DARK DESTINY
[RADIO-SERIES]
”The lives of some are doomed from the beginning. There are souls born beneath dark stars who
must travel by strange and terrible roads to meet their destinies. THIS is the tale of one of
these…”
This 1942 series is the earliest venture into the supernatural by the writing team of Robert Arthur
and David Kogan, who later collaborated on The Mysterious Traveler, The Sealed Book and The
Strange Doctor Weird. The two young men had met the year before in a writing class and, as their
friendship grew, decided to form a partnership as radio writers and packagers, who would bring
series deals to the networks but retain control over them (similar to the business model of Inner
Sanctum creator Himan Brown).
The director of the series was veteran producer Jack Johnstone, whose flair for the fantastic had
been demonstrated in previous series like Buck Rogers and Who Knows?
[Press release—OCTOBER 4, 1942—Ogden Standard Examiner—“Ethel Clark’s Radio Flashes”]
“Stories of the occult, of fate and destiny, of the mystic supernatural, will march in somber and
weird procession through Mutual microphones when ‘Dark Destiny,’ a new chiller series makes its
debut soon. ‘Dark Destiny’ will present stories based on the premise that: ‘There are lives
foredoomed from the beginning. There are souls born beneath dark stars who must travel by
strange and terrible roads to meet their destinies.’ Jack Johnstone, noted for his use of unusual
voice and sound effects, will produce and direct the series. ‘Dark Destiny’ will replace Morton
Gould’s ‘Music for America.’”
Many of the episodes were rebroadcast in the years to come on the scripting duo’s longest-
running series, The Mysterious Traveler. In 1952 Arthur and Kogan revived Dark Destiny as a
short-lived television series for WOR-TV. It ran for four weeks, using revamped Traveler scripts—
“Bury Her Deep” (March 17), “Murder by Proxy” (March 24), “Dig Your Own Grave” (March 31),
and “The Music Box” (April 7).
ORIGINATION: WOR, New York (MBS).
DURATION: August 26-October 7, 1942 (Wednesday series), October 17-November 21, 1942 (Saturday
series), November 26, 1942-March 11, 1943 (Thursday series).
PERSONNEL: Robert Arthur (scriptwriter), Jack Johnstone (producer), David Kogan (scriptwriter).
CASTS: Alfred Shirley, et al.
[CHRONOLOGY]
DARK DESTINY (WOR, NEW YORK)
[Wednesday—9:30-10:00 PM]
August 26, 1942 “It Is Later Than You Think”
September 2, 1942 “The Curse of the Tomb”
[VARIETY?: “…A blind bodyguard will accompany an English archeologist
into an ancient mausoleum, the idea being that only the sightless man
has ears sensitive enough to hear supernatural voices cursing the savant
for disturbing the entombed sleep of dead kings…”]
September 23, 1942 “The Man Who Couldn’t Die”
September 30, 1942 “Escape into the Night”
October 7, 1942 “The Knives of Death”
[Saturday—8:00-8:30 PM]
October 17, 1942 “Murderer at Large”
October 24, 1942 “The Bell of Life”
October 31, 1942 “Masquerade”
EXTANT RECORDING
November 7, 1942 “Till Death Do Us Part”
November 14, 1942 “The Dynasty of Death”
November 21, 1942 “No Escape”
[Thursday—8:30-9:00 PM]
November 26, 1942 “Full Fathom Fifty”
December 3, 1942 “Extra! Extra!”
December 10, 1942 “Mortal Clay”
DECEMBER 13, 1942:
[Ogden Standard-Examiner—“Ethel Clark’s Radio Flashes”]
“‘Dark Destiny,’ horror story series produced and directed by Jack Johnstone,
has replaced Tom Howard’s ‘It Pays to Be Ignorant’ on Thursday nights.”
December 17, 1942 “They Who Sleep”
December 24, 1942 “No One on the Line”
December 31, 1942 “It Is Later Than You Think”
January 7, 1943 “Murder Goes Free”
January 14, 1943 “The Whisper of Death”
January 21, 1943 “The House of Cain”
January 28, 1943 “If You Believe”
February 4, 1943 “Horror by Night”
February 11, 1943 “Five Miles Down”
February 18, 1943 “Death Won’t Wait”
February 25, 1943 “The Cat from Hell”
March 4, 1943 “Flight to Safety”
March 11, 1943 “The Hand with Claws”