DRACULA
[RADIO-SPECIAL]
Need further research; listed in NYT as “Talk, Dracula.”
ORIGINATION: WRNY, New York City, New York.
DURATION: December 14, 1927.
PERSONNEL: Unknown.
EXTANT RECORDINGS: None.
DRACULA
[RADIO-SPECIAL]
Cited in the radio log of the New York Herald Tribune as a “futuristic broadcast of ‘Dracula’” and
qualified as “(tentative)” by the Times… Associated with the station at that time was
announcer/poetry reader David Ross (still known as David Rosenthal), so it is possible he was
involved with the broadcast.
A curious feature of the evening’s lineup on WGBS was that the Dracula show was flanked on
both sides by performances of the Running Wild Four, a women’s quartet headed by Georgette
Harvey, who later played the old voodoo woman in the 1933 Florida-made film Chloe and in the
WSUN radio broadcast of scenes from the film.
ORIGINATION: WGBS, New York City, New York.
DURATION: January 5, 1928.
PERSONNEL: Unknown.
EXTANT RECORDINGS: None.
DRACULA
[STAGE-PLAY]
Bram Stoker’s vampire Transylvanian first came to the airwaves on March 30, 1928 as the fifth
installment of Mortimer Stewart’s series Stardom of Broadway. The program’s raison d’etre was
the presentation of tabloid versions of currently-running stage shows featuring members of the
original casts. For his abridgment of Dracula—then in its 26th hit week at the Fulton Theatre—
Stewart utilized the services of Bela Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan, Dorothy Peterson and Terrence
Neill in their characterizations of the Count, Van Helsing, Lucy and Jonathan Harker,
respectively.
Although the Stardom of Broadway series would shortly afterwards shift to an evening slot, it
was—at the time of the broadcast of Dracula—firmly positioned in WJZ’s mid-afternoon line-up.
Consequently, at half past three, startled housewives and children comprised the majority of the
audience for this precursor of horrific things to come. Bela Lugosi, when interviewed in San
Francisco the following year, recalled the furor over the broadcast: According to the Call and Post
reporter, Lugosi said that “there was much indignation among the listeners. One
woman...telephoned in demanding that it be stopped, because she had six children who had to
listen to it.”
Surprisingly, despite this early appearance on the air (and in his most famous role), Lugosi did
very little radio work over the years—partially due, no doubt, to his own stated antipathy for the
medium. (He did, however, play the Count one more time upon the air—in a 1939 comedy sketch
entitled “Dracula of Sunnybrook Farm” on the Texaco Star Theatre.)
STARDOM OF BROADWAY (WJZ, NEW YORK—NBC-BLUE)
[???day—3:30-4:00 PM]
March 30, 1928 “Dracula”
SCRIPT: Mortimer Stewart.
PERSONNEL: Mortimer Stewart (producer).
CAST: Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Terrence Neill (Jonathan Harker), Dorothy
Peterson (Lucy), Edward Van Sloan (Dr. Van Helsing).
DRACULA
[MOTION-PICTURE; RADIO-SERIAL]
The twisted and torturous route by which the Hungarian actor went from stage Dracula to film
Dracula has been intricately chronicled by various Lugosi biographers and by David Skal in his
book Hollywood Gothic. Once the movie was ready for release early in 1931, Universal started
their publicity machinery churning at full force, since—in a very real sense—the fate of the studio
depended significantly upon the box-office pull of this one film (although no one anticipated the
phenomenal success that it would become).
As part of the promotional barnstorming, WCFL in Chicago was approached by the Radio-
Keith-Orpheum theater chain about doing a serialized dramatization of the Dracula story during
the week that the film was scheduled to open in that city. The station, which was operated by the
Chicago Federation of Labor, lacked a sufficient drama staff of its own, so they issued a open call
for auditions. Among the few applicants for work was a high school senior named Bert (later Bret)
Morrison, who had had a distinguished amateur thespian career up to this point, capped the
previous year by winning for his alma mater Senn the coveted Drama League Student Production
Award over the efforts of their chief competitor, the Todd School for Boys under the direction of
15-year-old Orson Welles.
In the ensuing years Morrison gave conflicting accounts of how he scored the Dracula job. He
told interviewer Chuck Schaden that he had been working at WCFL since 1929. “I had my own
poetry hour there. And then later, as a result, we formed a little theater group with a nucleus of
players that we had at Senn, under the same director. We used to do one-act plays on the air.
