Nick Danger is a fictional character created by the comedy group

The Firesign Theatre The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued app ...

, portrayed by

Phil Austin Philip Baine Austin (April 6, 1941 – June 18, 2015) was an American comedian and writer, best known as a member of the Firesign Theatre. Early life and education Austin was born in Denver, Colorado, and later grew up in Fresno, California, at ...

. Danger is a

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

of the

hard-boiled detective Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

, and is often announced as "Nick Danger,

Third Eye The third eye (also called the mind's eye or inner eye) is an invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, supposed to provide perception beyond ordinary sight. In Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna (or brow) chakra. In bot ...

", a parody of the term ''

private eye ''Private Eye'' is a British fortnightly satirical and current affairs (news format), current affairs news magazine, founded in 1961. It is published in London and has been edited by Ian Hislop since 1986. The publication is widely recognised ...

''. Danger stories involve stereotypical

film noir Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...

situations, including mistaken identity, betrayal, and

femmes fatales A ( , ; ), sometimes called a maneater, Mata Hari, or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and Seduction, seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype ...

. Danger originally appears on the 1969 album '' How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All'', and is reprised in the 1979 '' Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe'', 1984 ''

The Three Faces of Al ''The Three Faces of Al'' is a 1984 comedy album by the group Firesign Theatre. It features the group members reprising their most popular characters from earlier collaborations, notably hard-boiled detective Nick Danger and his nemesis, Lieuten ...

'', and 2001 '' The Bride of Firesign''.

Development

In January 1969, while

the Firesign Theatre The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued app ...

's radio show ''Radio Free Oz'' was running on

KMET (FM) KMET was a Los Angeles FM radio station owned by Metromedia (hence the "MET" in its call sign) that broadcast at 94.7 MHz beginning on May 2, 1966. It signed off permanently on February 14, 1987 after a 21-year run on air. The station, nicknam ...

, the Firesigns wrote a pilot script for a show inspired by

Fred Allen John Florence Sullivan (May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956), known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist topically-pointed radio program '' The Fred Allen Show'' (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forw ...

's 1942 show ''

Allen's Alley ''The Fred Allen Show'' was a long-running American radio comedy program starring comedian Fred Allen and his wife Portland Hoffa. Over the course of the program's 17-year run, it was sponsored by Linit Bath Soaps, Hellmann's, Ipana, Sal Hepa ...

'', to be broadcast live from the Los Angeles

Elks The Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS), formerly known as Linux-8086, is a Linux-like operating system kernel. It is a subset of the Linux kernel, intended for 16-bit computers with limited processor and memory resources such as machines pow ...

Hall near

MacArthur Park MacArthur Park (originally Westlake Park) is a park dating back to the late 19th century in the Westlake, Los Angeles, Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In the early 1940s, it was renamed after General Douglas MacArthur, and la ...

. The script contained a third act based on a

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

detective Nick Danger, modeled after ''

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar'' is a radio drama that aired on CBS Radio from February 18, 1949 to September 30, 1962. The first several seasons imagined protagonist Johnny Dollar as a private investigator drama, with Charles Russell, Edmond O ...

''. When KMET rejected the pilot, the Firesigns expanded the script to a 28-minute mock radio play, which they recorded in January and February. This was released in July as the second side of their second album, '' How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All''.

Supporting characters

A constant thorn in Danger's side is police Lieutenant Alvin Bradshaw, portrayed by

Peter Bergman Peter Michael Bergman (born June 11, 1953) is an American television actor best known for his portrayals on soap operas: as Cliff Warner on ''All My Children'' (1979–89) on ABC and as Jack Abbott on ''The Young and the Restless'' (1989–pre ...

. Bradshaw is resentful of Danger's "intrusion" into police business, jealous of his appeal to women, and suspicious of his honesty, constantly looking for a chance to catch him in a felony (he specifically blames Danger for the botched arrest and subsequent escape of a

pederast Pederasty or paederasty () is a sexual relationship between an adult man and an adolescent boy. It was a socially acknowledged practice in Ancient Greece and Rome and elsewhere in the world, such as Pre-Meiji Japan. In most countries today, ...

