***Dr.
Morelle***
Created by
Ernest
Dudley
Originally
as part of Monday Night at Eight.
featuring
in the 3rd, 6th & 8th series.
Meet Dr
Morelle (1942 & 46) [No
episodes preserved]
Dennis
Arundel & Jane Grahame
Meet Dr
Morelle (1947-8) [No
episodes preserved]
Heron
Carvic
Dr.
Morelle was revived again in a series of 13 half hour adventures Produced
by Leslie Bridgmont.
A Case
for Dr Morelle (1957)
[There
are surviving episodes for this series]
Cecil
Parker & Sheila Sim
Sources
Denis
Gifford's book "The
Golden Age of Radio". and BBC Radio 4 documentary
"The
Radio Detectives - A Case for Dr Morelle"
Prepared
& pictures scanned by Greg Marshall. 13
August 2000.
corrections
or additions??
An article transcribed
from Page 3 of the NZ Listener (March 14 1958).
"You’re
right Dr. Morelle."
"I
make a practice of it, Miss Frayle."
Sheila Sim &
Cecil Parker
That eminent criminologist,
Dr.
Morelle, has just solved another crime and
incidentally administered a crushing rebuke to his pretty secretary Miss
Frayle. This is his usual reaction to his
somewhat scatterbrained amanuensis, but it does not seem to have put the
smallest dent in her devotion to the psychiatrist whose infallibility is
the despair of criminals and the delight of his friend Inspector
Hood of Scotland Yard. Listeners of A
Case for Dr. Morelle, a new series of
30 minute mysteries which begins next week will discover him complacently
noting how criminals always behave exactly in accordance with his theories
on criminal psychology.
Dr. Morelle
has had some time to form these theories, having started his career as
a sleuth in the early years of the war. "He was dreamed up in a coal cellar
in Bristol, said his creator Ernest Dudley.
It was 1940, and the coal cellar underneath my flat provided a comforting
place during the Luftwaffe’s attacks on Bristol, where I was with the BBC
Variety Department. I wrote the original series called Meet
Dr. Morelle for Harry
Pepper and Ronnie
Waldman’s famous show, Monday
Night at Eight. I was briefed to get right
away from the Scotland Yard detective idea; and also to provide a comedy
role in the series for Jane Grahame,
who had made a success in several radio shows. Since Miss
Grahame was in private life my wife, I was
quite happy about this."
He felt less happy about the other part of the assignment, since thinking
up a new detective was a real headache. He already knew the foreign sleuths
- Europeans like Inspector Hanaud and
Hercule
Poirot and Orientals like Charlie
Chan and Mr Moto,
and the English investigators already ranged from the peerage to their
retired nannies: Lord Peter Wimsey
to Miss Silver.
"The character of Dr. Morelle,"
said Mr Dudley,
"was finally evolved from my memories of the silent film star Erich
von Stroheim - who incidentally nearly played
the part years later in a film version - and whom Hollywood used to bill
as "The Man You Love to Hate." In order to point up the self-opinionated
biting sarcasm of Dr Morelle
(I first named him Dr Corelli,
only Ronnie Waldman was
afraid he might be confused with the famous authoress) I gave him as a
foil a pretty feather brained secretary, Miss
Frayle.
"And so, seventeen years ago Dr Morelle
was let loose on millions of unsuspecting listeners, the first fictional
character, I think, whom people hated so much they simply had to tune in
and listen to him."
Most
of Ernest Dudley's Books are out of print,
See
below for details of a Chivers audiobook.
Since then he seems to have had his audiences in the condition the rattlesnake
induces in the rabbit. Ernest Dudley
has written many Dr Morelle short
stories and last year he completed his fifth Dr
Morelle novel. Radio versions have been broadcast
in Australia and Germany, where the name struck a not unfamiliar chord
- a Dr Morel
had been one of Hitler’s
personal physicians. And a play about Dr Morelle,
written with Arthur Watkyn,
is regularly performed by repertory companies and amateur dramatic societies.
In the original show Dr Morelle
was played by Dennis Arundell,
who had just scored a triumph as the murderously overbearing husband in
the stage play Gaslight.
In the film version Dr Morelle
was played by Valentine Dyall
of the silky sinister voice. Now in the latest series Cecil
Parker plays Dr
Morelle, and Sheila
Sim is Miss Frayle,
while such well known people as Moira Lister,
Lana
Morris,
Molly
Rankin,
Ralph
Truman,
Norman
Wooland, and Fred
Yule [also pictured are Hugh
Burden and Sydney
Tafler] take part in the various cases investigated
by Dr Morelle.
Cecil Parker’s role in British comedy will
be familiar to most listeners. His drooping eye and petulant expression
coupled with a smile have made him a natural for the pompous but well-meaning
superior who almost invariably has to admit defeat, and even his incursions
into crime, as one of the Ladykillers
or the usurping king in The Court Jester,
were duly punished. When even his wife couldn’t get away with it, on the
good yacht Turtle, Cecil Parker
must have thought happily of Dr Morelle’s
cloak of infallibility.
Perhaps it is time, or perhaps Mr Parker,
or Dr Morelle
has mellowed a little since he first began his practice at 221B Harley
St. He certainly seems less deliberately offensive, although still completely
without consideration for other people’s feelings - in particular the feelings
of Miss Frayle,
who nurses a secret affection for the doctor. When the new series begins,
Miss
Frayle has left him and his new secretary,
her "umpteenth successor," is walking out, indignant at being expected
to work morning to midnight every day. Fortunately
Miss
Frayle, like the criminals Dr
Morelle studies, is under a compulsion to
return to the scene of the crime. Her excuse is a murder in the hotel where
she is working, and she is soon happily helping Dr
Morelle as he disguises the truth to unmask
a criminal.
Next Week listeners to A Case for Dr Morelle
from the YAs can join in the search for the answer, confident that Dr Morelle
will always have seen it first.
(2YA, March 18, 3YA, 4YA, March 20, 1YA, March 21.)
Image
above to Nightmare for Dr Morelle (Chivers
Audio Publishing)
ISBN
0754002829
Helping
Interpol unmask the big wheel behind an international narcotics racket,
Dr Morelle himself becomes involved in a train crash - with unforeseen
results. Meanwhile, his secretary, Miss Frayle, makes a flying dash across
Europe to help Morelle.
prepared
by gregmarshall2@homail.com [Aug
13 2000]
for
any corrections.
Back to Top
That eminent criminologist,
Dr.
Morelle, has just solved another crime and
incidentally administered a crushing rebuke to his pretty secretary Miss
Frayle. This is his usual reaction to his
somewhat scatterbrained amanuensis, but it does not seem to have put the
smallest dent in her devotion to the psychiatrist whose infallibility is
the despair of criminals and the delight of his friend Inspector
Hood of Scotland Yard. Listeners of A
Case for Dr. Morelle, a new series of
30 minute mysteries which begins next week will discover him complacently
noting how criminals always behave exactly in accordance with his theories
on criminal psychology.
Since then he seems to have had his audiences in the condition the rattlesnake
induces in the rabbit. Ernest Dudley
has written many Dr Morelle short
stories and last year he completed his fifth Dr
Morelle novel. Radio versions have been broadcast
in Australia and Germany, where the name struck a not unfamiliar chord
- a Dr Morel
had been one of Hitler’s
personal physicians. And a play about Dr Morelle,
written with Arthur Watkyn,
is regularly performed by repertory companies and amateur dramatic societies.