The Mercury Theatre on the Air
Orson Welles (July 1938)
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| Other names | First Person Singular |
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| Genre | Anthology drama |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | CBS |
| Hosted by | Orson Welles |
| Starring |
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| Created by | Orson Welles |
| Written by |
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| Directed by |
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| Produced by |
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| Executive producer(s) | Davidson Taylor (for CBS) |
| Narrated by | Orson Welles |
| Air dates | July 11 to December 4, 1938 |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 22 |
| Opening theme | Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor by Tchaikovsky |
The Mercury Theatre on the Air (first known as First Person Singular) is a radio series of live radio dramas created by Orson Welles. The weekly hour-long show presented classic literary works performed by Welles's celebrated Mercury Theatre repertory company, with music composed or arranged by Bernard Herrmann.
The series began July 11, 1938, as a sustaining program on the CBS Radio network, airing Mondays at 9 pm ET. On September 11, 1938, the show moved to Sundays at 8 pm.
After the front-page headlines generated by the "The War of the Worlds" (October 30, 1938) — one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio due to the mass panic it accidentally caused — Campbell Soup signed on as sponsor. The Mercury Theatre on the Air made its last broadcast December 4, 1938, and The Campbell Playhouse began December 9, 1938.
After the theatrical successes of the Mercury Theatre, CBS Radio invited Orson Welles to create a summer show for 13 weeks. The series began July 11, 1938, initially titled First Person Singular, with the formula that Welles would play the lead in each show. Some months later, the show was called The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
Paul Holler, writing in Critique, described the program's origin:
"Radio, with its power to excite the imagination and actually involve the audience in the creative process, had huge potential as a medium for serious drama. It seemed inevitable that the day would come when this medium, which had made Orson Welles a household name across the country, would become a part of his serious theater ambitions. That day came in 1938
"It was in that year that CBS, remembering Welles' work on Les Misérables the year before, approached him and Houseman about a series of radio dramas for its summer schedule. The idea was conceived as a series of narratives under the title First Person Singular. But the series would be best remembered by the name it assumed with its second production, The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
"As with Les Misérables the previous year, Welles was given complete creative control by CBS over the new series. The choices he made in developing the series were informed by what he had learned in previous years in other radio dramas. Chief among those choices was to create dramas specifically for the radio and not to simply adapt dramas in production at the Mercury Theatre for broadcast. In close collaboration with John Houseman and other writers, Welles wrote, directed and performed in the productions. The end result was a series of dramas based on literary, rather than dramatic, works. There were exceptions, most notably Our Town by Welles's early mentor Thornton Wilder. But it was clear to Welles and Houseman that the medium of radio suited the telling of a story far better than the dramatization of it. As a result, some of the most memorable Mercury Theatre on the Air productions were adaptations of great novels. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, The Magnificent Ambersons, Heart of Darkness and other major literary works were offered to radio audiences during the Mercury Theatre on the Air's run."
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