Monthly Featured Broadcasts

[Store Hadji]

I've uploaded June's broadcast, a rare recording of Welles appearing on Radio Reader's Digest, featuring John Collier's thriller "Back for Christmas" starring OW and Agnes Moorehead.

The file required extensive restoration work to fix EQ problems, the odd scratch, and an extreme amount of static in the second half.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kt0kn0m4omw

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Terry: I was able to download the program with no trouble, and your restoration work adds to the pleasure of hearing Welles and Moorehead presenting modulated performances in a dramatization of one of John Collier's most celebrated "twist" tales. It is no doubt based to some degree on the story of Dr. Crippen, albeit a dentist, who intrigued the British middle class in the 20th Century, as Jack the Ripper did with greater success evidently in the 19th, or as Drew Peterson or Casey Anthony do for us Americans in our period of decline.

Arnold Moss, the host, a sort of poor man's Orson Welles never worked on the scale of his star, but he had a voice, look and presence which graced nicely later films like REIGN OF TERROR, KIM, VIVA ZAPATA, and a lot of Television.

A real gem, Terry.

Glenn

[Harvey Chartrand]

Another Welles-Hitchcock connection!
In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock directed an adaptation of John Collier's short story BACK FOR CHRISTMAS for the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode starred John Williams, the Master of Suspense's favorite supporting player during the 1950s. Williams appeared in DIAL M FOR MURDER, TO CATCH A THIEF and 10 episodes of the Hitchcock anthology series from 1955 to 1959. Williams would also have co-starred in Hitchcock's NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE with Audrey Hepburn and Laurence Harvey, but the film was cancelled when Hepburn objected to a controversial scene in the script.
In 1964, Arthur Kennedy and Phyllis Thaxter (another Hitchcock TV show favorite) co-starred in an episode with a plot that was somewhat similar to BACK FOR CHRISTMAS – entitled CHANGE OF ADDRESS, the show was directed by David Friedkin.

[ToddBaesen]

Duplicate... see below.

[ToddBaesen]

Thanks for this terrific find, Terry.

As Harvey notes, it's quite notable that Hitchcock also did several John Collier stories on his TV show. Since I had never heard this radio show before, but had seen the Hitchcock TV episode with John Williams, I already knew what the twist ending was going to be, but still loved the radio show.

In fact, I couldn't help but imagining Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead in the roles that John Williams and Isabel Elsom played on the Hitchcock TV show!

Since Welles was back in America doing his own John Collier episode, THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH for TV in 1956, just imagine what might have been if Hitchcock had asked Welles and Moorehead to reprise their roles as the leads in his (then) new TV show!

[Store Hadji]

I knew I recognized John Collier from somewhere. Thanks, Todd!

[Alan Brody]

The followup show to Fountain of Youth would also have been a Collier story, Green Thoughts. And Collier's The Chaser was one of the stories Welles read for the Sears project in the early 70's. According to Collier's online career summary, The Chaser did become a Twighlight Zone episode in 1960. Collier also wrote that oddly poetic 1935 cult classic Sylvia Scarlett, with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Nice job on the program, Store Hadji. I enjoyed it very much, although I wonder why Moorehead was not credited. I was also quite moved by the Yugoslavian poem at the end of the show. Keep up the good work.

[Store Hadji]

This month I've added the rare second episode from the Commentaries series. For lack of a title, I dubbed it "Prophecies, The Woman from Weehawken," though more subjects were covered than that. Welles had a sponsor at this point, though that would change by the time of the Woodard broadcasts, and even before.

Prophecies, The Woman from Weehawken

[Glenn Anders]

Another nice job, Terry. Your transcription catches the intimate tone Welles was at his best at during public conversation.

He may have leaned a bit too hard on the memory of his "War of the World's," but by 1946, he was beginning to need to remind people of the sensation the program caused. And of course, it tied into a genuine worry that he carried the rest of his life about the future of civilization (or the lack thereof).

Interesting to hear how he came back to the same themes his whole life, dressing them in new and old clothes, but holding to them.

His anti-war stance is here, if his propheses are a bit alarmist. We needed those reminders though; even if, in fact, when the three years had passed, possibly two nations had The Bomb. Today, however, I think we are pretty close to the nine nations Welles tells us the war planners believed were going to get those bombs. After all, it only takes one nation to take out up to sixty nations in peremptory strikes, as the Bush Administration told us we were quite ready to demonstrate. Still, if the American Public had taken Welles seriously, they might not have been so shocked, and we might have escaped the McCarthy Period, which for all the patting of ourselves on the back has led to what we have now.

