Radio Drama · Old Time Radio Researchers · Mystery & crime · Drama
Pat Novak, For Hire
- Networks
- Mutual, ABC (as its archives name them)
- Heard
- 1946–1949
- Episodes
- 45
PAT NOVAK, FOR HIRE
More about it
Pat Novak, for Hire, is an old-time radio detective drama series which originally aired from 1946-1948, and revived in 1949. It started as a West Coast regional produced program at KGO in San Francisco. This regional version originally starred Jack Webb in the title role, with scripts by his roommate Richard L. Breen. When Webb and Breen moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Webb was replaced by Ben Morris, and Breen by Gil Doud. Meanwhile in LA, Webb and Breen, joined by Director William P. Rousseau, would work on an extremely similar nationwide series, Johnny Madero, Pier 23, for the Mutual network. Webb would then star in Jeff Regan, Investigator until December, 1948. By 1949, a year after the end of the San Francisco run, Jack Webb resumed the Novak role, and Breen his duties as scriptwriter, this time for a national audience on ABC. Pat Novak, for Hire is set on the San Francisco, California waterfront and depicts the city Pat Novak knows - a dark, rough place where the main goal is survival. Pat Novak is not a detective by trade. He owns a boat shop on Pier 19 where he rents out boats and does odd jobs to make money. The series is popular among fans for its fast-paced, hard-boiled dialogue and action and witty one-liners. Each episode of the programs, especially with Jack Webb, follows the same basic formula
Episodes, in broadcast order
Where it comes from 2
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.
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Pat Novak, For Hire - Single Episodes
the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.
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Pat Novak for Hire
Uploader’s mark: Public domain (Creative Commons dedication): Marked Public domain (Creative Commons dedication) by its uploader at the Internet Archive; the record gives no basis for it.
1 more set holds only episodes played here from a set above.
A set by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group (otrr.org), at the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio collection.
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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.