By RAY KELLY
Last November, The Strand Magazine published a transcript of a long lost John Steinbeck story, With Your Wings, written for Orson Welles Almanac and broadcast on July 19, 1944. There were no records of With Your Wings appearing previously in book or magazine form and Steinbeck experts knew little about it until its discovery at the University of Texas at Austin.
Now, a second transcript – marked With Your Wings By John Steinbeck “Orson Welles Almanac” (MobilOil) – has been uncovered in the Orson Welles Manuscripts collection at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Lilly Library Manuscripts Archivist Craig S. Simpson included the transcript in the recent centennial exhibition, 100 Years of Orson Welles: Master of Stage, Sound, and Screen. Simpson said he tracked down the bound transcript after reading about the Strand Magazine find in Wellesnet.
“Most likely nobody knew it was here because only the special guest’s name on the show (Ruth Terry) was cited on the finding aid,” Simpson said. “Now that the exhibit has been de-installed and the transcript returned to the collection, I’m going to have Steinbeck’s name added to the item’s description on the finding aid so that researchers know of its existence and can access it.”
He added, “It’s amazing the treasures you can find even when you think you know a collection pretty well.”
With Your Wings is an inspirational story about a black pilot read during one of Welles’ wartime broadcasts.
In introducing Steinbeck’s With Your Wings to radio listeners, Welles noted it was written by “one of the first talents of American literature” especially for the broadcast.
The July 19, 1944 episode of Orson Welles Almanac is embedded below. With Your Wings begins at the 23:35 mark.
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