“I know at this moment that I’m perfectly sane. That it’s not me who has gone mad…”
Recently, I sat down and listened to Orson Welles’s magnificent and haunting radio performance of Lucille Fletcher’s chilling ghost story, “The Hitch-Hiker,” which was first written and performed in 1941. This was in conjunction with my never-ending project to read or watch all the original source material that inspired Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Orson Welles originally performed “The Hitch-Hiker” on his show, The Orson Welles Show, on November 17, 1941. This was followed by a performance on the radio show Suspense in 1942, and subsequent performances on The Philip Morris Playhouse on October 16, 1942, and The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air on June 21, 1946. Thankfully, the age of the internet has made these old radio programs more accessible so I decided to listen and read along with the second performance Welles on the radio show Suspense (complete with the atmospheric Bernard Herrmann score).
As explained by Lucille Fletcher, “The Hitch-Hiker” was inspired by a cross-country road trip she took in 1939 with her first husband, celebrated composer Bernard Herrmann (creator of the initial Twilight Zone theme as well as countless other classic scores). Along the way, they spotted an odd hitch-hiker on the Brooklyn Bridge. Later, they thought they saw the same man again on the Pulaski Skyway. Lucille Fletcher found the whole experience eerie and she developed it into one of the most memorable radio ghost stories.
Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, initially heard “The Hitch-Hiker” on the radio as a child and he never forgot it so when it came time to begin producing episodes for the first season of The Twilight Zone, he was eager to acquire the rights (narrowly beating out Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a bidding war). However, I was keen to take note of differences between the original radio play and The Twilight Zone episode.
The most glaring change is that in the radio play, the protagonist is a 36-year-old man named Ronald Adams (not a woman named Nan Adams). He is unmarried, tall, dark, and has a black moustache. He drives a 1940 Buick, license number 6Y175189. He was born in Brooklyn where his family still resides. Speaking from the future (somewhere along Route 66, west of Gallup, New Mexico), he describes leaving Brooklyn six days ago, bidding his mother farewell, and embarking on a cross-country road-trip to California.
However, almost immediately he starts seeing a strange hitch-hiker standing along the roadside and calling out to him. Here is the first description of the hitch-hiker on the Brooklyn Bridge:
“Crossing Brooklyn Bridge that morning in the rain, I saw a man leaning against the cables. He seemed to be waiting for a lift. There were spots of fresh rain on his shoulders. He was carrying a cheap overnight bag in one hand. He was thin, nondescript, with a cap pulled down over his eyes. I would have forgotten him completely except that just an hour later, while crossing the Pulaski Skyway over the Jersey Flats, I saw him again… at least he looked like the same person. He was standing now with one thumb pointed west.”
He sees the same man again on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, then standing at the end of the road in rural Ohio, and then in Oklahoma beside the train-tracks (it is a sunny day but the hitch-hiker still has fresh rain on his shoulders). He is described as “drab as a mud fence” while seemingly “beckoning” Ronald to his death. Ronald briefly encounters a friendly woman hitch-hiking to Amarilla, Texas, but she eventually flees from him over his obsession with the hitch-hiker. Shortly thereafter, alone and desperate to sleep, he sees the hitch-hiker again in rural Texas, wandering out of a cattle field. And so it is that every time he stops for gas or coffee, the hitch-hiker is there, watching him, calling out to him, whether at a Navajo Reservation or a parking lot in Albuquerque.
The radio play ends when Ronald tries to call his mother at “Beachwood 20828.” However, he is shocked when a Mrs. Whinny answers the phone and explains that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital after having suffered a nervous breakdown. She has been “prostrated for five days” since the death of her oldest son, Ronald, who was killed six days ago in an automobile accident on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Befuddled, perturbed, and alone, Ronald hangs up the phone and informs the listener that he is still sitting in that deserted auto camp in Gallup, New Mexico, waiting for the hitch-hiker to find him again:
“And so, I’m sitting here in this deserted auto camp in Gallup, New Mexico. I’m trying to think, trying to get ahold of myself. Otherwise I’m going to go crazy. Outside it’s night. The vast soulless night of New Mexico. A million stars are in the sky. Ahead of me stretch a thousand miles of empty mesa –mountains, prairie, desert. Somewhere along them, he’s waiting for me. Somewhere I shall know who he is –and who I am.”
The radio play ends on ambiguous note. Who is the hitch-hiker? What does he want? Did Ronald really die in a crash on the Brooklyn Bridge? Answers are never given, but in The Twilight Zone episode, the protagonist Nan learns that she died back in Pennsylvania when her tire blew out and it is strongly implied that the hitch-hiker is actually Death personified (she seems resigned to her fate as the hitch-hiker finally speaks with her at the end of the episode). Listening to Orson Welles’s 1942 radio rendition of “The Hitch-Hiker” on Suspense is like finding an extraordinary time capsule that has been hidden away for years. This performance of “The Hitch-Hiker” aired during the height of World War II and there is even a unique war bonds advertisement at the end of the show that feels like a humble plea to citizens of a more civilized age. The care and attention that went into these old radio programs is still impressive to this day. It’s easy, in our present age of endless CGI and AI slop, to look back with fond nostalgia on the golden age of radio and “The Hitch-Hiker” is a wonderful example of that experience. It comes highly recommended from me, not simply to fans of The Twilight Zone, but to listeners everywhere.
Click here for my review of The Twilight Zone episode “The Hitch-Hiker.”
Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.