{
  "title": "THE AUTHOR AND THE THING",
  "category": "[RADIO-SCRIPT]",
  "article": "Arch Oboler’s self-reflexive script figures himself into the grisly action as Oboler the writer\nconjures up a hideous monster for his next Lights Out plot… Oboler uses a metafiction approach\nas both a clever story device and a form of self-promotion.\n[Winnipeg Free Press] “The author of the play himself as the leading character in the ‘Lights\nOut’ drama… Although the writer is the central character, Author Arch Oboler will not play the\nrole. He’ll sit safely at home and hear himself go through a very uncomfortable evening.”\n[Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1936] \"Lights Out,\" the midnight horror show written by Arch\nOboler, put on a drama Wednesday night in which Oboler cast himself, his mother, his brother,\nand a girl friend. A monster enters his room (according to the script and Oboler's imagination)\nand consumes his brother and mother and murders his girl friend. \"Oboler\" summons the police,\nwho can find no monster. So they hold \"Oboler.\" A sanity hearing ensues in which physicians\nbearing the surnames of the radio editors of Chicago examine him. They pronounce him a lunatic.\nAnd then the thing comes and consumes him!\nAt the conclusion of the broadcast your reporter made a telephone call to Oboler's home and\nfinding him in New York, apologized to his mother for disturbing her at such a late hour.\n\"That's quite all right,\" she said. \"Your call reassures me that I am still alive. I heard the\nbroadcast all alone here except for our dog!\"\nShirley Frohlich, The Billboard, October 16, 1943] Lights Out Reviewed Tuesday, 8-8:30 p.m.\nStyle — Melodrama. Sponsor — Ironized Yeast Co.,  Inc. Agency — Ruthrauff & Ryan, Inc. Station\n— WABC (New York) and CBS.\nAuthor Arch Oboler was probably trying to prove in The Author and the Thing (he's writing those\nwin-the-war dramas again, now that he's fortified himself financially on Ironized Yeast) that his\ncommercial ending could be as auspicious as his beginning. His first mistake was telling his press\nagent. Prior to Tuesday's show, every radio ed's desk received the news that Oboler was planning\nto wind up Lights Out by bumping himself off and involving his Hollywood enemies and friends\nas accomplices and victims (interchangeably, not respectively). The only victims turned out to be\nOboler's own defenseless mother and brother, and Mercedes McCambridge, radio actress. His\nsecond mistake was to try to kid the handiwork that feeds (or fed) him. Oboler played himself in\nthis one, the author of the Lights Out series, dreaming up his final play. Because he's been\ndwelling on evil thoughts for the past seven days and nights (it says in a medieval tome he\nhappens to have around the house), he conjures up a super-monster, the embodiment of all evil,\nwho knocks off mom, brother, leading lady and finally Oboler, who winds up where he modestly\nclaims to belong — in hell. Before the final kick-off, however, Oboler, a good egg at heart, informs\nthe authorities about the murders and, since no one believes the story about the monster (he's\ninvisible to everyone but his conjurer), Oboler comes up before the lunacy commission. He's\npronounced insane on the basis of his peculiar shirts and the plays he writes. The farce isn't good\nor novel enough to be funny, but there's just enough of it to take the edge off whatever chills of the\nobvious plot. Result, therefore, wasn't even good Oboler.”",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "LIGHTS OUT (WMAQ, CHICAGO—NBC-RED)\n[Wednesday—\nSeptember 9, 1936\n“The Author and the Thing”\n[“…Arch Oboler writes himself a Frankenstein monster for tonight’s\nbroadcast… Oboler will be the central character in the sketch, although\nhe will not actually appear as an actor… Searching until weary for an idea\nfor an episode, the author dozes as he sits at his typewriter, his hands idle\nin his lap. Somehow, maybe from news of the day, thoughts turn to the\nFar East and to the dragon that shakes the earth. The idea shapes itself\ninto something awe-inspiring and a great green monster assumes\nproportions from the curling smoke of a little cigarette. Soon the\ngruesome animation grasps the dreamer by the shoulder and shakes him\ninto activity…”]\nSCRIPT: Arch Oboler.\nLIGHTS OUT (KNX, HOLLYWOOD—CBS)\n[\nSeptember 28, 1943\n“The Author and the Thing”\n[“…In a jovial mood Arch Oboler turns actor in the role of himself during\nhis drama ‘The Author of [sic] the Thing’… In the script Oboler murders\nhis enemies and takes his friends to heaven…”]\nSCRIPT: Arch Oboler.\nPERSONNEL: Arch Oboler (director).\nCAST: Mercedes McCambridge, Arch Oboler, et al.\nEXTANT RECORDING",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}