The Orson Welles TV Show You've Probably Never Seen

Anthology of Anthology TV Shows looks back at forgotten television series, this installment looks at a pattern of Orson Welles hosting shows that didn't last. Not the talk show, not the magic show, but the THREE different sets of short-form suspense tales.
written and narrated by Kevin Maher
edited by Bill Scurry
produced by Kevin Maher and Nick Nadel
Executive Producer: Tim Finn
Thumbnail by Colton Ogburn ( / coltonogburn )
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[@sanfordgray5699]

I'd been searching for the name of this show LITERALLY FOR YEARS. Then, I finally found it and it felt like a weight had been lifted. "I didn't imagine it!" Now I'm trying to find the name of a jungle cartoon from Disney (I think) set in the jungle with an ominous tone, soft jazz soundtrack by George Bruns (not Burns) and possibly containing Ludwig Von Drake talking about the animals of the jungle. Meanwhile, all you can see of most of the animals is their eyes behind and between the tall grasses. It's very stylized and may have played with the Goofy Sports or Goofy's How To videos from the 50s or 60s (that era anyways).

[@KevinGeeksOut]

Sorry I can’t place that jungle video.

[@lanieh6900]

Is it "Island of the lost"?

[@sanfordgray5699]

@@lanieh6900 Could be. At this point, I'm just thankful for any tips in any direction because I'm stumped. Thank you.

[@noneofyourbusiness4616]

Is there not an IMDB page for the composer you named to comb through?

[@teddyfurstman1997]

Orson Wells doing an Anthology show from the 80s was nuts! I’m glad you found this treasure.

[@atomicabe]

Yes, SCENE OF THE CRIME delights me on many levels. Treasure is a great word for it!

[@teddyfurstman1997]

@@atomicabeAwesome.

[@tommylakindasorta3068]

I feel like Markie Post never got the big break she deserved. She was always believable and her work on Night Court shows she had great comedic timing. She was successful by any measure, but I feel like she deserved to be even bigger.

[@atomicabe]

She starred in a pilot for ELECTRA WOMAN & DYNA GIRL in the '90s and it didn't get picked up, but she was fantastic in it. The lead role in a series, but still a very funny character. She's terrific. And yes, deserved a bigger career.

[@sulufest]

AGREED 👍

[@MultiSmartass1]

Night Court pretty much was her big break. Markie had done The Fall Guy previously but Night Court made her at least a lead on TV . She did largely MOWs as a lead and also did Hearts Afire as a series lead for a couple years at least. That's the peak of her career.

[@homelesshannah50]

She used to be on Fall Guy too, that's quite a thing being on 2 shows at the same time

[@barry-allenthe-flash8396]

Man, I love anthology shows - at least older ones from the "Twilight Zone era" up to the '80s and '90s. I think anything past 'Beyond Belief' just lost the magic, the watchability, the fun of the older ones. Stuff like 'Tales from the Darkside' and 'Monsters' were my jam and still fun to watch today online! I love your other content Atomic Abe, but man am I excited about this new series! EDIT: 'Scene of the Crime' sounds amazing. That thing needs to be rebooted post-haste!

[@rickwilson4077]

Ohhhh. This is such a fun theme to explore. Love this channel so much.

[@atomicabe]

Thank you. That's so good to hear. Means a lot!

[@KasumiKenshirou]

His role as Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie was my introduction to Welles. According to the other voice actors he was in very poor health and couldn't even move without a wheelchair anymore due to his obesity, and his vocal recordings were not usable without heavy processing. One of the actors said something like, "The irony of Welles playing a planet-sized eating machine was not lost on anyone."

[@sanfordgray5699]

The Babysitter is what stuck with me most about this show.

[@atomicabe]

I think I missed THE BABYSITTER when it originally aired, but it seems like the kind of thing people would've write about on the Kindertrauma website.

[@JayTemple]

One last mystery that Welles did: He introduced "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", an episode of "Moonlighting". He died between the night it was teased and the night it aired.

[@atomicabe]

Yes, I saw that. And apparently the producers booked him without requiring Cybil Shepherd to call in a personal favor.

[@Kerorofan1990]

Orson clearly came up with Scene Of The Crime so he could afford more Mrs. Pell's Fish Sticks.

[@amcaesar]

Oh thank heavens, there's a french fry stuck in my beard.

[@edreid7872]

The Marriage Ref.. I never imagined thought that show would ever be referenced in my lifetime..😂

[@atomicabe]

ha ha ha.

[@TomMSTie1138]

Awesome episode. Can't wait for future installments.

[@jznnotjason]

Super fun. Looking forward to more!

