DREADFUL JOHN AT MIDNIGHT
[RADIO-SERIES]
Produced by students of Columbia University in New York City, this series consisted of
narrational readings (with heavy echo effect) of classics of horror literature.
[DOUG GOTTHOFFER] “J. Willis Morrow is John Morrow, the host, voice, and creator of the
series and the Dreadful John character. When he did the credits at the end, he listed himself as
producer, but he didn’t want anyone to know he was Dreadful John. So, he used the J. and his
middle name.”
“John was a psychology major at Columbia…he got the idea to do these readings of horror short
stories on the air. He was a year ahead of me, I believe, so he’d been doing this for a little while
when I joined the station in the fall of 1963. The station was just converting over to stereo (and we
were one of the first stations in New York to do that), which I think was done either in the spring
or fall 64 semester. John decided he wanted to try out his stories in stereo, adding stereo effects to
spruce up the readings and make them more dramatic. That’s how I got involved… To do the show
in stereo, John and I had to work from midnight to whenever, usually around 3 or 4 AM. I was
willing to do that, so that’s how I wound up affiliated with John. (Also, I loved trying out sound
effects and experimenting with stereo.) Beginning with the fall of 65 I spent less and less time
with the station because my studies were more demanding (electrical engineering). By 1966 I was
pretty much out of my involvement. I don’t remember when I stopped doing Dreadful John, but I
would think it was no later than early 1965.
“John and I set up at midnight after the station went off the air. He usually had his story and
some sound effects, though I might have dug some out of the library for him. To do the show in
stereo, we typically recorded his reading and then dubbed in the effects. That was exciting
because we would end up having to patch inputs and outputs together through the patch bay, by
hand. It was easy to lose track of what was going where, and to have effects on the wrong channels
or out of phase. The most fun was, at 3 AM trying to agree on whether to do another take or go
home.”
ORIGINATION: WKCR, New York City, New York.
DURATION: Circa 1963-1966.
PERSONNEL: Clive Thomas Cuthbertson (producer, announcer), Robert Deitsch (technical assistant),
Martin Gleitsman (announcer), Douglas Gotthoffer (production assistant), Howard Kramer (production
assistant), Sherman Levine (production assistant), Michael Markman (production assistant), J. Willis
Morrow (producer-director, voice of “Dreadful John”).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: “Born Of Man And Woman,” “Oil Of Dog,” “Was It A Dream,” “Torture By Hope,”
“Ghost Hunt,” “The Pit And The Pendulum,” “The Masque Of The Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
“Spirits Of Thought,” “An I At Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “The Hornet,” “The Parricide’s
Tale,” “The Women.”
DREADFUL JOHN AT MIDNIGHT (WKCR, NEW YORK)
[Tuesday—12:00 MIDNIGHT-12:30 AM]
Dec. 17, 1963
DREADFUL MYSTERIES
Also billed as the Saturday Night MysteryTheater.
ORIGINATION: KGO, San Francisco, California.
DURATION: October 5, 1963-[1968].
PERSONNEL: Jim Dunbar (voice of “Claude the Magnificent”).
EXTANT RECORDINGS: None.