Adaptations: Radio Versions of Newspaper Films

Note: This page is a draft… the link lists are incomplete and there will be quite a bit of editing before I declare it finished. But most of the program titles below link to playable MP3 files already. Let me know if you find broken links or new adaptations to add to the list. Also see my overview At the Movies page.

by Bob Stepno

Whether the newspaper journalists involved were the drama critics in “All About Eve” and “Arsenic & Old Lace,” the international reporters in “Blood on the Sun” and “Foreign Correspondent,” or the courthouse scandalmongers in “The Front Page” and “His Girl Friday,” radio loved adapting Hollywood movie plots, and did it over and over in what were called “anthology series.”

So many top stars appeared in these broadcasts that Hollywood clearly encouraged the publicity, especially back before television brought moving pictures into the living room. Scripting half-hour or hour-long adaptations of feature-length films must have been a challenge. Even the shortened radio versions of movie stories presumably helped audiences relive favorite films and promoted film revivals, as well as raising interest in the stars’ next features — which were usually mentioned at the close of each broadcast.

Film producer and director Cecil B. DeMille was host for the early years of one of the series,  Lux Radio Theater. (Archived online copies are often of the Armed Forces Radio rebroadcasts, done without commercial sponsors. Wartime episodes “on behalf of the United States government” were renamed Victory Theater; later AFRS versions were called Hollywood Radio Theater.)

Squibb presented Academy Award Theater in 1946, which featured Oscar-nominated players and Oscar-connected films, including several newspaper-journalist dramas: “The Front Page,” “Foreign Correspondent,” “It Happened Tomorrow” and “Blood on the Sun.”

The “Academy Award” claim in the series title required some cast and story shuffling, such as putting John Garfield in the James Cagney leading role of “Blood on the Sun.” Garfield had been nominated for an Oscar in an unrelated film in 1938. “Blood on the Sun” itself won a 1946 Oscar, although it was for art direction-interior decoration, an aspect of the film that doesn’t come through on radio. Cagney appeared in the Lux Theater, 1945 version of the film the previous year. (The Archive.org collection of 1945 Lux episodes does not include it, but it was added to a supplementary collection.)

The full Cagney movie is also available in various digital video formats at both the archive.org film collection and IMDB/hulu.com, apparently because its copyright wasn’t renewed.

Academy Award Theater wasn’t the first to put the Oscar-nominated The Front Page on the air, but its half-hour 1946 radio version did reunite the original stars of the 1931 movie, Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien. Lee Tracy, who played Hildy Johnson on Broadway, also brought the role to radio, but I haven’t found a recording of that broadcast. The 1937 Lux Theater production was distinctive for another reason: It included real-life newspaperman Walter Winchell as Hildy Johnson. The detail-oriented archival researchers at DigitalDeliToo located a Wisconsin State Journal listing from Jan. 27, 1946, for a production of The Front Page by Theatre Guild on the Air starring Melvyn Douglas and Michael O’Shea.

However, Ford Theater’s 1948 production may have come closest to the 1928 Broadway original thanks to the script treatment by the distinguished critic, editor and playwright Gilbert Seldes.  The younger brother of long time journalist George Seldes and one of the first critics to take seriously “The Lively Arts” of popular culture, Gilbert Seldes was later to become the first director of television for CBS News and founding dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the father of actress Marian Seldes.

Ford Theater was a high-quality anthology series that ran for only two years, just as television was beginning to cut into the audience for evening home entertainment. Along with “The Front Page” and “Storm in a Teacup,” the  1947-49 archive.org collection does not include the series’ production of another film about an distinctive era in journalism — the Academy Award winning “Cimarron,” the Edna Ferber story about a husband and wife who found and run an Oklahoma newspaper during the area’s growth from frontier territory to oil-rich state.

DigitalDeli’s scouring of newspaper program logs located a Dec. 14, 1947, Amarillo News-Globe listing: “At 4 o’clock on the Ford Theater, KGNC-NBC, it’s Edna Ferber’s epic novel of the opening of the Southwest and the Oklahoma territory, Cimmaron. Barbara Weeks is cast as Sabra, gentle southern wife of a newspaperman and dreamer Yancey Cravat.” The hour-long Ford production may have told more of Ferber’s story than the two half-hour productions done years earlier on other series, although both of those versions included the original star, Irene Dunn.

Also missing from the audio archives is a Ford Theater production of Booth Tarkington’s “Gentleman from Indiana,” starring Burgess Meredith. Digital Deli uncovered a May 27, 1949, listing in the  Syracuse Herald Journal, which said, “The story deals with a young man who comes back home to run a newspaper, finds political corruption and tries to clean it up as a good citizen. The love interest is provided in the sub-plot of a girl who comes back home to look for her father.”

Some stories featuring journalists came back again and again. This list — all programs available in MP3 format online — may be just a start, considering how many classic Hollywood films had journalists in their plots.

