Ekleticgoodies

Campbell Playhouse's

"AH, WILDERNESS"

September 1939

written by Eugene O'Neil

Scripted & Starring Orson Welles

w/Arlene Francis, Joan Tetzel

Ah, Wilderness! is a play by Eugene O'Neil, and has the distinction of being the only true comedy he would ever write. In contrast to O'Neill's other, often tragic works, the overall tone of Ah, Wilderness! is rather  sentimental and nostalgic

The play takes place around the Fourth of July, 1906 and focuses on the Miller family of Connecticut The main plot deals with the middle son, 17-year-old Richard, and his coming of age.

The story was also made into the 1959 Broadway musical Take Me Along starring Jackie Gleason as the drunken Uncle Sid (Beery's role in the film), Walter Pidgeonas Nat and Robert Morse as Richard. The play ran for 448 performances. Gleason won the 1960 Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical.

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.