STORY OF MAN THEY COULDN'T HANG

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 31, 13 January 1939, Page 5

STORY OF MAN THEY COULDN'T HANG

John Lee’s Dramatic Escape From Death Enacted In New NCBS Feature

"FAMOUS ESCAPES," the new NCBS feature which commences from the ZB stations on January 26, promises to be something out of the ordinary in radio serials. The theme which underlies the whole series is the escape of mankind from some difficult situation, from peril, temporal or spiritual, from death, History is packed with famous escanes, and there is scarcely an adventure story, from Sir Walter Scott to John Buchan, in which am escape does not play an important pert. The scope of the series is unlimited.

FIRST escape dealt with is per- ' . haps the most famous of all -that of John Lee, the man they could not hang. Although thought by many to be innocent of the murder he was charged with, Lee was sentenced to death, but three times he stood on the seaffold to suffer the supreme penalty, and three times the machinery broke down. Common opinion was that some divine providence was intervening to save him from death, and he was eventually reprieved. Another episode is concerned with a lesser known, but none the jess dramatic escape, that of a Frenchwoman, Diane Traill. It happened during the Great War. While her husband is in the trenches Diane Traill is injured by 2 bomb, and left terribly scarred and .disfigured. She is afraid that her husband, who had so treasured her beauty, will cease to love her, and when she receives a message that he is wounded and wishes to have her with him, she goes in fear and trembling. But she finds he has ‘been blinded, and will never knows that she has lost her beauty.

An escape about which there is a certain amount of historical sloubt, but which has nevertheless been dramatised, is that of Dan Kelly, the Australian bushranger. Dan Kelly FTER exploits which were to make them renowned the world over, the Kellys were finally cornered at Glenrowan, and all shot down with the exception of Dan Kelly. It is not certain that Dan Kelly really did escape, but there is sufficient evidence to make it dramatically legitimate to show his escape from the burning dwelling in which the gang was cornered. Alexander Korda’s film "Katharine the Great" possibly inspired ‘the episode dealing with the escape of that wily empress from a plot hatched by Russian nobles. Other famous figures who play their part in this ‘series are Elizabeth Barrett, who escapes,

thanks to Robert Browning, from parental tyranny as soul-destroy-ing as any prison; Captain John Smith, one of the founders of Virginia, who is saved from death when Pocohontes, daughter of a Red Indian chief, decides to marry him; Dreyfus, whom Zola rescued from Devil’s Island, most terrible prison of all; Penelope, legendary Grecian matron who is saved from the unwelcome attentions of suitors by the oppartune return of Ulysses from his wanderings. All these, and many other historical figures besides, re-enact episodes from their lives.