Jane Eyre & the end of The Campbell Playhouse

[tony]

As for Jane Eyre, OW's narration is as good as his movie Amberson narration (really!) but of course his Rochester is just as hokey as his movie portrayal; also, Herrmann's score is a surprise, as the repeated theme/figure is the SAME as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, (which is itself used again, I believe, in his opera "Wuthering Heights"). He really was shameless at stealing from himself! I remember reading an interview from 1970, and when the interviewer pointed this fact out, Herrmann freaked, denied it, and got REALLY aggressive! What a crazy guy!

[Wellesnet]

75 years ago, on 31 March 1940, Orson Welles's production of "Jane Eyre" was broadcast on "The Campbell Playhouse," CBS-Radio. Madelline Carroll played the title role and Welles played Jane's moody and mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester of Thornfield. It was the last show of the Campbell Playhouse, a series of some sixty one-hour dramatizations that represented the peak of Orson Welles's power and influence in the medium of radio. He would continue to do wonderful things in various shows and series on the air for the next fifteen years, but never with such a large and sustained national audience as this.

A few years later Welles would reprise his role as Rochester in an excellent Hollywood film.

Here's a tribute to the Campbell Playhouse:
http://www.wellesnet.com/75-years-ago-c ... toric-run/

[Wich2]

>He would continue to do wonderful things in various shows and series on the air for the next fifteen years<

He never totally gave up work in the audio storytelling field. Offhand, I can think of the LP "The Beggating of The President" in 1969, and the narration of the broadcast promotional version of "Something Wicked This Way Comes" in 1983.

-Craig

[Le Chiffre]

No question, Welles did a lot of solo readings in his later years including the two you mentioned, some New Testament readings, The Orson Welles Library and Sidney Sheldon readings for Japanese market (some of which have never even been released yet), and numerous voiceovers for a variety of projects. None of that was for radio, per se, but there are still some gems among that work.

Here's a pdf I put together a few years ago on Welles-related commercial audio releases. It's a bit of a mess, and needs to be reorganized and updated one of these days, but it'll give you an idea of what's out there:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/132618391/OW-LPs

One thing I have to get on there is that Mercury on the Air CD set from Radio Spirits that you pointed out and wrote the essay for. I bought one and have been very impressed with it so far.

[Wich2]

Chief-

>No question, Welles did a lot of solo readings in his later years ... None of that was for radio, per se, but there are still some gems among that work.<

Not sure if you're including the SOMETHING WICKED piece there; but it was radio. That's where I heard it back then - and wish now that I'd recorded it.

>One thing I have to get on there is that Mercury on the Air CD set from Radio Spirits that you pointed out and wrote the essay for. I bought one and have been very impressed with it so far.<

Yes, they did a solid job (though it's First Generation Archives, not Radio Spirits). I wish there'd been more. I did recently order a sample CD of Campbells from the new mp3 source we discussed recently, and will report in after I've sampled it.

Best,
-Craig

[Le Chiffre]

Please do. Haven't heard that "Something Wicked" broadcast in a few years, but I remember liking it. It used to be online and we had a thread on it

http://wellesnet.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=1704

but unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore.

***

The Jane Eyre broadcast is interesting in that it has a scene not in the film, where Rochester regains his sight at the end. Too bad the 1938 "Mercury Theatre on the Air" broadcast of Jane is lost. The Brocklehurst of the '39 - played by Robert Coote, who would later play Rodrigo in OTHELLO - is much warmer and more pleasant sounding than the cold, sadistic Brocklehurst of the film. And the age difference between Rochester and Jane, practically non-existent in the film, is emphasized more in the broadcast.

[Wellesnet]

Jane Eyre at the IU OW radio website in better sound than I've heard before:
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/s ... 320%2C4068