otr_mercury

Old Time Radio - Drama - The Mercury Theatre

The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown. - The show first broadcast on CBS and CBC in July 1938. It ran without a sponsor until December of that year, when it was picked up by Campbell’s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.
Actor and director Orson Welles along with John Houseman was responsible for the creation and popularity of Mercury Theater with $110 for production costs. It was a relatively short lived show – only five months, but it remains one of the most culturally significant shows in entertainment history. The Mercury Theatre on the Air concentrated on classic literature such as " Treasure Island," "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "Dracula. Radio listeners knew that the show was unique and the acting of Welles Virginia Welles (Mrs. Orson Welles), Agnes Moorehead, and Everett Sloane and others as well as the musical compositions by Bernard Herrmann was exceptional.
One of most famous of all old time radio shows, which aired on October 30th, 1937, was the "War of the Worlds. Orson Welles and writer Howard Koch converted the well know H.G. Wells story into a seemingly live new broadcast; this episode of Mercury Theater terrified the nation into believing that the Martians were attacking Earth.

© Urheber via Dokumentationsarchiv Funk/OTR

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