New Years Eve Horror

In 1936, after the first three years of wildly successful run of his earlier creation "Lights Out", Cooper  opted to leave the show behind, so production was transferred over into the hands of Arch Oobler who became very famous because of it, and carried it on-and-off for another decade.          
           

".. Willis Cooper was the writer who originated the show, but he left for Hollywood in 1936. Arch Obeler took it over "and made it his," according to Schaden. "Lights out, everybody," was the announcer's greeting during the show's Chicago run.." - Chicago Tribune Feb 23, 1986 section C, pg. 7, "Way We Were. A look at Chicago's past"
                                      

Lights Out to Hollywood Lights...

Cooper's desire to leave  was to satisfy an urge to pursue other ventures in Hollywood..  And so he went, and for the next 4 years he was both sole screenplay writer, and  contributing writer on over a dozen motion pictures and television productions. A few notable movie mentions include 'Black Friday' (aka 'Friday the 13th), 'Mr Moto', 'Electric Man' (aka 'Man Made Monster') and at least one of  'Shirley Temple's films.
But certainly, the most famous, was his screenplay for the motion picture 'Son of Frankenstein'.. it was also the last script for a movie he'd ever write.
As successful as 'Son of Frankenstein' was, Coopers experience while scripting it, was an excessively miserable one, and undoubtedly the reason he became disenchanted with Hollywood...

(Bear with me here, the following leads to a direct relationship to 'Quiet Please'..)

The release date for the movie Son of Frankenstein had been set for January 1939. Universal Studios was still awaiting a director in September when they had hired Cooper to create the screenplay. Cooper checked in at Universal, screened both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein to familiarize with the theme, and then set out to write the script.
On October 20, Cooper completed the screenplay for the movie. Universal was enthused over Coopers finished script, and ready to begin shooting, But their recently hired producer/director Rowland V. Lee threw a monkey wrench into the whole production, when he began re-crafting the Son of Frankenstein story in the way he envisioned it..
Cooper was then put into a constant 24/7 standby at the studio for months, and had to rewrite the script, little by little, every day, based on the the ever-changing spare-of-the-moment ideas Lee was continuously pitching at him.

The shooting finally began in November, and "Cooper was still a virtual prisoner at the studio cranking out a few pages at a time based on Lee's impromptu inspirations."
This continued on through December, on into the evening of Christmas Eve.. and on past New Years Eve..
 
"Son of Frankenstein has a literate story, fascinating principles, and some classic dialogue. As such, it seems almost unbelievable the story was made up day to day. Lee might have fashioned the basic story but the sole screenplay credit went to Wyllis Cooper, who'd written the original abandoned script. Now, during the shoot, Cooper was on call, apparently 24/7, to develop Lee's ideas.  Was it an enjoyable challenge?".... "..it seems safe to assume that Wyllis Cooper hardly cherished his memories.. of Son of Frankenstein."- 'Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration' by William Mank - Page 352

The above quote from the book is but a small portion describing Coopers ordeal, you can read more of it here. How does it have a relation to 'Quiet Please'? Well, for one, the whole ordeal had so discouraged Cooper, that immediately after it, he abandoned his other screenplay obligations, and left Hollywood. Had he not left, he might not of ever created "Quiet, Please!".

"Wyllis Cooper, reported to be writing the new Karloff and Lugusi movie ["Friday the 13th"], had escaped the job -- possibly frighted of being held captive at the studio as he'd been on Son of Frankenstein". - P. 384

But the direct relationship between his work on the movie and the Quiet Please series is that, eight years later, Cooper  turned that horrific ordeal  into a  QP episode, that he entitled "Rain on New Year's Eve" (#29). Everything that happened in the episode, corresponds almost exactly, and very thinly veiled, with what went on at Universal, but fortunately, the real life experience didn't conclude in the drastic way the episode did.. Still, it did make clear on Coopers attitude about the whole thing.

Anyway, in 1939, Cooper decided that Hollywood was not his game, so he left California for New York, and a return to his roots in radio..

So with tonight being New Years Eve,...


Episode #29 December 31  1947
Rain On New Years Eve
Listen:
or Download mp3
Original Air Date(s):
Monday, December 29, 1947 ?PM WOR
Wednesday, December 31 1947 8:30 P.M. MBS - WNDR
Summary:
An overbearing director of a horror film puts unreasonable demands upon the cast and crew, making them work unreasonable hours, while also consuming both their Christmas, and New Years Eve holidays..
 This episode is based on the real life events of Wyllis Cooper which occurred about eight years earlier at Universal Studios, while he was writing the screenplay for the famous 1939 motion picture "Son of Frankenstein" - (Though in real life it didn't end the same!).
Audio Quality:
Other than some brief spans of noise at the very beginning and around the  halfway mark, audio is clean.

