Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 6: Suspicion

Suspicion

• Lux Radio Theater (May 4, 1942): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role), Brian Aherne and Nigel Bruce (reprised his film role).
• Screen Guild Theater (January 4, 1943): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role), Nigel Bruce (reprised his film role) and Basil Rathbone (substituted for Brian Aherne).
• Lux Radio Theater (September 18, 1944): starring William Powell and Olivia de Haviland.
• Theater of Romance (July 17, 1945): starring Judith Evelyn and Anthony Quinn.
• Screen Guild Theater (January 21, 1946): starring Cary Grant (reprised his film role), Loretta Young and Nigel Bruce (reprised his film role).
• Academy Award (October 30, 1946): starring Cary Grant (reprised his film role) and Ann Todd.

Hitchcock's film adaptation of the novel Before the Fact is kind of interesting in how it gaslights the protagonist; in the novel, the husband is planning his wife's death, but in the film her suspicions are incorrect. It's not an extremely satisfying film, but then again, as the novel's protagonist has little agency or ability to control her fate that it's a bit more satisfying to have her and her husband sort things out at the end.

The various radio adaptations are strictly from the film, not the novel. The adaptation on Theater of Romance comes closest to the novel as the protagonist is about to accept her fate, but then it swerves into Hitchcock's film as the husband tries to kill himself and she stops him, then reconciles.

It's also interesting to note that the two Screen Guild Theater versions both featured Nigel Bruce in his film role and also have virtually identical outros read by Nigel Bruce where they joke about the next week's show. Recycling scripts is one thing, it's something else to hear the banter performed anew!

Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 5: Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

• Lux Radio Theater (June 9, 1941): starring Bob Hope and Carole Lombard (reprised her film role).
• Screen Guild Theater (February 8, 1942): starring Errol Flynn and Lana Turner.
• Screen Guild Theater (December 14, 1942): starring Joan Bennett, Robert Young and Ralph Bellamy.
• Matinee Theater (November 26, 1944): starring Victor Jory and Betty Winkler.
• Screen Guild Theater (January 1, 1945): starring Preston Foster, Louise Allbritton and Arthur Q. Bryan.
• Hollywood Star Time (July 20, 1946): starring Robert Montgomery (reprised his film role) and Mary Jane Croft.
• Screen Director's Playhouse (January 30, 1949): starring Robert Montgomery (reprised his film role) and Mary Jane Croft; hosted by Alfred Hitchcock.

This is one of the most-frequently adapted Alfred Hitchcock films heard on the radio. Of course, it's not what people think of as a Hitchcock film - it's simply a screwball comedy (starring Carole Lombard, the very queen of the genre). But heck, the movie was a good piece of screwball regardless.

These seven adaptations are all over the place. The most faithful to the original film is the Lux Radio Theater version, although it added a lot of 'zingers' suited to Bob Hope's style. The Screen Guild Theater adaptations made a few changes to the plot and added many new jokes, but mostly followed the original. It is interesting that in the second version (with Robert Young), Warner Bros' Arthur Q. Bryan and Mel Blanc both appeared!

I complained about Matinee Theater before in my entry on Rebecca and I have to single them out again. Their adaptation is extremely unfaithful as the conclusion nullifies the story's premise - that is, the couple are revealed to have been married all along. It stinks.

The most interesting one is the Screen Director's Playhouse version because - even though Hitchcock didn't consider this to be 'truly' one of his films - he appeared as the host. There's even some fun banter after the program where they talk about Hitchcock's many cameos in his films, which was apparently a subject of conversation as early as '49 (Hitchcock makes a joke about the lack of cameo in Mr. and Mrs. Smith). Hitchcock fans ought to listen to that adaptation at the very least.

Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 4: Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent

• Academy Award (July 24, 1946): starring Joseph Cotten (who substituted for Joel McCrea).

Foreign Correspondent is not usually counted among the 'greatest' of Hitchcock's films. It isn't exactly disliked, but it seems to be a little neglected compared to others. It's a fairly decent movie but very much tied to World War II - it doesn't fit the post-war environment very well. Perhaps that's why this adaptation doesn't quite work. Academy Award Theater tried to cover too much too briskly. The script really needed to be pared down - as is, the protagonist just seems to lurch from one locale to the next. The ending is also disappointing - instead of the protagonist urging his fellow Americans to action, it ends with the couple being split up in a bittersweet ending. This adaptation simply fails to capture what made the movie such good fun.

Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 3: Rebecca

Rebecca

• Campbell Playhouse (December 9, 1938): starring Orson Welles, Margaret Sullvan and Agnes Moorehead.
• Lux Radio Theater (February 3, 1941): starring Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino and Judith Anderson (reprised her film role).
• Screen Guild Theater (May 31, 1943): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role), Brian Aherne and Agnes Moorehead.
• Matinee Theater (January 21, 1945): starring Martin Gabel and Gertrude Warner.
• Hollywood Players (October 1, 1946): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role) and Joseph Cotten.
• Screen Guild Theater (November 18, 1948): starring Loretta Young and John Lund.
• Lux Radio Theater (November 6, 1950): starring Laurence Olivier (reprised his film role) and Vivian Leigh.

Dephne du Maurier's Rebecca was a famous novel before it became an Alfred Hitchcock film, so it's not too surprising to discover that it was adapted to radio prior to his movie. Orson Welles' adaptation is interesting in part because du Maurier appeared at the end of the drama (also, Orson makes a joke about the name of the novel's protagonist). One can see from this production that Hollywood was surely trying to bring Rebecca to the screen.

Hitchcock, of course, wasn't especially found of the movie, even though it brought him the highest accolades of his career. It's certainly a much more conventional film than most of his pictures. The adaptations which followed the movie were a mix of film and novel adaptations - the Lux Radio Theater and Screen Guild Theater versions were clearly drawn from the film, while the Matinee Theater version seems mostly a novel adaptation.

The first appearance of the script on Screen Guild Theater came one week after their adaptation of Shadow of a Doubt, so they were surely fond of Hitchcock on that program! The two Screen Guild adaptations share a script with the Hollywood Players script. Notice also that Joseph Cotten was present in the Hollywood Players version; we'll see his name a lot in these blog posts as he was a very busy man on radio, but it's neat that a genuine Hitchcock star appeared in so many of Hitchcock's adaptations.

The fidelity of the various adaptations waxes and wanes, primarily based on how much time they had to tell the story. Lux Radio Theater fits in all the highlights from the film, but screen Guild had to drop a major character (Rebecca's cousin) in order to make it fit (fortunately, Mrs. Danvers is enough of an antagonist on her own). Interestingly, the Screen Guild did not remove the minor character Frank Crawley - mainly because he provided useful exposition.

Interestingly, Laurence Olivier reprised his role on Lux Radio Theater 12 years after the film's release. Notably, Olivier's lover Vivian Leigh took the lead role in that version - he had campaigned for her back in '38 and been very disappointed when the part went to Joan Fontaine.

The Matinee Theater adaptation is pretty lousy. The novel and film are a decent mix of romance and ambiguity but this simplified version has an absurd happy ending where Mrs. Danvers simply leaves and Manderlay is not destroyed!

Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 2: The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps was one of the greatest films from Alfred Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood career (the greatest, according to me). Unlike yesterday's look at the The Lodger, here we have a story which was adapted to old-time radio from both the original novel and the Hitchcock film. Interestingly, this time the first adaptation was of the movie!

• Lux Radio Theater (December 13, 1937): starring Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino.
• Mercury Theater (August 1, 1938): starring Orson Welles.
• Studio One (March 23, 1948): starring Glenn Ford and Mercedes McCambridge.
• Suspense (March 3, 1952): starring Herbert Marshall.

Now, I love John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps an awful lot as well, so I'm certainly not bothered by attempts to adapt the book instead of the movie. The Lux Radio Theatre adaptation is the one time Hitchcock's film was adapted to radio. Lux Radio Theater was an extremely well-produced program which would dig up good performers even when the originals weren't available (as is the case here). It's a good production but the dynamic between Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino is lacking - they essentially argue in every scene they share, yet still declare they're in love with each other at the end. It's really not credible, unlike the Hitchcock film's efforts at convincing us that Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll's characters gradually fell in love.

The other three are adaptations of the novel and they're all pretty good, but I have to give the highest honours to Suspense simply because with only a 30-minute production they were able to condense the novel down to its most essential moments. It's a stellar piece of adaptation. The Mercury Theater version, on the other hand, tries to be a little too artsy and then has trouble fitting the story into an hour! Orson Welles made a comment about the Hitchcock film at the end of his adaptation:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you missed Madeleine Carroll in our stag version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, the young lady in the movie, in common with almost everything else in that movie, is the child of its director's own unparalleled and unpredictable fancy. If you missed anything you must blame Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. If you were surprised by anything, you must blame us."

Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 1: The Lodger

I love Alfred Hitchcock's works - and I love old-time radio! I've examined how the two are connected before in a previous post which looked at radio adaptations of stories which were dramatized on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

But Hitchcock was primarily a filmmaker and many of his movies were adapted on the radio. I thought it would be interesting to listen to each old-time radio adaptation of every Alfred Hitchcock film and then see what I discover. Let's begin!

The Lodger

• Forecast (July 22, 1940): starring Herbert Marshall
• Suspense (December 14, 1944): starring Robert Montgomery
• Hollywood Star Time (May 19, 1946): starring Vincent Price and Cathy Lewis (who substituted for Ida Lupino)
• Mystery in the Air (August 14, 1947): starring Peter Lorre and Agnes Moorehead
• Suspense (February 14, 1948): starring Robert Montgomery

The Lodger was adapted five times; of these, only the Forecast program referenced Alfred Hitchcock's film as it was used as the pilot episode of Suspense. But it was an incomplete adaptation and when Suspense became a series it was without Hitchcock's involvement.

Suspense adapted the original novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes twice, both with Robert Montgomery as the star. The first was a half-hour, the second was one-hour, but, like most hour-long episodes of Suspense it's not really much different than the shorter version - just padded a bit. The Hollywood Star Time is pretty good, although it takes considerable liberties with the novel! Peter Lorre is great in the Mystery in the Air version too, although again, just like Hitchcock's own film, no one used the novel as much more than a launching point.

Radio Recap: The Henry Morgan Show

So far I've used this 'Radio Recap' to visit old-time radio programs which fell into the mystery genre. Obviously, that's not all that I enjoy listening to; recently I decided to listen to what I could find of the ABC comedy program The Henry Morgan Show (1946-1947). I had only heard a couple of episodes in the past and I had mostly enjoyed what I heard, but the last time I tried to listen to whole series I was a little put off by the voices.

Well, voice. I've said many times before that I don't enjoy radio programs with performers who use squeaky or nasally tones for comedic effect. Unfortunately I really didn't take to Henry Morgan's sidekick Arnold Stang, who was in every episode of the ABC show. However, although I didn't find his voice funny, he did have some funny material on Mogan's program and as I listened to the whole series I gained a lot of respect for Stang's performance.

I was really drawn to Henry Morgan because of his wit - his sarcastic remarks, his love of satire and his willingness to mock his sponsor. Many radio comedians of the time made fun of their sponsors to some extent, but listening to all of Henry Morgan it is amazing to hear him constantly put down his sponsor Eversharp-Schick Razors. Usually the middle commercial of the program was read by Morgan himself and that's where he became most acrid towards his sponsor, such as noting the product cost $1.25, then suggesting other things which could be bought for that money, or claiming that using the product helped men save time only to result in a tragic outcome.

It feels like ABC and Eversharp-Schick really wanted a Jack Benny or Bob Hope program (especially ABC as they were a very young network). It's certainly different from where Morgan originated as a radio disc jockey. Instead of simply being Morgan at a microphone, ABC and Eversharp-Schick gave him a band and stooges. But if they'd actually listened to his material from his disc jockey days they might have realized that his brand of sardonic humour was not going to win over Bob Hope-sized audiences. Heck, in one episode Morgan informs his cast that they all have to adopt distinctive characteristics and gives them all traits from Jack Benny & Bob Hope's casts; it only lasts for one sketch.

Indeed, Morgan was malleable - he played a variety of different characters on the show, sometimes adopting accents. He certainly didn't disappear into his characters, but that Morgan wasn't putting himself (or his sponsor's product) forward was definitely against the grain. His trademark opening, "Good evening, anybody, here's Morgan," hints at the contempt he had for his own profession.

Listening to The Henry Morgan Show it's clear that it could never have really taken off, but the type of humour which Morgan performed did find audiences with other comedians in the post-war era - Stan Freberg, Mad magazine, Bob and Ray. It's notable to me that Bob and Ray never really altered their format from their days as disc jockeys - a Bob and Ray program from any point in their careers is mostly like any other program aside from what music is played.

But all that is to say that if you like old-time radio comedy - and especially satirical humour - The Henry Morgan Show is a very good program. My personal favourite show is the New Year's program from January 1, 1947, in which Morgan presents various pieces of dialogue, sound effects and music cues which he wasn't able to use in 1946, then introduces a sketch which assembles them into one ridiculous narrative!