Radio Recap: Columbia Workshop

Columbia Workshop is a piece of old-time radio history; it was a CBS program that they ran from 1936-42 and again 1944-1947. CBS paid for the program all the way through with no real remit for the series other than using it as a program for experimenting with radio storytelling.

(I won't be covering the contents of Twenty-Six by Corwin which was technically a 26-episode run of the Columbia Workshop - if I ever do cover it as a radio recap, it'll appear as its own entry; the 1956-1957 series CBS Radio Workshop was a latter-day revival of this series.)

Columbia Workshop was an anthology series; it featured episodes of every conceivable type of genre - not just comedy, fantasy, mystery, drama, musical... some episodes were structured like a revue, some featured multiple sketches. And the purpose of the series changed depending on the creators involved; some were experimenting with sound effects, others were simply utilizing unorthodox scripts. There are plenty of anthology shows on radio, but there's no other I can think of that was a sandbox for testing out new or unusual ideas.

Initially the series was produced by Irving Reis, who also wrote a few of the earlier scripts. Some of the most noted authors who wrote plays for the series were Stephen Vincent Benet, Archibald MacLeish, Lucille Fletcher and Norman Corwin. After Reis moved on, William Spier became the producer/director; William N. Robson was another director on the series; Bernard Herrmann was one of the musical contributors, prior even to his work on Mercury Theater on the Air.

As I noted in my recap, CBS' Forecast came from similar cloth as it experimented with different types of radio drama, although it was presenting its dramas as pilots for prospective new programs. Columbia Workshop sometimes helped set up new shows, but I'd hesitate to call any of the episodes a "pilot" in the traditional sense.

Still, I have to observe that Ed Gardner appeared in a number of Columbia Workshop comedic stories where he portrayed a wiseguy who told seemingly tall tales; they clearly led to Gardner's Forecast pilot for Duffy's Tavern; similarly, William Spier Columbia Workshop worked alongside writer Lucille Fletcher and music composer Bernard Herrmann - and not only would they all work together again on Suspense (which had its pilot on Forecast) but one episode of Columbia Workshop - "Double Ugly" (November 30, 1941) - was repeated on Suspense.

Lucille Fletcher's Columbia Workshop scripts are an interesting mix - two of her plays had heavy supernatural overtones - "Someone Else" (July 20, 1942) and "Remodeled Brownstone" (October 19, 1942) - and could have been rebroadcast on Suspense. Yet she also penned comedy/fantasy tales like "My Client Curley" (March 7, 1940) about a dancing caterpillar and "The Man with the One Track Mind" (June 30, 1940) in which a man decides to become a locomotive; if you only know her for her Suspense work, Columbia Workshop will change how you view her writing.

The series adapted Euripides' "The Trojan Women" (December 8, 1940), not so much because they wanted to honour classic Greek drama as to note that the play's views on war were applicable at the present time; certainly many plays on Columbia Workshop were concerned with the past trauma of World War I (ie, "Nine Prisoners," February 20, 1939) and the present trauma of World War II (ie, "The Parade," December 7, 1946).

Orson Welles appeared very early on in "Hamlet" (September 19 and November 14, 1936); this was before Orson's Mercury Theatre had come to radio and it's interesting to hear Orson in a production where he wasn't in charge (for one thing, he didn't narrate or m.c.). Given Welles and Herrmann's work on this program, I'd say it helped pave the way for the Mercury Theater on the Air.

The "Dramatization of the San Quentin Prison Break" (September 5, 1936) featured William N. Robson dramatizing how he crafted an episode of Calling All Cars so that they could adapt a jailbreak on the very day it had occurred. It's a neat look behind the curtain, demonstrating how radio scripts were assembled and performed.

There were notable episodes with Black casts including "Drums of Conscience" (May 2, 1937) about a Black man who believes he's haunted by the ghosts of slaving ships; "Tranga Man, Fine Gah" (June 4, 1938) set in Sierra Leone; "The Creation" (March 30, 1941) with a musical interpretation of the creation of life; and "Jason Was a Man" (April 27, 1941) a musical based on Jason's quest for the golden fleece.

Many years before he formally established himself as the leader in children's fiction, Dr. Seuss' first two hit children's books were adapted on Columbia Workshop- "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" (August 18, 1940) and "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" (December 1, 1940).

A lot of the steam behind Columbia Workshop seemed to peter out after the war; the show disappeared for all of 1943, then returned as Columbia Presents Corwin. But after the completion of that run, most of the old guard on Columbia Workshop had moved on (such as to Suspense). The post-war Columbia Workshop episodes are still interesting, but I don't find them as arresting or innovative as earlier productions, even though the technology behind radio was becoming stronger and stronger post-war.

I think there's plenty of episodes that are worth recommending but I'll save that for a separate post this Wednesday.

