TEHRAN, Iran -- While tensions remain high between the U.S. and Iran, there's at least one American that state radio in Tehran invites on the air each week for its millions of listeners.
It's just that he's a fictional insurance fraud detective who's been on the case since 1949. “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,” a radio program created by CBS that later found a devoted listenership in Iran for a Farsi-language version under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s, has returned to Iranian radio. It's not clear why exactly the network controlled by hard-liners have decided to bring back “the man with the action-packed expense account,” but his reappearance harkens back to an era when Iran and the U.
S. enjoyed incredibly close relations. And the newly produced episodes introduce younger generations to a character that many older Iranians still have a decades-old fondness for, their ears perking up with show’s signature start with three gunshots and Johnny Dollar answering a ringing phone with its title.
“It is amazing, it reminds me of the ‘60s and ’70s, when I listened to the episodes with my parents through a vacuum tube radio," said Masoud Kouchaki, 73. "We did not have any worries except for guessing how Johnny Dollar would find the murderer.” The original CBS radio show ran from 1949 until 1962 and focused on the cases of Johnny Dollar, an investigator from Hartford, Connecticut.
The serial relied on the investigator's expenses account entries — like “$10 .