For Halloween: Audio of War of the Worlds (and others from Mercury Theatre) online:

[The Straight Story]

http://www.mercurytheatre.info/

The Mercury Theatre on the Air
The finest radio drama of the 1930’s was The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a show featuring the acclaimed New York drama company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman. In its brief run, it featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris. The show is famous for its notorious War of the Worlds broadcast, but the other shows in the series are relatively unknown. This site has many of the surviving shows, and will eventually have all of them.

The show first broadcast on CBS and CBC in July 1938. It ran without a sponsor until December of that year, when it was picked up by Campbell’s Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse. All of the surviving Mercury Theatre shows are available from this page in RealAudio format (some are also in MP3 format). There are several Campbell Playhouse episodes available here as well, in both RealAudio and MP3 formats; the rest are being added gradually.

Mercury Theatre

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Dracula (July 11, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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Treasure Island (July 18, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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A Tale of Two Cities (July 25, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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The 39 Steps (August 1, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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Three Short Stories: I’m a Fool, The Open Window, and My Little Boy (August 8, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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Abraham Lincoln (August 15, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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The Affairs of Anatol (August 22, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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The Count of Monte Cristo (August 29, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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The Man Who Was Thursday (September 5, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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The Immortal Sherlock Holmes (September 25, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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Hell on Ice (October 9, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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Seventeen (October 16, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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Around the World in 80 Days (October 23, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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Heart of Darkness / Life with Father (November 6, 1938)
Real Audio • MP3 • Checksums
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A Passenger to Bali (November 13, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum
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The Pickwick Papers (November 20, 1938)
Real Audio • Checksum

[eShirl]

1. kickety-kick!

[The Straight Story]

2. Listening to it now, told my daughter to rush out here on porch to hear the news

She is 8 and was entranced, we looked up Grover's Mill, NJ on google maps :)

Finally let her in on it - when she was 3-4 she loved the original movie, watched it all the time. Not sure why but she thought it was the coolest thing.

[eShirl]

6. lol, hope she wasn't mad when she found out

I'm going to listen to these w/ my husband, who's legally blind

he feels left out sometimes w/ movies & TV that he can't see so clearly, but with these we'll be on equal footing :)

[The Straight Story]

8. See my link below as well for even more

Hope you both enjoy them as much as I am!

[Soylent Brice]

3. excellent find!

thank you!!

[The Straight Story]

5. A lot more here:

http://radiolovers.com/

[Graybeard]

9. Here's another great website:

For old time radio shows, news broadcasts and a lot more.

http://www.archive.org/

[eShirl]

12. wow!

When I was a kid, my older brother restored a few antique radios (wooden, gothic arch looking things), about the same time that Public Radio was rerunning a bunch of old shows like Fibber McGee & Molly, The Shadow, Green Hornet, etc. Bro was playing the shows on one of his project radios when I had a friend over, and asked her if her family ever listened to these shows. "Oh no," she said, "we don't have an old radio."

:rofl:

[Soylent Brice]

13. dude! they have the old superman shows!

[The Straight Story]

7. And here are many old books free online (Like HP Lovecraft, etc)

http://manybooks.net/authors/lovecrafth.html

[martymar64]

11. Praise Yog-Sothoth!

There is also a bittorrent out there that is a collection of audiobooks and broadcasts of Lovecraft stories. The Atlanta Radio Theatre renditions of the Dunwich Horror and At the Mountains of Madness are nothing short of brilliant.
Joe Bob says check it out!

[Soylent Brice]

14. thanks a lot! i'm going to be up all night now! lol

The Call of Cthulhu.

awesome.

[The Straight Story]

16. Whisperer in the darkness is my all time favorite one

Still gives me the chills reading it.

[Graybeard]

4. They did Rebecca before the movie version was made.

Orson Welles and Margaret Sullavan in Rebecca is great. It is faithful to the book's plot and ending unlike the Selznick movie. And as a bonus Welles speaks with Daphne du Maurier via trans-Atlantic cable, quite a novelty at the time.

[slampoet]

10. For the very first time available FREE! Thanks Public Domain!!!!!!

[HootieMcBoob]

15. Great Stuff!!

I really appreciate your posting this link. A real treasure trove.