Simanaitis Says
On cars, old, new and future; science & technology; vintage airplanes, computer flight simulation of them; Sherlockiana; our English language; travel; and other stuff
“RADIO CLASSICS” REDUX PART 2
THIS ALL STARTED WITH MY LISTENING TO ORSON WELLES performing in a Suspense! broadcast of The Dark Tower, a Kaufman and Woollcott melodrama. Today in Part 2, there’s the original novel, a Suspense Project report on the broadcast replete with Welles lore, and that guy named Nixon.
The Dark Tower: A Melodrama, by Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman, Random House, 1934.
In truth, I’ve not read the original melodrama. AbeBooks has one for US$550. Gulp.
The Warner Bros. Flick. Wikipedia recounts, “The play was later adapted for the Warner Bros. film The Man with Two Faces (1934) starring Mary Astor, Louis Calhern, and Edward G. Robinson.”
Poster from Wikipedia.
Mary Astor, of course, was Sam Spade’s femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon, 1941. Ricardo Cortez, next to her in the cast listing here, portrayed Sam in the first version of this tale, the 1931 flick following Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel.
The [first] Maltese Falcon, 1931.
One of my favorite Edward G. Robinson’s radio tales is “The Man Who Thought He Was Edward G. Robinson.” It’s a dual role of whimsy in which Robinson plays himself as well as a meek little fellow named Howard J. Hubbard.
“Radio Classics” Suspense! I enjoyed The Dark Tower starring the likes of Orson Welles and Hans Conried, via SiriusXM “Radio Classics” Suspense!
Image from RadioEchoes.
“The Suspense Project: 1944-05-04 The Dark Tower“ offers details: “A well-known actor turns to murder to save his sister from her unhappy marriage. That’s the excuse for the story, a satire about the stage and movies and those who engage in such enterprises. If you are expecting regular Suspense fare, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting a play overflowing with Welles and lines often drenched with innuendo, you may find this an unexpected pleasure.”
“Welles deliberately overacts in this play,” The Suspense Project notes, “as it is somewhat of a satire about theater and actors, and he makes it about himself. It is amusing how so many of the lines could apply to Welles public persona, even though the play was introduced in 1933 when he was just starting in the profession.”
“At about the 4:30 mark of the broadcast,” it continues, “the character comments about being asked to stop drinking. He says… ‘Would you have me subsist entirely on food? And reach the gargantuan proportions of an Orson Welles?’ ”
That Nixon Reference. “In January 1938,” Wikipedia recounts, “the future President of the United States Richard Nixon was cast in the Whittier Community Players production of this play. He was cast opposite a high school teacher named Thelma “Pat” Ryan, whom he would later marry.”
We may not have Nixon “to kick around anymore,” but we do have Orson Welles in dual roles in The Dark Tower. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
Again Dennis, you’re stirring up those deeply embedded “leetle grey cells” between my ears, and bringing golden memories to the surface. I grew up as an Air Force brat in early ’50s Europe, being denied the pablum of television, but the Armed Forces radio was full of those ’30s radio serials.
We had Amos n’ Andy and Fibber McGee’s closet brought to life in our imagination, balanced against the mystery, suspense and horror of Johnny Dollar, the Green Hornet and Tales from the Crypt. The images we conjured in our mind’s eye made the movie SFX of the day pale by comparison, and even today’s exotic CGI comes up lame.
A favorite, snuck in under the bed covers on a Boy’s Life built crystal set radio was late night tales from Orson Welles, guaranteed to be delivered in dulcet tones that would transition to menace and despair … sleep didn’t come quickly, but not from fear, but absorbing the messages and their delivery.
We had “high adventures in the wild, vast regions of space” with Tom Corbett, Commander in Chief of the …roaarrrrr… SPACE PATROL!! And thrilled to the gritty tales of Gunsmoke’s Sherriff, William Conrad who started each episode on Boot Hill where “some people were there because they were bad … some because they were good … all because they were dead!”
When I later experienced TV and movie SFX, they’ve been a letdown.
Agreed about the magic. As you may know, many of these are still available on SiriusXM “Radio Classics.” There’s also the later Jim French’s “Imagination Theatre” out of Seattle (which I never heard in the original).
For me, radio imagination continues to surpass TV or movie CGI.