1984 by George Orwell: Classic Dystopian Literature on Old-Time Radio
This article is an excerpt
from RUSC Member's Area
Listening to George Orwell’s 1984 originally broadcast by NBC in August 1949, five months before his death from tuberculosis on 21st January 1950, it is easy to see how Orwell is as relevant now, as he was in 1949.
During the NBC University Theater performance starring English Actor David Niven the intermission commentator, distinguished author Mr James Hilton says:
"George Orwell is a distinguished English writer who is desperately concerned as many others of us are today with the shape of things to come. And he is also aware that such earlier prophecies as those of Orson Welles and Aldous Huxley were not so much incorrect as incomplete and are now in need of restatement and revision before a modern audience. Thus Orson Welles forecasts the engulfment of modern civilization in total war but war says George Orwell is not all nor is it quite the worst most imaginable thing."
As long ago as 1932 Aldous Huxley satirized the regimented state in his book Brave New World but some people in those days probably missed the satire and thought that with all its mass production techniques and scientific management Mr Huxley’s new world might even be worth looking forward to. But today no one is so naïve as that. Indeed the crisis of our civilization is in some danger of becoming clichéd for after dinner speakers.
Orwell however is the first writer to warn us in the form of fictional satire what might conceivably happen if all the worst features that exist anywhere in our modern world were to prevail over all the others and if in addition all these worst features were to spread all over the earth. Since the story is told with nightmarish detail and inexorable logic the commentator can perhaps serve best by a few mild warnings of his own. First that despite any easy assumptions that might readily and even excusably occur to both listener and reader, George Orwell’s satire does not bear exclusively against any one country. Certain early symptoms of that breakdown of the human soul, which he forecast, are diagnosable in all countries today and most of us also to a greater or lesser extent are already victims of certain types of doublethink.
It will probably take its place among the memorable works of its kind both for its technical virtuosity and for a sort of intellectual passion that pervades it throughout. If you have read 1984 you may not feel that you’d like to meet any of its characters but you do feel that you’d like to meet Mr Orwell if only for an argument.
You certainly have to agree with Hilton and I feel that we are fortunate to be able to witness through Old-Time-Radio history as it was being written and to appreciate some wonderful classic literature.
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