Sep 19, 2024
Inquest - Quiet, Please | 08/03/1947 (Ep007)
Ad-free episode of “Quiet, Please” - the audio has crackles but it’s a great story.
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Inquest - Quiet, Please | 08/03/1947 (Ep007)
Ad-free episode of “Quiet, Please” - the audio has crackles but it’s a great story.
This week on Content Abnormal we present Ernest Chappell in the Quiet, Please tale "Whence Came You?".
Remembering Wyllis Cooper (January 26, 1899 – June 22, 1955) on his birthday
Old time radio fans know him best as the creator of Lights Out and Quiet Please. He wrote the scripts for Mr. Moto Takes a Chance and the Universal horror entry Son of Frankenstein. In 1951, he created and directed Whitehall 1212, a Scotland Yard radio drama presenting actual cases from the London police. Cooper was also the writer and director behind Cloak and Dagger - the dramatizations of wartime adventures of the OSS, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Cooper was a radio innovator; Lights Out was celebrated for its clever use of sound effects to create a sense of tension and horror in its stories, and Quiet Please was minimalist in its presentation, sometimes featuring only one actor and very little in the way of music. In Quiet Please, Cooper gave us what is widely considered the most frightening radio play of all time - “The Thing on the Fourble Board.”
Personally, I’m partial to a few of the less scary but still entertaining tales Cooper concocted for Quiet Please...
Every marriage has its ups and downs - but a man married to a witch has more than his share in “Don’t Tell Me About Halloween” (originally aired on Mutual on October 27, 1947).
A meek scientist’s tremendous invention - a supercomputer with incalculable intelligence - develops feelings for its creator in “The Pathetic Fallacy” (originally aired on Mutual on February 2, 1948).
A veteran cavalry soldier narrates a lyrical and beautiful story with a gut punch of an ending in “A Red and White Guidon” (originally aired on Mutual on February 9, 1948).
Cooper was hailed by his fellow writer (and Lights Out successor Arch Oboler) as the father of the radio drama: “Radio drama (as distinguished from theater plays boiled down to kilocycle size) began at midnight, in the middle thirties, on one of the upper floors of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. The pappy was a rotund writer by the name of Wyllis Cooper.”
Horror returns after a three-year gap with 1939's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, directed by Rowland Lee. What changed in America that Universal Studios was willing to raise this dead genre? How far does this apple fall from the Frankenstein tree? And how do Basil Rathbone, Lionel Atwill, and Bela Lugosi stand in comparison to Boris Karloff as the Monster?
Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 38:59; Discussion 48:06; Ranking 1:09:07
This week on Content Abnormal, Frankentyner discusses Valentine’s Day, the writings of Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson and Wyllis Cooper, and he presents the Quiet, Please episode featuring the drama “The Hat, The Bed And John J. Catherine”!
This week on Content Abnormal we present Ernest Chappell in the spooky Quiet Please story "Good Ghost"!
Son of Frankenstein
🇺🇸 | Jan 13, 1939
directed by Rowland V. Lee
screenplay by Wyllis Cooper
novel by Mary Shelley
produced by Universal Pictures
starring Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson
1h39 | Horror, Science Fiction
out of plan
Today's stay at home, binge-able listen features Wyllis Cooper, the wonderful mind behind the creation, writing and directing of "Lights Out" and "Quiet Please" (still my fav radio show.)
Episode #88 Aired 1949-02-20 Length: 24:58 Size: 5.71 MB
"Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" - https://www.quietplease.org/mp3/88alt.mp3
Wyllis Cooper is in a bar, late at night. He's drinking ginger ale. A man named Basil comes up to him and tries to start a conversation, but Cooper attempts to ignore him. Basil is persistent, and eventually forces conversation. Soon enough, after he learns that Cooper writes scripts for radio, he arrives at the question everyone arrives at: "Where do you get your ideas?"
Basil, after drinking a series of dry Manhattans, tells Mr. Cooper about the woman who he keeps murdering, but who won't stay dead. He also tells Mr. Cooper about the people on the moon, who have four arms and two heads. Cooper tries to ignore him, and the bartender tries to get rid of Basil.
The question remains: Where did he get his ideas?
{A lovely sidenote about Mr. Cooper is that it's said that his name was originally spelled Willis, but he changed it to accommodate his wife's beliefs in numerology. A wonderful gesture}
