Did you get a chance to listen to the adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" done for "The Campbell Playhouse" in 1939?
I think it's terrific, but I do love old-time radio (or OTR as they say), so you can't always go by me.
You kind of get a two-for-one deal here, with Lionel Barrymore and Orson Welles. The most renowned (and loved, as Orson points out) radio Scrooge teamed with one of the most creative radio minds ever. How could it not be good?
As an OTR fan of long-standing, I remember very well when it was not always easy to be able to listen to shows. With the internet and digital revolution, there are so many old shows available for listening with a simple click, but back in the day you had to get what you could when you could.
The same was true with information about old shows. You pieced together what you could from various sources without being able to Google up information. Looking back, I'm surprised I knew as much as I did about things so far before my time.
But even then, I knew that Lionel Barrymore had acted as Scrooge over the duration of the golden age of radio and I knew him from watching old movies on TV. He had a very distinctive voice that was imitated a lot. The "Simon Bar Sinister" character from the "Underdog" cartoon series is probably the best-known homage to him. Like most kids from back then, when I first saw Lionel Barrymore in an old movie, I was like, "Hey! He sounds like that Underdog bad guy!" And this was before "It's a Wonderful Life" was on 24/7 at Christmastime!
Anyway, back in the day, some small record labels specialized in releasing old radio shows on LPs. My favorite was Radiola, as you always got a full hour on each LP and the shows were unedited. So, imagine my excitement when they announced that they would be releasing an LP of "A Christmas Carol" starring Lionel Barrymore featuring Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater!
So, naturally I ordered that thing and I really thought it was great and still do.
We get Orson Welles obviously having a great time reading ample amounts of the original text with his great pipes, so we get to hear lines from the book we don't hear very often, including the awesome "I am standing in the spirit at your elbow," as great a line for radio as anything ever!
We get a great performance from Lionel Barrymore, a total pro who easily can go from mean to nice with plenty of shading in between.
We get top support from Orson Welles's brilliant group of actors, including Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Everett Sloane and Erskine Sanford who all appeared to great effect in "Citizen Kane," leading to successful Hollywood careers.
We get great music from Bernard Herrmann, who also broke into pictures with "Citizen Kane" and wound up doing countless memorable movie scores, including several for Alfred Hitchcock, with "Psycho" as good an item as anything on anyone's resume. (As noted previously, Mr. Herrmann also provided the memorable score for the 1954 "Shower of Stars" presentation with Fredric March.)
Even announcer Ernest Chappell tastefully plugs Campbell's Soup!
This is radio drama at its best and I'm so thankful to be able to enjoy it today as those lucky listeners did some 80 years ago!
No comments:
Post a Comment