This Is My Best
Genre | Anthology drama |
---|---|
Running time | 30 minutes |
Country of origin | United States |
Language(s) | English |
Home station | CBS |
Hosted by | Owen James John McIntire Verne Smith Jimmy Wallington Orson Welles |
Written by | True Eames Boardman Dick Carroll Norman Corwin Robert Riley Crutcher Betty Hopkins Milton Geiger W.A. Krauss Robert Tallman Orson Welles |
Directed by | Don Clark |
Original release | September 5, 1944 – May 28, 1946 |
No. of series | 2 |
No. of episodes | 75 |
Audio format | Monaural sound |
This Is My Best is an American radio anthology series, sponsored by Cresta Blanca wines, which ran on CBS Radio from 1944 to 1946 in 30-minute episodes.
The series aired for two seasons, one of 39 episodes and the other of 36, before its cancellation in 1946, and adapted a combination of literary classics, contemporary literature and films. It was performed before a live audience.
Guest stars included many notable actors of the day, such as Ralph Bellamy, Jack Benny, Joan Blondell, Joe E. Brown, Virginia Bruce, Jack Carson, Ray Collins, Robert Cummings, Louis Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Hedda Hopper, Van Johnson, Charles Laughton, Ida Lupino, Virginia Mayo, Burgess Meredith, Thomas Mitchell, Gregory Peck, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Sylvia Sidney, Akim Tamiroff and Keenan Wynn.[1]
The series is most closely associated with Orson Welles, who guest-starred in several earlier episodes, and then from episode 27 (broadcast 13 March 1945), took over as producer, writer, host and star. He began with an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, something he had previously adapted for The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The Campbell Playhouse, and which he had attempted to make as his first film in 1940 before turning his attention to Citizen Kane. However, Welles' running of the show was short-lived, and he left after just seven episodes.[1] Welles' suffered strained relations with the show's nominal director, Don Clark, complaining that Clark could be "very drunk" in the studio, whilst Welles annoyed Clark by effectively taking the directing out of his hands.[2] He was fired after a disagreement with Clark, when Welles wanted to substitute an adaptation of Don't Catch Me by Robert Powell which Clark had scheduled with his own adaptation of Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman, starring himself and his wife Rita Hayworth. Despite the show's sponsors being very happy with the idea (Hayworth was then at the peak of her stardom), Welles was sacked within three hours of the argument.[3] Welles went on to front another radio anthology series for Cresta Blanca and CBS later that year, The Orson Welles Theatre, which lasted just two months.[1]
It was during Welles' stint that his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and so he made his penultimate episode, I Will Not Go Back (broadcast 17 April 1945) an FDR special, dedicating it to "an American president who has fallen in battle."[4][5]
In the 1950s, the program aired on The Armed Forces Radio Service as "The Globe Theater."
References
- ^ a b c http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/DigitalDeliToo/dd2jb-This-Is-My-Best.html The Definitive This Is My Best Radio Log
- ^ Simon Callow, Orson Welles: Hello Americans (Jonathan Cape, London, 2006) p.243
- ^ Simon Callow, Orson Welles: Hello Americans (Jonathan Cape, London, 2006) pp.243-4
- ^ http://www.all-otr.com/T018_ThisIsMyBest.htm Episode synopses of This Is My Best
- ^ http://www.originaloldradio.com/cddh1677.html Log of Orson Welles radio episodes
External links
- The Definitive This Is My Best Radio Log - contains complete episode guide
- This Is My Best — "Heart of Darkness" (March 13, 1945) at the Paley Center for Media
- This Is My Best — "Snow White" (March 27, 1945) at the Paley Center for Media
- This Is My Best — "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (April 3, 1945) at the Paley Center for Media
- This Is My Best — "I Will Not Go Back" (April 17, 1945) at the Paley Center for Media
- v
- t
- e
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
- The Stranger (1946)
- The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
- Macbeth (1948)
- Othello (1951)
- Mr. Arkadin (1955)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- The Trial (1962)
- Chimes at Midnight (1965)
- The Immortal Story (1968)
- F for Fake (1973)
- Filming Othello (1978)
- The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
- Twelfth Night (1933)
- The Hearts of Age (1934)
- Citizen Kane trailer (1940)
- Around the World (1946)
- The Miracle of St. Anne (1950)
- Magic Trick (1953)
- The Dominici Affair (1955)
- Portrait of Gina (1958)
- An Evening with Orson Welles (1970)
- Orson's Bag
- Vienna (1968)
- The Merchant of Venice (1969)
- One Man Band (1968–1971)
- Moby Dick (1971)
- Orson Welles' Magic Show (1976–1985)
- The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh (1984)
- Too Much Johnson (1938)
- It's All True (1942)
- Don Quixote (1957–1969)
- The Heroine (1967)
- The Deep (1967–1970)
- Filming 'The Trial' (1981)
- The Dreamers (1980–1982)
- Journey into Fear (1943)
- Follow the Boys (1944)
- Black Magic (1949)
- Three Cases of Murder (1955)
- David and Goliath (1960)
- The Southern Star (1969)
- Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
- Treasure Island (1972)
- Cradle Will Rock (1999)
- The Big Brass Ring (1999)
- Orson Welles' Sketch Book (1955)
- Around the World with Orson Welles (1955)
- Orson Welles and People (1956)
- The Fountain of Youth (1958)
- In the Land of Don Quixote (1964)
- The Orson Welles Show (1979)
- Marching Song (1932)
- Bright Lucifer
- Voodoo Macbeth (1936)
- Horse Eats Hat (1936)
- The Cradle Will Rock (1937)
- Caesar (1937–1938)
- Too Much Johnson (1938)
- Native Son (1941)
- The Mercury Wonder Show (1943)
- Around the World (1946)
- Othello (1951)
- The Lady in the Ice (1953)
- Moby Dick—Rehearsed (1955)
- Rhinoceros (1960)
- Les Misérables (1937)
- The Shadow (1937–1938)
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air (1938)
- "Dracula" (1938)
- "The War of the Worlds" (1938)
- The Campbell Playhouse (1938–1940)
- The Orson Welles Show (1941–1942)
- Ceiling Unlimited (1942–1943)
- Hello Americans (1942–1943)
- The Orson Welles Almanac (1944)
- This Is My Best (1945)
- Orson Welles Commentaries (1945–1946)
- The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air (1946)
- The Adventures of Harry Lime (1951–1952)
- The Black Museum (1951–52)
- The Happy Prince (1946)
- The Begatting of the President (1970)
- This is Orson Welles (1992)
- Les Bravades (1996)
- Mercury Theatre
- Rita Hayworth (second wife)
- Paola Mori (third wife)
- Beatrice Welles (daughter)
- Oja Kodar
- Frozen Peas
- Orson Welles Paul Masson advertisements
- It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (1993)
- Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)
- They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
- Orson Welles (crater)