Treasure Island
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Wilson
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Treasure Island
Up for discussion, the second episode of First Person Singular, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure tale...
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R Kadin
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Jeff, I think your invitation and reminder on this thread might have been buried. Here's hoping this entry's appearance prods things along again...
Well, all I can say is, Wonderful! What a world of character and sound has been created, here! If you liked the suspense of the shipboard scenes in Dracula, you'll love what's accomplished with nothing more than the sound of a blind man's shuffling gait, the clip-clip of his cane and the menacing jostle of the Admiral Benbow's metal latch.
The music is all it should be, as are the majority of the many and varied accents on offer from the actors. (Forgive me, my esteemed colleagues, but I regret Welles' unfixed reading of Long John Silver's lines could, at different times, have the character hailing from almost any corner of the English-speaking world.) Lines colourfully-delivered without toppling into hamminess or parody, real hazards in lesser hands.
A ripping yearn rollickingly told. A true pleasure throughout - even in Welles' generous, warm and witty introductions of his players, especially the precocious and talented "Jim Hawkins" (Arthur Anderson).
And the respect shown for the good humour and intelligence of the audience certainly set this series apart from most anything else I've heard from the era. Imagine, riffing on game show hyperbole to promo Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities! With a characteristic reference to the tools behind all the artifice (in this case, the control booth), Welles takes care to leave his listeners with a final smile, the mark of a consummate showman.
Well, all I can say is, Wonderful! What a world of character and sound has been created, here! If you liked the suspense of the shipboard scenes in Dracula, you'll love what's accomplished with nothing more than the sound of a blind man's shuffling gait, the clip-clip of his cane and the menacing jostle of the Admiral Benbow's metal latch.
The music is all it should be, as are the majority of the many and varied accents on offer from the actors. (Forgive me, my esteemed colleagues, but I regret Welles' unfixed reading of Long John Silver's lines could, at different times, have the character hailing from almost any corner of the English-speaking world.) Lines colourfully-delivered without toppling into hamminess or parody, real hazards in lesser hands.
A ripping yearn rollickingly told. A true pleasure throughout - even in Welles' generous, warm and witty introductions of his players, especially the precocious and talented "Jim Hawkins" (Arthur Anderson).
And the respect shown for the good humour and intelligence of the audience certainly set this series apart from most anything else I've heard from the era. Imagine, riffing on game show hyperbole to promo Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities! With a characteristic reference to the tools behind all the artifice (in this case, the control booth), Welles takes care to leave his listeners with a final smile, the mark of a consummate showman.
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Le Chiffre
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It's been awhile since I've heard the broadcast, and my tape of it is buried in storage right now, but I remember being struck by how much more energetic Welles' performance as Long John Silver was on radio then in the '72 film, which may be the worst performance he ever gave.
I love Stevenson's book- in fact, it's the only book I've ever read in one sitting. The Welles/Mercury show is good, but not one of their best, but like I say, I haven't heard it in awhile, so I'll have to give it another listen one of these days. Too bad there's never been a great, definitive film made of it.
Arthur Anderson was a good child actor, and he served as a source of info for Robert Kaplan's recent novel ME AND ORSON WELLES, which is an entertaining fictional account of the Welles/Mercury stage production of JULIUS CEASAR.
TREASURE ISLAND is first in a list of sea stories associated with Welles, a list that includes several incarnations of MOBY DICK (in several different media), A PASSENGER TO BALI, FOUR MEN ON A RAFT, A FERRY TO HONG KONG, VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, THE DEEP, and one of Welles' few original stories, SANTO SPIRITO. There may be a few more too. Why Welles was atrracted to sea stories I don't know, but it's interesting.
I love Stevenson's book- in fact, it's the only book I've ever read in one sitting. The Welles/Mercury show is good, but not one of their best, but like I say, I haven't heard it in awhile, so I'll have to give it another listen one of these days. Too bad there's never been a great, definitive film made of it.
Arthur Anderson was a good child actor, and he served as a source of info for Robert Kaplan's recent novel ME AND ORSON WELLES, which is an entertaining fictional account of the Welles/Mercury stage production of JULIUS CEASAR.
TREASURE ISLAND is first in a list of sea stories associated with Welles, a list that includes several incarnations of MOBY DICK (in several different media), A PASSENGER TO BALI, FOUR MEN ON A RAFT, A FERRY TO HONG KONG, VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, THE DEEP, and one of Welles' few original stories, SANTO SPIRITO. There may be a few more too. Why Welles was atrracted to sea stories I don't know, but it's interesting.
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Le Chiffre
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Maybe it has something to do with this passage from MOBY DICK, which Welles used both in his play and in the later short film he made of himself reading from it:
"Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?-and the still deeper meaning of that story of Narcissus, who, because he could not grasp the mild, tormenting image in the fountain, plunged into it, and drowned. That same image we ourselves see in all rivers, in oceans and in lakes and wells. The image of the un-graspable - the phantom of life. And that is the key to it all..."
What does this have to do with TREASURE ISLAND? I don't know, just thought I'd toss it in. Conrad's book has some interesting stuff on the similarities between Long John Silver and Falstaff. Silver is Falstaff as a pirate, and a little more dangerous too.
"Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy?-and the still deeper meaning of that story of Narcissus, who, because he could not grasp the mild, tormenting image in the fountain, plunged into it, and drowned. That same image we ourselves see in all rivers, in oceans and in lakes and wells. The image of the un-graspable - the phantom of life. And that is the key to it all..."
What does this have to do with TREASURE ISLAND? I don't know, just thought I'd toss it in. Conrad's book has some interesting stuff on the similarities between Long John Silver and Falstaff. Silver is Falstaff as a pirate, and a little more dangerous too.
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Wilson
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This was a solid show, though I think it wraps the story up too suddenly. The cast is quite good all around, with Arthur Anderson doing a splendid job as Jim Hawkins. As with anything of this nature, the quality of the adaptation is paramount, and this one was a little lacking near the end. Probably just a case of time constraints forcing them to move things along.
The promo for the next show was odd, but as one sees with the Campbell Playhouse shows in particular, they ended the shows with some fairly oddball comedy stuff; "The Chicken Wagon Family," now lost, has a very funny "Life of Burgess Meredith" (that show's guest star) that has Welles playing Meredith and Meredith playing Welles, among other conceits. But that's a way off.
And that's an interesting point about Welles and the sea; someone should look into it further. There are certainly other radio stories involving it, as it makes a cool radio atmosphere with all the various sounds that can be produced.
The promo for the next show was odd, but as one sees with the Campbell Playhouse shows in particular, they ended the shows with some fairly oddball comedy stuff; "The Chicken Wagon Family," now lost, has a very funny "Life of Burgess Meredith" (that show's guest star) that has Welles playing Meredith and Meredith playing Welles, among other conceits. But that's a way off.
And that's an interesting point about Welles and the sea; someone should look into it further. There are certainly other radio stories involving it, as it makes a cool radio atmosphere with all the various sounds that can be produced.
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R Kadin
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How much more exotic the open seas must have seemed to a land-locked Wisconsin lad of Welles' era and before!
The thought of a limitless horizon and an ever-shifting plane, always the sea, but from moment to moment never the same; their beckoning must have been irresistible to a boy of OW's fertile and insatiable imagination.
Ships blown about by invisible forces, coursing adventurously along to magical lands upon the furthermost frontiers of possibility stretching into the unknowable distance, timeless stages fit for conflicts of mythic, if not impossible, scale - how could a mind such as that not be beguiled by lures such as those?
Add to all this the sea's role in the motherless Welles' young life as the place he likely spent the most uninterrupted time with his father as well as the route he took to the bohemian and adolescent bliss of his Irish idyll, and we could begin to have a sense of what the sea might have meant to our man, even before its deeper psychological significance is taken into account.
The thought of a limitless horizon and an ever-shifting plane, always the sea, but from moment to moment never the same; their beckoning must have been irresistible to a boy of OW's fertile and insatiable imagination.
Ships blown about by invisible forces, coursing adventurously along to magical lands upon the furthermost frontiers of possibility stretching into the unknowable distance, timeless stages fit for conflicts of mythic, if not impossible, scale - how could a mind such as that not be beguiled by lures such as those?
Add to all this the sea's role in the motherless Welles' young life as the place he likely spent the most uninterrupted time with his father as well as the route he took to the bohemian and adolescent bliss of his Irish idyll, and we could begin to have a sense of what the sea might have meant to our man, even before its deeper psychological significance is taken into account.
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Glenn Anders
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Yes, R Kadin, you got there before me. As I caught up, at last, to "Treasure Island," and scrolled through the various comments, my own conclusions about a landlocked, motherless boy came to mind. I might only add that, though he may have been landlocked, in those days long before the St. Lawrence Seaway, he was still not far from water. A look at the map will show you that Kenosha, Wisconsin, is on Lake Michigan, forty miles from the sophistication of Chicago, to which Beatrice Welles was drawn, and perhaps seventy-five from Dubuque, Iowa, on "The Big Two-Hearted River," the Mississippi which figures so large in Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the subject of a later Campbell Playhouse production.
These bodies are, to be sure, far from " deep water," real sea water: the Sea.
Your remarks, mteal, about Moby Dick reminded me of the above, and of the opening of Huston's movie adaptation of that whale of a novel, where Ishmael speaks of all the freshets, creeks, streams and rivers running down to the sea, in which "we find ourselves."
It may be, too, that Welles, so interested in storytelling, and adapting stories and novels (rather than conventional plays) as he was, had learned one of the few great secrets of novel writing and tale-telling: A journey, especially one on water, over the millennia, has been nigh irresistible.
You might add to your Welles' Movie List, mteal, JOURNEY INTO FEAR and its voyage across the Bosphorus, from safety into danger and out again; or THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, in which the cruise of the "Circe" through "The Panama" (actually on the "Zaca" of Errol Flynn, off Acapulco!!) takes Mike from romantic innocence into brutal corruption, as Welles must have decided his coming by way of New York to Hollywood had robbed him of freedom and discipline in the East for a luxurious decadence on the far West Coast.
A balance was needed, which he never found again.
We might addend one other program to Welles' Robert Louis Steveson work for Radio, a production he did of "The Master of Ballantree" (coincidentally, a Flynn movie vehicle) on Suspense.
Later, the Oceans of the World figure in a Horizons Unlimited radio production he narrated about a B-17 which was forced to fly around the World after Pearl Harbor.
And much later still, he is credited by some sources with not only speaking but writing the narrations for THE VIKINGS (Fleischer, 1958) and CINERAMA SOUTH SEA ADVENTURE (various director, 1958). In the latter example, he shared the narration duties not only with Don the Beachcomber but that other Radio master of voices: Ted DeCorsia.
And I liked, Jeff, your criticism of the show that the denouement of "Treasure Island" was too swift. This failing was a growing problem for later shows. Adapting a narrative of several hundred pages on short notice, often from scratch, in the time constraints of an hour, must have been formidable. If one listens to the rehearsals that are available for several productions, it is clear that the rough script of a short novel like Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" ran to an hour-and-a-half in recorded time. Years afterward, trying to reduce Moby Dick to a half-hour (I've never heard it) must have been impossible.
In fact, for a couple of other Welles' favorites, "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Around the World in Eighty Days," he confessed the problems, on the air. But then, there is the famous original Welles private-eye tale, crafted along the lines of The Thin Man, in which they announced the cast in the middle of the show so they could have more time to work on fleshing out the ending.
And the charm of his remarks about the cast must have been a device to fulfill a potential need to "stretch" the material if, there was not enough of it. In practice, Welles' radio shows appeared to generally have too much content, and I suspect that he sometimes was reluctant to sacrifice his precious words of praise for the cast -- to the detriment of the show. This practice was also, I think, in part, an interest he had in humanizing Radio, The Theater, actors in general, and Mercury Actors, in particular, to "the greater American Audience," an idea which the Lux Radio Theater exploited to a much greater extent, on behalf of the Hollywood Studios, for decades. What a cruel trap he must have found, that in the latter stages of his career when he was mocked about his personal habits in remarks about his weight and his making of wine commercials!
[As I write, I'm listening with one ear to Michael Moore asking some cogent questions for Americans on IFC; attempts are being made to marginalize him, in a not dissimilar way.]
But in the 1930's and 1940's, Welles always seemed marvelously relaxed, when he broke "the fourth wall" of Radio and took us into the Mercury or Campbell Playhouse Green Rooms.