First Time On Air..

One Air for the First Time...

It was 1947 when Cooper was once again awarded the opportunity to write and direct a new original radio series of his own creation; (ironically this happened only a few months before 'Lights Out' was to air it's final show, and end it's sporadtic14 year run. )
And that's when 'Quiet, Please' came into existence..

"..The bizarre and supernatural will be the material for writer Wyllis Cooper's "Quiet Please," a new dramatic series to be heard on WOR by transcription,..."  
-New York Times - July 23, 1947 - 'News of Radio' column

One of the first things Cooper did, was to urge and convince a specific, and very well known radio announcer and emcee - - not to be the announcer for the new show, - but to exclusively be the featured actor on all episodes...
Cooper must have sensed that man's talent was crucial to make Quiet Please really work.
That man was the beloved Ernest Chappell.

Chappell had next to nil on acting experience, still, he was a 25 year veteran in broadcast radio, and possessed a manner and a voice that the public had already grown to know and admire. And besides, Cooper didn't want "acting" on his show, his aim was to have the stories exhibit a more natural and realistic feel, and he insisted such deliveries from all participating cast members. Yet, it was also mandatory they stay true to the scripts.

Cooper likes to think of himself as a rebel..."I don't believe in too strong a story line because it's apt to be too hard for the listener to keep in mind," he says. "The charm in radio consists of good characterization. Plot should consist of a twist rather than a formalized structure." He doesn't rewrite, nor does he permit his actors to "ad lib" although his dialogue achieves a smooth flowing naturalness. He beats no drums, espouses no causes, says his function is "to entertain. - Writer's Digest magazine, May 1949

 
Yes, Cooper's superb creativity, writing, and direction was an extremely major contribution.. he was the very backbone to the Quiet Please aura. He must have possessed a tremendous energy. His seemingly effortlessly written stories week after week, month after month, year after year, never dry, never dull, always insightful, always knowledgeable, always diverse, and always entertaining. How did he tap into that never ending stream?
The question resides now as it did then: Wyllis Cooper, where did you get your ideas?

"Wyllis Cooper, a writer of eerie, sometimes incomprehensible though remarkably literate radio and television dramas, looks as if he'd stepped out of one of his own scripts. He's a short, bespectacled man, broad of brow and sweeping of girth. His double chin is an expanse of incomparable grandeur. He works, hunched over a typewriter like an intelligent spider, in a large office in the Hotel Brittany behind drawn blinds. The drawn blinds, he explains, are to protect him from street noises, which is the sort of contradiction he loves to use in his radio plays.
                      - Oakland Tribune, September 6, 1949

The First Quiet Please Episode: Recorded on 6/3/47 Studio 6 - 100 - 530
Interesting note: The original script called for a ticking clock to start the show:
 (MUSIC ... THEME)
 ANNCR: Quiet, please.
 SOUND: (A QUIET CLOCK TICKING)
 ANNCR: (ON CUE) Quiet, please.
 SOUND: (FADE THE CLOCK-TICKING OUT SLOWLY
Evidently, Cooper changed his mind..

Episode #1. June 8, 1947
Nothing Behind The Door
Air Date:
Sunday, June 8, 1947,  2:30 PM,  MBS
Summary:( Actual reviews from the time)
"Quiet, Please! Reviewed June 8, 1947. Wyllis Cooper.. unveiled a promising program over at the Mutual network Sunday (8), 3:30-4 pm. Tabbed Nothing Behind the Door, The shot--..impressed as imaginative venture ingeniously put together at very low production cost... ..Thus, In Door three thieves decide to use a fenced off building atop Mount Wilson as a cache for stolen money. Astronomers at the Mount Wilson observatory "who know a lot more than they are telling" warn off intruders, but the thieves are undaunted....[spoilers omitted] ... Currently the program is heard over MBS, but not in New York. The web is considering shifting the show to a nighttime spot. It rates-- it's good, effective, imaginative radio.
-Paul Ackerman, - The Billboard   June 21, 1947 [excerpt, spoilers omitted]
.
"Another batch of summer shows goes into replacement spots on three networks Sunday.. ..on MBS -- 2:30 Quiet Please, eerie drama, temporarily for Juvenile Jury;" - Dixon Evening Telegraph June 7, 1947

LISTEN:
or Download mp3
Audio Quality:
I cleaned a lot of scratch and pop throughout the audio, it was my first time ever trying to repair any audio, and its not too terrible, better than what it sounded before. Certainly bearable for the sake of a good episode.

