Ekleticgoodies

“Abraham Lincoln”

 Produced, directed and scripted by Orson Welles

Augest 15th 1938
Starring Orson Welles

 Orson Welles dramatizes a few highpoints in the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. In this radio drama Welles used a variety of Lincoln's writings and speeches. For 1938, this radio drama certainly did not skirt racial issues; for example, Welles reads  from the first Lincoln-Douglass Debates, where Lincoln said, “There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence…”

The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown.

The show first broadcast on CBS and CBC in July 1938. It ran without a sponsor until December of that year, when it was picked up by Campbell’s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.

Approximate play time of 1 hour.