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Dark Fantasy
Images and old article reproduced by The Digital Deli Too
From the April 19, 1942 edition of The Capital Times:
Dark Fantasy
Sees Light
In Tea RoomScott Bishop, Author of
Mystery Novels, Is
Writer
"Dark Fantasy," radio's weirdest thriller series, heard late in the evenings over Station WIBA, was bom in a Chinese tea room late on the stormy night of Nov. 3, 1941 while Scott Bishop, father of hundreds of mystery novels, stories, and radio scripts, sat drinking an iced, spiced tea concoction of his own invention, with Radio Production Man John I. Prosser in a haunt known as Yung Si Fu's.The darkly psychological conversation centered around mystery tales, with frequent references to Poe, DeQuincy, Blake, Coleridge and other masters of the craft.
Bishop's mind kept turning on the subject after he went home, so he sat down and wrote a 30-minute script called "The Man Who Came Back." Next day Prosser and Bishop read the tale over in the cold light of morning, decided it was good, got a dramatic cast together, made a recording and submitted it, still hot off the infernal griddle, to the NBC-Red network program department. Eleven days later "Dark Fantasy" had its premiere.
On Friday, Apr. 24, "Dark Fantasy" will present Bishop's 23rd original story of the series over Station WIBA at 11:05 p.m. The title is,"The Screaming Skulls."
Asked recently why he thinks his type of mystery thriller has particular appeal for radio, Bishop reasoned, "granted, that listeners enjoy a good whodunit yarn where all the facts have sound reasons for existing, I think there is more fascination in the "Dark Fantasy" type of tale where the horror comes from things unusual or even, supernatural. In this case, it is not the terror itself that causes listeners' hair to rise. It's the-unseen, unaccountable cause of the terror."