Arch Oboler's Light's Out

That rerun series got a lot of people interested in Oboler's work -- I used to hear those on WMEX in Boston in the mid-late '70s. Most of the programs came from the 1942-43 season of "Lights Out," but a few were taken from "Arch Oboler's Plays," a 1939-40 NBC series Oboler did after leaving "Lights Out," in which he focused on more philosophical/political themes than he had in his earlier work.

Oboler burned out on radio in the late forties. In 1948 he wrote a scathing essay for Variety in which he condemned the sausage-grinder mentality of the people who ran the radio business, and essentially washed his hands of it. Much the pity, because it would have been very interesting to see him creating new work in the '70s rather than simply repackaging the old.