One of the great things about these old radio dramas is you get to see different casting combinations of old movies. Instead of thinking Errol Flynn would have been great in Lives of a Bengal Lancer – you can hear him; instead of wishing Orson Welles had made some more mainstream stuff you have hear him to just that on radio.This gives us another teaming of the legendary Ladd and Lake – they made four films together, three of them classics; the film of OSS was better than Saigon, but it lacked Lake (Geraldine Fitzgerald was the female lead).
To be honest, neither she nor Ladd are believable as spies – they’re too tough and sexy to fit in – but it’s wonderful to hear them together; even on radio they made a good team. Listening to this it felt different from the film – mainly I guess because the thing I most remembered from the movie (the training sequence with all the cool stuff spies do) is cut; however they do include the other but I remember, namely Ladd being asked to stay on the mission and whingeing about it (actually it’s a good bit of acting from him).
There’s some funny Lux stuff – the spiel for Lux mentions the fact that female agents in occupied countries can’t use Lux otherwise they wouldn’t fit in with the locals.
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