Three, Numerology, and Name Changes..

Willis to Wyllis...
.When Wyliss Cooper returned from Hollywood after writing the screenplay for the motion picture 'Son of Frankenstein, curiously, he legally changed the spelling of his name from "Willis" to "Wyllis"..  'Radio Mirror' magazine appears to be the first
to mention it in 1940, saying "a numerologist advised him to change it" then Time magazine made a similar mention in 1941, but elaborated further that it was due to "his wife's numerological inclinations". Then in 1942  'Capital Times' newspaper in  Madison WI seemed to merge the two previous reports as: "..a numerologist told his wife it should be spelled Wyllis and he's done so ever since." 
                    Other than the brief passages in those publications, there appears to be no other specifics, no direct or indirect quotes from Cooper on the matter to be found anywhere...
Upon utilizing several present day numerology calculators found online, the results conclude that both spellings have virtually identical meanings in every respect.

" ...But there may have been another, more rational, reason for it. In mid-1939, the year of the change, Cooper lost a court case to NBC. Subsequently, his wages were garnished so the network could collect what he owed them... Judging by some of the NBC papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Cooper resisted paying and made things difficult for his creditors. I can't prove it, but I think it's possible he changed the spelling to make it a little harder to attach his money...
Or maybe our guy was just plain eccentric; it's hard to tell."
   - from a post by "MS', a senior member at quietplease.org
                   
But anyway... Speaking of Numerology, here's a bit of trivia before playing this posts featured episode..

Think Cooper Had a Thing for Three?...

• Three - Story about a man haunted by the number three.
• Three Sides to a Story - three participants in a seemingly lethal love triangle.
• The Third Man's Story- Story about Abel, the third man on earth.
• Adam and the Darkest Day - Story about the last three people on earth.
• How Are You, Pal? - About the three words he wants you to write down.
• Little Fellow - A carnival midget with a Egyptian amulate that'll grant three wishes.
• Three Thousand Words - A three foot dwarf and a ventriloquist,
• Thing on the Fourble Board - About a monster from three miles underground.
• Sketch for a Screenplay - 3 children reunite on battlefields of France during WWII.
• Very Unimportant Person - Three People on a plane, a world wide nuclear war below, they can't land, and running out of gas.
• Beezers Cellar - Three criminals trapped in a cellar and an expanding hole in the floor.
• Not Responsible After Thirty Years - After 3 years, a man is getting out of prison.
• Oldest Man in the World - Three friends seek shelter in a cave to escape a storm.
• Nothing Behind the Door - Three criminals break into an empty observatory building.
• The Ticket Taker - 3 murdering crooks have repeating encounters with "the ticket taker"
• I Remember Tomorrow- Three criminals want a time machine built.

 Perhaps I'm beginning to stretch the "three" thing to far now, but several of Coopers scripts do tend to carry the number! And speaking of three...

Quiet Please Episode #22,THREE
Original Air Date: Monday  November 10, 1947 on WOR
and Wednesday, November 12  1947 8:30 P.M on MBS. + WNDR
Summary:Story of a man, seemingly being pursued by the number three.. Pursuit leads to persecution as the number three continues to twist his perceptions of reality, eroding his sanity, to the point he believes it to be a threat to his very life. This story kind of hangs in mid-hair due to it's apparent lack of any solid final conclusion... It's basically a look at a man who's lost grip, and his circular hopelessness leading to madness. It's a story of his journey, without specifically knowing his final fate. Although I seen others review this episode unfavorably, I actually liked it.. Whimsical but suspenseful. Listen:
or Download mp3
Audio Quality:This is my cleaned up version.. I didn't originally intend to work the whole thing, I was just out to remove the thick scratch groove in the first 5 minutes.. I applied heavy processing to the music at the start, and then mild processing for the next 2 minutes or so. After that applied no processing at all, just removal of the heavy pops and clicks. particularly the heavy crackle during the mid point. The results is not perfect, but an improvement.

