Inner Sanctum Mystery, also known as Inner Sanctum, is a popular old-time radio program that aired from January 7, 1941, to October 5, 1952. It was created by producer Himan Brown and was based on the imprint given to the mystery novels of Simon & Schuster.[1] In all, 526 episodes were broadcast.[2]
In 1930, the first title was published in Simon & Schuster's "Inner Sanctum" mystery series: I Am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton. Although the imprint "Inner Sanctum" also included serious drama (published with blue covers) and romance (published with red covers), for the most part it was associated with mysteries (published in green covers).[3] Lee Wright was the editor of the series, and over the years she introduced such authors as Craig Rice, Gypsy Rose Lee, Patrick Quentin, Thomas Sterling and Anthony Boucher.[4]
Horror hosts
On January 7, 1941, the Inner Sanctum radio program premiered,[5] the name licensed by Simon & Schuster on condition that at the end of each broadcast the announcer would promote the latest book title published in the series.[3] The anthology series featured stories of mystery, terror and suspense, and its tongue-in-cheek introductions were in sharp contrast to shows like Suspense and The Whistler.[2] The early 1940s programs opened with Raymond Edward Johnson introducing himself as "Your host, Raymond" in a mockingly sardonic voice.[6] A spooky melodramatic organ score (played by Lew White) punctuated Raymond's many morbid jokes and playful puns. Raymond's closing was an elongated "Pleasant dreeeeaams, hmmmmm?" His tongue-in-cheek style and ghoulish relish of his own tales became the standard for many such horror narrators to follow, such as Maurice Tarplin (on The Mysterious Traveler).[7]
When Johnson left the series in May 1945 to serve in the Army, he was replaced by Paul McGrath, who did not keep the "Raymond" name and was known only as "Your Host" or "Mr. Host".[8] (Berry Kroeger had substituted earlier for a total of four episodes.) McGrath was a Broadway actor who turned to radio for a regular income. Beginning in 1945, Lipton Tea sponsored the series, pairing first Raymond and then McGrath with cheery commercial spokeswoman Mary Bennett (aka the "Tea Lady"), whose blithesome pitches for Lipton Tea contrasted sharply with the macabre themes of the stories. She primly chided the host for his trademark dark humor and creepy manner.[citation needed]
The creaking door
The program's familiar and famed audio trademark was the eerie creaking door which opened and closed the broadcasts. Himan Brown got the idea from a door in the basement that "squeaked like Hell." The door sound was actually made by a rusty desk chair. The program did originally intend to use a door, but on its first use, the door did not creak. Undaunted, Brown grabbed a nearby chair, sat in it and turned, causing a hair-raising squeak. The chair was used from then on as the sound prop. On at least one memorable occasion, a staffer innocently repaired and oiled the chair, thus forcing the sound man to mimic the squeak orally.[9]
Guest stars
The stories were effective little chillers, mixing horror and humor in equal doses. Memorable episodes included "Terror by Night" (September 18, 1945) and an adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (August 3, 1941). The latter starred Boris Karloff, who was heard regularly in the first season, starring in more than 15 episodes and returning sporadically thereafter.[citation needed]
Of more than 500 programs broadcast, only about 200 remain in circulation.[citation needed]
Example program opening
Sound effect: A door with squeaky hinges is slowly opened. Organ begins to play.
