«Тыныштық, сұраңыз» радио бағдарламасы: Қорқыныш пен қиял әлемі

Radio fantasy and horror program

Quiet, Please! was a radio fantasy and horror program created by Wyllis Cooper, also known for creating Lights Out. Ernest Chappell was the show's announcer and lead actor. Quiet, Please debuted June 8, 1947 on the Mutual Broadcasting System, and its last episode was broadcast June 25, 1949, on the ABC. A total of 106 shows were broadcast, with only a very few of them repeats. Earning relatively little notice during its initial run, Quiet, Please has since been praised as one of the finest efforts of the golden age of American radio drama. Professor Richard J. Hand of the University of Glamorgan, in a detailed critical analysis of the series, argued that Cooper and Chappell "created works of astonishing originality"; he further describes the program as an "extraordinary body of work" which established Cooper "as one of the greatest auteurs of horror radio." while John Dunning describes the show as "a potent series bristling with rich imagination."

Probably the most highly regarded episode of Quiet, Please is "The Thing on the Fourble Board" (August 9, 1948), about an oil field worker who encounters a mysterious subterranean being hiding on the derrick's catwalk. The unusual title is a bit of oil worker argot: the "fourble board" of an oil derrick is a narrow catwalk that is as high up as four lengths of drilling pipe placed vertically (two lengths of pipe are a "double", three are a "thribble" and four are a "fourble.") The story's effectiveness has led some fans to label the episode one of the best radio horror programs ever broadcast. Richard J. Hand of the University of Glamorgan notes that "The Thing on the Fourble Board" is not only cited as the finest example of radio horror, but occasionally cited as one of the best examples of radio drama as a whole. Especially effective was Cecil Roy's vocal performance as the creature. Though she performs only very briefly, Roy's vocal (barely recognizable as human) was cited by Dunning as still startling and chill inducing even after decades. According to Hand, Cooper's script for the episode was dizzyingly multilayered, blending authentic details of oil rig workers' daily activities, with elements of what might be termed "subterranea" or Hollow Earth lore, yet managing to faintly invoke nautical stories like the kraken.

Though many radio programs used various meta fictional ploys, Quiet, Please arguably offered some of the most effective and intriguing examples. Hand writes that Cooper "enjoys creating roles for the audience: passive listener, surreptitious eavesdropper, or even someone implicated in the action of the story itself." Ellison goes on to relate the plot (at least as he remembers it after several decades, admitting that time might have altered some of the details), and asks, "[H]ow many stories you heard or saw or read fifteen years ago, ten years ago, even five years ago do you remember that clearly today? And I heard 'Five Miles Down' at least forty years ago. And it's still with me." Ellison's recollection is a little inaccurate: he relates the story being broadcast "early in the Forties" on Quiet, Please when it was in fact a late 1940s episode of another series, The Mysterious Traveler. In 2004, Ellison took part in a recreation of the "Five Miles Down" script (by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, not Wyllis Cooper) at a convention of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy. He "acted and helped direct the show" and recalled hearing the episode when he was growing up.

In the October 17, 1948 episode titled "And Jeannie Dreams of Me" the Stephen Foster song Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair figured prominently. The episode uses the song throughout and its title is a reversal of the song title which acts as a foreshadowing to the theme of the episode.