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davis_squareThe following is the second of three previews of the plays being featured in the Post-Meridian Radio Players' Summer Radio Mystery Theatre, taking place July 27th - 28th. For more information on the show and for tickets, visit srt12.pmrp.org!
I'd heard about Sorry, Wrong Number for many years, but always in the context of visual media: the 1948 movie with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster or the 1989 TV version with Loni Anderson and Patrick McNee. It wasn't until producer Chris DeKalb suggested it for this year's mystery-themed summer show that I learned about its amazing history—as a radio play on CBS' long-running series Suspense!.
Orson Welles once called Sorry, Wrong Number "the greatest single radio script ever written" and its writer, Lucille Fletcher, "one of the most gifted of all the writers who've ever worked for this medium". (Welles had earlier appeared in another classic script by Fletcher called The Hitch-Hiker on his own Mercury Theatre program in 1941 and, later, on Suspense! itself).
Fletcher started out during the Depression working at CBS Radio in a variety of jobs: music librarian, copyright clerk, publicity writer and in the typing pool. She was encouraged to try scriptwriting by her future husband, composer Bernard Hermann, who conducted the CBS orchestra at the time. Her first radio success came when the famous Norman Corwin adapted one of her magazine stories, My Client Curly, into a play.
The inspiration for Sorry, Wrong Number came from an incident in Fletcher's own life. One day, when at a grocery store on Manhattan's East Side to obtain milk for one of her children who was sick, Fletcher asked a well-dressed woman if she might be permitted to go ahead of her in the checkout line. The woman's response of ''No, you cannot. How dare you?'', and subsequent rudeness to both her and the clerk, motivated Fletcher to seek revenge via the pen.
Sorry, Wrong Number premiered on Tuesday, May 25th, 1943, featuring actress Agnes Moorhead (photo above) as the terrified Mrs. Elbert Stevenson. However, there was a major gaffe by one of the actors at the end of the play's East Coast broadcast that led to great confusion for the audience. Ms. Moorhead recalled that “To the amazement of CBS, they got about 500 calls in the space of an hour asking what had happened, so they had to rebroadcast it two months later.” This second airing, in August of 1943, was the first of seven repeats of the story on Suspense!, making it the most-requested play in radio history. (And these were not reruns, either, but full productions — each featuring Agnes Moorhead. Reruns as we know them were virtually unheard of in those days).
Fletcher's revenge on that obnoxious woman became — and remains — one of the most terrifying stories ever produced for radio. The story of a lonely invalid who overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is unable to get anyone to listen to her came, in part, from Fletcher's own circumstances: “It was set in a weird house I lived in with my husband,” she once wrote. “Near us was the Queensborough Bridge over which ran the old Third Avenue elevated subway. I used to sit in the bedroom at night and think how awful it would be if something happened and I couldn't get help.”
Of the play, Fletcher said "[It] was originally designed as an experiment in sound — and not just as a murder story — with the telephone as its chief protagonist. I wanted to write something that, by its very nature should, for maximum effectiveness, be heard rather than seen. However, in the hands of a fine actress like Agnes Moorehead, the script turned out to be more the character study of a woman than a technical experiment." In her own observations of the play, Moorhead once said “Some of the value of the radio show was its intensity, and the fact that by the time it ended, you felt that this woman had dug her own grave."
For our performances, I have attempted to recreate the sound and feel of the original Suspense! productions. Doing it live in front of an audience does create some difficulties in this area, though, which is why, aside from the Host, you will only see Mrs. Stevenson and the Foley artist on the stage during the performance. The remaining characters, who are only heard via the telephone, will be hidden from the audience to maintain the story's original focus, which is Mrs. Stevenson, alone in her bedroom.
I was very lucky to find such an exceptional array of actors to make this happen, particularly newcomer Sami Genstein (Second Shift) as Mrs. Stevenson (photo right) and Katie Drexel (2010: Our Hideous Future—The Musical) as her nemesis, the Operator. I hope that they, along with our Foley artist, the sound design and the staging, will pull you fully into the last terrifying moments of a sad woman's life, and leave you holding your breath until intermission.
