Episode 56 - Citizen Holmes (Mercury Theatre On the Air)

Down These Mean Streets (Old Time Radio Detectives)

Jack Mooney

Arts, Performing Arts, Tv & Film

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2014

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just a month before they terrified the nation with "The War of the Worlds," Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre On the Air presented an adaptation of "Sherlock Holmes," the 1899 play co-written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The legendary actor/director stars as the legendary detective in this broadcast originally aired on CBS on September 25, 1938.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The We're headed back to Baker Street this week for a unique radio adventure of Sherlock Holmes. Several actors have played Holmes on stage, screen, and radio since Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the character in 1887.
0:36.5	But in 1938, the Deerstalker Cap was donned by none other than Orson Wells in a broadcast of the Mercury Theater. on the Storm in 1936 with a series of well-received productions, including a version of Macbeth
0:56.3	said in Haiti. In 1937, Wells founded his own theatrical company, The Mercury Theater.
1:04.5	The troop included stars like Joseph Cotton, Agnes Morehead, and Everett Sloane, and they
1:09.9	mounted Broadway productions of Julius Caesar in 1937 and the Shoemaker's Holiday in 1938.
1:18.0	While all of this was going on, Wells made a living and helped finance his productions as a radio actor. His most famous role was that of
1:26.0	Lamont Cranston, alias The Shadow, from 1937 until 1938. He left that series but moved to CBS, where he had been invited to launch a radio
1:37.2	playhouse for the Mercury Theater. Originally titled First Person Singular, the show premiered on July 11th, 1938 with an adaptation of
1:47.6	Dracula.
1:48.6	Wells played the title role.
1:51.6	During that first series, Wells and his company presented the 39 steps, the count of Monte Cristo, and most
1:58.6	infamously, the War of the Worlds. Wells production of the classic H.G. Wells, no relation, science fiction
2:06.4	novel, incorporated realistic radio bulletins and managed to convince listeners that Martians had invaded the planet.
2:14.0	It's perhaps the most famous radio broadcast of all time
2:18.0	and it put the 23-year-old Wells on the map.
2:21.0	But just about a month before the War of the Worlds panicked the
2:25.2	nation, the Mercury Theater presented an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, an 1899 play
2:31.9	co-written by William Gillette and Arthur Conan Doyle.
2:35.1	Gillette starred as Holmes as well and made over a thousand appearances on stage as
2:41.0	the Great Detective. It was Gillette who introduced some of the
2:44.8	key elements of the Holmes character that became part of the mythos,
2:48.6	including his trademark curved pipe and the phrase Elementary, My Dear Watson, which never appeared in a Conan Doyle story.
	...

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