Horror and mystery shows were common and diverse in the Golden Age of Radio. Perhaps the most stylishly fun of all of them, however, was Inner Sanctum Mystery. Introduced by the trademark creaking door (a sound effect actually created by a rusty desk chair) and The Host with a macabre basketful of puns and bad jokes about murder, death, and mayhem, it just had more fun with it all than any other series.
"The Wailing Wall" from 1945, not long after it had begun to be sponsored by Lipton, is perhaps not the most original of the Inner Sanctum stories, but it has everything that made the show great. It is well written. It stars Boris Karloff. And, of course, we have The Host and Mary the Lipton Tea Lady. (There are people who don't have much taste for her, but I love Mary the Lipton Tea Lady. By being so radically different from The Host, she makes every episode ten times more fun.)
You can listen to "The Wailing Wall" online at the Internet Archive (episode 44) or OTRCAT (the third from the top). Or you can watch it on YouTube:
