The Black Museum
was a 1951 radio crime drama program produced by
Harry Alan Towers for the
BBC and based
on real-life cases from the files of
Scotland Yard's
Black Museum. Ira Marion was the scriptwriter, and music for the
series was composed and conducted by
Sidney Torch.
Orson Welles was both host and
narrator for 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.
Program format and themes
Walking through the museum, Welles would pause at one
of the exhibits, and his description of an artifact served as a device
to lead into a wryly-narrated dramatised tale of a brutal murder or a
vicious crime. In the closing: "Now until we meet again in the same
place and I tell you another tale of the Black Museum", Welles would
conclude with his signature radio phrase, "I remain, as always,
obediently yours".
With the story themes deriving from objects in the
collection (usually with the names of the people involved changed but
the facts remaining true to history), the 52 episodes had such titles as
"The Tartan Scarf," "A Piece of Iron Chain," "Frosted Glass Shards" and
"A Khaki Handkerchief.". An anomaly to the series was an episode called
"The Letter"; this was the only story not about murder but about
forgery.
American version
In the
United States, the series aired on the
Mutual Network between (January
1 and
December 30,
1952).
Beginning May 7, 1953, it was also broadcast over
Radio Luxembourg sponsored by the cleaning products
Dreft and
Mirro.
Since the BBC carried no commercials, Radio Luxembourg aired sponsored
programs at night to England.
In
America, a program of similar scope, using many of the same picked
cases as The Black Museum, and nearly mirroring its broadcast run
was broadcast by NBC called
Whitehall 1212. The two shows were different in the respect that
while Whitehall told the story of a case entirely from the point of view
of the police starting from the crime scene, The Black Museum was more
heavily dramatized and played out scenes of the actual murders and
included scenes from the criminal's point of view.
Black Museum
