Unfortunately we don't have much of Cooper's Lights Out episodes to compare with Quiet, Please; the vast majority of surviving episodes of Lights Out are those which were written & produced by Arch Oboler. But comparing Oboler's Lights Out to Cooper's Quiet, Please there is one obvious difference between the two men's styles: Cooper's interest in religion.
Oboler's Lights Out told stories which emphasized a rough (disproprtionate) sense of karma and/or hubris. A man wants to capture a big spider; he dies. A woman dances on a grave; she dies. A woman likes jazz music; brother, she dies! Perhaps the Lights Out episode "Nature Study" is the definitive Oboler morality play as the actual spoken aloud text of the story is that everyone who dies is being punished for their misdeeds.
Even in what little we have of Cooper's Lights Out, his evident Christian upbringing is noticeable. In "Uninhabited", three soldiers returning from World War I realize they are the veritable reincarnations of the three wise men from the story of Jesus' birth.
Many episodes of Quiet, Please have Biblical elements. Some are very subtle such as "Let the Lilies Consider", which is titled after the passage found in Matthew 6:28 & Luke 12:27. "Kill Me Again" features the Devil himself. "Calling All Souls" is a rare Halloween story which emphasizes All Saints' Day instead. In "Adam and the Darkest Day, a man named Adam who survives the near-destruction of all human life is told his name is an appropriate one.
But then there are other stories which delve much deeper into the Bible and Biblical characters.
"The Third Man's Story" features Ernest Chappell as the Biblical character Abel, recounting the story of Abel's murder (Genesis 4:1-8).
"Very Unimportant Person" features Ernest Chappell as an airplane pilot who has just survived a nuclear holocaust when he finds a stowaway on his plane who is God himself in an outcome which seems drawn from Revelation 21:1.
"Berlin, 1945" features Ernest Chappell as Jesus Christ, who visits lonesome soldiers in Berlin at the end of World War II; Chappell's identity is never spoken aloud and is only revealed in the last line of dialogue.
"Portrait of a Character" features Ernest Chappell as St. Gabriel the angel, who has just received a 'gig' to play his horn. Gabriel as a horn blower isn't directly from the Bible (wherein he appears to Zacharias and to Mary in Luke's gospel), but the tradition is derived from verses such as 1 Corinthians 15:52.
"A Time To Be Born and a Time to Die" is easily the most directly drawn from the Bible as it features Ernest Chappell as a man whose life directly follows the lines of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.
Finally, "Shadow of the Wings" is a warm Easter tale starring Ernest Chappell as the Angel of Death, who helpfully recounts his tale from Exodus 12:23-30.
Wyllis Cooper's strong Christian influence in his writing definitely sets him apart from Arch Oboler as well as his contemporaries in radio horror/fantasy stories. It's yet another interesting aspect of Quiet, Please.
3 comments:
I think that both of these shows have weaknesses. Obler is way too preachy and message-oriented. I despise stories about Nazi's getting their comeuppance. Of course, I am not Jewish but eh, I believe in human redemption. Arch Obler's Plays to me, is even more preachy and boring.
Quiet, Please had an incredibly bad opening with the title said over and over. It is famous for Fourble but I am not sure that I even understand what is happening in that story. Is the narrator evil? Is he simply submissive to the creature? The other thing that you mention at times is that having a larger cast can often created interest in terms of the different voice but Quiet, Please is often one guy rambling on, or maybe two on Fourble Board.
Best Intro of all time: X Minus One. Suspense and Escape both had great openings. I prefer Escape because there is very little chaff while Suspense has maybe one third clunkers, one third that are okay and one third that are great. I do not like Agnes Moorhead because to me, she overacts. I know you dislike tobacco sponsors but I liked the Lucky Strike opening with the tobacco caller from North Carolina and many at the time loved the little Philip Morris guy. This character relates to a job that doesn't really exist any longer but which many male young men used to partake in.
Any show with excessive use of an organ usually makes me halt listening.
I don't think you have reviewed High Adventure. Until recently, it was hard to find in single episodes and the South African ones are mixed in with the American ones but I for one, really like South African Otr but the quality of the sound of the shows is often poor but there were several worthy shows such as SciFi 68, the Clock, the Challenge of Space and Squad Cars, which I prefer to Dragnet. South Africa got television incredibly late compared to the rest of the world and there are shows even dating from the 70's. Strangely enough, OTR is more or less, only an English-speaking phenomenon. I speak other languages and often listen to Dracula in French and Spanish but there is very, very little extant. Maybe you know of French language ones produced for New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, which is where most francophones are.... Spanish national radio created some amazing shows, all in Spanish and without commercials.
I tend to listen just as much to the old ads as the shows especially with CBSRMT where there is a great divide between the full episodes usually with commercials and also often followed by interesting newscasts. The Autolite commercials probably seemed better at the time because we are supposed to know who this Harlow is but none of his banter was interesting. I prefer the later episodes with a variety of sponsors like Pepsi, cigarettes and alcohol, and thinks like hair products.
As much as I love Otr, it seems less productive than television in terms of truly great shows. There are probably about five OTR shows that I consider great, X Minus 1/Dimension X, Escape, Suspense, Jack Benny, Gunsmoke and for some people, Dragnet. I despise detective shows and shows where someone is plotting a murder which is literally about half of the Suspense scripts and overwhelmingly these are about spouses who murder spouses.
You don't see shows like that any longer and Anthology shows are pretty much kaput as are variety shows on television. Personally, I never try to predict endings or figure them out through deduction because all of that is contrived. Murder She Wrote might have been the last gasp of such shows on "network" television although HBO brought back one of the old shows. Except for Candy Matson which lacks good scripts, all of the detective shows on otr seem to be cookie-cutter shows based upon hardboiled detectives good with their fists but not so good with the ahem Constitution.
Private investigators still exist somewhat but they seldom wear trench coats or fight anyone. I really enjoy reading your OTR posts and it seems that you are coming upon many of the same lesser known series probably because we both find them at the bottom of archive.org Otr pages but the suggestions only come up if you actually scroll to the bottom. You can also tell by the lack or paucity of comments on the show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlow_Wilcox_(announcer)
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