Box 13: Daytime Nightmare (Alan Ladd/Paul Frees Radio Adventure 1948)

Alan Ladd as Dan Holiday in this July 9, 1948 offering of old-time radio adventure. In this episode, after dining out with a businessman (Paul Frees), Holiday passes out only to wake up and find himself strapped to a gurney in a sanitarium where everyone refers to him as Mr. Stokes.

Regular Cast:
Alan Ladd as Dan Holiday
Sylvia Picker as Suzy
Edmund MacDonald as Lt. Kling
Vern Carstensen as the Announcer

Box 13 was a syndicated radio series about the escapades of newspaperman-turned-mystery novelist Dan Holiday, played by film star Alan Ladd. Created by Ladd's company, Mayfair Productions, Box 13 premiered in 1947. In New York City, it first aired on December 31, 1947, on Mutual's New York flagship, WOR.

To seek out new ideas for his fiction, Holiday ran a classified ad in the Star-Times newspaper where he formerly worked: "Adventure wanted, will go anywhere, do anything -- write Box 13, Star-Times." The stories followed Holiday's adventures when he responded to the letters sent to him.

Supporting cast members included Betty Lou Gerson, Frank Lovejoy, Lurene Tuttle, Alan Reed, Luis Van Rooten and John Beal. Vern Carstensen, who directed Box 13 for producer Richard Sanville, was also the show's announcer.

The dramas featured music by Rudy Schrager. Russell Hughes, who had previously hired Ladd as a radio actor in 1935 at a $19 weekly salary, wrote most of the scripts, sometimes in collaboration with Ladd. The partners in Mayfair Productions were Ladd and Bernie Joslin, who had previously run the chain of Mayfair Restaurants.