Friday's Favorite OTR

The Mercury Theatre on the Air: "Abraham Lincoln 8/15/38



Based on the play by John Drinkwater, this broadcast was an episodic examination of Lincoln's presidency. It's quite wonderful--generating a surprisingly high level of emotion as Lincoln deals with hard moral decisions and an argumentative Cabinet. With much of the dialogue lifted directly from Lincoln's speeches, it's a powerful bit of historical drama.

Click HERE to listen or download.

DECADE BY DECADE: Part 4: Friday's Favorite OTR

Today we combine our regular Friday feature with the "Decade by Decade" series and take a look at an episode of The Shadow from June 12, 1938.

I don't know how society would have survived past the 1930s without the help of heroes like the Shadow. It's apparent from listening to his radio series (and reading his pulp adventures) that madmen and villains of all sorts stalked the mean streets of New York (as well as just about everywhere else) and that horrible death was no farther away than the prick of a hypodermic needle, the click of the timer on a bomb, or the sudden lunge of a rapid dog.

But, by golly, the Shadow was there to keep us all safe. In "Death from the Deep," he goes up against a wealthy madman who has built his own submarine. The modern day pirate wages war on merchant and passenger ships, but the Shadow manages to track him down, bringing matters to a head in a confrontation aboard the sub.

Orson Welles was the Shadow in this one. It's always fun to listen to his performance knowing he was playing the part cold, without prior rehearsal and without having even glanced at the script before the live broadcast. (This was part of Welles' contract, making sure he had time to see to his Broadway responsibilities with the Mercury Theatre.) Welles could sight-read during the broadcast, jumping a little ahead of the lines he was currently speaking in order to guide his performance. It's amazing how good he was in the role using this method.

The story itself is, like nearly every Shadow episode, pure melodrama. But it's entertaining melodrama, played straight with fast moving plots, good acting and good sound effects. Besides, the idea of a modern day pirate in a submarine is just plain cool.

Random Pirate Fact

In the summer of 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater did a superb adaptation of Treasure Island for radio. In his introduction to the story, Welles provides a succinct explanation of why pirates are cool:

“We calculate that no decent, law-abiding citizen is immune to pirates. There are cowboys and Indians. There are gangsters and G-men. But these delights are inconstant, like the short skirt. I don’t care how young you are: nothing charms—nothing ingratiates—nothing wins like a one-legged, double-barreled buccaneer with earrings, a handkerchief on his head and a knife in his teeth.”

So, in appreciation of the simple fact that pirate are indeed really cool, here is a Random Pirate Fact for today:

Pierre Le Grand ("Peter the Great"--his real name is unknown) was a Frenchman who, around 1620, took 28 men out into the Caribbean in a small boat, determined to make a go at piracy regardless of his lack of a real ship.

They'd been at sea awhile, with food running short and the boat in bad shape, when they finally spotted a large Spanish galleon. Le Grand decided to board her. His men swore an oath to fight to the death, but Le Grand drilled a hole in the bottom of the boat regardless. They would have to win or die.

They came up to the ship in the dark and climbed aboard, each man armed with a cutlass and a pistol. They caught the captain and some others in a cabin, playing cards. Some of the crew tried to defend the gun room, but were quickly killed. The ship was quickly in the hands of the pirates.

Le Grand kept enough Spaniards aboard to work the ship, put the rest ashore and sailed for France. Peter Le Grand's career as a pirate was short, but very successful.