Mercury Theater 1938-07-11 (1) Dracula
A solicitor's clerk discovers that Count Dracula is a vampire, setting off a desperate effort to track the count down before he can claim more victims.
The Mercury Theatre on the Air was Orson Welles's 1938 CBS literary anthology, performed by the Mercury repertory company and remembered most famously for The War of the Worlds. Golden Radio Hour's 130-item collection includes core Mercury Theatre broadcasts alongside additional Welles-era material cataloged with the program.
Only 18 objects belong to Mercury Theatre on the Air proper; later items are separately profiled by historical program.
Names that turn up again and again in the surviving run include Orson Welles (performer, host, and radio adaptor), Bernard Herrmann (conductor, composer, and music), Ray Collins (performer and narrator), Dan Seymour (announcer and performer), Edgar Barrier (performer), George Coulouris (performer), and Eustace Wyatt (performer).
Across its run, the surviving broadcasts are tied to CBS Radio Network, WABC, WBT, and WRVA.
The stories often return to literary adaptation, war and military service, horror and supernatural, and aviation.
The show also sits in a wider radio history that includes Mercury Theatre on the Air launch, War of the Worlds broadcast, Campbell Playhouse transition, and Ceiling Unlimited wartime aviation series.
If you are following the same actors and creative circles, related programs worth opening next include Columbia Workshop, The Shadow, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Suspense, and Theater Five.
Search this program or browse in its validated catalog order.
A solicitor's clerk discovers that Count Dracula is a vampire, setting off a desperate effort to track the count down before he can claim more victims.
Young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map and joins a dangerous voyage to a remote island, where pirates and buried riches turn the expedition into a fight for survival.
Against the violence of the French Revolution, an old injustice binds together a young couple and a disillusioned lawyer whose final choice becomes an act of sacrifice.
After being framed for murder, an ordinary man goes on the run while trying to expose an international espionage plot that could trigger a war.
A Mercury Theatre anthology presenting three separate short stories. Sherwood Anderson's I'm a Fool follows a young racetrack worker who invents a false identity to impress a girl and later…
A biographical drama follows Abraham Lincoln from his humble beginnings through the burdens of the presidency, the Civil War and his final sacrifice.
A charming but restless Viennese bachelor moves through a succession of romantic entanglements that finally carry him toward an eventful wedding day.
An innocent man survives wrongful imprisonment, reinvents himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo and sets out to punish those who betrayed him.
A poet secretly working as a detective infiltrates an anarchist council and gradually discovers that neither his fellow conspirators nor their mysterious leader are what they first appear to be.
Shakespeare's Roman tragedy follows Caesar's rise, the conspiracy against him and the political violence unleashed by his assassination.
Sherlock Holmes pursues Professor Moriarty while unraveling a blackmail scheme involving a prominent family and a set of stolen letters.
A polar expedition becomes a brutal survival ordeal when the men are trapped by the Arctic and must struggle against the ice, cold and mounting desperation.
A comic coming-of-age story follows a seventeen-year-old boy through the embarrassments, infatuations and social agonies of adolescence.
Phileas Fogg bets that he can circle the globe in eighty days, facing delays, rescues and a detective who wrongly suspects him of robbery along the way.
A routine radio program is interrupted by escalating reports of a Martian invasion, following the apparent collapse of ordinary life as the attack spreads.
Orson Welles presents a double bill combining Joseph Conrad's dark journey into colonial Africa with comic selections drawn from Clarence Day's family stories.
A freighter captain takes aboard a strange passenger and discovers that the man brings a sinister presence no port seems willing to accept.
Samuel Pickwick and his companions set out on a comic journey of observation that leads to romantic mishaps, misunderstandings and a sensational legal dispute.
A young bride enters her wealthy husband's imposing home and finds their marriage overshadowed by the powerful memory and hidden secrets of his first wife, Rebecca.
On Christmas Eve, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is confronted by spirits who force him to see the cost of his life and the possibility of changing it.
A successful attorney faces the threat of disbarment and betrayal in his personal life before a sensational new case gives him a reason to fight forward.
The voyage of HMS Bounty erupts into mutiny, setting Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian on opposing paths whose consequences follow the crew long after the uprising.
A naive playwright enters Hollywood and finds her stage success at the mercy of a domineering producer whose demands constantly reshape the work.
A young scientist's devotion to rigorous medical research carries him through ethical conflicts and personal tragedy as he tries to fight disease without abandoning his principles.
After a British aircraft crashes in a remote Himalayan kingdom, its passengers become captives in a ruler's calculated plan for revenge.
A loyal political operative moves through a corrupt city's underworld to protect his boss when a murder investigation threatens their entire organization.
Three brothers serving in the French Foreign Legion confront siege, mutiny and the mystery surrounding a stolen family sapphire.
A flamboyant theatrical producer facing ruin encounters his former star aboard a cross-country train and launches a desperate campaign to win her back.
A young woman's life unfolds amid the joys and hardships of her family's Mississippi showboat and her turbulent love for a charming gambler.
A Chinese revolutionary living in exile in Japan builds a family there, then is summoned back to China as war places him in conflict with his wife's homeland.
A divorced couple discover that they are honeymooning with new spouses in adjoining rooms, reigniting the passion and conflict that ended their marriage.
A writer returns to his New England family home and struggles against eccentric relatives and a past that keeps pulling him back into their troubled world.
The everyday lives, loves and losses of the people of Grover's Corners reveal the value of ordinary moments as the years pass.
A notorious but honorable bandit unexpectedly intervenes in the romantic and financial troubles threatening a struggling Texas ranch.
The Campbell Playhouse presents an original historical pageant titled The Things We Have, framed by a modern American family and an adopted immigrant boy learning what freedom has meant across…
Key moments in Queen Victoria's life trace her growth from an inexperienced young monarch into the commanding ruler who becomes Empress.
A sensitive teenager reacts to first heartbreak with rebellion, only to gain a deeper understanding of himself and his parents after a difficult night.
A perceptive woman quietly steers her ambitious husband's career while protecting him from his own vanity and the social mistakes he cannot see.
A man destroyed by betrayal and wrongful imprisonment returns years later as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo to carry out an elaborate revenge against those responsible.
A wanted jewel thief hiding in the Casbah risks the safety of his refuge after becoming captivated by an American woman, drawing him toward a fatal confrontation with police.
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