Les Mis

[Tony]

I'm just finishing up a week of Les Miserables, the 1937 radio program which was Welles's first radio production that he also directed, and it's one of the best things he ever did! At 7 hours, it's expansive, and thus presents a novel in such a way not even Ambersons would have been at 130 minutes; just imagine if Welles could have directed a 7 hour Ambersons on radio- or on TV! The whole Mercury crew is here, such as Aggie Moorehead, Ray Collins (in about 45 parts!), Martin Gabel (amazing as Javert), Everett Sloane, Frank Readick, Hiram Sherman, Peggy Allen, Virginia Nicholson, et. al. There are 2 Mercury players missing, though: Houseman and Herrmann. Houseman's absence is astonishing, as this proves what Welles was capable of on his own, without Jack. Herrmann's absence is also surprising, as whoever does write and arrange the music (his name is briefly mentioned) is brilliant: it's one of Welles's best scores in any medium. The adaptation is gorgeous, apparently editing, but otherwise following the book exactly, which results in sheer poetic prose, read of course by Welles, who also naturally plays the main character, Jean Valjean. The whole thing has such a subtle and deliberate dramatic arc, and it builds to a shocking pre-finale in part 6. I find one easily gets caught up in the story, and emotionally involved with the characters. Another surprising aspect is the technical condition of the shows: they are perfect, with literally no surface noise, distortion or wow and flutter: they are immaculate, and by far, the best preserved of any of Welles's radio shows, with the Theatre of the Imagination collection coming in a distant 2nd place in the sonics department.

All in All, I'd give it a 10; my release is the 3 disc Smithsonian Institution released in association with Radio Spirits: it's a "must have" for any Wellesian, IMO!

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: I have "Les Miserables" on audio cassettes, and perhaps not as clean as the Smithsonian DVD issue, they are nevertheless impressive.

The Mutual Broadcasting Network would have been basically three years old in 1937, and a counterpart in Radio to RKO in movies, cobbled together from various stations, not on the same par in terms of prestige with NBC's Red and Blue Networks, or CBS. Possibly, for that reason, they were more adventurous, in a commercial sense, developing "The Lone Ranger," "The Green Hornet," and rather significantly, "The Shadow."

They also pioneered "transcriptions," rather than the required dutiful "air checks." Perhaps, for that reason, Mutual may have used larger disks to preserve their major programs and special events.

John Houseman may not have been so involved in the radio activities of the Mercury Theater in 1937 as he was a year later in the work of the Mercury Theater on the Air, and Bernard Herrmann, it is my recollection, had a prior relationship with Columbia, which may have made full participation in the Mutual project difficult.

Gienn

[Tony]

Glenn:
While listening to Les Mis, it struck me that Welles started off with this, his very first directing job on the radio, on a small network with no commercials and a seven hour show; then he moved to the much larger and prestigious CBS with single hour shows, but still no commercials. Then he moved, on the Summer Mercury Theatre, to half-hour shows with commercials. This pattern is kind of an analog to his whole career, and dare I say, the pattern of Western society over the last century or so: companies turn into corporations, the quality goes down and the commercialisation becomes more and more prevalent, predominating and saturating. ???

In his autobiography, Houseman mentions how he listened to Les Mis on the radio and even though he knew nothing about radio programming, he was very impressed and congratulated Welles on it the next time they were together. I think you're right about Benny already being with CBS.

Glenn, have you listened to Les Mis lately? I swoon to the music on this show: it's got that 30's vibrato in the strings, and that wonderful romantic feeling of Stokowski with the Philadelphia: it's really gorgeous! Also, occasionally Welles uses that strange theme music that was also used for the Shadow: "Omphales Spinning Wheel" (Opus 31) by Saint-Saens.

