The Witch's Tale

Posted by Robert on April 14, 2014 at 9:26pm

The mastermind behind The Witch's Tale was writer- director Alonzo Deen Cole. He convinced management at WOR in New York to let him try a drama series devoted entirely to the supernatural to compete against musical programs in the same time slot. The series became the premier radio program of its day and is fondly remembered by fans. However, less than 10% of the recordings of this pioneering series survive. Cole kept bound copies of his 332 different Witch's Tales scripts, and was proud enough of his work to actually copyright his stories. (He may have been the first radio writer to do so.) But by 1961, he didn't think there was any commercial value in the actual radio transcriptions. According to Dave Siegel's book The Witch's Tale, Cole destroyed all his own recordings of the series when he moved from New York to California. The three dozen or so surviving recordings are thanks to the efforts of other sources that salvaged what was left of this groundbreaking classic.

The horror series was undoubtedly influenced by the lurid pulp magazines of the same era, complete with vampires, jungle curses, crawling hands, Frankenstein monsters, werewolves, and ghostly manifestations. Cole played the lead in the series while his wife Marie O'Flynn played the primary females. Mark Smith and Alan Devitte rounded out the ensemble cast. By today's standards, the acting can seem overblown, but the plots themselves are engrossing and often crawl under your skin. Some of the surviving episodes are actually Australian remakes based on original scripts (including "Haunted Crossroads" and "Tourists Accommodated").

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