Author Archive: Retro

At the Bainbridge Research Foundation, Professor Franklin Arnold, displays his creation, the Metalogen Man, a robot, to Professor Ernst and three other colleagues. Shortly afterward, the three associates are killed by Thor (Ray Corrigan, in his for-rent ape suit), a huge ape trained by Ernst, and Arnold, his daughter Babs and Ken Morgan, a representative of the company for whom the robot was made, find it has been stolen. Their 15-chapter search for Thor, the robot and Ernst leads to a series of cliff-hanging adventures as Ernst strives to gain control of the robot and the supply of metalogen needed for its production.

Alvin Merle, a womanizing Broadway matinée idol, is found strangled in his dressing room. The door is locked from the inside and there is no possible other way into the room. Merle is having an affair with his leading lady, while his wife, actress Ethel Wynn, appearing in another play in a theater around the corner, is doing the same with Frank Murray, the stage manager on Merle’s play. Newspaper reporter Jim Ryan is investigating the case and meets Jean Royce, a young actress who had been fired from the play while in rehearsals. Everybody, including Michael, the old actor now relegated to being just a stage-doorman, has a motive. The explanation for the murder lies within the script of the play.

After her fiancé, Ronald Bruce (Bruce Seton), breaks their engagement, fearing he will be financially dependent on her recent lottery winnings, stenographer Carol Howard (Ann Harding) decides to rent her apartment and go to France. Debonair Gerald Lovell (Basil Rathbone) comes to look at the apartment, and later turns up on her boat. Carol falls in love with Gerald, and the two elope. But upon returning to England, he has them move to an isolated home, and Carol begins to suspect and fear him.

In this pre-Pearl Harbor recruiting poster, colonel’s estranged son Bill Burke, football hero Donald Morse, and hillbilly Jeff Hollis enlist in the paratroopers. Their training at Fort Benning, Georgia is followed in semi-documentary style, with time out for personal dramas and the romantic rivalry of Bill and Don over the sergeant’s daughter.

Criminals hijack an airplane that not only carries a dangerous organism that is to be used in bacterial warfare, but also five beauty contest finalists.

In 1923 British Colonial Nigeria, Mister Johnson is an oddity, an educated black man who doesn’t really fit in with the natives, nor the British. He works for the local British magistrate, and considers himself English, though he has never been to England. He is always scheming, trying to get ahead, which lands him in a lot of hot water.

The mental condition of psychiatrist’s wife Lorna Baylor begins to deteriorate as an anonymous delivery of flowers arrives at her home, awakening her phobia of white carnations.

Story detailing the 14th Century and the people of Switzerland in danger of being sold as slaves and losing their land and belongings.

An ex-detective gets a job as an investigator digging up dirt on celebrities for a tabloid scandal sheet.