Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

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 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.

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.

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.

In the fall of 1937, Orson Welles was busy readying for a Mercury Theater broadway production of Julius Caesar. The agency Ruthrauff and Ryan approached Welles about the possibility of starring in a weekly radio series. His signing was announced in The New York Times on August 29th, 1937. Welles’ contract allowed him to miss rehearsals and readings. He was paid seventy-five dollars per week, or roughly fifteen hundred today, for one-half hour of weekly work.

On Sunday September 26th, at 5:30PM the new version of The Shadow debuted. The program's announcer was Ken Roberts. Opposite Welles as Margot Lane was Agnes Moorhead, along with many of the Mercury Theater players.

The Shadow was Lamont Cranston, a wealthy man about town. He had the ability to cloak himself with invisibility and to read minds. They were tools of Mesmer, learned through years of study in the orient and India.

Walter Gibson’s involvement in the radio series was minimal. Clark Andrews directed the first few broadcasts with Martin Gabel becoming the de facto director thereafter.

The voice at the top of this clip is that of former WOR chief engineer Jack Poppele. The station went online on February 22nd, 1922.

In 1934, WOR became one of the flagship stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System. The next March, Poppele was chiefly responsible for the creation of radio’s first directional antenna just as WOR increased its power to fifty-thousand watts.

In December of 1936, Don Lee’s west coast chain of networks joined Mutual, giving it coast-to-coast access. But in the fall of 1937 The Mutual Broadcasting System had no top-fifty rated shows.

Seventy-four percent of the U.S. population now had a radio set. Sunday evening’s most-heard shows belonged to Edgar Bergen, who pulled a 32.1, and Jack Benny, who pulled a 29.5. Both ran on NBC Red. Overall NBC’s Red Network had twenty-six of the nation’s top fifty shows, while CBS had nineteen, and NBC’s Blue Network had five.

WOR’s Sunday afternoon programming had concerts, sports, and news bulletins. Their schedule was ripe for a new melodrama.

By late spring in 1937, the Federal Theater Project was under intense scrutiny for staging what some felt were too many left-leaning labor plays. In Washington, there were rumors funds would be cut.

At the same time, Welles and John Houseman were rehearsing a production of The Cradle Will Rock. The play took place in "Steeltown, USA.” It followed the efforts of Larry Foreman to unionize the town's workers. This was to combat the wicked Mister Mister, who controls Steeltown’s factory, press, church, and social organizations.

Less than three weeks before the play was to open on June 23rd, The WPA shut down the project. Welles went to Washington to argue his case. He failed. Next, he threatened to open the play himself. The government’s response was severe.

A dozen uniformed guards took over the building. They stood at the front entrance, the box office, and in the alley outside the dressing rooms to ensure no government property was touched. But, John Houseman discovered an out. As U.S. citizens, the actors were free to enter as audience members and rise from their seats to speak their lines, so long as they weren’t on stage. The Cradle Will Rock played in the aisles. The next day everyone was fired, but it was front-page news.

That summer NBC featured a series of Shakespeare dramas with John Barrymore, while CBS aired Shakespeare adaptations featuring Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard. To battle for listeners, Mutual scheduled a seven-week take on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, hiring Orson Welles to write, direct, and star in the production.

Les Misérables debted on Friday, July 23rd, 1937 at 10PM, over WOR in New York. The production also marked the radio debut of the Mercury Theatre troupe. Martin Gabel was Javert. Alice Frost, Fantine. Virginia Nicolson, the adult Cosette, and it also featured soon-to-be radio mainstays like Ray Collins, Everett Sloane, Betty Garde, Hiram Sherman, Frank Readick, Richard Widmark, and Welles’ good friend, Agnes Moorehead.

From July 23rd through September 3rd, Les Misérables captured public interest. In a press release, Welles referred to the broadcast as a “projection” of what radio could dramatically evolve into. The series had begun solely on the east coast, but audience reaction induced Mutual’s officials to give it full coast-to-coast coverage. It cemented Welles as someone who could write, produce, direct, and act for radio.