The Garden of Allah

[Wellesnet]

Broadcast 11/19/39, with guest star Madelline Carrol, star of Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps. This was one of her four radio appearances with Welles and the Mercury.

Based on the 1905 novel by Robert Hichens, "The Garden of Allah" concerns Domini, a young British woman who travels to Algieria and falls in love with a mysterious man with a secret in the desert. It was made into a film three times: in 1916, in 1927 by Rex Ingram (one of Welles's models for Jake Hannaford in "The Other Side of the Wind"), and in 1936 by David Selznick, with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer as the leads.

Welles would later do a 30-minute radio version for Lady Esther, with Merle Oberon, who was dumped by Selznick in favor of Dietrich for the 1936 film.

Nice sounding copy of the broadcast at the IU/Lilly website "Orson Welles On the Air":
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/show/2003

30-minute version for Lady Esther:
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/show/2041

[Le Chiffre]

One interesting thing about this broadcast is that it is made clear at the end that Dominique and the renegade priest have had a baby together. That is not made clear in the film version by Selznick. I guess that, even with Campbell's censorship, you could get away with some things on radio that you couldn't get away with in Hollywood at that time. Not a bad show, with some poetic qualities here and there, but it's hard to escape the feeling that this is essentially a soap opera.

Around this time Welles was pushing for SMILER WITH THE KNIFE as his first RKO project after HEART OF DARKNESS was rejected, and may have been considering Madeline Carroll for the lead role.