Saturday, February 26, 2011

Radio review – Silver Theatre – “Stars in their Courses” (1939) **

Orson Welles introduces this show, but doesn’t act in it, even though the male lead kind of sounds like him, and the female lead was Helen Hayes, with whom Orson frequently acted on radio. Helen plays an aspiring actor who falls in love with another actor after one date and they agree to get married; he’s actually not very good, and one night when his co-star gets ill, Helen steps in and is a success – and it ends up breaking up their marriage. Which makes the guy a major loser (I mean he sooks off when his wife is a hit), but she kind of falls to pieces and I think we’re meant to be happy when he turns into a playwright and they get back together. Sexist trollop – the most interesting character is a drunken actor, a sort of Iago figure, who disappointingly disappears for the last act.

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