Terror By Night
1936
Above image courtesy of Tune In For Terror © 1992
Terror by Night didn't have a host. It just launched into the story with a full cast and sound effects. The tales were classic horror stories, and the premier episode was Rudyard Kipling's "The Phantom Rickshaw" and the last episode was Charles Dickens' "The Signal Man." It ran from March through June of 1936... just before the summer that CBS began keeping recordings of their shows. A young Orson Welles appeared in several of the shows, as did the music of Bernard Herrmann. Radio researcher Mike Ogden considers Terror by Night as the genesis of The Columbia Workshop, which broke new ground with experimental radio story telling techniques. (Irving Reis was co-director of Terror by Night and two years later, the creator of The Columbia Workshop.) Also in 1938, The Mercury Theater on the Air began bending the conventions of radio drama, so much so that they created a public panic with their now infamous Halloween Eve broadcast of "War of the Worlds". Bernard Herrmann supplied music for both series, and both shows were broadcast from the same CBS building.
I am grateful to Mike Ogden (3-26-10) for his above information on this series. (If you have any additional info, please contact me.) There's no documentation about Terror by Night in the more popular OTR reference books. So we're fortunate that Ogden has expanded the list of ten known titles (from the OTRR radio logs) to thirteen (with one repeat). It provides a good taste of what the series was all about.
1936/03/01 1 The Phantom Rickshaw
1936/03/08 2 The Restless Dead
1936/03/22 3 The Bells (Orson Welles, Ray Collins, and Martha Scott)
1936/03/29 4 The Tell-Tale Heart
1936/04/05 5 The Signal Man
1936/04/12 6 The Half-Pint Flask
1936/04/19 7 The Murder Ghost
1936/04/26 8 The Phantom Coach
1936/05/03 9 The Monkey's Paw
1936/05/17 10 Death of a Friend
1936/05/24 11 The Open Door
1936/05/31 12 The Haunted Mine
1936/06/07 13 The Signal Man
Here are ten known titles (courtesy of the OTRR radio logs)
1936/03/01 1 The Phantom Rickshaw
1936/03/08 2 The Restless Dead
1936/03/22 3 The Bells
1936/03/29 4 The Tell-Tale Heart
1936/04/05 5 Death of a Friend
1936/04/12 6 The Half-Pint Flask
1936/04/19 7 Murder Ghost
1936/05/03 8 The Phantom Coach
1936/05/17 9 Death of a Friend
1936/05/24 10 The Open Door
