On May 18, 1968, BBC Radio 3 broadcast its dramatization of Ray Bradbury's wonderful play, LEVIATHAN '99. Sir Christopher Lee, a fine actor and a good friend of Ray Bradbury, starred in the production. The musical score was composed by Tristam Cary. To listen to that radio broadcast, just click on the link below. Enjoy!
The following will take you to an article by former TV horror movie host John Stanley about Sir Christopher Lee, after Mr. Lee's death in 2015. And if you read the article, you'll learn how Ray Bradbury...indirectly...stopped Mr. Lee from walking off Mr. Stanley's television show prior to a scheduled interview!
Ih his introduction to the excellent 1985 anthology REALMS OF DARKNESS, actor Sir Christopher Lee wrote about his love for written stories of the macabre, noting that lovers of films of that genre should not ignore the written stories from which so many such films originated:
"But I have to recognize, from an enthusiasm for macabre stories that began in boyhood and is still with me, that there are limits to what films can do. If you want the authentic frisson, the dawn of apprehension rising on the naked crags of malice and evil, you have to go back to written texts, to the stories as the authors first imagined them....And in spite of having been Count Dracula, I am just as thrilled and chilled by a finely-spun yarn as anybody else, and delighted to be shown the way to different varieties of short, sharp shock by practitioners who became my friends, like Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury..."
Well said! While movies are fine, there is nothing like a scary story that allows the reader's imagination to fill in the details, as so many of Ray's stories do.
The link below will take you to a photo of Sir Christopher Lee on the set of the 1965 film, THE FACE OF FU MANCHU. As you can see, Mr. Lee is reading a paperback book containing a selection of horror stories. Four names can be read on the book's cover: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, L.P. Hartley and...the second name...some fellow named Ray Bradbury. From the look on Mr. Lee's face, the story he's reading must be pretty scary!
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