HELLO AMERICANS/CEILING UNLIMITED - Welles' two wartime propoganda series

[Le Chiffre]

Finished listening to the ten HELLO AMERICANS programs recently (Thanks Jeff!). I think this is really one of Welles' finest acheivements in radio. Even if the It's All True film had been completed, I don't see how it would have been that much more of a valueable work then this series is. These ten shows really are beautifully written and performed. The sound quality that they are available in could stand alot of improvement, but hopefully that will happen one of these days.

As for CEILING UNLIMITED, the Air Force tribute show that Welles did concurrently with HA, it is highly enjoyable too, even though I've heard less then half of them. I read in one of the old-time radio books not long ago that Welles was fired from the show after the tenth episode or so, because he walked out of the studio just before airtime, after having a fight with one of the producers. I'd like to get more info on that incident if possible. It may be another fabricated story, one of many that surround Welles' legend.

[Jeff Wilson]

Both of theses shows are excellent, and among Welles' best radio work. He was working with quality writers on both shows, and it's evident from the quality of most of the episodes. HELLO AMERICANS was quite likely a good substitute for IT'S ALL TRUE for Welles after coming back from Brazil; the show certainly exhibits the same goals and attitudes. It's a strong show as far as quality; for my money, there's only one stinko show among the 10 episodes Welles appeared in, which was "The Bad Ambassador," an utterly ridiculous Christmas tale.

CEILING UNLIMITED is a fascinating show as well, and I like it a lot, despite not being as strong across the board as HA. The 15-minute format isn't ideal, and Welles wasn't enthralled with its limitations. But with programs like "Wind, Sand and Stars," "The Navigator," "Gremlins," and "The Future," they succeeded pretty well. A handful of episodes descend into sap, but overall it's a solid series. The show was geared around aviation in general and meant to play up the heroic aspects of planes and their crews. I doubt the story about Welles being fired; his contract states a 13 episode commitment, and that's what he delivered. The show did continue later in 1943, with Joseph Cotten as host in a 30 minute format.

[Le Chiffre]

As I'm sure you already know Jeff, the Lilly Library contains a mountain of evidence confirming the incredible amount of work that Welles and co. did in preperation for IT'S ALL TRUE: boxes and boxes filled with research files, essays, memos, photos, unused scripts, etc. One of the great things about HELLO AMERICANS was that it allowed Welles to make good use of some of this work. Otherwise it might have all gone to a complete waste. HA was a good substitute for TRUE indeed. I hope it becomes commercially available in restored sound someday.

I haven't heard "Wind, Sand, and Stars" from CEILING UNLIMITED yet. Wasn't that program written by St. Exupery, who wrote THE LITTLE PRINCE? According to my crude notes, Box 20 at Lilly contains 5 drafts of Welles' script for a film of The Little Prince. I only got a chance to read the first couple of pages - I did far too much superficial skimming when I was at Lilly, but how can you help it when there's so much there? - but I was reminded a bit of the OW Sketchbook series, since it starts with a child's hand drawing pictures over some nostalgiac narration by Welles. Probably too poetic for Disney, whom he reportedly tried to pitch it to.

[Jeff Wilson]

"Wind, Sand and Stars" was adapted from St Exupery. It's a good show, with Burgess Meredith. A testament to the will to survive in pilots and such. There's a nice sequence where Meredith starts telling his tale, with a trance-like quality, and Welles picks up the same phrase, a beat behind to continue the story as Meredith trails off. It's a great effect.

I haven't even bothered looking at the mounds of It's All True material; there's just too much to casually dig through. Clearly Welles should have had plenty of ideas for HA based solely on all that.

Side note: Arthur Miller was among the writers who worked on CU; some of his story notes to Welles are among the papers held at the Lilly.

[Le Chiffre]

I forget which episode offhand, but another great effect is the way Welles - playing a general, I think - comes swaggering into the room. Campy little touches like that were one of his specialties. Another CU episode I want to hear again is the last one, "The Future". I heard it at Lilly, but at the end of the day, by which time my brain was pretty fried. It seemed like a good one, though. I too doubt that story about Welles getting fired from the show, but it's interesting that at the end of the Future episode, he seems almost sad about the end of the series run, praising Lockheed as the most significant sponsor The Mercury has ever had (I wonder what Noam Chomsky would have said to that). It sounds like Welles may have been trying to get a contract extension - a shame he didn't. Do you know if the Cotton-hosted episodes still exist? It'd be interesting to hear at least one.