Finally, as to "Treasure Island" itself, I don't have a memory of the radio play, at the time, perhaps because my father had told me the story when I was little. He also had given me the novel for my birthday -- I don't remember which now, but it must have been after this adaptation aired. Treasure Island was the first novel I ever read . . . well, after Edgar Rice Bourough's Tarzan's Golden Lion . . . and perhaps Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris. During that long hot summer Sunday in 1938, I was probably outside playing ball, or at least, gazing toward Lake Erie.
Or perhaps, there was a thunder storm, which would have raised ned with Cleveland's WTAM (AM, of course).
Listening to the show later, on tape -- many years later -- like Jeff, I found the early scenes the best: the lonely Jim Hawkins outside gazing toward the sea, describing mysterious colorful figures prowling up Spyglass Hill . . . the tapping of Blind Pew's cane, the Treasure Map, the excitement of the preparations for a voyage of impossible discovery. All exciting, romantic, atmospheric stuff, in the best traditions of boyhood adventure.
As you suggest, gentlemen, it must have appealed to a lonely boy like Stevenson or Welles, as it did to me and millions of other Americans.
Let's continue sailing for a time!
Glenn
These bodies are, to be sure, far from " deep water," real sea water: the Sea.
Your remarks, mteal, about Moby Dick reminded me of the above, and of the opening of Huston's movie adaptation of that whale of a novel, where Ishmael speaks of all the freshets, creeks, streams and rivers running down to the sea, in which "we find ourselves."
It may be, too, that Welles, so interested in storytelling, and adapting stories and novels (rather than conventional plays) as he was, had learned one of the few great secrets of novel writing and tale-telling: A journey, especially one on water, over the millennia, has been nigh irresistible.
You might add to your Welles' Movie List, mteal, JOURNEY INTO FEAR and its voyage across the Bosphorus, from safety into danger and out again; or THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, in which the cruise of the "Circe" through "The Panama" (actually on the "Zaca" of Errol Flynn, off Acapulco!!) takes Mike from romantic innocence into brutal corruption, as Welles must have decided his coming by way of New York to Hollywood had robbed him of freedom and discipline in the East for a luxurious decadence on the far West Coast.
A balance was needed, which he never found again.
We might addend one other program to Welles' Robert Louis Steveson work for Radio, a production he did of "The Master of Ballantree" (coincidentally, a Flynn movie vehicle) on Suspense.
Later, the Oceans of the World figure in a Horizons Unlimited radio production he narrated about a B-17 which was forced to fly around the World after Pearl Harbor.
And much later still, he is credited by some sources with not only speaking but writing the narrations for THE VIKINGS (Fleischer, 1958) and CINERAMA SOUTH SEA ADVENTURE (various director, 1958). In the latter example, he shared the narration duties not only with Don the Beachcomber but that other Radio master of voices: Ted DeCorsia.
And I liked, Jeff, your criticism of the show that the denouement of "Treasure Island" was too swift. This failing was a growing problem for later shows. Adapting a narrative of several hundred pages on short notice, often from scratch, in the time constraints of an hour, must have been formidable. If one listens to the rehearsals that are available for several productions, it is clear that the rough script of a short novel like Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" ran to an hour-and-a-half in recorded time. Years afterward, trying to reduce Moby Dick to a half-hour (I've never heard it) must have been impossible.
In fact, for a couple of other Welles' favorites, "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Around the World in Eighty Days," he confessed the problems, on the air. But then, there is the famous original Welles private-eye tale, crafted along the lines of The Thin Man, in which they announced the cast in the middle of the show so they could have more time to work on fleshing out the ending.
And the charm of his remarks about the cast must have been a device to fulfill a potential need to "stretch" the material if, there was not enough of it. In practice, Welles' radio shows appeared to generally have too much content, and I suspect that he sometimes was reluctant to sacrifice his precious words of praise for the cast -- to the detriment of the show. This practice was also, I think, in part, an interest he had in humanizing Radio, The Theater, actors in general, and Mercury Actors, in particular, to "the greater American Audience," an idea which the Lux Radio Theater exploited to a much greater extent, on behalf of the Hollywood Studios, for decades. What a cruel trap he must have found, that in the latter stages of his career when he was mocked about his personal habits in remarks about his weight and his making of wine commercials!
