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This collection contains 12 of the greatest Christmas radio shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio!

Richard Diamond, Private Detective came to NBC Radio in 1949, starring film actor and crooner Dick Powell. Powell had recently played Philip Marlowe in the popular RKO film Murder, My Sweet and jumped at the chance to play a suave detective on the radio. Diamond was a lighthearted, New York - based private eye who enjoyed ribbing the cops and singing songs to his millionaire girlfriend, Helen Asher.

Taking its name from a popular series of mystery novels, Inner Sanctum Mysteries debuted over NBC's Blue Network in January 1941. It featured one of the most memorable and atmospheric openings in radio history: an organist hit a dissonant chord, a doorknob turned, and the famous "creaking door" slowly began to open. Every week, Inner Sanctum Mysteries told stories of ghosts, murderers, and lunatics.

The detective series Let George Do It came to radio in 1946. It starred Bob Bailey as George Valentine, ex-GI and detective for hire. Clients came to Valentine's office after reading a newspaper carrying his classified ad: "Personal notice: Danger's my stock-in-trade. If the job's too tough for you to handle, you've got a job for me, George Valentine. Write full details."

Dashiell Hammett created the character Sam Spade for his crime story The Maltese Falcon. Spade was a hard-boiled detective with cold detachment, a keen eye for detail, and an unflinching determination to exact his own justice. For most people, Spade is most closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played him in the third and most famous film version of The Maltese Falcon. In 1946 one of radio's top producers, William Spier, brought Sam Spade to the airwaves in a radio show starring newcomer Howard Duff.

Created by author Jack Boyle, Boston Blackie was a master safecracker and hardened criminal who served time in a California prison. Rehabilitated, he decided to use his knowledge of the underworld to fight crime as an amateur detective. Known as "an enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend", Boston Blackie's exploits were adapted to film, radio, and television.

Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve was a popular character appearing each week on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show. On August 31, 1941, Gildersleeve landed his own situation comedy, The Great Gildersleeve, becoming radio's first spin-off. Gildersleeve moved from the town of Wistful Vista, where Fibber McGee and Molly lived, to Summerfield, where he oversaw his late brother-in-law's estate and took on the rearing of his orphaned niece and nephew, Marjorie and Leroy Forrester.

X Minus One, widely regarded as one of the finest science fiction dramas ever produced for radio, was broadcast on NBC from 1955 until 1958. It began as a revival of NBC's Dimension X, which ran for just a year and a half, from 1950 to 1951.

Every week, Inner Sanctum Mysteries told a story of ghosts, murderers, and lunatics. Taking its name from a popular series of mystery novels, Inner Sanctum Mysteries debuted over NBC radio's Blue Network in January 1941 and featured one of the most memorable and atmospheric openings in radio history, as an organist hit a dissonant chord, a doorknob turned, and a creaking door slowly began to open.

Fibber McGee & Molly had a long and successful run on radio from 1935 to 1959, featuring its creators and stars, married couple Jim and Marian Jordan. Living in the fictional Midwestern city of Wistful Vista, Fibber was an American teller of tall tales and a braggart, usually to the exasperation of his long-suffering wife, Molly, who tried to keep him out of trouble.

Our Miss Brooks was a highly popular radio sitcom that was eventually adapted for both television and film. It starred Hollywood film and New York stage veteran Eve Arden, who specialized in playing the wisecracking friend. She often did it better than anyone else, receiving an Oscar nomination for the 1945 film Mildred Pierce. Since her skill with the wicked one-liner was beginning to lead to typecasting, Arden signed on for the lead in radio's Our Miss Brooks to find a new image.

The Weird Circle radio show was an anthology of classic thrillers from the pens of the world's best-known and respected fiction authors of the 19th century. The focus was on stories of horror, suspense, and the supernatural by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mary Shelley, with an occasional drama by the likes of Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot.

The Whistler was one of radio's top mystery programs airing from May 16, 1942 until September 22, 1955. The Whistler was an ominous narrator who opened each episode with, "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men andwomen who have stepped into the shadows. I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak."

During the height of its popularity, almost the entire country listened to the fifteen-minute, Monday-through-Friday adventures of Amos and Andy. Department stores open in the evening piped in the broadcasts so shoppers wouldn't miss an episode; movie theaters scheduled their features to end just prior to the start of Amos 'n' Andy so they too could pipe it in. The characters were members of the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge, of which George Stevens was "the Kingfish."

This collection contains 12 of the greatest mystery shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio, featuring the legendary stars that made them great. You will hear Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Joan Fontaine, and other stars in classic radio episodes from such radio shows as Suspense, Escape, The Whistler, Inner Sanctum, The Screen Directors Playhouse, and The Weird Circle, among others.

"Countdown for blastoff...X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one.... Fire! From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future - adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds." Thus began each episode of X Minus One, a half-hour science fiction radio series that was broadcast from 1955 until 1958.

The Black Museum was a weekly radio crime drama produced for the BBC in 1951 and based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard. Orson Welles, who was living in London at the time, was both host and narrator for these dramatized stories based on Scotland Yard's Black Museum, which housed its collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical crime cases.

Created by author Jack Boyle, Boston Blackie was a master safecracker and hardened criminal who served time in a California prison. Rehabilitated, he decided to use his knowledge of the underworld to fight crime as an amateur detective. Known as "an enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend", Boston Blackie's exploits were adapted to film, radio, and television.

This collection contains twelve of the greatest comedy shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio. You'll hear Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll as Amos 'n' Andy, Robert Young in Father Knows Best, Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly, William Bendix as Chester A. Riley in The Life of Riley, Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband, and more.

Made as a prequel to the hit film The Third Man, this radio show was created to follow the adventures of the popular character Harry Lime, played here and in the movie by Orson Welles. The 1949 film The Third Man won an Academy Award and was an international success, called "magic" by Roger Ebert and "one of the finest films ever made" by The New York Times.