Haven't been to a Radio Cavalcade show yet? You're in for a treat as you become the live studio audience, back in time during the Golden Age of Radio. Live foley artists and live musical stylings, actors taking on multiple roles during a broadcast, and more. Just $5 gets you in the door of this audience favorite. MERCURY THEATER'S "THE HITCHHIKER" Actor and director Orson Welles along with John Houseman was responsible for the creation and popularity of Mercury Theater, achieved with only $110 for production costs. It was a relatively short lived show – only five months – but it remains one of the most culturally significant shows in entertainment history. Best known for their production of “The War of the Worlds,” which had many in the radio audience believing Earth really was being invaded by Martians, Mercury Theater quickly gained recognition and its popularity earned it a sponsorship from Campbell's Soup with the name of the show soon changed to The Campbell's Playhouse. “The Hitchhiker” was written by Lucille Fletcher, who also penned the classic “Sorry, Wrong Number.” In “The Hitchhiker” a man named Ronald Adams keeps encountering the same solitary hitchhiker as he drives alone across the country. At first, he is curious as to how the hitchhiker seems to be everywhere he goes, but then his sense of dread gradually increases. Ronald finally tries to stop at a phone booth to call his mother, but in an unexpected twist, a stranger answers the phone only to tell him some nightmarish news. "The Hitchhiker" was originally performed on Orson Welles' radio show, "Mercury Theater," in 1941, and was made into an episode of the TV show "The Twilight Zone" in 1960. BEST PLAYS' "ARSENIC AND OLD LACE" Going on-air from 1952 to 1953, Best Plays was an NBC Radio program that featured some of the most excellent theatric plays ever created. Hosted by John Chapman, New York Daily News' drama critic, the top stars of Broadway were brought in to recreate their stage roles. “Arsenic and Old Lace” is a comedy thriller in which Mortimer, a dramatic critic on a New York newspaper, discovers his two old aunts are quite insane! When he visits his sweet little aunties Abby and Martha to tell them the good news that he is going to marry Elaine Harper, he discovers a dead body in the window seat. Shocked that his aunts are not surprised, he learns that they have been killing lonely old men and consider it an act of charity! So far they have killed 12 old gentlemen, and Mortimer’s cousin Teddy, himself a little insane, has been burying them in the cellar for his aunties. The aunties have a third nephew, Jonathan, who also likes to kill people so that he can use their faces to change his own, and this time when the aunts see Jonathan, he looks like Boris Karloff! Soon, Mortimer begins to question his own sanity, as it seems the whole of his family is crazy. “Arsenic and Old Lace” aired July 6, 1952, and featured the king of horror movies, Boris Karloff, recreating his stage role.
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