Tired of the everyday grind?
Ever dream of a life of … romantic adventure?
Want to get away from it all?
We offer you … ESCAPE!
Escape (1947-1954) aired “The Loup Garou” on Sunday, November 16, 1952 as the show’s 157th episode. Not surprisingly, we have aired many episodes (over 40) of this top-shelf program over the past 17 years, the most recent coming almost a year ago in early May of 2025, with this current episode being but the second since April of 2024. A spinoff and sister show of the highly popular radio program Suspense (1942-62), Escape produced (according to one source) 251 episodes of which 241 were unique stories, plots, or scripts. Escape concentrated on adventure tales, some with an SF/F theme, though the straight adventure tale set in exotic locales was its meat and potatoes. Escape soon established itself with an even more focused approach to action and exotic adventure, dramatizing literary classics (from such as Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Nelson Bond, Ray Bradbury, Eric Ambler, Jack London, Joseph Conrad, and others) while at the same time treating its audience to many brand new tales, a fair number of which have become radio classics. In fact, some of Escape‘s original shows were so well written, acted, and produced they were later reincarnated for episodes of Suspense.
While strangely not consistently supported by its host network CBS, that rarely gave advance notice of upcoming program titles and moved the show to different times and days willy-nilly no fewer than 18 times over its 7-year run, the show found a faithful audience, and continued to produce well-written scripts with many of the finest actors in radio.
“The Loup Garou” takes us to the steamy swamps of Louisiana, where the bayou holds not only gators but snakes, mosquitos, stifling heat, and creatures not born of man but through generations of tales passed down through word of mouth until they have become hard-held truth, superstition become fact and unshakeable belief. Such is the backdrop when a young man comes to live in the local village about the same time as mysterious deaths occur. Add to this one of the longtime elder residents whose beautiful daughter has fallen for the newcomer and you have all the makings for village gossip to run amuck with tales of a loup garou–a werewolf–in the guise of the newcomer. The father of the daughter smitten with the newcomer warns her to stay away from him, but of course she does not, not believing him to be the loup garou of ignorant legend. What transpires next is an escalation of the plot now set in motion as the chase is on for the locals to confront and then hound the suspected werewolf with his death the goal. But as you might guess, things don’t always turn out the way you might wish or expect, especially when it comes to the supernatural. So put your expectations aside and enjoy the next few minutes as you learn the truth of “The Loup Garou.”
(The linked CD at top includes this episode and 11 others on a digitally remastered and restored 6 CD set.)
Play Time: 29:11
{“The Loup Garou” aired on a Sunday evening in mid-November of 1952. Thanksgiving, a mere 11 days away, might as well have been a million years away, for all the neighborhood gang had on their mind was heading for the corner newsstand the next day after school to find some exciting tales to keep their imaginations on fire, as had the story of “The Loup Garou” from the night before. As usual, they were in luck. Adventure (1910-1971) was created in direct response to Argosy, whose circulation was around 100,000 per issue. Argosy provided a wide spectrum of story types for its readership, not focusing on one type, or genre. Adventure, on the other hand, narrowed its fiction target to that of danger and thrills and found an enthusiastic audience that kept the magazine afloat for over 60 years. It was a bimonthly in 1952. Other Worlds (1949-1953) was publisher and editor Raymond Palmer’s fictional counterpart to Fate, his non-fictional magazine devoted to UFOs and unexplained phenomena. It was a monthly in 1952 but managed only 9 issues. Startling Stories (1939-1955) was one of several (now classic) SF pulps devoted to colorful adventure fare, with little regard for scientific accuracy but devoted to wild imagination in service to page-turning stories on other worlds, usually with some version of a fair maiden on the cover about to be saved by the handsome hero as he fended off aliens or monsters in all manner of shapes and sizes. Some of SF’s most beloved stories were first published in Startling Stories by some of its most popular authors. Throughout its entire run 1952 was the only year it sported a monthly schedule.}
[Left: Adventure, 11/52 – Center: Other Worlds, 11/52 – Right: Startling Stories, 11/52]
To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.