Once again we’re going to return to one of the premiere horror radio shows of all time, Lights Out. We discussed a little bit of the history of the program earlier in The Spooktacular but let’s dig a little deeper. Lights Out was popular but always seemed to bounce around during the 1940s, run as a summer replacement or some other short run, after a rather steady 1930s. In fact the episode we’ll listen to tonight was the premiere of the third Lights Out revival of the 1940s. In 1947 Eversharp razors sponsored an eight episode ABC summer run of classic Willis Cooper scripts which would feature Boris Karloff. After only three episodes Eversharp pulled the plug because, as the story goes, the company’s president found the episodes already aired far too gruesome.
Tonight we’ll hear the premiere episode of that short 1947 revival. It just happens to be a reworking of a 1930s script which showcases just how explicitly horrific and outrageous those early Lights Out episodes were.
So here’s Death Robbery, starring Boris Karloff, on Lights Out as it originally aired on July 16th, 1947.
Download the show to take on the go right here.
On a quick side note, most visitors to TGG probably don’t know I ran an old time radio website quite a few years back and I have tens of thousands of radio shows in my collection. Each of the programs I’ll share during the Spooktacular have had their audio personally cleaned up by me to remove many of the pops, crackles, and hisses so common with old time radio recordings. These aren’t pristine by any means but keep in mind the original broadcasts you’ll be hearing are anywhere from fifty to eighty years old…
