Rex Saunders - Artist
Built on a Familiar Blueprint
When Bulldog Drummond left the air in 1949, producer Himan Brown wasn't quite ready to let the format go. Two years later he brought NBC a new show that lifted the same foghorn-and-footsteps opening, the same theme music, and at least one recycled script — wrapping it around a new British gentleman detective named Rex Saunders. The show ran Wednesdays at 8:30 on NBC, with RCA Victor as sponsor, from May 2 to August 1, 1951, and lasted exactly fourteen weeks.
The character travels internationally with his assistant, investigating cases and coming to the aid of women in distress — a format that mirrors the Bulldog Drummond template closely enough that the resemblance was clearly intentional. Brown had produced Bulldog Drummond himself, so he knew exactly what he was borrowing and why. The idea was to fill the gap the earlier show had left among listeners who liked their detectives polished, British, and slightly larger than life.
Rex Harrison in the Lead
The central bet the show made was Rex Harrison. NBC was building star-vehicle series around well-known film and theater personalities in the early 1950s, and Harrison was a logical candidate — he had come to America in 1946, made a critically noted Hollywood debut in Anna and the King of Siam that same year, and carried enough transatlantic polish to make a British gentleman detective credible. Born Reginald Carey Harrison on March 5, 1908, in Huyton, England, he had been appearing in British films since 1929 and had served in the Royal Air Force during World War II before his American career began.
The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio podcast, grouping the show under a "Gentlemen Detectives" theme, identified Harrison's charisma as the program's chief strength, alongside what it called "a few clever writing touches." Writer Ed Adamson kept the cases varied: a kidnapped nephew in "High Dividends…Or Shallow Graves" (May 30, 1951), a mysterious widow on a train in "When Murder Is Along as a Silent Companion" (July 11), a woman convinced she'll be killed as her husband's first wife allegedly was (July 18), an antique Ming cat at the center of a beautiful woman's plea for help (July 25). The finale, "When They Track Down…The Human Game" (August 1, 1951), had a desperate fugitive force Rex at gunpoint to change clothes, then throw him from a train — not a quiet ending for a show that was about to disappear.
The Supporting Cast
Leon Janney played Alec, Rex Saunders's sidekick. By this point Janney was one of New York radio's most versatile character actors, known for having perfected more than twenty accents and dialects — a skill set that had made him indispensable in the medium since his first radio appearance in 1926. His earlier credits included lead roles in The Adventures of Dick Cole, Chick Carter Boy Detective, and The Parker Family. The Army had drafted him specifically because he could speak fluent Russian, which makes the fact that he was later blacklisted during the Red Scare a particularly bitter irony.
Lesley Woods and Elspeth Eric shared female lead duties, and Kenneth Banghart handled announcing. Brown directed from New York, overlapping with his work on another NBC detective drama, Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, which he also directed during 1951–1955.
Himan Brown's Operation
Brown's career context is worth noting. He had produced Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Adventures of the Thin Man, Grand Central Station, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, and Terry and the Pirates, among more than thirty thousand lifetime productions. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1990 and later received a Peabody Award for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Rex Saunders was a small piece of a very large output — a quick attempt to revive something that had worked before, produced by someone who understood the machinery of radio drama as well as anyone working in New York at the time.
Fourteen Weeks and Out
The series ended abruptly enough that the final broadcast on August 1, 1951 included an on-air announcement of details for a fifteenth episode that was never produced or aired. Whatever was planned didn't happen, and the show closed without ceremony. Fourteen episodes survive, with a combined running time of around six hours. Early recordings in the surviving set have noticeably lower volume and audio clarity than later ones — one source has speculated the first couple of episodes may have been transmitted from overseas, though this hasn't been confirmed.
Harrison, of course, went on. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for My Fair Lady in 1964 and is primarily remembered for that role today. Rex Saunders sits in a footnote of his radio work — a summer detective show that borrowed its bones from a better-remembered series and didn't outlast the season.