“Cairo, gateway to the Ancient East…where modern adventure and intrigue unfold against the backdrop of antiquity…”

Rocky Jordan (1948-1950) aired “Madame Dulac’s Daughter” on Sunday, February12, 1950. This is the 17th Rocky Jordan episode we have showcased since 2011 and the second since August of 2024, just over two years ago.. From a previous introduction and for the benefit of new listeners unfamiliar with the Rocky Jordan program, here are the basics of the show’s background. Rocky Jordan ran from October 21, 1948 through September 5, 1950 and starred Jack Moyles as Rocky Jordan. There were several iterations of the show, the first of which aired in 1945 under the title A Man Named Jordan. Only two episodes of this early precursor are known to still exist. This version was set in Istanbul, Turkey but was otherwise the same as its successor. An attempt to revive the series with famed Hollywood actor George Raft aired for one season from 1950-51. A couple of half-hearted attempts were made at further revivals in 1955 and ’57, but none of these fifteen-minute episodes survive.

Rocky Jordan was modeled on the classic, much revered movie Casablanca, which premiered in New York on November 26, 1942 and then in general release on January 23, 1943. Casablanca starred Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, the American exile who ran Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca, Morocco, an unallied country during World War II located in northwest Africa and bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Rocky Jordan is set in Cairo, Egypt, in northeast Africa, said country also bordering the Mediterranean. Rocky calls St. Louis home (but was chased abroad by his enemies), whereas Rick hailed from New York; both are intimated to have shady pasts. The counterpart to Rick’s Cafe Americain is Rocky Jordan’s Cafe Tambourine, not far from the “mosque Sultan Hassan,” (photo below) where Rocky finds himself routinely involved with “crime, mystery, and beautiful women.” Much like Rick’s Cafe Americain which is set during WW II, Jordan’s Cafe Tambourine, while set a few short years following the war, is a magnet for all ethnicities and types, from the respectable to the rogue.

As you might imagine, Rocky seems always to find himself at the center of trouble. Egyptian-Muslim police Captain Sam Sabaaya (married with four children) plays it straight and by the book but helps Rocky when he can, while Sabaaya’s Sergeant Greco dislikes Jordan and attempts to pin every mishap and crime on the part-time detective and foreigner.

The writers always strove for authenticity in Rocky’s adventures, researching names of streets and places for accuracy, and the show’s producers even hired an Egyptian writer/consultant in later episodes for further accuracy of detail in regard to the locales and various cultures, Cairo being a centuries-long crossroads and melting pot of the Middle East.

“Madame Dulac’s Daughter” opens with Rocky walking along the street when a local stops him, hands him one half of a torn $1,000 bill, and says to receive the other half all he must do is talk with Madame Dulac about an offer she will make him, and if he accepts he will be given the other half of the large note as his reward if he succeeds in her behalf. Accepting the torn $1,000 bill (in American currency), Rocky makes his way to Madame Dulac’s home to hear her out. She is obviously quite wealthy as her richly appointed home indicates. Her offer? Her beautiful daughter—grown, but spoiled and strong-willed—has taken up with an older man, a con man always involved in some scheme or other. Madame Dulac knows this man is no good for her daughter and wants Rocky to make sure the con man is removed from her daughter’s life. With no set plan in mind, Rocky tracks down the daughter at the local Cairo race track and discovers the shyster she has fallen for is an old acquaintance of his from the United States, a man who cheated Rocky in some venture or other and who Rocky is more than happy to have caught up to after all this time. Just when this looks like a rather mundane, uncomplicated affair and well within Rocky’s wheelhouse to handle quickly and collect the other half of his $1,000 reward, things turn sideways quickly. Before Rocky realizes what he has walked into, with the situation more complex (and deadly) than he ever imagined, he…. Well, friends, let’s just say the plot thickens beyond all recognition, and boy does it ever. The only way Rocky will earn his reward is to find out the hard way the story involving “Madame Dulac’s Daughter.”

(The CD linked above includes this episode and 19 others, all digitally remastered and restored.)

Play Time: 29:33

{Airing on a Sunday evening, the neighborhood gang was ready and willing to seek more stories of adventure and danger like this episode of Rocky Jordan, so headed for the corner newsstand after school the next afternoon. F.B.I. Detective Stories (1949-51) lasted on 14 bimonthly issues but its timing and public sentiment no doubt accelerated its demise despite any possible quality of its stories. Popular Detective (1934-53), a meat and potatoes detective pulp, had a solid run of 133 issues, aided by fiction from most of the top detective writers in the field. It was a bimonthly in 1950. Super-Detective (1940-50) began in 1934 as Super-Detective Stories, but folded in 1935 after only 15 issues. It was revived 5 years later in 1940 with its current title, simply Super-Detective, under which title it managed another 65 issues. After the war its schedule became erratic, sometimes a monthly for awhile, others bimonthly, until it ended up briefly as a monthly again in 1950 but could scrape together only 6 issues before giving up the ghost.}

[Left: F.B. I. Detective, 2/50 – Center: Popular Detective, 1/50 – Right: Super-Detective, 2/50]

   

To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.