{
  "title": "DREADFUL JOHN AT MIDNIGHT",
  "category": "[RADIO-SERIES]",
  "article": "Produced by students of Columbia University in New York City, this series consisted of\nnarrational readings (with heavy echo effect) of classics of horror literature.\n[DOUG GOTTHOFFER] “J. Willis Morrow is John Morrow, the host, voice, and creator of the\nseries and the Dreadful John character. When he did the credits at the end, he listed himself as\nproducer, but he didn’t want anyone to know he was Dreadful John. So, he used the J. and his\nmiddle name.”\n“John was a psychology major at Columbia…he got the idea to do these readings of horror short\nstories on the air. He was a year ahead of me, I believe, so he’d been doing this for a little while\nwhen I joined the station in the fall of 1963. The station was just converting over to stereo (and we\nwere one of the first stations in New York to do that), which I think was done either in the spring\nor fall 64 semester. John decided he wanted to try out his stories in stereo, adding stereo effects to\nspruce up the readings and make them more dramatic. That’s how I got involved… To do the show\nin stereo, John and I had to work from midnight to whenever, usually around 3 or 4 AM. I was\nwilling to do that, so that’s how I wound up affiliated with John. (Also, I loved trying out sound\neffects and experimenting with stereo.) Beginning with the fall of 65 I spent less and less time\nwith the station because my studies were more demanding (electrical engineering). By 1966 I was\npretty much out of my involvement. I don’t remember when I stopped doing Dreadful John, but I\nwould think it was no later than early 1965.\n“John and I set up at midnight after the station went off the air. He usually had his story and\nsome sound effects, though I might have dug some out of the library for him. To do the show in\nstereo, we typically recorded his reading and then dubbed in the effects. That was exciting\nbecause we would end up having to patch inputs and outputs together through the patch bay, by\nhand. It was easy to lose track of what was going where, and to have effects on the wrong channels\nor out of phase. The most fun was, at 3 AM trying to agree on whether to do another take or go\nhome.”",
  "origination": "WKCR, New York City, New York.",
  "duration": "Circa 1963-1966.",
  "personnel": "Clive Thomas Cuthbertson (producer, announcer), Robert Deitsch (technical assistant),\nMartin Gleitsman (announcer), Douglas Gotthoffer (production assistant), Howard Kramer (production\nassistant), Sherman Levine (production assistant), Michael Markman (production assistant), J. Willis\nMorrow (producer-director, voice of “Dreadful John”).",
  "extant_recordings": "“Born Of Man And Woman,” “Oil Of Dog,” “Was It A Dream,” “Torture By Hope,”\n“Ghost Hunt,” “The Pit And The Pendulum,” “The Masque Of The Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,”\n“Spirits Of Thought,” “An I At Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “The Hornet,” “The Parricide’s\nTale,” “The Women.”\nDREADFUL JOHN AT MIDNIGHT (WKCR, NEW YORK)\n[Tuesday—12:00 MIDNIGHT-12:30 AM]\nDec. 17, 1963",
  "chronology": "",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}