One of my favorite satellite radio channels Radio Classics, maybe because I’m so old that I remember when radio was filled with diverse entertainments instead of the steady diet of super-inflated egos who pour division and distrust into democracy’s gears.

One thing television has taken away from radio is the detective show in which the main character is the narrator who explains in often-colorful phrases the world in which he or she lives.  Many of these shows were created in era of hard-boiled detective novels and magazines, thus leading to a lot of similes that left vivid images in the listeners’ minds.

Let’s face it, television and movies cannot come close to showing what we see in our minds and they did it with similies.

The king of the detective simile was Pat Novak, played by pre-Dragnet Jack Webb on “Pat Novak for Hire.”  The other day Radio Classics played an episode called “Agnes Bolton.”

To refresh your memory of high school freshman English, a simile is a figure of speech in which something is compared to something different.

Pat Novak was a tough private eye living on the financial edge with a boat rental business in San Francisco. Webb’s narration throughout the program described his situations and those he met, including a friend who tells him during the show, “You’re never on the right side of things. You’ll always be in trouble because you’re a bad citizen. You’re a shabby half-step in the march of human progress. You don’t know the difference between good and evil. For you, all of human endeavor is a vague blur in high heels…You might as well try to recapture melancholy or ventilate a swamp. Ya haven’t a chance. You’ll never be any good.”

The writers for the show were Richard Breen and Gil Doud.  It must have been fun writing Webb’s narration as Pat Novak.  Even those who were raised after the dawn of television can probably hear in their own minds Jack Webb’s clipped, blunt, reading:

Around here a set of morals won’t cause any more stir than Mothers Day at an orphanage.

It doesn’t do any good to sing the blues because down here you’re just another guy in the chorus.

About as likely he would show up as a second pat of butter on a 50-cent lunch.

A smile as smooth as a pound of liver in a bucket of glycerin.

His eyes swept the room like a $10 broom.

She was at least 50 because you can’t get that ugly without years of practice.

(Her complexion) was red and scratchy as if she used a bag of sand for cold cream.

Her hair hung down like dead branches of a tree.

The way she fit (into a telephone booth), a sardine ought to be happy.

He was making noises in his throat as if he was eating a pound of cellophane.

(I couldn’t get anybody to talk to me.) I might as well have been selling tip sheets in a monastery.

If you keep your foot on a bar rail, you’ll find it’ll do more good for your arches than for your brain.

I better have a drink first; there’s an ugly taste in my mouth. I think it’s saliva.

It wasn’t raining hard anymore…It sounded quiet, almost private, like the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking. It got on your nerves at first and then you learn to enjoy it.

Her main talent is more dimensional than dramatic.

(She was) stretched out as dead as a deer on a fender.

Her skin reminded you of a piece of felt that was almost worn out. But the rest was all right.

Riding with (him) is just about as safe as eating an arsenic sandwich.

The rain was hitting the windshield and it was like trying to see through a mint julep.

—All of those are from that single show.  If a person loves descriptive writing or wants to learn something about it, I suggest they listen to some of these great old detective shows.

Various people have proclaimed, “Theatre is life; film is art; television is furniture; but radio is imagination.”  Have you ever seen on television anything that has shown you someone “as dead as a deer on a fender?”  Or seen anything on television as sensuous as “the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking?”  What we see with our eyes is often so inadequate when compared to what we see in our minds.

This is a good opportunity to pay tribute to those two writers. Their names are unfamiliar. In fact, we don’t pay much attention as the credits roll at the end of our movies or TV shows and name of the writer(s) show up.

Richard Breen started as a freelance radio writer who moved to movies. He won an Oscar as the screenwriter for 1953’s Titanic.  He was nominated for writing A Foreign Affair in 1948 and for Captain Newman, M.D., in 1963.

Gil Doud also wrote for the Sam Spade radio series.  He wrote one episode of the radio Gunsmoke and adapted five of John Meston’s Gunsmoke radio scripts for the early television versions of the show. He didn’t match Green’s screenwriting credentials but he did write Thunder Bay starring James Stewart in 1953, Saskatchewan with Alan Ladd the next year, and Audie Murphy’s To Hell and Back in 1955.  He also wrote episodes for the radio shows Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

These guys were writing for radio in the era when people such as Mickey Spillane were beginning their tough murder mysteries with (from Spillane’s The Big Kill):

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world.  The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men and enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.”

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels and the radio shows written by people such as Breen and Doud create images no television program or movie could ever show.  It’s the power of the written word.  And the spoken word.

Let’s conclude this colorful reminiscence with part of the script from the opening of the tenth Pat Novak show, “Go Away Dixie Gilliam.”  It’s from https://www.genericradio.com/show/07d5af03664522b5:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the American Broadcasting Company brings transcribed to its entire network, one of radio’s most unusual programs:

MUSIC: BRIEF, DRAMATIC INTRO, THEN SOFTEN FOR NEXT LINE

ANNOUNCER: Pat Novak, For Hire.

MUSIC: UP AGAIN BRIEFLY AND FADE OUT

SOUND: HARBOR AMBIANCE DURING NOVAK’S INTRO LINES

SOUND:FOOTSTEPS OUT OF THE FOG

 

NOVAK: Sure, I’m Pat Novak, For Hire.

SOUND:HARBOR OUT

MUSIC: CUP AS HARBOR FADES. PLAY BRIEFLY AND THEN SOFTEN AS NOVAK CONTINUES.

NOVAK:

That’s what the sign out in front of my office says: Pat Novak, For Hire. Down on the waterfront in San Francisco you always bite off more than you can chew. It’s tough on your wind pipe, but you don’t go hungry. And down here a lot of people figure its better to be a fat guy in a graveyard than a thin guy in a stew. That way he can be sure of a tight fit. (Pause) Oh, I rent boats and do anything else which makes a sound like money–

MUSIC: OUT

NOVAK:

–It works out alright, if your mother doesn’t mind you coming home for Easter in a box. I found that out on Wednesday night at about 9 o’clock. I closed the shop early and I came home to read. It wasn’t a bad book, if you ever wanted to start a forest fire. It was one of those historical things and the girl in it wandered around like a meat grinder in ribbons. Ah, I was moving along alright. She was just getting her second wind before going for the world’s record when the door to my apartment opened and the place began to get kinda crowded. From where I sat, the crowd looked good.

SOUND: SOFT FOOTSTEPS APPROACH UNTIL LEIGH’S FIRST LINE

NOVAK:

She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was alright, too. It reminded you of a furnace full of marshmallows.

 

My God!  “Like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke….”  Let NCSI or Law & Order try to match that.

Some of our women readers might consider this language blatantly sexist.  It’s hard not to agree.  Perhaps in our comment box below, some might want to suggest some similar similes describing men. Just remember, this is a family blog, rated no higher than PG.

This concludes our refresher course on SIMILIES.

And how much better our minds were when radio brought them to us