[@kodiekulp]

Rad! Aaaaaaahhhhhh the french champagne! 😂 I was hoping you would play that. I love these epsiodes 🙌

[@atomicabe]

oh yeah, gotta include that bit or frozen peas.

[@kodiekulp]

@@atomicabe I see you did ! Orsen Welles was a fascinating guy! Quite like Vincent Price, there wasn't an advertisement these dudes wouldn't do 😂 I didn't know he did that earlier TV show (excellent point about the website as well!). I actually am planning to watch it, certain I could find! I always find the bigger-than-life American director of earliier Hollywood. Incredible. Your spin-off series brings it into focus of the well oiled Hollywood machine that Orsen disposed of! I think it was off fellow that had 3 versions thanks the studio! It was cool to learn about this because I had no clue he did this television show in the 80s!

[@Drew791]

Nice, my favorite television format is the anthology. I’m actually just finishing up “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”(all 7 seasons) for the second time in 3 years. There are some definite gems in there but quite a few misses IMO. I just recently started to allow a few “Alfred Hitchcock Hour” episodes per week since the pacing tends to drag a little over 43 minutes or so.

[@atomicabe]

That cool! I've watched a lot of anthology series and they're almost always a mixed bag. Even The Twilight Zone had some uneven episodes. (I don't care for the funny ones or the overly sentimental ones.) There are some really great AHP episodes. I'm less familiar with the hour-long series. I think these kinds of short-stories work better in the half-hour format.

[@Drew791]

@@atomicabe absolutely, 20-30 minutes is just right

[@AlexSpalex1]

Another Anthology show that you might be able to talk about is The Hidden Room, it was the Lifetime network attempt at the genre. One of the Episodes (While She Was Out) was later remade into a movie in 2008, starring Kim Basinger.

[@atomicabe]

Yes, thank you! We've got a bunch of videos we're prepping and researching for this new series and I'm totally taken with THE HIDDEN ROOM. So many cable ACE award nominations, so many great actors involved. But all I've been able to find online is a single promo. The fact that the show has been scrubbed from media history is also strange. I had no idea about the Bassinger movie! Thanks so much for fanning the flames. Please let us know if there's a way to see episodes.

[@candidgamera]

I love anthologies and am looking forward to more of this series!

[@atomicabe]

yes, there are so many of them. And lots of forgotten ones.

[@KaristaSwiss]

YES YES YES I love this show... I want all the episodes 🙂

[@EugeneGM1]

Oh man, I hope you cover Snoop dog's take on the Crypt Keeper.

[@MultiSmartass1]

I call Orson Welles Great Mysteries: F for Fee.

[@tamaraclaw]

"Youth From Vienna" was also told on another anthology series..the British series "Tales of the Unexpected"

[@GohTakeshita]

I love this series idea! I was hoping someone would cover anthologies.

[@atomicabe]

Glad you like the idea. There are so many anthology shows. Lots to cover.

[@teddyfurstman1997]

Orson Welles also narrated the Alan Parsons Project Debut album of 1976 Tales of Mystery and Imagination on the 1987 CD Mixes done by Parson himself. Best Prog Rock Bands.

[@atomicabe]

There's also a record by a band called CONSEQUENCES where their big story concept was narrated by Peter Cook, who played multiple parts for a concept album. When was the last time a band did that?

[@teddyfurstman1997]

@@atomicabeCool.

[@PtolemyJones]

Hitchcock had his name on a good paperback book series too, read a bunch of them as a teen. One mostly forgotten anthology-like TV show was Friday 13th. Yes, it had a trio of regulars, but each episode had a new cursed item they had to pursue, with new people and a new story. Good stuff I thought.

[@bkjbearcat78]

Ummmmmm Please tell me we’re going to get Red Shoe Diaries in this series sometime?

[@jmalmsten]

Whenever I don't know what to say, I too go "AAAAAAAAAAHHH the french... Champagne."

[@atomicabe]

it fits almost any occasion.

[@PtolemyJones]

This show looks awesome, sorry I missed it...

[@Norvo82]

To be fair, by 1984 Orson Welles was pretty much a short lived anthology himself.

[@Bigbadwhitecracker]

I have always loved Orson, but I think he was kind of a jerk, not an honorable person, and the sole source of his own problems.

[@homelesshannah50]

LOL

[@zsoltfazekas2426]

Ooo... I will love this series!

[@atomicabe]

It's been so much fun to research! There are so many of these shows. Some really odd ones.

[@zsoltfazekas2426]

@@atomicabe sounds fun! I loved the old anthology shows, but I now start to notice I didnt know about soooo many. Hitchhiker was totally new thing for me. Maybe it wanst shown in hungary back in its day.

