Adventure Shows - Bold Venture
<<< Back to Adventure Show Index
Humphrey Bogart was Slate Shannon, owner of a hotel in Havana, Cuba, who ran into mystery and intrigue for a half hour every week. His side-kick was his deceased best friend's daughter, Sailor Duval, played by Bogart's real-life wife Lauren Bacall. Jester Hairston played the part of King Moses, a calypso singer in Shannon's hotel. Many of the adventures involved Shannon's boat the Bold Venture, after which the show was named.
The show began in March of 1951 and was syndicated on radio stations around the country, being heard on about 500 different radio stations at it's peak. Fred Ziv produced the shows with a budget of $600,000 for the first year, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall receiving $5,000 for each week's episode. Mort Fine and Dave Friedkin wrote the scripts for $1,000 each, and the music for the shows was handled by David Rose and his orchestra. Radio stations were required to buy the full year's production, with small town stations being charged as little as $13 per episode, while large market stations were charged up to $750 for each episode.
