Busted! Dramatic Narrative Strategies in ‘Gang Busters’ — America’s First True Crime Radio Series
In terms of storytelling strategy, ‘Make it snappy’ is the golden rule in ‘Gang Busters’, America’s first ‘true crime’ radio series for NBC Radio. ‘The Case of the Incorrigible Killer’ is one of the most thrilling episodes, first aired the 9th of October, 1948. It’s still a thrilling 30-minute listen with a sophisticated narrative structure as outlined below.
Voices of Authority
The story opens with a sharp police whistle, and a resounding ‘Now, Gaaaaaang Buster!’ in the resonant, deep voice of the announcer, Don Gardiner, who was the ‘Monday Morning Headlines’ news commentator for ABC Radio 1944–58.
This is not a fictional drama but a news-based true crime story. Gardiner’s voice signals to regular listeners this is a news-based crime story: we are told in no uncertain terms from the start, this is ‘the only national program that brings you authentic police histories’ and this one, no less, is ‘presented in cooperation with police and law enforcement departments throughout the United States.’
Law Enforcement Authority Figures in ‘Gang Busters’
The earliest case files dramatised for the ‘Gang Busters’ series from 1935 had the seal of authority from the Director of the FBI J Edgar Hoover himself who would personally select the FBI case histories to be presented.
The father of the General Norman Schwarzkopf, Norman Schwarzkopf Sr, former head of the New Jersey State Police, then served as chief consultant for the show and appeared on the show to comment on the individual cases.
From 1945, Lewis Joseph Valentine, the New York City Police Commissioner, was the main consultant. The series dwindled by 1958 as police authority was increasingly coming under question.
Use of Sound Effects to Command Authority
‘Gang Busters’ has a signature sequence of sound effects that were later carried over to its newer television adaptions in the 1950s and also a feature drawn into in the 1947–8 ‘Gang Busters’ comic books inspired by the radio series.
A rota of the following cartoony sound effects make sure we are sitting still and at full attention:
- police sirens
2. gun shots
3. police whistle
4. megaphone
The police sirens wail with a slight echo, suggesting empty streets at night. Transcodification (Crisell, Understanding Radio, 1994) is taking place here, where the police sirens evoke images through audio of a police car moving rapidly through dark, wet, empty streets. This is conveyed by the slight echo in the audio and hiss of the vintage audio. The audio is more than its sole reference point and creates an atmosphere of danger and suspence.
The ringing shots are heard at a distance, a rat-tat-tat rather than a pow.
The police whistle is at close-range, as if we are shoulder-to-shoulder with the police, and is short and sharp, suggesting the police are ready, on top of things, and just short of arresting a criminal (ie not mired in paperwork, but out on the streets, in heroic action).
The police whistle immediately seizes our attention, and then the (news) announcer’s voice sums up the case to be examined tonight (each ‘Gang Busters’ in stentorian tones, opening each episode with the same announcement: ‘Tonight’s Gang Busters presents ‘The Case of —’).
All of the sound effects intensify the action and our engagement. We are with the police and inside the action, but not inside the heads of the criminals, or seeing any of the action from the criminals’ perspective. This is a story spoken with authority, from the point of view of the law authorities.
This is not the softly, softly approach of the modern-day Serial, in which the narrator pieces together the story, bit by bit, by stealth. This is a headline-grabber, in the sense that it is based on an already notorious case that crucially has been solved and sorted. It is morality tale and true crime story all in one: the subtext is the baddies get caught and punished and the goodies are at home safe, thanks to another heroic action by the law authorities.
The megaphone amplifies the authority of the announcer
The announcer, Don Gardiner, speaks through a megaphone, as if the listener tuning in to ‘Gang Busters’ weren’t sitting up straight already after hearing the police whistle, sirens and shots ringing out. There’s an echo distorting Gardiner’s baritone, creating a sense of a vast space, as if this were a monumental announcement in a town hall or empty town square, and not at all an intimate radio chat by the fireside. This is no ordinary radio show, but presents itself as a story of national importance.
Fear-Mongering Supports the Authority of the Police Narrative
The fear-mongering adds to the authority of the police perspective on the story (its only perspective) because they are presenting themselves as the state-backed authority who’ll keep us all safe, even if we felt perfectly safe when we switched on the radio to tune in.
Reno: Setting as Character
Reno is central to the story, described as ‘the biggest little city in the world, but it’s still little.’ Everybody knows everybody, we are told, but nobody has seen the criminal gang. They are crucially from elsewhere. They are not one of their own. Only the police have cottoned on to them. In an impressive exchange of phone calls, answered on the first ring. the police are coordinating nationwide. There is a sense of the inhabitants of Reno lying low, while the police come to the rescue, and only after the arrests are made can ordinary citizens sit and listen to the policemen’s heroic tale.
‘Gang Busters’ portrays a sense of small town life — embodied by the listener, listening quietly at home — being disrupted by criminals, a peaceful way of life preserved and protected by the police. With this early true crime series, there is sense of domestic security shaken by the disruptive presence of renegade criminals.
The police chiefs, based on real characters but reimagined by actors, are perfectly coordinated and cooperative, noble, smart, organised and close on the tail of even the most cunning criminals. These police authorities are omniscient and their authority is never questioned.
