The Campbell Playhouse
Encyclopedia
The Campbell Playhouse was a CBS radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

 series directed by and starring Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

. Produced by John Houseman
John Houseman
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...

, it was a sponsored continuation of the Mercury Theatre on the Air
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...

. The series offered 60-minute adaptations of classic plays and novels, plus some adaptations of popular motion pictures.

History

As a direct result of the front-page headlines Orson Welles generated with his 1938 Halloween production War of the Worlds, Campbell's Soup
Campbell Soup Company
Campbell Soup Company , also known as Campbell's, is an American producer of canned soups and related products. Campbell's products are sold in 120 countries around the world. It is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey...

 signed on as his sponsor. The Mercury Theatre of the Air made its last broadcast December 4, 1938, and The Campbell Playhouse began December 9, 1938. The series made its debut with Welles' adaptation of Rebecca, with guest stars Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...

 and Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...

. Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...

 composed and conducted the imaginative score, and later used much of it for the film Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (1944 film)
Jane Eyre is a classic film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name, made by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by William Goetz, Kenneth Macgowan, and Orson Welles . The screenplay was by John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Henry Koster, and Robert...

. The radio drama was the first adaptation of the 1938 novel
Rebecca (novel)
Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...

 by Daphne Du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...

; the author was interviewed live from London at the conclusion of the broadcast.

The same creative staff stayed on, but the show had a different flavor under sponsorship. This was partially due to a guest star policy which relegated the Mercury Players to supporting roles. There was a growing schism between Welles, still reaping the rewards of his Halloween night notoriety, and Houseman, who became more like an employee than a partner. The primary writer, as during the end of the unsponsored run, was Howard Koch
Howard Koch (screenwriter)
Howard E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Early Years:...

.

Productions included The Citadel
The Citadel (novel)
The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later...

(with Geraldine Fitzgerald
Geraldine Fitzgerald
Geraldine Fitzgerald, Lady Lindsay-Hogg was an Irish-American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Early life:...

), A Christmas Carol (broadcast once with Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...

 as Scrooge, and once with Orson Welles himself in the role), a non-musical version of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

(with Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...

 as Magnolia, Orson Welles as Cap'n Andy, Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s...

 as Julie, and author Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...

 herself as Parthy), A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway concerning events during the Italian campaigns during the First World War. The book, which was first published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance...

(with Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

), Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty
The mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny that occurred aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the...

, Arrowsmith (with Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

), Les Misérables (with Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...

), Our Town, Ah, Wilderness, Dodsworth, Lost Horizon (with Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...

), Dinner at Eight (with Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...

 and Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...

), Liliom
Liliom
Liliom is a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It was very famous in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.- Plot :...

(with Orson Welles in the title role and Helen Hayes as Julie), and Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic Mark Twain novel.Huckleberry Finn may also refer to:*Huckleberry Finn , a fictional character in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer...

(with Jackie Cooper).

When Welles left the series in 1940, Houseman stayed to write scripts for the final season, which was initially produced by Diana Bourbon, one of the few women directors in network radio. Houseman wrote a script every other week, alternating with veteran radio writer Wyllis Cooper
Wyllis Cooper
Wyllis Oswald Cooper was an American writer and producer.He is best remembered for creating and writing the old time radio programs Lights Out and Quiet, Please -Biography:...

 (he and Campbell announcer Ernest Chappell
Ernest Chappell
Ernest E. Chappell was an American radio announcer and actor, best remembered for his featured role in the late 1940s radio program Quiet, Please. The show ran from 1947 to 1949, and Quiet, Please was Chappell's major acting credit...

 would go on to create Quiet, Please
Quiet, Please
Quiet, Please! was a radio fantasy and horror program created by Wyllis Cooper, also known for creating Lights Out. Ernest Chappell was the show's announcer and lead actor. Quiet, Please! debuted June 8, 1947 on the Mutual Broadcasting System, and its last episode was broadcast June 25, 1949, on...

) . Later in the season, scripts by others were used, including one each by Norman Corwin
Norman Corwin
Norman Lewis Corwin was an American writer, screenwriter, producer, essayist and teacher of journalism and writing...

 and Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...