Then, eventually, I did some publicity work for Universal Pictures and we did across-the-board,
five half-hours a week and did the complete version of Dracula, which they had just filmed…”
At other times he related a completely different story. He asserted that there was an open call
for actors, that he showed up—a stranger to the WCFL people—and bluffed his way through the
audition, even telling the station staff that he was a professional actor and that he had already
played Dracula in stock (which he had not). If this version is true, then it was certainly
braggadocio worthy of his rival Welles (who later that same year made similar claims of previous
professional activity when applying for work at Dublin’s Gate Theatre). According to this version
of Morrison’s story, he walked away not only with the role of Dracula but also the responsibility
for directing the production. He immediately hired his Senn drama teammate Hugh Hipple (later
Marlowe)
ORIGINATION: WCFL, Chicago, Illinois.
DURATION: March 16-21, 1931.
PERSONNEL: Bert Morrison (director).
CAST: Peggy Davis, Hugh Hipple, Bert Morrison (Count Dracula).
SPONSOR: Radio-Keith-Orpheum (theatre chain).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: None.
DRACULA (WCFL, CHICAGO)
[Monday-Saturday—
March 16, 1931 [PART 1]
March 17, 1931 [PART 2]
March 18, 1931 [PART 3]
March 19, 1931 [PART 4]
March 20, 1931 [PART 5]
March 21, 1931 [PART 6]
DRACULA
[NOVEL]
Tod Browning’s film of Dracula (1931) may have initiated Hollywood’s horror cycle of the
Thirties, but it took radio to create a version of the Bram Stoker novel that brought the genre to its
full height as the decade (and the cycle) drew to a close. Welles had originally intended to kick off
his Mercury Theatre series with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, but when the rights to
Dracula became available he jumped at the opportunity. Skillfully patching together the novel’s
crazy-quilt of diary and journal entries by divers hand into a seamless whole—and keeping the
proceedings at so swift and hypnotic a pace that lapses in narrative wouldn’t be noticed anyway—
he fashioned a masterpiece that ranks with his best work on the air. The cast is a standout,
particularly Coulouris’ desperate Jonathan Harker (“I’m alone in the castle! Alone!”),
Moorehead’s entranced Mina who struggles to free herself in the end, and Orson himself in the
dual roles of Dr. Seward and the Count.
ORIGINATION: WABC, New York City, New York (CBS).
DURATION: July 11, 1938.
PERSONNEL: John Dietz (sound engineer), Larry Harding (assistant director), Bernard Herrmann (music),
John Houseman (scriptwriter), Dan Seymour (announcer), Orson Welles (scriptwriter, director).
CAST: William Alland, Ray Collins (The Captain of the Demeter), George Coulouris (Jonathan Harker),
Martin Gabel (Professor Van Helsing), Agnes Moorehead (Mina Harker), Karl Swenson (The Coach Driver /
The First Mate), Orson Welles (Count Dracula / Dr. Seward), Virginia Welles [billed as “Elizabeth Farrar”]
(Lucy Westenra).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: Yes.
THE MERCURY THEATRE ON THE AIR (WABC, NEW YORK—CBS)
[Monday—9:00-10:00 PM]
July 11, 1938 “Dracula”
DRACULA
[NOVEL]
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
STAGE 49 (, TORONTO—CBC TRANS-CANADA)
[
April 24, 1949 “Dracula”
SCRIPT: George Salverson.
PERSONNEL: Andrew Allan (producer).
EXTANT RECORDING
CBC STAGE (TORONTO—CBC TRANS-CANADA)
[
February 9, 1958 “Dracula”
SCRIPT: George Salverson.
PERSONNEL: Esse W. Ljungh (producer).
DRACULA
[COMEDY-SERIAL]
Mentioned by John Rayburn in his memoir, Cat Whiskers and Talking Furniture…
[Rayburn] “A late night, early 1960s program on KOA radio in Denver was the Wayward
Barker Show. It featured the front row, stretched-out Bill Barker, one-time Denver Post
columnist. It began as a straight interview show but soon began to feature a Friday night ‘Crazy
Crew’. Among their antics was a comedic treatment of Dracula… Due to station power (50,000
watts) and the late night time slot, the program attracted mail from 38 states.
