Richard Diamond Presented by the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio – Details, episodes & analysis

During Dick Powell's lengthy career, he had many stages. From the 1930s to 1944, he was known as a skilled singer and comic actor. He landed the film role Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, he starred in the first true hard-boiled Private Eye show Rogue's Gallery, and then he spent many years playing a variety of hard-boiled characters in Noir films.

 In many ways, Richard Diamond was a perfect marriage of the two halves of Powell's performing career before the next stage of Powell's career which saw him as a creative force behind programs such as the Zane Grey Theater.

The series was unusual in that many episodes featured hard-boiled fisticuffs and gunfights. Then the series shifts to Richard Diamond showing up at his girlfriend Helen Asher's The series also stars Virginia Gregg as Dick's wealthy girlfriend Helen Asher, Wilms Herbert plays Sergeant Otis, and a series of actors including Ed Begley and Arthur Q. Bryant played Diamond's best friend, Lieutenant Walt Levinson.  to serenade her as he softly sings and plays the piano and the two banter back and forth. It's an unusual series that only Powell could make work.

Diamond was a former NYPD detective who served in the O.S.S. during the war before returning home to start his own private agency. His rates are quite exorbitant at $100 a day plus expenses. Compare this to contemporary Philip Marlowe's $25 a day. He enjoys a good relationship with Lt. Levinson of the Homicide Squad while being a bane to the existence of the slow-witted Sergeant Otis.The series aired for eighty episodes on NBC, fifty-one of which were sustaining (without a sponsor) and twenty-nine sponsored by Rexall. \

It then moved to ABC and was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes for sixty-five weeks. The series returned to radio in an unusual way: CBS aired reruns of the show as a summer replacement in 1953, which was unprecedented for the time.

The character of Richard Diamond returned in 1957 on television with less of the comedy as a half hour detective program starring David Janssen (The Fugitive). The new series lasted four seasons and also featured appearances by a young Mary Tyler Moore.


Adam Graham is your host providing commentary on each episode, adding historical context and responding to listeners during the period the series was a featured show on the Great Detectives of Old TIme Radio podcast.