Favorite Welles Radio Show?

[Coldspur]

What's your favorite Welles radio show (either w/ the Mercury Theatre, Campbell Playhouse, or otherwise)? I certainly haven't listened to all of them, however, my current favorite is probably Dracula or A Tale of Two Cities. Unfortunately, I find the shows to be rather lacking as a whole. Though this really can't be blamed because many of these stories lose their identity when crammed into the one hour time slot.

Also, I was curious whether or not Welles did a radio adaptation of Heart of Darkness after the Mercury Theatre show? I listened to the Mercury Theatre show and was quite underwhelmed.

[colwood]

I've got five CD's of Welles' OTR shows in MP3. Sadly, I've only listened to few of them in their entirety. While I have greatly enjoyed those I've heard (Huck Finn, Ambersons, War of the Worlds) I'd say my favorite Mercury show is Dracula. As for my favorite show in general, I'd have to say it's the answer to your second question: his show of Heart of Darkness for Cresta Blanca's This is My Best (c. 3/45). While it seemed even more compact than the Mercury version, I love this show and is the only OTR show of his that I've listened to numerous times.

[Coldspur]

I thought I'd seen another version of Heart of Darkness available. I'd love to get my hands on a copy. Where'd you get your CDs from?

[colwood]

The version of Heart Of Darkness from '45 I got as part of a 4 disc Welles OTR collection on ebay.

Also, you can hear a few small (5 second) snippets of this show at the beginning and end of the Apocalypse Now doc, Hearts of Darkness.

[Glenn Anders]

Welles' radio work has to be heard, first of all, as a breakthrough in American radio drama. Until the mid-1940's, there was nothing which had his balance of content quality with imaginative technique, and of course, until after the War, these shows were live. Because all such breakthroughs are absorbed and improved upon, even the best of these shows do not seem so astonishing as they did at the time. To listen to the programs live, at the time, with heavy effort to boost the AM signal by the big base speaker of the day, had a power and an immediacy, insome ways, unmatched in today's digital and hi-fidelity.

Besides "Dracula" and "Sherlock Holmes," which you mention, my favorite Mercury Theater pieces are "The Man Who Was Thursday," "The Pickwick Papers," "Treasure Island," "The Affairs of Anatole," "The Thirty-Nine Steps," "Abraham Lincoln," and "Jane Eyre." My favorite Campbell Playhouse shows are "Rebecca," "A Christmas Carol," "Counselor at Law," Private Lives," "Liliom," "The Green Goddess," "The Glass Key," "Twentieth Century," "Our Town," "Algiers," "The Magnificent Ambersons," and "Dodsworth."

As with his films, the quality of recordings of the shows varies widely, in this case because they were preserved on glass transmission discs, "air checks," simply for FCC records, never thought to have future economic or artistic value.

Secondly, the Welles' radio shows were an influence on Hollywood. You will notice that films were made from a number of these properties after Welles had presented them on Radio. David O. Selznick was constantly firing off memos about Welles' shows, and hauling his line producers and writers in to listen to Welles' programs. They were natural scenarios, from which screenwriters sometimes worked. In fact, a lot of Welles' own subsequent film work and ideas can be traced to what he produced in the radio medium.

You should not neglect his early work, such as his "Les Miserables" serial, "Hamlet," "Twelfth Night." For many Americans, these were the first dramatizations of such works they had ever experienced. And his 1937 narration on Archibald McLeish's "The Fall of the City" was a landmark. In these programs, he often worked with other important directors, such as Irving Reis, William N. Robson, and Norman Corwin, who are looked upon now as among the best the medium ever produced.

Welles' later work was notable for several things he did on Suspense, most notably "The Hitchhiker," "Donovan's Brain," and "The Most Dangerous Game." He also championed Civil Rights and Jazz in his Almanac series, and the controversial "His Honor the Mayor."

Aside from his debates and speeches for FDR (which I have never seen preserved), and his War Bond work, the "Political and Patriotic Welles" was most evident in his two shows on the atom bomb and the end of World War II, written by Norman Corwin, the latter (with Olivia DeHaviland) being a bit more of a pat on the back for the Atom Bomb.

I also like his Mercury Summer Theater productions of "The Apple Tree" and "Abednego the Slave."

Welles did a half hour adaptation of "The Heart of Darkness" for the series This Is My Best, which does not have some of the technical problems which mar the Mercury Theater version.

Hope this helps.

Glenn

[Coldspur]

It Definitely Helps! Thanks alot for the incredibly thorough response, Glenn Anders. I certainly didn't mean to degrade Welles' radio work because I've gotten enjoyment out of all the shows I've heard.

The adaptation I was most dissapointed with (that I've heard) was Les Miserables. It's been a while since I listened to it, however, I felt Welles didn't spend enough times on many parts of the presentation (especially the Cosette-Valjean relationship). However, this is probably due to the fact that I've never read the abridged novel, the only available English version in the 1930's.

[Coldspur]

Would anyone on here that has the *.mp3 file of Welles' 1945 Heart of Darkness, be kind enough to send a copy my way? I've got a T1 connection at my college so it would literally take about 20 seconds if you have a high-speed connection.

