More Meridian

Original shadow box artwork by Karen Strachan.

This week we released Meridian 7-1212, the second of two Old Time Radio recreations we recorded for The Sonic Society. Along with the show, we released a bonus scene that's about four minutes long. It adds another short story to the vignette-based piece, further expanding the web of people who call in to the titular phone number.

In the scene, two sailors have overstayed their shore leave. Pete, the younger and more naive of the two, has fallen head over heels for a woman he just met. Joe, more cynical and worldly, is immediately skeptical, having seen his friends taken in by similarly alluring women who turn out to be con artists. The scene ends on a clever and wryly poignant note, bringing us back to Dot Day and the telephone time service while resonating perfectly with the bleak, pessimistic world of the show.

If you listen to the most widely available version of the original broadcast, you won't hear this scene. So where did it come from?

When we re-recorded Meridian, we used a transcribed script made available through the Generic Radio Workshop. It wasn't until after we finished recording that I discovered the original script for Meridian 7-1212 had been published in 1939, along with 13 other scripts from The Columbia Workshop. I started looking around for libraries that might have a copy, and eventually found it in the collection of the Paul Barret Jr. Library at Rhodes College—my alma mater, a regular host to Chatterbox productions, and the domain of Chatterbox Board member Bill Short. In other words, right under our noses.

Reading the original script was interesting for several reasons. It cleared up some of the spelling errors in the transcription, which, among other things, credits the author as Irving Reese rather than Irving Reis. It revealed some character names that are not included in the dialog, like the surnames of the two reporters in the opening scene. It also clued me in to a few words and lines that we flat-out got wrong: e.g., the second drunk is actually named "Stuff," not Scott.

But mainly, it allowed me to find this additional scene, which I knew about from Leonard Maltin's brief description of the show but had never heard nor read. As Eric worked through the show's post-production, we decided it would be great fun to include this scene with our release. Lee, our Dot Day, left town at the end of last summer, so we recorded her calling the appropriate times and added her voice to the great work done later by actors Stephen Garrett and Ross Williams.

Chronologically, the scene takes place between the London scene and the final scene at the courthouse. Now that I've read it, I definitely feel its absence from the larger show. As I said above, it further expands the story's world—and this is a world I want to explore as much as possible. Plus it balances out the heaviness of some of the other stories with a tale that, while not exactly happy, is at least darkly amusing.

So, the mystery remains: Why isn't this scene in the recording that has been passed down to us? Was it cut for time prior to the show's 1939 broadcast, and never actually performed? (That would be strange, as the recording clocks in at a brief 25 minutes, compared to 28 - 29 minutes for other Columbia Workshop shows.) Was it cut out of the recording for some unknown reason during the past 71 years? Or (and I'm just speculating here) is the version we have one that was recorded for rebroadcast to the Armed Forces? This was a pretty common practice, so that those stationed in other parts of the world could still hear their favorite shows, and at a reasonable hour. In that case, I can see the scene being excluded for its depiction of disobedient naval officers. If anyone can shed any light on the subject, I'd be grateful.

Doppelgangers and Alternate Versions

Ebenezer Singh. Tongues, 2008. 15ft X 9ft. Fiberglass, resin, pigments and sequins.

 
I talked a few weeks ago about some artistic choices we made for Chatterbox's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim." Thanks to the blog post, I remembered that, in the process of creating the show, I had come across several other audio interpretations of the story.

Chatterbox adapts a lot of classic stories that have been around for dozens (or, in some cases, hundreds) of years. It's fun to see what other audio drama producers, both contemporary and OTR, have done with the same material. Today I thought I'd point out some alternate versions of shows in the Chatterbox catalogue.

The OTR Shows Weird Circle, Hall of Fantasy, and Theatre Royal all took on "Markheim" back in radio's Golden Age. The Weird Circle version updates the story to (then) modern day and gives Markheim's uncle a prominent role. Similarly, Hall of Fantasy makes a character out of Markheim's betrothed. The Theatre Royal version stars Sir Lawrence Olivier. In the 1970s, the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre gave another spin on the tale, calling it "Markheim: Man or Monster?"

One of our first shows was an adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." The classic OTR series Suspense also produced the story, in a version starring the immortal Agnes Moorehead.

Speaking of our early shows, "Bartleby the Scrivener" also appeared on the OTR show Favorite Story in a version titled "The Strange Mr. Bartleby."

Remakes of existing shows are, of course, a different beast than two shows that share a common ancestor. But if you've heard, say, Chatterbox's production of "The Thing on the Fourble Board" and haven't heard the original Quiet, Please broadcast, you should definitely check it out. I'm confident other contemporary groups have remade this story, by the way, though I haven't come across any links.

Likewise for our recent production of "The Shadow: The Little Man Who Wasn't There." The original 1945 broadcast is still a great deal of fun. To hear another contemporary group's take on The Shadow (albeit different adventures), check out Pendant Audio's double feature of "The Blind Beggar Dies" and "The Poisoned Death."

