Mr. And Mrs. North

Show Information based on John Dunning's book "On The Air"

Mystery melodrama, based on the novels by Frances and Richard Lockridge. (1942-1954).

Mr. and Mrs. North was conceived for radio as it had begun in literature: as a light comedy. When he wrote the original stories for the New Yorker in the 1930s, Richard Lockridge made them light domestic misadventures. It wasn't until 1940, when Lockridge teamed with his wife, Frances, that the Norths met murder and steam-rolled their way into the most successful husband-and-wife crimefighting series of the day.

An audition was transcribed in 1941, with Peggy Conklin and Carl Eastman as Pam and Jerry North. It was a humorous light romance, written by Howard Harris and Martin Gosch, with Don Voorhees on music. But nothing came of it.

The mystery version, opening a year later, was another story. Mr. and Mrs. North immediately moved up to challenge the mystery frontrunner, Mr. District Attorney, in the ratings polls. It grew steadily in popularity until, in its second year, it held an audience of 20 million a week.

Average was its byword. Mr. and Mrs. North were not detectives, but average people who might be living next door or in the apartment upstairs. They solved only average murders - the stabbings and shootings, the crimes of passion - leaving the more exotic cases to gumshoes and gangbusters on other programs. Producer S. James Andrews once turned down a script simply because it was set in a medieval museum and involved ancient devices of torture unfamiliar to the common man. Neither Pam nor Jerry was trained in the science of deduction. Jerry was an average publisher of books who just happened, each week, to stumble over a corpse. Pam was an everyday housewife who loved cats, liked to play cupid for her single friends, and talked in riddles. Somehow she usually managed to ponder her way to the killer's identity. Jerry tried to explain how she did it for Radio Mirror in 1943. Men think logically, from cause to effect, went the explanation. Women (and Pam North in particular) reach a conclusion first and then gather up the facts that support it. Pam had a quick wit, a sharp tongue, and lots of female intuition.

Their best friend was Lt. Bill Weigand of homicide. Weigand eventually got used to the idea that, wherever the Norths would go, murder inevitably followed. If they went on a train trip, a corpse would be stashed in the upper berth. Look in the bathroom - body in the bathtub. The Norths lived at 24 St. Anne's Flat in Greenwich Village. Their acquaintances were slightly bizarre: floaters through the underworld, neighborhood sellers of tips, and a talkative cabbie named Mahatma McGloin. There was also a teenage niece, a problem child named Susan, who stumbled over a few unsolicited bodies.

The series was heavy with extraneous interplay, helping the characters come alive for listeners, Bill Weigand was a fearless cop, but bashful with the opposite sex. Pam schemed and plotted in a constant though futile effort to get him married. Weigand appreciated women but never understood them. Nor did he understand how his bumbling right-hand man, Sergeant Aloysius Mullins, could have such a solid family life and be the father of eight children.

CAST:

Joseph Curtin and Alice Frost as Mr. and Mrs. North (Jerry and Pam), a book publisher and his irrepressible wife. Richard Denning and Barbara Britton as Jerry and Pam later in the run.

Frank Lovejoy initially as their friend, Lt. Bill Weigand of homicide.

Staats Cotsworth and Francis DeSales also as Bill Weigand.

Walter Kinsella as the ever-exasperated Sgt. Mullins.

Betty Jane Tyler as Susan, the Norths' 14-year-old niece.

Mande! Kramer as Mahatma McGloin, a talkative cab driver.

ORCHESTRA: Charles Paul.

PRODUCERS: S. James Andrews, John W. Loveton.

SOUND EFFECTS: Al Binnie, Al Hogan (CBS); Sam Monroe (NBC).

THEME: The Way You Look Tonight

BROADCAST HISTORY:

Dec. 30, 1942-Dec. 18, 1946, NBC. 30m, Wednesdays at 8. Jergens Lotion and Woodbury Cold Cream.

July 1, 1947-April 18, 1955, CBS. 30m, Tuesdays at 8:30, 1947-54;

heard in serial form, l5m, weekdays, Oct. 4-Nov. 19, 1954;

then, again, 30m, Mondays at 8, beginning Nov. 29, 1954. Colgate-Palmolive for various products, including Halo Shampoo, 1947-54.