The Second Time Around for Radio Veteran Himan Brown

“I don’t like ‘The Shadow’ and I don’t care to listen in ’88 to ‘The Lone Ranger,’ ” groused Himan Brown. “Yes, I was involved with other shows of that vintage, but then I grew up. As you grow older, your tastes change.”

The creator of such ‘40s radio classics as “Inner Sanctum Mysteries” and “The Adventures of the Thin Man” is back in production at age 70 . . . but not with the “gee whilikers” brand of drama he once put on the old Philco.

Brown, who was also responsible for producing “Mystery Theatre” for radio in the 1970s, recently unveiled his plans to produce a new series of 26 half-hour shows under the title “We, the Living.” Don Ameche reportedly has expressed an interest in hosting the shows, and Brown is hoping to draft such other veteran performers as Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.

Each program dramatizes real people’s stories that illustrate “the problems and joys of being over 65,” Brown said in an interview. “These programs are full of hope, inspiration and dramatic interest. Who (else) puts shows like this on the air?”

One show focuses on an elderly gardener in Connecticut who teaches young vandals how to nurture plants instead of destroying property. Another is a “second-time-around” love story in which a widower doctor woos a widow very much his opposite: She’s a vegetarian, he’s not; she listens to Mozart, he adores Gershwin.

The series is set to begin production in January in conjunction with a University of Georgia facility named for Brown: the Himan Brown Audio Production Center. Programs are targeted for initial broadcast over National Public Radio stations in April.

“I would like to feel we could do as well as the British do. Do you know how many hours of radio drama the BBC puts on? Close to 800 hours a year,” he said.

“I want people to be entertained. Radio drama is theater, make no mistake about it. And to me, it’s the most potent form of theater.”