Busy Wunderkind

A year ago Alla Nazimova decided Scriptwriter Arch Oboler was a genius, requested him to write a radio play for her. Pleased that Nazimova shared a conviction that he himself had held for years, Oboler turned out an opus called The Ivory Tower, in which, for the union minimum of $21, Nazimova made her first appearance on the air. This week Oboler will present another famed actress in her radio debut. She is Elisabeth Bergner, who will run through Oboler's latest radio work, An American is Born.

Not at all astonished is cocky little 31-year-old Oboler that such theatrical lights are anxious to deliver his lines. "They realize," he points out, "I have a respect for the medium I am working in." For this respectful attitude, Oboler is paid $4,000 a week by Procter & Gamble. His contract gives him the last word on all problems connected with Everyman's Theatre, on which each week he offers a half-hour of what he calls "socially conscious drama," written and directed by himself. Out of his $4,000, Oboler pays actors (his top: $1,000) and musicians, sometimes spends as much as $3,600 to put a show across. One of these costlier numbers was This Lonely Heart, for which he hired a full symphony orchestra to weave in a bit of Tchaikovsky. Like Clifford Odets, his opposite number in the theatre, Oboler cannot work without music, makes a point of listening to recordings of Beethoven, Moussorgsky, Sibelius and Debussy before settling into the creative groove.

Within the past couple of months Oboler has published a book of 14 radio plays, has been signed as a writer-director for the cinema by Frank Lloyd Productions. His virgin effort as a movie scriptwriter was Escape (TIME, Nov. 18), in which he managed to get Alla Nazimova a leading role.

In Hollywood Oboler was described as "all the Dead End Kids put together." He badgered Escape's Director Mervyn Le Roy endlessly about studio technique, until Le Roy finally told him to watch through a camera finder and he would demonstrate a storm scene. As soon as Oboler had his eye glued to the finder, Le Roy cued technicians to drench him with cinema rain.

Reticent about discussing money, Oboler admits he is making twice as much as anybody should. He is having Frank Lloyd Wright design a $20,000 house for a 25-acre mountaintop he owns in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking the Pacific. Feature of the place (name: "Aeire") is a stream which according to present plans will run through the Oboler living room. On his mountaintop Oboler plans to do further experimental work for the radio. He realizes his responsibilities. "I have," he says, "a larger audience now than Shakespeare ever had."

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