During the War, Bill Gargan led a USO group that featured Paulette Goddard, Keenan Wynn, and accordionist Andy Arcari.

They toured China-Burma-India. He spent four months overseas in some of the poorest and worst conditions of the War, putting on shows and flying in various prop planes despite a lingering ear infection, drinking whatever alcohol he could to help keep sane.

When Bill finally got home his ear was so swollen wife Mary jokingly called him Dumbo. Under contract at MGM, he borrowed an apartment in New York and went on stage. His first night he got word that friend Leslie Howard had been killed in a plane crash.

The War marked a dividing line in Bill’s life.

He went back to Hollywood and made Swing Fever, She Gets Her Man, and finally in 1945, he starred with Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, and Martha Sleeper as Joe Gallagher in The Bells of St. Mary's.

Television sets began to show up in homes as Bill and his agent Ken Dolan conceived a half-hour mystery radio show called Murder Will Out for ABC. It failed to find a long-term sponsor and was canceled.

Gargan next starred in I Deal In Crime, beginning on January 21st, 1946 on ABC. He played private investigator Ross Dolan for the next twenty months.

During that time, Gargan also guest-starred on Family Theater, hosting the second episode on February 20th, 1947.

Family Theater was created by Patrick Peyton of the Holy Cross Fathers. Mutual Broadcasting donated time under four conditions:

The show had to be a drama of top quality; strictly nonsectarian; feature a film star; and Father Peyton had to pay the production costs.

Peyton met Loretta Young, who advised him on how to approach A-listers. She became the “first lady” of Family Theater. Between 1947 and 1956, there were four-hundred eighty-two dramas broadcast. Few used religion of any kind in the plot.

Bill continued to make guest-appearances on radio, like on the October 13th, 1948 episode of Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time on ABC. It would be in 1949 that William Gargan took on his most famous role, and in the process became one of the first television drama detectives in broadcasting.