I am indebted to the Line-Up log prepared by the late Stewart Wright (available via this page) and would recommend it for thorough information on The Line-Up: airdates, titles, actors, the setting, etc. Thanks also to Dr. Joe Webb and to Bob Pedersen for sharing with me episodes I had not heard!
My own eclectic notes below are based on listening to 82 episodes of the series and on looking at the twelve scripts available in the library of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy (SPERDVAC).
My own eclectic notes below are based on listening to 82 episodes of the series and on looking at the twelve scripts available in the library of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety And Comedy (SPERDVAC).
Some story connections
1950-05-27 audition "The Anita Cameron Case" (Morton Fine & David Friedkin)
The same story as Broadway's My Beat 1949-11-26 "The Mary Gilbert Murder Case" and Bold Venture e42 "A Dead Girl's Clothes" aka "Innocence in Trujillo."
1950-08-03 Untitled (aka Two Young Girls Killed by Hit and Run Driver) (Morton Fine & David Friedkin)
Serial killing as revenge for vehicle accident: a variation on the same basic idea as, although not the same story as, Fine and Friedkin's oft-repurposed script for Broadway's My Beat 1949-08-11 "The Jane Darnell Murder Case," Pursuit 1949-11-10 "Three For All," The McCoy 1951-04-24 "Three Wayward Girls" and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1953-01-16 "The Starlet Matter."
"I'm gonna keep Elaine Kirk's engagements." See also Broadway's My Beat 1950-11-24 "The Shorty Dunne Murder Case," in which Danny Clover investigates a woman's murder by following her shopping list.
Someone "confesses" that they blame themselves for the victim's death, but then it turns out that person literally did commit the murder. This also happens in Broadway's My Beat 1950-02-03 "The Lt. Jimmy Hunt Murder Case," 1951-10-06 "The Lily Nelson Murder Case," and 1952-02-16 "The Raymond Grant Murder Case."
1950-08-10 Untitled aka Man Dies of Poisoning (Morton Fine & David Friedkin)
Man dies at police headquarters; cab driver reports man was in his cab with woman who got out first; investigation uncovers blackmail about bullet wound: see also Broadway's My Beat 1949-08-04 "The Dr. Robbie McClure Murder Case." The cabbie coming to the protagonist's office to report recognizing his fare on a poster is also reminiscent of a scene in Broadway 1950-05-05 "The Thelma Harper Murder Case."
1950-08-24 Untitled (Hotel arson, body found) (Morton Fine & David Friedkin)
Policewoman impersonates murder victim in order to trap killer into trying to finish the job: see also the later Broadway's My Beat 1952-01-19 "The Lynn Halstead Murder Case." That story also involves delay and trouble about identifying a body, although for very different reasons.
1950-11-23 The Topaz Earring Case (Gene Levitt and Robert Mitchell)
Reuses many story elements from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe 1949-08-06 "The August Lion" by Mel Dinelli, Robert Mitchell and Gene Levitt—including the clue of a piece of jewelry which seems to point to one suspect but actually implicates another of the opposite gender.
Also, the cops get a tip from a dubious private detective named Manny Pomeroy; there's a disreputable PI named Mutt Pomeroy in Philip Marlowe 1950-01-28 "The Hairpin Turn" and 1950-09-08 "The Fifth Mask."
1950-11-30 The Cop Killer (Blake Edwards)
The grieving Mom Fisher calling Ben and Matt "my two big policemen" is reminiscent of the grieving Mama Waxman ("Oh, Richard, how's mein big policeman?") in Richard Diamond, Private Detective 1949-06-26 "The Tom Waxman Bombing Case."
1950-12-07 The Jersey Parallel (Blake Edwards)
Evidently inspired by the case of WWII veteran Howard Unruh (Wikipedia), who on 6 September 1949 walked around his Camden, New Jersey, neighborhood and killed thirteen people with a Luger in under twenty minutes. In the days immediately following the crime, Unruh's brother was reported to have "expressed the opinion that his brother went berserk because of nervousness brought on by his war service," and his father also publicly stated that the war changed him; but psychiatrists quoted in the press said that Howard Unruh's war service had nothing to do with his mental illness. The Line-Up story takes that view, adding the final twist that in this case the paranoid killer was never even in the Army.