Raymond: Good evening, friends of the Inner Sanctum. This is Raymond, your host. I'm glad you came tonight, because we have a very special guest of horror with us. I'd like you to meet the late Johnny Gravestone, the most celebrated member of the Inner Sanctum Ghost Society. He's the best haunter of them all. Johnny's the tall figure in the white sheet wearing the blue ribbon. He's haunted everything from a palace to a telephone booth. And uh, if you're very nice to him, he'll be glad to consider giving your house the once-over. Who knows? He might even haunt you! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
(Commercial)
Raymond: Well, we're about to begin our story. Oh, I forgot to warn you about the Trembliens. They're those pesky, invisible cousins of the gremlins. They uh, sidle up to[sic] you, give quick little shoves, and give the false impression that you're trembling. If you're being troubled by a Tremblien, just grab him by his invisible little horns and stick him into the nearest pin cushion.[7]
In June 1943, Universal purchased the screen rights to the series from Simon and Schuster, Inc.[10][11] The Inner Sanctum Mysteries feature a "stream of consciousness" voiceover which Edward Dein stated he incorporated into his script at Lon Chaney Jr.'s insistence.[12] With the exception of Pillow of Death, each film is prefaced with a sequence featuring the bobbing head of actor David Hoffman staring out of a crystal ball, giving warnings to the audience about how each audience member is capable of murder.[13]
Lon Chaney Jr. was hopeful for the series, craving diversity in his roles after Universal had placed him in various monster roles in their horror films.[11] Pivar planned to produce two Inner Sanctum mystery films a year with each film featuring Chaney and Gale Sondergaard in the lead roles.[13] Sondergaard was dropped from the lead role shortly before the filming of Calling Dr. Death.[13]
From retrospective reviews, Kim Newman described the film series as "straddling whodunnit and horror" and that "the films vary in quality but mostly deliver as strange entertainment."[16] Newman found that Weird Woman was the standout film in the Inner Sanctum series, being the sole entry in the series to have supernatural elements.[16] The authors of the book Universal Horrors declared the series "feeble melodramas with little to recommend them beyond their camp qualities and the morose spectacle of seeing a badly miscast Chaney struggle his way through acting assignments that were painfully beyond his depth."[11] They concluded that the series was "generally regarded by buffs and film historians as a missed cinematic opportunity."[17]
Television
The 1954 syndicated television series featured Paul McGrath as the off-camera host/narrator. The TV shows were produced at the Himan Brown Production Center (now Chelsea Studios) in Manhattan.[18]
"Pleasant dreeeeaaams, hmmmmm?"
In the 1970s, with his CBS Radio Mystery Theater series, Himan Brown recycled both the creaking door opening and, to a lesser extent, the manner of Raymond. The hosts were E. G. Marshall and during the final season, Tammy Grimes. When the series was rebroadcast during the late 1990s, Brown himself rerecorded the host segments and mimicked Raymond's "Pleasant dreeeeaaams, hmmmmm?" for the familiar closing.[2]
Satires
Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder satirized the series in Mad's fifth issue (June–July 1953) with "Outer Sanctum!" In the opening panels, host Ramon greets the reader: "Come in, I've been waiting for you! I've been waiting for you to fix my squeaking door!... What?... You say you're not the carpenter?... You have come to hear a story?... Very well!"
In the Three Stooges short The Ghost Talks, a creaking door prompts Shemp to parody the opening narration of the program, naming it "The Outer Sanctorum."
The opening of an Inner Sanctum episode was used to open one side of The Whole Burbank Catalog, a 1972 compilation album in the Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders series from Warner Bros. Records. The announcer's jokey pun in this case concerned an author friend, specializing in best-sellers, who "tried to bury [him] in one, because all the very best sellers (cellars) have corpses in them." A backwards version of the creaking door sound effect led directly into "Get It On" by T. Rex.
The popular British 60s radio comedy Round The Horne had occasional sketches that were influenced by the style of the show. Regular cast member Hugh Paddick would introduce the "scary" sketch with the words "Inner Sanctum-um-um-um-um-um..." – pretending to echo! This was accompanied by a warbling, quivering, high pitched tone from a Theremin played by an orchestra member. The sketches nearly always ended in confusion as the plots were deliberately circular and convoluted whilst playing up the "spookiness" of the part.
The 1946 Warner BrothersBugs Bunny cartoon Racketeer Rabbit had Bugs enter an abandoned Victorian house (which was actually the gangsters' hideout) that had a squeaky door. Bugs said as he was entering the house, "Huh? Sounds like Inner Sanctum!"
Creighton Tull Chaney, known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr., was an American actor known for playing Larry Talbot in the film The Wolf Man (1941) and its various crossovers, Count Alucard in Son of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Mummy in three pictures, and various other roles in many Universal horror films, including six films in their 1940s Inner Sanctum series, making him a horror icon. He also portrayed Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men (1939) and played supporting parts in dozens of mainstream movies, including High Noon (1952), The Defiant Ones (1958), and numerous Westerns, musicals, comedies and dramas.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, and later in the early 2000s was repeated by the NPR satellite feed. In New York City it was not aired by the then all-news WCBS but by its originating station, WOR, which produced and announced it as simply Radio Mystery Theater.
The Creaking Door was an old-time radio series of horror and suspense shows originating in South Africa.
Bela Lugosi (1882–1956), best known for the original screen portrayal of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1931, performed in many films during the course of his 39-year film career. He appeared in films made in his native Hungary, Germany and New York before re-locating to Hollywood in 1928. Films are listed in order of release.
Raymond Edward Johnson was an American radio and stage actor best remembered for his work on Inner Sanctum Mysteries.
