From Mercury to Mars: “Welles,” Belles, and Fred Allen’s Sonic Pranks
The latest post in our From Mercury to Mars: Orson Welles on Radio after 75 Years series (in conjunction with Sounding Out!) finds Kathleen Battles focusing on the humorous side of Welles. Specifically, the relationship between Welles’s post-“War of the Worlds” fame and how it was lampooned by Fred Allen, one of the great absurdist comics in modern entertainment and perhaps the most creative radio comedian of his era. Battles discusses how Allen made a career satirizing the cultural conventions of the day, with the radio industry itself being one of his favorite targets. The auteur genius figure of Welles was simply too rich a subject for Allen to forego.
Click here to read Kathleen Battles’s full post.
This post is the fifth in our ongoing series in partnership with Sounding Out!, From Mercury to Mars: Orson Welles on Radio after 75 Years. Stay tuned for Antenna’s next installment on October 14th, featuring Shawn VanCour on the aesthetics of the “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Miss any of the previous posts in the series? Click here for links to all of the earlier entries.
