Lilly Library to restore 14 Lady Esther shows

[NoFake]

Alland would have been working with Welles on Macbeth just prior to this radio show debuting; is it possible that Welles made a guest appearance?

It's only $5.00. Anybody game?

[Wellesnet]

75th anniversary of "The Orson Welles Show" for Lady Esther:
http://www.wellesnet.com/75-years-ago-o ... cbs-radio/

[Roger Ryan]

75th anniversary of "The Orson Welles Show" for Lady Esther:
http://www.wellesnet.com/75-years-ago-o ... cbs-radio/

Interestingly, Welles appears to be wearing a false nose in the publicity photo (or the photo was retouched to give the nose a longer, straighter bridge).

[Wich2]

I seem to recall Orson bragging in some interview (maybe, in more than one?), that he was proud of the fact that VERY few "official" pictures of him showed his real nose.

He was evidently not a fan of his upturned little Irish pug.

-Craig

P.S. - As to the series itself, it's a mixed bag; I know The Great Man enjoyed himself hugely when he subbed for Jack Benny, but his gifts as Radio Comedian are hardly in the latter's category!

[Le Chiffre]

Craig, I think you might be confusing the Lady Esther show of 1941/42 with the "Orson Welles Almanac" series of 1943/44, done right after he subbed for Jack Benny. That later series is the one where he really tested his powers as a comedian with, as you say, very mixed results.

[Wich2]

Chief, perhaps I should've operated with a finer scalpel. But do I think Orson confused the two series as well!

They have a good bit in common, esp. with the more free-form omnibus-style episodes of each, and both used comedy in places.

Best,
-Craig

[Jeff Wilson]

The Lady Esther and Mobil shows had pretty different initial intentions; the Lady Esther show's original intent, as described in promotional material, was: "It’s a difficult show to pin down in cold type. It would be a program without a formula…just as an evening spent with interesting and well-loved friends has no formula, and the conversation flows naturally from an anecdote to a song to a discussion of a news event, to a joke…There in the pleasure of such an evening, is the essence of the show…a show of many-sided appeal governed only by the dictates of good taste and the basic sincerity and inspiration that should characterize and surround an advertiser’s message to the public." And initially, the show was presented along these lines, albeit not without hiccups, like the quickly-dropped Jiminy Cricket. But to me at least, it's always entertaining, and often very well done. That the show didn't appeal to Lady Esther's demographic of older women is hardly a shock, and the show eventually moved to a traditional one story format for its final few episodes.

The Mobil Almanac was a different creature, made in a war environment, with garbage tier writers producing equivalent material, particularly the military-oriented stuff, which is painfully bad. Welles was capable of being very funny with people, as has often been stated by many who knew him, but in this setting, he fell flat. The sponsors knew it as well (from the first episodes on), and they questioned, when the show was approaching the end of its initially contracted run and a renewal was being contemplated (as shocking as that is), if Welles was up to putting in the work needed to adapt to radio comedy format. The sponsors wrote to Welles' rep at the William Morris Agency that Welles admitted "frankly that he felt nowhere near the mastery of the comedy form that he felt of the dramatic form." Nobody would, with the material he had to work with. Also, Welles was trying to follow in the Benny mold of poking fun at his perceived personality defects, and while it worked for Benny and the character of "Jack Benny" that the public knew from the show, Benny was playing a role and had a cast to back him up and bounce off of. Welles already had a public persona that was very well known, and as a result had to resort to jokes about being a terrible actor, overweight, and effeminate. All the while promoting a movie (Jane Eyre) in which he is the brooding romantic lead, and doing dramatic monologues at the end of each show! So the audience is left with a schizo version of Welles, one immensely talented and performing suitable material for that talent, or he's a clown pretending to be good. It's just silly. Welles responded to early criticism of the show by discussing how Benny was the butt of jokes and Fred Allen made jokes, the former being all character and the latter not one at all. Where would Welles have fit in on that scale? He tried both approaches on the Mobil Almanac, and they both flopped. With good writers, and a better handle on how to better use Welles in a comedy format, maybe something could have been made of it, but to me it stands as Welles' major failure in radio, at least in terms of quality.

[Le Chiffre]

No question, the 1943 Almanac is, show for show, the worst of Welles’s radio series’, and yet there are good - or at least decent - moments in each program, and one could probably string together an aural highlights reel that might be pretty worthwhile. My main problem with Welles as comedian – at least on this show, but also some of his guest appearances on other shows – is that he tries to ad lib too much, is if he’s indicating to his audience that he has no faith in the material. As you say, alot of that material isn’t really worthy of much faith, but to me, Welles’s ad libs, which usually fell flat, just made the situation worse.

