Radio Drama · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · Mystery & crime

The Lineup

Networks
CBS (as its archives name them)
Heard
1950
Episodes
2

The Lineup was a police procedural on CBS radio from 1950 to 1953. The program did not have a true star, but used some of CBS' best actors of the era, notably Bill Johnstone, Wally Maher, Jack Moyles, and many others.

More about it

The program would start with a police lineup of suspects with questions asked of them so victims could hear their voice and see their demeanor. The viewers of the lineup were told not to pay attention to their answers "because they often lie."

Other CBS regulars didn't need a steady character to be in the series every week. They were often different victims, officers, witnesses, criminals, and suspects in each episode. Howard McNear, a familiar voice to listeners as Doc Adams on Gunsmoke, could be heard almost every week as a different hapless criminal in that week's lineup.

Those opening minutes set the storyline for that week's drama after the victim identified whether someone in the lineup was their attacker or not, leading to the gritty policework that listeners would hear as the crime was solved.

Dragnet set the tone for police procedurals in this period. The Lineup may have been in Dragnet's shadow in ratings and popularity, but it had fine scripts and direction under Elliott Lewis. It had polished performances of an ensemble cast who worked on so many other series together (Suspense, Escape, Philip Marlowe, and many others), making The Lineup a worthwhile listen. * * * These recordings are part of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection. Mr. Hehn…

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. Topaz Earring

    · 29 min

  2. The Cop Killer

    · 29 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 Lineup

    The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · 2 episodes here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

From the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection, at the Internet Archive.

More Mystery & crime

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.