The Dark Fantasy Radio Program

WKY, Oklahoma City had been a highly respected and equally highly sophisticated Radio operator for over eight years by the time this series first aired, so it was no great leap for NBC to take the gamble in taking the series nationwide. NBC-Red and it's flagship station, WEAF, indeed began airing Dark Fantasy in New York simultaneously with the broadcasts airing out of WKY, Oklahoma City.

WKY's talented writer, Scott Bishop, was responsible for all of the scripts. Indeed, the scripts were so chilling that both WKY and NBC felt obliged to air the program well after 1940s children had fallen soundly asleep. NBC-Red picked up Scott Bishop's Dark Fantasy series, from as early as November 14, 1941 forward. In 1943, NBC sustained Bishop's Strange Dr. Karnac series.

From the April 19, 1942 edition of The Capital Times:

"Dark Fantasy," radio's weirdest thriller series, heard late in the evenings over Station WIBA, was bom in a Chinese tea room late on the stormy night of Nov. 3, 1941 while Scott Bishop, father of hundreds of mystery novels, stories, and radio scripts, sat drinking an iced, spiced tea concoction of his own invention, with Radio Production Man John I. Prosser in a haunt known as Yung Si Fu's.

The darkly psychological conversation centered around mystery tales, with frequent references to Poe, DeQuincy, Blake, Coleridge and other masters of the craft.

Bishop's mind kept turning on the subject after he went home, so he sat down and wrote a 30-minute script called "The Man Who Came Back." Next day Prosser and Bishop read the tale over in the cold light of morning, decided it was good, got a dramatic cast together, made a recording and submitted it, still hot off the infernal griddle, to the NBC-Red network program department. Eleven days later "Dark Fantasy" had its premiere.

On Friday, Apr. 24, "Dark Fantasy" will present Bishop's 23rd original story of the series over Station WIBA at 11:05 p.m. The title is,"The Screaming Skulls."

Asked recently why he thinks his type of mystery thriller has particular appeal for radio, Bishop reasoned, "granted, that listeners enjoy a good whodunit yarn where all the facts have sound reasons for existing, I think there is more fascination in the "Dark Fantasy" type of tale where the horror comes from things unusual or even, supernatural. In this case, it is not the terror itself that causes listeners' hair to rise. It's the-unseen, unaccountable cause of the terror."

Scott Bishop provided an homage to the 'haunt' referred to in the article above, in his script for Episode No. 27, Dead Hands Reaching. Muir Hite portrayed the notorious, Yung Si Fu, operator of, among other ventures, "an opium den in Chinatown."

Dark Fantasy's supernatural tales are probably a bit tame by the standards of today's adolescents, but it's still a safe bet that with the lights out, and late at night, these episodes will still raise the armhairs of anyone listening to them--young or old.

Series Derivatives:

Keith Peynton, Tom Paxton

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were the log of the radioGOLDINdex and Texas, New York, and Wisconsin newspaper listings.

OTRisms:

Dark Fantasy is a poster child for recycled otr lore. As long as inaccurate references remain to misinform and misdirect the efforts of sincere vintage radio preservation efforts, we'll continue to point them out.

Citing an initial broadcast of November 14, 1941 (over ONLY WKY, Oklahoma), the gap in previous loggers' chronological math was reverse-engineered by an anecdotal citation of Episode No. 5, Men Call Me Mad, as being preempted for coverage of the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks of December 7th 1941. It certainly sounded plausible, since any number of regularly scheduled programs were being preempted during those first ten days after Pearl Harbor. The fact that the anecdote had no basis in historical fact didn't seem to bother anyone in the commercial otr community for almost forty years. The same sources continued to state quite authoritatively and flatly that Dark Fantasy was broadcast--and received--only from Oklahoma NBC affiliate station, WKY, and didn't go national until its sixth week of broadcasts.

