The Strange Dr. Weird is a radio program broadcast on Mutual from 1944 to 1945.
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, Mutual was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow. For many years, it was a national broadcaster for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Notre Dame football. From the mid-1930s and until the retirement of the network in 1999, Mutual ran a highly respected news service accompanied by a variety of popular commentary shows. During the late 1970s, Mutual pioneered the nationwide late night call-in radio show and introduced the country to Larry King.
Sponsored by Adam Hats, the drama is notable in part because it was a sister series to The Mysterious Traveler, both in theme and its narrator. Maurice Tarplin, who was also the creepy voice of The Mysterious Traveler. Many of the scripts were condensed 15-minute versions of scripts originally broadcast on The Mysterious Traveler.
The Mysterious Traveler was an anthology radio series, a magazine, and a comic book. All three featured stories which ran the gamut from fantasy and science fiction to straight crime dramas of mystery and suspense.
Maurice Tarplin was a novelist and a radio actor best known as the narrator of The Mysterious Traveler, employing a voice once described as "eerily sardonic."
To the accompaniment of an organ's spooky strains, Tarplin introduced each episode:
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands on a keyboard or with the feet using pedals. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria, who invented the water organ. It was played throughout the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman world, particularly during races and games. During the early medieval period it spread from the Byzantine Empire, where it continued to be used in secular (non-religious) and imperial court music, to Western Europe, where it gradually assumed a prominent place in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. Subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument in the Classical music tradition.
Good evening. Come in, won't you? Why, what's the matter? You seem a bit nervous. Perhaps the cemetery outside this house has upset you. But there are things far worse than cemeteries. For instance...
The closing line never changed:
Perhaps you’ll drop in on me again soon. I’m always home. Just look for the house on the other side of the cemetery... the house of Dr Weird!
The 29 episodes were produced and directed by Jock McGregor and written by Robert A. Arthur, who also scripted for The Mysterious Traveler.
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