Drew Pearson was a tremendously influential columnist of his day, but I don't quite understand why Welles draws him into his commentary except for comfort, and to link somehow what's being said with his veiled jibe at General Douglas MacArthur, who even in the sunny comfort of World War II Victory was often resented for pronouncements such as: "A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him." MacArthur was always suggesting that his troops were not quite courageous enough to make him look good. He was often known as "Dugout Doug," and he was one of the first modern American generals to have a personal PR officer/Intelligence Chief (the mysterious Major General Charles Andrew Willoughby, German-born and later employed by Francisco Franco and Big Oil).

The stuff about Hollywood and "entertaining the troops" is pretty ephemeral, too, except for the fact that arguments about troop support -- much more serious arguments, really -- go on, today.

Finally, I find it poignant that Welles was making longing references to The Story of Bonito, an unstated reference to a remainder of his IT'S ALL TRUE, four years after his Latin American debacle. He was always in the thrall of that summer he spend with the bulls in Spain as a boy, imagining himself no doubt, at least later, to be his early hero, Ernest Hemingway. And of course, as he informs us off-handedly, he is at the Tijuana fights with his friend Jo Cotten, in the company of "Rita," the most desired Latina in the World at the time.

Thank you, Terry.

Glenn

[Alan Brody]

I'd like to hear that Bpnito broadcast if it still exists (I assume it's dated 9/30/45). If it doesn't that would be a shame, since I don't know that Welles ever related the story anywhere else. If it does exist, they should combine it with some of the surviving Bonito footage. Maybe they'd have enough material to make an interesting and valuable 15-minute film.

Interesting to hear how he came back to the same themes his whole life, dressing them in new and old clothes, but holding to them.

That's an excellent point, Glenn. That's why I enjoyed Peter Conrad's book on Welles. He seems to have tapped into that idea with great depth and insight. In addition to bullfighting, Welles does also seem to have been fascinated by prophecy his whole life. Maybe that's why he had such a special affinity with Macbeth which he would soon make into a movie.

I didn't know that Lear radios were for aircraft. In a way, that sort of ties the whole 'Commentaries' series in with the Ceiling Unlimited shows. Interesting connection, alluding to another major Wellesian theme: Flight.

[Store Hadji]

There is the Sketchbook broadcast of Bonito: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?glzizjwjm1j

I'd also thought of re-editing it to match the Mexican footage, but there's not enough footage available yet to make an attempt.

[Alan Brody]

Ah yes, the good old Sketchbook. Forgot about that one, thanks. Terrific little series, I can't imagine why no one has ever put it on video before. I've heard there is quite a bit more of the Bonito footage waiting to be developed, but whether it ever will be or not is another matter.

[Store Hadji]

This month's rarity is the December 1st, 1941 episode of The Orson Welles Show (aka Lady Esther.) While everyone has heard the Wilbur Brown sketch, few have heard the entire broadcast:

411201 OW Show - Something's Going To Happen to Henry/Wilbur Brown, Habitat Brooklyn

While checking links, I found that most of the Mercury Theatre on the Air files I'd linked to had disappeared entirely, so I uploaded upgraded copies of them and fixed the links.

"The Final Problem" from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes had similarly vanished, so I found an alternate link for that.

Also, the complete original "Victory Extra" from Command Performance has recently turned up in a fresh vinyl rip, so I replaced my incomplete reconstructed version with a link to the original (which includes an extra Welles segment at the end.)

Two more episodes of The Shadow ("The Bride of Death" and "Society of the Living Dead") have surfaced on Rhapsody, so links to those were added.

And while I was uploading and relinking, I added the complete interview with OW and H.G. Wells from that KTSA news program, replacing the truncated version which was linked to previously.

[Glenn Anders]

"Intrepid" should be your name, Terry.

I especially enjoyed the Victory Command Performance. So many of those entertainers, Welles among them, obviously hoped for a cooperative, peaceful world, after five years of unrivaled carnage. What a shame that, in recent decades, we have made such a hash of it. Today, I wonder if many Americans can conceive of the sacrifices made in that time -- or care. We are a nation of greedy, selfish hamsters, living on our ignorant little treadmills from one consumer sensation to the next.

May your larger goals meet with success, Terry,

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

I added the complete version of "George Washington, America" to the museum page. It makes a nice companion to the Mercury Theatre on the Air's "Abraham Lincoln" and The Campbell Playhouse's "Things We Have."

It has an odd running time of 38 minutes and must have had a 45 minute slot and fallen short. It can't have run 8 minutes long. The only example I can think of for a Welles show running long is "Treasure Island;" at the 62 minute mark, Welles remarks upon there being some disturbance in the control booth - some suit from upstairs wondering why the hell the sustaining show hadn't signed off yet, probably.