Uploaded April 2020 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Original Airdate: 1951
Starring: Orson Welles
A vile murderer preys on middle-aged women, getting them to marry him and buy lovely toys for him while he goes about his business of chasing and seducing younger women. This time, however, a rose garden, a whining dog, and a Scotland Yard inspector put an end to this man’s game.
The Black Museum was a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Towers in London. It was broadcast in Europe on Radio Luxembourg, a commercial radio station.
In 1946 Harry Towers and his mother, Margaret Miller Towers, started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Lives of Harry Lime with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower with Michael Redgrave, and a series of Sherlock Holmes stories featuring John Gielgud as Holmes, Ralph Richardson as Watson, and Welles as Moriarty.
The Black Museum was based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's actual Black Museum. The program was transcribed in 1951 and was broadcast in the United States in 1952 on Mutual. More than 500 of the network's stations carried it. Ira Marion was the scriptwriter, and music for the series was composed and conducted by Sidney Torch.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator for stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true-crime cases. The show's opening began:
This is Orson Welles, speaking from London. (Sound of Big Ben chimes)
The Black Museum... a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects... a woman’s shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe... all are touched by murder.
Original Airdate: 1951
Starring: Orson Welles
A vile murderer preys on middle-aged women, getting them to marry him and buy lovely toys for him while he goes about his business of chasing and seducing younger women. This time, however, a rose garden, a whining dog, and a Scotland Yard inspector put an end to this man’s game.
The Black Museum was a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Towers in London. It was broadcast in Europe on Radio Luxembourg, a commercial radio station.
In 1946 Harry Towers and his mother, Margaret Miller Towers, started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Lives of Harry Lime with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower with Michael Redgrave, and a series of Sherlock Holmes stories featuring John Gielgud as Holmes, Ralph Richardson as Watson, and Welles as Moriarty.
The Black Museum was based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's actual Black Museum. The program was transcribed in 1951 and was broadcast in the United States in 1952 on Mutual. More than 500 of the network's stations carried it. Ira Marion was the scriptwriter, and music for the series was composed and conducted by Sidney Torch.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator for stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true-crime cases. The show's opening began:
This is Orson Welles, speaking from London. (Sound of Big Ben chimes)
The Black Museum... a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects... a woman’s shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe... all are touched by murder.