As you can see, I'm really knoocked out, not just by the presentation, but also by Hugo's beautiful prose: wow!
:laugh:

[mteal]

Excellent posts and points, Glenn and Tony.
LES MISERABLES is a wonderful show, and at seven half-hour episodes, suffers little of the overly-condensed character that slightly mars some of the one-hour First Person Singular and Campbell Playhouse shows. Here's Callow from his first book, ROAD TO XANADU:

"Purely as a professional achievement, this is breathtaking, more impressive than many of his more highly publicised feats. To take a thousand pages of text and effectively to convey it's essence in brief episodes - to do so, more-over, using the medium at full stretch - is a skill that often eludes radio adaptors of many years' experience. On what was virtually his first outing as a radio director, Welles at twenty-two produced a show that could rival any by the most seasoned practitioner."

The series is also one of first and most successful examples of the 'cut-and-paste' style of adaptation that Welles would adopt throughout his career and which would perhaps reach it's highest artistic peak with CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. Here's an excerpt from Michael Dawson's liner notes for the CD set:

"In July, the New York Times announced that LES MISERABLES would be 'projected'. In the article, Welles described projection as 'an entirely new technique calculated to air the essential character of the book itself', and explained that while the broadcast would be a dramatization, it would not be one created or derived from the work of a scriptwriter or a playwright'. Obviously the story had to be condensed, but 'the goal was to make the script "the work of Victor Hugo to the fullest extent". The narrator was to read from descrptive passages of the book itself, and dialogue would be taken directly from the book.'

It's great to hear almost the full contingent of the Mercury players just at the time when they were becoming an official ensemble, and the performances are excellent almost all the way through.Welles in particular is very good as Valjean, and one of the things that fascinates me most about listening to him here is the fact that you're listening to a young 22-year-old firebrand who, just one month before, had staged his infamous CRADLE WILL ROCK stunt with Houseman, and two months later would inaugurate his new Mercury Theatre onstage with the now-legendary production of CEASAR. LES MISERABLES was the bridge between these two major events in his career.

We're very lucky to have this CD set in such excellent sound, and one of the main reasons we do is because the musical production of LES MIS was such a resounding success. I'm sure The Radio Spirits CD was issued to try and capitalize on that success. I managed to see the musical when it came to town about 15 years ago or so, and was very impressed with it's intricate use of the revolving circular stage, which Welles had used 50 years earlier in FIVE KINGS. I'm sure 50 years of technological progress had made the device much more flexible and manageable, but once again, we see what a seminal influence Welles's imagination was on American theatre.

It's just too bad that more of Welles's radio work can't be heard in as good of sound as this CD set offers. If it could, I think his work in that medium would be much more celebrated, right along with the films.

[Store Hadji]

That's a stunningly good series. Those live audio montages of Jean Valjean/thief/guilty are beyond belief. At 3 and 1/2 hours, it seems to be the longest of any of Welles' productions (though I don't know how long Five Kings ran.) Welles was very good at a length of more than 2 hours. Too bad he didn't have aspirations of Von Stroheim proportions.

[Roger Ryan]

Too bad he didn't have aspirations of Von Stroheim proportions.

It would have been just more for the studio to cut out ??? .

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: Most of us are victims of the increased pace and fragmentation of modern life over the last hundred years. I suppose it is one of the trade-offs for our ability to duplicate and modify live experience. In the 1930's, a slower paced American society, in rural as well as urban areas, would still take the time for a more complete presentation of something like a Herrmann score or a Welles' adaptation of "Les Miserables."

My reading of both Welles and Herrmann is that they were both artists who inordinately resented interference in the presentation of their work. That is why Welles lost contracts in Radio for expanding his dialogue and sound effects at the expense of the sponsor's commercial advertising. That is why Welles insisted on making a long, leisurely picture like THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, when RKO was still hoping he would film "The War of the Worlds." That is why Herrmann and Welles agreed that THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, unlike CITIZEN KANE, would be cut to Herrmann's score. That is why Herrmann demanded that his name be taken off the picture when his score was changed, and when another composer's work was substituted for his own.

We must remember, too, that the major networks broadcast complete symphonies and operas live in those days. There was still a large enough audience, possibly a growing audience, for that kind of programing.

In a very American way, change for its own sake has always been our name for "progress," commercial change increasingly running the show, and indeed, Welles (like Charles Foster Kane) was an inadvertent agent of that change, which is an underlying theme his early film work.

