Breaking Walls

In Breaking Walls Episode 104 Part 3, we pick up with Orson Welles as he joins the Democratic campaign for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reelection in 1944.

PRODUCTION NOTE: This episode will be split into five parts and released on 6/1/2020 ; 6/5/2020 ; 6/10/2020 ; 6/15/2020; and 6/20/2020. On 6/25/2020 the entire episode will be available in long form.

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Highlights:

• Campaigning for FDR

• Donovan’s Brain

• D Day

• Election Day—1944

• Rita and Orson meet Rebecca

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

——————————

WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

URL - thewallbreakers.com

In the summer of 1946 Orson Welles was in New York appearing on broadway in Around the World in Eighty Days. While there, CBS gave him a thirteen-week summer series of past Mercury Theatre adaptations.

On June 21st, they broadcast Lucille Fletcher's "The Hitchhiker."

(Photo: Orson Welles with Cole Porter—1946)

In Breaking Walls Episode 104 Part 2, we pick up with Orson Welles after he comes back to the United States from South America in late 1942.

PRODUCTION NOTE: This episode will be split into five parts and released on 6/1/2020 ; 6/5/2020 ; 6/10/2020 ; 6/15/2020; and 6/20/2020. On 6/25/2020 the entire episode will be available in long form.

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Highlights:

• Ceiling Unlimited And Hello Americans

• Jane Eyre

• Jack Benny Gets Sick, Orson filles in as host

• The Mercury Wonder Show

• Rita

• Marriage, again

• Busy Radio Days in 1944

• The Orson Welles Almanac

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

——————————

WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

URL - thewallbreakers.com

On the evening of December 7th, 1941, with the United States reeling from the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Manilla, Orson Welles took to the air on CBS in collaboration with Norman Corwin.

Corwin was hired by CBS in April of 1938. For the next three years he honed his craft on shows like Words Without Music, Forecast, and The Pursuit of Happiness.

In 1941 Corwin was given the task of taking over the famed Columbia Workshop . He wrote and directed twenty-six plays—today considered great work. The final one was “Between Americans.”

On an evening unlike any prior in American radio history, Corwin tabbed Orson Welles to talk directly to the country. It was the first time they’d worked together.

In 1976 Orson Welles was a guest of Johnny Carson's on The Tonight Show. In this clip the two share radio stories and Orson Welles talks about why he hired an ambulance to take him around New York city during the Golden Age of Radio.

In Breaking Walls Episode 104 Part 1, we focus on Orson Welles’ radio career as he returns to Hollywood radio after production of Citizen Kane wrapped in the fall of 1941.

PRODUCTION NOTE: This episode will be split into five parts and released on 6/1/2020 ; 6/5/2020 ; 6/10/2020 ; 6/15/2020; and 6/20/2020. On 6/25/2020 the entire episode will be available as one full episode.

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Highlights:

• Orson Returns to Radio In the Fall of 1941

• The Magnificent Ambersons Enters Productions

• December 7th, 1941

• Orson and Norman Corwin Collaborate

• Orson is Named Pan-American Goodwill Ambassador

• It’s All True and Brazil

• Problems with RKO

• Endings Changed, Others Destroyed

• Orson gets fired—Returns to the United States in the fall of 1942

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The WallBreakers:

http://thewallbreakers.com

Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:

http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

——————————

WallBreakers Links:

Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers

Social Media - @TheWallBreakers

URL - thewallbreakers.com

At The Mercury Wonder Show's intermission on September 7th, 1943, Hal Styles interviewed the Wonder Show audience and cast — including Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, and Marlene Dietrich.

Welles and Hayworth had been married earlier in the day.

On Wednesday January 26th, 1944, CBS, Mobil Oil, and Orson Welles launched a variety program, with comedy, jazz, and a weekly guest star. It would be a true radio almanac.

On February 9th, Ann Sothern appeared. The Mercury team of veterans like Agnes Moorehead, Hans Conried, and Ray Collins supported. This episode aired at 9:30PM Pacific Time.

In early 1950 as NBC launched Night Beat starring Frank Lovejoy as Chicago night beat reporter Randy Stone, they sent this recording of the episode "Zero" out to potential sponsors with a sales message taking the place of an opening commercial. Night Beat was a high-adventure human interest series.

The program would get sponsorship starting in July as part of General Mills' Wheaties "Big Parade," but the cereal company would drop the entire campaign after just eight weeks. Night Beat was taken off the air in November of 1950, but revived the following March. It would continue to air until September 25, 1952, never again having a regular national sponsor.

In 1946, Orson Welles decided to make a musical out of Around The World In Eighty Days. He wanted a circus on stage, traveling by a train running through the West. When the show cast ballooned to seventy, including four mechanical elephants, his original producer Mike Todd, pulled out.

Welles went to Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures for money. In exchange, Welles would put the play on Broadway, and direct a film at no fee. The problem was, Welles' wife Rita Hayworth had a long-standing hatred for Cohn, even though she was still employed by RKO.

In late Spring Welles moved to New York. Around The World In Eighty Days premiered on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre on May 31st, 1946.

The film that Welles agreed to do in exchange for Cohn's help became The Lady From Shanghai.