Weird Circle, The
Entry updated 4 April 2017. Tagged: Radio.
Radio series (1943-1945), RCA Recording Services. Syndicated for the Mutual Broadcasting System and the NBC Red Radio Network. Staff writers included Peggy Mayer. Announcers/narrators: unknown. 79 30-minute episodes.
Primarily a Horror, mystery and suspense anthology series, The Weird Circle also offered some adaptations of early sf stories. These include The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe (5 August 1943); The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain (August 1859 Blackwood's Magazine; 1905 chap) by Edward Bulwer Lytton, adapted as "The House and the Mind" (8 September 1943); What Was It? A Mystery (March 1859 Harper's; 1974 chap) by Fitz-James O'Brien (3 October 1943); The Diamond Lens (January 1858 Atlantic Monthly; 1909 chap) by O'Brien, air date unknown: "Le Horla" (October 1886 Gil Blas; exp rev in Le Horla, coll 1887) by Guy de Maupassant, as "The Horla" (24 October 1943); an abbreviated version (8 January 1944) of Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818; rev 1831); and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, air date unknown. At least 39 episodes are known to survive, although it is unclear how many sf instalments feature in this total.
As a syndicated series, the programme aired at different times depending upon the particular market. It also ran under the title Ogden's Playhouse in Canada, where the series was rebroadcast into the early 1950s. [GSt]
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