THE BLACK MUSEUM
(aka BLACK MUSEUM)
ORSON WELLES
| "The Black Museum" (aka "Black Museum") was a suspense anthology radio series with Orson Welles as the host and narrator.
The Black Museum was produced in Sydney by Creswick Jenkinson on behalf of Towers of London. It had a top-line Australian cast including Joe McCormick, plus American actor Harp McGuire. Orson Welles's introductions were recorded on tape in London, then flown to Australia to be added to the locally recorded performances.
The Black Museum was based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. The program was broadcast in the United States in 1952 on Mutual.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator of stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true crime cases. The show's opening began: (Sound of Big Ben chimes) The Black Museum ... a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects ... a woman’s shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe ... all are touched by murder".
ORSON WELLES From IMDB: Born George Orson Welles on 6 May 1915 in Kenosha, Winconsin, USA; his father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles when a child, was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting). When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
Welles would narrate and host the radio anthology series "The Black Museum".
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. From 1973-1974, Welles hosted "Orson Welles Great Mystery".
In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.
Welles would host the 1984-1985 suspense anthology series "Scene of the Crime".
Welles passed away on 10 October 1985 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Below is episode 1 (1952) "The 22 Caliber Pistol" from the series: |
LINKS
 Internet Movie Data Base "Orson Welles" |
 Wikipedia "The Black Museum" |
 Radio Horror Hosts "The Black Museum" |
 Classic Radio Shows "The Black Museum" |
 Old Time Radio Downloads "Black Museum" |
Wikipedia "Orson Welles" |
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