CBS Studio One Production: Under The Volcano 29th April 1947

I have just discovered that you can listen to the above broadcast on the Internet Archive.

The idea of a radio production of Under The Volcano came about after Lowry met Fletcher Markle and Gerald Noxon in March 1947. Lowry had been on his way back to Dollarton following a visit to New York for the publication of the novel. The three met in a Toronto bar across the street from the CBC buildings where Markle and Noxon had worked on radio drama projects.

Fletcher Markle was a Canadian film and television writer and producer who was with the CBS programme "Studio One". Gerald Noxon had worked with Markle in Canada and together they adapted Under The Volcano for the first transmission of the CBS "Studio One" production.

Lowry accepted appears to have accepted the limitations of the adaption of turning his complex novel into a 60 minute play. Noxon sent Malc the following telegram which Lowry answered positively which gave the go-ahead for the production:

COLUMBIA BROADCASTING WANT TO DO ONE HOUR RADIO VERSION OF VOLCANO FOR NETWORK. FLETCHER MARKLE DIRECTING SELF WRITING RADIO VERSION. THEY OFFER YOU $350 FOR SINGLE PERFORMANCE RIGHTS RECOMMEND YOU ACCEPT.PUBLICITY EXCELLENT FOR BOOK SALES.PLEASE REPLY TO ME CARE OF FLETCHER MARKLE CBS NEW YORK CITY. VERY URGENT.





The adaption featured Everett Sloane as the Consul and Ann Burr as Yvonne.

Here is the publicity blurb which appeared in Billboard magazine prior to the broadcast:









As it turned out, Lowry was unable to hear the transmission on the night due to a friend's radio set breaking down. CBS eventually sent him a recording of the broadcast on a shellac disc. The only documentary comments with have of what Lowry thought of the production come in a letter to Noxon dated June 21st 1947 (See Letters of Malcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon Pgs 144-45). Malc was pleased that the reviews had been positive but says he was "hellishly disappointed not to hear it over the radio". The recording sent by CBS appears to have been of poor quality which seems to have affected Lowry's enjoyment of the production but he adds that "we got a good idea and enjoyed it". Lowry's only criticism was the following:

"Sloane's odd interpretation, everyone else was to the contrary, was my chief criticism. I know he's a damn fine actor, but I cannot see why he emoted Lostweekendwise so much. He could have just spoken plenty of horrors, and poetry too, and it would have been more all right by me; but I guess I reckon without the difficulties."

It is interesting to read Malc's description of Sloane's performance in terms of the novel/filmThe Lost Weekend. The Lost Weekend's appearance before Under The Volcano haunted Lowry for ever more. With hindsight, Lost Weekend has none of the depth of Under The Volcano and only shares the subject matter of alcoholism.

In 2011, the production seems odd and stilted to my ears demonstrating how difficult it is to distill a novel like Under The Volcano into one hour. I agree with Lowry that Sloane's interpretation is off key and doesn't fit with my idea of the Consul!

Chartres in Orson Welles's F for Fake

F for Fake (French: Vérités et mensonges) is the last major film completed by Orson Welles, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in the film. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Loosely a documentary, the film operates in several different genres and has been described as a kind of film essay. Read more on Wikipedia



On 10th March 1947, Lowry flew back from New York to Vancouver after celebrating the success of his novel Under The Volcano. He booked himself into the Sylvia Hotel where proceeded to get drunk. He called the local paper the Vancouver News Herald to arrange an interview. In this interview published on 15th March 1947, Lowry told the reporter that Orson Welles was interested in making a movie of Under The Volcano. This was an exaggeration because though Fletcher Markle, a colleague of Welle's, had sent the director a copy of the book, apparently Welle's didn't like the novel. Personally, I have always thought that Welles would have been a good choice but it was not to be.



One thing that appeals to me about Lowry is the coincidences that can occur while studying him - Lowry himself was fascinated by Baudelaires's idea of "correspondances":

Correspondances

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.
II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
— Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.
— Charles Baudelaire

Correspondences

Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.
Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.
There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,
With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Patrick McCarthy has noted that; "one of the most striking elements of Under The Volcano is its reliance on coincidences and correspondences less suggestive of random occurrence than the operations of a partly enclosed fate." Forest of Symbols 1994.

Lowry's first reference to Baudelaire's "forest of symbols" comes in the short story 'Hotel Room In Chartres". Returning to Welles's film, it struck me as coincidence that Welles's would talk about authorship in place which had significance for Lowry who visited the city twice in 1934 which resulted in the short story plus Lowry had touted Welles for the director of a film version of Under The Volcano. Lowry was often afraid of being branded a "fake" by critics and other writers after he was accused of plagiarism by Burton Rascoe amongst others. (See Sherril Grace's "Respecting Plagarism: Tradition, Guilt, and Malcolm Lowry's 'Pelargiarist Pen' in Strange Comfort Pg. 103