THE EVIL EYE
[RADIO-SCRIPT]
[Circleville Daily Herald, January 27, 1938] “Both Boris Karloff and Charlie
McCarthy have a new experience next Sunday, January 30, when they meet. Boris
has never tried to scare a ventriloquist’s dummy before and Charlie McCarthy has
never come within ten miles of trying to scare Boris Karloff. In fact it’s still far
from settled just how close to Karloff, Edgar Bergen will be able to get Charlie...
Karloff also plays the leading part in a dramatic sketch with Don Ameche.”
[Wisconsin State Journal, February 10, 1938] “Nobody can say that Harry Saz,
NBC Hollywood sound man, hasn’t his heart in radio these days. The heartbeats
which listeners heard when Boris Karloff and Don Ameche dramatized Edgar
Allen Poe’s ‘The Telltale Heart’ were the McCoy. With a hand mike clamped
against his chest, Saz sat in another studio while NBC engineers faded in his
heartbeats at the proper time. Producers auditioned several hearts, but Saz’s
seemed to give out the loudest throb.”
[Homer Canfield, San Mateo Times, February 4, 1938] “Karloff didn’t scare
McCarthy nearly as much as he did Senator Herring of Iowa. The Iowan has
demanded a script of the broadcast as a perfect example of what children
shouldn’t be allowed to hear over the air.”
[February 3, 1938] “Protesting against radio horror scenes during children’s
broadcasts, Senator Clyde L. Herring, D., Ia., today asked for a script of Boris
Karloff’s recital of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Evil Eye’ on a National Broadcasting
Company network last Sunday night.”
“ ‘The fact that the poem [sic] is a classic does not make it satisfactory for
broadcasting on a ‘children’s hour’ program,” Herring said. ‘It is all right for the
book to be on the shelf to be read when anyone desires, but I don’t think it should
be broadcast just before children go to bed.’”
[Renwicke Carey, San Antonio Light, March 6, 1938] “Boris Karloff was so
effective in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ that he was given a five-week contract to portray
original horror stories by Arch Oboler at the Lights Out broadcasts.”
ORIGINATION: KFI, Los Angeles, California (NBC-RED).
DURATION: January 30, 1938.
PERSONNEL: Dwight Cooke (producer), Shirley Ward (scriptwriter).
CAST: Don Ameche, Boris Karloff.
EXTANT RECORDINGS: Yes, in the Library of Congress.
THE CHASE AND SANBORN HOUR (KFI, LOS ANGELES)
[Sunday—8:00-9:00 PM]
Jan. 30, 1938 “The Evil Eye”