1951-06-19 Lieutenant Guthrie Kidnapped (Blake Edwards)
See also Richard Diamond, Private Detective 1950-10-18, in which Lieutenant Walt Levinson is kidnapped; the two stories are not especially similar, but it could be a bit of an in-joke the way the Line-Up kidnapper keeps saying he bets nobody's ever kidnapped a police lieutenant before.
1951-09-26 The Fur Flaunting Floozie (E. Jack Neuman)
Several elements of this story were reused for Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1953-05-12 "The Rochester Theft Matter," which was later combined with Johnny Dollar 1953-01-02 "The Baltimore Matter" and reworked as 1956-01-09 – 1956-01-13 "The Todd Matter."
1951-10-18 The Nicely Nixed Nixon Case (E. Jack Neuman)
Has a character named Bill Chambers, which was the name of the boyfriend in Johnny Dollar "The Rochester Theft Matter" and "The Todd Matter."
1951-11-08 The Pixie-Picker Pickle Case (E. Jack Neuman)
The police bring in a eccentric, religious newspaper seller named Edmund who witnessed a crime and who, when asked to describe the criminal's face, replies that it was "the Devil's face." Neuman reused much of this scene in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1955-10-06 "The Macormack Matter" episode 4—perhaps primarily in order to fill time for the new five-part format! Unlike in the Line-Up episode, the witness's story in Johnny Dollar does not help solve the case and they don't try to get him to identify a suspect.
1952-07-22 The Drinkler Kidnapping Case (E. Jack Neuman)
1952-10-08 The Teacher's Pet (Sidney Marshall)
1952-10-22 The Green Cap Case (Sidney Marshall)
1953-01-07 Once Upon a Snow-Plow (Sidney Marshall)
1953-02-11 Good Enough to Eat (Sidney Marshall)
Child actor turned director Richard Quine (Wikipedia) was a friend and frequent collaborator of Blake Edwards, and is credited as co-writer or co-editor with Edwards of the Line-Up episodes of 1951-05-29, 1951-06-12, 1951-07-05, and 1951-08-02. He and William Asher (Wikipedia) were co-producers and co-directors of the 1948 Columbia picture Leather Gloves, in which Blake Edwards was an actor.
The fictional Sgt. Quine is called "Dick" and "Richard" in the dialogue of 1951-09-05 "Pointless Pierson Polemic Polarity," and has the first name Richard on the character list of the script for 1952-04-08 "Cornered Cop Killer." His first name is Tom in the dialogue of 1952-10-01 "Poker Party" and on the scripts of 1952-04-01 "Kastro's," 1952-07-06 "Luger-Lugging Laddie," 1952-07-22 "Drinkler Kidnapping," 1952-11-05 "Be-Bop Bandits," 1952-12-12 "Gasoline Bandit," and 1952-12-19 "Two Tough Thugs."
Sgt. Asher has the first name Dave in the dialogue of 1952-03-04 "Mercer's," 1952-05-06 "Babs," 1952-07-08 "Luger-Lugging," 1952-07-29 "Charles Crocked," 1952-08-05 "Karger Kops," 1952-10-15 "Bentley's" and 1952-12-19 "Two Tough Thugs," and on the script of 1952-12-12 "Gasoline Bandit." His first name is Fred on the scripts of 1952-04-01 "Kastro's" and 1952-11-05 "Be-Bop."
According to IMDb, Asher's first name was Fred in both the 1954 TV series and the 1958 movie based on The Line-Up. Quine is listed in only one episode of the TV series, with no first name given, and has the first name Al in the movie.
Before introducing Quine as a regular on The Line-Up, Blake Edwards had used the name Quine for a police officer in Richard Diamond, Private Detective 1949-05-22 "The Stolen Purse"; and Sgt. Asher shares his surname with Diamond's steady girlfriend Helen Asher. In a possible nod to her, one of the suspect's aliases in 1951-10-04 "The Wild, Wild Woman Case" by E. Jack Neuman is "Helen Diamond."
The real-life Dick Quine was also close friends with one Frederick Karger, and witnessed Karger's marriage to Jane Wyman in 1952. A policeman named Karger is referred to in passing in nine episodes in 1951 (1951-04-24, 06-19, 09-26, 10-04, 10-11, 11-01, 11-08, 11-22 and 11-29), but does not appear as a character.
