From the Brooklyn Bridge to Pennsylvania Highway 11

The reuse of storylines from radio dramas on early television was not uncommon; indeed, much of the television programming of this period consisted of repurposed radio scripts. The scores for these radio dramas were often reused, as well. Music from radio dramas was recycled into new television contexts, or the radio dramas and their music were adapted into television shows. The literature often does not discuss these radio-to-television adaptations, let alone their music. This article discusses the appropriation of radio music in The Twilight Zone in the context of Lucille Fletcher’s radio drama ‘The Hitch-Hiker,’ her reworking of the drama into a staged play, and Rod Serling’s version for The Twilight Zone (1960). Bernard Herrmann’s score for the radio drama was repurposed for the television version, and its function in both versions, depending on the author/adaptor’s agenda, created a profound change in the story trajectory. The addition of several gendered musical cues in the television version, for example, helped to shape the musical portrayal of an independent career woman of the 1950s

Appropriation · Art · Bridge (graph theory) · Commercial broadcasting · Context (archaeology) · Drama · Literature · Media studies · Musical · Public broadcasting · Sociology · Telecommunications · Engineering · History · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History