[Jeff Wilson]

At least three of the Cotten hosted episodes survive, but they don't appear to be in circulation. The show also appears to be less about aviation and more generally military-oriented in nature. These program descriptions come from the radiogoldindex.com site:

64307. Ceiling Unlimited. September 5, 1943. CBS net. Sponsored by: Lockheed-Vega. The song of the week is "Sunday, Monday Or Always." The story of the week is "A Smart Soldier Like Me" by Winston Norman. Joseph Cotten (host), Nan Wynn, Wilbur Hatch and His Orchestra, Winston Norman (writer), Pat McGeehan (anouncer), Mandred Lloyd (writer). 29:43. Audio condition: Very good. Complete.

64302. Ceiling Unlimited. December 19, 1943. CBS net. Sponsored by: Lockheed-Vega. The song of the week is a Christmas medley. The event of the week is Christmas. Joseph Cotten is featured in a moving war drama, ending with "a letter to an unborn son." Joseph Cotten (host), Harry Cronman (writer), Wilbur Hatch and His Orchestra, Constance Moore (vocal), Agnes Moorehead, Pedro De Cordoba, Lou Merrill, Hans Conried, Pat McGeehan. 29:44. Audio condition: Very good to excellent. Complete.

64369. Ceiling Unlimited. April 9, 1944. CBS net. Sponsored by: Lockheed-Vega. The song of the week is "I'd Like To Be With you On Easter Sunday." The cast does "Hymn To A Hero," a message of comfort and a tribute to love. A second performance of the Easter story: "God's Corporals" is presented. Joseph Cotten, Constance Moore, Wilbur Hatch and His Orchestra, Agnes Moorehead, Pat McGeehan (announcer), Harry Cronman (writer). 29:31. Audio condition: Very good to excellent. Complete.

"The Future" is a classic episode, with Welles as the Devil, discussing how he hoped Hitler would use aviation to conquer the world. Great stuff. Oddly, the scripts and such at the Lilly for that episode indicate a completely different show, which must have been scrapped reasonably late for the one we have now.

[Terry]

What is a good source for titles/descriptions of the Ceiling series? I've been using the chronology in This Is Orson Welles along with guesswork. I thought the episode with Welles as the devil was Air Transport Command. Is that one really The Future?

[Jeff Wilson]

"Air Transport Command" features Welles, Ray Collins, and Joseph Cotten as old Civil War vets who discuss Welles' character's nephew, who is a member of the ATC. Actually, the ATC is discussed very little, but it's definitely not the episode with Welles as the devil. That would definitely be "The Future." As for a source of program listings for it, I'm working on one, but otherwise, there really aren't any. The one I have on Wellesnet gives titles and dates, obviously but nothing else. Briefly, they are:

1) Flying Fortress: Includes Da Vinci as a character, as he and OW go on a tour of the titular craft.

2)Air Transport Command: see above.

3)The Navigator: About a small town, normal guy who becomes a navigator and we learn the vital importance of that job on a plane.

4)Wind, Sand and Stars: Guest-starring Burgess Meredith, based on a story in St. Exupery's book of the same name.

5)Ballad of Bataan: Welles reads this dramatic poem, which he also did on another show, Treasury Star Parade.

6)Gremlins: Joe Cotten stars in this one, about the title creatures. One of the four episodes in common circulation.

7)War Workers: Welles escorts a German spy through a factory, explaining the secret of American production: people.

7)Pan American Airlines: About the idea of voyages, and focuses on the Pacific Clipper.

Anti-Submarine Patrol: Edward G Robinson stands in for an ill Welles and we learn about this group of flyers.

9)Finger in the Wind: Strange story with a miscast Welles as a pilot held out the military, who eventually becomes an expatriate working out of South America, who makes the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

10)Letter to Mother: By John Steinbeck, largely a piece for Betty Garde as a mother who tells her younger son what the older one is doing in the war, reading between the lines of his nondescript letters.

11)Mrs James and the Pot of Tea/With Your Wings: Welles get out his Irish accent to play an RAF rigger, who consoles a woman waiting for her pilot husband to returns. In the second piece, Welles reads a brief story by Steinbeck.

12)The Future: A look into the future, and the role aviation willplay in leading us to a united world.

"the devil show": Welles as the devil, discussing how Hitler has used aviation for evil ends, to a group consisting of Philip II, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Louis XIV. Probably a guest appearance by Welles. No date.



Edited By Jeff Wilson on Oct. 02 2002 at 00:03

[Jeff Wilson]

Having done further research on Ceiling Unlimited, I need to correct the listing of shows. "The Future" is not the show with Welles as the devil; it is an entirely different episode about, well, the future. Quite good too. I'm not sure where the devil episode fits into the series, as the standard list for the Welles part of the series has no empty slots, and at least according to what Welles says on "The Future," that was indeed the end for the Mercury on the series. My guess is that Welles came back for a guest shot, as there no materials for the devil show in any of the Ceiling Unlimited files held by the Lilly. I would imagine if the show was made during Welles' run as producer/director/star, there would be something, however meager, about it.