Here's a massive collection 333 episodes of the Columbia Workshop at the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: Creeps by Night

Creeps by Night was a very short-lived old-time radio horror series, lasting just February 15-August 15, 1944 on the Blue network. It was apparently produced by Robert Maxwell and directed by Dave Drummond. Alonzo Dean Cole (the Witch's Tale) was one of the contributing writers. Boris Karloff was the series' star and apparently also served as the host of the series (some of my sources claimed Bela Lugosi was the original host but apparently that was just scuttlebutt); after Karloff had to leave the show, the host became the anonymous "Doctor X."

(I don't think there's any connection between the series and the hardcover anthology Dashiell Hammett edited, but they both came out in 1944, so I'm using the book cover for this post; it's a swell anthology, check it out!)

The series' short length of just 25 episodes is further diminished in that only 7 episodes are known to exist - and even then, several of them are truncated versions from the Armed Forces' Mystery Playhouse.

Since we have only 7 episodes to hear, I might as well summarize their plots:

• "Those Who Walk in Darkness" (April 25, 1944) starring Boris Karloff as an eye doctor operating on the husband of the woman he's had an affair with.
• "The Final Reckoning" (May 2, 1944) starring Boris Karloff as a man who gets out of prison and seeks revenge on his former partner-in-crime by scaring him to death.
• "The Hunt" (May 9, 1944) starring Boris Karloff as a farmer whose property is being stalked by a werewolf.
• "The Walking Dead" (May 16, 1944) On a plantation in Haiti, zombies rise to assault the living.
• "The Strange Burial of Alexander Jordan" (May 23, 1944) Edmund Gwenn stars as a man who is afraid of being buried alive.
• "The Three Sisters" (June 20, 1944) as one woman lies dying, her two sisters hold a vigil, expecting their dead mother to come and claim her.
• "The Six Who Would Not Die" (July 11, 1944) a pearl diver sends six men to their deaths in the ocean but they don't stay dead.

Of these, naturally the Karloff episodes are of most interest to horror buffs; "the Final Reckoning" probably has the best audio; "the Hunt" has somewhat patchy audio although the story is good; but I think the best of Karloff's is "Those Who Walk in Darkness."

As a whole, I think Creeps by Night is comparable to Inner Sanctum Mysteries; there's some decent chills and good performances. Who knows, we might yet unearth more lost episodes some day - they'd be most welcome.

A fan has a playlist of Creeps by Night here on the Internet Archive.

Radio Recap: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Let's talk about another syndicated radio series produced by Harry Alan Towers: the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (it was also broadcast as episodes of ABC Mystery Time).

To be clear, this is only going to be a recap of the 1954 series that Towers produced - I won't be referencing any of the many BBC adaptations, nor the long radio runs of NBC's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1930-1936), or the best-remembered version, NBC/Mutual's New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which initially starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (1939-1950). Maybe I'll visit them in a future Radio Recap, but it would take a lot of research on my part.

Towers' the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starred two big name actors in the lead roles - John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson. Gielgud was in something of a slump; he was homosexual, and had been caught cruising for sex, which was a crime; he avoided prison, but his career slumped to a standstill, which naturally led him to Harry Alan Towers, who always had work for slumming professionals.

I find Gielgud is all right as Holmes, but he comes off as more austere than cerebral. A bigger problem is Ralph Richardson - as Watson, he had to narrate every episode and his delivery was a bit muddy. He'd drop his voice and mumble at times-- and not for dramatic effect.

Like most of Towers' programs, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has a small library of musical cues that it uses all the time; there's also scarcely any sound effects (other than a stock noise of hoofbeats on cobblestones that's used in the intro and at times to set a scene). The music is primarily a short piece of violin; sometimes it's introduced as what Holmes is supposedly playing at the time.

What the series had going for it was that it adapted the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories - there were no original scripts, unlike the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I've definitely found these adaptations to be effective; I can vividly recall the first time I heard the productions of "the Case of the Six Napoleons" and "the Dying Detective," which led to my own fascination with Doyle's short stories and novels. And as an Orson Welles fan, I do appreciate his turn as Professor Moriarty in "the Final Problem."

However, as much as I like Doyle's writing, I'm not certain that these are the best adaptations of his work. The first episode of the series is just terrible. Titled, "Dr. Watson Meets Sherlock Holmes," it begins as an adaptation of Doyle's short story, "the Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" but just before it reaches the climax, Watson shifts the narrative to describe how he and Holmes first met (as related in the novel "A Study in Scarlet"), then returns to the climax of the case. There is no good reason for this shift; if the episode had opened with Holmes and Watson's first meeting, the script would have been much improved. As is, it's so bad that if you try listening to the series in order, you might want to give up right then and there; but if you're willing to persevere, I do think this is a good Sherlock Holmes program, even if it's not the best.

