter and restore justice to the frontier. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 30 · 59 min
Old Time Radio Sci-Fi — Mercury Theater On The Air: "War of the Worlds" (1938) | Full Episode
Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air present H. G. Wells's tale of a Martian invasion, adapted by Howard Koch and told as a live dance-band broadcast that keeps being interrupted by news bulletins. A meteor lands at Grover's Mill, New Jersey; a professor peers at the smoking crater; then the Martians rise from the pit with their Heat-Ray and the tripods begin to wade toward New York. Broadcast on CBS on Halloween eve, October 30, 1938, with Welles as Professor Pierson and Bernard Herrmann conducting, it is the most famous half hour in the history of radio, and it still works on anyone who hears it cold. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 29 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Thriller — Suspense: "The Diary of Sophronia Winters" (1943) | Full Episode
Suspense presents Lucille Fletcher's first original script for the series, a study in terror told through a diary. Sophronia Winters is forty, freed by her father's death, and on her first holiday in St. Petersburg, Florida when a charming hotel owner from Maine sits down beside her on the beach and proposes within the week. Married, she rides north to his enormous, empty hotel at the end of a foggy road, where the doors are locked and her husband has strange things to say about his late sister-in-law, who happened to share her name. Agnes Moorehead, fresh from Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, stars with Ray Collins, produced by William Spier and heard here on CBS in April 1943. The solution waits on the last page of the diary. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 28 · 24 min
Old Time Radio Detective — Sam Spade: "The Bouncing Betty Caper" (1948) | Full Episode
A fussy English butler named Carruthers walks into Sam Spade's office, tidies his ashtray, and hires him to go undercover as a chauffeur at Bleakcliff, a clifftop estate near Squid Beach. Someone keeps trying to kill young Kathy McGraw, and the household blames her troubled brother Tony. Kathy blames her stepfather, a psychiatrist and fortune hunter. Before Spade can prove anything, a wartime German land mine goes off in the doctor's office. Howard Duff plays Spade and Lurene Tuttle is Effie in this 1948 CBS caper, heard here in its Armed Forces Radio Service rebroadcast. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 27 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Horror — Lights Out: "It Happened" (1938) | Full Episode
Jean Taylor is a spoiled rich girl from New York on a chaperoned art tour of Paris, and she is bored stiff. She slips away from the Louvre looking for fun and finds a smooth stranger who says he knows her father and offers to show her the real Paris. By nightfall she is locked in an empty house with a man who wants $150,000 in revenge, a heavy candlestick in her hand, and nowhere to run but down, into the black, rushing sewers beneath the city. Down there an old man named Louis pulls her from the water. He has a workshop, and a hobby: exquisite lace-like necklaces, carved from what the current brings him. Arch Oboler wrote and directed this Lights Out nightmare, letting you hear both Jean's voice and the frantic thoughts racing through her head. First broadcast May 11, 1938, from NBC's Chicago studios. Also known as "Her Name Was Jean." 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 26 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Western — The Lone Ranger: "Murder Strikes Thrice" (1942) | Full Episode
The Lone Ranger and Tonto ride into Excalibur, a dusty frontier town where somebody is killing men on their birthdays. A year ago, three witnesses swore away the alibi of a young drifter named Paul Zember, and the court sent him to prison for life on his own birthday. Now Cole Rankin has been poisoned at his birthday toast, Lem Parsons knifed in his bed, and Seth Hollins shot in the street, each on his birthday. The town is sure the convict has come back for revenge, the honest sheriff has been voted out, and the judge who passed sentence may be next. But the judge is hiding a secret of his own, and the masked man suspects the killer wants the town looking the wrong way. Brace Beemer stars as the Lone Ranger, with John Todd as Tonto, in a Fran Striker story first broadcast October 2, 1942. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 25 · 25 min
Old Time Radio Western — Have Gun Will Travel: "Strange Vendetta" (1958) | Full Episode
The very first radio episode of Have Gun Will Travel, with John Dehner as Paladin, the cultured San Francisco gunman of CBS's "thinking man's Western." San Francisco, 1875: Paladin lends his opera box to a Mexican grandee, Don Miguel Rojas, and his lovely wife. After The Marriage of Figaro, an assassin strikes from behind the curtain, the blade is poisoned, and a dying Don Miguel speaks of a family blood feud. His last wish: pay Paladin $1,000 to escort his coffin safely across the desert to his home in Mexico. But a coffin can carry more than a body, and the road south runs past a lonely waterhole called Loma Verde. With Ben Wright as Hey Boy and Lillian Buyeff, Harry Bartell and Joseph Kearns. From Ken Kolb's TV script, adapted by John Dawson; first aired November 23, 1958. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974
September 24 · 29 min
Old Time Radio Western — The Six Shooter: "Britt Ponset's Christmas Carol" (1953) | Full Episode
Jimmy Stewart rides the winter trail as Britt Ponset, the easygoing drifter of NBC's The Six Shooter. With Christmas coming on, he comes upon Johnny, an orphaned runaway who wants no part of the holiday, so Britt sits the boy down and tells him Dickens' A Christmas Carol the only way he knows how: as a Western, with a frontier Eben Scrooge (Howard McNear, later Floyd the barber), his clerk Bob, and three ghosts who have to ride a long way to change a hard man's heart. With Dick Beals as Johnny and Eleanor Audley as Aunt Millie. Written by Frank Burt; first aired December 20, 1953. 🎧 Hundreds more classic radio shows free at https://www.vintageradioshows.com 📱 Listen anywhere with the Vintage Radio app for iPhone and iPad: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vintage-radio/id455577974

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