Sometimes the anthology series recruited members of the original casts, sometimes intriguing alternative players from either the Hollywood production or a preceding Broadway play. For instance, Screen Guild Theater replaced Cary Grant with Eddie Albert as Mortimer Brewster, the lead of “Arsenic & Old Lace” and Best Plays brought in Donald Cook to play Mortimer, but both had Boris Karloff play the homicidal maniac brother, as he had on Broadway. (Raymond Massey took the part in the film, but the screenwriters kept a police officer’s comment that “He looks like Boris Karloff.”)

Each film or series title, or year of production, is linked to a downloadable MP3 files, an archive.org series page, or other source of information. (Before you click, hover the mouse over the link for more information as a browser “tooltip.”)

1. All About Eve (Lux Theater, Screen Guild Theater 1951 and Theater Guild on the Air). Original stars Bette Davis and Anne Baxter with Lux, Tallulah Bankhead heads the Theater Guild cast including the author of the original short story in the supporting role of Karen, the star’s friend who is manipulated by the up-and-coming young actress in the title role.
2. All the King’s Men, NBC University Theater‘s January 1949 dramatization of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-winning novel effectively uses its newspaperman-turned-political-operative character as narrator. The radio adaptation precedes the Broderick Crawford film, which was released ten months later.  (Film trailer at YouTube, summary at IMDB.)
3. Arsenic & Old Lace (Screen Guild Players 1946 with Boris Karloff and Eddie Albert; Best Plays, 1952 with Karloff and Donald Cook; also done by Ford Theater 1948)
4. Blood on the Sun (Lux Theater, 1945; Academy Award Theater, 1946)
5. Bullets or Ballots (Lux Radio Theater, 1939)
6. Call Northside 777 (Hollywood Sound Stage, Screen Directors Playhouse, 1949, Screen Guild Theater, 1948)
7. Chicago Deadline, 1950 production by Screen Director’s Playhouse. The film also is (or has been) online at YouTube.

8. Christmas in Connecticut, at Screen Guild Theater
9. Cimarron (Cavalcade of America and Hallmark Playhouse with Irene Dunne, also by Ford Theater 1947 with Barbara Weeks as Sabra Cravat)
10. Deadline USA (Lux Theater, as Hollywood Radio Theater, 1953)
11. Design for Scandal (Screen Guild, 1944)
12. Each Dawn I Die (Lux 1943); prison drama about crime reporter framed for manslaughter, making unexpected gangster friend in jail. Lux had the film’s George Raft as the gangster, with Franchot Tone as the reporter instead of the film’s James Cagney. See the film version’s Wikipedia page; film and radio version are both based on a Jerome Odlum novel.

13. Foreign Correspondent (Academy Award Theater, 1946)
14. Front Page Woman (Lux 1939). Blog post
15. Gentleman’s Agreement, Lux Radio Theater, 1948 and 1955. The film was based on a popular novel and won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Leading man Gregory Peck appeared in the first Lux adaptation. His part was taken by Ray Milland in the second production seven years later, with Dorothy McGuire recreating her original role. Although the story is about anti-semitism, the level of racial sensitivity in 1955 is reflected in a between-acts discussion of a new film about South Africa that, an announcer mentions, features “tamed” Zulus in the cast.
16. Gentleman from Indiana (Ford Theater 1949, CBS Forecast 1940. The Internet Movie DataBase lists only a 1915 silent film adaptation of this Booth Tarkington novel about a crusading editor taking on a political boss, but radio collector sites indicate at least two adaptations for radio, neither of which is immediately available online. The novel itself is out of copyright and is available online: Gentleman from Indiana at Google Books; Gentleman from Indiana at Project Gutenberg
17. Hands of Mr. Ottermole (Suspense, Radio City Playhouse). While this frequently anthologized classic mystery story by Thomas Burke has not been a feature film, it was produced for radio, and then for television by Suspense and by Alfred Hitchcock Presents (available via Hulu). The radio versions are listed in some “old time radio” logs as “Dr. Ottermole,” apparently through an often-copied typographical error.
18. His Girl Friday (Screen Guild Theater 1941, Lux Radio Theater 1940)
19. I Cover the Waterfront (a series pilot, apparently never produced regularly; based on Max Miller novel and film)
20. It Happened One Night (Campbell Playhouse, 1940, Lux Radio Theater, 1939)
21. It Happened Tomorrow (Screen Guild, 1944, with original stars Dick Powell and Linda Darnell;  Lux, 1944, Don Ameche and Anne Baxter; Theater of Romance, 1945, Ralph Bellamy and Joan Allison; Academy Award Theater 1946, Eddie Bracken and Ann Blyth)
22. Knickerbocker Holiday (Theater Guild on the Air)
23. Libel (Lux Radio Theater, 1941 and 1943, both with Ronald Colman; a 1935 play adapted for radio in ’41, for BBC TV in 1938, not made into a feature film until 1959)
24. Love Is News (Romance with Dane Clark and Faye Emerson, Stars Over Hollywood, Screen Guild Theater 1946)
25. Meet Flash Casey (While the film wasn’t directly adapted to radio, the long-running radio series “Casey, Crime Photographer” and the film were based on the same character, who began in magazine fiction)
26. Meet John Doe (Screen Guild Theater, Philip Morris Playhouse; mp3 versions are not in the archive, but the full-length film is: Meet John Doe 1941 film)
27. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Campbell Playhouse, Lux Radio Theater 1937)
28. Next Time We Love  (Screen Director’s Playhouse, Romance and Screen Guild Theater); “Classic Movies For You” at YouTube has a copy of the full film “Next Time We Love“:
    

