June 26, 2012

Radio Classics Wishes Peter Lorre a Happy Birthday!

Greg Bell, host of Radio Classics, will present a birthday tribute to Peter this week, born June 26, 1904.

For two hours, Lorre fans will enjoy Inner Sanctum, "The Black Seagull" (Mar. 7, 1943); Suspense, "Of Maestro and Man" (July 20, 1944), and two episodes of Peter’s own radio series Mystery in the Air, "The Lodger" (Aug. 14, 1947) and "The Horla" (Aug. 21, 1947).

An interview with Roger Corman will precede the four radio shows. Corman directed Peter in two Edgar Allan Poe films in the early 1960s, Tales of Terror (1962) and The Raven (1963), which co-starred Vincent Price.

The Lorre tribute will air these dates and times:

Tuesday, June 26:
7 am Pacific, 10 am Eastern
3 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern

Friday, June 29:
3 am Pacific, 6 am Eastern
5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern

Saturday, June 30:
7 pm Pacific, 10 pm Eastern

Satellite radio providers XM and Sirius air Radio Classics over channel 82. Subscribers may also listen to the programs over the internet. Log-in with your User ID and password. Not a subscriber? A free 30-day trial is also available through the XM radio website.

A full schedule of the week’s programming may be found on Greg Bell’s website.

The life and career of Peter Lorre is chronicled in the pages of his authorized biography The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre by Stephen D. Youngkin, who interviewed many of Peter’s family members, friends, fellow actors, and the directors, producers and crew who worked with him during his career.

The Lorre radio programs airing this week in honor of Peter’s 108th birthday are available through many merchants, including Radio Showcase. The Appendix of The Lost One offers the most complete list available of Peter’s many radio credits – in addition to his appearances on stage, in movies, and on television.

Published in 2005 through University Press of Kentucky, The Lost One is now available in paperback, as well as Amazon’s Kindle, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and hard-cover.

June 19, 2012

Arsenic and Old Lace at the Groton Public Library, June 19, 2012

As part of their weekly Classic Cinema Series, the Groton Public Library will screen Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) on Tuesday, June 19, 2012.

Admission is free.

The program will begin at 2 pm in Meeting Rooms 1 and 2. For more information, please contact Linda Wallace at (860) 441-6750.

The Groton Public Library is located at 52 Newtown Road, Groton, Connecticut. Directions may be found on the library’s website.

The making of Arsenic and Old Lace is recounted in The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre by Stephen D. Youngkin, who interviewed director Frank Capra.

Filmed in the fall of 1941, Arsenic and Old Lace was one of several movies Peter Lorre made at Warner Bros. before the studio offered a long-term contract. By the time the film was released in 1944, Peter was a member of the Warners stock company and in the midst of one of the most productive periods of his career, which included appearances on most of the classic radio shows of the period and a House Act tour of cinemas.