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In its final season NBC University Theater, billed on air as the NBC Theater, was still bringing a great novel to radio every week from Hollywood. Tonight it is Leo Tolstoy's scandalous "The Kreutzer Sonata," adapted by Richard E. Davis. In a prison cell, Vasya Pozdnyshev (Whitfield Connor) gives his statement to Inspector Karkov (Stanley Farrar): ten bitter years of marriage, and then the handsome violinist Trukhachevsky (Paul Dubov), who came to play Beethoven duets with his wife (Vivi Janiss). Too proud to admit he is afraid, Vasya keeps inviting him back, until one midnight he comes home to find them alone in the music room. Directed by Andrew C. Love; announcer Don Stanley. First aired on NBC January 3, 1951.

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By the fall of 1949 NBC University Theater (now billed simply as the NBC Theater) was broadcasting a full hour of a great novel from Hollywood every Sunday, with college courses built around the plays. This week is Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady," adapted by Richard E. Davis. Isabel Archer, a spirited young woman from Albany, turns down an English lord at a Tudor country house outside London because she wants to see life for herself. An inheritance arranged by her ailing cousin Ralph (Larry Dobkin) sets her free, and the cultivated Madame Merle steers her toward the elegant American expatriate Gilbert Osmond (Tony Barrett) in Florence and Rome, where Isabel learns what her freedom has cost. With Ben Wright as Lord Warburton and Gayne Whitman narrating; directed by Andrew C. Love. First aired on NBC October 2, 1949.

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NBC University Theater brought the great novels to radio from Hollywood, with film stars in the leads. This hour is Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," adapted by Ernest Kinoy, starring John Lund as Lt. Frederic Henry, an American ambulance officer on the Italian front in the First World War, and Lurene Tuttle as Catherine Barkley, the English nurse he meets through his friend Rinaldi. What starts as a wartime flirtation becomes a love that outlasts his wounding, the chaos of the retreat, and a desperate escape to Switzerland, until the war's logic catches up with them anyway. First aired on NBC August 6, 1948, with commentary by critic Malcolm Cowley, music by Albert Harris, and direction by Andrew C. Love.

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Gunsmoke brought the adult Western to radio, with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal of Dodge City. In "Kitty Caught," Chester comes back from Wichita with word that the Karp brothers, bank robbers drifting up from the Indian Territory, are headed for Dodge. The warning comes too late. The Karps hit the bank that same morning, kill the cashier, and ride north with Kitty as their hostage, promising to leave her dead on the trail if anyone follows. Matt and Chester track them anyway, past a cowboy the brothers shot out of his saddle, to a lonely prairie cabin. Then they lie in the buffalo grass all day, close enough to the cabin that a single sound could get Kitty killed, and a rattlesnake coils up beside Chester. Written by John Meston and first aired on CBS October 16, 1954, with Parley Baer as Chester, Howard McNear as Doc, Georgia Ellis as Kitty, and John Dehner, Lawrence Dobkin and Joe Du Val.

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Gunsmoke brought the adult Western to radio, with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshal of Dodge City. In "Gone Straight," a special deputy for the New Mexico Stock Raisers Association hands Dillon a Santa Fe warrant for Dane Shaw, a former rider with Billy the Kid, and Matt and Chester make the hard two-day ride south to Tascosa on the Canadian River. There they meet Nat Temple, owner of the Red Deer saloon, the man building the town its first schoolhouse, who has given his barkeep, gunman Mike Postle, a second chance away from rustler Harry Gunter. When Gunter vows to ride in and drag Postle back, Temple swears to stand beside him, and Dillon quietly realizes Temple is the very man his warrant names. Written by John Meston and first aired on CBS August 22, 1953, with Parley Baer as Chester, Howard McNear as Doc, and John Dehner, Tom Tully, Harry Bartell, Paul Dubov, Helen Kleeb and James Nusser.

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For ten dollars, a numerologist over a barbershop promises to put Fibber McGee in harmony with the universe by giving him a new name: Homer K. Frink, eleven letters, a prime number, guaranteed lucky. Fibber shows off his new vibrations to the Old Timer, Mrs. Uppington, Harlow Wilcox and Wallace Wimple, then jaywalks against a red light and tells the cop his name. Homer K. Frink, it turns out, is wanted in seven states for arson, murder, bank robbery, forgery, swindling, parole violation and bigamy. Under the station-house spotlight Fibber 'confesses' to the big Chicago fur warehouse job, and it takes Doc Gamble and an appendix scar to spring him. Broadcast on NBC May 4, 1943, with Jim and Marian Jordan, Bill Thompson, Isabel Randolph, Arthur Q. Bryan and Harlow Wilcox, plus the King's Men singing 'I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'.'

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A package marked FRAGILE, insured for $800, lands at 79 Wistful Vista, and inside is a leather sample case stamped in gold: Fibber McGee, special representative of a fancy watch company. Molly landed him the job at Mrs. Uppington's bridge party, and Fibber has already done the arithmetic: a hundred watches a week, a thousand dollars in commission, and a hotel suite to match. His very first sales call goes wrong in the worst possible way. Halfway through his pitch at the jewelry counter, a gunman walks in and holds up the store, Fibber gives chase, and the cop on the corner collars the man running down the street carrying a case full of gold watches. Then every friend who comes down to vouch for the McGees ends up behind bars beside them: Harlow Wilcox for an unpaid parking ticket, Mrs. Uppington on suspicion of being the fence, and Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve because the judge's wife wears his girdles. Broadcast on NBC February 11, 1941, the week of Lincoln's Birthday, with Jim and Marian Jordan, Harold Peary, Bill Thompson and Isabel Randolph. Listen for the hall closet, a gag barely a year old here and, as Molly says, it "still gets a laugh."

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Before Bob Bailey, before Charles Russell, there was Dick Powell. In this December 1948 audition, never broadcast, Powell plays Johnny Dollar, the freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account. East Coast Underwriters needs him to keep Milford Brooks III, a spoiled heir with a $2 million life policy, from killing himself. The beneficiary is a restaurant owner Brooks owes $200,000. Then Brooks vanishes out a window, his coat turns up on a ferry, and a matchbook in the pocket points straight at the man who collects. Dollar has to work out whether he's looking at a suicide, a murder, or a setup. Powell passed on the series to star in Richard Diamond, so this is the only time he played the role.

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The Lone Ranger and Tonto have jailed four of the knife-throwing Tarantula gang with help from Texas Jack of the Border City Cafe, and now Jack hands over a dead sheriff's letter naming the last of them: Larkspur, who cheated old Bart Billings out of the Last Chance mine by burying its gold vein under a blast. Billings turns up in an arroyo with a Tarantula knife in his back, a knife fired from a crossbow carries the gang boss's order to kill the masked man, and an ambush at Overhang Rock closes in on two glowing headbands in the dark. The final chapter of the September 1942 Tarantula serial, with Brace Beemer as the Lone Ranger and John Todd as Tonto.

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Caleb Saxon and his wife Edith ride the stage to Basin City hoping to leave the whispers back East behind them: a court cleared Caleb, but everyone still believes he stole the trust fund he managed for his late friend's son. Then the stranger riding up top pulls a gun, forces the coach down the lonely Creek Trail, and marches the old couple off into the woods with every dollar they own. The young man who swore to get even with Caleb is camped with the Lone Ranger, and the masked man has a hard lesson in mind for him. A July 1, 1940 broadcast with Earle Graser as the Lone Ranger and John Todd as Tonto.

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