Final expense, $19.20 for getting patched up at the hospital.
Johnny Dollar
A long-running, weekly Radio Drama about the titular character, Johnny Dollar, who is a hardboiled Private Investigator seeking to unmask Insurance Frauds. It aired on CBS Radio from 1949 to 1962. It's famous for being the last show of The Golden Age Of Radio.
Moonstone Books commissioned Éric Thériault (illustrator) and David Gallaher (writer) for a graphic novel adaptation of the program; it was published in 2003.
Tropes:
- Captain's Log: The title character's expense account entries as a way to summarize what he's been up to; in the show's introduction, Johnny is credited as "The Man with the Action-Packed Expense Account".
- The Corpse Stops Here: The private investigator interrupts a murder. The murderer locks him in a closet with the murder weapon and then calls the police. Naturally, the police have a hard time believing the story.
- Every Episode Ending: The drama uses the same line as the ending, the title, and the conceit. Johnny Dollar is an insurance investigator, and each episode is an explanation of the expense report he types up for his bosses (all of which, of course, have extremely dramatic and entertaining reasons). At the end of the letter/episode, he states the total, occasionally commenting that it's unusually low and "I must be slipping!" Then he signs the letter "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar."
- Failed Attempt at Drama: After all the action brought by solving the mystery of the week, Johny reports to the lieutenant (whom he's attracted to) while bleeding profusely. In his narration, he admits wanting to "impress her with [his] All-American toughness" by not fainting in front of her. The lieutenant then proceeds to catch him before he wilts to the floor.
- Framing Device: The Recap by Audit of the protagonist's expense account is how the show reveals Jonhny's exciting activities.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The program's subtitle is 'Murder Matters'; several episodes are formatted as 'The + [murder subject] + Matter'. For instance, "The Thelma Ibsen Matter", "The Rasmussen Matter", "The Templeton Matter", "The Clever Chemist Matter", "The Killer's List Matter", "The Midnight Sun Matter", and "The No Matter Matter".
- Insurance-Motivated Murder: The show focuses heavily on these, as the titular character is a detective who works for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims. Life Insurance is his bread and butter, though claims involving expensive items like boats and racehorses are also sometimes investigated.
- "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: During the serialized period of the show, star Bob Bailey gives a brief, one-sentence preview of the next part of that week's story. He ends with, "Join us, won't you? Yours truly, Johnny Dollar."
- Opening Narration: Each episode begins with the announcer declaring "Time now for...", followed by a telephone ring that would be answered by the leading man saying "Johnny Dollar". This us used to great effect following a Cliffhanger in which Dollar has been shot: the phone rings several times before a heavily medicated Dollar answers the phone from a hospital bed. The first season includes an extended opening narration afterward, noting that, "When it comes to insurance investigations, he's simply an expert; when it comes to padding his expense reports, he's an outright genius."
- Recap by Audit: This is, in fact, the radio drama's format. All of Johnny's adventures are narrated as he goes down the list filling out his expense report.
- Television Serial: In 1995, the 30-minute self-contained format of episodes is changed to five 15-minute parts divided from a single, still weekly, episode.
- The X of Y: The arc comprising the third, fourth, and fifth episodes is called "The Tears of Night Matter".
