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Friday, July 05, 2019

Masons On the Wireless: 'The Man Who Would be King' from 1947


Driving home through South Dakota and Idaho on our long road trip, Sirius Radio's Radio Classics aired an old episode of 'Escape' tonight featuring Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would be King. 

It first aired on CBS Radio 72 years ago, July 7, 1947.

It actually did a pretty fair job of telling the whole story in 30 minutes, complete with the important Masonic references in the adventure tale. ("They all be Fellow Crafts!"). It was adapted by the veteran radio writer, Les Crutchfield, and featured Raymond Lawrence as Peachy, Eric Snowden as Daniel, and Herbert Rawlinson as Kipling.


This classic adventure story about a pair of ambitious rogues whose Masonic membership plays such an important role in far off Kafiristan was eventually made into an outstanding motion picture in 1975 by director John Huston, starring Sean Connery as Daniel, Michael Caine as Peachy, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling. If you've never seen it, stop whatever you're doing right now and go bookmark it to watch tonight on Amazon or your favorite movie provider.

3 comments:

  1. Back in 2017 Christ wrote a very informative piece about Kipling and I
    added:

    Kipling's Masonic interests are explored in a book edited by Professors Marie Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. See Paul Rich, "Kim and the Magic House: Freemasonry and Kipling," in Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret Societies, eds. Marie M. Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lennon (New York: AMS Press, 1995), 322 - 338.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you want to listen to the radio show version. It’s available for free on https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Escape_Singles

    ReplyDelete
  3. "They're Masons (Moisons). By the square (squire), by the compass, by the plumb bob! They're Masons." I love that line in the movie.

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