(1939 - 45)
Born to in 1909 to Bavarian-Jewish German father and a Irish Catholic mother, Arch Oboler grew up protestant in Chicago, IL. During radio’s infancy in the 1920’s, Arch Oboler wrote his first radio scripts while still in high school.
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When he took over Lights Out from creator Wyllis Cooper in 1936, he created novel innovative sound effects, including the use of a rubber glove to represent a man’s skin turning inside out. His stories were so cutting edge and gruesome, that as narrator of the show he warned audiences that the show wasn’t for the "timid. After writing the famous Mae West "Adam and Eve skit on Bergen and McCarthy in 1937, he was considered a even more avant-garde writer and earned his own old time radio show, Arch Oboler’s Plays. Unjustly, as Oboler’s career soared Mae West was banned from radio because her appearance in this racy scene.
Text on OTRCAT.com ©2001-2008 OTRCAT INC All Rights Reserved-Reproduction is prohibited. Arch Oboler, a genius anti-Hitler loud-mouth with intense horn-rims and personality, writes and produces his own plays in Arch Oboler’s Plays. He used the platform of radio to directly criticize the rise of Nazi Germany. There is notable scene in 390520 Crazy Town a "Leader who spouts in a choppy German accent against tolerance. He continued to write anti-Nazi plays at the height of WWII that the stars were clamoring to be in. Joan Crawford and Alla Nazimova begged to be cast, taking union pay (far less than they would normally be paid) for the great honor.
Arch Oboler’s career spanned the history of the golden age of radio and into 3-D movies and campy horror flicks. Flexible to the world changes around him, Oboler remained at the forefront of popular entertainment throughout his career pushing each medium to its creative limits.
For more tales of horror, see also Dark Fantasy, Escape, Inner Sanctum, Mysterious Traveler, Mystery in the Air, Suspense, The Whistler, and Weird Circle.
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