Hall of Fantasy aired “The Golden Bracelet of Amoniris” on August 3, 1953. It is the 14th episode of Hall of Fantasy we have run since the first in 2011. It is only the 3rd since September of 2017, with the one previous to this episode coming in April of 2020. Therefore, a bit of introductory recap is in order for newcomers to the series.
Hall of Fantasy (1946-47 from station KALL in Utah, and 1949-53 from station WGN in Chicago) aired an estimated 200+ scripts or (combined) broadcasts, yet only between 40-45 are thought to still exist (though estimates vary), which is a shame, for creator, writer, director, and sometimes Hall of Fantasy actor Richard Thorne (1925-2007*, photo top right) was an extremely talented individual, and those episodes still surviving are held in high regard by OTR fans.
The first two years were broadcast from Utah (on those stations on the Intermountain Network) and the show concentrated on straight mysteries or murder plots, but when the show ended up in Chicago and was subsequently revived due to a fortunate turn of fate, it shifted focus to the supernatural or straight horror story format for which it became famous, all but adaptations of the classics being written by Thorne. The show went national on the syndicated Mutual Network in 1952.
[*I would like to express my thanks to Old Time Radio historian Karl Schadow for supplying the birth and death dates for Richard Thorne after my own search came up empty.]
The network would run rebroadcasts from late 1953 into 1954, though because of the shoddiness of research and/or outright collusion on the part of a few commercial sellers attempting to fob off a number of rebroadcasts as originals to aid their sales, it is quite possible that many of their shows are broadcasts from years earlier, with no foreseeable hope of pinning down their first airings due to the incomplete and/or unverifiable historical record.
(Above: Howard Carter examining the sarcophagus of the boy king, Tutankhamun, 1923)
“The Golden Bracelet of Amoniris” follows in the footsteps of many another “curse of the mummy” type stories. The earliest and most famous of the mummy’s curse legends began when archaeologist Howard Carter unearthed the tomb of King Tut in November of 1922, and broke the seal and entered the tomb in February of 1923. Though the “curse” proved not to be true it was too good a story to let die and so was spread far and wide, spawning all manner of imaginative variations in print, radio, film, and TV. In this episode a party of archaeologists is searching for the tomb of a king who had ruled some 5,000 years ago. Their search takes them 20 miles north of the Valley of the Kings. Much to their surprise they did indeed discover a still sealed and unlooted tomb, but not the one for which they had been searching. Instead, and much to their excited disbelief, they had stumbled upon the tomb of Queen Amoniris of the 3rd Dynasty, known as the Master of Men and the Cruelest of All. Buried among the treasures accompanying the Queen into the Afterlife is a snake bracelet, the eponymous Golden Bracelet of the story’s title, and a beloved favorite of the Queen. As we might expect, Amoniris has placed a curse upon the bracelet such that she will hunt down anyone who takes it from her. How this plays out is the interesting, fun part of the story, and as these mummy’s curse stories go it is a pretty decent one.
Play Time: 23:18
{“The Golden Bracelet of Amoniris” aired on a Monday evening in August of 1953, and it still being summer vacation it was a foregone conclusion that the neighborhood gang would congregate at the nearby newsstand the next morning to search for more stories of possible ancient curses, or thrill to those stories come to life on far-flung worlds across the immensities of time and space. They were in luck. Startling Stories (1939-55) was not known for its high brow literary merit but for strong and colorful adventure fare where many of the most popular genre authors could be found exercising their imaginations without guilt or shame, simply fulfilling the noble goal of entertaining the magazine’s readers. The result is that many of its issues are now eagerly sought collector’s items at SF conventions. It was a bi-monthly until 1952 when it tried going monthly. It lasted but a year and a half, and after its June 1953 issue it produced but two more in 1953, August (below) and October, for a total of 8 in 1953. It then became a quarterly for its final two years of publication, folding with its Fall 1955 issue. Thrilling Wonder Stories (1936-55) attracted much the same audience as did Startling Stories and for much the same reasons. The six years previous to 1953 it was a bi-monthly but managed only 5 issues in 1953. It too, like SS, went to a quarterly schedule in 1954 before publishing its only issue of 1955, cover dated Winter. Weird Tales (1923-54) dubbed the “unique magazine,” has a long and storied history. It made its bones and established its identity in the ’20s and ’30s with stories of the supernatural, macabre, and dark horror stripe, attracting some of the most prominent and popular masters of these types of stories. To name just a few to grace its pages we have H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, and E. Hoffman Price. WT is considered a legend in the field, and the late Robert Weinberg (who wrote a history of the magazine), proclaimed it “the most important and influential of all fantasy magazines.” It was a bi-monthly in 1953.}
[Left: Startling Stories, Aug. 1953 – Center: Thrilling Wonder, Aug. 1953 – Right: Weird Tales, July 1953]
To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.