Apocryphal fiction about Dark Fantasy proliferates exponentially as new generations of 'credentialed otr experts' perpetuate the same misinformation. One 'borrows' from another, the next cites the misinformation of those who've 'borrowed' before them, and so forth, until one day, the misinformation becomes fact.

As regards the radioGOLDINdex's database of Dark Fantasy, we don't doubt radioGOLDINdex's account of their first five transcriptions of Dark Fantasy:

• They were transcribed for syndication throughout NBC-Red.
• We don't doubt that they carried the dates that radioGOLDINdex cites.
• We have no reason to doubt the existence of such transcriptions.
• What we know of the listed air dates for the first six episodes of Dark Fantasy establishes that the series wasn't widely listed as being broadcast until November 21, 1941.
• Indeed, the article above in the Dee-scription, cites Scott Bishop:
  • conceiving the plot for The Man Who Came Back on the evening of November 3, 1941
  • going over it the next day with producer John L. Prosser
  • soon after assembling a cast
  • cutting a demo for NBC-Red
  • then getting the green light from NBC-Red on or about the 10th of November 1941.
• The article states that Dark Fantasy premiered eleven days later--the 21st of November. (see updates below)

The account explains radioGOLDINdex's citation of a November 14, 1941 date for the transcription. That's when the production transcription was apparently either cut--or annotated--for broadcast on the 21st of November. The article above also fixes a provenance for the 23rd script of Dark Fantasy titled, The Screaming Skulls, and airing on April 24, 1942.

Verfiable provenances are absolutely essential elements of historical research--for Golden Age Radio broadcasts or any other historical research endeavor.

Nor was the December 12th, 1941 episode universally preempted. Many other programs were, indeed, preempted across the networks during the period immediately following Pearl Harbor, but Dark Fantasy wasn't one of them, least of all, everywhere--in all likelihood due to it's near-midnight timeslot. Dark Fantasy continued to air at 11:30 p.m. or 12:30 a.m., Friday evening for the entire run of the regionial--and national--broadcasts. We've collected thirteen newspaper references to date, citing scheduled airings of Dark Fantasy from outlets across the country--but not one single notation, as yet, citing a preemption for the 12th of December.

OTR revisionists continue to dismiss provenances out of hand. They won't disclose one single preemption provenance--because they apparently can't--but they won't concede the historical proof. That's long-standing otr revisionist history in a nutshell. 'Reputations' and 'credentials' being what they are, most notable experts are loathe to back down on virtually any of the otr lore they propound.

From the very first broadcast of Dark Fantasy, NBC-Red took Dark Fantasy regionally--and nationally--and Dark Fantasy continued to occupy the 11:30 p.m. or 11:05 p.m., Friday night slot--adjusted for time zone--just as it had been broadcast from WKY.

No additional Dark Fantasy exemplars have surfaced in the past seven years.

Note that, in all likelihood, Episode No. 28, Rendezvous With Satan, was indeed, preempted on May 29, 1942 due to a widely, NBC-Red broadcast, U.S.O. War Drive Variety Special. Let's bounce this one around for a bit . . . . Say you're "Mr. or Mrs. Program Director at KWXY, Centerville, U.S.A.." The network gives you the choice of airing:

• Mary Martin, Fanny Brice, Red Skelton, Meredith Wilson's orchestra, Max Terr's chorus, Joe E. Brown, Charles Butterworth, Linda Darnell, Deanna Durbin, John Garfield, Judy Garland, Laurel and Hardy, Hugh Herbert, Chico and Harpo Marx, Adolphe Menjou, Chester Morris, the Ritz Brothers, Mickey Rooney, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Ann Sheridan, and Spike Jones' City Slickers
• or . . . another episode of Dark Fantasy for the adolescent late night thriller crowd that probably would have just been making out to it anyway.

