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The Plot To Overthrow Christmas
''The Plot to Overthrow Christmas'' is a radio play written by Norman Corwin and first performed on December 25, 1938. Plot The play, a fantasy told entirely in rhyme, begins with a narrative introduction. It proceeds without further narration, but a character named Sotto voce occasionally interrupts with parenthetical footnotes for the audience. Sound effects depict a descent to Hell: a gong, followed by two crashes of thunder; then an electronic hum, first descending, then ascending in pitch; which dissolves into a sustained violin note, which finally turns into a classical cadenza. The violin is being played by the Roman emperor Nero, whose playing is interrupted by a courier summoning him to an urgent meeting called by the Devil, Mephistopheles. Mephisto explains to an assembly including Nero, Ivan the Terrible, the Biblical Haman, the Roman emperor Caligula, the Borgias, and Simon Legree, that he is concerned about the thwarting of his efforts to corrupt humanity, by the pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Play
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s radio drama began losing its audience. However, it remains popular in much of the world. Recordings of OTR (old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors, libraries and museums, as well a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sortition
In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, democratic lottery, and lottocracy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The system intends to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It also minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative ..., by contrast, foster it. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Naked City
''The Naked City'' (aka ''Naked City'') is a 1948 American film noir directed by Jules Dassin, starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart and Don Taylor. The film, shot almost entirely on location in New York City, depicts the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. ''Naked City'' received two Academy Awards, one for cinematography for William H. Daniels and another for film editing to Paul Weatherwax. In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot In the late hours of a hot New York summer night, a pair of men subdue and kill Jean Dexter, an ex-model, by knocking her out with chloroform and drowning her in her bathtub. When one of the murderers gets conscience-stricken while drunk, the other kills him and throws his body into the East River. Homicide Detective Lt. Dan Muldoon and his young associate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth
''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, ''Macbeth'' most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Theatre Project
The Federal Theatre Project (FTP; 1935–1939) was a theatre program established during the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depression as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists, writers, directors, and theater workers. National director Hallie Flanagan shaped the FTP into a federation of regional theaters that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation in new forms and techniques, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time. As a drama professor at Vassar college, Hallie Flanagan was chosen to head the Federal Theatre Project. Although The Federal Theatre project consumed only 0.5% of the allocated budget from the WPA and was widely considered a commercial and critical success, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. While in his 20s, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of ''Macbeth'' with an entirely African-American cast and the political musical '' The Cradle Will Rock''. In 1937, he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including ''Caesar'' (1937), an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar''. In 1938, his radio anthology series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel ''The War of the Worlds'', which caused s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan (born Henry Lerner von Ost Jr.; March 31, 1915 – May 19, 1994) was an American humorist. He first became familiar to radio audiences in the 1930s and 1940s as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist; in the 1950s and later, he was a regular and cantankerous panelist on the game show ''I've Got a Secret'' as well as other game and talk shows. Early life and education Henry Lerner von Ost, Jr. was born in New York City to German-Jewish parents, Henry and Eva (née Lerner) von Ost, who were divorced when he and his brother were young. He grew up in Washington Heights, attended the High School of Commerce for two years, then went to the Harrisburg Academy in Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1931. Radio Morgan began his radio career as a page at New York City station WMCA in 1932, after which he held a number of radio jobs, including announcing. He strenuously objected to the professional name "Morgan" but was told that his birth name of von Ost was exotic and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Burroughs
Eric Burroughs (November 6, 1911 – November 12, 1992) was an American stage and radio actor whose career spanned the 1930s to the early 1960s. He appeared in Orson Welles's all-Black Federal Theatre Project production of '' Macbeth''. Burroughs was later lauded by radio giant Norman Corwin as being "the finest Negro actor in radio." Biography Early years Eric Burroughs was born in The Bronx, New York on November 6, 1911. He was the son of postal worker and Shakespearean reader Charles Burroughs and Williana Burroughs, a New York City public school teacher and Communist party activist. In the late 1920s, after graduating from high school at the age of 16, Burroughs secured a minor role in the production ''Harlem'', at the Apollo Theatre, starring Isabelle Washington, which ran for six months. His parents, however, wanted him to have a profession, and sent him to Germany to study political science. Instead, he quit after two weeks and enrolled in the Kammerspiele School of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Jameson
House Baker Jameson (December 17, 1902 – April 23, 1971)DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). ''Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 139. was an American actor in the era of old-time radio and early television. Early years Jameson was a native of Austin, Texas. He was named for Edward M. House, a political figure who was a friend of the family. He graduated from Columbia University. Jameson said that he knew at age 5 that he wanted to be an actor, when an aunt, who raised him after his father died, took him to see a performance of ''The Shepherd King.'' Jameson told ''TV Guide'' that after the family returned home, he "absolutely refused to go to bed until the family rustled up some costumes and re-enacted the play." Radio Jameson broke into radio in the early 1930s, as an announcer with WEVD. Jameson admired a WEVD announcer named Roland Bradley in Chicago, and wrote him a letter telling him so. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Will Geer
Will Geer (born William Aughe Ghere; March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor, musician, and social activist, who was active in labor organizing and other movements in New York and Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. In California he befriended rising singer Woody Guthrie. They both lived in New York for a time in the 1940s. He was blacklisted in the 1950s by Hollywood after refusing, in testimony before Congress, to name persons who had joined the Communist Party. In his later years, he was well known for his role as the grandfather figure Zebulon Walton in the TV series ''The Waltons'' until his death. Early life Geer was born in Frankfort, Indiana, the son of Katherine (née Aughe), a teacher, and Roy Aaron Ghere, a postal worker. His father left the family when he was 11 years old. He was deeply influenced by his grandfather, who taught him the botanical names of the plants in his native state. Geer started out to become a botanist, studying the subje ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia Workshop
''Columbia Workshop'' was a radio series that aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from 1936 to 1943, returning in 1946–47. Irving Reis The series began as the idea of Irving Reis. Reis had begun his radio career as an engineer and developed a fascination with the possibilities of the relatively new medium. His idea was to use experimental modes of narrative to enhance the way a narrative was conveyed over the radio. Reis had isolated attempts to experiment on the radio: Before the ''Columbia Workshops debut, he had directed at least a few radio dramas. For Reis, the ''Columbia Workshop'' was a platform for developing new techniques for presentation on radio as noted in the debut broadcast: :The ''Columbia Workshop'' dedicates itself to the purposes of familiarizing you with the story behind radio, both in broadcasting, as well as in aviation, shipping, communication and pathology, and to experiment in new techniques with a hope of discovering or evolving new and better f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