). Bradshaw's dream is to become

district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...

and prosecute Danger for a

capital crime Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

. One of Danger's criminal nemeses is Rocky

Rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

(

Philip Proctor Philip George Proctor (born July 28, 1940) is an American actor and a member of the Firesign Theatre. He has performed voice-over work for video games, films and television series. Early life Proctor was born in Goshen, Indiana, on July 2 ...

), described as a "

little man Little Man may refer to: Characters * The Little Man (''The Pink Panther''), a recurring character in ''The Pink Panther'' cartoons * Clayton Chester "Little Man" Logan, from the novel ''Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry'' * Wintell "Little Man" Royc ...

" and a "sleazy weasel", based on

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett ( ; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade ('' The Ma ...

's Joel Cairo as portrayed by

Peter Lorre Peter Lorre (; born László Löwenstein, ; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, active first in Europe and later in the United States. Known for his timidly devious characters, his appearance, and accented vo ...

in the 1941 film '' The Maltese Falcon''. In the role, Proctor imitates Lorre's distinctive voice. In pictures supplied with the ''How Can You Be in Two Places...'' album, Bergman portrays Rococo, creating the image of a bald man wearing a fez. Danger's old college flame, Betty Jo Bialosky (Proctor), uses several aliases: Melanie Haber, Audrey Farber, and Susan Underhill, but "everyone knew her as Nancy." Rococo's and Nancy's names are a gag based on the

Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

song "

Rocky Raccoon "Rocky Raccoon" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album ''The Beatles'' (also known as the ''White Album''). It was primarily written by Paul McCartney, although credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership, ...

". In the original Danger episode, Bergman voices Nancy in one scene where she appears with Rococo. Nancy's butler Dan Catherwood (

David Ossman David Ossman (born December 6, 1936, in Santa Monica) is an American writer and comedian, best known as a member of the Firesign Theatre and screenwriter of such films as '' Zachariah''. Early life Ossman attended Pomona College, where he star ...

) is secretly Nancy's husband. He has Ossman's distinctive old man voice, and is found to be 1000 years old, as a result of having invented a time machine and making a round trip to

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

Firesign appearances

A boxed set of most Firesign Theater performances containing Nick Danger was released in 2008 as '' The Firesign Theatre's Box of Danger''.

''The Further Adventures of Nick Danger''

Danger debuts in a 28:11 track on side 2 of the 1969 album '' How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All''. This is an episode titled "Cut 'Em Off at the Past", of a mock radio program purportedly aired on December 6, 1941. Rocky Rococo comes to Danger's office and attempts to sell him the ring Danger gave Nancy back in college. Danger goes to the mansion where Nancy lives and meets her butler Catherwood. After knocking Danger unconscious, Catherwood and Nancy murder Rococo, who is blackmailing them. They attempt to frame Danger for their crime, but Danger forces Catherwood to reveal the truth, and solves his problem by some means we will never know; the show is interrupted by the news bulletin of President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

(Bergman) announcing the

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. At the tim ...

. Danger's origin is surreally explained on the album's first side title track, where a

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which ...

flip of the TV dial includes a brief snippet of a show or movie which depicts three deranged hoodlums discussing how much they "hate cops". Their leader, Nick, vows to "get even with every rotten cop in this city" by turning in his badge and burning his uniform.

''Young Guy Motor Detective''

On the 1972 live album '' Not Insane or Anything You Want To'', the group presented a

self-parody A self-parody is a parody of oneself or one's own work. As an artist accomplishes it by imitating their own characteristics, a self-parody is potentially difficult to distinguish from especially characteristic productions. Self-parody may be us ...

of Nick Danger. This has Austin playing the title role as a Japanese detective Young Guy, Proctor as his Japanese girlfriend Miki, Ossman as the detective's robotic Japanese butler Rotonoto, and Bergman as American police Lieutenant Brad Shaw.

