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Beyond The
Horizon
NBC Presents Eugene O'Neill
Broadcast: NBC - Monday,
August 02, 1937
Andrew Mayo
- James Meighan
Robert Mayo -
Neil O'Malley
Ruth Atkins -
Helen Hayes
 The
NBC Presents Eugene O'Neill
Production
[August 1, 1937 The Washington Post (excerpt)]
Four plays by Eugene O'Neill never heard on the air, will be presented
by the National Broadcasting Co. in August in the first radio cycle of
O'Neill dramas ever broadcast. Prominent actors of the stage will be
heard in the leading roles.The comprehensive series, which will embrace both the
formative and mature periods of the playwright's development, will
include four modern classic dramas to be heard on successive Monday
evenings, starting August 2, over the coast-to-coast N.B.C. blue
network. The broadcasts will begin at 8:30 p. m., and will run 45
minutes or an hour, according to the length of the original play. ...
"In offering this first cycle of O'Neill plays ever
to be heard on the air, the National Broadcasting Company is privileged
to present to the radio public not only America's leading playwright but
also the leading experimentalist in the field of drama," John F. Royal
NBC vice president in charge of programs, said. "Taking his models from
the early Greek dramas and developing his theme along the lines of
modern thought, O'Neill has accomplished a fine dramatic intensity which
is admirably suited to radio projection."
[August 7, 1937 Hammond (IN) Times - Radio Short
Circuits column by Paul Damai]
... BEYOND THE HORIZON (Mon. 8:30 p.m., WENR). The present amplitude of
sustaining dramas (of which this is the beginning of a series of O'Neill
dramas) brings home more and more to us the cleanliness of
non-commercialized presentation of hour-long plays on the air. There is
a sullied pall hanging over the sponsored dramas with acts annoyingly
interrupted by spell-breaking messages in the interests of a toilet soap
or a skin balm.
Helen Hayes had a different semi-unsympathetic role
in this, carried out with the usual Hayes competence, and was supported
gallantly by James Meighan and the rest of the cast. It was a tragic
realistic piece with which O'Neill is wont to regale us, capable of
putting us in a lingering mood of melancholy, and of morose cogitation
on the weaknesses that human flesh is heir to.
This coming Monday (8:30 WENR) the second in the
series of Eugene O'Neill will have Ian Keith and Francesca Bruning
playing "The Fountain" —a lesser known work based on man's quest for
eternal youth. It promises to be as good, if not better, from a
mood-brightening standpoint, then last Monday's "Beyond The Horizon."
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