The Mercury Theatre on the Air, 1938 - Orson Welles (PRO)

Amazing application that includes 17 hours of historical audio.

The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown. This site has many of the surviving shows, and will eventually have all of them.

The show first broadcast on Columbia Broadcasting System and CBC in July 1938. It ran without a sponsor until December of that year, when it was picked up by Campbell’s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.


Dracula (July 11, 1938)

Treasure Island (July 18, 1938)

A Tale of Two Cities (July 25, 1938)

The 39 Steps (August 1, 1938)

Three Short Stories: I’m a Fool, The Open Window, and My Little Boy (August 8, 1938)

Abraham Lincoln (August 15, 1938)

The Affairs of Anatol (August 22, 1938)

The Count of Monte Cristo (August 29, 1938)

The Man Who Was Thursday (September 5, 1938)

The Immortal Sherlock Holmes (September 25, 1938)

Hell on Ice (October 9, 1938)

Seventeen (October 16, 1938)

Around the World in 80 Days (October 23, 1938)

The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)

Heart of Darkness / Life with Father (November 6, 1938)

A Passenger to Bali (November 13, 1938)

The Pickwick Papers (November 20, 1938) Show More