Chandu, the Magician (1932-35, 1948-50) aired “The Village of Thieves” on February 10, 1949 as the 2nd of the 13 half-hour episodes that began in February to begin the 1949 season. It ran until the end of April when the summer hiatus would intervene, the show picking up again in November with its final 6 episodes that would end the year with its Christmas Eve show. The show’s final season (consisting of another 6 episodes) would run from July 26th to August 30th, 1950. This is the 5th episode of Chandu we’ve offered since the first in April of 2023 and the first since January of this year, 2025.

The first run (1932-35) consisted of daily 15-minute episodes that became popular very quickly, so much so that a 1932 film soon followed the radio adventures of Chandu. The idea behind Chandu the Magician stemmed from the public’s interest at the time with Eastern mysticism and the occult. The Chandu character’s fictional real life name is Frank Chandler. Chandler has spent many years in the Orient studying the mystic arts and is now adept at astral projection, conjuring illusions, and teleportation among other magical abilities he uses when necessary. If this sounds like a familiar set of superpowers it was, witness magazine and radio close contemporaries like the Shadow or Mandrake the Magician—though Chandu on radio was the first. The original story arc sees Chandu chasing after the evil Roxor, who has kidnapped the husband of Chandu’s sister, Dorothy Regent. Chandu and his sister travel to all sorts of exotic locales in search of her husband (who was thought to have disappeared in a shipwreck but later to have disappeared at the hands of Roxor). Roxor, as all truly evil villains are, is bent on conquering the world and will stop at nothing to accomplish his egomaniacal ends. For the original 1932 movie, actor Edmund Lowe played Chandu, while none other than Bela Lugosi took the role of Roxor. For the 1934 sequel, however, in a surprising role reversal Lugosi was honored with the role of Chandu.

A crucial bit of the history of the show would be incomplete without mentioning that a great part of the radio show’s success was due to a young woman by the name of Vera Oldham, a former office girl who proved good on her aspirations to write. After the radio series ended in 1935 and the Chandu films were long over, Chandu was resurrected on radio in 1948, with the former story arc refurbished and updated (even bringing back Oldham to touch up the scripts), continuing Chandu’s travels to mysterious and little known parts of the world (the fabled land of Lemuria for one), and gifting him with a love interest of surpassing beauty in the character of the Egyptian princess Nadji.

For the 1948-50 radio revival, the episodes from June of 1948 through the end of January 1949 were daily 15-minute episodes, then from February of 1949 through the final show on September 6, 1950 Chandu would become full half hour, self-contained stories, of which this week’s episode is one. Tom Collins (1913-73, photo top right) would become the new voice of Chandu, Irene Tedrow (1907-1995, photo at right) played his sister Dorothy, and film actress Veola Vonn (1918-1995, photo at left) was Princess Nadji. While Dorothy appears in this episode, Princess Nadji does not. Besides her dual careers in radio and film, Tedrow would also make a name for herself in television, appearing in dozens of shows, a very few among them being Dennis the Menace (1959-63, 26 episodes as Mrs. Lucy Elkins), Dragnet, Leave it to Beaver, The Twilight Zone (episode “Walking Distance” from October 30, 1959; ranked as the 9th best TZ episode of all time), Perry Mason, Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Andy Griffith Show, The Fugitive, Hogan’s Heroes, Kung Fu, Magnum P.I., L.A. Law, and a veritable host of others. In 1939 Tedrow married William Kent, a refugee who came to the United States to escape Nazi Germany. He passed away in 1974. Tedrow died on March 10, 1995 in Hollywood from complications arising from a stroke. She was 87.

“The Village of Thieves” is where Chandu finds himself for this adventure, amidst the narrow, shadowy streets of Cairo. He becomes aware of a certain individual, an employee of the British government working for the foreign office no less, who has been abducted by a notorious band of thieves. Through his local network of native “friends” Chandu learns the man is held in a secret desert location, but that a plan to set him free may be harder than it first appears given the nature of the bloodthirsty cutthroats. Enter one of the artifacts Chandu has brought with him following his years of mystic training in India, a special crystal ball able to show him visions as needed when mentally activated. Not only does Chandu discover the whereabouts of the captured British official, but he coincidentally finds out the real power behind the tribe of thieves is none other than his arch nemesis Roxor. Continuous action of one kind or another seems to be the name of the game in this episode, so don’t get too comfortable during your brief visit to “The Village of Thieves.”