And Now, Star Wars on the Air

Radio drama is making a resounding comeback

Galloping galaxies! Here come that midget robot and the tin man with the English accent again, along with Luke, Han Solo and the rebellious rose of Alderaan, Princess Leia. Star Wars is back, but with a difference. This time it is on National Public Radio, and instead of being presented within the confines of a two-hour movie, it has been expanded into a serial: 13 half-hour cliffhangers.

"We're trying to attract a whole generation of listeners who have been raised on visual entertainment," says Executive Producer Richard Toscan, "people who think of radio only as background."

Fans will recognize the plot, which started unwinding several weeks ago in many parts of the country. But with 4 1/2 additional hours, the writers have been able to introduce entirely new characters and create scenes that the film only hinted at. Luke Skywalker's best friend and boyhood hero, Biggs Starfighter, makes an appearance, for example, and the audience is in on the beginning of the most thrilling romance since Romeo and Juliet --the first encounter between Artoo Detoo and See Threepio.

The radio Wars' producers even recruited two members of the original cast for the series, Mark Hamill playing Luke and Anthony Daniels giving his inimitable English accent to Threepio. If Star Wars is a success, National Public Radio believes it may attract a whole new audience to radio drama, which was an entertainment staple until television displaced it in the '50s.

In fact, there already is such an audience, and as Luke was beginning his ad ventures on the air, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater was celebrating a kind of anniversary by sending out its 2,500th broadcast. Started in 1974 by Hunan Brown, whose own radio career dates back to 1929, Mystery Theater has presented everything from Dr. Jekylland Mr.

Hyde to The Last Days of Pompeii in nightly doses. The audience is small by TV standards (about 3.6 million a week compared with 37 million for a show like M*A*S*H). But the series is nonetheless at or near the top of the ratings for its time slot in several major cities and on the armed forces network.

Numbers alone do not tell the whole story, however, and Mystery Theater fans, many of whom listen in their cars, are almost fanatical in their devotion.

Some have even written in to say that they will reverse directions if they find they are driving out of the range of a station carrying the show. "A whole generation was cheated of radio drama," says Brown, who is himself something of a fanatic on the subject. "Only here in America did Madison Avenue say, 'This is it. Without a picture there ain't no story.' Nonsense! The finest stories are right in your head."

Many performers are equally excited by the notion of acting with their voices alone. One of Mystery Theater's stars, Mercedes McCambridge, notes that since all emotions are conveyed through the voice, radio requires a concentration unknown in either movies or television.

And, she says, "very few superstars in Movieland could cut that kind of mustard."

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