{
  "title": "FACES IN THE WINDOW",
  "category": "[RADIO-SERIES]",
  "article": "“The mind at midnight is lonely, and the senses are sharp. And so, from out of darkness of shape\nor form, where a single light is focused, the sharp and lonely midnight mind will see…faces in\nthe window.”\nKen Nordine served as dramatic narrator for this series that started on Chicago television\nstation WNBQ in the fall of 1952 and expanded to a radio version in May of the following year. “[It\nwas] very late at night,” recalls Nordine. “It came on after the used car salesmen. There I’d be in\none corner of the studio: myself, the engineer and one little light to read by. I would read horror\nstories, Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Rats in the Wall’ by Lovecraft, and scare the heck out of people. It had a\ntremendous reaction.”\nFor the first broadcast on November 22 Nordine read Poe’s “The Black Cat” while the camera\nstayed locked on his face.\nNordine had a marvelously deep voice that was perfect for the reading of eerie narratives.\n“When puberty came along,” he explained, “my voice dropped, and the only thing I had to do was\nlearn to read intelligently… People would always tell me that I should get into radio because I had\na good voice. So I organized a radio workshop for the Board of Education here in Chicago—\nWBEZ. From that, little by little, I got into the business of being an announcer and actor-narrator.\nEventually, I ended up doing some parts on the old Lights Out series.”\n“I found out years later that the kids were watching because they could turn off the lights and it\nwas a great way to hug each other in the dark. I scared them into romance.”\n[Gerald McDougall, imdb] “I remember Ken Nordine of WGN-TV in Chicago reading it\n[“Passion in the Desert”] as one of his late night shows.”\n[“Double Life.” Time (August 9, 1954).] “Nordine himself is no stranger to experimental\ntelevision. For more than a year he has been frightening and delighting Chicago audiences with\neerie readings of classic horror tales such as Poe's Pit and the Pendulum, Lovecraft's Rats in the\nWalls. He calls this show Faces in the Window, plays weird music as he reads and scares his\nlisteners with a bagful of simple but effective tricks. For a story where a man is hanged, he had the\ncamera turn slowly back and forth to suggest a corpse swinging on a rope. Trick lights and a\nturtleneck sweater make his cadaverous face appear to float in air, and sometimes a zoomar lens\nmoves in until only one glittering Nordine eye fills up the television screen.”\n“I remember vividly sitting in an old arm chair enthralled with Nordine’s Monday night\nperformances,” recalls Jan Bach, who was a teenager at the time. “Several years ago Nordine came\nout to Northern Illinois University, where I teach in the School of Music, to do an evening of\nWord Jazz, and was a very gracious and hospitable man. And was he surprised when I put\nBartok’s ‘Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin’ on the record player and asked him to identify it.\n‘Why,’ he said, ‘that’s the old theme I used for Faces in the Window!’”",
  "origination": "WMAQ, Chicago, Illinois.",
  "duration": "May 4-September 7, 1953.\n[OG-NOTE: The television version had a substantially longer run, from November 22, 1952 until ???? ??, 1954.]",
  "personnel": "Marvin David (series co-creator, story adapter), George Heinemann (series co-creator), Larry\nJohnson (music supervision), Howard Keegan (director), Bruce Knowles (sound engineer), Ken Nordine\n(dramatic reader).",
  "extant_recordings": "“The Pit And The Pendulum” (7/13/53), “The Bet” (8/10/53), “A Visitor from\nEgypt” (8/17/53), “Hide and Seek” (8/24/53), “Possession on Completion” (8/31/53).\n[OG-NOTE: Audio portions of several of the television broadcasts are also available. These include “The Black Cat”\n(11/22/52), “The Lightning Rod Man” (1/17/53), “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1/24/53), “The Cone” (1/31/53), “The\nMasque of the Red Death” (3/7/53), and “The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar” (4/18/53).]\n[PROGRAM LOG]\nFACES IN THE WINDOW (WMAQ, CHICAGO)\n[Monday—11:15-11:45 PM]\nMay 4, 1953\nMay 11, 1953\nMay 18, 1953\nMay 25, 1953\nJune 1, 1953\nJune 8, 1953\nJune 15, 1953\nJune 22, 1953\nJune 29, 1953\nJuly 6, 1953\nNO SHOW?\nJuly 13, 1953\n“The Pit and the Pendulum”\nJuly 20, 1953\nJuly 27, 1953\nNO SHOW?\nAug. 3, 1953\nAug. 10, 1953\n“The Bet”\nAug. 17, 1953\n“A Visitor from Egypt”\nAug. 24, 1953\n“Hide and Seek”\nAug. 31, 1953\n“Possession on Completion”\nSep. 7, 1953\n[Monday—1:00-     AM]\nOct. 19, 1953\nOct. 26, 1953\nNov. 2, 1953\nNov. 9, 1953\nNov. 16, 1953\nNov. 23, 1953\nNov. 30, 1953\nDec. 7, 1953\nFeb. 1, 1954\nChan",
  "chronology": "",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}