Ekleticgoodies

 Mercury Theater on the Air’s

“Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne ”
October 3rd 1938
Starring Orson Welles, Ray Collins

EXCERPT:

Good evening. On Thursday July 14th, at 2:29 in the afternoon, aviator Howard Hughes set his big, twin-motored monoplane "World's Fair 1939" down at Floyd Bennett Field for a new record in round-the-world flying. From take-off to landing, the trip of almost fifteen thousand miles took just three days, nineteen hours and seventeen minutes. That was about three months ago. But back in the 1870's, so Jules Verne tells us, a group of English gentlemen made a wager on what they were confident was a sure thing. Their club-mate, Phileas Fogg, had the fantastic notion that a man, traveling from West to East, could get around the world in eighty days. His attempts, as I think you'll agree, remain, at the least, more incredible than Mr. Hughes achievement-

And that's the story of adventure and break-neck speed that Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre On The Air bring to life for us tonight! Jules Verne's "Around The World In 80 Days" with Orson Welles as Phileas Fogg!

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.