The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe
The Character and What Made Him Work on Radio
Rex Stout introduced Nero Wolfe in the 1934 novel Fer-De-Lance, and over the course of 33 novels and 39 short stories built one of crime fiction's most distinct figures. Wolfe was, as the radio introduction put it, a "gargantuan gourmet, the detective genius who rates the knife and fork the greatest tools ever invented by man" — an orchid fancier, a bon vivant by nature and a fat man by consequence, who solved murders from the comfort of his brownstone without ever visiting the scene of the crime. The laziness was the point. Wolfe needed money to fund his appetites, grumbled whenever a client appeared at his door, and then took the case anyway. The tension between indolence and necessity was built into the premise from the first page.
Radio suited this setup remarkably well. Since Wolfe never left the house, you didn't need to show the audience much beyond a well-furnished study and a convincing voice. The show was narrated by Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's legman, assistant, and secretary, who did all the footwork — interviewing witnesses, gathering clues, and occasionally admiring a well-shaped leg. Archie's voice carried the stories forward while Wolfe waited at home to make sense of what Archie brought back. It was an efficient division of labor for a 30-minute format.
Three Runs, Three Titles, Three Different Wolfes
Before the show reached a national audience, it ran on the regional New England Network for about twelve episodes between April and June 1943, with J. B. Williams as Wolfe. None of those episodes have survived.
The national debut came on the Blue Network starting July 5, 1943, produced by Himan Brown, who had persuaded Stout to agree to the radio series in exchange for a weekly royalty. Santos Ortega played Wolfe, with John Gibson and Joseph Julian both credited as Archie Goodwin during the run. Writer Louis Vittes handled most of the scripts, basing none of them on Stout's original stories. The show ran Mondays at 8:30, went on a four-month hiatus, then resumed January 21, 1944, on Fridays at 7. Luis Van Rooten replaced Ortega as Wolfe at some point in 1944, though the exact date of the handover isn't known. The whole Blue Network run ended July 14, 1944, and didn't continue on the renamed ABC network — the result of a disagreement between producer Brown and Edwin Fadiman, who oversaw Stout's radio, film, and television interests through his company Nero Wolfe Attractions, Inc. Only one episode from the entire Blue Network phase survives: "The Last Laugh Murder Case," which aired July 14, 1944, and was later rebroadcast by the Armed Forces Radio Service. The announcer on that surviving episode was Peter Lorre.
In 1945, the show returned on Mutual under the title The Amazing Nero Wolfe, airing Sundays and sponsored by Jergens Lotion. Francis X. Bushman played Wolfe, with Elliott Lewis as Archie and Jim Bannon as announcer. Travis Wells produced and directed; Louis Vittes again wrote the scripts. Rex Stout's biographer John McAleer later criticized the Mutual run for its "slapstick" humor. The series ended December 15, 1946, and only about six episodes from that run are known to have circulated — the clearest surviving example being "The Shakespeare Portfolio," also known as "The Missing Book," dated that final broadcast day.
The NBC Run and Sydney Greenstreet
The third and final run — the one the canonical title refers to — aired on NBC from October 20, 1950 to April 27, 1951, Fridays at 8, produced by Edwin Fadiman and directed by J. Donald Wilson, with Don Stanley announcing. Plymouth came on as a partial sponsor but soon lost interest, and the series ran mostly unsponsored. It comprised 26 episodes, all but one of which have survived — the missing entry being Episode 4, "The Case of the Headless Hunter," from November 10, 1950. The opening weeks set the pattern: "Stamped for Murder" on October 20, "The Case of the Care Worn Cuff" the following Friday, "The Case of the Dear Dead Lady" on November 3.
The casting of Sydney Greenstreet as Wolfe was, by any measure, the defining creative decision of the NBC run. Greenstreet had made his film debut at 61 playing Kasper Gutman — the Fat Man — in The Maltese Falcon (1941), a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to make five films with Humphrey Bogart and nine with Peter Lorre, including Casablanca (1942) and Passage to Marseille (1944). By 1950, his film career had ended — he retired from pictures after Malaya (1949) due to failing health, suffering from both diabetes and Bright's Disease — and the NBC radio role was among his last significant work. The connection between Gutman and Wolfe wasn't subtle: both were large, cultivated, dangerous men who operated from positions of comfort. The casting was, by one account, typecasting — but typecasting that worked. McAleer reported that Stout himself enjoyed the portrayal.
Born December 27, 1879, in Sandwich, Kent, England, Greenstreet had a lengthy stage career before films — touring Britain with Ben Greet's Shakespearean company, making his New York stage debut in 1905, and appearing in a 1902 production of a Sherlock Holmes story in his professional debut as a murderer. He became a U.S. citizen in 1925. He had also appeared on radio before NBC came calling — on The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theatre and Academy Award Theatre, and in lighter turns alongside Fred Allen and Bob Hope, gently sending up the screen persona that had made him famous. He died January 18, 1954, in Hollywood, from complications of diabetes and Bright's Disease, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
The Writers and the Revolving Door on Archie
The NBC run's scripts were written almost entirely by Alfred Bester, who contributed nearly all 26 episodes. At the time, Bester was developing what would become The Demolished Man, serialized in Galaxy magazine beginning January 1952 and the winner of the first Hugo Award in 1953. He was doing that work simultaneously with the Nero Wolfe scripts — a notable intersection of two very different kinds of storytelling.
The Archie Goodwin role, meanwhile, cycled through five actors over a single season. Lawrence Dobkin played Archie for the first twelve episodes; Gerald Mohr, who had made a guest appearance in the twelfth, took over for the next four; Harry Bartell played Archie for the remainder. Wally Maher and Herb Ellis are also credited, as is Lamont Johnson. Low ratings drove the turnover — the show struggled throughout its NBC run, and the instability in casting reflected the broader uncertainty about the series' future. The fact that it ended after 26 episodes, without a second season, wasn't a surprise.
Despite the ratings trouble, the NBC version is generally regarded as the most accomplished of the three radio incarnations. It was described at the time as the first radio series that, like the Stout novels themselves, stressed characterization over plot — and it remains the run most credited with bringing Nero Wolfe to a wider radio audience.
After Radio
Stout had been wary of adaptations since the 1930s, when Columbia Pictures filmed Fer-De-Lance and The League of Frightened Men to his disappointment. He accepted the radio royalties but kept his distance from the creative side. After the NBC radio run ended in 1951, the character eventually moved to other media. A 1979 ABC television movie, written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy and produced by Paramount Television, starred Thayer David as Wolfe and Tom Mason as Archie, adapting the novel The Doorbell Rang. Shot as a pilot, it was shelved for over two years before finally broadcasting on December 18, 1979.
Paramount had actually purchased the entire catalog of Nero Wolfe stories in 1976 with Orson Welles in mind for the lead role, but Welles ultimately withdrew over creative disagreements. The 1981 NBC television series that followed starred William Conrad — himself an alumnus of old-time radio — as Wolfe and Lee Horsley as Archie. It ran 14 episodes as a midseason replacement from January to August 1981 and earned two Primetime Emmy nominations. A 1982 CBC radio series starred Mavor Moore as Wolfe and Don Francks as Archie, with Cec Linder as Inspector Cramer and Ron Hartmann adapting and directing 13 episodes. A 2001 A&E series, A Nero Wolfe Mystery, starred Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton and ran for two seasons. Each adaptation found its own Wolfe, but the radio versions — particularly the NBC run — were where the character first found a mass audience beyond the page.