Barrie Craig also known as Barry Craig or Barry Crane, Confidential Investigator

Detective drama (1951 - 55)

Your man when you can't go to the cops... Confidentiality a specialty...

By the time NBC was celebrating its Silver Jubilee - 25 years of technological, talent, infrastructure, and commercial success in broadcasting. With the roll-out of the 1951 fall radio line up, the "Hard-Boiled" Detective genre was beginning to get a little stale. Smart-aleck tough guys who lived by their personal codes of honor while demonstrating an ability to deliver and absorb a degree of violence were still popular and would remain so for several more seasons, as well as getting a boost on the Small Screen. However, these rough and tumble gumshoes just were not as fresh as they were at the end of the War. William Gargan as Barry Craig, Confidential Investigator tried but did not change the situation, however, Craig would become one of radio's most likable sleuths.

Brooklyn-native Bill Gargan had a nearly ideal background for playing a radio gumshoe. His father had been a detective. Young Bill got his start as a "Salesman" delivering bootleg liquor to Manhattan speakeasies. Later he got into the detective game himself, working as a collection agent for a clothing manufacturer before stepping into the "$10-a-day-plus-expenses" world of regular detective work; guarding payrolls, tailing suspects, bodyguarding, and the like. The agency let him go after he lost track of a diamond salesman he was supposed to be protecting. Fortunately, he went to visit his brother at work; Edward Gargan was a successful character actor and Bill got a stage job as well.

Gargan would land parts as cops, priests, and adventurers on stage before moving to Hollywood where he would enjoy moderate success in mostly "B" Grade films (he played Ellery Queen in three different films in 1942) and appeared in several different detective roles on West Coast Radio. Just before creating Barry Craig, Gargan starred as Martin Kane, Private Eye for US Tobacco on NBC Radio, and took the role to the small screen where it became TV's first "Cops and Robbers" show.

Barry Craig was a less intense detective than some of his pulp-magazine inspired contemporaries like Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, or Philip Marlowe. He generally got along with the cops, was in the business because it was his job and (almost) paid the bills. He would point out that he was a "confidential investigator" rather than a private eye, which indicated that he held his client's privacy in high regard. However, if the case could be resolved with a win for the little guy, so much the better.

In 1958, Gargan's acting career was cut off when he was forced to have his larynx removed to stave off cancer. He learned to employ an artificial voice box and became an outspoken anti-smoking crusader. William Gargan passed away in 1979 after suffering a heart attack aboard a flight from New York to San Diego

See also Broadway is My Beat, Dragnet, Jack Webb Collection, Johnny Dollar, Nero Wolfe, and Pat Novak for Hire.