Radio Drama · Old Time Radio Researchers · Horror & the supernatural
The Devil and Mr. O
- Heard
- 1971–1972
- Episodes
- 26
THE DEVIL AND MR. O
More about it
A transcribed syndication of original broadcasts from Lights Out. With its premiere on the nationwide NBC hookup in 1935, Lights Out was billed "the ultimate in horror." Never had such sounds been heard on the air. Heads rolled, bones were crushed, people fell from great heights and splattered wetly on pavement. There were garrotings, choking, heads split by cleavers, and, to a critic at Radio Guide, "the most monstrous of all sounds, human flesh being eaten." Few shows had ever combined the talents of actors and imaginative writers so well with the graphic art of the sound technician. Wyllis Cooper, who created, wrote, and produced it, was then a 36-year-old staffer in Chicago's NBC Studios. Cooper created his horror "by raiding the larder." For the purposed of Lights Out sound effects, people were what they ate. The sound of a butcher knife rending a piece of uncooked pork was, when accompanied by shrieks and screams, the essence of murder to a listener alone at midnight. Real bones were broken - spareribs snapped with a pipe wrench. Bacon in a frypan gave a vivid impression of a body just electrocuted. And the cannibalism effect was actually a zealous actor. Gurgling and smacking his lips as he slurped up a bowl of spaghetti. Cabbages sounded like human heads when chopped open with a cleaver, and carrots had the pleasant resonance of fingers being lopped off. Arch Oboler's celebrated tale of a man turned inside-out by a demonic fog was accomplished…
Episodes, in broadcast order
Where it comes from 1
The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.
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The Devil and Mr. O - Single Episodes
CC BY-NC-ND 2.5: CC BY-NC-ND 2.5, as its uploader states it at the Internet Archive.
1 more set holds only episodes played here from a set above.
A set by the Old Time Radio Researchers Group (otrr.org), at the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio collection.
More Horror & the supernatural
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NBC · 1944–1949
Inner Sanctum Mysteries
1941–1952
Lights Out
1935–1947
Dark Fantasy
NBC · 1941–1942
Nightfall-CBC
1980–1983
The Life of Riley
1943–1951
Ozzie & Harriet
CBS · 1944–1954
Weird Circle
1943–1947
The Inner Sanctum
1941–1952
Molle Mystery Theatre
1943–1948
Quiet Please
Mutual · 1947–1949
Screen Director's Playhouse
NBC · 1949–1951
Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.