1938 · CBS

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Twenty-two weeks, no sponsor, no rules

CBS gave the Mercury an hour on Sunday nights with no advertiser attached, which meant no one to answer to. Welles narrated in the first person, cast his Broadway company, and let Bernard Herrmann write a full score every week. It ran twenty-two weeks. The seventeenth of those weeks was Halloween eve, and the newspapers spent the following morning explaining what radio could do to people who had come in late.

19 broadcasts · 1 seasons held · Studio One, New York