Arch Oboler

Arch Oboler (born on December 7, 1909) was a screenwriter, novelist, producer, and director who focused his work on film, radio, and television.

Born in Chicago, he was raised Protestant, although his parents were Jewish immigrants from Riga, Latvia.

Oboler attracted considerable attention for his radio scripts, and his work in this medium is considered the highlight of his career. Despite his tendency toward the macabre, he is praised as one of the greatest talents in broadcasting and is considered one of the innovators of the “golden age of radio.”

Oboler entered radio because he believed it had great unrealized potential for telling stories with ideas. He thought that the medium was being wasted on soap operas. In 1933, he wrote a spec script called Futuristics, which satirized the world of the present in light of the future. NBC bought Oboler's script and broadcast it as part of a dedicatory program to NBC's new futuristic headquarters in New York City, Radio City. The broadcast was a success, but it set the stage for Oboler's future run-ins with broadcasters. In the play, one of Oboler's characters lampoons the slogan of American Tobacco. At that time in broadcasting history, making fun of commercials was still taboo.

From 1933 to 1936, Oboler wrote potboilers for programs such as Grand Hotel and Welch's Presents Irene Rich. Things changed in 1936, when radio's leading impresario Rudy Vallée used a short radio playlet of Oboler's titled Rich Kid. The success of Rich Kid landed Oboler a lucrative 52-week stint writing plays for Don Ameche for The Chase and Sanborn Hour. During this time, Oboler wrote a number of idea plays and some were aired, in shortened form, on The Rudy Vallée Show and The Magic Key of RCA.

His early film work includes Escape (1940), Passage to the Future (1943), and A Survey Called Miracle (1948), all of which he wrote. In 1945, he made his double debut as a director with Bewitched and Strange Holiday, followed by the post-apocalyptic Five (1951), filmed in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, owned by Oboler himself. A year later, he made Bwana, the Devil of the Jungle, the first feature film in 3-D to be released in theaters. He also directed The Twonky (1953), based on a story by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym shared by science fiction author Henry Kuttner and his wife, fellow writer Catherine L. Moore). In 1956, Sidney Lumet staged Oboler's play Night of the Auk, a science fiction drama about astronauts returning to Earth after the first moon landing. In 1966, Oboler returned to directing a 3-D film, The Bubble.

On April 7, 1958, Oboler's son Peter died at the age of six when he drowned in water that had accumulated in the excavations of the author's home in Malibu.