Saturday, December 8, 2012

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

One of the most famous short stories of the 19th century was Ambrose Bierce's 1890 tale of the civil war hanging of confederate sympathizer Peyton Farquhar, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
In the 20th century this story was interpreted in both radio and television, during the Golden Age of Radio by Escape and Suspense to tremendous effect.
On television, first by Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the 5th season, episode 13 aired December 20th 1959.



Thanks to Buck Benny's OTR podcast he brought us this version
The radio adaptations began with Escape's airing on December 10th 1947, starring Harry Bartell as Peyton Farquhar.


Suspense gave us its adaptation in July 9th 1959 with Vincent Price as Farquhar.


Maybe the most famous adaptation on American television was the airing on The Twilight Zone (Season 5, episode 22, Feb 28 1964) of the french short film that won the award for Best Short Subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and the 1963 Academy Awards.


Again on radio by the great OTR revival show CBS Radio Mystery Theater June 4th 1974, starring William Prince as Peyton Farquhar.

1 comment:

Steve said...

Thanks for posting all these versions of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I didn't even know there was a Hitchcock version shown that was not too long before the Twilight Zone one ... and I was old enough to watch it back then.
I just discovered your blog and I am delighted with all the content. "Completeist" is a great label. Thanks.