Remembering Welles

May 6th, marks the centenary of Orson Welles’ birth, and there’s lots of stuff online and on FB to celebrate the occasion. I’m currently listening to the Mercury Theatre’s radio production of The Magnificent Ambersons, broadcast October 1939 as part of The Campbell Playhouse series. The recording like most of the existing Mercury radio plays is rather scratchy and lo-fi but it’s an excellent hour’s worth of drama, with Walter Huston playing “queer looking duck” Eugene Morgan and Welles doubling up as narrator and as the arrogant, immature George Amberson. Perhaps most significant though is that the radio play was what RKO used as a guide to shaping The Magnificent Ambersons film in Welles’ absence. Highly recommended listening. The Magnificent Ambersons radio play (and other Mercury radio productions) can be dl’ed here