Himon Brown, Radio Storytelling Star, Dies

Himan Brown, radio storytelling star, dies in NYC DEEPTI HAJELA
Associated Press NEW YORK -- Himan Brown, who created dramas
that used sound effects like a creaking door and a steam engine to enthrall
listeners during the golden age of radio, has died. He was 99. Brown died in
his Manhattan apartment, his family said Monday. The creative force behind
radio classics including "Inner Sanctum Mysteries" and "Grand Central
Station," Brown grasped "how sounds would trigger the imagination," said Ron
Simon, curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media. Inner
Sanctum Mysteries," for example, used the sound of a creaking door as its
signature opening and ended with the ominous sign-off, "pleasant dreams.
Grand Central Station" included the sound of a steam engine. He was one of
radio's great storytellers," Simon said. Among Brown's other creations were
"The Adventures of the Thin Man" and "Dick Tracy. He worked with stars like
Orson Welles and Boris Karloff. Brown, who died Friday, "always believed in
the drama of the mind," said his daughter, Hilda Brown. He felt people could
use their own imagination to create mental pictures to go along with what
they were hearing on the radio. The son of Russian immigrants, Brown was
raised in Brooklyn. He graduated from law school, but decided to follow his
creative passions instead, his daughter said. He had good timing: The 1930s
and 1940s were part of the years when radio was most popular. Shows of all
kinds could be found all over the radio dial, and popular shows were
must-hear appointments for many Americans. Even as television came into
prominence in the middle of the 20th century, Brown remained a firm believer
in the power of radio. In 1974, he started "CBS Radio Mystery Theater," a
nightly radio program that ran until the early 1980s. Radio drama is the
most potent form of theater I know," he told the alumni newsletter of Grady
College at the University of Georgia in 1994. It gives you an experience no
other form of theater -- movies and television -- can duplicate. It's the
theater of the mind. Brown was married twice -- to Mildred Brown and later
Shirley Goodman, both deceased. Along with Hilda Brown, he is survived by
his son, Barry Brown; his granddaughters, Melina Brown and Barrie Brown; and
four great-grandchildren.