[@MultiSmartass1]

Scene of the Crime was actually a good, solid concept : Direct to Camera Fourth Wall breaking murder mystery. What is a nice additional touch here is having celebrity TV actors offer their insights. Angela Lansbury made me chuckle Sad thing is Network and even some cable outlets are often rigid and inflexible . They gave this shot to series but clearly saw it as a novelty . A Shame. It looks like pure fun.

[@atomicabe]

Well the series stopped featuring celebrity guests after the first episode. And half the episodes didn't have the interactive element, those were just suspense stories about murder.

[@MultiSmartass1]

@@atomicabe Yeah I got to see a couple episodes here on KZbin. I guess they traded off- some audience solve the case episodes and some straightforward ones.

[@MultiSmartass1]

Good video. I know Welles film career well as a former film reviewer but wasn't aware of these failed TV pilots and shows. Im not surprised NBC thought Fountain of Youth was "too sophisticated". They also thought Star Treks Original Pilot The Cage was "Too cerebral" . Of course, Star Trek was produced by Lucille Balls Desilu which I guess brings us full circle...

[@atomicabe]

Thank you. Another footnote we didn't include with Welles and TV -- he was the original choice to host/narrate The Twilight Zone, but they didn't think they could afford him. (Welles would later narrate a segment on Rod Serling's Night Gallery)

[@MultiSmartass1]

@@atomicabe I know Orson did a lot of gigs as an actor and voice over actor to pay the bills and sometimes try to fund his projects . Rather interesting considering he was a serious filmmaker having to do Paul Masson and Vivica Camera ads. Such was the business then.

[@scottandrews9453]

The guest detective gimmick was used on the Ellery Queen radio show of the 1940s.

[@atomicabe]

oh, I didn't know that. It's a good gimmick. I think they stopped doing it in SCENE OF THE CRIME after the pilot.

[@scottandrews9453]

@atomicabe Yeah, they only did it on the radio show (there are surviving shows on MP3 online if you're interested). Ellery Queen started the 'challenge to the reader' to solve the case in his early novels of the 1930s where when you got to the point in the story where the solution was about to be revealed he would insert a paragraph in which he asks the reader, "Who killed _______? You have all the clues at this point." It was dropped in the books in the late 1930s. They used it in the radio show with a couple of 'guest armchair detectives'. The Ellery Queen TV show of 1975-76 with Jim Hutton didn't have the guest detective but Hutton would turn to the camera and ask the TV audience "do you know who killed ________?"

[@mandelabutterfly9162]

Good episode. But I'm surprised you didn't use clips of Orson Welles with Lucy on I Love Lucy.

[@atomicabe]

We just used "Lucy Meets Orson Welles" in our previous video and didn't want to be too repetitive: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqCkpqueeKmVaK8si=F12uIh0kPbheQTmS

[@Drew791]

Btw the animated show Animaniacs does a pretty decent parody of Orson Welles’ famous frozen peas rant, for the company Findus, using “The Brain” character from the “Pinky and the Brain” segments (who is based off Welles anyway).

[@atomicabe]

Yes, that is so great!

[@dannybeaty3486]

I hope you will do an episode on "Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected".

[@QueenOfTheNorth65]

Night Gallery terrified me as a kid.

[@Filmation77]

7:14 Now for a Generation of Millenials ,they have no idea That Maurcie LeMarche's "Brain" from Animainiacs/Pinky and The Brain was based on Orson Wells😉

[@justamannn8674]

Please consider doing The Dark Room. Ty!

[@atomicabe]

The one hosted by James Coburn?

[@waddlesdpuffin]

Hope you guys have British anthology Beasts on your radar from Nigel Kneale

[@atomicabe]

Adding it to the growing list. There are SO MANY anthology series! Seems like there are a lot of good British ones. I've been watching a lot of Roald Dahl's TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED (which we feature in this video @0:45) I also need to track down THE FRIGHTENERS (1972)

[@waddlesdpuffin]

@@atomicabe I actually sat down and watched all the seasons currently available of Tales of the Unexpected a while ago on Prime though many of them are available on KZbin.

[@Shorty_Lickens]

I must be the only person not obsessed with Orson Welles. Watched Citizen Kane during the lockdown and thought it was just OK, nothing special. And none of his other work was impressive at all.

[@auntiewewe972]

War of the worlds, The Magnificent Ambersons Chimes at Night, F for Fake, numerous Shakespearean movies. Not only innovative but ground breaking. It's your right and taste to feel however you want but Welles left an indelible mark on cinema

[@atomicabe]

I am taken with him on two levels: There's Orson Welles' work, and then there's simply the fact that he reminds me of my Dad.

