Starring William Johnstone (12 half-hour episodes / 6 hours via digital download)
“The Line Up” was a hard-boiled drama of police action. Like “Dragnet”, it realistically showed police doing their jobs. “The Line Up”, as the title indicates, centered around the police line up. The show always began with a police sergeant ordering suspects to stand at attention in a police line up so that the victim, behind one-way glass, could try to identify the criminal. While the line up was rarely the key to solving the case, it did give the show a rhythm and it also allowed for humor in the interrogation of the suspects by the sergeant. William Johnstone, best known as the second voice of “The Shadow” beginning in 1938 starring as Lieutenant Ben Guthrie. Wally Maher was Sergeant Matt Groebs. The supporting casts were a who’s who of Hollywood radio actors, including Howard McNear, William Conrad, Barton Yarborough, Hy Averback and Herb Butterfield. The series began as a summer replacement for “The FBI in Peace and War” in 1950, but quickly got its own time slot and would remain on radio until the spring of 1953 before making a successful transition to television.
