This Suspense episode is another Orson Welles performance, and we get to hear producer William Spier as an actor! Welles doubles, playing rival magicians.
The show publicity built up another Welles appearance and described the plotline. This is how the 1944-04-13 Orlando FL Evening Star reported the upcoming broadcast:
Orson Welles lends his talents to brilliant dual role, portraying two magicians in "The Marvelous Barastro"' on Suspense tonight... In the psychological mystery tale, one the magicians has a blind wife. The other magician learns to impersonate her husband well that he fools even the wife.... When the husband learns of the chicanery, events move with horrifying swiftness to an awesome conclusion.... William Spier, producer of Suspense appears also as a cast member tonight, assuming the role of a producer to whom Welles tells his weird tale.... The Marvelous Barastro is adapted from Ben Hecht's The Shadow.
Today, Hecht is best known for his 1931 movie The Front Page. He was, however, a high profile Hollywood and literary figure of the time. This episode was adapted by Jacques Anson Finke and first appeared in the 1926-01-30 edition of Liberty Magazine with the title “The Shadow.” Because of possible confusion with the radio series with that title, in which Welles starred in in the late 1930s, the Suspense production title had to change. It was originally re-titled as “The Human Barastro,” itself a change in the name of the short story character of “Sarastro” or “Zarastro.” The “Human” title appeared in early CBS publicity about the broadcast. The publicity with its final title was available in time for the “Marvelous” adjective to appear in most newspapers.
Welles so enjoyed this Hecht story that he bought movie rights to it in late 1944. He never exercised them. In 1947, a screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts was shopped around Hollywood, but the project was never accepted or if it was, was never financed. An original of that script has been offered on auction websites for $300 to $400.
Ben Gross of the NY Daily News of edition 1944-04-14 wrote:
The brilliant talents of an incisive writer and of an outstanding actor combined to give meaning to the title of that radio series Suspense, last night. The actor, Orson Welles, portrayed two rival magicians in The Marvelous Barastro, an adaptation of Ben Hecht's story, The Shadow. A psychological mystery tale, it abounded not only in obvious thrills, but also in those shadowy forebodings which are the hallmark of distinguished yarns of this type. Orson proved himself a masterly performer. In this kind of drama he really is a magician.
There are four surviving recordings. Both the east and west network recordings have survived. A contemporary Armed Forces Radio Service program (#81), drawn from the east broadcast is available.
William Spier appears in the opening scene and there are differences in the Thursday and Monday performances. This is a way to discern from which the AFRS broadcast is drawn. It is drawn from the east broadcast:
East 26:09 and AFRS 24:16 Spier dialogue is “I must admit that the whole thing shook me rather badly. I’ve been…spent the whole week wondering if something might happen, something I couldn’t predict. This morning…I think perhaps it came. At least…while I was reading through the theatrical weekly Variety…”
West is “Since then, I don’t know, the incident’s left me pretty shaky and nervous. All week I’ve had a strange and distracted feeling, as though I were waiting for something…and now I know. It came a few minutes before we went on the air tonight, and then it was too late to send you to another story. I was thumbing through the….my copy of the theatrical weekly Variety…”
There is a later 1970s or 1980s recording released by the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service that is from the west broadcast. In comparison with the east network…
East at approximately 7:36 is “You will teach me to see.” "To see?”
West at 7:37 “You will teach me to see.” “To...to see?” and the AFRTS recording has the same at 4:15 “You will teach me to see.” “To...to see?”
This is one of the few times where there are different Armed Forces recordings that have both surviving east and west network origins. The later AFRTS releases of the series were aggressively edited to exclude elements that might make the shows seem “dated.”
The east network and the first AFRS recordings are in the best sound. The west network and the AFRTS recordings are flawed with narrow range and background noise.
While Welles’ exploits remain well known over so many decades, Hecht’s are not. He is one of the era’s most fascinating persons. He was one of the most prolific writers, screenwriters, playwrights, and even a commentator, and an early TV talk host, across parts of four decades. He had a great dislike for Hollywood but a marvelous ability to set that sentiment aside to write some compelling and very successful movie scripts. He even appeared on Suspense, just four months after this broadcast, narrating his own radio play Actor’s Blood. The envy and shallowness he found in the entertainment business became the source of a good radio script plotline.
Hecht’s biography is too complicated to summarize in this blogpost. These links are recommended:
LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/440413
THE CAST
CAST: ORSON WELLES (Sharri Barastro / Rico Sansini), Hans Conried (Anna’s grandfather), Joe Kearns (Man in Black), Lurene Tuttle (Anna), William Spier (himself)
Peter Lorre took the magician role in his Mystery in the Air radio series. That broadcast of 1947-08-07 has survived.
###
