Organized Crime: America’s Little Mob Problem In The 1950s – 1951 – Past Daily Reference Room

The Nation’s Nightmare – Waterfront Crime – 1951 – CBS Radio – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

Oh, for the carefree 50’s. Not. Between the paranoia of the Cold War, the turmoil in the Middle East, the myriad social upheavals either about to start or getting underway and the unexplained world of UFO’s, Crime was just one more element in the already haywire decade of the 1950s. For all the innocence professed on the surface, underneath it was a hotbed of fear and mistrust, and it was sweeping the nation.

One of the biggest concerns was Crime, organized Crime – and aside from rooting out Communists, Capitol Hill was busy holding hearings over just how serious and all-pervading this atmosphere of crime really was. And even though the subject of Waterfront Crime became the subject of an Academy Award winning film, it cast a blazing light on one more important element in our society that was being taken over by the Mob, one more thing America had to worry about.

In this half-hour radio documentary, one of a multi-part series produced by CBS Radio and, “torn from today’s headlines” as it were, Waterfront Crime was a searing and unvarnished look at just how entrenched the Mafia was in the day-to-day operations of some of our busiest ports around the country.

Told in a rather over-the-top and alarming manner by veteran broadcaster and journalist Bill Downs, the series makes stark use of that new technological advance; the tape recorder, and dives feet first into uncovering secret confessions, on-the-spot reporting of violence and alarming facts and figures.

The intent, no doubt, was to spark fear and outrage and most likely stimulate an audience abandoning radio for that other new technological advance; television.

But the bottom line – America was going through changes, it was shedding the cloak of innocence and being made aware of things that were uncomfortable in ways that had been overlooked before.

To get some idea, here is that episode “Waterfront Crime”, part of the CBS Radio series “The Nation’s Nightmare” from late 1951.

Liked it? Take a second to support Past Daily on Patreon!