Episode 9700: Arch Oboler's Plays - "Johnny Got His Gun" (Starring Jimmy Cagney) 03-09-40

Johnny Got His Gun (Starring Jimmy Cagney) Aired March 9, 1940

The original canon of scripts encompassed some ninety-plus original stories. And, as dyed in the wool Lights Out! fans will surely point out, a good number of Lights Out! stories were reprised among the Arch Oboler's Plays canon over the years as well. By the second year of Lights Out!, America was under the spell of the diminutive giant of a playwright, Archibald 'Arch' Oboler and his spellbinding, highly personalized writing style. While clearly a genius in his own right, it's also clear that much of his writing style had been informed by Wyllis Cooper at the least. Cooper's own writing style almost routinely employed a highly personalized point of view, so as to further attenuate the listening experience of his radioplays to the greatest degree. Given young Arch Oboler's close association with Cooper with Lights Out!, it's difficult to divorce Wyllis Cooper's writing style from Oboler's in many respects.

THIS EPISODE:

March 9, 1940. Blue Network. "Johnny Got His Gun". Sustaining. A dramatization of the superb, shocking best-seller about the legless, armless, blind, deaf and dumb war veteran. An eloquent anti-war statement, Cagney was never better on the air. Dalton Trumbo (author), Arch Oboler (adaptor, producer, director), James Cagney, Gordon Jenkins (composer, conductor), Verna Felton. 29:54. Episode Notes From The Radio Gold Index.