Airborne - Radio documentary chronicles Welles career

[RayKelly]

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A groundbreaking radio biography set to air on the 73rd anniversary of the infamous WAR OF THE WORLDS Martian hoax is bringing a wealth of rare broadcast recordings by legendary CITIZEN KANE filmmaker Orson Welles back to the airwaves -- many for the first time in over 60 years.

AIRBORNE: A LIFE IN RADIO WITH ORSON WELLES is a new, full-length work by documentarian R. H. Greene. The show will air twice in Los Angeles over the 2011 Halloween weekend via 89.3 KPCC (89.3 FM), one of the nation's premiere news stations. A special podcast edition of the program, with 20 minutes of additional material, will be posted to the KPCC website at http://www.kpcc.org/programs/offramp/ that same week.

According to Greene, Welles' vast body of radio work has been reduced in public memory to his single 1937-38 season voicing the popular radio superhero THE SHADOW and to Welles' legendary broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, a docudrama adaptation of the H. G. Wells "Martian invasion" classic that caused widespread panic when it first aired as a Halloween prank in 1938. Culled from over 400 vintage radio recordings, Greene's new documentary showcases the eclectic nature of Welles' radio achievements.

"The War of the Worlds was fantastic radio," Greene says, "which is why it's still revived on dozens of stations every Halloween. But few people know that Welles also pursued careers as a radio comedian, a wartime propagandist, and a serious political commentator over the air, or that his American radio career ended with a heroic act of great personal sacrifice.

"It's a great American story, one I've always felt was hiding in plain sight -- neglected, I think, because of the hectic nature of Welles' radio experiments and because the world of radio's 'golden age' is so remote to us today."

AIRBORNE will run twice as a special full-length edition of KPCC's OFF-RAMP, a weekly magazine show hosted by John Rabe. The Welles documentary airs both at noon on Saturday, October 29th and at 7pm on Sunday, October 30th. Sunday's rebroadcast marks THE WAR OF THE WORLDS' 73rd birthday.

The special podcast edition of AIRBORNE features additional vintage radio clips plus dramatic readings from Welles' secret FBI file and other rare documents.

Primarily a film documentarian, Greene views AIRBORNE as the first step in an ongoing process. "I'd like to tell this story again," he says, "because it's so interesting to me. Maybe for the screen, or in an even more elaborate broadcast version. But AIRBORNE is complete in itself. You get to hear Welles sing with Carmen Miranda, joke with Jack Benny, step fearlessly into political controversies. It showcases a bunch of unknown sides to an American legend. And bringing Welles back to radio in a unique way on the WAR OF THE WORLDS anniversary -- well, it means a lot to me."

[Le Chiffre]

That's an excellent program. Very comprehensive, it gives the Martians their due, but highlights the more unsung events in OW's radio career too. The Isaac Woodard broadcasts in particular, seem to have a growing stature within Welles's career. Before Barbra Leaming's book, they were virtually unknown. I hope this documentary stays online for awhile.

[tonyw]

Seconded, mteal. The radio work is really important and I hope a full archive will appear before long.

[Glenn Anders]

Could that obsessed admirer of Orson Welles' Radio work, R.H. Greene, be lured into Wellesnet (if he is not already here, incognito)?

Perhaps the sinister and presently elusive goblin, Todd Baesen, might be persuaded to use his prodigious contacts to hunt him down. Or Jeff Wilson, who may still be lurking about this Halloween Eve, may know where to find him. Jeff was once engaged in a study of Radio Wellsiana, to which some of us contributed. [Check the Archives.]

I'll also note, in passing, that the lovely Harris Faulkner of Fox News (Glenn Beck, please copy) had a feature on her Fox Report, yesterday, celebrating the 73rd Anniversary of Welles' "The War of the Worlds." Her voice-over, at one point, was illustrated with a vintage video of a fit young Welles I'd never seen before. Did anyone else catch Ms. Faulkner's guilty Halloween pleasure?

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Revisiting this topic, thanks to the mysterious former Wellsian contributor, Walt Sobczech, I have had an opportunity to actually listen to R.H. Green and John Rabe's documentary on Orson Welles' career in Radio. In my opinion, this "biography in sound" (as they used to say) is poignant, skilled, and eminently listenable. The piece is not entirely adoring of its subject, but Mr. Green's narration suggests that Welles was both triumphant and tragic in the best sense of those words, and that such a view is seen most coherently in his Radio years. Green suggests at several points that many of the themes Welles was stressing, especially the dangers of Fascism, both abroad and at home, in the years between 1934 and 1947 are still viable today. If you did not listen, the production may be heard as it was broadcast on October 29, 2011:

http://media.scpr.org/audio/offramp/201 ... fframp.mp3

The program runs a little over an hour, and spends most of its time on Welles' struggle in the years following his 1938 "War of the Worlds" bombshell. I thought the ending was particularly admirable in summing up the sadness and courage of Welles' end in American Radio.

Glenn Anders

[Le Chiffre]

AIRBORNE deserves a place next to that other excellent audio documentary on Welles radio, Leonard Maltin's THEATRE OF THE IMAGINATION, which was part of the Criterion set with the same title. There is a third one that I heard at the University of Michigan's Welles archive that was very enjoyable too, a 1990 audio program by Karen Latham of New York University, with many excerpts from Welles's radio career that I had never heard before and could not identify. Does anyone know anything else about that one?

[R. H. Greene]

Folks --

Forgive my belated response to Glenn's invitation to say hello--my radio documentary was a labor of love that was being worked on and tweaked right up until a few days before airtime and much business that had been allowed to slide during the months of making it needed to be urgently attended to. Yes, I have been a regular lurker here for many years, not so much to research the doc but because, like many a Wellesian, a community of the like-minded draws me to it, in my case at least once or twice annually when I suddenly hunger for fresh insights into an amazing artist and a fascinating man.

The doc was years in the making, in the sense that I have been listening and relistening to every available broadcast for well over a decade so that I could hopefully draw some connections between them that are fresh and needed making, and so that I would be able to find the very best material from that vast and I think underexplored broadcast achievement.

It means a great deal to me to have the project embraced in the spirit it was created in by this collective, which I have always felt is doing the lord's work when it comes to celebrating Welles and generating fresh road maps into the still not entirely charted topography of his life and work. I thank you for the kind words, and thoughtful comments.

If you're interested in the origins and development of AIRBORNE, I wrote an essay on the topic for the radio station where it was first broadcast. I am hoping to explore syndicating the program to other public radio stations in the not too distant future. In the meantime, it will continue to live on KPCC's servers for the forseeable future.

For the interested, my essay on AIRBORNE and my friend the late Richard Wilson can be found here:

http://www.scpr.org/blogs/offramp/2011/ ... ary-about/

Thank you so much once again for your kindness and support.

All the very best,
R. H. Greene

[Glenn Anders]

You have indeed been "One of Nature's Noblemen," R.H. Thank you for coming out of the Wellsian shadows. Your explanation of how you became a follower of Orson Welles is fascinating, sir. [Sorry, I misspelled your name; if I don't have things right before me now, I screw them up.} Your affection and admiration for Richard Wilson is palpable.

When I have a chance, I'm also going to listen to your documentary on Vampira, another original. "Off Ramp" and Station KPCC must be counted as minor National Treasures!

Please don't be a stranger. Perhaps, you can get together with F.X Feeny, another fan of Welles, and come up to Frisco for some '"target practice."

Glenn Anders