[Coldspur]

Well, I just got done listening to Heart of Darkness from This Is My Best and I'm sorry to say that, technical problems notwithstanding, it's, in my mind, a worse adaptation than Welles' Mercury effort. Almost all the additions I found quite annoying, most notably the silly inclusion of Kurtz's fiancée at the beginning and the incredibly under whelming talk w/ Kurtz at the end.

On a side note, I found Hell On Ice to be absolutely chilling!

[Glenn Anders]

Dear coldspur: There are inevitable trade-offs. Transcription quality (glass discs) was a sometime thing. The earlier version of "The Heart of Darkness" was in Welles' experimental mode, made mainly to please himself, but it has glitches. In the latter series, This Is My Best, he was making some effort to please a sponsor, and he had less control over the production.

Thinking of "Hell on Ice," which I also enjoyed, reminds me of a memorable 1940's piece about an assassination plot done in "The War of the Worlds" mode. It featured the confession of a hired assassin at a radio station, and his murder at the end of the show, which broke away in wild confusion to an announcer calming down the audience in radioland. It seems to me that it should be a Welles' project, but I can't find it anywhere.

I never think of the Kennedy Assassination without remembering that program.

Does anyone recall it, and if so, who did it?

Glenn

[Jeff Wilson]

Getting back to Glenn's initial comment, many of Welles' broadcasts for FDR and the Democrats are preserved at the Library of Congress, as they were network donations at some point. You can search the LOC's online catalog for them. Unfortunately, material like this is not the type of stuff sought by the general OTR fandom, so it isn't in general circulation among collectors.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you for that tip, Jeff. I'll take a look.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

i did a search in google for audio, entered welles and a site came up selling like 223 hrs of welles radio on mp3 for 15 bucks.

i have found most of welles' radio work hard to listen to. i liked the ambersons, the times he filled in for jack benny, a show called information please where welles out-answered the judges of the show, and the issac woodward broadcasts kicked ASS! at the time welles did this, it took a lot of guts. most of america didn't care if a white policeman blinded a darkie for being upitty.

the first time i heard the issac woodward broadcasts, i was on a treadmill with headphones on. i had no idea what to expect. store hadji had sent me a bunch of tapes. when the issac woodward broadcast came on, the adrenalin flowed, it was captivating. welles had such conviction when it came to human rights. no matter what his faults, that is one thing that made him a giant.

i have theater of the imagination, and found most of it unlistenable, or a one time listen, except for the audio documentary conducted by leonard maltin (who's film opinions i've never trusted).

you know what they say, one man's treasure, etc.

[Jeff Wilson]

Radio then is like television today, the best stuff being enduring and well-made, the worst immediately dismissable. Some of the work Welles did in radio falls into the latter category, but I find most of it eminently listenable and interesting.

Glenn, I should have mentioned that you (or anyone else interested) needs to search the LOC section for audio materials, known as SONIC (Sound Online Inventory & Catalog).

[blunted by community]

.........

i don't doubt that in it's day all of welles' radio work was ground breaking, like everything else he touched. i have a lot of OTR, and welles' stuff sure sounds different than it's competition.

i found dracula, sherlock holmes, the lincoln one, the one whith benito huarez; that era, which i think was campbel playhouse and the mercury theater, practically impossible to sit through in this day and age. the great man votes, also could not sit through. OW almanac tough to listen to. julius cesar impossible to listen to. liked the few harry limes i've heard. have never heard the black museum, curious about those. black museum was i think his later work in radio, and in citizen welles they are reviewed well.

i went through hell to find dracula and julius cesar, was sure i was going to love them. tried to listen to heart of darkness a few times but didn't make it to the end. and i do like OTR. especially the ones during ww2.

light up a lucky strike, sit back and enjoy the show

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, Jeff, that saved a lot of looking.

Blunted, The Black Museum shows, like the Harry Lime's, although providing Welles a kind of sketchbook of ideas, were pretty conventional for their time, produced by an all-time schlocmeister named Harry Alan Towers. They were radio transcriptions, destributed by franchise.

I guess that I shouldn't emphasize again that the earlier stuff was remarkable for its innovation, and its fly-by-the-seat of-you-pants sponteneity. When it was good, it was very good, but you do have to understand the transmission problems of the time. We're lucky to have any of it, really.

You remind me, Blunted, of another gem from the Campbell Playhouse, "Counselor-at-Law," based on an Elmer Rice play, I think, and an early 1930's movie vehicle for an idol that Welles shared with Errol Flynn -- John Barrymore. It's what would be called today edgy material on divorce, anti-semitism and the law.

In support of your judgment though, I might offer "There's Always a Woman," one of Welles' Campbell Playhouse originals. It's so bad that it is pretty good. Welles and Marie Wilson (one of his discoveries) play a pair of private eyes, and the play was so chaotic that they introduced the cast in the middle of the show, I suspect so Welles and his assistants could tack an ending on it.

Glenn