3. Orson Welles:
Orson Welles also played the Shadow. He had the role for the 1938 and 1939 seasons. He was a brash 22 year old boy genius who was juggling his “Shadow” role with a little acting troupe he had on Broadway called the 'Mercury Theater'.
On broadcast days, Welles would be taxied from his Broadway performance to the radio studio. He would storm in at the last second, and pick up his script just minutes before the show was scheduled to begin. Without rehearsal or even reading through the script, he would give a masterful performance every single time.
His Margot Lane, Agnes Moorhead, once told of a particularly good episode. She said that Welles was being his usual booming self, reading his lines with authority and chasing bad guys around the radio stage.
During the middle commercial halfway through the show, Welles stage whispered to Moorhead, “Hey Agnes, this is a pretty good show. I wonder how it turns out!”
In addition to his Shadow work Welles had a few other series. From London for the BBC, he did a program called Harry Lime…it was a prequel to “The Third Man”. Most of Welles radio work was good. Some of it was spectacular.
For the Mercury Theater and also for Suspense, Welles did “The Hitch hiker”. It’s a chilling story of a 1939 road trip from New York to California with Welles driving and death following him.
His biggest contribution to radio, of course, was “The War of the Worlds”. It’s probably the most famous radio show in history and should be listened to every year or two - much like Citizen Kane needs to be viewed every couple of years.
It’s difficult now to remember how big a personality Orson Wells was. We’re closing in on a full century since the ‘Boy Genius’ first came to the attention of the world. It’s hard to believe, but almost before he was old enough to vote, he formed his own Broadway Theater company, the Mercury Players. Shortly after that he landed the plum role of “The Shadow”. He played the part to perfection for one full season, plus a summer series for Goodrich Tires.
His longtime friend and co-worker in the Mercury Theater, Agnes Moorhead was fond of telling stories of the Shadow days. She said that many nights Orson would be working late in the Mercury Theater and he would continue almost right up until airtime. Then he would hire an ambulance which would scream its way through the streets of New York City and deposit him at the radio network just seconds before airtime.
She said that Orson would pick up his script without even looking at it and deliver a spectacular performance with a completely cold reading.
“One night”, she said, “we were halfway through show. It was live before a studio audience. We were on stage during the commercial break. The announcer was reading a spot for our sponsor, Blue Coal, and Orson staged whispered to me. ‘Hey Aggie, this is a great story. I wonder how it ends.”
