The original radio program was reissued in an audiobook format by Heritage Media.
The Black Museum is a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Alan Towers, which was broadcast in the USA on the Mutual network in 1952. It was then broadcast in Europe in 1953 on Radio Luxembourg, a commercial radio station, and was not broadcast by the BBC until 1991.
Towers was based in London, but this series was recorded in Sydney, Australia. In 1946 Towers and his mother, Margaret Miller Towers, started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Lives of Harry Lime with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower with Michael Redgrave, and a series of Sherlock Holmes stories featuring John Gielgud as Holmes, Ralph Richardson as Watson and Welles as Moriarty.
[1]
Towers visited Australia in the late 1940s and set up production facilities in Sydney. The Black Museum was produced in Sydney by Creswick Jenkinson on behalf of Towers of London. It had a top-line Australian cast including Joe McCormick, plus American actor Harp McGuire. Orson Welles's introductions were recorded on tape in London, then flown to Australia to be added to the locally recorded performances. This was the first series to be produced in Australia in this way.[2]
The Black Museum was based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. The programme was transcribed in 1951 and was broadcast in the United States in 1952 on Mutual.[3] More than 500 of the network's stations carried it.[4] Ira Marion was the scriptwriter and music for the series was composed and conducted by Sidney Torch.
This same music was used for the opening credits of, and incidental music in, the 1955 film They Can't Hang Me, starring Terence Morgan.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator of stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true crime cases. The show's opening began:
"This is Orson Welles, speaking from London.
(Sound of Big Ben chimes)
The Black Museum ... a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects ... a woman’s shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe ... all are touched by murder."
Robert Rietti played the lead roles and Keith Pyott was often in the cast.
In 2002, Towers produced The Black Museum for television and hired director Gregory Mackenzie to be the showrunner and director for the anthology series using the original narration by Welles. The adaptation was shot on location in London in a film noir style and the pilot starred Michael York as the Scotland Yard Inspector Russell.
^"Harry Alan Towers obituary". September 30, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
^"The Black Museum". 12 July 2006.
^Dunning 1998, p. 95.
^Sullivan, Ed (December 17, 1951). "Little Old New York". The Morning Herald. The Morning Herald. p. 4. Retrieved May 4, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
TheBlackMuseum is a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Alan Towers, which was broadcast in the USA on the Mutual network in 1952. It was then...
Horrors of theBlackMuseum (1959) is a British-American horror film directed by Arthur Crabtree and starring Michael Gough, June Cunningham, Graham Curnow...
TheBlack Forest Open Air Museum (German: Schwarzwälder Freilichtmuseum Vogtsbauernhof) is an open-air museum located between Hausach and Gutach in the...
Black Mirror is a British science fiction anthology series created by Charlie Brooker. The programme was inspired by The Twilight Zone and explores technology...
TheBlack Country Living Museum (formerly theBlack Country Museum) is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings in Dudley, West Midlands, England...
TheBlack Fashion Museum is a former museum that traced the historical contributions of black designers and clothing makers to fashion. Originally established...
Known as theBlackMuseum until the early 21st century, themuseum came into existence at Scotland Yard sometime in 1874, arising out of the collection...
TheMuseum of Black Civilisations (French: Musée des civilisations noires) is a national museum in Dakar, Senegal, that opened on 6 December 2018. It...
collections of The Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, theMuseum of Arts and Design, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Schomburg Center...
horror are features of "BlackMuseum" and "Playtest", respectively. The first episode, "The National Anthem", contains black comedy and political satire...
Marc Rowan and Josh Harris. Black was the chairman of theMuseum of Modern Art from 2018 to 2021. Black is a son of Eli M. Black (1921–1975), a Jewish businessman...
The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum is a wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland featuring prominent African-American and other black historical figures...
TheMuseum of Black Joy is a virtual museum launched by Philadelphia artist Andrea "Philly" Walls in January 2020. Themuseum's mission statement says...
from the original on 15 October 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2018. TheBlackMuseum ISBN 978-0-316-90332-5 pp. 364–365 The Murders of theBlackMuseum: 1870–1970...
It also includes contemporary objects. Themuseum is named after Jim Crow, a song-and-dance caricature of black people that by 1838 had become a pejorative...
Blacks Point Museum is a museum in Blacks Point, near Reefton on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Themuseum building is a former Methodist/Wesleyan...
Baan Dam Museum (Thai: พิพิธภัณฑ์บ้านดำ), also known to foreigners as theBlack House Museum, is a private art museum comprising a mixture of traditional...
Gregory has set up theBlack Miner's Museum and has curated an exhibition entitled The Digging Deep Project Exhibition. Museums portal Audio tour Category:Types...
Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It...
preserved and extended by theBlack Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, located in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Black Mountain College was founded...
The Safe House Black History Museum is a museum and cultural center in Greensboro, Alabama, United States. In March 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. used...
The Griot Museum of Black History is a wax museum in St. Louis, Missouri, founded in 1997. Originally named TheBlack World History Wax Museum, the organization...
Barry Black, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer. TheMuseum of the Bible charges for admission. Themuseum features...
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located...
By 1929, the Natural History Museum, London had skins of black leopards collected in South Africa, Nepal, Assam and Kanara in India. Black leopards were...
TheMuseum of theBlack History in Porto Alegre, sometimes called theBlack History Museum, is an open-air museum in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre...
Global Information
