Radio Recap: Les Miserables

Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables was adapted to radio in 1937 in a format similar to how television would later create it's own prestigious mini-series adaptations. It aired on Mutual from July 23-September 3, 1937. Starring as the novel's hero Jean Valjean (and as the book's narrator) was Orson Welles, buttressed by Martin Gabel, Agnes Moorehead, Bill Johnstone, Everett Sloane, Frank Readick, Gwen Davies, Ray Collins and Alice Frost. It was during this time that Welles and most of the performers appearing with him founded the Mercury Theatre, which would make its true radio debut the following year with CBS' Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Listening to Les Miserables, it is very much in the same spirit as the subsequent Mercury Theatre on the Air - in part because Welles seems to have bit off a little more than he could chew. It's well-documented that Welles kicked off the Mercury Theatre on the Air by trying to quickly pare down Bram Stoker's Dracula into a viable hour-long drama and it was a struggle for his staff to assemble it in time. Similarly, it feels as though when he started Les Miserables's first episode he didn't have a final script for the series. The first five episodes go fairly briskly through Hugo's novel, but in the 6th episode the story jumps far ahead to the story of Jean Valjean entering the barricade to rescue Marius - whose entire romance with Cosette happened in-between episodes. Then the 7th episode is mostly a recap of the previous episodes, until finally adding Valjean's death from the novel.

But although the pace of the adaptation is uneven, it's a very well-produced program with terrific performances by Welles' regulars. I first heard this series before I had read the novel or seen any of the film adaptations - I came away feeling I had a decent grasp of what the novel's plot and themes were. I also think the 5th episode with the account of Valjean being buried alive is a piece of excellent radio, a very well-done bit of thriller melodrama.

You can hear all seven episodes of Les Miserables on this YouTube playlist.

Radio Recap: Screen Directors' Playhouse

Screen Directors' Playhouse was a program late in its arrival. NBC produced it from 1949-1951 and they really should have gotten on the bandwagon sooner! CBS had been adapted popular films and plays in the Lux Radio Theatre since 1934 and that series brought in very good ratings; yet NBC stubbornly persisted in investing its time and money into comedy programs. That worked well for them until the post-war years when suddenly dramatic programming started bringing in huge ratings for CBS (also, CBS raided their comedy talent, depriving them of many of their greatest assets). The great thing about adapting popular films to the radio is that the material has already been audience tested and approved! There's little to gamble, especially if you can bring along at least one of the stars of the movie for the radio adaptation.

What made Screen Directors' Playhouse different from Lux Radio Theatre? Or from Ford Theatre, Academy Award Theatre or Screen Guild Theatre? It's in the title: Directors'. Screen Directors' Playhouse attempted to spotlight the directors of the movies. Frequently they appeared at the opening and closing of the drama. Sometimes, however, they dramatized films whose director had passed on. In those cases a guest director would appear to discuss the film. In 121 episodes, the original director appeared 96 times. Usually at least one member of the original cast would appear as well.

The series was usually a half-hour program, which means the stories were much more clipped than the hour-long Lux Radio Theatre. From November 9, 1950 onward it held an hour-long timeslot. Pabst Blue Ribbon sponsored it at first, with RCA Victor, Anacin and Chesterfield chipping in later. In the latter part of the series the number of commercials gets out of control as several different products are advertised in a single broadcast.

I reviewed a few episodes of Screen Directors' Playhouse before when I was covering Alfred Hitchcock adaptations. Here are my reviews of their productions of: Llifeboat, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound.

Outside of their Hitchcock adaptations, I have a few other episodes that I think are good programs. Although I'm not a western fan, I think the first episode's adaptation of Stagecoach is very good; the Gunfighter was a pretty good western drama too. The comedy episodes Ghost Breakers, Miracle on 34th Street and Hired Wife are both quite funny. And the thrillers the Night Has a Thousand Eyes, the Big Clock, Call Northside 777, D.O.A., the Dark Mirror and the File on Thelma Jordan are excellent stories. The Uninvited was a good horror program and the adaptation of the Spiral Staircase had some interesting audio tricks to convey the point-of-view character couldn't actually speak. Obviously like all film adaptation programs, it's hit-or-miss but at its worst, it's just uninteresting - it was never bad radio, even in its final months as it struggled under a reduced budget. For some of the films heard on this series, the Screen Directors' Playhouse adaptation was my introduction to the production and led me to seek out the original film.

The Old-Time Radio Researchers Group has a collection of Screen Directors' Playhouse on the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Mandrake the Magician

Mandrake the Magician is remembered as the star of his own King Features comic strip that lasted from 1934-2013. It was created by Lee Falk and originally drawn by Phil Davis. The strip's titular hero, Mandrake, clearly drew some influence from popular stage magicians like Harry Houdini and Blackstone, with the difference that Mandrake practised actual magic - or, rather, he had the power of hypnosis and seemed to make magical things happen by planting ideas in his enemy's minds. He was accompanied by his giant servant Lothar and his lady love Princess Narda. Mandrake inspired a legion of imitators in the comics, the best-known being DC Comics' Zatara the Magician.

But from November 11, 1940 to February 6, 1942, Mandrake the Magician was heard 3 times per week on Mutual as a serialized adventure program! Mandrake, Lothar and Princess Narda were all present for the adventures, along with a plucky kid named Tommy. Starring as Mandrake was Raymond Edward Johnson, who became the original host of Inner Sanctum Mysteries during this show's production.

