Orson Welles remarks on GKC

Well, this is my 1,000th post for this blog. It seems as if I should do something special, but I don't know what. Oh, well. :-)

Anyway, something that I apparently do not have included on this blog (except in part on my list of GKC's influence) is the remarks made by Orson Welles prior to his 1938 radio dramatization of Chesterton's novel  The Man Who Was Thursday (made a few weeks before his famous radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds.) In addition to writing the adaptation,Welles played the role of the protagonist Gabriel Syme in the broadcast.

Here is his remarks:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

G.K.C., Gilbert Keith Chesterton, great, greatly articulate Roman convert and liberal, has been dead now for two years. For a unique brand of common sense enthusiasm, for a singular gift of paradox, for a deep reverence and a high wit, and most of all for a free and shamelessly beautiful English prose, he will never be forgotten.

"It must be wonderful to be famous."

According to the story, that is what the young lady said to the fat man, the fabulously fat, the fantastic, the famous fat man when he took her to lunch at a fashionable restaurant, and everybody turned and stared.

"Tell me," she said, "Do people always recognize you? Does everybody always know who you are?"

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Chesterton, "If they don't, they ask."

Mr. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is a little like that. Roughly speaking, it's about anarchists. It was written, remember, in the boom of bomb-throwing in those radical irresponsible days of the Nihilists. And roughly speaking, it's a mystery story. It can be guaranteed that you will never, never guess the solution until you get to the end. It is even feared that you may not guess it then. You may never guess what The Man Who Was Thursday is about, but definitely, if you don't, you'll ask.