Here’s a fun 30 minutes or so for the Halloween season. It’s Orson Welles using his terrific voice for “The Hitchhiker” radio drama for CBS Radio about 80 years ago.
Route 66 content: A good portion of the story takes place on the Mother Road. The first line of the suspenseful tale is “I’m in an auto camp on Route 66 just outside Gallup, New Mexico …”
“The Hitchhiker” later inspired an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
Welles was less than a year removed from the release of his classic film “Citizen Kane” and just a few years after his infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.
The tale obviously is fiction, but it provides a glimpse of life in World War II in America. You’ll also hear an advertisement for war bonds at the end of the story.
The person who uploaded the recording remastered it so it’s a lot clearer anytime it’s been heard except for possibly its first broadcast in 1942. The channel has more such radio episodes.
(Hat tip to Brian Gregory; image of a young Orson Welles by bswise via Flickr)