Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (5-part AFRS series)


Yours Truly Johnny Dollar related the adventures of "the man with the action-packed expense account." This has become a much-beloved series decades after it went off the air, and is now a favorite of collectors. For more details about the series and the six actors who played Johnny Dollar , see the Hehn Collection page with the half hour episodes . From Fall 1955, the adventures were serialized from Monday to Friday in 15-minute episodes. That format lasted 65 weeks. Most YTJD fans consider this portion of the series starring Bob Bailey to have the best performances, writing, and most compelling storylines of the series. The additional broadcast time allowed for more plot and character development. The 5-part episodes were supplied to Armed Forces Radio for distribution to their stations around the world. For many years, AFRS versions were the only recordings available to collectors, but in the late 1970s, full network recordings became available in superior sound. The AFRS recordings slowly slipped out of circulation. These have now been "found again" in the Hehn (and other) old collections and are now in better sound because of modern audio processing. The 5-part era had two storylines that were of different lengths. The Phantom Chase was aired as a 9-part serial (it was written for 10 but it had to be adjusted for news events), and the Kranesburg Matter was aired in 6 parts though originally written for 5 parts. A planned week-long news event lasted only four days, and the scripts were adjusted by adding extra scenes and dialogue. Instead of the scripts being numbered 1 to 5, they were numbered 1, 1A, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The early scripts were "padded" to fill the extra day. The full six-part series as broadcast in the network is available. The Armed Forces Radio Service, however, needed to edit it back to five parts to fit their schedule. They took the network recordings supplied to them and matched the drama portions and the next show "tease" from different episodes. The chart below summarizes what the AFRS production staff did. They eliminated episode 2 of the network broadcasts; this could be done because each of the episodes of the storylines recapped events of the prior episode or episodes as part of the dialogue in that day's broadcast. Listeners would be able to follow the story, with most of them not realizing that an early episode was dropped. This edit was easy to do with an early episode, especially one that was part of the "padding" to fill the extra day. This makes the AFRS version of The Kranesburg Matter an interesting curiosity of the early days of collecting radio recordings. There are also AFRS recordings of individual episodes from the 5-part era also available and they will be posted when processed. The full 5-part series for some of them are not available. * * * These recordings are part of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection. Mr. Hehn (1931-2020) was a pioneering collector of radio recordings when the hobby emerged in the 1960s. Digitizing his collection of reel tapes and discs is the effort of a wide range of North American volunteers, and includes assistance of some international collectors. The groups supporting this effort with their funds, time, technology and skills are the Old Time Radio Researchers and a small group of transcription disc preservationists who refer to themselves as the "The Knights of the Turning Table."

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.