Transmissions
Suspense : The Hitch-Hiker
Suspense The Hitch-Hiker (US 1942)
Mercury Theater (US 1942)
29 min Episode 45 of 52
The Audio equivalent of a black and white matinée film, narrated by a young Orson Welles. (Citizen Kane) We are pulled in with the question; Who doesn't like a good ghost story? No blood or gore, just a shocker, a thriller, a real Orson Wells story. Sometimes you want your heart to be warmed and sometime you want your spine to tingle.
Wells plays the protagonist Ronald Adams who comes across a mysterious hitchhiker as he drives across the States in his Buick. This radio play takes the listener to another era but the production is so good - and to think this was all done live!
There’s even a Patreon style plea at the end to Mrs and Mrs American working man and woman to lend Uncle Sam a dime to help win the war against the Nazis. It’s revelatory.
And if you’e never heard the original War of the Worlds by H G Wells, it’s really worth a listen (Also produced by the Mercury Theatre)
Produced and Directed by William Sphere
Scored by Bernard Herman
Narrated by Orson Welles
Produced for The Mercury Thearter
Listen to the series
CBS Mystery Theatre: Ep 706 The Woman In The Green Dress
CBS Theatre (US 1974)
Created by Himan Brown for CBS (US 1977)
45 min / Episode 706 of 1399
Forget true crime, these mystery dramas were reintroduced in 1974 on CBS Radio as a nostalgic hark back to old time radio. These dramas proved so popular that the series kept going for a decade.
In this episode, an apparition of a lady in a green dress haunts a visitor in his friend's residence. Things get interesting when he finds her mentioned in a coat of arms in the architecture of a derelict, local church. Further enquiry with the old church sexton reveals a strange murder committed nearly eighty years back. Can he solve the mystery now? And what happened to Andrew Scott?