1951-12-06 "The Bastille-Bound Bad Boys Case" has a Sgt. John Karger: "Karger's taking the line while Matt is sick, he's nervous as a kitten." John Karger has very little dialogue in this episode after the line-up scene, but Quine is present throughout—and at one point seems to refer to Ben as his partner, leading me to believe that this Karger really was introduced solely to fill in for an unexpectedly absent Matt Greb/Wally Maher, and the script was hastily reworked to give Quine most of Matt's other dialogue (probably relegating Quine's original dialogue to Karger).
Pete Karger is Ben Guthrie's full-time sidekick beginning in early 1952 after Maher's untimely death. Asher and Ben's dialogue at the beginning of 1952-02-05 "The Potting Peter Case" again indicates that Karger is new to doing the line-up ("Got somebody in the line?" "Uh-uh. I thought I'd see how Karger was making out. How many do you have?" "Fifteen. Glad to see Karger get the chance. Been with you a long time." "Yeah, twelve years now."), so there's no apparent continuity between him and the earlier version of the Karger character. Karger spells his name aloud in 1952-10-08 "The Teacher's Pet": "This is Sergeant Karger." "Carter?" "Er, Karger. K-A-R-G-E-R."
"Doesn't look much like a kidnapper, does he, Ben?" / "I don't know. What's a kidnapper supposed to look like?" Compare Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1953-05-12 "The Rochester Theft Matter" (and the subsequent "The Todd Matter"): "Doesn't look like a killer, though, does he?" / "I don't know. What's a killer supposed to look like?"
1952-10-08 The Teacher's Pet (Sidney Marshall)
A man dies at the wheel of a car, apparently of cardiac arrest, but the autopsy uncovers a small-caliber bullet wound behind the right ear. This also occurred in the murder of Samuel I. Paris, dramatized by Sidney Marshall for Somebody Knows 1950-08-10. In the Line-Up episode, the autopsy surgeon says the bullet wound wasn't noticed because "Silvano needed a haircut"; the Somebody Knows episode doesn't specifically mention the victim's hair, but contemporary newspaper items on the Paris murder do say the wound was concealed by thick hair.
1952-10-22 The Green Cap Case (Sidney Marshall)
Significant portions of this episode are directly adapted from Marshall's script for Somebody Knows 1950-07-06 "The Unsolved Murder of Joseph P. Bohanak." According to that account of a true unsolved case, the police believe the distinctive green cap found at the scene may be a vital clue. In the Line-Up story, they investigate the cap but wind up catching the killer by other means—and the last line is "I wonder if Quine ever got anywhere with that cap"!
The name of the victim in "The Green Cap Case" is William Brenizer; Eugene Brenizer was one of the detectives on the Bohanak case.
The name of the victim in "The Green Cap Case" is William Brenizer; Eugene Brenizer was one of the detectives on the Bohanak case.
1953-01-07 Once Upon a Snow-Plow (Sidney Marshall)
This story seems to be loosely based on the murders of Geraldine Mingo and Mary Kabiska, as dramatized by Sidney Marshall for Somebody Knows 1950-07-13. The two St. Paul women were knifed over a year apart, both while walking home alone from transit stops at night in stormy inclement weather. Before the Kabiska murder, a professor of clinical psychology had theorized that the Mingo murder was the work of a repetitive psychopathic killer and predicted that the killer would strike again under similar circumstances. In the Line-Up story, Guthrie is able to identify the circumstances in order to anticipate and thwart a third murder. In real life, there were apparently no further murders publicly linked to these two, and the case remains unsolved.
1953-02-11 Good Enough to Eat (Sidney Marshall)
A clue is reported in a trash can, but the trash is taken to the dump before the clue is retrieved, and the police have to sort through a huge pile of garbage using a conveyor belt. This also occurred in the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Short, as dramatized by Sidney Marshall for Somebody Knows 1950-08-24. In the Line-Up story, they find the jars and track down the source of the poisonings; in the Short case, they found the purse but it turned out to have no bearing on the murder.
Some character names (or, The Quine's Qurious Qognomens Qase)
Child actor turned director Richard Quine (Wikipedia) was a friend and frequent collaborator of Blake Edwards, and is credited as co-writer or co-editor with Edwards of the Line-Up episodes of 1951-05-29, 1951-06-12, 1951-07-05, and 1951-08-02. He and William Asher (Wikipedia) were co-producers and co-directors of the 1948 Columbia picture Leather Gloves, in which Blake Edwards was an actor.
