The Lord of the Rings (1979 radio series)

• 1. Introduction

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  National Public Radio brought J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to American listeners in 1979. The radio dramatization ran to more than eleven hours. Bob Lewis produced it, and Bernard Mayes adapted the novel into a radio script. The production came from a company called The Mind's Eye. What did Mayes choose to preserve from a novel of such scope, and what did he sacrifice? Bernard Mayes kept Tom Bombadil in his script, a character that almost every other adaptation of the book has cut.

• 2. Tom Bombadil

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  Bernard Mayes voiced Tom Bombadil himself in the production, while also voicing Gandalf. His dual position as scriptwriter and prominent voice actor gave him an unusual stake in his own work.

  A review from SF-Worlds noted that the local Virginia theater players in the cast sometimes struggled to pronounce Tolkien's character and place names. The same review described the production style as mid-20th century. It said the series would seem 'remote' to anyone raised on Peter Jackson's films.

  The full cast behind this production included fourteen named actors, a number of them playing as many as four characters each.

• 3. One Actor, Many Roles

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  Gail Chugg voiced four separate characters: the Narrator, Gimli, Gollum, and Barliman Butterbur. John Vickery matched that number with Legolas, Faramir, Wormtongue, and the Mouth of Sauron. Tom Luce took on Strider, also known as Aragorn, Treebeard, and Denethor. Together, those three actors alone covered a substantial portion of the production's principal characters.

  James Arrington voiced Frodo Baggins and Saruman, while Mac McCaddon played both Pippin and Galadriel. Ray Reinhardt voiced Bilbo Baggins, and Lou Bliss played Sam. Pat Franklyn voiced Merry and Ioreth, and Erik Bauersfeld took on Boromir and Theoden. Carl Hague voiced Elrond and Beregond, while Karen Hurley played Eowyn. Bob Lewis, who also produced the series, appeared as the Wild Man and Glorfindel.

  Matthew Locricchio voiced Eomer as part of a cast whose recorded performances have survived in more than one format, not all of them identical.

• 4. The Wooden Box

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  The most widely circulated American edition of this production comes in a wooden box, available on compact disc or cassette tape. Newer editions on compact disc and MP3 run for a somewhat shorter time than the original cassette recordings. A considerable amount of dialogue and narration was omitted or condensed in the transition to later formats.

  Of all the formats in which this production has appeared, the original cassette recordings carry the closest thing to a complete performance of Mayes's script.