Books about Welles' radio work?

[Wilson]

The Heyer book is a new book; the practice of publishing hard and soft cover editions on the same day is not unusual for academic publishers.

[mteal]

The Heyer book sounds good. An entire book that focuses exclusively on the radio work is long overdue.

[Glenn Anders]

Until we can get a hold on Mr. Heyer's book, I might mention John Dunning's The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio. It is 822 pages in length, double column, including a bibliography and full index. The volume is a revised edition of Dunning's 1976 Tune in Yesterday. My copy is dated 1998, published by Oxford University Press, NY, NY.

In this exhaustive study of major Radio Network programs,Welles is referred to over 40 times, including a seven page entry on The Mercury Theater on the Air; articles on other major series featuring Welles, such as The Columbia Workshop, The Shadow, The March of Time on the Air, The Campbell Playhouse, The Orson Welles Theater, The This Is My Best, etc; shorter entries on lesser known work like Hello Americans, etc; notations on such individual productions as Les Miserables; as well as references to his appearances on The Lady Esther Show and the controversial work of The Free Company.

There is little in depth, but the Encyclopedia is full of useful information about Welles' place in Radio.

Glenn

[Wilson]

A brief note about Heyer's book, which I got an early copy of (I believe it was officially published in the last day or two). It's fairly brief, only 210 pages or so of actual text, and almost 40 of those are dedicated to "War of the Worlds." It's not bad, but Heyer inexplicably does make one big error: he repeats as fact Houseman's long since disproved story about "The Man Who Was Thursday" being 15 minutes short, and Welles doing extemporaneous readings, etc. No mention of the 90 minute rehearsal tape. He then immediately segues into a discussion of the "Julius Caesar" broadcast, noting that it's somewhat flat to him, but not mentioning (or maybe not aware) that it was a rehearsal tape, as the original is lost. He gets into the films in some detail, at least those made during the radio years, to show Welles' radio influence on them, but I haven't gotten there yet. More thoughts when I finish the book.

[Knowles Noel Shane]

If there ever WAS a broadcast that fell fifteen minutes short, with Welles reading from various texts supplied by the saviour Houseman to fill up the extra time, I certainly haven't found it yet. Sadly, a few episodes of The Mercury Theatre (and many of The Campbell Playhouse) have proved to be too ellusive to locate (as of yet, but one fellow collector who has them might turn up one day.) One question I've had for years, which I may as well direct towards Jeff, concerns the East Coast and West Coast broadcasts of The Mercury Theatre, specifically that a few hours after the New York show was broadcast live there was a second broadcast for the West Coast. Was this second broadcast also done live with the same cast, or was it done simply by playing the records they'd just cut of the first show? I can't remember wherein I read Welles making reference to the second broadcast, but perhaps there are are two versions of each of the shows floating around out there. Perhaps you've stumbled across this in your research, Jeff.

[Wilson]

I really haven't seen much mention of it, to be honest. Bing Crosby did pioneer the use of a simple re-broadcast of the earlier East Coast version of a show, but that wasn't until around 1948 or so. I've read that sustaining programs, like the pre-Campbell Mercury stuff, certainly wasn't done twice, given its already subsidized nature. My copy of Welles' contract for his Lady Esther show specifies only that the show would be broadcast from Hollywood from 10pm to 10:30pm EST; no mention of a second show is made. The upshot is that I don't know for sure.

[Wilson]

And some further thoughts on the Heyer book: another truly mystifying element of the book is Heyer making judgments on shows that are generally considered lost; he describes Katherine Hepburn's performance in the Campbell "A Farewell to Arms," yet neither the performance or even the script exist, so far as I know. He does this for other supposedly lost shows too. You'd think if he had found some of these, he'd be letting us know.

[Knowles Noel Shane]

Anything lost has a tendency to be found some day. Perhaps these shows weren't in Richard Wilson's garage and aren't at the Lilly Library, but I'll bet some collector somewhere has the old acetates or a cassette. Hey! Are you reading this? Let us know!

[Wilson]

It's entirely possible that someone has copies of these, but if so, they've kept them out of sight pretty well. For the missing Campbell Playhouse shows and later, it's interesting, because Welles had copies provided to him, and if he didn't have a copy, you have to wonder who would. And regarding the dual broadcasts of shows for the coasts, it occurred to me that there probably aren't double recordings of a given show, in that either one performance or another was recorded as a matter of rule (probably the first), and the other simply wasn't. But that's a guess on my part.