“On the considerably less serious side, the ‘Crazy Crew’ did a comedic rehash of the Bram Stoker
classic, Dracula, a suspenseful tale of the nocturnal atrocities of a vampire. We played it strictly
for laughs, spread out in short episodes over a period of weeks. The only suspense was whether or
not we’d crack up laughing, which we did quite often, thereby softening the horror aspect.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
THE WAYWARD BARKER SHOW (KOA, DENVER)
[Friday—
Circa 1960s “Dracula”
[Number of episodes unknown]
DRACULA
[NOVEL]
Adaptation of the novel done on CBSRMT…
“This episode…received a Count Dracula Society Award for its contribution to presenting such
an adaptation to the public.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER (WRVR, NEW YORK—CBS)
[???day—10:07-11:00 PM]
May 2, 1974 “Dracula”
[“…While visiting her critically ill friend Lucy Westenra, Mina Harker
discovers that Lucy is being drained of her blood by Count Dracula, a
vampire. Professor Van Helsing, called in for a consultation by Lucy’s
fiancé Dr. John Seward, declares that they must kill Dracula by a
gruesome procedure if they are to stop him and save Lucy’s soul…”]
SCRIPT: George Lowther.
PERSONNEL: Himan Brown (producer-director).
CAST: Paul Hecht (Dr. John Seward), Mercedes McCambridge (Mina Harker),
Stefan Schnabel (Professor Van Helsing), Marian Seldes (Lucy Westenra),
Michael Wager (Count Dracula).
EXTANT RECORDING
[OG-NOTE: This program was repeated on July 22, 1974, January 6, 1978, May 26, 1979,
and October 31, 1980.]
Michael Wager (ca. 1955)
DRACULA
[NOVEL]
French serial adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel.
Notable among the cast members was Edith Scob, who played Mina Harker. Her place in
horror-movie history is secured by her performance as the disfigured daughter in Georges
Franju’s grisly poetic chiller L’yeux sans visage (1959).
ORIGINATION: France-Culture, Paris.
DURATION: December 13, 1983-January 4, 1984.
SCRIPT: Jacques Bransolle.
PERSONNEL: Jean-Pierre Colas (director).
CAST: Yves Arcanel, Bruno Balp, R. Bensimon, A.-M. Coffinet, Daniel Emilfork, Philippe Mintana, J. Plee, J.-
P. Richepin, L. Robert, Edith Scob, Jean-Jacques Steen, Hans Verner.
EXTANT RECORDINGS: Unknown.
DRACULA
“We’ve had many requests for ‘spooky stories’ as the nights get darker. So stakes and garlic at the
ready as Bram Stoker’s Dracula takes over the airwaves… Phyllis Logan stars as Mina who is the
object of the undead Transylvanian’s obsession. Retold through the diaries of the main
protagonists, settle back and relive the horror of the young solicitor’s incarceration at the Count’s
castle, through to the race against time to save Mina from becoming another of the vampire’s
victims.”
ORIGINATION: Radio 4, Edinburgh (BBC).
DURATION: December 19, 1991-
[Re-broadcast on Radio 7’s 7thth Dimension on October 18-26, 2004.]
PERSONNEL: Malcolm Clarke (music), Nick McCarty (scriptwriter), Hamish Wilson (director).
CAST: Ronald Aitken, Paul Birchard, Peter Blythe, John Buick, Mark Coleman, Andrew Conlan,
Peter D’Souza, Michael Elder, Rosemary Evans, Stella Forge, Frank Gallagher, Monica Gibb,
Nicholas Gilbrook, Bernard Holley, Frederick Jaeger (Count Dracula), Alexa Kesselaar, Peter
Lincoln, Crawford Logan, Phyllis Logan (Mina Harker), Sharon Maharaj, David McKail, Raymond
Ross, Wendy Seager, Ian Sexon, John Shedden, Tom Smith, Finlay Welch (Professor Van
Helsing), Amanda Whitehead.
