Project Audion Episode 2: Arch Oboler's Plays' "Special to Hollywood"

As part of Project Audion, voice actors from Canada, Illinois, Kansas, Florida, and Texas perform live together in a recreation of a classic Arch Oboler radio drama from 1945. A Note from the Director... This play is timeless and terrifyingly timely, with its story of Hollywood elites completely out of touch with the suffering of ordinary people. Arch Oboler wrote it in 1941, after he and his wife attended a dinner party at the home of a Hollywood bigwig, along with other bigwigs. The after-dinner conversation was about World War II, which was devastating the world, but the bigwigs only cared about how it was affecting their own bottom-lines. Outraged at their complete indifference to the suffering of millions of people, Oboler went home and wrote "Special to Hollywood". It was produced three times. The first version (on "Everyman's Theatre", in 1941) is the most available one, but it has a fake "Lights Out" wraparound done when it was released on cassette by Metacom, and is usually also misidentified as the 1945 version. It stars Howard Duff. The second version (on "Arch Oboler's Plays, in 1945) is not circulating, but is the best version because of its subtlety and long pauses, and because it stars Elliott Lewis, under the pseudonym of "Hans Max". Elliott was in the AFRS at the time, but was stationed in Hollywood, where he took civilian gigs under pseudonyms, since he didn't have the AFRS' permission to do so. The third version (on "Arch Oboler's Plays", in 1964) is circulating, but is the least of the three versions. It stars William Shatner, and is shorter, faster-paced, and lacking in subtlety. It also has a different ending, suggesting that Oboler had lost hope for humanity.