Enjoy two free drama episodes of Night Beat w/ Frank Lovejoy

A) 9/25/50 A Case of Butter

B) 9/4/52 The Bomb on Flight 63

Frank Lovejoy starred as Randy Stone (in the pilot his name was “Lucky” Stone), a war hero and streetwise journalist, who combed Chicago’s windy streets after office hours – during the “Night Beat” – in search of human-interest stories. A prolific newspaper columnist for the Chicago Star, Randy was a hardboiled yet kind-hearted character and his laconic style came in handy when talking bad guys out of doing vile deeds. Airing from 1950 until 1952, NBC referred to the program as a “dramatic thriller” but that wasn’t completely accurate and Night Beat seemed to defy classification. It wasn’t really a detective series and there was no sidekick, little violence, and no bullying newspaper editor screaming on the phone about deadlines. Focusing on the psychology of the characters and their motivation, the series was cerebral in nature. The dialogue was rhythmic and hypnotic, the music of Frank Worth set the mood, and the critics raved. Less than a year after the radio program went off the air, Frank Lovejoy reprised his role as Randy Stone for a would-be pilot episode of television’s weekly anthology, Four Star Playhouse. The gritty tough-guy dialogue of the radio scripts was better suited to the airwaves and the pilot never went beyond the initial airing.