Radio Recap: Mystery in the Air

One of my absolute favourite radio series is the short-lived mystery/horror anthology program Mystery in the Air, starring Peter Lorre. It was an NBC summer 1947 replacement series sponsored by Camel cigarettes while their usual clients Abbott and Costello took a break.

Now, there was also a 1945 summer series Camel produced called Mystery in the Air and a lot of radio logs treat the two as the same show. Scholarship performed by the Digital Deli determined they were very different shows - the 1945 program was a detective show starring Jackson Beck as detective Stonewall Scott.

Lorre's Mystery in the Air lasted just 13 episodes; the first five are now lost programs: "The Tell Tale Heart," "Leiningen vs. the Ants," "the Touch of Your Hand," "the Interruption" and "Nobody Loves Me." Those are definitely some tantalizing titles - "Nobody Loves Me" was also performed by Lorre on Suspense, which we still have; and Lorre's "Leiningen vs. the Ants" aired half a year before the first adaptation performed on Escape; one wonders if they used the same script on Escape.

But let's consider the remaining 8 episodes:

1. "The Marvelous Barastro" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays a famous magician who married a blind woman, then encountered another magician who was determined to learn Barastro's tricks and destroy his happiness.
2. "The Lodger" (by Marie Belloc Lowndes) in which Lorre is the man believed to be a serial killer dubbed 'the Avenger'; however, he's not the point-of-view character as that role falls to Agnes Moorehead as the landlady.
3. "The Horla" (by Guy de Maupassant) in which Lorre portrays the hapless man who becomes haunted by an invisible presence.
4. "Beyond Good and Evil" (by Ben Hecht) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who masquerades as the new minister to a small town, challenging his own sense of right and wrong.
5. "The Mask of Medusa" (by Nelson S. Bond) in which Lorre portrays an escaped criminal who hides in a wax museum where the statues are very much alive.
6. "The Queen of Spades" (by Alexander Pushkin) in which Lorre portrays a gambler who learns the secret to win every time at cards.
7. "The Black Cat" (by Edgar Allan Poe) in which Lorre portrays the brute who murders a cat and soon becomes a killer.
8. "Crime and Punishment" (by Fyodor Dostoevsky) explicitly an adaptation of the 1935 motion picture, with Lorre reprising his role as the murderer, Raskolnikov.

The adaptations take some liberties - for instance, there isn't a single radio adaptation of "The Lodger" that uses the novel's ending and Mystery in the Air came up with its own as other shows did; "the Mask of Medusa" is a fairly brief short story and Mystery in the Air adapted it all by the 15-minute mark - their expansion is very good.

Many of these stories were heard on other radio shows (Suspense adapted both of the Ben Hect stories - Mystery in the Air used the same scripts). However, some are very seldom heard on the radio, such as "the Horla." "The Horla" was the first episode of Mystery in the Air I heard and it won me over immediately because of Lorre's intense performance as his character grows increasingly unhinged across the half-hour, until the show ends with him breaking character to assure the audience he's not really insane! This episode made me fascinated with Guy de Maupassant's fiction; I later read all of his short stories. I also recently reviewed a graphic novel adaptation of this story, le Horla.

I like all 8 episodes; "the Queen of Spades" is a terrific supernatural tale and "the Black Cat" came across very well. Perhaps "the Lodger" is the least interesting but only because the emphasis on Moorehead's point-of-view reduces the amount of time for Lorre to be heard.

Lorre was a terrific actor whose abilities seemed to be taken for granted by Hollywood for much of his career. Mystery in the Air demonstrated he was as capable as Boris Karloff in headlining his own anthology series; too bad the summer series didn't result in a regular radio series. He did later host Nightmare but hosting isn't the same as leading the production.

I should also mention that the cast of Mystery in the Air included announcer Henry Morgan -- no, not the star of the Henry Morgan Show. This is the same performer who would later make his professional name "Harry Morgan," serving as Joe Friday's sidekick in the 1960s Dragnet TV show and performing as Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H. It's interesting to hear him back in the 40s - his voice never seemed to age.

Here's a YouTube playlist created by a fan of the remaining episodes of Mystery in the Air.