The fictional Sgt. Quine is called "Dick" and "Richard" in the dialogue of 1951-09-05 "Pointless Pierson Polemic Polarity," and has the first name Richard on the character list of the script for 1952-04-08 "Cornered Cop Killer." His first name is Tom in the dialogue of 1952-10-01 "Poker Party" and on the scripts of 1952-04-01 "Kastro's," 1952-07-06 "Luger-Lugging Laddie," 1952-07-22 "Drinkler Kidnapping," 1952-11-05 "Be-Bop Bandits," 1952-12-12 "Gasoline Bandit," and 1952-12-19 "Two Tough Thugs."
Sgt. Asher has the first name Dave in the dialogue of 1952-03-04 "Mercer's," 1952-05-06 "Babs," 1952-07-08 "Luger-Lugging," 1952-07-29 "Charles Crocked," 1952-08-05 "Karger Kops," 1952-10-15 "Bentley's" and 1952-12-19 "Two Tough Thugs," and on the script of 1952-12-12 "Gasoline Bandit." His first name is Fred on the scripts of 1952-04-01 "Kastro's" and 1952-11-05 "Be-Bop."
According to IMDb, Asher's first name was Fred in both the 1954 TV series and the 1958 movie based on The Line-Up. Quine is listed in only one episode of the TV series, with no first name given, and has the first name Al in the movie.
Before introducing Quine as a regular on The Line-Up, Blake Edwards had used the name Quine for a police officer in Richard Diamond, Private Detective 1949-05-22 "The Stolen Purse"; and Sgt. Asher shares his surname with Diamond's steady girlfriend Helen Asher. In a possible nod to her, one of the suspect's aliases in 1951-10-04 "The Wild, Wild Woman Case" by E. Jack Neuman is "Helen Diamond."
The real-life Dick Quine was also close friends with one Frederick Karger, and witnessed Karger's marriage to Jane Wyman in 1952. A policeman named Karger is referred to in passing in nine episodes in 1951 (1951-04-24, 06-19, 09-26, 10-04, 10-11, 11-01, 11-08, 11-22 and 11-29), but does not appear as a character.
1951-12-06 "The Bastille-Bound Bad Boys Case" has a Sgt. John Karger: "Karger's taking the line while Matt is sick, he's nervous as a kitten." John Karger has very little dialogue in this episode after the line-up scene, but Quine is present throughout—and at one point seems to refer to Ben as his partner, leading me to believe that this Karger really was introduced solely to fill in for an unexpectedly absent Matt Greb/Wally Maher, and the script was hastily reworked to give Quine most of Matt's other dialogue (probably relegating Quine's original dialogue to Karger).
Pete Karger is Ben Guthrie's full-time sidekick beginning in early 1952 after Maher's untimely death. Asher and Ben's dialogue at the beginning of 1952-02-05 "The Potting Peter Case" again indicates that Karger is new to doing the line-up ("Got somebody in the line?" "Uh-uh. I thought I'd see how Karger was making out. How many do you have?" "Fifteen. Glad to see Karger get the chance. Been with you a long time." "Yeah, twelve years now."), so there's no apparent continuity between him and the earlier version of the Karger character. Karger spells his name aloud in 1952-10-08 "The Teacher's Pet": "This is Sergeant Karger." "Carter?" "Er, Karger. K-A-R-G-E-R."
In 1950-07-20, the first prisoner in the line-up is named John Meston, like the radio writer who later became script supervisor for Gunsmoke. Fine and Friedkin also used the surname Meston in four episodes of Broadway's My Beat and one episode of Bold Venture.
1951-02-01 "The Grocery Store Matter" by Blake Edwards has a character named George Lumpkin; Ernest Lumpkin was Helen Asher's grouchy neighbor on Richard Diamond.
1952-04-01 "Kastro's" mentions a cop named Leeds who gets shot and dies! Peter Leeds does play Asher in this episode, but at least he doesn't have to report his own death.