You can hear every episode of Towers' the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in this YouTube playlist created by a fan.

Radio Recap: The Lives of Harry Lime

"That was the shot that killed Harry Lime. He died in a sewer beneath Vienna, as those of you know who saw the movie the Third Man. Yes, that was the end of Harry Lime-- but it was not the beginning; Harry Lime had many lives and I can recount all of them. How do I know? Very simple; because my name is Harry Lime."

Continuing from last Friday's post on the Black Museum, I'd like to talk about another syndicated radio program by Harry Alan Towers: The Lives of Harry Lime (1951). Er, if that is indeed the series' name; it's almost as often given by announcers as "the Third Man."

The Third Man was, of course, the 1949 movie directed by Carol Reed from Graham Greene's story. The film featured author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) as a man who goes to post-war Vienna to accept a job from his old friend Harry Lime. He soon discovers Harry is actually a criminal.

I learned of the Third Man through the Lives of Harry Lime and when I finally saw that film, it became my favourite movie. But the radio series is not really part of the same continuity as the movie; they both star Orson Welles as a criminal named Harry Lime; they both feature the zither music of Anton Karas (believe it or not, Karas' score to the movie was a hit at the time). But perhaps the reason Orson's opening narration refers to Lime's "many lives" is because these stories aren't meant to be about the same person in the Third Man - instead they present alternate takes on him.

In the Lives of Harry Lime, Harry is roguish fellow; although he loves to swindle people, sometimes his inner goodness causes him to take pity on his victims; sometimes he gets outwitted; and sometimes he's pit against corrupt government or Nazis where it's considered morally correct for Lime to fleece them. But that's not the Harry Lime of the Third Man; part of the plot of the movie is Holly realizing that Harry isn't who he thought he was; Harry views himself as a good-natured rogue, but Holly is forced to confront the results of Harry's actions, the innocent children who die because of Harry's black market penicilin.

So, although the program invites comparisons to the Third Man it's really best that you take this series on its own terms - it's an adventure program. Harry gets to be genuinely heroic at times, such as in a nice playful moment at the climax of "5,000 Pengoes and a Kiss" where Harry forces a patrol of Hungarian policemen to give him their belts so that they'll be unable to chase him. Harry: "In all the famous chases in history, no policeman has been known to catch a fugitive and hold up his pants at the same time."

Other good episodes include "Turnabout Is Foul Play" in which Harry pretends to be an immensely moral man in order to swindle a government official; "The Bohemian Star" in which Harry masquerades as a journalist and gets the goods on a jewel heist; and there's the very intriguing episode "Man of Mystery" which was apparently written by Orson himself; he later expanded the plot another motion picture, Mr. Arkadin.

Welles appeared in a lot of radio shows for Harry Alan Towers but the quality of his output was variable. In the Lives of Harry Lime he was being called on to be the lead man - not merely a supporting player or narrator. Frankly, he wasn't always up to it. In much of Orson's radio work, he'd read through his scripts recklessly and even contemptuously; knowing that he sometimes didn't read scripts until he showed up for the broadcast, his performances could come over as unpolished (to put it politely). Sometimes Orson seemed very invested in his performance; other times, he sounded bored; on other occasions, he was speeding through the script, talking over his fellow performers as if in a hurry to be done with it; and then there are time where he garbles his dialogue (which is amazing for a transcribed program; I guess he refused to do retakes) and sounds either sleepy or drunk. All of this drags down the program.

You can hear every episode of the Lives of Harry Lime in this YouTube playlist created by a fan.

Radio Recap: The Black Museum

"The Black Museum, the repository of death. Yes, here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide... where everyday objects: a skillet, a screwdriver, a photograph... all... are touched by murder!"

Somehow it's taken this long for me to post a Radio Recap of a Harry Alan Towers program.

In the 1950s, Harry Alan Towers produced a number of syndicated radio dramas, usually employing many of the same performers in each series - programs like Secrets of Scotland Yard, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Adventures of Horatio Hornblower and today's entry - the Black Museum (1952). He liked to produce 52 episodes of his shows so they could be broadcast across an entire year. As best as I can tell, the syndicated episodes of the Black Museum were aired in the USA on Mutual.

The series was a crime anthology hoted by Orson Welles. Towers' shows tended to use a big-name actor to draw listeners to the show - but he went specifically after big-name actors who were having trouble in their career, and thus were desperate enough to work for him. Orson was then having an awful time with the IRS in the USA, hence the attraction to recording a lot of radio shows with Towers. The problem, of course, is that when Orson was just there to collect a paycheck he didn't put in his best effort. At least as narrator, that didn't mean he would sink the whole show-- but I've seen plenty of online reviewers remark that Orson sounded bored as he hosted the Black Museum. To me, it's variable - in some episodes he seems very into his craft; in others, not so much.

