Ekleticgoodies

Mercury Theatre on the Air’s

The 39 Steps

written John Buchan
Produced, directed, scripted by Orson Welles
starring Orson Welles

The 39 Step is an adventure novel by the author John Buchan, first published in 1915 . It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous habit of getting himself out of sticky situations.
The novel formed the basis for a number of  adaptations, notably Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 adaptation The 39 Steps, and in this case Orson Welles adaptation for his Mercury Theatre Company.
 
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.