[@jaengen]

The Third Man is one of the best movies of the ‘40’s.

[@cassandramiller4477]

The last series reminds me a lot of a 1970s British series called Whodunnit, right down to the celebrity panel. (Also, was that Patrick Troughton in a scene from the second series?)

[@KaristaSwiss]

I so want all 6 episodes 🙂

[@atomicabe]

The home video release included the pilot and one other episode. The Babysitter segment is on KZbin. That's all I could find. Also, a publicity photo from the show suggests there were only 4 episodes. Hmm...

[@zoppie]

Benny Hill did a skit where he dressed up as Welles to parody that mystery series opening as "Orson Buggy."

[@atomicabe]

ooh - I need to see that. John Candy also played Welles a few times on SCTV.

[@oldmanonyoutube]

There is a generation of kids who only know of Orson Welles because of His impression in the Pinky and the Brain.

[@atomicabe]

Very true.

[@konstantinkoverchenko9587]

As Your Host, LOL! >_

[@mikebell2112]

Mwa-haa the mystery.

[@amcaesar]

AH... the... clip episode...

[@animeknight8958]

can you do a video on "Beyond Belief, Fact or Fiction"

[@homelesshannah50]

You forgot about Darkroom from 1981 and was hosted by James Coburn. It only lasted one season but I loved that show. They had it on KZbin but now they are all blocked due to copyrights 😡. There were a few big names on the show like Helen Hunt, David Carridine and Ronny Cox.

[@jeremybowen6565]

Work with The Master

[@SmartCookie2022]

I'm curious, what was the Vincent Price anthology series called? I can't find it anywhere.

[@atomicabe]

HALF HOUR TO KILL is the name of the show. The episode we featured is "Freedom to Get Lost" which was included on a DVD titled "Vincent Price: The Sinister Image." Apparently this is the only episode they made.

[@SmartCookie2022]

@@atomicabe Thank you for the answer, Abe. I see someone has posted "Freedom to Get Lost" here on KZbin in 4 parts. I'll give it a watch😃

[@termsofusepolice]

Price also did an anthology radio show in the 1970's called The Price Of Fear. Worth checking out.

[@Bigbadwhitecracker]

I wasn't home much in '84 (being 20) but I think I managed to see two episodes. Of course, if I liked it, it didn't last one season. Sorry Orson, I liked it. I hope you'll do One Step Beyond (Classic) and it's late '70s cheap reboot, Next Step Beyond (truly horrifying).

[@atomicabe]

I seem to recall another episode from its original airing where a man is killed -- and his dead body is found wearing a trenchcoat. The camera holds on that. The host reveals that you should have known he was killed by a woman -- because she buttoned the coat right-to-left. I think this was from SCENE OF THE CRIME. Unless there's another show where you were supposed to solve a murder. Oooh, I don't know NEXT STEP BEYOND. Was that also with John Newland?

[@trinaq]

Shame that this show was forgotten, lost forever to time. It should have had a long lasting legacy, similar to The Twilight Zone.

[@atomicabe]

There was a VHS release (we show the cover in the video @7:17) but I don't think it was re-run or syndicated. Oddly enough, the first choice to narrate THE TWILIGHT ZONE: Orson Welles. But the show couldn't afford him. Years later, Orson narrated a segment ("Silent Snow, Secret Snow") on NIGHT GALLERY.

[@sanfordgray5699]

By the way, this show is called "Scene of the Crime".

[@richardgadberry8398]

This show is full of country goodness and green peaness.

[@atomicabe]

ha!

[@timestes891]

Markie Post was a great actress.

[@atomicabe]

Yes, she was really funny. She starred in a reboot pilot (that might still be on KZbin) for ELECTRA WOMAN & DYNA GIRL. I wish it had gone to series.

[@JustAPrayer]

These seem like cool shows, I’ll have to check them out. But him lying too and taking money from Desi and Lucy like that kinda makes it karma that they ended early.

[@mathieuleader8601]

Orson Welles considered running for the senate in the state of Wisconsin

[@atomicabe]

I kinda wish he had.

[@markjamesmeli2520]

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........the French!

[@rogermorris9696]

S,o a Cluedo (Clue) ripoff with assumed low ratings and likely an incoming lawsuit was cancelled after six shows, Why not licence the game and do it that way? There was a popular series in the UK that did it.

[@atomicabe]

good question!

[@MikeHunt-rw4gf]

algorithm

[@FlushGorgon]

I remember those. They were mediocre and derivative. Welles didn't hold a candle to Hitchcock.