Beating EC to the punch

[Yoc]

I agree John it's a lot of fun to see who the various media influenced each other.  I've read Citizen Kane had a huge influence on all the media types when it debuted.

In the case of the old witch I'm betting the popular 1930s 'Witch's Tale' radio show, the witch from Snow White and the original fairy tale source material from who knows how far back were the biggest influences on EC's version.

-Yoc

[John C]

In the case of the old witch I'm betting the popular 1930s 'Witch's Tale' radio show, the witch from Snow White and the original fairy tale source material from who knows how far back were the biggest influences on EC's version.

Ah, but that's where the details come in, and what makes it interesting.  By looking at the specifics (which I haven't, in this case) of the image use, we might get a sense of whether there's a use-to-use continuity or whether the creators all shared a common interest in a particular source.  And if the latter, where else were those influences found?

While I'm sure a lot of the creators went BACK to the folktales to obscure their sources, for example, I doubt any of them were specifically inspired by it.  Likewise, almost every portrayal of Dracula can be traced to the Universal film or an imitator, not Bram Stoker or the historical Vlad the Impaler.

[moondood]

These are all based on pulp/radio prototypes I believe.

=========================================================

The radio weird-mysteries definitely predated the EC stories of 1950 onward.

Someone mentioned the Witch's Tale [yes, an excellent series]...there were many others--Inner Sanctum, Arch Obler's Lights Out [I think that was his]...and several others I have on my hard drive.

The distinction I can see having read the EC's and having heard many of the radio shows over the past few years is that the EC stories seemed to connect the "commupence" to the "crime" more directly than the radio stories seemed to do...which I think is the twist ending trademark of the EC stories.  The main writer of those EC tales has mentioned the influence of radio in various interviews [though I don't think he mentioned the shows by name].

I'll be listening to one of these radio shows and think "this is like an EC story [in tone]"--then the ending is nothing like an EC story.  So the connection between the two is lost.  EC went a step further as far as I can tell.  They had definitely crafted a kind of formula that was pure EC.

Many of the radio shows are good--as are Old Time Radio Shows in general--before there was TV there was the theatre of the mind.  I work as a comics freelancer all day at the computer and I listen to this stuff rather than have the TV on [No turning of my head to see the picture--with radio, there IS no picture].

You can download a TON of these shows, in addition to comics-related Radio titles, detective shows, Sci-Fi, westerns, etc..at Zootradio.com [I think it is].

Some of the best overall shows are Gunsmoke, Dragnet, and The Saint.  Wonderful stuff.  Not supernatural, but really good radio entertainment.  The supernatural shows vary in story quality from show to show, season to season. Some very, very good to just plain odd, depending on the show title.  Same for the Sci-Fi shows.

You can buy collections on ebay, too.

Moondood

[mopee167]

I realize this is an old thread, but I thought it worth mentioning that the spooky story reference in
the initial post was a fairly direct plagiarism of W.W. Jacobs’ 1900 short story, “The Monkey’s
Paw.” The only elements changed by Alan Mandel are place (Connecticut instead of England),
object (idol instead of monkey’s paw), cash ($5,000 instead of 200 pounds), and child (Eileen
instead of Herbert).

BTW, this story was re-told by the late A.J. Hanley in The Buyer’s Guide #351 (Aug 8, 1980).
The similarities between “The Third Wish” and “The Monkey’s Paw” were first pointed out by
Charles Van Wissick in The Buyer’s Guide #357 (Sep 19, 1980). The Buyer’s Guide, for those
who may not know, was a comic book adzine published by Alan L. Light.

[Yoc]

Thanks mopee.
There might well be some here that have never heard of The Buyer's Guide.  It ran from 1971 to 2013.
Your additions to the forum have been very appreciated.

-Yoc