On Lady Esther, there’s also no question that Welles was at odds with his sponser over the material presented. Welles was trying to be gender neutral in his shows, but with cold cream as the product being touted in the commercials, I’m sure he was expected to offer mainly soap opera type dramas and romantic comedies; “women’s stuff” in other words. Some of this he did offer, and sometimes superbly too, but the show has enough variety of subject matter to transcend it’s original purpose (as envisioned by the sponsor, that is), and as Welles was at his artistic peak at this time, they have a lot of value to Welles fans, with a much better signal-to-noise ratio then the Almanac (even though there are too many missing shows from from both of them). I hope Lilly can restore these shows to the sound quality they deserve.

[Wich2]

>at least decent - moments in each program, and one could probably string together an aural highlights reel that might be pretty worthwhile<

True. And the cast & guest list is very good.

>My main problem with Welles as comedian – at least on this show, but also some of his guest appearances on other shows – is that he tries to ad lib too much<

Indeed. And doing that to sharp effect is a gift Orson just did not share with the best comedians.

>they have a lot of value to Welles fans, with a much better signal-to-noise ratio then the Almanac (even though there are too many missing shows from from both of them). I hope Lilly can restore these shows to the sound quality they deserve.<

Agreed. There are still a real part of mid-20th century broadcast history.

Best,
-Craig

[Le Chiffre]

The website is up https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/ and it's amazing so far! Goes way beyond Lady Esther, so we've started a new thread:
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2871

As far as Lady Esther goes, however, the new Lilly site represents probably the most complete collection of LE shows I've ever seen, and yet that's still not saying a whole lot. According to Wiki, Welles was contracted for 26 episodes, but produced only 19 of them because of the ill-fated South American venture. Of those 19 shows that were produced, 15 are presented at the Lilly site, but only six of them are complete.

Here is Jeff Wilson's writeup from the Wellesnet archive:
http://www.wellesnet.com/ladyesther.htm

So using this page, let's put Archive and Lilly together for an initial inventory of available LE shows online:

Lady Esther at Archive.org (8 of 19 shows, but only six complete):
https://archive.org/details/1941OrsonWe ... ladyEsther

Lady Esther at Lilly's ORSON WELLES ON THE AIR site (15 of 19 shows, but only six complete):
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/collections/show/11

Status of the nineteen LE shows online-

9/15/41
Shredni Vashtar; An Irishman & a Jew
(Complete at both Archive.org and the Lilly site)

9/22/41
Golden Honeymoon; Murder in the Bank; The Right Side; The Sexes
(Missing show)

9/29/41
The Interlopers; Song of Solomon; I'm a Fool
(Complete at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly)

10/6/41
The Black Pearl; Annabel Lee; There's a Full Moon Tonight
(Missing at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly)

10/13/41
If In Years to Come; Noah Webster's Library; Dorothy Parker Poetry
(Complete at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly)

10/20/41
Romance; Kublai Khan; The Prisoner of Assiout
(Missing at both Archive and the Lilly site, although the Lilly's inventory page claims to have it)

11/3/41
Wild Oranges
(Missing at Archive.org, complete at Lilly site)

11/10/41
That's Why I Left You; Maysville Minstrel
(Missing at Archive.org, complete with original script at Lilly site)

11/17/41
The Hitchhiker; Sonnet from the Portugese
(Missing show)

11/24/41
A Farewell to Arms
(Missing show)

12/1/41
Wilbur Brown-Habitat Brooklyn; Something's Going to Happen to Henry
(Archive has Wilbur, Lilly has Henry)

12/8/41
Symptoms of Being 35; Leaves of Grass
(Missing at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly)

12/22/41 (Christmas show)
St. Luke, The Happy Prince, Christmas poetry
(Almost complete at Archive.org, complete at Lilly site)

12/29/41
There are Frenchmen and Frenchmen
(Missing at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly site)

1/5/42
Garden of Allah
(Missing at Archive.org, complete at Lilly site)

1/12/42
The Apple Tree
(Complete at both Archive.org and Lilly site)

1/19/42
My Little Boy
(Complete at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly site)

1/26/42
The Happy Hypocrite
(Missing at Archive.org, incomplete at Lilly site)

2/2/42
Between Americans
(Missing show)

So, between Archive and Lilly, there are 9 complete shows, which is less then half the series.