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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 25 |
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Before 'Inner Sanctum,'
there was 'Lights Out!'
of TheColumnists.com
Radio had a special way of scaring the living daylights out of listeners: It could unleash the human imagination, the most efficient system of special effects ever devised.
If you're old enough to remember The Golden Age of Radio, roughly 1930 to 1950, or you have a favorite modern radio station that likes to play Old-Time Radio (OTR) programs late at night, you don't need to be reminded of how often "Inner Sanctum Mysteries," "Suspense," "I Love A Mystery" or "The Shadow" could shiver your timbers with just a few well-spoken words and maybe a little sinister organ music.
But before "Suspense," which began in 1942, or "Inner Sanctum," which began in 1940, there was the grand-daddy of all radio horror shows: "Lights Out," which ran from 1935-39 on NBC, returned in 1942-43 on CBS, moved back to NBC for most of 1945-46, then finished its radio run on ABC in 1947.
Though "Lights Out" was created by Wyllis Cooper, who wrote many of the early radioplays, most people associated the program with Arch Oboler, one of radio's most acclaimed creative talents, who wrote, directed and acted in many of the greatest episodes. Oboler, who also started the 1950s boom in 3-D movies with the first of them, "Bwana Devil" (1952), took over the program so thoroughly that many people today think of it as "Arch Oboler's 'Lights Out.'"
You can still find a great many original radio episodes on audio tapes and CDs--just Google "OTR" on the internet and check out some of the marketers of old radio programs--but here's another very interesting way to sample the oldest of the broadcast horror shows: Watch them on TV!
Yes, "Lights Out" was among the many radio programs that successfully made the jump to television when the new medium began to knock the pins out from under radio in the late 1940s. Fred Coe, the TV pioneer whose specialty was special events he called "spectaculars," first brought "Lights Out" to television as a series of four specials in 1946--the first year network TV really appeared on the American scene.
Then, on July 19, 1949, "Lights Out" premiered as a regular weekly series on NBC, playing as a half-hour show Tuesday nights from 9-9:30 until that November, when it switched to Monday nights. The show remained on NBC until its final telecast on September 28, 1952.
You can now sample half a dozen episodes in two volumes of "Lights Out" currently available on DVD from Alpha Home Entertainment. These are extremely inexpensive DVDs, running in the $5-6 range, so you're not risking much to see what this classic series was all about.
Be warned that videotape didn't exist in the 1949-52 era, so the quality of these shows is not great compared to shows that came later when videotape was available; or studios had learned from Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball that it was wise to film programs rather than perform them live, so they could be preserved indefinitely.
These "Lights Out" shows survive only because the networks then made what were called "kinescope" copies of them by filming the picture and recording the sound as it came over the actual TV set. Lighting is poor and the episodes look a little washed-out or fuzzy.
Still, they're eminently watchable and you'll certainly be able to feel the suspense generated by the actors, working live in front of a TV camera as the images were sent out to homes.
"Lights Out, Volume One" contains two episodes: "The Passage Beyond," starring Stella Andrew and Ralph Stanton, two of the many little known actors who worked in early live TV dramas, and "The Man With the Watch," starring English actor Francis L. Sullivan, best remembered today for his role in David Lean's acclaimed 1948 version of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist."
In "Passage Beyond," a husband and wife are entertaining a female guest in their creaky old house, which is supposedly haunted by the ghost of "Lady Ann." It turns out the husband wants to "entertain" the lady guest a little extra after his wife has gone to sleep. Naturally, this is when the ghost of "Lady Ann" appears from a secret passage in the house.
In "Man With the Watch," the hulking Sullivan is a sinister fellow whose watch is actually a transporter device that can send you to his home planet. You do not want to see him making adjustments to his watch while looking suspiciously at you.
"Lights Out, Volume Two," contains four episodes. (The first volume offers two episodes of other early TV shows of the same genre.) The first is "Dark Image," in which a new bride (Anne Shepherd) looks into an antique mirror once owned by the dead ex-lover of her husband (Donald Woods) and sees the dead woman's image standing next to hers.
In the second episode, called "The Faceless Man," Robert Sterling plays a hideously ugly man who gets a cosmetic makeover from a plastic surgeon and emerges as rather handsome when the bandages come off. But no sooner does the man start his new life as a charmer when he's stalked by a strange guy (Ted Hecht) whose face is swatched in bandages. Who is this menacing character and what does he want? Check it out.
The best of all the episodes is the third one "The Veil," starring Lee J. Cobb as a top criminal lawyer who has his "low class" girl friend bumped off because she's pressing him for marriage and he knows an important man like him can't be saddled with such a cheap "dame." But almost immediately after the murder, a new female "client," who wears a veil, starts pestering him to help her bring to justice the man who killed her. That's right: It's the angry spirit of his ex-lover, played by Arlene Francis, best remembered today as a panelist on TV's long-running quiz show "What's My Line?"
Cobb's performance lifts this episode up quite a bit and the finish, in which lawyer Cobb has to defend himself against the spirits of all the people he's killed on his way to the top, is pretty good drama.
The final episode in this second volume is "Perchance to Dream," in which author William Eythe is a man who dreams things that seem to happen in real life to a rival author. It also turns out the dreaming author's mysterious"dream girl" is the other man's wife. This, too, is a good one with a good finish.
All the episodes in these two volumes are hosted by creepy Frank Gallop, who took over the job from the original host, veteran movie character actor Jack LaRue, in 1950.
A few other "Lights Out" episodes have turned up as fillers in other DVDs in the Alpha Home Entertainment catalog, but how many of the shows actually still exist isn't known. Though these TV episodes aren't anywhere as frightening as listening to "Lights Out" on the radio, it's mainly because your imagination always scares you more than any visual effects could do.
Still, it's great to have a chance to see
how "Lights Out" played when it came to TV after one
of the most successful runs of any radio horror show.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The illustration is courtesy of Alpha Home Entertainment. This column first posted June 23, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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