"That was the shot that killed Harry Lime. He died in a sewer beneath Vienna, as those of you know who saw the movie the Third Man. Yes, that was the end of Harry Lime-- but it was not the beginning; Harry Lime had many lives and I can recount all of them. How do I know? Very simple; because my name is Harry Lime."
Continuing from last Friday's post on the Black Museum, I'd like to talk about another syndicated radio program by Harry Alan Towers: The Lives of Harry Lime (1951). Er, if that is indeed the series' name; it's almost as often given by announcers as "the Third Man."
The Third Man was, of course, the 1949 movie directed by Carol Reed from Graham Greene's story. The film featured author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) as a man who goes to post-war Vienna to accept a job from his old friend Harry Lime. He soon discovers Harry is actually a criminal.
I learned of the Third Man through the Lives of Harry Lime and when I finally saw that film, it became my favourite movie. But the radio series is not really part of the same continuity as the movie; they both star Orson Welles as a criminal named Harry Lime; they both feature the zither music of Anton Karas (believe it or not, Karas' score to the movie was a hit at the time). But perhaps the reason Orson's opening narration refers to Lime's "many lives" is because these stories aren't meant to be about the same person in the Third Man - instead they present alternate takes on him.
In the Lives of Harry Lime, Harry is roguish fellow; although he loves to swindle people, sometimes his inner goodness causes him to take pity on his victims; sometimes he gets outwitted; and sometimes he's pit against corrupt government or Nazis where it's considered morally correct for Lime to fleece them. But that's not the Harry Lime of the Third Man; part of the plot of the movie is Holly realizing that Harry isn't who he thought he was; Harry views himself as a good-natured rogue, but Holly is forced to confront the results of Harry's actions, the innocent children who die because of Harry's black market penicilin.
So, although the program invites comparisons to the Third Man it's really best that you take this series on its own terms - it's an adventure program. Harry gets to be genuinely heroic at times, such as in a nice playful moment at the climax of "5,000 Pengoes and a Kiss" where Harry forces a patrol of Hungarian policemen to give him their belts so that they'll be unable to chase him. Harry: "In all the famous chases in history, no policeman has been known to catch a fugitive and hold up his pants at the same time."
Other good episodes include "Turnabout Is Foul Play" in which Harry pretends to be an immensely moral man in order to swindle a government official; "The Bohemian Star" in which Harry masquerades as a journalist and gets the goods on a jewel heist; and there's the very intriguing episode "Man of Mystery" which was apparently written by Orson himself; he later expanded the plot another motion picture, Mr. Arkadin.
Welles appeared in a lot of radio shows for Harry Alan Towers but the quality of his output was variable. In the Lives of Harry Lime he was being called on to be the lead man - not merely a supporting player or narrator. Frankly, he wasn't always up to it. In much of Orson's radio work, he'd read through his scripts recklessly and even contemptuously; knowing that he sometimes didn't read scripts until he showed up for the broadcast, his performances could come over as unpolished (to put it politely). Sometimes Orson seemed very invested in his performance; other times, he sounded bored; on other occasions, he was speeding through the script, talking over his fellow performers as if in a hurry to be done with it; and then there are time where he garbles his dialogue (which is amazing for a transcribed program; I guess he refused to do retakes) and sounds either sleepy or drunk. All of this drags down the program.
You can hear every episode of the Lives of Harry Lime in this YouTube playlist created by a fan.
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