Radio Recap: The Black Museum

"The Black Museum, the repository of death. Yes, 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!"

Somehow it's taken this long for me to post a Radio Recap of a Harry Alan Towers program.

In the 1950s, Harry Alan Towers produced a number of syndicated radio dramas, usually employing many of the same performers in each series - programs like Secrets of Scotland Yard, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Adventures of Horatio Hornblower and today's entry - the Black Museum (1952). He liked to produce 52 episodes of his shows so they could be broadcast across an entire year. As best as I can tell, the syndicated episodes of the Black Museum were aired in the USA on Mutual.

The series was a crime anthology hoted by Orson Welles. Towers' shows tended to use a big-name actor to draw listeners to the show - but he went specifically after big-name actors who were having trouble in their career, and thus were desperate enough to work for him. Orson was then having an awful time with the IRS in the USA, hence the attraction to recording a lot of radio shows with Towers. The problem, of course, is that when Orson was just there to collect a paycheck he didn't put in his best effort. At least as narrator, that didn't mean he would sink the whole show-- but I've seen plenty of online reviewers remark that Orson sounded bored as he hosted the Black Museum. To me, it's variable - in some episodes he seems very into his craft; in others, not so much.

The show's gimmick is that Orson would be within Scotland Yard's Black Museum, introducing an object which was related to a crime of some kind; then the drama would begin in earnest, with Orson piping up only when exposition required his assistance. The Scotland Yard inspectors were played by a number of uncredited performers and changed with each episode.

I think the Black Museum is the best of Towers' programs; the man liked to recycle his music, whether the music fit the mood of the script or not. But the musical transitions on the Black Museum work pretty well. Towers also didn't like to use many sound effects on his shows, which really diminishes them; but because the Black Museum would be centered around a particular object, there would usually be a noise to accompany that object, giving the show a bit more heft.

There are some gruesome crimes recounted on the Black Museum, especially violence committed against women - "the Baby Jacket" and "the Brass Button" are two of the more violent episodes. There's a Jack the Ripper episode called "the Razor"; and there's a ghost episode, "the Chain!"

But some episodes don't quite work for me - "the Postcard" doesn't have a conclusion to its crime, ending on an ambiguous note.

As I noted before, the program Whitehall 1212 was also about items from Scotland Yard's Black Museum, but it's nowhere near as good, despite being produced by Wyllis Cooper. Stick to the Black Museum if this is a subject you're interested in.

You can hear the Black Museum on the Old Time Radio Reserchers' YouTube playlist.