Thursday, February 6, 2020

More of Kirk Douglas in OTR

Here are a few more appearances Kirk Douglas made on radio:

On September 25, 1946, Douglas made what seems to be his radio debut on Academy Award Theater for their adaptation of "Guest in the House". The motion picture Guest in the House is a bit of an odd one - it's a film noir picture which won an Academy Award yet somehow ended up forgotten and in the public domain until recent years when it's become reappraised as an unheralded classic of the genre. Douglas wasn't in the film version but stepped in to cover Ralph Bellamy's role for the radio.

  • You can hear "Guest in the House" at archive.org by clicking here

Douglas' 1949 boxing film Champion came to radio twice, both times with Douglas reprising his starring role. First came the Screen Guild Theater on October 13, 1949. The drama is a little undermined by the audience, who begin giggling during a supposedly intense scene; I have a feeling one of the actors was making faces. A few months later he delivered another version for Screen Director's Playhouse on March 17, 1950.

  • You can hear the Screen Guild Theater version of "Champion" at archive.org by clicking here
  • You can hear the Screen Director's Playhouse version of "Champion" at archive.org by clicking here

Finally, one of Douglas' great films of the 50s was 1951's Detective Story. It was adapted into a one-hour drama for Lux Radio Theater. It was a rough story for its time, although the radio version is a little more tame than the film.

  • You can hear "Detective Story" at archive.org by clicking here

No comments:

Post a Comment