Welcome to what will now be an annual event, our rebroadcast of the 1938 Mercury Theater production of A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol (1938) — The Mercury Theatre, Orson Welles, and the Enduring Power of Radio Drama

When the Mercury Theatre on the Air presented its 1938 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, listeners expected to hear Lionel Barrymore, whose portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge had become a beloved annual tradition. But when Barrymore fell ill shortly before the broadcast, a remarkable thing happened: Orson Welles, only twenty-three years old, stepped into the role. Already known as a bold experimenter in radio, Welles not only narrated the production but also assumed Scrooge’s voice with an authority far beyond his years.

What emerged was not merely a holiday episode but a defining moment in radio history.

In 1938, America was still wrestling with the emotional and economic wounds of the Great Depression. Dickens’s tale of greed, poverty, and redemption resonated deeply with audiences who understood hardship firsthand. Welles and the Mercury troupe embraced that resonance. Their production is lean, atmospheric, and psychologically driven—focused less on Victorian ornament and more on the internal transformation of Scrooge.

The sound design, an innovative hallmark of the Mercury Theatre, layered music, voice, and environmental effects to create vivid auditory landscapes. The result is a story experienced not just as narration, but as an immersive journey. Welles’s interpretation of Scrooge—more intense, more introspective than the jovial Barrymore tradition—reveals a young artist already exploring the depths of character and the possibilities of sound to shape emotion.

Why It Still Matters Today

The themes that animated Dickens and captivated both Barrymore and Welles continue to speak to us. Economic precarity, social fragmentation, and moral exhaustion mark our historical moment just as they did the late 1930s. Yet A Christmas Carol insists on the radical idea that individuals and societies can still choose generosity, empathy, and transformation.

There is also something profoundly meaningful in the way Welles stepped in for Barrymore. The continuity of tradition—handed off, adapted, and preserved by new voices—mirrors the evolution of storytelling itself. Every generation inherits the tale, but every storyteller reimagines it in the shape of their own time.

An Annual Tradition of Artistic Stewardship

By making this rebroadcast a yearly tradition on Creating Dangerously, you join Welles in the act of keeping public storytelling alive. You revive not only a classic performance but a shared cultural ritual: gathering listeners to experience a story that has bound generations together in reflection and hope.

In honoring both Barrymore’s legacy and Welles’s youthful audacity, this annual event becomes more than nostalgia. It becomes a statement. It says that art survives because artists—across decades, mediums, and personal histories—continue to pass the flame.

And in that continuity, A Christmas Carol remains what it has always been: a reminder that even in difficult times, redemption is possible and kindness revolutionary.