Project Audion: Classic Audio Dramas for Modern Times

Just the facts, ma'am: DRAGNET is one of the few programs from the classic age of audio drama which is still recognized by most people today - for the iconic four-note theme, at least. But even Dragnet didn't hit the airwaves at the start in its fully-realized familiar form. Episode number one, which aired on June 3, 1949, survives only via a script, not a recording. That script reveals a compelling cop show, but one which doesn't ...

Even the greatest creative people had to start somewhere. For Rod Serling, whose "Twilight Zone" series is one of the landmarks of television, it was the radio series "Doctor Christian." Project Audion is proud to recreate his very first professionally-sold script for that show, which hasn't been heard since it originally aired back on November 9, 1949.

Doctor Christian, which starred Jean Herscholt, was a popular and long-running ...

Arch Oboler was one of radio's most accomplished writer/producers. Although he may be best known for his creepy horror scripts, he cared deeply about the human condition and regularly tackled weighty topics. "Special To Hollywood" was an indictment of the vacuousness of Hollywood celebrity, told in a sort of proto-"Twilight Zone" form. The story was performed on three occasions, and the 1945 script (from the series "Arch Oboler's P...

Project Audion presents a special Christmas audio drama recorded before a live audience at the Grapevine (TX) Public Library on December 14, 2025 as part of "Christmas On The Air."

This half hour recreates a "A Christmas Carol" as it was traditionally heard on on the radio networks in the days before television. For nearly two decades spread across across the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, actor Lionel Barrymore definitively portrayed Eb...

Project Audion presents a special Christmas audio comedy, recorded before a live audience at the Grapevine (TX) Public Library on December 14, 2025 as part of "Christmas On The Air."

This show recreates a special Christmas episode of the beloved British radio sitcom "The Men From the Ministry" which was extremely popular during the 1960s and 1970s (and still re-run on the BBC today). The show satirized governmental bureaucracy, but...

Bob Hope was one of the 20th century's greatest entertainers: in vaudeville and movies, and especially his radio (and later TV) comedies, so often performed in front of appreciative US servicemen, kept America smiling for better than six decades. He became an icon of American humor, and it is a special task to bring the Hope style back to life. But now Project Audion premieres a "new" 1940s-era Bob Hope radio show, thanks to the pe...

If you love audio drama, then you will appreciate Project Audion's November episode, which is NOT an audio drama but a podcast ABOUT audio drama - and why we make it, particularly in a time when Artificial Intelligence may be able to impact this art form. youcan "Meet The Creators" of some of best, longest-running modern radio-drama groups in North America, as they discuss why they find value in...

From the early days of the classic era of audio drama, Project Audion recreates a unique ghost-story/murder-mystery taken from a radio drama which is now so forgotten that it, too, might well be a ghost. But in the early 1930s "Eno Crime Clues" was a major radio hit, following the adventures of detective Spencer Dean (known as "The Manhunter") and his partner, Dan Cassidy. Our lost script from 1936 took the show in a new direction....

Gunsmoke! The show that created the "adult western" drama genre...the show that moved westerns from the kid-centered "Lone Ranger" into darker, more mature themes... the show that ran for 10 years and nearly 500 radio episodes, and 20 years and 600 more chapters on television. A handful of Gunsmoke audio recordings have been lost for seven decades, but Project Audion now recreates one of those missing episodes - in fact, Gunsmoke's...

You know Jimmy Durante, even if you think you don't -- the fellow was so famous for so many decades that just a caricature of his face was once enough to elicit a smile. His outsized "Schnozz" matched the outsized personality from the 1920s through the 1970s. Even today his catchphrases and songs endure. You can hear Durante singing in the "Joker" movie of 2019, imitated in the "Lion King," in Warner Bros cartoons, and  every year ...

"Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" (actually called "The Challenge of the Yukon" for most of its 16 years on the radio) was one of the greatest juvenile adventure radio series ever - part of a trinity of kids' shows that originated from Station WXYZ in Detroit. (The others were "The Green Hornet" and "The Lone Ranger".) It chronicled the never-ending adventure of the noble Mountie and his wonder dog Yukon King, maintaining law and ord...

What makes "The Great Gildersleeve" a great radio comedy? Historically, it was the first-ever spinoff series, and its classic sitcom characters were more deeply and warmly drawn than its parent show "Fibber and McGee and Molly," but no less funny.  Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve was the unforgettably blustery Water Commissioner of Summerfield, portrayed with a famous laugh full of innuendo by Hal Peary (and later Willard Waterman). G...

To begin Project Audion's sixth season, we're once again returning to that all-time classic audio drama, Suspense.  Once again, we've accessed a script from one of the very few lost episodes of the show, and are bringing back many of the actors from Audion's very first episode in 2020 to recreate it. 

This 1950 episode, "Deadline," is a powerhouse story of a newspaper editor whose fast-breaking stories on the Chicago underworld in...

What's more exciting than premiering a recreated lost episode of a classic audio drama? Premiering a completely unknown and lost show! Such is "Wayfaring Men," Project Audion's latest offering. "Wayfaring Men" was a dramatic summer 1933 CBS serial about the lives of the hoboes, tramps, and bums who were numerous during the Great Depression. Not a single recording of the show exists, and almost no background information either, but ...

Project Audion brings back another iconic mid-century situation comedy classic: "Our Miss Brooks." In the 1950s, the character of Connie Brooks was everyone's favorite English teacher - sassy and smart, but starry-eyed in her unrequited desire for biology teacher Mr. Boyton. Actress Eve Arden's portrayal was so iconic she made the jump to television four years after the radio version launched in 1948 - and even filmed a movie adapt...

Project Audion brings you "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," recreating an episode which has remained unheard for eighty years. There's no more famous detective, real or imagined, than Holmes. His creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, pretty much defined the mystery-detective story, and 138 years later Holmes and Watson are still part of popular culture. In 1945, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce portrayed them weekly on the Mutual Radi...

Long, long before George Burns became the senior citizen movie star of films like "The Sunshine Boys" and "Oh God!" he was familiar to radio and television audiences across the country as the grounded half of the comedy couple Burns and Allen, with real-life wife (and vaudeville partner) Gracie Allen playing the ditzy dame of the duo. Theirs was a 25-year run on the airwaves, and now for Project Audion, Pete Lutz has penned a fresh...

Our Christmas present for you is a lost episode of the classic detective drama "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe" with a holiday theme! Because Audion's previous Philip Marlowe restoration became its most popular episode ever, we returned to our archives to unearth a Marlowe script which hasn't been performed or heard since December 19, 1948 -- "The Three Wise Guys." "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe" ran for three years on network...

The Jack Benny Program returns with a delightful all-new radio episode penned by former Bob Hope staff writer Robert L. Mills just for Project Audion. Jack and his regular gang - Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, and Rochester - send up the movie classic "Casablanca" with  some of the movie's original cast in guest starring roles.  Jack takes the Humphrey Bogart part, inevitably. Join project Audion's talented transcontinen...