THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater was an ambitious effort by veteran radio producer Himan Brown to revive interest in American radio drama. Every night from 1974 to 1982, host E. G. Marshall (later Tammy Grimes) ushered listeners through a creaking door -- similar to the one Brown used on Inner Sanctum decades earlier -- for an hour of “the fear you can hear.”

Brown produced nearly 200 new episodes of Mystery Theater every year, using both original scripts and adaptations of classic stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Mystery Theater brought many veterans from radio’s golden age back before the microphone, including Agnes Moorehead, Richard Widmark, Celeste Holm, Mercedes McCambridge and Howard daSilva. The show also featured performances from many up-and-coming stage and film actors, including Tony Roberts, John Lithgow, Morgan Fairchild, Mandy Patinkin and Sarah Jessica Parker.

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater won the George A. Peabody Award in 1975. After eight years and over 1,500 shows, the show ended its run on December 30, 1982.

E. G. Marshall died on August 24, 1998.

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1990.

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