[Le Chiffre]

Yeah, I don't remember hearing Welles as the devil in THE FUTURE episode. I do remember him as Famine in the "Feed The World" episode of Hello Americans, tho. I'd like to hear The Future again, but of course I'd like to hear all the Ceiling Unlimited episodes eventually.

The three movements of Marc Blitztien's Airborne Symphony from 1945 play almost like symphonic versions of Ceiling Unlimited episodes - each movement is about 15-20 minutes - especially on the 1976 LP where Welles does the narration. I also wonder how much Welles' late short film THE SPIRIT OF LINDBERGH was inspired by CU.

[Le Chiffre]

It's possible that CEILING UNLIMITED may also have helped inspire Welles' interest in directing a film of Joseph Heller's CATCH-22, which is almost like a series of black-comic CU episodes.

Regarding Fantomas' recent description of the SANTO SPIRITO screenplay - with it's cross-dressing pirates - it seems Welles was thinking about female pirates as early as the HELLO AMERICANS series. In the episode on the Antilles islands, he talks about the brotherhood of buccaneers being the first organization of the new world. But pirate ships had extremely harsh discipline: any man caught bringing a woman on board dressed as a man was put to death. Welles then tells the story of Anne Bonney of Ireland, who was deserted by her sailor husband and then wound up on a pirate ship dressed as a man. There she met other female pirates dressed as men, and they fought side by side in many battles.

[Michael]

Thank you all for this really interesting discussion on these radio programs. Where can one find them?

Thanks!

Michael

[Harvey Chartrand]

On the subject of Welles and his fascination with pirates: a pity that SANTO SPIRITO remained unproduced (though after seeing CUTTHROAT ISLAND, maybe it's just as well).
The closest Welles got to living the pirate dream was when Harry Alan Towers produced his script for TREASURE ISLAND, in which Welles starred as a hefty Long John Silver. However, Towers, a "friend" of Welles, would not let Welles direct the picture because of the former prodigy's reputation for having a "fear of completion" complex, and the result is, I'm told, a depressing fiasco.
This wasn't Orson's only pirate adventure, though. As Captain Hart in the meretricious FERRY TO HONG KONG, Welles harrumphed and sputtered like a latter-day Erskine Sanford when his vessel was boarded by Asiatic pirates. However, long-in-the-tooth adventurer Curd Jurgens saved the day and Capt. Hart realized that the man-without-a-country wasn't such a bad chap after all.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Harvey Chartrand: Quite true.

Your observations remind me again of how much of Welles' Work and interests can be traced back to radio, and presumably, to an extent, to his boyhood. For instance. "Treasure Island" was announced as the first production of The Mercury Theater on the Air. Characteristically, in the event, the Stevenson story was postponed to the second presentation, but many people think it was Welles' most perfect Mercury Theater radio production; shapely, complete, unhurried, without technical glitches (such as those which mar the first: "Dracula").

[As far as the Movie, if you know anything about Harry Allen Towers, you realize that almost everything he has ever touched has turned to third-rate dross.]

I cannot prove it, but I believe that FERRY TO HONG KONG, by some strange transmutation, developed from a Mercury radio adaptation of Passage to Bali, an obscure novel by Elias Koteas. A kind of take on Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." Welles did it a couple of times on radio, and it was later picked up by Escape, and perhaps Suspense.

[The property was also turned into a play in 1940 or so, which starred Walter Huston, on Broadway. It was not successful, but first time director John Huston was given good reviews, and they helped him exercize a clause in his Warner's contract to direct THE MALTESE FALCON. The project appears to be, in a way I can't entirely trace, a continuation of a relationship between Welles and Huston, which probably went back to when they were both students of Huston's Aunt, Margaret Carrington Jones Huston, a former opera star and voice coach, who specialized in lowering vocal registers.]

I hope this information helps.

[signed] Glenn Anders

[Le Chiffre]

Glenn Anders,
Treasure Island is one of the better Mercury radio shows, but then noone, not even Welles, has ever done justice to the book. Still, it's amazing to listen to Welles' energetic and colorful voicing of Long John Silver in the radio show, especially when you contrast it with his mumbling and drunken Silver in the '72 film. I think it's possible that Welles' great performance as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight may have left him cashed as an actor.

That's a good point about Welles' work and interests being traced back to his radio career, but I think the radio work was in turn influenced by the stage work. For example, Henri Christophe, the Haitian monarch whose story inspired the Voodoo Macbeth, also figures prominently as a character in the Hello Americans series.