Arch Oboler

writer, director
Audio Play

Arch Oboler’s Plays

Arch Oboler was a prolific radio playwright from the mid-1930s, starting with NBC’s Lights Out radio show. One of the stories in the 1939 Arch Oboler’s Plays series was “And Adam Begot,” which told the story of two men and a woman thrown back into prehistoric times. The story appear in print in a 1944 anthology, was reprised for the 1951 Lights Out TV show, and formed the basis for a 1953 Steve Ditko story in the Black Magic comic book.
The young dramalist expects to face his biggest casting problem in filling the roles of the two Neanderthal men which he has written into “And Adam Begot.” He wants a voice, he explains, which will instantly suggest a cave-man to the radio listener. With that in mind, he conducted a survey of what people expect in a Neanderthal voice. “A cross-section of the answers,” Oboler says, “suggests a bass voiced prizefighter, talking double talk with his mouth full of hot potatoes.”
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  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

And Adam Begot

  • by Arch Oboler
  • in Out of This World, edited by Julius Fast, Penguin Books (US, May 1944)
I haven’t yet read this story, which came from Oboler’s 1939 radio play of the same name. It was later turned into a TV episode of Lights Out and was the basis of a Steve Ditko story in the Black Magic comic book (1953).
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  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Twonky

  • written and directed by Arch Oboler
  • (at movie theaters, USA, 10 June 1953)
Unlike in the original short story of “The Twonky,” the movie’s mad machine is a TV rather than a radio. Also, we never explicitly see the machine’s construction by a time traveler, but the professor’s discussions with the coach make it clear that they  believe the machine is from the future, and that’s good enough for us.

And finally, when you watch the wacky film, you’ll see that Arch Oboler devised a different fate for the Twonky than that in Kuttner and Moore’s original story. —Michael Main
Kerry: Then it is from another world?

Coach Trout: No, from our world, centuries in the future.
A red ball shoots out of the sky as four startled people cower below.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel