The Dark Fantasy Radio Program

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.

We invite you to compare our fully provenanced research with the Dark Fantasy log from the '1,500 expert researchers' at the OTRR, which the OTRR claims to be correct according to their 'OTTER log' they represent as the "most authoritative and accurate vintage Radio database in the world":

OTRRpedia

''The OTRR Group's Certified Series is currently the most accurate archive of OTR series in the world. Each series has been thoroughly researched, accurately labeled (dates and titles), and transcribed at the highest quality possible.''

We've provided a screen shot of their current log for comparison HERE to protect our own further due diligence, content and intellectual property.

The OTRR in their own, imaginative and equally fictional "Dark Fantasy Intro" that they bundle with their "Certified Accurate and Complete" Dark Fantasy collection, states that "Dark Fantasy is another radio series that very little information is available on [sic]." This, despite:

• The information and history in this very article
• The known full casts for the series
• The known producer
• The known announcers and narrators
• The provenanced log below
• The contemporaneous account (above) of how Scott Bishop arrived at the idea for Dark Fantasy in the first place.
• The lavish, three-page article from the May 16, 1942 issue of Movie-Radio Guide which completely documents the entire production, complete with storyboards (right).

Regrettably, there's very little in the OTRR's Dark Fantasy Intro that is accurate. And yet, with a flourish in his closing comments, the narrator states very baldly that the OTRR concerns itself with "preserving radio's past." This, in spite of the fact that the only things the OTRR is 'preserving' by disseminating their misinformation about Dark Fantasy are the reputations of the handful of intentionally deceptive and misinformed commercial otr authors and cassette and CD sellers that the OTRR caters to with obsequious devotion at every opportunity. If the OTRR spent a tenth of the time they devote to providing cover for shabby 'otr authors', log plagiarists, and commercial otr sales firms, they might actually manage to do a little actual research someday.

In the timeless observation of Benjamin Franklin:

"He that lieth down with Dogs, shall rise up with Fleas."

Plagiarism is the grease that's kept the lucrative wheels of 'otr' commerce spinning smoothly since vintage Radio collecting was reinvented as 'otr' in the mid-1970s. Dark Fantasy is a poster child for the process. As long as obviously plagiarized references remain to misinform and misdirect the efforts of sincere vintage radio preservation efforts, we'll continue to point them out.

We suppose it's entirely appropriate that this remarkable supernatural thriller program should have the ghosts of otr's past come back to haunt the commercial otr world of 2010. And so it's been that for almost forty years, commercial otr wags have spun a dark fantasy of their own regarding the first six weeks of Dark Fantasy over the great Oklahoma station, WKY, an NBC affiliate.

Citing an initial broadcast of November 14, 1941, the gap in their chronological math, once NBC picked up Dark Fantasy throughout the midwest, was reverse-engineered by a fanciful citation of Episode No. 5, Men Call Me Mad, being preempted for coverage of the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks of December 7th 1941. It certainly smacked of authenticity, since any number of regularly scheduled programs were being preempted for those first ten days after Pearl Harbor. The fact that their anecdotal fantasy had no basis in historical fact didn't seem to bother anyone in the commercial otr community for almost forty years. In the lucrative world of otr commerce, historical fact has almost always taken a back seat to commercial expediency.

The apocryphal fiction about Dark Fantasy proliferates exponentially as new generations of 'credentialed otr experts' surrender their scruples to commercial expediency and perpetuate the same, tired, forty-year-old misinformation. One plagiarizes from another, the next cites the plagiarism of those who've plagiarized before them, and so on and so on, until one day, the plagiarized fiction becomes fact--in the cozy, commercial otr world, in any case.

We don't doubt radioGOLDINdex's account of their first five episodes 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 very clearly that the series wasn't 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, Q.E.D..

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 endeavor. As best as we can yet determine, we're the only Golden Age Radio website on the Internet that endeavors to actually disclose--and freely share--our provenances, right on the article page. It's all right here on the page for anyone to see--or dispute--for themselves.

Nor was the December 12th, 1941 episode preempted. Many other programs were, indeed, preempted during the period following Pearl Harbor, but Dark Fantasy wasn't one of them--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 broadcasts.

OTR deniers, being what they are, will continue to disregard these provenances out of hand. They won't site one single preemption provenance--because they can't or won't--but they won't concede the historical proof. That's traditional otr denial in a nutshell. 'OTR authors' love taking $90 for an 'authoritative' book of plagiarism, but when it comes time to issue addenda to their gross misinformation--not so much. Commercial otr sellers, for their part, couldn't give a fig about historical accuracy or integrity. All they care about is cash flow--nothing more, nothing less, period. So as long as the OTRR continues to provide cover for these commercial otr charlatans, financial support for the OTRR will keep rolling in. How cozy for all of them. But how sad for the tens of thousands of sincere devotees of this national treasure we refer to as vintage or Golden Age Radio.

From the very first broadcast of Dark Fantasy, NBC 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.

Let's make this absolutely clear: no additional Dark Fantasy exemplars have surfaced in the past seven years.

Also 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 USO 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.

Hmmm . . . decisions, decisions. What to choose from: 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 . . . . Here's a hint to help you puzzle it out: whichever of those Program Directors that picked one more Dark Fantasy were probably fired. Does that help lay it out our hypothesis a bit better?

[Update: 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.]

What you see here, is what you get. Complete transparency. We have no 'credentials' whatsoever--in any way, shape, or form--in the 'otr community'--none. But here's how we did it--for better or worse. Here's how you can build on it yourselves--hopefully for the better. Here's the breadcrumbs--just follow the trail a bit further if you wish. No hobbled downloads. No misdirection. No posturing about our 'credentials.' No misrepresentations. No strings attached. We point you in the right direction and you're free to expand on it, extend it, use it however it best advances your efforts.

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We don't pronounce our Golden Age Radio research as 'certified' anything. By the very definition, research is imperfect. We simply tell the truth. As is our continuing practice, we provide our fully provenanced research results--to the extent possible--right here on the page, for any of our peers to review--or refute--as the case may be. If you take issue with any of our findings, you're welcome to cite any better verifiable source(s) and we'll immediately review them and update our findings accordingly. As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

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The Dark Fantasy Radio Log

Dark Fantasy Biographies