Carlton E Morse Collection

Carlton Morse
(1901 – 1993)

As much as we appreciate and admire the efforts of the actors who stood in front of the microphones during the golden Age of Radio, for the most part, the actor was merely reading the words that someone else wrote. Anyone who has been part of a dramatic performance can tell you that it is far from easy to breathe life into a character that someone else has created, but until a writer creates the character and makes up a story so that the character has something to do, there is no need for the actors to even come to the studio.

"At the tender age of five I enticed my father and mother away from their rice fields and oil wells near Jennings, Louisiana, not too distant from the rough, tough, roistering elements of the Texas Panhandle..." - Carlton E. Morse

George and Ora Morse started their wandering family by welcoming their oldest, Carlton Errol Morse, into the world on June 4, 1901. Eventually there would be six kids in the Morse clan, so in 1906 they packed all they could carry and moved West, seeking their fortunes in the booming Golden Gate city of San Francisco, and then moving North to a fruit and dairy farm near Talent, Oregon. Young Carl attended Ashland High for two years before the family moved south again, this time settling on a twenty-acre ranch near Sacramento.

Carl worked on the Sacramento High School Newspaper and played basketball before graduating in 1919 and moving on to Sacramento Junior College. In 1922, he entered the University of California at Berkeley, studying drama and writing in preparation for what he expected to be a rewarding journalism career. Some biographers have claimed that Morse met and became lifelong friends with some of the actors who would later work for him while he attended drama classes at Berkeley, although he would later state categorically that the first time he laid eyes on his company of players was when they came in for their audition.

He was expected to graduate with the Class of 1923, male University students at the time were expected to complete a course in Military Studies. The general public was still flush with the grandeur of General Pershing's WWI Expeditionary Force returning from France. Farm boy Carl had rarely, if ever, seen a man in uniform, let alone worn one himself, and this lack of martial background kept him from receiving his diploma. However, he had picked up enough in his journalism courses to land a job at the Sacramento Union.

Even though he was proud to have launched into the noble profession of journalism, he found that a job and a living wage were not the same things. He would work his way up and down the Western States between 1922 and 1928, writing for The San Francisco Illustrated Daily Herald, The Seattle Times, The Vancouver Columbian,The Portland Oregonian and The San Francisco Bulletin. While at The Bulletin in 1928, Carlton met and married Patricia Pattison De Ball. Then The Bulletin was sold to be absorbed into the growing Hearst syndicate. Morse later wrote that an advantage of a journalistic career was that he got to see the want ads before the general public, and when he saw that the National Broadcasting Company was in need of script writers at their West coast studio, he was one of the first in line.

From the West Coast Blue Network flagship station, KGO, Morse began writing scripts for House of Myths. The show was rather unique among network programming in that the East and West Coast versions used completely different scripts. The program was built around dramatizations of Greek classics, but the KGO management said "We can't do these – they're terrible" and tasked Morse with rewriting them or finding other myths to base a script on. He hit on the concept of doing myths in a modern vernacular and making tongue-in-cheek reference to the sex-life of the Gods. About the time he got going with Myths, Carlton got an offer to go back to work with The Seattle Times, but after tasting the creative freedom of radio, there was no going back.

He also worked with the San Francisco Police Department on a quartet of series, Chinatown Squad, Barbary Coast Nights, Killed in Action and To the Best of Their Ability. Not only were the police involved with the content, all four shows were narrated by Police Chief William J. Quinn.

Morse's greatest successes were One Man's Family and I Love a Mystery (ILAM to fans). The two very successful serials could hardly have been more different. One Man's Family was a soap opera created for housewives while ILAM appealed to youngsters and those fascinated by the macabre.

One Man's Family premiered in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle markets on April 29, 1932, and expanded to the full West Coast network a month later. The next year it was carried nationwide, becoming the first West Coast series to have regular play in the East. J. Anthony Smythe played patriarch Henry Barbour for the entire 27-year run, and as the Barbour children grew, the family faced the issues which concerned the nation as a whole, including service in WWII.

I Love a Mystery premiered on the West Coast Network in January 1939, and became part of NBC's national lineup that fall, sponsored by Fleischmann's Yeast. The show followed Jack Packard, Reggie York, and Doc Long as they formed the A-1 Detective Agency in San Francisco. The team found cases where they had to face mysteries, adventures, and supernatural terror. If the premise sounds familiar to younger audiences, it may be because ILAM was one of the influences of Hanna-Barbera's long-running animated series Scooby-Doo.

Morse also created I Love Adventure, Adventures by Morse, and wrote for The Upper Room. After retiring from broadcasting, he wrote novels, including Killer at the Wheel, A Lavish of Sin and Stuff the Lady's Hatbox. In 1993, Carlton Morse died of natural causes.  Besides his mystery anthology and soap opera recordings, this collection also includes some of the rare recordings such as Behold Woman, The Bennetts, It's the Berries, Tell me a Story (starring Ida Lupino), That's Our Boy, The Woman in My House and a rare interview with Carlton Morse.

A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honors Carlton E. Morse's contributions to Radio at 6445 Hollywood Blvd.