EXTANT RECORDINGS:
[CHRONOLOGY]
DRACULA (RADIO 4, EDINBURGH—BBC)
[???day—11:00-11:30 PM]
December 19, 1991 [PART 1]
[“…Jonathan Harker journeys to Transylvania on legal business, leaving
his fiancee Mina Murray to spend some time with her best friend Lucy
Westenra…”]
December 26, 1991 [PART 2]
[“…On holiday in Whitby, Mina waits to hear from Jonathan. Following a
great storm and a shipwreck, Lucy starts sleepwalking…”]
January 2, 1992 [PART 3]
[“…Mina receives news of Jonathan ill in a hospital in Buda-Pesth, and
Arthur becomes alarmed about the state of Lucy’s health…”]
January 9, 1992 [PART 4]
[“…The madman Renfield’s behavior becomes even stranger. Van
Helsing and John Seward struggle to save Lucy’s life and Jonathan
Harker sees an old acquaintance…”]
January 16, 1992 [PART 5]
[“…Van Helsing reveals the appalling truth about Lucy’s fate to Arthur,
Quincey and John Seward…”]
January 23, 1992 [PART 6]
[“…The six companions determine to root out the evil Count before any
other innocent lives are put at risk…”]
Janyart 30, 1992 [PART 7]
[“…Renfield’s confession points the way to Dracula’s lairs—but is Mina
now at risk?...”]
DRACULA
As performed by the Big Radio Players.
“An array of voices from talented actors makes for interesting variety. The generous use of
sound effects, from train whistles to creaking doors, adds further atmosphere.” Carol Katz,
Harrison Public Library, NY
ORIGINATION: Produced by Big Radio Productions, Lynn, Massachusetts.
DURATION: Released in 1996.
PERSONNEL:
CAST: Jeremy Gage (Professor Van Helsing).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: The complete series.
DRACULA (BIG RADIO PRODUCTIONS)
[1] “Dracula’s Guest”
[2] “The Castle”
[3] “The Lizard”
[4] “Escape!”
[5] “Whitby by the Sea”
[6] “Enter Van Helsing”
[7] “Dracula’s Victory”
[8] “The Good and the Evil”
[9] “The Undead”
[10] “The Tomb”
[11] “Van Helsing’s Plan”
[12] “The Vampire’s Lair”
[13] “Blood of My Blood”
[14] “Into Battle”
[15] “The Chase”
[16] “The Final Encounter”
DRACULA
Hywel Bennett reading of Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel.
ORIGINATION:
DURATION: December 12, 1997-January 30, 1998.
PERSONNEL: Hywel Bennett (reader), Jane Marshall (adapter, producer).
EXTANT RECORDINGS:
DRACULA
December 12, 1997 [1] “Journey to Transylvania”
December 19, 1997 [2] “Inside Castle Dracula”
December 26, 1997 [3] “Down in the Vaults”
January 2, 1998 [4] “An Arrival in Whitby”
January 9, 1998 [5] “Lucy’s Story”
January 16, 1998 [6] “Arthur’s Ordeal”
January 23, 1998 [7] “Understanding the Vampire”
January 30, 1998 [8] “The Hunt for Dracula”
DRACULA
Four actors read Bram Stoker’s classic.
ORIGINATION: Radio 4, Belfast? (BBC).
DURATION: November 24-December 5, 2003.
PERSONNEL: Daragh Carville (scriptwriter), Gemma McMullan (producer).
CAST: James D’Arcy (Dr. Seward), Michael Fassbender (Jonathan Harker), James Greene (Dr.
Van Helsing), Gillian Kearney (Mina Murray).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: The entire series.
BOOK AT BEDTIME—“DRACULA” (RADIO 4, BELFAST—BBC)
[Monday thru Friday—10:45-11:00 PM]
November 24, 2003 [1]
[“…Jonathan Harker makes a strange journey to Count Dracula’s castle
in Transylvania…”]
November 25, 2003 [2]
[“…Jonathan explores the castle and discovers more than he had dared
contemplate…”]
November 26, 2003 [3]
[“…Jonathan discovers the truth about his host. Meanwhile, Mina fears
for his safety…”]
November 27, 2003 [4]
[“…An empty foreign schooner arrives in England and Mina’s fear grows
for the strange illness affecting her dear friend Lucy…”]
November 28, 2003 [5]
[“…Dr. Seward calls in Professor Van Helsing when Lucy’s health
deteriorates…”]
December 1, 2003 [6]
[“…In London, Jonathan is terrified by the sight of a familiar face in the
crowd…”]
December 2, 2003 [7]
[“…Professor Van Helsing sets the plan in motion to capture the
vampire…”]
December 3, 2003 [8]
[“…Mina receives a visit from Count Dracula. Time is running out…”]
December 4, 2003 [9]
[“…Van Helsing is determined to hunt out the vampire…”]
December 5, 2003 [10]
[“…Jonathan, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward and Mina journey to Transylvania
for the final battle…”]