Son of Dracula is a 1943 American horror film directed by Robert Siodmak with a screenplay based on an original story by his brother Curt Siodmak. The film stars Lon Chaney Jr., Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, Evelyn Ankers, and Frank Craven. The film is set in the United States, where Count Alucard has just taken up residence. Katherine Caldwell (Allbritton), a student of the occult, becomes fascinated by Alucard and eventually marries him. Katherine begins to look and act strangely, leading her former romantic partner Frank Stanley (Paige) to suspect that something has happened to her. He gets help from Dr. Brewster (Craven) and psychologist Laszlo who come to the conclusion that Alucard is a vampire.
An anthology series is a written series, radio, television, film, or video game series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a different cast in each episode, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week. Some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and then expanded to television.
The Crime Club was an imprint of the Doubleday publishing company, which later spawned a 1946-47 anthology radio series, and a 1937-1939 film series.
Martin Grams Jr. is an American popular culture historian who wrote and co-wrote over thirty books about network broadcasting and motion-pictures. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Grams is the son of a magician, Martin Grams Sr. and Mary Patricia Grams, a librarian. Grams is also the author of more than 100 magazine articles.
Pillow of Death is a 1945 noir-mystery horror film, and the sixth installment in The Inner Sanctum Mysteries anthological film series, which was based on the popular radio series of the same name. Directed by Wallace Fox and starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Brenda Joyce; it was the only entry in the series to dispense with the introduction by a disembodied head in a crystal ball, as well as the only one to feature comic-relief characters to alleviate the grim tone.
Calling Dr. Death is a 1943 mystery film, and the first installment in The Inner Sanctum Mysteries anthological film series, which was based on the popular radio series of the same name, the film stars Chaney Jr. and Patricia Morison, and was directed by Reginald Le Borg. Chaney Jr. plays a neurologist, Dr. Mark Steele, who loses memory of the past few days after learning that his wife has been brutally murdered. Aware of his wife's infidelity and believing he could be the killer, Steele asks his office nurse Stella Madden to help him recover his lost memories.
Strange Confession is a 1945 noir-mystery horror film, and is the fifth installment in The Inner Sanctum Mysteries anthological film series, which was based on the popular radio series of the same name. Released by Universal Pictures and starring Lon Chaney Jr., J. Carrol Naish and Brenda Joyce; the movie was directed by John Hoffman and was later rereleased under the title The Missing Head.
Weird Woman is a 1944 noir-mystery horror film, and the second installment in The Inner Sanctum Mysteries anthological film series, which was based on the popular radio series of the same name. Directed by Reginald Le Borg and starring Lon Chaney Jr., Anne Gwynne, and Evelyn Ankers. The movie is one of several films based on the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. Co-star Evelyn Ankers had previously worked with Chaney in Ghost of Frankenstein, where Chaney played the Frankenstein monster, and The Wolf Man, where Chaney played the title role.
The Brute Man is a 1946 American horror thriller film starring Rondo Hatton as the Creeper, a murderer seeking revenge against the people he holds responsible for the disfigurement of his face. Directed by Jean Yarbrough, the film features Tom Neal and Jan Wiley as a married pair of friends the Creeper blames for his deformities. Jane Adams also stars as a blind pianist for whom the Creeper tries to raise money for an operation to restore her vision. The film is a prequel to House of Horrors (1946).
Himan Brown, also known as Hi Brown, was an American producer of radio and television programs. Over seven decades, Brown produced and directed more than 30,000 radio shows, for all of the major radio networks and syndication. He worked with such actors as Helen Hayes, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles.
The Secret of the Blue Room is a 1933 American pre-Code mystery film directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, and Edward Arnold. A remake of the German film Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers (1932), it concerns a group of wealthy people who stay at a European mansion that features a blue room that is said to be cursed, as everyone who has stayed there has died shortly after. Three people suggest a wager that each can survive a night in the blue room.
Inner Sanctum is an American television anthology series based upon Inner Sanctum Mystery, the radio series of the same name. It was created and produced by Himan Brown. Its unseen host and narrator was Paul McGrath. Thirty-nine episodes were syndicated in 1954.
Dracula is a film series of horror films from Universal Pictures based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and its 1927 play adaptation. Film historians have had various interpretations over which projects constitute being in the film series; academics and historians finding narrative continuation between Dracula (1931) and Dracula's Daughter (1936), while holding varying opinions on whether Son of Dracula (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945) are part of the series. Author and academic Gary Don Rhodes stated the all the mentioned films would require an audience to be familiar with Count Dracula, portrayed by Bela Lugosi, and the various character traits the actor established in the original 1931 film.
The Inner Sanctum Mysteries film series consists of American classic-horror mystery films, based on and inspired by the works of Himan Brown, and the stories printed by Simon & Schuster.
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