So, while it's true that we do our best to steer clear of stories that have been adapted too often, it's certainly fun to hear what others have created using the same source material! More links as I run across them.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

Original artwork by Dean Zachary

This week we’re releasing our recreation of The Shadow: The Little Man Who Wasn’t There, which gives me the opportunity to geek out a bit about this coolest of vigilante heroes.

I’ve loved the character of The Shadow since grade school. I was introduced to him through comic books, where he matched my fondness for heroes who didn’t possess fantastical powers. From there, I discovered the radio shows, mainly through cassette tapes bought in blister packs from the aisles of Wal-Mart or the Cracker Barrel gift store. (These tapes were a large part of the inspiration behind Chatterbox.) I was first in line for the lame1994 movie starring Alec Baldwin. More recently, I’ve enjoyed delving into the original pulp novels in beautiful reprint editions from Nostalgia Ventures.

Along the way, I’ve learned a bit more about Walter B. Gibson, the man behind The Shadow. Gibson was an unbelievably prolific writer, and is credited with writing 282 of the 325 Shadow pulp novels released under the pen name Maxwell Grant. (At times, he was writing two complete novels a month.) Not only that, but Gibson was an accomplished magician, and I was amazed to discover that he was ghost-writer and friend to another of my early-20th-century obsessions, Harry Houdini.

Gibson did not create The Shadow. The character was originally introduced in 1930 as a narrator for the radio show Detective Story Hour, back when radio shows mainly existed to help sell pulps. When people at the newsstands started clamoring for “The Shadow” magazine, publishers Street & Smith knew they’d better act fast. Walter B. Gibson was brought on to flesh out the character, and he did so in a big way. He created The Shadow’s iconic appearance, along with his battery of secret agents and his identity as Lamont Cranston (which was later overturned in the pulps, by the way).

The classic radio version of The Shadow, who first appeared in 1937, was a considerably different character. In an effort to tone down the violence of the pulps, he was stripped of his twin .45s, most of his agents, and his ties to the underworld dwellers of Chinatown. The radio Shadow was more of a gentleman detective in the vein of The Thin Man. But this version wasn’t a total loss. Radio gave us Margo Lane, who was so popular she began appearing in the pulp stories as well. The Shadow was granted “the hypnotic power to cloud men’s minds, so they cannot see him.” And of course, radio gave us indelible performances by Orson Welles, Bill Johnstone, Brett Morrison, and others as the man of mystery himself.

Running for 17 years, the radio show had its share of highs and lows. (Later seasons seemingly featured Margo being abducted by a different mad scientist each week.) But “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There,” written by science fiction author Alfred Bester, always stood out to me as a show that features all the best parts of The Shadow: A clever mystery, a cast of colorful characters, and one of those thrilling climaxes in which The Shadow reveals -- to the criminals and to us -- that he does, in fact, have the upper hand.

We recorded the show (along with Meridian 7-1212) in response to a request from Jack Ward of The Sonic Society, who was looking for a contribution to his “Summerstock Playhouse,” where contemporary audio theater companies recreate some of their favorite OTR shows. Recording the show was great fun, and it gave me, at age 31, the chance to reconnect with a character I had loved at 13. What a thrill to work with such a great cast and crew on this production, and to have the opportunity to read those iconic opening and closing lines:

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows!"

A Closer Listen: Workshop Clips

 Run! It's a monster!

Marques and I have been working hard to map out Chatterbox's new Sound Effects Workshops, which has been a blast, and very rewarding. In the process, we identified and uploaded some representative clips from both OTR and Chatterbox shows that we find particularly effective. I thought I'd share a few with you today. Click each show's title to hear the clip.

Three Skeleton Key
This clip comes from a classic OTR episode of Escape, and there's really only one thing you need to know: Rats. Thousands and thousands of them. The characters in the story are trapped in a lighthouse. An unmanned ship has wrecked on their island. The ship was filled to the brim with rats, which are now swarming the island and the lighthouse. According to Leonard Maltin, the squeaking sounds were created by rubbing damp corks against glass, and looping the sound over and over until a few became a multitude.

Dead and Gone
This is from the first scene of our Southern adaptation of James Joyce's "The Dead." The main characters, Gabriel and Margaret, trudge through the snow toward their elderly aunts' holiday party. The wind sounds are recorded. The snowy footsteps were created using a classic radio technique: squeezing a box of corn starch. And the party noises (which continue throughout most of the show) are of course just our talented actors. Simple enough, but for me, the scene beautifully creates a change in temperature. We go from the cold, desolate outdoors to the warm, inviting indoors. (You can practically smell the wood burning in the fireplace.) Naturally, this simple transition has a lot of interesting thematic relevance. But it also just works as a nice entrance into the story.