. Reduced to a half hour, the series' focus shifted away from heavy play and novel adaptations to lighter, more popular fare, still with casts drawn from the ranks of film actors. Listenership increased—ratings were actually higher than the Welles-hosted seasons—but the series was expensive and the sponsor canceled it in June 1941.

Episodes

# Date Title
1 Dec 09, 1938 "Rebecca
Rebecca (novel)
Rebecca is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. When Rebecca was published in 1938, du Maurier became – to her great surprise – one of the most popular authors of the day. Rebecca is considered to be one of her best works...

"
2 Dec 16, 1938 "Call It a Day"
3 Dec 23, 1938 "A Christmas Carol" (Welles as Scrooge)
4 Dec 30, 1938 "A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway concerning events during the Italian campaigns during the First World War. The book, which was first published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance...

"
5 Jan 06, 1939 "Counselor at Law"
6 Jan 13, 1939 "Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty (novel)
For the actual event described in this book, see Mutiny on the Bounty.Mutiny on the Bounty is the title of the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, commanding officer of the Bounty in 1789. It has been made into several films...

"
7 Jan 20, 1939 "The Chicken Wagon Family"
8 Jan 27, 1939 "I Lost My Girlish Laughter"
9 Feb 03, 1939 "Arrowsmith
Arrowsmith (novel)
Arrowsmith is a novel by American author and playwright Sinclair Lewis that was published in 1925. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Lewis but he refused to accept it. Lewis was greatly assisted in its preparation by science writer Dr. Paul de Kruif, who received 25% of the royalties on sales, but...

"
10 Feb 10, 1939 "The Green Goddess
The Green Goddess (stage play)
The Green Goddess was a popular stage play of 1921 by William Archer.In the three years after its publication, the play toured in both America and England....

"
11 Feb 17, 1939 "Burlesque"
12 Feb 24, 1939 "State Fair"
13 Mar 03, 1939 "Royal Regiment"
14 Mar 10, 1939 "The Glass Key
The Glass Key
The Glass Key is a novel by Dashiell Hammett, said to be his favorite among his works. It was first published in 1931, and tells the story of gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont, whose devotion to crooked political boss Paul Madvig leads him to investigate the murder of a local senator's son as a...

"
15 Mar 17, 1939 "Beau Geste
Beau Geste
Beau Geste is a 1924 adventure novel by P. C. Wren. It has been adapted for the screen several times.-Plot summary:Michael "Beau" Geste is the protagonist. The main narrator , by contrast, is his younger brother John...

"
16 Mar 24, 1939 "Twentieth Century
Twentieth Century (play)
Twentieth Century is a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles B. Millholland, inspired by his experience working for the eccentric Broadway impresario David Belasco....

"
17 Mar 31, 1939 "Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...

"
18 Apr 07, 1939 "Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

"
19 Apr 14, 1939 "The Patriot"
20 Apr 21, 1939 "Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

"
21 Apr 28, 1939 "Black Daniel"
22 May 5, 1939 "Wickford Point"
23 May 12, 1939 "Our Town
Our Town
Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

"
24 May 19, 1939 "The Bad Man"
25 May 26, 1939 "American Cavalcade" (subtitled "Things We Have")
26 Jun 02, 1939 "Victoria Regina"
27 Sep 10, 1939 "Peter Ibbetson
Peter Ibbetson
Peter Ibbetson is an American black-and-white drama film released in 1935 and directed by Henry Hathaway.The picture is based on a novel by George du Maurier, first published in 1891. In 1917, du Maurier's story was adapted into a very successful Broadway play starring John Barrymore, Lionel...

"
28 Sep 17, 1939 "Ah, Wilderness"
29 Sep 24, 1939 "What Every Woman Knows
What Every Woman Knows
What Every Woman Knows is a four-act play written by J. M. Barrie. It was first presented by the impresario Charles Frohman at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 3 September 1908...

"
30 Oct 01, 1939 "The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...

"
31 Oct 08, 1939 "Algiers
Algiers (film)
Algiers is a 1938 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, and Hedy Lamarr. The Walter Wanger production was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name...

