I was surprised at first to discover how many well-known film actors appeared in radio programs. Given the prominence of radio in the years before television, I'm not quite sure why this came as a surprise. But it did. I suppose I imagined radio and movies as two distinct worlds, never colliding. However, collide they did. And often. Jimmy Stewart starred in a radio western. Peter Lorre in a suspense drama. And I soon discovered that another familiar voice, Boris Karloff's, could be heard frequently. Perhaps less surprising was the genre of radio program in which Karloff usually appeared.
There were several horror programs on the air in the 1930's and 1940's, ranging from campy to creepy. One of the best, Lights Out!, was promoted to radio audiences as "the ultimate in horror". Never before had such graphic sounds been heard on the radio. Heads rolled, bones were crushed, people fell from great heights and splattered on pavement. There was strangling, cannibalism, heads split by cleavers, people turned inside out by supernatural forces. Each program was preceded by a sincere quiet warning to the audience to simply turn off their radios if they didn't feel capable of controlling their fear.
Wyllis Cooper, who initially wrote and produced the program, created this horror by "raiding the larder." Hence, the sound of a butcher knife hacking into a piece of raw pork was, when accompanied by screams, the essence of murder to a listener sitting alone at midnight. Real bones were broken; although they were merely spareribs snapped with a wrench. Bacon sizzling in a frying pan represented a body being electrocuted. When chopped open with a cleaver, cabbages sounded remarkably like human heads , and carrots like fingers being lopped off. The listener saw none of this of course. The listener saw only horror and death.
Cooper left the show in 1936 and Arch Oboler took over, soon making household names out of both himself and his program. Names that became synonymous with horror and gore. The ideal environment for Boris Karloff. Because when radio was at its peak of popularity, Boris Karloff's name was also synonymous with horror. And the producers of radio horror were eager to associate his name with their programs. Arch Oboler reportedly wrote several episodes of Lights Out specifically with Karloff in mind.
And so it was that Boris Karloff travelled to Chicago in 1938 to record four consecutive episodes of Lights Out to mark the fourth anniversary of the series. One of these episodes, entitled "The Dream", tells the story of a man who boasts that he has never dreamed while asleep. Not once. Not ever. And then suddenly, he does. A dream that more than makes up for his dreamless years. Whether he wants it to or not.
Now, lights out . . . everybody. And remember, ". . . if you wish to avoid the excitement and tension of these imaginative plays, we urge you calmly, but sincerely, to turn off your radio... now."
Lights Out - The Dream
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