Radio Drama · Old Time Radio · Horror & the supernatural

The Gaming Gang October Spooktacular 2021 - Lights Out: Death Robbery

Episodes
1

Once again we're going to return to one of the premiere horror radio shows of all time, Lights Out. We discussed a little bit of the history of the program earlier in The Spooktacular but let's dig a little deeper. Lights Out was popular but always seemed to bounce around during the 1940s, run as a summer replacement or some other short run, after a rather steady 1930s. In fact the episode we'll listen to tonight was the premiere of the third Lights Out revival of the 1940s. In 1947 Eversharp razors sponsored an eight episode ABC summer run of classic Willis Cooper scripts which would feature Boris Karloff. After only three episodes Eversharp pulled the plug because, as the story goes, the company's president found the episodes already aired far too gruesome.

More about it

Tonight we'll hear the premiere episode of that short 1947 revival. It just happens to be a reworking of a 1930s script which showcases just how explicitly horrific and outrageous those early Lights Out episodes were.

So here's Death Robbery, starring Boris Karloff, on Lights Out as it originally aired on July 16th, 1947.

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. TGG October Spooktacular 2021 Lights Out Death Robbery 1947

    No date given · 33 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. The Gaming Gang October Spooktacular 2021 - Lights Out: Death Robbery (1947)

    Old Time Radio · Jeff McAleer · 1 episode here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

From the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive, uploaded by the collector named.

More Horror & the supernatural

Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.