GANG BUSTERS "Blood Oath Gang"

Episode 71 aired on CBS Radio June 2, 1937. Gang Busters is an American dramatic radio program heralded as "the only national program that brings you authentic police case histories." It premiered on January 15, 1936, and was broadcast over 21 years through November 27, 1957. So-called "true crime" magazines were highly popular in the 1930s and the movie G Men starring James Cagney, released in the spring of 1935, had proven to be a big hit. Producer-director Phillips H. Lord thought there was a place on radio for a show of the same type. To emphasize the authenticity of his dramatizations, Lord produced the initial radio show, G-Men, in close association with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was not particularly favorable to the notion of such a program, but U. S. Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings gave it his full support.