Beyond The Horizon

[August 1, 1937 The Washington Post (excerpt)]

Four plays by Eugene O'Neill never heard on the air, will be presented by the National Broadcasting Co. in August in the first radio cycle of O'Neill dramas ever broadcast. Prominent actors of the stage will be heard in the leading roles.

The comprehensive series, which will embrace both the formative and mature periods of the playwright's development, will include four modern classic dramas to be heard on successive Monday evenings, starting August 2, over the coast-to-coast N.B.C. blue network. The broadcasts will begin at 8:30 p. m., and will run 45 minutes or an hour, according to the length of the original play. ...

"In offering this first cycle of O'Neill plays ever to be heard on the air, the National Broadcasting Company is privileged to present to the radio public not only America's leading playwright but also the leading experimentalist in the field of drama," John F. Royal NBC vice president in charge of programs, said. "Taking his models from the early Greek dramas and developing his theme along the lines of modern thought, O'Neill has accomplished a fine dramatic intensity which is admirably suited to radio projection."

[August 7, 1937 Hammond (IN) Times - Radio Short Circuits column by Paul Damai]

... BEYOND THE HORIZON (Mon. 8:30 p.m., WENR). The present amplitude of sustaining dramas (of which this is the beginning of a series of O'Neill dramas) brings home more and more to us the cleanliness of non-commercialized presentation of hour-long plays on the air. There is a sullied pall hanging over the sponsored dramas with acts annoyingly interrupted by spell-breaking messages in the interests of a toilet soap or a skin balm.

Helen Hayes had a different semi-unsympathetic role in this, carried out with the usual Hayes competence, and was supported gallantly by James Meighan and the rest of the cast. It was a tragic realistic piece with which O'Neill is wont to regale us, capable of putting us in a lingering mood of melancholy, and of morose cogitation on the weaknesses that human flesh is heir to.

This coming Monday (8:30 WENR) the second in the series of Eugene O'Neill will have Ian Keith and Francesca Bruning playing "The Fountain" —a lesser known work based on man's quest for eternal youth. It promises to be as good, if not better, from a mood-brightening standpoint, then last Monday's "Beyond The Horizon." ...