Welles radio programs now available for streaming

[Wellesnet]

30 or so of Orson Welles's best radio shows are now available as streaming audio on Wellesnet:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=5937

[Jedediah Leland]

Bravo! A great addition to the site.

I assume everyone here's already familiar with all the out-of-copyright stuff from Welles's radio career which can be found on archive.org - last time I checked, you could freely listen to and legitimately download the majority of episodes of Les Miserables, The Mercury Theatre On The Air, Campbell Playhouse, Hello Americans, This Is My Best, The Orson Welles Show (only selected episodes of that one), Orson Welles Commentaries (sadly very few of those) , Mercury Summer Theatre on the Air, and The Lives of Harry Lime, plus various Welles guest spots on other shows.

I *LOVE* The Adventures of Harry Lime. Yes, I know Welles hated the role, but the technique of recording these shoes had really been refined by then, the writing's often excellent, and there's an infectiously playful quality in Welles's Lime performances that make these episodes a joy to behold.

[mteal]

Yes, I’m glad Archive has so much Welles radio stuff for free, although it is of quite variable sound quality. As someone else once said here, we're lucky to have as much of Welles's radio career as we do, although there are still many significant shows missing, especially, as you mentioned, the Commentaries.

Did Welles really hate the role of Harry Lime? If so, he didn’t have much of a right to, since the character was so good to him when he needed it. Harry Lime is one of my favorite Welles radio series too, and the fact that he directed and wrote many of the programs makes them all the more truly “Wellesian”. Many of these shows also continue, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, and with a more European slant, Welles’s political interests that he developed throughout the 1930’s and 40’s. One of the programs Ray included at my recommendation was DEAD CANDIDATE, a biting satire on U.S. economic imperialism that eventually was expanded into Welles’s first novel, UNE GROSSE LEGUME. It’s one of the best LIME shows, although the novel, for some inexplicable reason, has never been published in English.

[Roger Ryan]

Did Welles really hate the role of Harry Lime?

According to his daughter Chris, he despised the moral character of Lime (at least as presented in the film THE THIRD MAN; the radio shows feature a less morally dubious version), but enjoyed playing the role. He commented that it was more fun to play the villain than the hero.

[mteal]

Yes, the film Lime is a cold-blooded killer, whereas the radio Lime is more of a charming scoundrel. It would be interesting to take a tally of Welles's film and radio characters. My guess is the villains would outnumber the heroes by a wide margin.

Another interesting find on Archive, though: a Silver Theatre show called ONE STEP AHEAD, starring Welles as a put-upon businessman (interesting to hear him in a role like that instead of the usual power figure). What's really nice is the sound quality- it sounds like someone transferred it right from an original acetate! I've never even heard of this show before.

http://archive.org/details/OrsonWellesOnSilverTheater

[RayKelly]

Great find, Mike!
I added "One Step Ahead' to the Wellesnet collection:
http://www.wellesnet.com/?page_id=5974

[Jeff Wilson]

A small note, but the pedant in me demands it: the recordings of the shows themselves that are posted all over the place may well fall into public domain status, but they do not qualify as being out of copyright, because the scripts used in them remain covered by copyright. Technically, the writers of the scripts, the estates of copyrighted properties adapted for these shows, or the sponsors involved (whoever owned the rights, essentially) could legally stop distribution of these shows, but their value is seen as so small that it isn't worth it, or they're unaware of the distribution. Thankfully, the market is small enough that no one cares and we get to hear most of what's existent, but it also means nothing locked up in an archive will ever get re-mastered or otherwise released as well, because of the thicket of potential copyright issues arising from potential release.

[Wellesnet]

The radio shows themselves, some of which are more than 75 years old, were -- to the best of my knowledge -- never copyrighted, though some scripts may be copyrighted.
Most of the videos and audios found on wellesnet.com are embedded from other websites. Those recordings are not located on our server.
If a recording on wellesnet.com's server is not in the public domain, it would, of course, be removed at the request of the legitimate copyright holder.

[Jeff Wilson]

The scripts are automatically copyrighted as unpublished and unregistered works, under the Copyright Law of 1978, meaning they're protected for 120 years (previously they were protected forever). I didn't mean to give the impression Wellesnet was in any kind of danger; as I said before, almost no one cares about these shows, given their almost total lack of monetary value (both due to rampant pirating and cult following). The odds of anyone complaining about an embedded link are miniscule to say the least.

[Wellesnet]

The Copyright Act of 1976 created a 75-year term (dated from the date of publication) for works made for hire. A 1998 amendment (the Sonny Bono Act) extended the term for works made for hire from 75 to 95 years. There are differing legal views throughout the web on radio shows/public domain/script copyrights.

[mteal]

The odds of anyone complaining about an embedded link are miniscule to say the least.

True, if noone's complaining about all the full-length movies on YouTube these days, it's hard to imagine anyone complaining about an old radio show. Kim Kommando's Mercury.info site has been up almost as long as Wellesnet, hasn't it?