Most of the time, editors sit behind a desk and send reporters and photographers out to cover stories, sometimes making them risk life and limb.
Not
Steve Wilson, managing editor of
Big Town's
The Illustrated News!
From 1937 to 1952,
Steve personally used the Power of the Press on the weekly radio series
Big Town.
Aided by assistant editor/society editor-reporter
Lorelei Kilbourne,
Steve didn't hesitate to roll up his sleeve and dive into the thick of things, somehow always managing to meet deadlines despite the fact he was rarely in the office!
Wilson was technologically-savvy, using then-state-of-the-art equipment (mostly listening devices, wiretaps, mini-cameras, and even radio phones like the one seen on the cover above) in his battles against evil.
Once he had the info he needed,
Wilson would contact
District Attorney Miller and turn the info over to him, usually in exchange for an exclusive on the story for
The Illustrated Press, and a chance to participate in the "take-down"!
The first radio
Steve Wilson was none other than Edward G Robinson, who managed the weekly live broadcast from Hollywood despite an incredibly-hectic movie career!
He finally had to give it up in 1942, when the show moved to New York City for the remainder of it's run.
Like most successful radio shows,
Big Town became a multi-media franchise including a comic book series, four B-movies, and a tv series that ran simultaneously with the radio show from 1950 to '52 (when the radio series was cancelled), and stayed on the air until 1956.
Trivia:The comic book (from which we derive our images) featured some of the best artists in the business including Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Alex Toth.
The four B-movies featured Hillary Brooke (later the beautiful comic foil on
The Abbott & Costello Show) as
Lorelei Kilbourne!Big Town is the headline feature in
Atomic Kommie Comics' ™ newest kool kollectible collection Newpapermen (& Women) Against Crime™ with no less than three different designs!If you have a media mogul in the family, here's a perfect (and relatively inexpensive) birthday or holiday gift for them.
Remind them of the way it used to be (and could be, again)!
Special Treat:
Link to mp3s of the
Big Town radio show (Some eps with Edward G Robinson!)
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