Radio Drama · Old Time Radio Researchers · News & history

Stroke Of Fate

Heard
1953
Episodes
29

STROKE OF FATE Joe Webb

More about it

From October to December 1953 NBC aired a curious historical series, Stroke of Fate. NBC’s inspiration was the successful CBS radio and television series You Are There. That series started in 1947 as CBS is There and soon adopted the more listener-focused name that made it famous. In 1953, the television version of the series started. NBC and others saw an opportunity to do something historical but with a twist. Rather than dropping modern day reporters into historical events, Stroke of Fate offered a cerebral “what if?” approach with dramas of historical persons in hypothetical circumstances. This was an interesting premise intended to stimulate interest and discussion of the trends of history and the eventual shaping of world affairs and conditions. This is the Single Episodes Page. The Maintained Set includes extras not found here. It is located here. This Single Episodes page is provided in case you want to sample the shows. Note that in many cases, file names have been modified from the original OTRR names to conform to archive.org naming requirements.

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. Robert E Lee

    · 25 min

  2. Robert E. Lee

    · No. 1 · 25 min

  3. Earl of Essex (followed by NBC News)

    · 28 min

  4. What If The Earl Of Essex Plot Had Succeeded

    · 25 min

  5. Earl of Essex [followed by NBC News]

    · No. 2 · 28 min

  6. What If Hamilton Had Killed Burr In Duel

    · 24 min

  7. The Burr-Hamilton Duel

    · No. 3 · 24 min

  8. Marie Antionette

    · 25 min

  9. Marie Antoinette Had Escaped Death By The Guillotine

    · 23 min

  10. Escape of Marie Antoinette

    · No. 4 · 25 min

  11. Abraham Lincoln

    · 25 min

  12. Lincoln's Consular Service

    · No. 5 · 25 min

  13. Benedict Arnold

    · No. 6 · 30 min

  14. Julius Caesar

    · 30 min

  15. Caesar and Cleopatra

    · No. 7 · 30 min

  16. France Supresses Germanys Rhineland Invasion

    · 28 min

  17. Germany Invades the Rhineland

    · No. 8 · 30 min

  18. Battle of Quebec

    · No. 9 · 30 min

  19. Our Neighbor in Alaska

    · No. 10 · 30 min

  20. Alexander the Great

    · No. 11 · 30 min

  21. Americas First Secret Weapon

    · 30 min

  22. America's First Secret Weapon

    · No. 12 · 30 min

  23. Norman Conquest of England

    · No. 13 · 30 min

  24. Introduction

    No date given · 5:02

  25. Old Time Radio Researchers Introduction

    No date given · 3:01

  26. Cameron Prud'Homme Biography

    No date given · 1:34

  27. Santos Ortega Biography

    No date given · 1:04

  28. Bernard Lenrow Biography

    No date given · 2:59

  29. Everett Sloane Biography

    No date given · 1:39

Where it comes from 3

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. OTRR Stroke Of Fate Singles

    Old Time Radio Researchers · 19 episodes here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

  2. Stroke Of Fate

    The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · 5 episodes here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

  3. Stroke Of Fate Singles

    Listeners' uploads · Mort Lewis and George Faulkner · 5 episodes here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

A set by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group (otrr.org), at the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio collection.

More News & history

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.