THIS ALL STARTED WITH MY LISTENING TO ORSON WELLES performing in a Suspense! broadcast of The Dark Tower, a Kaufman and Woollcott melodrama. Today in Part 2, there’s the original novel, a Suspense Project report on the broadcast replete with Welles lore, and that guy named Nixon.
The Dark Tower: A Melodrama, by Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman, Random House, 1934.
In truth, I’ve not read the original melodrama. AbeBooks has one for US$550. Gulp.
The Warner Bros. Flick. Wikipedia recounts, “The play was later adapted for the Warner Bros. film The Man with Two Faces (1934) starring Mary Astor, Louis Calhern, and Edward G. Robinson.”
Poster from Wikipedia.
Mary Astor, of course, was Sam Spade’s femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon, 1941. Ricardo Cortez, next to her in the cast listing here, portrayed Sam in the first version of this tale, the 1931 flick following Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel.
The [first] Maltese Falcon, 1931.
One of my favorite Edward G. Robinson’s radio tales is “The Man Who Thought He Was Edward G. Robinson.” It’s a dual role of whimsy in which Robinson plays himself as well as a meek little fellow named Howard J. Hubbard.
“Radio Classics” Suspense! I enjoyed The Dark Tower starring the likes of Orson Welles and Hans Conried, via SiriusXM “Radio Classics” Suspense!
Image from RadioEchoes.
“The Suspense Project: 1944-05-04 The Dark Tower“ offers details: “A well-known actor turns to murder to save his sister from her unhappy marriage. That’s the excuse for the story, a satire about the stage and movies and those who engage in such enterprises. If you are expecting regular Suspense fare, you will be disappointed. If you are expecting a play overflowing with Welles and lines often drenched with innuendo, you may find this an unexpected pleasure.”
“Welles deliberately overacts in this play,” The Suspense Project notes, “as it is somewhat of a satire about theater and actors, and he makes it about himself. It is amusing how so many of the lines could apply to Welles public persona, even though the play was introduced in 1933 when he was just starting in the profession.”
“At about the 4:30 mark of the broadcast,” it continues, “the character comments about being asked to stop drinking. He says… ‘Would you have me subsist entirely on food? And reach the gargantuan proportions of an Orson Welles?’ ”
That Nixon Reference. “In January 1938,” Wikipedia recounts, “the future President of the United States Richard Nixon was cast in the Whittier Community Players production of this play. He was cast opposite a high school teacher named Thelma “Pat” Ryan, whom he would later marry.”
We may not have Nixon “to kick around anymore,” but we do have Orson Welles in dual roles in The Dark Tower. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024