 Campbell Playhouse's BEAU GESTE by P.C. Wren Produced and scripted by Orson Welles STARRING ORSON WELLES PLOT SUMMARY: Beau Geste is a 1924 adventure novel by P. C. Wren, which has been adapted to film several times Although minor plot points separate the versions, all of the versions share a common element of a stolen gem, which one of the Geste brothers, Michael "Beau" Geste, is thought to have stolen from his adoptive family. He subsequently runs away to join the French Foreign Legion; in some adaptations, more than one of the Geste brothers joins him or goes to find him. The original novel, on which the various films are more or less loosely based, is written in a dated style in which English upper class values and attitudes are dominant. It does however provide a detailed and fairly authentic description of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion, which has led to (unproven) suggestions that P. C. Wren himself served with this regiment. The climax, in which one of the Geste brothers is the only survivor of the garrison of a desert fort is however melodramatic and has no historical basis. 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 BEAU GESTE EXCERPT.mp3
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