#edgarriceburroughs - Every Day With Edgar Rice Burroughs - July 18, 2025

 July 18, 2025 and it was a slow day in the historical world of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ve posted about most of the events that happened on this day, so the new post is relatively obscure. On this day ninety-one years ago in 1934, Episode # 29, “Another Try For the Diamond,” of the radio serial, “Tarzan and the Diamond of Asher,” was broadcast. The episode lasts 13 minutes and nine seconds and like all 39 episodes may be heard for free at: www.erbzine.com/mag31/3140.html

Carlton KaDell voiced Tarzan, Karena Shields voiced Helen, Jeanette Nolan was Magra, and Ralph Scott was D’Arnot.

A lot can happen in 13 minutes, here’s an episode summary, courtesy ERBzine: Helen, believing her brother dead, breaks up and lashes out at her captors before fainting. The king explains that the reason for their capture and for Brian’s punishment is that he believes they have come to steal the Father of Diamonds. Gregory had gone alone to the diamond room and had shot a guardian ape. He then had removed the diamond and was apprehended while trying to escape with the sacred gem. As punishment he had been forced to look into the glare of the diamond until he fell into his present comatose state of suspended animation. When Magra warns him to beware of Tarzan’s wrath, the king warns them that no help will come from their imprisoned friends since they have been sentenced to a fate worse than death. With a sinister laugh he informs Helen that plans are being made for her royal wedding – she will become his queen. Helen threatens to kill herself rather than to go through with such a ceremony.

The drabble for today, "I Heard It In A Book,: from comments that ERB made about radio in 1934. Fourteen words have been added to bring the word count to exactly 100 words.

"You ask me how book sales are holding up during hard times like these. There is one factor that may have more effect on reducing book sales than any number of depressions, and that is radio, to which we are looking for far greater returns than our book royalties ever brought us. Already, with two programs, we are netting more than we do from the sale of all our books, which, taken in connection with the fact that there are hundreds of similar programs on the air, suggests that people are taking their fiction this way instead of through books."