[As I write, I'm listening with one ear to Michael Moore asking some cogent questions for Americans on IFC; attempts are being made to marginalize him, in a not dissimilar way.]
But in the 1930's and 1940's, Welles always seemed marvelously relaxed, when he broke "the fourth wall" of Radio and took us into the Mercury or Campbell Playhouse Green Rooms.
Finally, as to "Treasure Island" itself, I don't have a memory of the radio play, at the time, perhaps because my father had told me the story when I was little. He also had given me the novel for my birthday -- I don't remember which now, but it must have been after this adaptation aired. Treasure Island was the first novel I ever read . . . well, after Edgar Rice Bourough's Tarzan's Golden Lion . . . and perhaps Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris. During that long hot summer Sunday in 1938, I was probably outside playing ball, or at least, gazing toward Lake Erie.
Or perhaps, there was a thunder storm, which would have raised ned with Cleveland's WTAM (AM, of course).
Listening to the show later, on tape -- many years later -- like Jeff, I found the early scenes the best: the lonely Jim Hawkins outside gazing toward the sea, describing mysterious colorful figures prowling up Spyglass Hill . . . the tapping of Blind Pew's cane, the Treasure Map, the excitement of the preparations for a voyage of impossible discovery. All exciting, romantic, atmospheric stuff, in the best traditions of boyhood adventure.
As you suggest, gentlemen, it must have appealed to a lonely boy like Stevenson or Welles, as it did to me and millions of other Americans.
Let's continue sailing for a time!
Glenn
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Le Chiffre
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R. Kadin,
Good point about the young Orson sailing around the world with his father. I'm sure that must have been a factor in his attraction to sea stories.
Glenn,
Guy Endore's WEREWOLF OF PARIS sounds interesting, especially if it's the same Guy Endore who wrote KING OF PARIS, about the rocky relationship between Alexander Dumas and his son. It's a very entertaining novel that Welles actually did make a 30-minute film of in the 50's. Sadly, that film is now believed lost.
Thanks for the additions to my Wellesian sea list. I suppose if we stretch things, we could note THE IMMORTAL STORY'S young sailor, as well as Welles' audio-book reading of Conrad's THE SECRET SHARER. And as was noted in the Dracula thread, one of that broadcast's strongest sections takes place aboard a doomed ship. Your mentioning Stevenson's MASTER OF BALLENTRAE reminds me that that is, if anything, an even greater book then TREASURE ISLAND. Welles' 1945 30-minute radio version for the Mercury Summer Theatre was disapointing.
Jeff,
THE CHICKEN WAGON FAMILY is for me one of the most lamentable of the lost Mercury radio shows. It sounds like it would have been a rare example of the Mercury in full slapstick mode. How did you find out about the Burgess Meredith spoof?
Good point about the young Orson sailing around the world with his father. I'm sure that must have been a factor in his attraction to sea stories.
Glenn,
Guy Endore's WEREWOLF OF PARIS sounds interesting, especially if it's the same Guy Endore who wrote KING OF PARIS, about the rocky relationship between Alexander Dumas and his son. It's a very entertaining novel that Welles actually did make a 30-minute film of in the 50's. Sadly, that film is now believed lost.
Thanks for the additions to my Wellesian sea list. I suppose if we stretch things, we could note THE IMMORTAL STORY'S young sailor, as well as Welles' audio-book reading of Conrad's THE SECRET SHARER. And as was noted in the Dracula thread, one of that broadcast's strongest sections takes place aboard a doomed ship. Your mentioning Stevenson's MASTER OF BALLENTRAE reminds me that that is, if anything, an even greater book then TREASURE ISLAND. Welles' 1945 30-minute radio version for the Mercury Summer Theatre was disapointing.
Jeff,
THE CHICKEN WAGON FAMILY is for me one of the most lamentable of the lost Mercury radio shows. It sounds like it would have been a rare example of the Mercury in full slapstick mode. How did you find out about the Burgess Meredith spoof?
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Wilson
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"Hell On Ice" is another Mercury sea, or at least boat, production, which we'll be hitting before too long as well.
