31 Facts About Arch Oboler

Arch Oboler was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer, and director who was active in radio, films, theater, and television.

Arch Oboler generated much attention with his radio scripts, particularly the horror series Lights Out, and his work in radio remains the outstanding period of his career.

Arch Oboler was one of those intense personalities who are liked and disliked with equal fire.

Arch Oboler grew up a voracious reader and discerning music appreciator, listening to the likes of violinist Fritz Kreisler and the great soprano Amelita Galli-Curci.

Arch Oboler entered radio because he believed it had great unrealized potential for telling stories with ideas.

Arch Oboler thought that the medium was being wasted on soap operas.

From 1933 to 1936, Arch Oboler wrote potboilers for programs such as Grand Hotel and Welch's Presents Irene Rich.

Things changed in 1936, when radio's leading impresario Rudy Vallee used a short radio playlet of Arch Oboler's titled Rich Kid.

The success of Rich Kid landed Arch Oboler a lucrative 52-week stint writing plays for Don Ameche for The Chase and Sanborn Hour.

Arch Oboler caused controversy with his very first play for the series, Burial Services.

Arch Oboler was very innovative with sound effects, and the insistent beating heart creates much of the terror in the broadcast.

Around the time that Arch Oboler was writing for Lights Out, he was invited to Hollywood to write sketches for the Lucky Strike-sponsored Your Hollywood Parade.

Arch Oboler caused more controversy with his script contribution to the 12 December 1937 edition of The Chase and Sanborn Hour.

In 1939, with his own money, Arch Oboler recorded an audition record of his play The Ugliest Man In the World, from which he hoped to launch a new radio series of idea plays.

An impressive roster of actors worked for scale to appear in Arch Oboler's plays, including Bette Davis, Ronald Colman, Edmond O'Brien, Elsa Lanchester and James Cagney.

Arch Oboler created striking sound effects for the play, including the eerie vibration of bed springs, which Joe Bonham learns to recognize as the movement of people entering and exiting his hospital room.

Everyman's Theatre was essentially Arch Oboler's Plays with commercial sponsorship.

Arch Oboler lost patience with the series because of the middle commercial interruption that came during his plays.

The program's life was cut short because of comments that Arch Oboler made at the Radio Institute at Ohio State.

Father Edward J Flanagan rebuked Oboler and remarked that America did not need its own Goebbels.

Arch Oboler enlisted the help of Eddie Cantor to get another propaganda series on the air, but Cantor's efforts were of no avail.

Arch Oboler produced and directed all 19 of the propaganda radio plays of this series, and wrote two of the plays.

Arch Oboler next worked with Ronald Colman on a propaganda series that featured Colman as the lead in adaptations of popular novels and plays.

Oboler's second series of Arch Oboler's Plays was broadcast over the Mutual Broadcasting Company.

In making a leap from radio to film, Arch Oboler was sometimes compared to Orson Welles, as in this commentary by Marty Baumann:.

Arch Oboler made film history with the 3-D film effects in Bwana Devil.

Arch Oboler returned to films with another 3-D feature, The Bubble, in 1966.

The play was based on Oboler's radio play Rocket from Manhattan, which aired as part of Arch Oboler's Plays in September 1945.

In 1949, Oboler helmed an anthology television series, Oboler's Comedy Theatre which ran for six episodes from September to November.

Arch Oboler married the former Eleanor Helfand; they had four sons: Guy, David, Steven and Peter Arch Oboler.

Arch Oboler died in Westlake Village, California, in 1987, aged 79.