The Man Who Was Thursday
by G.K. Chesterton & Orson Welles
 Mercury Theatre on the Air’s “The Man Who Was Thursday” by G.K. Chesterton September 5th 1938 Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, this text is firmly rooted in its time and place--turn of the century London--but it also defies temporal boundaries. 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. |
