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 “Treasure Incorporated” on January 24, 1950 as the show’s 95th episode. Not surprisingly, we have aired many episodes (35+) of this top-shelf program over the past 14 years, the most recent coming in April of 2023. 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.

“Treasure Incorporated” stars Frank Lovejoy (1912-1962, photo top right) who is probably best known on radio as the star of Night Beat (1950-52), though he garnered a well-earned reputation as one of the top 10 most memorable voices on radio for his many appearances on a variety of shows over the years. Lovejoy also became a well known and respected film actor in the 1940s and 50s, having supporting or major roles in more than two dozen films, a scant few of many worth mentioning being 1949’s In a Lonely Place (starring Humphrey Bogart), and the title role in the classic 1951 noir crime thriller I Was a Communist for the FBI. Lovejoy featured prominently in several World War II and/or Korean War films, the most high profile probably his co-starring role with James Stewart in 1954’s Strategic Air Command. Of interest to SF genre fans is Lovejoy’s role as Lt. Tom Brennan opposite Vincent Price in the 1953 3D horror flick House of Wax (the first color 3D film to be released by a major American studio, and the first in a regular theater setting to offer stereophonic sound).

As for “Treasure Incorporated,” Lovejoy portrays a man who devises a get-rich-quick scheme that of course goes awry. The man’s bored wife is no help and let’s her husband know that his plan to build a hotel on a lush Caribbean island will certainly fail, even when he explains how he will bury bits of jewelry and rare coins around the island and then promote the possibility of lost treasure to naive marks to draw them to his hotel. This grift isn’t a new one and the usual storyline doesn’t play out like one might expect, with our new hotel owner not the only one operating from greed to enhance their fortunes, but even they fall prey to something none of them figured on, and is what forms the crux of the tale with the ironic title of “Treasure Incorporated.”

(The linked CD at top left includes “Treasure Incorporated” as well as 11 other episodes in a 6-CD set.)

Play Time: 29:16

{Airing on a Tuesday evening in late January of 1950, the neighborhood gang was primed and ready for a mid-week visit to their favorite newsstand after school the next afternoon. fantastic Adventures (1934-53) was published by Raymond A. Palmer as a companion magazine to Amazing Stories. One reliable source recounts that at first fantastic Adventures ran lighter, frothier fare, but that by the late 1940s and certainly by 1950 one had difficulty telling which stories appeared in which magazine. fantastic Adventures was a monthly in 1950. Fantastic Novels (1940-41, 1948-51) made an instant name for itself by reprinting classic sf and fantasy novels from previous decades, many before there came to be SF or Fantasy magazines as a genre. An entire generation of readers could now discover and enjoy classic stories by such as George Allan England, A. Merritt, Austin Hall & Homer Eon Flint, Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster, and among others the husband and wife team of C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner. Fantastic Novels was edited by Mary Gnaedinger and was a bi-monthly in 1950. Thrilling Wonder Stories (1936-55) enjoyed a storied history and was one of the most beloved of the early SF pulp magazines, many of its colorful, imaginative, action-filled tales firing the imaginations of readers young and old for decades. Many of its issues go for premium prices at SF convention huckster rooms when they can be found at all. TWS was a bi-monthly in 1950.}

[Left: fantastic Adventures, 1/50 – Center: Fantastic Novels, 1/50 – Right: Thrilling Wonder Stories, 2/50]

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