    “I wonder what they do to newspapermen to make them work so hard” — best man, as groom leaves bride to cover big story

29. No Time For Love (Screen Guild Theater) Like the film, this radio version stars Claudette Colbert as a somewhat sophisticated photojournalist and Fred MacMurray as a working-class guy who gets in her way.
30. Nothing Sacred (Screen Guild and Lux Radio Theater 1940); Lux production included Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as the reporter and Joan Bennett as Hazel Flagg, as the subject of his stories. The classic film, which is out of copyright and available for download on its title above, starred Fredric March and Carole Lombard. Jerry Haendiges log also lists a 1941 Screen Guild radio production with Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor and James Gleason.
31. Penny Serenade (Lux Radio Theater, repeated in 1944), also at Matinee Theater, Romance, Screen Guild, and the original film is available at Archive.org.
32. Philadelphia Story (Lux 1942 as Victory Theater, also Lux Radio Theater, 1943; Screen Guild Theater, 1947; Theater Guild on the Air , 1948 (James Stewart, John Conte and Joan Tetzel, according to Digital Deli Too); Best Plays, 1952. The latter production has plenty of journalism coincidences. It featured as Tracy Lord (the Katherine Hepburn role), Joan Alexander, who also was the voice of Lois Lane on radio and cartoons; as Liz, the photographer, Betty Furness, who later had a TV series called “Byline” or “News Gal” and also did some real consumer reporting, and as Mike, the James Stewart reporter role, Myron McCormack, who also played a newspaperman in State of the Union, according to the introduction by John Chapman of the Daily News. Strangely, Chapman doesn’t mention who plays the Cary Grant role as C.K. Dexter Haven, but popular radio actor Joseph Curtin is identified in the final credits. Incidentally, Curtin’s daughter, Valerie, had a role in the movie All the President’s Men, and his niece, Jane Curtin, co-anchored the “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live.)
33. Remember the Day,  Screen Guild 1943
34. Storm in a Teacup (Ford Theater)
35. The Story of G.I. Joe wasn’t literally adapted for radio from the movie, but war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s stories, the basis of the film, were behind several radio dramatizations, including Here is Your War on Cavalcade of America, after Pyle’s book by that name, and Ernie Pyle, Typewriter in a Foxhole, a 1958 Biographies in Sound episode, more documentary than dramatization.
36. Theodora Goes Wild (Campbell Theater, 1940 and Screen Guild Theater, 1943); while the subject is a novelist, the main plot is about the newspaper serialization of her novel scandalizing her hometown. Irene Dunne, who played Theodora in the 1936 film, did the Screen Guild radio version with Cary Grant, while Orson Welles enlisted Loretta Young for the Campbell edition.
37. The Front Page (Academy Award 1946, Lux 1937, Ford Theater 1948, Theatre Guild 1946, no audio)
38. The Glass Key (Campbell 1939, Screen Guild 1946, Studio One 1948)
39. The Life of Emile Zola (Lux 1939)
40. Trent’s Last Case (Suspense 1953, NBC University Theater, 1949). The book is out of copyright and available from Archive.org in a “Librivox” recording as well as in print: Trent’s Last Case (novel); filmed as a silent in the 1920s and in 1952 with Orson Welles.
41. Up in Central Park (Screen Guild 1948)
42. Wake Up and Live was adapted by Lux Radio Theater in 1944 with a couple of casting twists from the 1937 movie. Instead of Wizard of Oz tin man Jack Haley as a nervous singer, Lux brought in a newcomer named Frank Sinatra, making “his first appearance in the dramatic end of radio.” Walter Winchell played himself in the movie version, but he didn’t get the part for the radio adaptation. Instead, the name is changed and Jimmie Gleason plays the part, doing a passable Winchell impersonation.
43. Woman of the Year (Screen Guild 1943)

Other source pages on anthology-style radio series:

• Author’s Playhouse
• Best Plays, introduced by drama critic John Chapman of The New York Daily News, who edited the annual print anthology by the same name. See Best Plays Log research at DigitalDeli2
• Cavalcade of America
• The Campbell Playhouse
• CBS Radio Workshop
• Ford Theatre
• General Electric Theater
• Lux Radio Theater
• Mercury Theatre on the Air ()
• (Theater of) Romance, including Love is News, Penny Serenade, Next Time We Love, and It Happened Tomorrow.
• Suspense
• Screen Director’s Playhouse
• The Screen Guild Theater and archive.org collection
• Theater Guild on the Air

Theater Five at ABC was an attempt to revive anthology radio drama in 1964-65, after television had taken hold as the more popular dramatic medium. If there are any journalists portrayed in the series, I haven’t heard those episodes yet. Perhaps by then television had also squeezed the newspaper journalist out of the script writers’ consciousness.