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75 Years Ago today in Radio History: Richard Diamond debuted on the radio today in 1949. Richard Diamond, Private Detective, was about as light-hearted as a detective could be and still carry the Hard-Boiled label. Dick Powell had effectively shaken his reputation as an "eternal juvenile" song-boy by starring as Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944), and he moved into more hard-boiled roles on the screen and the radio. As a detective, who was heard on the air for the first time on this day in 1949, Diamond checked most of the hard-boiled boxes, a former cop, he generally got along with the cops but they would have been happy if he stayed in his girlfriend's apartment, there was the girlfriend to nurse him after he took a beating, and he absorbed those beating on a weekly basis. Still, this was Dick Powell and he could and would break into song on any occasion.