Last night thanks to YouTube I got to watch the TV movie of The Screaming Woman for the first time since its initial broadcast on January 29, 1972. This was my first exposure, at least which I remember, to Ray Bradbury's work, although I wasn't to learn who Ray Bradbury was for another three years. I then got hold of everything by him that I could and have read all but a very few obscure items.

The history of the story is that it was originally broadcast as a radio play on the program Suspense on November 25, 1948, with a young Margaret O'Brien playing the part of a girl who hears a woman buried alive screaming. No one will believe her and there is a race against time before it is too late. Ray Bradbury then developed it into a short story which appeared in Today, May 27, 1951, and later in a couple of his short story collections. Another radio broadcast was done on the excellent radio program Bradbury 13 which was produced in 1983 and 1984. Finally a version starring Drew Barrymore appeared on The Ray Bradbury Theater on February 22, 1986. I think that's all the adaptations of this story. The Bradbury 13 and Ray Bradbury Theater versions are also available on YouTube.

The TV movie is the furthest from the source material, as all other versions feature a 10-year-old girl, Margaret Leary (Heather Leary in the Ray Bradbury Theater version), who hears a buried woman screaming underground and is not believed except by her friend Dippy who is around the same age. I was told by Ray Bradbury's bibliographer, Donn Albright, that Bradbury's original conception was much darker but was rejected and a rewrite forced, presumably by the radio show producers but possibly by the magazine which published the short story. As far as I know the version of the story with the alternate ending may have appeared in an anthology but was never included in a Bradbury collection. I don't want to give away the ending to either version. The original radio broadcast is also available on YouTube.

The TV movie is well worth watching. The copy on YouTube is in beautiful condition. It stars Olivia de Havilland as Laura Wynant, a wealthy former mental patient who hears a woman screaming underground on her first day outside after being released. I won't say the movie is padded with filler or that it ever actually drags, but the screenwriter, Merwin Gerard, did have to create a full length movie from a very short story so it inevitably does draw on in places but overall the writer and actors did a very good job. The only equivalent to Dippy is David, a neighborhood boy who runs away when he hears the screams. The suspense builds slowly but surely to the end which is actually frightening. This film features the last score John Williams wrote for a TV movie. I would say this movie has held up well over the years and would recommend it for at least age 9 to 10 and up.

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