{
  "title": "ATMOSPHERICS",
  "category": "[RADIO-SCRIPT]",
  "article": "This original play for radio by Lord Dunsany, broadcast in 1937, starred Ernest Thesiger as an\nescaped lunatic. Thesiger’s character is not a garden-variety looney—he’s radio-crazy, convinced\nthat his brain is a receiving set for vagrant airwaves, particularly those emanating from\nbloodthirsty Himalayan deities.\n[“Listener”, Manchester Guardian] “…the author…knows how to get the full dramatic\npossibilities out of a situation…”\n[Cincinnati Enquirer, October 24, 1926] “‘Radio hallucination’ is a new malady which has made\nits appearance in England and is puzzling doctors. There have been at least a dozen cases in the\nlast six months.\n“Sufferers from it imagine they are human receiving sets and are able to receive radio messages\nthrough their ears and mouths.\n“A variation of this malady is the claim of other sufferers that their sensitiveness is so keen they\ncan hear the throbbing of orchestras and the sound of strange far-away voices.”\nDescribed as “the most eccentric gay actor around in the 1930s,” Ernest Thesiger was also one of\nthe most memorable screen villains, creating indelible characterizations in James Whales’ The\nOld Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein, and as a serial-killer in They Drive by Night (1938).\nHe also enjoyed a long stage career, much of it in light comedy, but he also excelled in the sinister\nparts, playing everything from Captain Hook in Peter Pan to Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus.\nAs a radio personality Thesiger was frequently heard on the BBC, most memorably as the\nairwaves-crazed lunatic of Lord Dunsany’s radio original, Atmospherics (1938).\n[Kent] “Ernest Thesiger’s first wireless appearance (23 August 1923 ‘Aunt Elija’) was soon\nfollowed by: 29 January 1924 2LO First broadcast mock trial arranged by Ernest Thesiger…\nThesiger (1879-1961) was soon to publish his autobiography, Practically True (Thesiger 1927) at\nthe age of forty-eight… Thesiger has been described as: ‘Witty, skeletal Ernest Thesiger…by far the\nmost eccentric gay actor around in the 1930s and 1940s…’ (Bourne, 1996, 17).\n[Thesiger, p. 11]—“My companion on that occasion was Charles Conder, who was then living in\nthe lovely house in Cheyne Walk…where the Conders gave their famous masked ball. This was the\nprecursor of all the big fancy-dress balls that soon became the fashion at the Albert Hall and\nCovent Garden… I went as Death, in black draperies, with a skull-mask wreathed in scarlet\npoppies. On the many fans that Conder afterward painted representing the ball, there is nearly\nalways to be found my macabre figure in the corner.”\n[Thesiger, p. 180]—“I make no claim to second sight, but there are days when I am certainly\nclairvoyant, and certain people become, as it were, completely transparent to me; when I am once\nattuned to them there seems to be nothing about them that I cannot read.” [p. 182]—“…I acquired\na certain reputation as a wizard.” [p. 186]—“…it rarely happens to me that I foresee the future. But\non one occasion I had a queer taste of what was to come.” Dinner-party—sitting next to man, a\nstranger—“sudden attack of faintness”—“I got the sensation that he was being mauled to death by\nsome wild animal”—“Many years later—“Are you any relative?”—“He fell over a tree-trunk while\nshooting in India, and was attacked and killed by a tiger.”",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "DOUBLE TRACK—TWO ADVENTURES BY TRAIN (NATIONAL, LONDON—BBC)\n[Tuesday—8:15-9:00 PM]\nJune 15, 1937\n“Atmospherics” / “Little Ena”\n[“…Lord Dunsany’s play has two principal characters, a railway\npassenger and a fugitive from an asylum possessing a large knife, who is\nthe only other occupant of the compartment…”]\nPERSONNEL: Lord Dunsany (scriptwriter), Felix Felton (producer).\nCAST: Frederick Piper (Dick Smith), Ernest Thesiger (The Escaped Lunatic),\nWilliam Trent (The Stationmaster), Brember Wills (The Guard).\nDOUBLE TRACK—TWO ADVENTURES BY TRAIN (REGIONAL, LONDON—BBC)\n[Thursday—6:15-7:00 PM]\nJune 17, 1937\n“Atmospherics” / “Little Ena”\n(EMPIRE PROGRAMME, DAVENTRY)\n[Tuesday—12:15-12:35 PM]\nJuly 5, 1938\n“Atmospherics”\nCAST: Marcus Barron (A Station-master), Carleton Hobbs (An Escaped Lunatic),\nFrederick Piper (Dick Smith), Horace Sequeira (A Guard).\n(HOME SERVICE, LONDON)\n[Friday—4:10-4:30 PM]\nNovember 8, 1940\n“Atmospherics”\n(OVERSEAS SERVICE—ARABIC)\n[Wednesday—              ]\nDecember 4, 1940\n“Atmospherics”\n(\n[\nJune 15, 1944\n[according to Joshi]\n(\n[\nJune 2, 1959\n[according to Joshi]",
  "sources": "Dunsany, Lord. Plays for the Air???.\nThesiger, Ernest. Practically True. London: William Heinemann, 1927.",
  "gallery": "Lord Dunsany\nErnest Thesiger",
  "images": []
}