''School For Actors''

In 1976, while Proctor and Bergman went on sabbatical from The Firesign Theatre to produce a live show, Austin and Ossman produced a two-act live show, ''Radio Laffs of 1940''. Act one pits Danger against a cabal of Nazi spies conspiring to remake America by converting its radio drama to

dadaist Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

surreal humor Surreal humour (also called surreal comedy, absurdist humour, or absurdist comedy) is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviors that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of s ...

. Bergman's absence forced the omission of Lieutenant Bradshaw, and Ossman voiced all the non-Danger roles, including several females.

''The Case of the Missing Shoe''

In 1979, the Firesign Theatre produced five short (2:24) episodes of a prospective comic radio serial (similar to the 1960s syndicated '' Chickenman''). These were released by

Rhino Records A rhinoceros ( ; ; ; : rhinoceros or rhinoceroses), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant taxon, extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls) in the family (biology), famil ...

on a 12:00 EP record.

''Frame Me Pretty''

''Nick Danger Meets E.T.''

''The Three Faces of Al''

This 1984 album was produced without David Ossman, who had temporarily left to produce shows for

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

. This story is inspired by a line in the original "Cut 'Em Off at the Past" where Bradshwaw tells Danger, "You're lucky we didn't burn ya on the Anselmo

pederasty Pederasty or paederasty () is a sexual relationship between an adult man and an adolescent boy. It was a socially acknowledged practice in Ancient Greece and Rome and elsewhere in the world, such as Pre-Meiji Japan. In most countries today, ...

case." Bradshaw has realized his dream to become District Attorney, and gets his chance to prosecute Danger, who is the apparent suspect in the murder of mob boss Anselmo Von Pederazzi. Nancy and Rocky Rococo also appear.

''The Bride of Firesign''

This album was produced in 2001, after the Firesign Theatre staged a comeback with Ossman returned to the group. It is the third album in a "millennial trilogy" titled ''We're Doomed''.

''Shack Out On the Alien Highway''

In October 2001, the Firesign Theatre got a series on

XM Satellite Radio XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (XM) was one of the three satellite radio ( SDARS) and online radio services in the United States and Canada, operated by Sirius XM Holdings. It provided pay-for-service radio, analogous to subscription cable ...

titled ''Fools In Space''. They produced seven serial Nick Danger episodes for this show, broadcast between October 27, 2001, and August 24, 2002.

''All Things Firesign''

The Firesigns performed approximately once a month on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

's ''

All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...

'' news program from July 2002 to April 2003, released on a CD album in 2003. Two performances, on October 3 and December 24, featured Nick Danger. The Christmas Eve show featured a parody of the poem ''

A Visit from St. Nicholas "A Visit from St. Nicholas", routinely referred to as "The Night Before Christmas" and "Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously under the title "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1823. A ...

''.

Film

The character also features in the Firesign-produced film '' Nick Danger in The Case of the Missing Yolk''

Other appearances

A stage production of '' Nick Danger, Third Eye'' premiered February 8, 2012 at the Powel Crosley Mansion in

Sarasota, Florida Sarasota () is a city in and the county seat of Sarasota County, Florida, United States. It is located in Southwest Florida, the southern end of the Tampa Bay area, and north of Fort Myers, Florida, Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, Florida, Punta Gord ...

. This was the first professional theatrical performance of "Nick Danger" and starred Keith Chrismon as Nick Danger, Joelle Davis as Nancy, and John Forsyth, Marty Fugate and Karle Murdock as multiple characters. Larry Barrett produced and directed the production; Steve Patmagrian was its associate producer. A student production of ''Nick Danger, Third Eye'' was staged in the Fisher Theater Workshop At

Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Exeter Academy (often called Exeter or PEA) is an Independent school, independent, co-educational, college-preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school and educates an es ...

in 1978. The character also appeared as the trademark of a clothing line during the 2000s and early 2010s. Phil Austin also appears as Nick Danger in a Sparks Media production entitled "Down Under Danger", the only Danger adventure that has a female character as the femme fatale.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Danger, Nick Fictional private investigators Fictional characters introduced in 1969