The Father of The Crypt Keeper Speaks
Review of The Official Guide to Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Behind the Creaking Door
By June Pulliam
Grams, Martin, Jr. The Official Guide to Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Behind the Creaking Door. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. 2002. 249 p.
Martin Gram's ambitious guide to the influential 1940s radio program, and its various spin-off novels and films, documents a piece of popular culture that might have otherwise slid into obscurity as the people involved with the production of the show passed away. Like many programs of its time, The Inner Sanctum was produced live, meaning that there were nearly no surviving copies of broadcasts. If it weren't for some of the show's episodes being recorded onto vinyl to rebroadcast to service personnel overseas during World War II, there would be virtually no oral record of the program at all. The shows producers also failed to file scripts in the Library of Congress Copyright Office, making it even more difficult for a scholar to archive material about this program.
The Inner Sanctum series began from paperback novels released by Simon and Schuster under the series title "The Inner Sanctum." Originally, these novels in this series represented various genres, but eventually, they would be almost exclusively mystery novels, some with supernatural plot devices. All the novels featured buxom young women being menaced by a variety of villains. Host Raymond Edward Johnson and his famous creaking door helped popularize the horror and mystery genre with the American public, a public that already had a huge appetite for horror and detective fiction, and other shows with similar themes such as The Shadow.
Grams ambitious and well-researched guide chronicles The Inner Sanctum, from its roots to its later revival in the 1970. Among some of the more fascinating features of the book are information about how Himan Brown, the show's creator, collaborated with the War Department to incorporate propaganda into the scripts, or the show's occasional skirmishes with network censors and the FCC for what was considered fairly sensational material at the time.
The lack of documentation for The Inner Sanctum caused Grams to have to write his guide more like an oral history. He has managed to interview an impressive number of people involved with t he making of the show in order to document everything about it. He has also combed archives to find information on every conceivable facet of the show. One segment of the guide is devoted to fan mail received by the Inner Sanctum. Another is devoted reproducing the limericks fans sent to the show in response to ones created by the show's host. Interspersed in the guide are a number of illustrations of ads for the show.
A one-of-a-kind find, this is a valuable resource for any library or student of popular culture.