First Person Singular

Before Orson Welles created his own radio series, he frequently performed on the radio in series such as The March of Time and The Shadow. He used his income from radio to support the theater company he founded with John Houseman, the Mercury Theatre. The Mercury Theatre made a big impression in 1938, and Time magazine featured Welles on its cover on May 9, 1938. Taking advantage of Welles’s new celebrity, CBS offered Welles total creative control for a short radio series. First Person Singular ran for nine episodes, from July 11 to September 5, 1938. It continued under the title The Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Here is one of those episodes; an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1859 novel "A Tale of Two Cities", broadcast on July 25, 1938.

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