Welles, Hitchcock and Lehman screenplays to be bought to life for first time on Radio 4
The series of programmes on BBC Radio 4 will star James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, David Suchet, Tim Pigott-Smith, Elliot Cowan and Rebecca Front.
Published: 11 October 2015
To discover an unmade screenplay of the calibre of any of these is a find in itself, but to unearth three is little short of a miracle.
In June, Radio 4 announced that its Unmade Movies – a series which launched in February this year and brought together a collection of unproduced screenplays from globally celebrated writers – was making a return.
The network announced that one of the plays would be the broadcast premiere of Arthur Miller’s unproduced screenplay The Hook. Today, it is announced that the series will also feature the broadcast premieres of Heart Of Darkness by Orson Welles, and The Blind Man by Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman – all sitting in the station’s drama slot on Saturday afternoon at 2.30pm across three weekends in October.
Jeremy Howe, Drama Commissioner for BBC Radio 4, says: “To discover an unmade screenplay of the calibre of any of these is a find in itself, but to unearth three is little short of a miracle. I hope our audience will agree that being offered these three masterpieces on consecutive Saturdays is a massive treat. Get yourself a long drink, a bucket of popcorn, and sit back and enjoy the cream of Hollywood in its heyday – three brand spanking new stories from Arthur Miller, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles.”
Arthur Miller’s The Hook will see Adrian Noble take on his first directorship in radio drama and David Suchet, Tim Pigott-Smith and Elliot Cowan all star. The unproduced screenplay tells the story of a 1950s Brooklyn longshoreman who is fired for standing up to his corrupt union boss, but decides to fight back. Miller developed the script with Elia Kazan and it was on a trip to LA, to pitch it to Harry Cohn at Columbia Studios, that he met Marilyn Monroe for the first time. Cohn asked Miller to change the script and turn the corrupt union bosses into communists but Miller refused and the screenplay was shelved. He and Kazan then fell out and went on to write A View From The Bridge and On The Waterfront, respectively – two pieces which both closely mirror The Hook.
Originally written by Orson Welles in 1939, with the intention of him directing and starring as both Marlow and Kurtz, the screenplay for Heart Of Darkness proved to be too audacious and grandiose for RKO Studios. Adapted from Joseph Conrad's celebrated novel, it tells the story of a skipper who is hired to take a steam ship up the Congo River and encounters a terrifying evil. Forty years later it became the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! and now James McAvoy stars and Jamie Lloyd directs the broadcast premiere of the original screenplay.
Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman’s The Blind Man, written shortly after the duo worked on North By Northwest, is set in 1961 and tells the story of a famous blind jazz pianist who agrees to an eye transplant. The operation is a success but the eyes are those of a murdered man and on them is transposed the image of his murderer. The script was discovered by Unmade Movies producer, Laurence Bowen, in a research institute in Texas – along with extensive notes and letters exchanged between the two on the ending. Completed, and directed, by Mark Gatiss, the BBC Radio 4 world premiere has been approved by Hitchcock’s three granddaughters with Hitchcock consultant Laurent Bouzereau, and it stars the inimitable Hugh Laurie.
Speaking about his part in the drama, Hugh Laurie says: "The first time I read Ernest Lehman’s script of The Blind Man, it was like finding a pre-war Bugatti in a barn. We swept off some of the chicken droppings, cranked the handle, and it started first time. It was a thrill and a delight to be involved.”
Laurence Bowen, Producer at Feelgood Fiction, the creator of the series, says: "It's taken several years to find and secure the rights for these but what a wonderful journey it’s been, bringing to life for the first time lost treasures from the greatest writers of the 20th century. There are many reasons why screenplays don't happen – politics, funding, creative differences – and they disappear into cupboards, draws or computer files, never seeing the light of day, but these three are absolute gems and can now enter the official canons of their writers."
Listen to Unmade Movies at 2.30pm on Saturday 17, Saturday 24 and Saturday 31 October, BBC Radio 4 – or available to download after broadcast on the BBC iPlayer Radio app.
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