I'm almost finished with the Heyer book, which has been something of a disappointment; it's written for an audience with little knowledge of Welles' radio career, which makes it less than useful to those of us who are fairly familiar with it. Like too many books these days, it has several annoying typos as well. Overall, it's just too brief to get into real detail on much of anything.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Jeff and Knowles: I've been behind the battle for a week or so, but I think I've solved the mystery of Houseman's story concerning the September 5, 1938, Mercury Theater on the Air Production of "The Man Who Was Thursday." As you point out, Jeff, an hour and ten minute recording of a rehearsal exists, and the broadcast version of "The Man Who Was Thursday" is full and complete, showing the love Welles expressed for Chesterton's novella. I believe it to be one of the best of the Mercury efforts: a truly surreal and amusing allegory of what nations do when they use espionage to solve their problems.

So Houseman has to be wrong in his droll, mocking tale of Welles' ineptitude in adapting the story for the air.

Here is what I think happened.

On December 17, 1940, The Campbell Playhouse presented one of its rare original productions: "There's Always a Woman." It is a kind of breezy Nick and Nora Charles sort of private eye story. Welles and Marie Wilson play a pair of investigators, and there is a complicated caper plot. The script is assumed to be by Welles. Perhaps, Welles spent too much time before Christmas with his latest bodacious young discovery, the bosomy Miss Wilson, because the play shambles along, and all-of-a-sudden, stops. Welles, playing his other role as the host, interrupts jovially, and introduces the entire cast, some of whom make what might be regarded as surprised remarks. There is a commercial, of course, and then, the play resumes. There is another session with the cast at the end.

This play fits the basic scenario of Houseman's anecdote. Welles undertakes to do a piece of writing for radio; he will write a radio play, from start to finish, without anyone's help. On rehearsal day, there is not a complete script, and at air time, he has failed to complete it, or it is lost, or gets mixed up in some way. There are 20 minutes to fill; the regular writers are downstairs, desperately trying to figure out some logical end for "There's Always a Woman"; Welles and the troupers are in the studio, bravely and blindly carrying on. The play leaves that kind of impression; it staggers to sign off.

Houseman may well have had the experience he described, but mixed up the occasion, or did not want facts to interfere with a thesis about his estranged old partner; that Welles sometimes made foolhardy, egotistical commitments he could not deliver on.

Marie Wilson, by the way, in all accounts, was extremely brainy, just 23 or so in 1939. She had her first big role in Movies the year before, BOY MEETS GIRL, from the Broadway hit by the Spewacks, directed by LLoyd Bacon, with Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien. Like Lucille Ball, Miss Wilson came into her own with Television, as the "dumb blonde" on My Friend Irma, 1952.

Tapes of "There's Always a Woman" are out there.

What do you think?

Glenn

[Wilson]

Maybe, but at least according to Rosenbaum's chronology in This is Orson Welles, the night before the broadcast was the big flaming sterno throwing incident at Chasen's, and Rosenbaum goes on the mention that "There's Always a Woman" was the last episode that Houseman worked on as writer. So it could even be possible Houseman didn't finish it and they weren't able to cobble anything together in the meantime before the broadcast. I'll have to dig out my copy and listen to it, in any event.

[Glenn Anders]

I had not caught that connection, Jeff. If "the flaming sterno incident" occurred on the night before the broadcast of "There's Always a Woman," and I trust your research, then it may be a case of what the psychologists call "projection." It was Houseman who failed to complete his task, and years later, he projected his guilt and failure onto Welles.

Only a surmise, but a reasonable one.

I was giving Houseman the benefit of the doubt. We both know that the rehearsal copy of "The Man Who Was Thursday" runs well over a hour, and so Houseman's later account must be in serious error.

Glenn

[Knowles Noel Shane]

The Thursday rehearsal runs 90 minutes, I believe. I always assumed Welles played Thursday in it, but last time I listened to it, I wasn't sure. Welles told Bogdanovich that the rehearsal recordings weren't done with the real cast, though this one was in every other respect, as was the Julius Caesar rehearsal. Whoever plays Thursday on it has a beautiful voice, but it just sounds too oddly miked to be Welles. Maybe it was Maurice Bessy.

Jeff, I found that reference to the second Campbell's broadcast for the West Coast I was thinking of. Check the August 39 entry in TIOW. It says Welles couldn't fly back to Hollywood until after the second Sunday night broadcast. This would seem to prove that there were two performances - if the second broadcast was simply a record of the first one, Welles could have flown back earlier.