"
32 Oct 15, 1939 "Escape"
33 Oct 22, 1939 "Lilliom"
34 Oct 29, 1939 "The Magnificent Ambersons"
35 Nov 05, 1939 "The Hurricane
The Hurricane (1937 film)
The Hurricane is a 1937 film set in the South Seas, directed by John Ford and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, about a Polynesian who is unjustly imprisoned. The climax features a special effects hurricane. It stars Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, with Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Thomas Mitchell, Raymond...

"
36 Nov 12, 1939 "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in June 1926 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company on the 19th of the same month. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective...

"
37 Nov 19, 1939 "The Garden of Allah"
38 Nov 26, 1939 "Dodsworth
Dodsworth
Dodsworth is a satirical novel by American writer Sinclair Lewis first published by Harcourt Brace & Company in March 1929. Its subject, the differences between US and European intellect, manners, and morals, is one that frequently appears in the works of Henry James.-Plot summary:Samual 'Sam'...

"
39 Dec 03, 1939 "Lost Horizon"
40 Dec 10, 1939 "Venessa"
41 Dec 17, 1939 "There's Always a Woman
There's Always a Woman
There's Always a Woman is a 1938 comedy mystery film starring Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas as married detectives investigating a murder...

"
42 Dec 24, 1939 "A Christmas Carol" (Barrymore as Scrooge)
43 Dec 31, 1939 "Come And Get It
Come and Get It (novel)
Come and Get It is a 1935 novel by American author Edna Ferber. A film version with the same title was produced in 1936....

"
44 Jan 07, 1940 "Vanity Fair"
45 Jan 14, 1940 "Theodora Goes Wild
Theodora Goes Wild
Theodora Goes Wild is a 1936 American romantic comedy film that tells the story of a small town which is incensed by a risqué novel, little knowing that it was written under a pseudonym by a member of the town's leading family. It stars Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas and was directed by Richard...

"
46 Jan 21, 1940 "The Citadel
The Citadel (novel)
The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It is credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later...

"
47 Jan 28, 1940 "It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night is a 1934 American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite tries to get out from under her father's thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter . The plot was based on the story Night Bus by Samuel...

"
48 Feb 04, 1940 "The Broome Stages"
49 Feb 11, 1940 "Mr Deeds Goes to Town"
50 Feb 18, 1940 "Dinner at Eight
Dinner at Eight (play)
Dinner at Eight is a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber.-1932 Original Production:Dinner at Eight opened October 22, 1932 at the Music Box Theatre. It closed after 232 performances in May 1933. The play was produced by Sam H. Harris, staged by George S. Kaufman; Assistant Director: Robert B...

"
51 Feb 25, 1940 "Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings
Only Angels Have Wings is a movie directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It is generally regarded as being among Hawks' finest films, particularly in its portrayal of the professionalism of the pilots, its atmosphere, and the flying sequences.It inspired the 1983 television...

"
52 Mar 03, 1940 "Rabble In Armes"
53 Mar 10, 1940 "Craig's Wife
Craig's Wife
Craig's Wife is a 1925 play written by American playwright George Kelly, uncle of actress and later Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Harriet Craig was played by Chrystal Herne....

"
54 Mar 17, 1940 "Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic Mark Twain novel.Huckleberry Finn may also refer to:*Huckleberry Finn , a fictional character in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer...

"
55 Mar 24, 1940 "June Moon
June Moon
June Moon is a play by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. Based on the Lardner short story "Some Like Them Cold," about a love affair that loses steam before it ever gets started, it includes songs with words and music by Lardner but is not considered a musical per se.At its center is Fred...

"
(first program before a live audience)
56 Mar 31, 1940 "Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...

"

Other programs with the same name

Campbell Playhouse was also the title of a television series aired on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 between 1952 and 1954 as a replacement for The Aldrich Family
The Aldrich Family
The Aldrich Family, a popular radio teenage situation comedy , was also presented in films, television and comic books. In the radio series' well-remembered weekly opening exchange, awkward teen Henry's mother called, "Hen-reeeeeeeeeeeee! Hen-ree Al-drich!", and he responded with a breaking...

. It was also known as Campbell Soundstage. Scriptwriters for that anthology series included Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...

.

Listen to


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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