Newsletter November 2025

The 1949 film “The Third Man” was an international success. Written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, the production starred Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater cast members Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer of pulp westerns, who travels to post-war Vienna at the request of his old friend Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles.  Upon his arrival at Lime’s apartment, Martins discovers that Harry has been killed in a traffic accident and, soon after, attends his funeral. But it isn’t long before he learns of Harry’s true activities in Vienna as a black marketer – and also begins to suspect that his old friend might not have been killed in that accident after all.  In the late 1940s, while living in London, Welles became acquainted with Harry Alan Towers, a radio producer whose company, Towers of London, was heavily vested in syndicated radio production. Towers convinced Welles to appear in a radio series to be titled “The Lives of Harry Lime”, based on the character from “The Third Man”.  Since Harry Lime meets his end in the sewers of Vienna in “The Third Man” movie, it simply wouldn’t do to suddenly decide that Lime had either risen from the dead or had never been killed at all.  So Towers, with Welles’ involvement, decided to make “The Lives of Harry Lime” a prequel to “The Third Man”.  Thanks to brilliant scripts, expertly performed by Welles and a stock company of talented actors, the underworld activities of Harry Lime and his always-questionable associates made for great entertainment. Produced in England and recorded in London’s IBC Studios, “The Lives of Harry Lime” had an authentic continental flavor, with adventures taking place in such exotic locales as Paris, Rome, Venice, Tangiers, and the French Riviera.