Come up afterward and let me know if we succeeded. If you're still breathing, that is.
I'd heard about Sorry, Wrong Number for many years, but always in the context of visual media: the 1948 movie with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster or the 1989 TV version with Loni Anderson and Patrick McNee. It wasn't until producer Chris DeKalb suggested it for this year's mystery-themed summer show that I learned about its amazing history—as a radio play on CBS' long-running series Suspense!.Orson Welles once called Sorry, Wrong Number "the greatest single radio script ever written" and its writer, Lucille Fletcher, "one of the most gifted of all the writers who've ever worked for this medium". (Welles had earlier appeared in another classic script by Fletcher called The Hitch-Hiker on his own Mercury Theatre program in 1941 and, later, on Suspense! itself).
Fletcher started out during the Depression working at CBS Radio in a variety of jobs: music librarian, copyright clerk, publicity writer and in the typing pool. She was encouraged to try scriptwriting by her future husband, composer Bernard Hermann, who conducted the CBS orchestra at the time. Her first radio success came when the famous Norman Corwin adapted one of her magazine stories, My Client Curly, into a play.
The inspiration for Sorry, Wrong Number came from an incident in Fletcher's own life. One day, when at a grocery store on Manhattan's East Side to obtain milk for one of her children who was sick, Fletcher asked a well-dressed woman if she might be permitted to go ahead of her in the checkout line. The woman's response of ''No, you cannot. How dare you?'', and subsequent rudeness to both her and the clerk, motivated Fletcher to seek revenge via the pen.
Sorry, Wrong Number premiered on Tuesday, May 25th, 1943, featuring actress Agnes Moorhead (photo above) as the terrified Mrs. Elbert Stevenson. However, there was a major gaffe by one of the actors at the end of the play's East Coast broadcast that led to great confusion for the audience. Ms. Moorhead recalled that “To the amazement of CBS, they got about 500 calls in the space of an hour asking what had happened, so they had to rebroadcast it two months later.” This second airing, in August of 1943, was the first of seven repeats of the story on Suspense!, making it the most-requested play in radio history. (And these were not reruns, either, but full productions — each featuring Agnes Moorhead. Reruns as we know them were virtually unheard of in those days).
Fletcher's revenge on that obnoxious woman became — and remains — one of the most terrifying stories ever produced for radio. The story of a lonely invalid who overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is unable to get anyone to listen to her came, in part, from Fletcher's own circumstances: “It was set in a weird house I lived in with my husband,” she once wrote. “Near us was the Queensborough Bridge over which ran the old Third Avenue elevated subway. I used to sit in the bedroom at night and think how awful it would be if something happened and I couldn't get help.”
Of the play, Fletcher said "[It] was originally designed as an experiment in sound — and not just as a murder story — with the telephone as its chief protagonist. I wanted to write something that, by its very nature should, for maximum effectiveness, be heard rather than seen. However, in the hands of a fine actress like Agnes Moorehead, the script turned out to be more the character study of a woman than a technical experiment." In her own observations of the play, Moorhead once said “Some of the value of the radio show was its intensity, and the fact that by the time it ended, you felt that this woman had dug her own grave."
For our performances, I have attempted to recreate the sound and feel of the original Suspense! productions. Doing it live in front of an audience does create some difficulties in this area, though, which is why, aside from the Host, you will only see Mrs. Stevenson and the Foley artist on the stage during the performance. The remaining characters, who are only heard via the telephone, will be hidden from the audience to maintain the story's original focus, which is Mrs. Stevenson, alone in her bedroom.
I was very lucky to find such an exceptional array of actors to make this happen, particularly newcomer Sami Genstein (Second Shift) as Mrs. Stevenson (photo right) and Katie Drexel (2010: Our Hideous Future—The Musical) as her nemesis, the Operator. I hope that they, along with our Foley artist, the sound design and the staging, will pull you fully into the last terrifying moments of a sad woman's life, and leave you holding your breath until intermission.Come up afterward and let me know if we succeeded. If you're still breathing, that is.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 12:24 pm (UTC)From what I saw last night, it looks like you changed your mind about this?
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Date: 2012-07-28 02:08 pm (UTC)