The show's gimmick is that Orson would be within Scotland Yard's Black Museum, introducing an object which was related to a crime of some kind; then the drama would begin in earnest, with Orson piping up only when exposition required his assistance. The Scotland Yard inspectors were played by a number of uncredited performers and changed with each episode.

I think the Black Museum is the best of Towers' programs; the man liked to recycle his music, whether the music fit the mood of the script or not. But the musical transitions on the Black Museum work pretty well. Towers also didn't like to use many sound effects on his shows, which really diminishes them; but because the Black Museum would be centered around a particular object, there would usually be a noise to accompany that object, giving the show a bit more heft.

There are some gruesome crimes recounted on the Black Museum, especially violence committed against women - "the Baby Jacket" and "the Brass Button" are two of the more violent episodes. There's a Jack the Ripper episode called "the Razor"; and there's a ghost episode, "the Chain!"

But some episodes don't quite work for me - "the Postcard" doesn't have a conclusion to its crime, ending on an ambiguous note.

As I noted before, the program Whitehall 1212 was also about items from Scotland Yard's Black Museum, but it's nowhere near as good, despite being produced by Wyllis Cooper. Stick to the Black Museum if this is a subject you're interested in.

You can hear the Black Museum on the Old Time Radio Reserchers' YouTube playlist.

"Are the readers still with us?" The Mythmakers review

Last years Abrams published the Mythmakers, a graphic novel by John Hendrix. It's the story of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien's friendship and focuses in primarily on those years they spent sharing ideas and writing their stories together - but with biographical details stretching across both men's lives (and beyond). Some passages are told through text but most of the book is a proper graphic novel. Dramatic license is employed in recounting moments from both men's lives, but Hendrix used direct quotes where possible.

What's unusual about this book is that it's introduced by a lion and a wizard, who guide the audience through the book's narrative. At first it seemed a bit patronizing to me to have these fictional characters talking through Lewis and Tolkien's lives - it left me wondering if the book was meant for younger readers. Still, the lion and the wizard are deployed to discuss ideas outside the scope of Lewis and Tolkien's lives, especially for discussions about how to define a myth and where the two men's works fit in the academic definitions of myth. There's also a deeply personal reason why Hendrix uses these two characters, which is not revealed until the end of the book.

I only learned of the Mythmakers because it was being promoted in Christian circles as a very good book - it's rare that I see Christians promoting a graphic novel, much less one that was published for the general market, not the Christian bookstore speciality market. Hendrix discusses his own faith in the book's back matter and how that influenced his depiction of Lewis and Tolkien's friendship. I won't lie, Hendrix touched my heart.

I think all fans of Lewis and Tolkien feel as Hendrix does - that the loosening of their bond is a tragedy. And that's ultimately what the Mythmakers is walking through - it's the story of how a friendship was made, how that friendship fell apart and how to draw a happy conclusion despite that. This was a fine read and I'm very happy I read it.

Radio Recap: The Big Story

The Big Story is a fascinating concept for a program - although the execution isn't that different from other shows. It was an anthology program in which each week they would dramatize a story taken from the newspapers, usually with the story's journalist as the lead character in the drama.

The problem with the series is that while, in theory, a newspaper story could glance upon almost any aspect of social life, the majority of episodes of the Big Story are about crime; either the journalist is trying to help the police catch a criminal or he's trying to clear the name of a wrongly-convicted felon by finding the actual criminal. So although the Big Story could have been a great dramatic program, it's mostly yet another crime program.

The series was broadcast over NBC for a respectable run from April 2, 1947 until March 23, 1955. Pall Mall cigarettes sponsored the show for most of its run, although Lucky Strike sponsored the final year. The series was produced by Bernard J. Prockter, who had previously been a radio game show producer; the announcer was none other than Ernest Chappell, best-remembered as "the man who spoke to you" on Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please.

If you're a classic film buff, you probably remember the 1948 James Stewart film Call Northside 777, in which Stewart portrayed a journalist who rescues an innocent man from a life sentence. If you enjoyed that film then you'll probably like the Big Story, which hits a lot of the same beats as that movie.

One interesting episode that deviates from the norm is dubbed "The Bitterest Man on the Earth" (June 8, 1949) which concerns a wrongly-convicted black man. It sounds like at least a few of the performers were black people, and the majority of characters in the cast were black-- that's always a rarity in radio. Another interesting story is "Puritan Morality and Violent Death" (October 18, 1950) which drew parallels to the case of Lizzie Borden and involved a wife who grew frustrated with her philandering husband.

If you want a newspaper drama, you'll be a bit disappointed (maybe you should listen to Big Town?), but as a crime program with a rotating cast of journalist protagonists drawn from true-life cases, it's not bad.

You can hear 38 surviving episodes (from 383 broadcast!) of the Big Story on this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.