Joke names and a name joke
The first page of the script for 1951-10-04 "The Wild, Wild Woman Case" by E. Jack Neuman lists the two supporting sergeants as "Sgt. Nohitt Asher" and "Sgt. Cap Quine," which is presumably a joke: in this and other episodes, the cast lists sometimes give characters humorous names in addition to the names that are heard in the script proper.
"Wild, Wild Woman" also gives a superfluous middle name to Foley Lapin O'Mahoney, and a superfluous surname to Pete Peters. 1952-11-05 "The Be-Bop Bandits Bungling Bang-Bang" by William J. Ratcliff lists the character Miss Raines as "Miss Seldom Raines." 1952-04-01 "Kastro's Kop Killing Karnage Kase" by Blake Edwards lists the character Santley as "Notalent Santley"—and lists his actor as "Raymond N. T. Burr"!!
In 1951-02-01 and 1952-04-08, both by Blake Edwards, Quine's first line of dialogue in the script is "Hy, Ben," with a Y—presumably because in both episodes Quine is played as usual by Hy Averback. (In five of these other scripts, including 1952-11-12 by Blake Edwards and with Hy Averback, Quine says hi with an I.)
The prisoners are sent where?
The spiel explaining the line-up in the first scene of each episode has some minor variations throughout the series: the order of the sentences, which sentences are included, whether or not the sergeant adds "All right" or "Okay" before "bring on the line," whether the audience is on the other side of "the wire" or "the screen"....
My favorite of these variations is that in all surviving episodes up through 1951-02-22, Greb says, "Please be prompt with your questions or identifications. When the prisoners leave here they are sent to the bathroom and dressed back into their jail clothes. It makes it quite difficult to bring them back after they leave here."
Then, starting on 1951-02-27, he says, "Please be prompt with your questions or identifications. When the prisoners leave here they are sent to the washroom and dressed back into their jail clothes. It makes it quite difficult to bring them back after they leave here."
Did somebody decide the word bathroom was too vulgar for the radio? Were you allowed to say bathroom on Thursday night, but not on Tuesday night?
On 1951-05-01, Greb's spiel omits this sentence entirely ("...If you're sure or not too sure of the suspect, have him held. The officers who took your name will assist you, they're seated among you. The questions I ask these suspects..."), and subsequent episodes either have washroom or neither word.
1953-01-02 "Cowardly Castro" and 1953-01-07 "Once Upon a Snow-Plow" both omit the bathroom/washroom line from Karger's spiel—but there are surviving dialogue-only recordings of both, and in both cases we do hear the line at the end, where the spiel would normally be covered by the rising theme music. The "Snow-Plow" script in the SPERDVAC library says bathroom, but the recording says washroom; the dialogue in this script is not identical with the dialogue in the recording, and this may have been among the changes yet to be made.
Or, perhaps Jack Moyles simply knew that he wasn't supposed to say bathroom! In "Castro," presumably recorded about a week before "Snow-Plow," he says, "...When the prisoners leave here they're sent to the bathroom— When the prisoners leave here they're sent to the washroom and dressed back into their jail clothes. It makes it quite difficult to bring them back after they leave here." Then he starts over and repeats the whole speech, ending with "...sent to the washroom and dressed back into their jail clothes. It makes it quite difficult to bring them back after they leave here."
Miscellaneous
Lieutenant Guthrie has a cold in 1951-01-18 (and 1952-05-13) "Yudo in Ypsilanti," 1952-02-29 "The Sobbing Singer Saga," and 1953-01-07 "Once Upon a Snow-Plow." Three or four colds in two and a half years is better than average for a real person, but must be a record for a weekly detective show protagonist! Interestingly, in the "Snow-Plow" script I've seen, Guthrie does not have a cold—but it's mentioned in the dialogue in four places, so it clearly wasn't just a case of "throw it in." And actually, I think Guthrie's cold is more essential to this story than to either of the other two: it contributes to the overall mood of the episode, underscoring both the harsh winter weather and his anxiety about anticipating additional murders.
In 1951-11-29 "The Railroad Roundhouse Roundup," prisoner number 1, Jules Simpson (Howard McNear), says he's had lots of jobs and made enough to get a Social Security number. The number he gives is Blake Edwards's actual Social Security number! (This was back in the day when one's Social Security number really was just for keeping track of Social Security payments, rather than being the super-top-secret key to one's whole identity.)
