Molle Mystery 47/07/04 Challenge to the Listener

Mollé Mystery Theatre was a 30-minute anthology radio program that ran from 1943 to 1948 on NBC prior to its moving to the CBS network, where it ran till 1951 and was altered to center around a single character, Inspector Hearthstone. It finally ran from 1951 to 1954 on ABC. The show, sponsored initially by Sterling Drugs, manufacturers of Mollé Brushless Shaving Cream, began airing on Tuesday evenings during prime time.
In 1948, Mollé ceased sponsoring the program, and its title became Mystery Theater. It featured stories of mystery and suspense and boasted performances from up-and-coming actors such as Richard Widmark and Frank Lovejoy. The show bears no relation to the radio series ABC Mystery Theater.

NBC's Mystery Theatre began airing with much fanfare on September 7, 1943. The series promised stories from the greatest classical and contemporary mystery authors -- and production values to match. And it kept its promise. It was aided from the outset by the addition of an 'annotator'-- as it was described in the 1940s --named Geoffrey Barnes.
The apparent distinction made between a narrator and an annotator, was a matter of degree. Mr. Barnes, a distinguished and celebrated amateur criminologist in his own right, was apparently on hand to help the listener analyze and understand the various mysteries and their underlying crimes within each script. The program appears to have aired sustained for its first three months, with three to five sponsors beginning to make an appearance with Program #17, "The Mystery of The Seven Keys" of December 28, 1943. There is a circulating program titled "Homicide for Hannah", that should have been the first Molle Mystery Theatre, but there is no provenance anywhere that the initial program ever actually aired. This is the first circulating program in which we hear the program refer to itself as Molle Mystery Theatre.

We have solid, highly detailed newspaper listing provenances for almost ninety percent of the first 237 programs. Sadly, the transition from NBC to CBS didn't fare as well for Mystery Theatre. NBC and CBS were waging a major war at the time, each network nakedly poaching the other's greatest Radio talent and programs, wholesale. But judging from the way NBC and CBS -- and Frank and Anne Hummert -- promoted and supported their respective line-ups, it's clear that CBS was dropping the ball for the greater part of 1949.