[Today, the advertising dictum "Sell the sizzle not the steak" applies to everything, and will probably soon apply to us, too.]

And I agree with you, mteal and hadji, on the ease with which Welles presented "Les Miserables." Could it be that one reason Welles moved to Radio and Film was the ease by which those mediums alter, indeed anihilate, time? When Welles staged "Five Kings," on a number of occasions, the gearing mechanism for moving the large circular stage broke down, and cast members had to join stage hands, sweating below the boards, to crank a new scene into view. On those evenings, the running time of the production was much longer.

Welles could do that on Radio with a pointed finger, or in Movies at his moviola.

Some of the transcriptions for the radio shows are better than others, but only the Voyager Company's release of "The Theater of the Imagination" claimed to have enhanced the original disks.

Your observation, mteal, of Welles' overflowing genius in in the years 1937-1941 can't be argued with, even if Mr. Callow may have tried.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn:
Here's a weird observation that has stuck in my mind for many years:

Charles Manson: you remember him? The Tate-Labianca murders in the summer of 69, the following trial of Manson and his "Family", the famous book about the case "Helter Skelter" etc. Well, in an interview I saw, Manson (who had spent more tha 50% of his life behind bars by the time he was 35) says that the first time he got out of prison in the early 50s, he noticed that the pace of people's walking had increased in the 3 or 4 years he had been in jail: now only a prisoner, or a guy stranded on a desert island, would notice this. Then, in the late 50s, he went back to prison and got out in the early 60s: same thing: people had sped up some more. Then the same thing in the mid-60s, and finally in the late 60s he said people were almost running.

And now, of course, everybody's just driving!:laugh:

When I think of this observation, I often think of Ambersons, and how American life sped up after Dec. 41, and how Ambersons got caught up in that. I was just reading today how, I think it was Zero Mostel, couln't get work as a comic until America joined the war because his humour was too over the top, but the day after Pearl Harbour, the manager of a bar hired him cause "People need laughs now!" And Ambersons and Welles were caught in that transformation, just as Shakespeare and Cervantes were caught in the "fin de siecle" of their time.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Tony, I think your observation is apt.

The pace of American life, hence around the World, is increasing exponentially, affecting all institutions, segments and individuals of various societies. The fact that some are not fit for that kind of change, or might prefer not to take part, is not often considered, is pretty much ignored, until the riots and civil wars break out.

The pressure for change may answer many nagging questions: Why were we in Vietnam? Why are we in Afghanistan? Why are we in Iraq? Why will we be in . . . ?

As an old teacher, I often think of the debate over how large numbers of young Americans graduate from high school without being able to read, write or do math in more than a rudimentary fashion. There are many reasons, but a couple seldom mentioned are these:

In the best of times, according to the now rejected IQ tests, approximately 40-60 or 60-40 percent of students, depending upon the sample, and not taking into account whatever other reasons, did not have the mental capacity to grasp what they technically could read. The widespread new "magic" notion that the faster one read the better one read worked for the top percentiles, less well for the middle, and not at all for those of the lower mental capacity.

But the idea of speed reading had an appealing sound, however ill-baked the results.

Like the case for the automobile, as Welles suggests in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, consequences were not adequately considered. Getting there became more important than the point of getting there.

In education, I'm afraid, rubrics, listening devices, movies, TV, and now computers have taken up much of the slack.

Gadgets do for us what we can't or are unwilling to do for ourselves.

The next step is robotics, with more and more of the World's population being left behind. Greater numbers rendered "obsolete." Or considered so. We found out in the last century what that led to, and we are off to a good start in the 21st Century to coming to the logical conclusion and final solutions. And all peoples harbor them.

Welles, as almost always, was most prescient in recognizing this fundamental process in American life, perhaps one hardwired into humanity, which can be applied now to almost everything we do. Shakespeare's elegies for lost golden ages and Cervantes' umbrage at windmills challenged the concept of "progress," but atomic weapons were then some way off.

Today, they are almost literally on our doorstep.

Glenn