Prestigious Advertising Adds Authority
Tide is advertised at the beginning and end of the show. Tide detergent was a novelty product in 1948, first introduced in the US in 1946, with nationwide distribution only in1949 along with increased affordability of the first automatic ‘Speed Queen’ washing machines, which had high status in domestic households and raised standards of cleanliness.
Morality, tidiness, and cleanliness were of course tied together in suburban America, so the advertisement seems apt. The Tide ad also underscores domesticity in face of the terror of crime.
Crime and Punishment
In the world of ‘Gang Busters’, criminals don’t get away with murder, not ever. The case history in this dramatic episode is trailed as a morality tale rather than a news story: ‘Tonight, The Case of the Incorrigible Killer who broke out of prison and then broke back in, only to find when the breaks run out the penalty is death.’
To add to the authority of the story, the news announcer Don Gardiner adds: ‘Here with us in the studio tonight is the Honorable Paul V McNutt’, billed as the Former High Commissioner of the Philipines and Vice President of the National Probation and Parole Association. We are ordered to stay tuned for his ‘conclusions of vital importance’ at the end of the show.
Chief L. R. Greeson, Chief of Police in Nevada, is another authority figure who clearly sees eye-to-eye with Don Gardiner as they discuss the case. Basically it’s an angry shaking of heads, Chief Greeson’s stern moral judgement very much setting the tone for the rest of the show. Gardiner’s deep disapproval is rejoined by Chief Gresson, ‘That’s absolutely right, Don Gardiner’ he says. ‘I’ve been a police officer for 15 years …’ As a listener, you sense they are sitting back with furrowed brows, not having seen anything like it — building the suspense as the drama commences.
All of the above, ways to convey authority in a narrative, are crucial framing framing devices, without which this dramatic reenactment of one of the most notorious crimes in Nevada history, headline news in 1947, might be mistaken for a radio play with no basis in fact.
Settings as Narrative Drivers
‘Exactly a year ago on a cold, dreary morning’ we know from the start we are in for a dramatic tale. Our first setting is a local church. The sound effect of church music signals the church setting, and multiple, shuffling footsteps, as the main character, David Blackwell, searches for the man who ratted on him, called Nick, who is doomed — his meek tones tell us he’s done for. He’s no match for the wicked David Blackwell, described only as ‘a young man with piercing brown eyes and thin lips’.
But looking up the Nevada newspaper’s first reports of the story, the photograph on the front page of David Blackwell, released by Nevada State Prison, presents quite a different picture. He’s very young, just 18. Specifying his young age in the ‘Gang Busters’ reenactment might have garnered sympathy where they wanted none. He is handsome — a full head of tousled dark hair, eyes wide and bright, lips not at all thin. Sensual, even. A renegade, but hardly the addled psycho of ‘Gang Busters’.
David Blackwell is a prison escapee who murders two police officers in Reno.
The climax of the radio show comes as the police catch up with him after a crime spree, robbing slot-machine arcades and clubs in the Reno area. David Blackwell is hiding under his bedsheets, presumed asleep, but he surprises the policemen who have stalked his gang and were about to arrest him at the Carlton Hotel when he shoots two police officers dead (historic Nevada newspaper account here).
In the radio show, the Carlton Hotel is grander — with a lobby and a suite; in the newspaper account, it is a motel, without the implication of hubris (in 1940s America, young people staying at a hotel suite would be considered splashing out, hifalutin).
All three are arrested. David Blackwell is sentenced to death in the Nevada gas chamber. His two accomplices get a maximum sentence of 50 years. The radio show does not mention that Blackwell winked and smiled at the police officer who arrested him, just ‘before the cynanide pellet dropped into a pot of sulfuric acid,’ as the newspaper reports (cited above).
It is important to note that newspaper reports like this were melodramatic and graphic in tone. The cool, detached, objective tone of news and crime reporting today was not the convention at this time.
Stanley Niss, writer and director of this episode of ‘Gang Busters’, was a feature writer for the New York Daily Mirror (1941–45), and in earlier years, a news reporter for the St-Louis Star Times and the Dallas Journal. He was familiar with big-city crime stories, and had an ear for dialogue. He was heavily influenced by the leading crime fiction writers of his day.
Influence of Raymond Chandler
The punchy interludes are worthy of Raymond Chandler, born in 1888 in Chicago, who perfected the racing plot and tough-guy snappy dialogue, an all-American style of speech he honed in his crime novels. He was not given to description but a pulse-quickening pace and punchy rhythm, with a very macho outlook and mostly male characters.
Note there are no women at all in this episode of ‘Gang Busters’, just the implication of women and children when the doomed Nick in the early scene in the church and David Blackwell’s first victim, saying over and over ‘I’ve got people waiting’ — by implication, a family in the wings.
Given the explosion of true crime radio series and podcasts, this brief analysis of the narrative structure of this episode of ‘Gang Busters’ from 1948 hopefully shows how dynamic a form it was even in its earliest form. The intrinsic dramatic movement of true crime, the action — together with the listener seeking to understand deviant characters and wanting resolution.
All these drivers give the story its own pace and direction. Our fascination with the characters and what happens to them, even when we know how the facts and even how the story ends, shows how we cannot resist a good story.
‘Gang Busters’ was added to the National Registry of the US National Recording Preservation Board in 2008. Listen to more episodes of ‘Gang Busters’ here
If you too are a fan of vintage radio, on Facebook there are many lively forums including Grumpy’s Olde Time Radio Forum.
