This question has come up quite a bit on various otr mailing lists and
forums over the years. In checking newspaper listings, it looks like there
was only one broadcast of the "Mercury Theater" series, so it was heard in
the late afternoon on the West Coast.
On a side note, Mercury producer and actor Paul Stewart, in the 70s or 80s,
told some otr enthusiasts that the used to have the rehearsal discs for
"War of the Worlds" - he kept them because Welles was stopping the
rehearsal and complaining about how terrible the script was and that it was
the "worst thing he ever read".
No one seems to know what happened to that set of discs.
Randy
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Michael Shoshani <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 5/27/2014 06:10, Randy A. Riddle wrote:
>
>> I compared it to the Mannheim Fox version that's common along with some
>> others I was able to gather up (a Radio Recorders 1948 dub for example).
>> It's definitely the broadcast version and not the rehearsal - the pacing
>> of the speech and inflections, along with the effects and music cues are
>> the same.
>>
>> Randy
>>
>>
>
> Just as a curiosity, did Mercury Theater of the Air do a single broadcast
> for every show, or did they do a separate one for each coast? If the
> latter, I wonder if both versions were recorded.
>
> Michael Shoshani
> Chicago
>
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