The Damned Thing
Still one of my favorite Chatterbox sequences, this comes from our 2009 Halloween Show. The story is by American writer Ambrose Bierce. Two hunters stalk an animal that they soon discover is invisible. Our Halloween Shows are broadcast live, and every effect here is manual. We've got grass sounds (unspooled VHS tape), gravel (in a gravel box), that pulse-like pounding (a soft mallet against a metal box), and gunshots (the real thing, but blanks, of course). And then there's the horrible, otherworldly wailing of the creature. SFX artist and physics magician Michael Towle is the one who told us that dry ice contracts metal so quickly that the metal will release a horrific shriek. So the sound you hear is metal pipes pressed against dry ice. That plus some vocalizations from Mr. Towle himself combine to create something that simply doesn't exist in our world. Thankfully.

Super Feature
Another horror clip, this one from the classic OTR show Lights Out. The two speakers are criminals who travel town-to-town screening a monster movie. While the whole town watches the movie, the criminals sneak out and rob their empty homes. In this clip, the monster in their "picture" comes to life and slides off the screen. This episode is brilliant for what it doesn't tell you. Listen for the sound of the monster: nothing. Throughout the entire show, it's never audible, though it's clearly dangerous. It's also barely described; we know it has teeth and a tail. Leaving so much to imagination causes the listener to fill in something far, far worse than any writer could devise. In this case, less is so very much more.

I hope to make a regular feature of these types of close listens. Got any suggestions, or any clips you'd like to share yourself? Just let me know.

This Week in Listening: The Columbia Workshop

 Orson Welles, Irving Reis, and Archibald MacLeish working on The Fall of the City.

Things are calming down for me after a busy couple of weeks (months, really), so I'm looking forward to getting back on track with my listening. Because of Chatterbox's upcoming recreation of "Meridian 7-1212," I've been inspired to dig deeper into The Columbia Workshop.

According to author John Dunning, when The Columbia Workshop debuted in 1936, radio was only a decade old and was still trying to decide what kind of medium it would be: "Would it be commercial or a public entity? What would be allowed in the name of 'art'? Was radio by its nature simply another vehicle for pop culture, to be absorbed by the lowest common denominator and immediately forgotten?"

Luckily, a man named Irving Reis saw the artistic potential inherent in sound. Reis conceived of and championed The Columbia Workshop from the beginning. In the early days, not only was he the director of the show, but he also wrote several scripts (including "Meridian 7-1212") and apparently even answered the show's fan mail. William N. Robson took over for Reis in late 1937. Robson shared Reis's interest in experimentation but grounded the show in more literary works.

The Columbia Workshop was billed as a show of "experimental radio." The idea was to find brave, creative writers and directors to explore the vast possibilities of this new medium. According to Douglas Coulter, "The Workshop programs grew out of a conviction that there was much to be done to improve the originality of radio drama, both in content and in production."

Coulter and Wikipedia detail several of the show's innovations, including extended soundscapes, microphone filters, and the use of music cues to suggest sound effects. During its eight-year run (from 1936 - 1943, then again from 1946 - 1947), the Workshop was a breakout show for several audio luminaries, including composer Bernard Hermann and radio writer par excellence Norman Corwin.

The Workshop was broadcast as a "sustaining" show, meaning it had no advertisers and thus no outside forces to answer to. The creators were free to work in the name of art, not commerce.

The Columbia Workshop's finest hour is generally considered to be its production of Archibald MacLeish's poetic, gorgeous, frightening, and moving original script "The Fall of the City," which features Orson Welles, Burgess Meredith, and about 300 extras. With a celebrated poet like MacLeish on its side, The Columbia Workshop put to rest any question of whether radio could be a medium for art.

I had heard a handful of Columbia Workshop plays after stumbling across "Meridian 7-1212." Upon finding a longer list on archive.org, I'm really enjoying jumping back in. As with any experimental work, some of the shows are better than others, but all have something worthwhile to offer. Plus, they're almost entirely devoid of any cliched "Old Time Radio" trappings. Heck, most of them are shows I'd be proud for Chatterbox to produce today. Not surprisingly, I find listening to this show very inspiring.

The list begins with Orson Welles's one-hour version of Hamlet, and while I'm left hungry for the full-length play, it's always a treat to hear Welles doing Shakespeare. Also recommended are an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's fable "The Happy Prince" and the two-part "Alice in Wonderland." "The Fall of the City" really is as good as its reputation. And naturally I'm quite fond of "Meridian 7-1212," which is a master class in intertwining stories, shifting moods, and mounting suspense. (Chatterbox's recreation will debut on The Sonic Society in August.)

There are more than 60 Columbia Workshop productions freely available on archive.org. I'm going to be checking them out in the weeks and months ahead. You should, too -- I'd love to hear your thoughts.

When You Hear the Signal, the Time Will Be...

And here's just a glimpse at the amazing cast we managed to assemble for Meridian 7-1212:

These photos only show about half the people involved -- it was a big group! As before, the photos are courtesy of Mike Hanrahan. Keep an ear out for Meridian on The Sonic Society podcast this August. It will hit the Chatterbox site sometime afterward!

The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit

Here are a couple of sneak-peek images from our upcoming recreation of The Shadow:

The photos are by Mike Hanrahan. Our recording of The Shadow will debut in August on The Sonic Society podcast, along with another Chatterbox Old-Time Radio Recreation, Meridian 7-1212. Stay tuned!