Decisions, decisions . . . what to air: one more 30-minute Dark Fantasy installment or thirty of the most popular artists of contemporary Radio, Film and Stage for an hour of patriotic celebration just six months after 'Pearl Harbor' . . . what a dilemma . . .
[Update--2010-07-12]: It would appear upon further research, that NBC-Red's flagship station in New York, WEAF, was indeed airing Dark Fantasy from the very outset--from November 21, 1941, forward, just as we'd hypothesized for the past 12 years. It would also appear that rather than use Scott Bishop's own title for Episode No. 26, Funeral Arrangements Completed, the OTRR has chosen to rename Scott Bishop's script, "Coffin for Two".

[Update--2011-01-01]: Contributor 'nightkey' alerted us that The Chicago Tribune cited at least one listing of Dark Fantasy prior to our hypothesized November 21, 1941 premiere. You can view that page of the Chicago Tribune here. We also turned up a listing from the November 14, 1941 Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, here. Though only 'grid listings,' they would, at the very least, tend to reinforce our conviction that NBC-Red at least intended to air Dark Fantasy over the entire NBC-Red network from its premiere, forward. However, given the current absence of published titles prior to 42-02-06, The Sea Phantom, the 14 November listing could well represent either a preview, a premature announcement, or an actual aired episode of Dark Fantasy. What remains immutable for the present are several clues that continue to support a November 21, 1941 premiere date for Dark Fantasy:

1. Scott Bishop's chronological account of how Dark Fantasy got to the air.
2. The Christmas episode, House of Bread, airing on December 26, 1941 as the sixth presentation of the series.
3. The citation in the Wisconsin State Journal of 'The Sea Phantom' airing on 42-02-06.
4. The Sea Phantom closing announcement of 'W Is for Werewolf' as the following program, to be the 13th in the series.
5. The citation in the Wisconsin State Journal of 'W Is for Werewolf' airing on 42-02-13.
6. The W Is for Werewolf closing announcement of the following program to be the 14th in the series.

While none of the above is yet conclusive, our current hypothesis still appears to remain well supported. We would also add that if the above cited November 14, 1941 listing reflected an actually airing episode, it also further debunks the widespread otr lore that Dark Fantasy didn't go national until its sixth week.

[Update--2011-01-10]: We finally discovered a newspaper provenance for a November 14, 1941 broadcast of Dark Fantasy over WEAF, NY, titled "The Man Who Came Back"--in the Altoona Mirror of 41-11-14. The Man Who Came Back is widely cited as the first episode of the canon, which finally lends credence to the series premiering as early as November 14, 1941. It should be noted that NBC was due to celebrate its 15th Anniversary in a special broadcast of November 15, 1941, the Saturday following this first provenanced title for a premiere of Dark Fantasy. It may very well be that NBC's 15th Anniversary broadcast was taking up the majority of their P.R. resources those previous weeks. While introducing a bit more ambiguity into the premiere and chronology of Dark Fantasy, it would seem to settle for once and for all the issue of when Dark Fantasy went National over NBC-Red. If we can find more provenenced titles between The Man Who Came Back and The Sea Phantom we may finally resolve the broadcast chronology of this fine thriller canon. So let's recap at this point (as of January 10, 2011):

• It seems apparent now that Dark Fantasy may well have premiered, nationally, as early as November 14, 1941.
• It's becoming less and less likely that the December 12, 1941 episode of Dark Fantasy was preempted.
• It's becoming patently obvious that Dark Fantasy went national over NBC-Red from its very first broadcast.

[Update--2011-04-09]: Vistor Bob Pederson accurately pointed out that the circulating Episode 31, allegedly titled, 'Seance', is simply an excerpt of Episode 14, A Delicate Case of Murder. Apparently someone began circulating the excerpt, representing it as part of a final, unique episode of Dark Fantasy some years ago. We've therefore updated our citation of the alleged 'finale' episode of Dark Fantasy as 'Title Unknown' until we can determine:

• 1. If it actually aired at all.
• 2. The actual title of the finale episode.

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The Dark Fantasy Radio Log

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