Mystery House
194?
Bela Lugosi was to be the star of Mystery House, with Ken Carpenter as the host.
Mystery House was a terrific radio series staring Bele Lugosi. There was only one problem: It never aired. Fortunately, it survives on record and tape for collectors to enjoy. The following excerpt is from exhaustive book on Bela's career entitled LUGOSI by Gary Don Rhodes.
"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Lugosi's radio career is this -- an attempt at his own program [Mystery House] . It hoped to feature Lugosi in the leading role of various 'Grand Guignol' tales. Ken Carpenter, a well-known radio personality at the time, gave introductory and closing remarks/ Among the planned episodes was a story about a woman who had been buried alive, whith producers hoping for Simone Simon as a guest. 'The Thirsty Death', a 'pilot' episode, survives and features John Carradine and Lureen Tuttle as guests. Lugosi played a jealous husband who injects his wife or Carradine -- her presumed lover -- with a poison, only to find out too late that the two were innocent of infidelity. This particular recording is seemingly the only one actually produced and recorded. The Mystery House press would have sponsored it, so why the show never reached the air remains a question. The stories in Mystery House were to be from 'the greatest mystery theater the world has ever known, the Grand Guignol of Paris.' The only recorded show claims Lugosi was to star in a series of Mystery House films for Universal Studios. If produced, they would have echoed the Inner Sanctum series of films Univeral made with Lon Chaney, Jr. Some 14 episodes of Mystery House exist without Lugosi, surviving artifacts from another of the program's incarnations."