Radio Recap: NBC Presents Short Story

NBC Presents: Short Story was an anthology series that ran from February 21, 1951 to May 30, 1952. As the title suggests, each episode was an adaptation of a short story.

Short stories certainly suit the format of a half-hour radio program better than a novel - novels adapted to that length often resulted in very clipped versions of the original works. However, NBC Presents: Short Story had a different problem: too little material to fit the half-hour.

A good example of this is their adaptation of Shirley Jackson's short story "the Lottery," which had been published only 3 years prior to the adaptation. Jackson's story is brief and I don't think it's suited to a half-hour running time. NBC Presents: Short Story had to expand on Jackson's work and did so in ways that diminish the horror of Jackson's story. The biggest change is that a character is added who doesn't like the lottery and tries to get out of participating but ultimately obeys the will of the majority. Then in the climax, that character wonders wistfully when the lottery might end. It adds an element of hope and commentary upon Jackson's text that distracts from the sudden brutality that ends the original work.

We don't have even half of the episodes of NBC Presents: Short Story in circulation today, but there are some good dramas to be found among them. There's an adaptation of Ray Bradbury "the Rocket" and a faithful adaptation of John Collier's "De Mortuis."

Looking at a list of what we're missing, I'm sure there are a few gems that might still be unearthed one day. Supposedly an adaptation of James M. Cain's "Dead Man" is still existant but it isn't in any online archives I've checked. There's also an adaptation of James Thurber's "You Could Look It Up."

The strangest part of NBC Presents: Short Story is that there's a number of episodes bearing the series' name and introduction that are actually recycled episodes of the Weird Circle. Apparently none of these programs were actually broadcast; perhaps NBC put them together for the Armed Forces or another syndicated service. These include stories like "Frankenstein" and "the Cask of Amontillado" but the Weird Circle played pretty fast and loose with their source material, caveat emptor.

You can hear what remains of NBC Presents: Short Story at the the Internet Archive.