Breaking Walls

In the fall of 1938 as Orson Welles was launching The Mercury Theater of The Air, radio character actor Bill Johnstone became The Shadow. Johnstone held the role until March 21st, 1943, when Brett Morison took over. Morison had the title role for most of the rest of the radio run. The Shadow would air until December 26th, 1954.

We’re going to stop here. I’ve covered Welles from his birth through Pearl Harbor in episode 79 and from there to the early 1950s in episode 104.

While we’re wrapping up our coverage of The Shadow, we’re staying with The Mutual Broadcasting System in October and getting into the Halloween spirit. Next time on Breaking Walls, we’ll spend Halloween with Mutual Broadcasting mystery shows of the 1940s.

In Part 3 of And Then I Sing, an offer Frank can’t refuse to perform in Havana leads to a flurry of bad press that follows him for the remainder of the decade. Will his career, and marriage survive?

Featured in this cast were:

Brett Solimine as Frank, Nancy Pop as Nancy, with Eirik Gislason, Alain Laforest, Kacie Laforest, Mary Murphy, Michael Pate, Gus Rodriquez, Matt Roper, and James Scully.

Original music was written by Fred Travalena and sung by Patrick Barnitt, Nancy Osborne, and Fred Travalena.

Musical direction was by Jim Barnett.

Standard songs were sung by Frank Sinatra and Enrico Caruso.

Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio was engineer.

Lois Travalena was executive producer, and James Scully director and post-producer.

Our entire team would like to dedicate And Then I Sing to the memories of Frank Sinatra and Fred Travalena, with a special thank you for Lois.

In late June 1938, Orson Welles was approached by CBS. He was offered a one-hour, network sustained time slot on Mondays at 9PM.

William Paley’s concept: A Mercury Theater of the air for a nine-week trial run. Unlike Welles and Houseman’s theater productions which had several weeks of rehearsal, the show would begin in just two, on July 11th.

Houseman was nervous. He’d never done radio. Welles would direct, narrate, and star. The Mercury theater troupe would support. Bernard Hermann would be musical director and Davidson Taylor supervisor.

Welles called the show First Person Singular. A take on Bram Stoker's Dracula was selected for the first episode. Welles and Houseman had total creative control. The premiere set the tone.

Over the next nine weeks, listeners heard adaptations of classics like Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The 39 Steps, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Affairs of Anatole, and The Count of Monte Cristo, for which, Welles simulated the sound of a dungeon by having the actors play their scene from the floor of the CBS restroom. He placed two dynamic microphones against the bases of the toilet seat in order to achieve realistic subterranean reverberations.

After September 5th, 1938, CBS renewed the series under a new name: The Mercury Theater of The Air, moving it to Sundays at 8PM, opposite NBC’s highest-rated show: Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour.

It set the stage for a series of events which would forever alter the course of Orson Welles’ life.

The success of The Shadow was shared by Blue Coal. Billboard reported that twelve months after the premiere their sales were up nearly eleven percent. Blue Coal was selling for as much as two dollars per ton more than their competitors.

In February of 1938 Orson Welles opined that “radio’s future big-wigs will be college graduates.” By then more than ninety colleges offered courses in radio speech, while radio writing was taught at fifty-seven colleges, and fifty-three colleges were teaching radio acting. Both radio music and radio law were also becoming class offerings.

The last episode of The Shadow’s autumn run aired on March 20th, 1938. Although everyone knew who played Lamont, for the first time on air, Orson Welles was given credit for his role. Welles was contracted to produce twenty-six more episodes for a syndicated summer run. They co-starred Margot Stevenson as Margot Lane. Ironically, the character was named for Miss Stevenson who was originally supposed to play the role that fall.

Goodrich Tires would sponsor the summer run, with Blue Coal immediately signing on for another season in the fall. Agnes Moorehead would again play Margot, but Welles would be leaving for CBS that summer and taking the Mercury Theater troupe with him.

Welles was contracted to produce twenty-six more episodes for a syndicated summer run. They co-starred Margot Stevenson as Margot Lane. Ironically, the character was named for Miss Stevenson who was originally supposed to play the role that fall.

Goodrich Tires would sponsor the summer run, with Blue Coal immediately signing on for another season in the fall. Agnes Moorehead would again play Margot, but Welles would be leaving for CBS that summer and taking the Mercury Theater troupe with him.

In Part 2 of And Then I Sing, Frank Sinatra becomes the biggest singing star in the country, racking up awards, radio deals, and starring in films.

Orson Welles opened in Julius Caesar on November 11th, 1937. He also made time to perform in guest appearances elsewhere on radio with Tallulah Bankhead and Cedric Hardwicke.

Thursday, November 25th, 1937 was Thanksgiving Day. The New York Daily News headline spoke of Consolidated Edison finally getting on board with F.D.R.’s new deal program.

November 28th’s episode of The Shadow was called “The Circle of Death.” It’s a story about a mad man who plants bombs across the city, creating a reign of terror in his wake.

On Halloween 1937, Benito Mussolini removed Italy’s foreign minister to France due to strained relations between the two countries over Italy's participation in the Spanish Civil War. Adolph Hitler gave the Order of the German Eagle to the Japanese emperor’s son, while Chinese forces abandoned its defense of the Sihang Warehouse.

Sunday was Halloween and at 5:30PM eastern, The Shadow took to the air over Mutual with a story called “The Three Ghosts.”

The September 29th, 1937 issue of Variety said “that melodramatic and at times astonishing crime fighter, “The Shadow,” returns to the ether to probably find a rather sizable slice of listeners waiting for him. In this series the sponsor will benefit from having a program aimed right at the vulnerability of the audience it seeks. Orson Welles, a young and good actor still riding a crest of recognition won with the Federal Theatre Project, does the title role.

“The Shadow is a bit fantastic, but as with these things, the stunt stands muster with the show’s listeners and appreciably colors the proceedings. Well done, both as to script, acting, and producing.”

Both Billboard and Radio Daily also gave the program positive reviews. A blizzard of mail came into WOR. Shadow fan clubs sprang up across the country. Welles would occasionally appear at promotions donning a black cape, hat, and mask.

Oddly enough, because Welles was constantly rushing from one part of New York to the other, Frank Readick, who’d previously voiced the Shadow as narrator, was kept on to record the show’s opening signature, giving Welles a few more minutes to get into the studio.

You’re about to hear part 1 of act 1 of And Then I Sing, the new musical about the life and career of Frank Sinatra. It was originally written and created by the late comedian Fred Travalena and John Dayton as a stage play.

I was hired in March by Fred’s widow, Lois Travalena, to adapt this two-act play into an audio drama musical with John.

We’ve done a full-cast and musical production of the first act. While I’ll be posting And Then I Sing each Sunday at this time on this Breaking Walls podcast feed, you can subscribe to its own feed by searching for And Then I Sing anywhere you’d get a podcast and at AndThenISing.com

To find out more about And Then I Sing, please visit the aforementioned website — AndThenISing.com.

And now, enjoy the show.

On the October 24th, 1937 episode of The Shadow called “The Temple Bells of Neban,” Lamont meets an Indian woman and drug smuggler named Sadi Bel-Adda. She knows The Shadow’s true identity. She’s the niece of the man who trained Lamont, and capable of using the same powers. This cast featured Ray Collins as Commissioner Weston with Carl Frank as Jerry Gleason and Everett Sloane playing bit parts. Jeanette Nolan, then just twenty-five, played Sadi Bel-Adda. Rosa Rio was the program’s organist.