THE COLUMBIA DRAMATIC GUILD
[RADIO-SERIES]
This precursor to Irving Reis’ Columbia Workshop started out with an initial series that ran in the
summer of 1933. With most (if not all) of the scripts by Charles Tazewell, it had the avowed aim to
successfully adapt classics of the short story form into radio dramatizations. Although it was
never announced as such, the concentration of this first series was clearly on weird and spectral
fiction, with no less than eight adaptations of Poe tales, plus Kisfaludi’s “The Invisible Wound”
(which Alonzo Deen Cole would also dramatize on The Witch’s Tale the following year),
Washington Irving’s “The Specter Bridegroom,” Hawthorne’s “The Devil in the Manuscript,”
Stevenson’s “The Body Snatcher,” and de Maupassant’s “The Horla.”
[Program information]
ORIGINATION: WABC, New York City, New York (CBS).
DURATION: May 14-September 28, 1933 (first series).
PERSONNEL: Knowles Entrikin (assistant director), Ferrin Fraser (scriptwriter), Henry
Gauthier (sound technician), Marion R. Parsonnet (director), Charles Tazewell (scriptwriter).
CASTS: Bill Adams, Ray Collins, Kenneth Daigneau, Lorna Elliott, Stephen Fox, Adele Harrison,
Garda Olsen, et al.
EXTANT RECORDINGS: None.
[NOTE: Three of the scripts that Tazewell wrote originally for this series are extant in versions
done later for The Columbia Workshop—“The Tell-Tale Heart” (7/??/37), “The Horla” (?/??/37),
and “Metzengerstein” (12/??/37).]
[Program log]
THE COLUMBIA DRAMATIC GUILD (WABC, NEW YORK)
[Sunday—9:00-9:30 PM]
May 14, 1933 “The Necklace” (Guy de Maupassant)
May 21, 1933 “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Edgar Allan Poe)
May 28, 1933 “A Piece of String” (Guy de Maupassant)
June 4, 1933 “The Invisible Wound” (Karoly Kisfaludi)
[Sunday—8:00-8:30 PM]
June 11, 1933 “How He Got the Legion of Honor” (Guy de Maupassant)
June 18, 1933 “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Edgar Allan Poe)
June 25, 1933 “The Specter Bridegroom”
[“…Washington Irving’s ghostly story will be given in dramatized form…
The strange tale of the suitor whom even death did not prevent from
making an appointed visit to the home of his intended bride and her
parents, has been put into effective radio form. If the children refuse to
go to bed alone afterward it’s your own fault…”]
July 2, 1933 “The Man With the Golden Brain” (Alphonse Daudet)
[Thursday—8:30-9:00 PM]
July 20, 1933 “The Cask of Amontillado” (Edgar Allan Poe)
July 27, 1933 “The Watch Dog” (Guy de Maupassant)
August 3, 1933 “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Edgar Allan Poe)
August 10, 1933 “The Devil in the Manuscript” (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
August 17, 1933 “The Masque of the Red Death” (Edgar Allan Poe)
August 24, 1933 “Lillie Lala” (Guy de Maupassant)
August 31, 1933 “The Body Snatcher” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
September 7, 1933 “The Black Cat” (Edgar Allan Poe)
[Thursday—9:30-10:00 PM]
September 14, 1933 “The Horla” (Guy de Maupassant)
[SAN ANTONIO LIGHT: “…The Columbia Dramatic guild has chosen for its
Thursday evening presentation another horror story. This time it is Guy
de Maupassant’s ‘The Horla,’ which depicts the mental torture of a man
who imagines he is under constant surveillance…”]
September 21, 1933 “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
[SAN ANTONIO LIGHT: “…Recently a precedent was broken by one or the
other, we forget which, of the CBS dramatic programs, when young
children were advised not to listen to that evening’s dramatic offering
based on a classical horror story. This evening, however, the Columbia
Dramatic guild will offer a dramatization, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlin,’
that is safe for children, provided Charles Tazewell, author of the script,
has not taken liberties with that familiar old German legend…”]
SCRIPT: Charles Tazewell.
September 28, 1933 “Metzengerstein” (Edgar Allan Poe)
[Sources]
PERIODICALS: New York Sun, Brooklyn Times Union, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, New York Herald Tribune, Newark Evening News, New York World Telegram, New York
Evening Post, San Francisco Examiner.