By RAY KELLY
What’s old is new again.
Seven decades ago, Orson Welles hosted The Black Museum, a popular weekly radio series based on real life cases from the files of Scotland Yard. This forerunner to today’s popular true crime podcasts took its title from the original name for Scotland Yard’s famed Crime Museum. The weathered brick building overlooking the Thames River in London houses an infamous collection of items linked to grisly crimes of the past.
The Black Museum was produced by Harry Alan Towers and broadcast in the United States on Mutual Broadcasting System’s 500-plus stations beginning on January 1, 1952. It aired a year later on Radio Luxembourg in Europe.
Like Welles, Towers began his radio career in the early 1930s, though on the other side of the Atlantic. They first met in 1947 in the cutting room of The Lady from Shanghai, Towers recalled in a 2006 interview. After seeing The Third Man in 1949 and recognizing the popularity of the unsavory Harry Lime character, Towers approached Welles about starring in a prequel radio series. Towers’ offer came as Welles was hustling to raise money for his film adaptation of Othello and he readily agreed.
The Adventures of Harry Lime, produced by Towers of London, first aired on BBC on August 3, 1951 and its 52 episodes were syndicated overseas.
Very shortly thereafter, Towers approached Welles with a plan to rework a syndicated radio thriller he had produced several years earlier, Secrets of Scotland Yard. The two agreed to meet over dinner after a London stage performance of Othello at St. James Theatre in the fall of 1951 to finalize the deal.
Welles, who Towers described as “a character,” reportedly muttered, “The things I do for money” upon being handed the contract. He quickly scribbled his signature on the pact, adding, “Lower than this, I cannot stoop.”
Although Welles had written 10 episodes of The Adventures of Harry Lime for Towers, his involvement in The Black Museum was limited solely to hosting and narrating. Veteran radio scriptwriter Ira Marion was hired to author the episodes given his experience with the shows Crime Does Not Pay and The Blue Playhouse.
The Black Museum was produced in Sydney, Australia, where Towers had set up facilities several years earlier. Welles’ introductions were recorded in London and then flown to Sydney for inclusion. Cast members went uncredited during the broadcasts, but included Joe McCormick and Henry McGuire. Each of the more than 50 episodes began with a tailored introduction:
“This is Orson Welles, speaking from London. (The chimes of Big Ben ring out)
The Black Museum … a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects … a skillet, a screwdriver, a photograph … all are touched by murder.”
The series boasted such ominous titles as The Bloodstained Brick Bat, A Jar of Acid, The Claw Hammer, Glass Shards and The Straight Razor. Episodes began with Welles walking through the museum. He would stop at an exhibit and his description of an artifact would segue into a dramatized recounting of a brutal murder or other heinous crime.
The Black Museum would mark the end of Welles’ career as a weekly radio show host. At the close of each 30-minute broadcast, Welles would include a callback to his early radio days, as he intoned, “Now until we meet again next time in the same place and I tell you another tale of about the Black Museum, I remain, as always, obediently yours.”
The true crime series garnered favorable reviews when it first aired. Variety wrote, “Solidly scripted and pervasively performed, this show gets additional horror values from Orson Welles’ portentous narration, which bridges the plot sequences. Welles’ mysterioso gabbing style sets an appropriate clammy atmosphere for this session and the surrounding production succeeds in sustaining the mood.” TV-Radio Life noted that Welles “would take up the story line with his narration, but this was well placed and served to help the listener understand what was going on without taking the place of action… These Black Museum tales will not sound like ‘old stuff’ to you and will offer you a chance to exercise your own intelligence in putting the pieces together in each jig-saw murder.”
Following its initial run on Mutual and Radio Luxembourg in the 1950s, The Black Museum resurfaced 20 years later on Armed Forces Radio & Television Service These days, it can be found on compact disc, numerous online sites and on the SiriusXM Radio Classics channel.
Towers and Welles would work together again on a smart radio episode that cast the latter as the evil Moriarty opposite John Gielgud’s Sherlock Holmes and Ralph Richardson’s Dr. Watson in December 1954. Towers and Welles would reunite for the dismal 1972 film version of Treasure Island.
Fifty years after Towers teamed with Welles on radio for The Black Museum, he produced a pilot for a related television series, Tales from the Black Museum. He reused Welles’ radio narration for the 2002 TV pilot, which featured Michael Yorke as Scotland Yard Inspector Russell. Sadly, the series was not picked up.
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Individual episodes can be heard at https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Black_Museum_Singles.
For more information on The Black Museum, check out Karl Schadow’s informative program guide and history at https://d2fahduf2624mg.cloudfront.net/pre_purchase_docs/RT_RADI_002090/2021-01-21-08-47-05/rt_radi_002090.pdf
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