Quiet Please and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone

Quiet, Please! - First Of It's Kind..
There are claims that Rod Serling had been so enthused by the Quiet Please programs, that it inspired his formulation of
"The Twilight Zone". Some observe this to be only speculation since there's no direct documentation available to confirm it. Still, it's hardly a far fetched possibility, considering the similarities of the program, and that Serling was a known fan of the radio dramas of the time.
What can be confirmed however, is that in 1960, Rod Serling had explicitly attempted to contact Cooper to purchase rights to the Quiet Please script entitled "One For the Book" (episode 74), because it was virtually identical to his own upcoming tv episode titled "The Last Flight" and he did not want to risk script infringement... but Serling was unable to make contact, he did not realize that sadly, Cooper had died five years earlier. So onward into production it went, becoming a Twilight Zone episode without further consideration for Cooper. (source)

Here is Quiet Please Episode #74,
ONE FOR THE BOOK
Original Air Date: Sunday, November 21, 1948.
5:00 PM on the ABC Radio Network
Summary:
USAF XF131.. Whats a XF131?Max Westlake, USAF, talks about the days when he was a sergeant, with dreams of piloting a super speed jet.. or a "sky rocket" as his sarcastic friend called it.. Starts off with a jet pilot introductory narration with patriotic music playing in the background, then you're in a bar listening to two pilots discussing the possibility of flying faster than sound.. Ultimately a pilot does end up flying faster than sound, faster than light even..
What happens is One for the books...
Listen:
or Download mp3
Audio Quality: Mild crackling throughout. Has occasional thumps, worst at at the 20 minute mark for 40 seconds, Otherwise excellent.

What kind of show Quiet Please is

 To define the entire series is elusive. Often times labeled as "Horror", but that's a bit deceptive, though that is the genre in which some of these episodes fall; For example, the episode entitled "The Thing on the Fourble Board" is consistently awarded the unofficial honor as being: "Best radio horror show of all time", and more so, best radio drama ever.. which all may be very well true, but that's only one of the episodes, there are 104 more, some having nothing to do with monsters, or other things that go bump in the night. 
Other episodes - though still surreal - focus towards spiritual obligations, effects of actions, and personal responsibility, or simply a look at life from a different perspective...
The point is, as a whole, it's really not a horror series.
Perhaps the most accurate classification would be "Fantasy".
How ever you decide to define it, one thing can be agreed upon; the series was very original, and the first of it's kind, with it's signature laid back atmosphere.

Episode #59 August 9, 1948.
The Thing on the Fourble Board
or Download mp3
Two workers on an oil rig discover something strange brought up from a mile underground, and then something comes to get it back...
This is the most famous episode of the Quiet Please series, and holds claim as the best radio drama of all time. Audio quality is great.

Introductory note..
The content in this blog is nothing more than bits and pieces of http://quietplease.96.lt/ , and you'll really get a better presentation by viewing it there. I originally intended to build the sight on blogger, but just couldn't figure out how to lay it out the way I wanted to , so I found a free webserver and built it there.. However, since I notice I've been getting more hits on this blog than over there, I guess I'll begin transfer it into separate post here, little by little, to take advantage of that!.. although it's not going to be nearly as organized..

To start off with, here's a little audio mash-up of sorts, consisting of little clips I threw together from numerous different episodes of the program, as a teaser ( a little long though), and below, some introductory info on what this radio program was....




Snippets - 1947 thru 1949
QP Snippet Smashup 
or Download mp3 A fun, novel, on-a-whim, array, consisting entirely of a collection of short clips from a random selection of episodes, which presents a kind of glancing peek at the whole series run. 

'Quiet, Please!'
Wyllis Cooper.  Ernest Chappell.

The Story of  a Radio Drama

Although "Quiet, Please" is nearly 70 years old, it remains fresh and undated. The productions are very basic and simple, yet it shines vibrant and distinct.
The program is unique, has a charm, and stands apart from the rest.

This is an enchanting series. A lost classic, found again, which warrants a stronger recognition in the public arena of today,  I don't stand alone in admiration, it has already established a substantial cult following, which continues to expand, even extending beyond just that of the Old Time Radio fanfare realm.

'Quiet, Please' was a radio program produced at the WOR studios in New York City.
The weekly series aired a total of 105 episodes from June 8th 1947 until June 20th of 1949. It originated on the Mutual Broadcasting System, and about a year later made the jump to the more lucrative ABC radio network.

 

 

 

 

That does it for now, I'll post more later, or check out  of the website I built here: http://quietplease.96.lt for a complete overview.