Whistler 52 02 17 ep507 Rose for Pamela

The Whistler is a West Coast CBS radio mystery that ran from May 16, 1942, to September 22, 1955. Each week an unseen man walks a night street, whistling a 13-note theme, then steps into a crime story he already knows the ending of. He is not the detective and not the killer. He is the chorus. The show opens on footsteps and that whistle — Wilbur Hatch wrote the melody, Dorothy Roberts whistled it for most of the run — then the narrator speaks in second person, present tense, as if he is standing beside the person about to make the worst decision of their life. The famous open runs: “I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes… I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.” The plots are ordinary people pulled into murder, fraud, or a cover-up that looks clean until one overlooked detail or their own stupidity undoes them. The ending is almost always an ironic twist. Rare exceptions, such as the 1944 Christmas episode “Christmas Bonus,” let the protagonist off. Bill Forman held the title voice the longest. Gale Gordon, Joseph Kearns, Marvin Miller, and Bill Johnstone also played him. J. Donald Wilson created the series. Signal Oil was the long sponsor, with the tag “That whistle is your signal for the Signal Oil program, The Whistler.” It aired mainly on the CBS West Coast network, also in Chicago and on Armed Forces Radio. Roughly 450 of the episodes survive. Columbia turned the format into eight film noirs from 1944 to 1948, seven of them starring Richard Dix.