Like all juvenile adventure serials - especially those on Mutual - the production values weren't that high, with only so much available for music and sound effects. The writing was crude and workmanlike, but Mandrake the Magician had one terrific asset - and that was Raymond Edward Johnson. Johnson's earnest and commanding performance as Mandrake is by far the highlight of this series.

We only have so many episodes of the series. There's the first episode, then the middle and ending chapters of Mandrake and his friends battling the submarine crew of Captain X. That flows into the start and middle of a storyline where Mandrake fights a secret society led by one Dr. Carvass. Following that, there are just a few more fragments of other adventures.

You can hear the remaining fragments of Mandrake the Magician at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Halloween Week, Day 7: "The Thing on the Fourble Board"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

When I first heard the Quiet, Please episode "The Thing on the Fourble Board" I was doubly amazed; amazed that after so many years of listening to OTR there could still be a series I had never even heard of - and that the episode could be so good -- so scary!

I think most people who discover Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please enter via "The Thing on the Fourble Board." It's easily the best-known episode and that's probably why I haven't discussed it on this blog until now.

Ernest Chappell portrays "Porky," a roughneck working on an oil drill site in Wyoming. One night, Porky and his friend Billy discover something very odd among a recent drilling - a petrified finger. When the mud is removed from the finger, it vanishes from sight. And then the real terror begins.

"The Thing on the Fourble Board" aired on Quiet, Please on August 9, 1948. You can hear this episode at the Quiet Please website.

Halloween Week, Day 6: "Sorry, Wrong Number"

The old-time radio hobby is vast and, most happily, filled with thousands of surviving programs. Yet I think there are three particular shows you can guarantee a hobbyist will hear eventually, no matter what their inclinations are; there's the Mercury Theater on the Air version of "War of the Worlds"; there's the live news broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster; and there's the Suspense episode "Sorry, Wrong Number."

Suspense was still a young program on its first year when they presented Agnes Moorehead as the star of the first production of Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number." It went on to be presented a total of 10 times on Suspense; Fletcher adapted her script into a stage play and Hollywood made it into a motion picture starring Barbara Stanwyck in 1948 and a 1989 TV movie with Loni Anderson.

Yet familiarity so often breeds contempt; when OTR fans bring up "War of the Worlds" they might have differing opinions of the program but most of them like it. I have seldom, however, heard an OTR fan champion "Sorry, Wrong Number." I think the commonly-held view is that it's good, but not the greatest episode of Suspense. Heck, it wasn't even the greatest script Lucille Fletcher wrote for Suspense (they adapted her terrific story "The Hitchhiker" in their first year too)!

And that's a shame because if you've never heard "Sorry, Wrong Number," you're in for a treat. It's instantly memorable and a true representation of the kind of drama radio could do so well. Moorehead portrays one Mrs. Stevens, a lonely bed-ridden woman whose only link to the world outside is her telephone. One day she accidentally overhears a conversation in which two men are planning a murder and determines she must do something about it.

Consider how great a debt Suspense owes to the Columbia Workshop, where producer-director William Spier helped make his reputation, Lucille Fletcher produced many of her earliest scripts and talents were given the freedom to pursue unusual ideas for dramatic radio. If "Sorry, Wrong Number" had been aired on Columbia Workshop it would probably be remembered as one of the series' better entries and as good an example as there is of what radio can achieve; instead, it's unfavorably compared to the best of Suspense and found to fall short of the crown. So who needs a crown? It's a great episode in it's own right; never grade OTR on a curve.

"Sorry, Wrong Number" first aired on Suspense on May 25, 1943; one of the actors jumped his cue at the very end of the broadcast, so it was done again on August 21, 1943 not only because it was immediately well-received but so they could render a more satisfactory production. You can download the first version from the Internet Archive here and if you prefer to hear it without the cue jump, the 2nd one is here.

Tomorrow for Halloween: "We found something once - me and Billy Gruenwald - and... something found us. I'll tell you about it."

Halloween Week, Day 5: "Behind the Locked Door"

"Behind the Locked Door" is one of the best-known old-time radio horror episodes among fandom, yet I've never featured it in any of my previous Halloween blog posts. Let's repair that now! It was an episode of the Mysterious Traveler written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan, who wrote most of the episodes of the series.

In "Behind the Locked Door," Cathy Evans confronts her boyfriend Martin, an archaeologist who just returned from an expedition but gone into hiding. Disheveled, Martin tells Cathy what he and his professor found on their expedition - an underground civilization of humans who adapted to life without sunlight and the hideous result of their changes. This episode is famous primarily for how it ends - when the titular locked door is opened!

"Behind the Locked Door" was originally aired on the Mysterious Traveler on May 24, 1949 but the surviving version we have was aired November 6, 1951. You can download this episode from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "Don't worry. Everything's okay."

Halloween Week, Day 4: "Dead Man's Holiday"

A man narrowly survives an accident aboard a train. Awakening from the crash, he soon finds the whole world seems to be involved in a conspiracy against him; his wife is missing; his name and his face have been changed; he seems to be a wanted criminal. Such is the premise of "Dead Man's Holiday."

It's such a good premise that Inner Sanctum Mysteries told this story twice. Four years after "Dead Man's Holiday," someone had the idea of recycling the script but altering the protagonist from a man to a woman. There were a few other changes made to the plot, but for the most part the result, "The Unburied Dead," is the same story, just gender-swapped.

"Dead Man's Holiday" aired on Inner Sanctum Mysteries on June 19, 1945. You can download it from the Internet Archive here. "The Unburied Dead" aired May 16, 1949. You can download it from the Internet Archive here.

Tomorrow: "A noise came from its throat that was more that of an animal than a human being."