Further to this article about the Nelson S. Bond Room at Marshall University, Mythic Delirium Editor Mike Allen tells us that this week, Marshall is celebrating Bond’s life and career with a retrospective titled “Nelson S. Bond: From WV to TV and Beyond.” The festivities started Monday and runs through Friday 19 April. Among the highlights are vintage video presentations on the Marshall campus from television shows produced from Bond’s scripts, and the dedication of the Nelson Bond Room (which we announced in that previous article) on Friday 19 April.
Barbara A. Winters, Dean of the Marshall Libraries, said “Nelson Slade Bond may be the only graduate of the Page Pitt School of Journalism to have had a career in each of the seven specialties taught in the school. He studied under Page Pitt himself, and his writing career spanned seven decades. In just 23 years, from 1935 to 1958, he published 258 stories in 68 different magazines. These included crime, mystery, and sports pieces as well as fantasy and science fiction.”
Vintage television shows based on Bond’s work will be shown in Drinko Library Room 402. The schedule is:
Monday 14 April 14: “Al Haddon’s Lamp,” first published as a short story in Unknown Worlds, June 1942. Adapted as a live radio play for CBS’s Escape, 1949. Adapted for live television on NBC’s Gruen Guild Playhouse in 1952, starring Buddy Ebsen.
Tuesday 15 April: “Bacular Clock,” first published as a short story in Blue Book, 1942. Adapted for live radio on NBC’s The World’s Greatest Stories and Stories of Nelson Olmstead, 1942. Adapted for live television, Revue Productions, 1949, starring Buddy Ebsen.
Wednesday 16 April: “Mask of Medusa,” first published as a short story in Blue Book, December 1945. Adapted for live radio on NBC’s Peter Lorre’s Mystery on the Air, 1947. Adapted for live television, and first broadcast on NBC’s Radio City Playhouse, 1949. Marshall will be showing the 1953 version from NBC’s Tales of Tomorrow, which starred Raymond Burr.
Thursday 17 April: “The Night America Trembled,” first full-length (60 minutes) live television play on CBS’s Studio One, 1957. A dramatization of the events of 30 October 1938, when Orson Welles scared the United States witless with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds, the Nelson Bond-authored television play stars Edward R. Murrow, Ed Asner, James Coburn, Warren Beatty, Warren Oates and Vincent Gardenia. Bond’s script brought Studio One the highest ratings in its history.
Each video presentation will be introduced by Lisle Brown, curator in Marshall University Libraries Special Collections, who will provide attendees with little-known facts and historical perspective about Bond and the programs produced from his writings.
Nelson Bond began transferring his literary papers to the University Libraries Special Collections Department at Marshall in 2003 and continued the process up to his death on 4 November 2006, just 19 days short of his 98th birthday. “The collection contains all of his output as an author: his radio and TV scripts and plays, the original pulp fiction magazines, tear sheets, manuscripts, and the index cards and daybooks recording publication details,” Winters said. The collection also includes correspondence (including fan mail), contracts, agent correspondence, and financial records—as well as a full run of the Nelson Bond Society’s Newsletter and copies of his antiquarian book catalogs.
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