From 1939-1946 Americans gathered around their radio to listen to The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- featuring Basil Rathbone as the high strung crime solver and Nigel Bruce as his phlegmatic assistant, Dr. Watson. This special CD edition includes 12 of the series' best episodes and features nostalgic war-time announcements, original commercials and radio narrations.

"This freeform intimate look at the private man in the public spotlight goes behind the scenes of America's most popular radio show, A prairie home companion, and inside the imagination of the man who created it"--Container.

What began as a broadcast performance of H.G. Wells's fantasy, The War of the Worlds, turned into one of the biggest mass hysteria events in U.S. history. American Experience examines the elements that together created this frenzy, including our longtime fascination with life on Mars; the emergence of radio as a powerful new medium; and the creative wunderkind Orson Welles, the twenty-three-year-old director of the drama and mischief-maker supreme....