Ekleticgoodies

Campbell Playhouse's

ORSON WELLES

PLOT SUMMARY:

  On the heels of The Late George Apley, the novel for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939, John P. Marquand turned his gently satiric gaze on his own profession-the writing life-in this delectable portrait of a stagnant yet distinguished literary family in early 20th-century Boston. Jim is the only member of the extended Brill family at Wickford Point ever to have any money in his pocket. The rest of the Brills siphon gas from his car and overdraw their accounts with the cheerful abandon of those who have always been taken care of. In New England the Brills are cultural and literary royalty with an intellectual lineage that hasn't so much been inherited by the younger generation as it has fed an attenuated languor. The Wickford Point Brills are content to live off the implications of their name alone. And even as Jim laughs at his eccentric cousins, he cannot help being drawn back to Wickford Point, home to a gentle northern air that fills him with an inexorable sadness, but a place to which, ultimately, he belongs.

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.