I read the "The Chicken Wagon Family" script at the Lilly while doing Welles radio research, and it really didn't strike me as very slapstick in nature, in fact it has a fairly depressing ending. There was certainly some comedy to it though, early on at least. The Meredith spoof at the end was wackiest thing in the show, frankly.
Edited By Wilson on Oct. 04 2004 at 09:37
I read the "The Chicken Wagon Family" script at the Lilly while doing Welles radio research, and it really didn't strike me as very slapstick in nature, in fact it has a fairly depressing ending. There was certainly some comedy to it though, early on at least. The Meredith spoof at the end was wackiest thing in the show, frankly.
Edited By Wilson on Oct. 04 2004 at 09:37
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R Kadin
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What's this, Glenn? Everybody gets away with all the Moby Dickreferences they want, except me? What am I, chopped blubber??
Okay, just for that, here's MOBY DICK reduced to one half hour: Man meets whale; man loses whale; fifty years later, man gets whale-turned-unsurnamed-alt-music poster boy. It's the tried and true Hollywood formula. I'm surprised OW missed it.
Okay, just for that, here's MOBY DICK reduced to one half hour: Man meets whale; man loses whale; fifty years later, man gets whale-turned-unsurnamed-alt-music poster boy. It's the tried and true Hollywood formula. I'm surprised OW missed it.
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Le Chiffre
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Jeff,
Thanks for the correction. To me, the title "Chicken Wagon Family" suggests slapstick, but apparently it's not what it seems. If Lilly has all the scripts from the 13 missing shows, it would be neat to see them recreated as radio plays and performed by modern professional actors in modern stereo sound. I don't know if that would work, but it might be worth a try.
Thanks for the correction. To me, the title "Chicken Wagon Family" suggests slapstick, but apparently it's not what it seems. If Lilly has all the scripts from the 13 missing shows, it would be neat to see them recreated as radio plays and performed by modern professional actors in modern stereo sound. I don't know if that would work, but it might be worth a try.
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Wilson
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The Lilly has most of the missing Campbell Playhouse shows in script form, though "A Farewell to Arms" is a notable exception. I see no reason why any of them couldn't be performed, aside from the problems of getting copies and clearance. It would be an interesting project, no question. The only difficulty would be doing the end segments, which don't necessarily make much sense away from the original performers, since they usually were built around the guest stars. "State Fair" has a rather un-PC Amos and Andy appearance that has Welles asking in dialect if they ever need an "extry Kingfish" to give him a ring. When we get round to them, I'll provide material from my notes for the scripts I've read, so even if we can't necessarily discuss, at least some info about these shows is out there.
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Terry
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This one doesn't even start with the announcement "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" - at least not on my Radiola LP, which otherwise is complete. It even runs 64 minutes. I used software to reduce it to 60 minutes, and they all sounded like chipmunks. At the end, Welles mentions "some commotion in the control room" - maybe some exec was asking why they hadn't logged off and were still on air at 4 minutes after 9. Interesting also that the phrase "First Person Singular" is not mentioned anywhere in the broadcast.
Fucking fabulous episode. Ray Collins outdoes himself as The Captain. I don't know if Everett Sloane is listed in the cast, but I think he plays Blind Pew - wonderful, could have been a witch in Macbeth with that voice. Arthur Anderson is excellent. I think OW does better as Narrator than as Long John, which is a matter of comparing excellent with superb, so no slight intended.
Fucking fabulous episode. Ray Collins outdoes himself as The Captain. I don't know if Everett Sloane is listed in the cast, but I think he plays Blind Pew - wonderful, could have been a witch in Macbeth with that voice. Arthur Anderson is excellent. I think OW does better as Narrator than as Long John, which is a matter of comparing excellent with superb, so no slight intended.
Sto Pro Veritate
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tonyw
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Re: Weekly Welles Radio Discussion - Week 2: Treasure Island (1
Does anybody have a complete cast list? Everett Sloane is not mentioned in Bret wood's Bio-Bibliography nor on wikipedia.Did Orson also do Billy Bones and Blind Pew? I ran it in class last night. Agnes was great as Mrs. Hawkins and "Captain Flint" - Pieces of Eight! 