HARRY LIME IS HERE AGAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 656, 1 February 1952, Page 6

HARRY LIME IS HERE AGAIN

ARRY LIME, the sinister but plausible and engaging racketeer, had a short life and a violent death in The Third Man, as a good few people could probably tell you. But what happened before that? Harry Alan Towers, London radio writer and producer, wondered. Across the Atlantic, Orson Welles, who played Harry Lime in the film, was wondering, too. Then they met in Europe and put their heads together. Exactly what their talk added up to, listeners will know if they tune to any of the ZB stations or 2ZA ct 9.0 p.m. on Friday, February 8, and on succeeding Fridays. With Orson Welles in his old role and the same haunting zither theme of Anton Karas as an aeccomPpaniment, The Lives of Harry Lime dips into the past and brings forth a whole new series of adventures in the life of a notorious villain. Harry Lime was, in one sense, at any tate, too good a character to be lost, in spite of his bad record. In The Third Man, you'll remember, he was running a profitable little business selling useless penicillin to children’s hospitals when he found it necessary to disappear. He "died" conveniently in a motor accident, and he might have remained desd for a long time if it hadn’t been for an interfering friend who tried to find out what happened to him. As a direct result of this friend’s investigations Harry Lime died a second time, dramatically. in a Vienna sewer-and this time there was no make believe. Though Graham Greene created the character of Harry Lime specially for the Carol Reed film, it is Welles himself who has a big say in The Lives of Harry Lime. He has written many of the scripts, using as a background the charm and intrigue of such famous cities as London, Paris, Naples, Rome, and Budapest. Playing the leading role in all of them, he is assisted by English and Canadian players, and he also directed some "of the programmes. Each cpisode is a complete adventure. The return of Harry Lime would be an event in any circumstances, but Welles himself has had such an exciting life in theatre and radio

that he can always attract a good audience. Still a few years under 40, he makes full use of his height and robust bearing on the stage and in films. When he was a boy these were a drawback. The story, goes that at the age of nine he was sacked from the Chicago Opera Company because Martinelli, the opera star, had begun to break under the strain of picking him up and carrying him in Samson and Delilah. Though an American, Welles learnt much of his art at the famous Abbey Theatre, Dublin. People in this part of the world know him mainly as a screen actor, writer and producer. He startled us all with Citizen Kane about ten years ago, but even before that he was causing a stir among _ radio audiences-indeed, in 1938, with his broadcast adaptation of War of the Worlds, he caused a panic. Incidentally, in making The Lives of Harry Lime he records as if he were making a film, building up the programme scene by scene. Harry Lime wouldn’t be the same man without. his famous. theme, and Anton Karas also was in London when Harry Alan Towers and Orson Welles were working out this new series. Karas, of course, was discovered in Vienna in the first place by Carol Reed, who soon saw that the haunting zither music was just what he wanted for The Third Man.

Now, for hundreds of thousands of people who have never seen Vienna and perhaps never will, the musjc of Karas summons. up the cafés of the central

European capital. No doubt ‘it will go on casting its spell in the future over what is sure to be a big listening audience.