1940s radio
1950s radio
A01=Frank Krutnik
American radio
Author_Frank Krutnik
Category=ATFA
Category=ATL
Category=JBCC1
chillers
detective series
Double Indemnity
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film noir
killers
Lights Out
Murder
Murder My Sweet
My Sweet
neglected radio dramas
noir debates
noir films
noir influence
noir media comparison
noir storytelling
noir vein
Philip Marlowe
radio adaptations
radio as cinema's rival
radio noir dramas
radio vs cinema
Sam Spade
studio-era Hollywood
Suspense
The Maltese Falcon
thrillers
Product details
- ISBN 9781978836396
- Weight: 513g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 May 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Film noir is one of the most exciting and most debated products of studio-era Hollywood, but did you know that American radio broadcast many programs in the noir vein through the 1940s and 1950s? These included adaptations of such well-known films as The Maltese Falcon, Murder, My Sweet, and Double Indemnity, detective series devoted to the adventures of private eyes Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and the spine-tingling anthology programs Lights Out and Suspense. Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers is the first book to explore in detail noir storytelling on the two media, arguing that radio’s noir dramas played an important role as a counterpart to, influence on, or a spin-off from the noir films. Besides shedding new light on long-neglected radio dramas, and a medium that was cinema’s major rival, this scrupulously researched yet accessible study also uses these programs to challenge conventional understandings of the much-debated topic of noir.
FRANK KRUTNIK is an emeritus reader in film studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton. His publications include Popular Film and Television Comedy; In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity; and Inventing Jerry Lewis; and he is coeditor of Un-American Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (Rutgers University Press).
