The Lord of the Rings - Mind's Eye Radio Part One 1/9
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
- This is the somewhat infamous 1979 radio production of The Lord of the Rings, adapted by
Bernard Mayes. It was produced by The Mind's Eye for the National Public Radio in the United
States. This production had particular issues with the pronunciations of some of the names,
such as "Sauron" and "Saruman", but that said, it does have its positive and negative
points.
Cast:
Narrator, Gimli, Gollum, Butterbur - Gail Chugg
Bilbo Baggins - Ray Reinhardt
Frodo Baggins, Saruman - James Arrington
Aragorn, Denethor, Treebeard - Tom Luce
Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, Old Woman - Pat Franklyn
Peregrin "Pippin" Took - Mac McCaddon
Samwise Gamgee - Lou Bliss
Gandalf, Tom Bombadil - Bernard Mayes
Glorfindel, Wild Man - Bob Lewis
Legolas, Wormtongue, Faramir, Mouth of Sauron - John Vickery
Boromir, Theoden, Herbmaster - Erik Bauersfeld
Eowyn - Karen Hurley
Eomer - Matthew Locricchio
Elrond, Additional Voices - Carl Hague
oh look someone uploaded MY CHILDHOOD
Somewhat infamous? I would say extremely entertaining and awesome!
I remember owning the wooden box CD series of this version (It was lost in the Houston floods of 01). What I did like was the way they dramatized the Mines of Moria (The background tune would sent chills down the spine as they described the fear in each of the characters who wonder what would happen next). There were drawbacks to the recording certainly, but there were positives as well.
My favorite parts are Moria and Mt. Doom.
I still have that box! I moved to Houston 2009, but my box set survived the '17 Harvey flood!
@@andrewhewson6631 Who comes hither to disturb the Rest of Balin Son of Moria... Take That. Gotta Love Gandalf he's so good.
My mother recorded this off the radio onto cassette tapes. Years later I found the wooden box sets of both The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, which I have to this day.
Tropical storm Andrew. I didn’t make it home. I had to sleep at a cemetery in Tomball
Bloody amazing!!!!!! Not heard this in so long, back when I had this on audio tape....
This is the only! adaptation to feature the Tom Bombadil scenes. So despite the pronunciation issues and the overuse of some of the cast (probably due to te small budget), I always loved this performance. It's the most faithful one I know of. Even the BBC version, which in many ways is far and away superior to this, isn't quite as faithful.
They used the voice of SMURFETTE to do Sam. That loses major points...
@@DeathReviews Terminal.
Excellent point! Tom Bombadil is "The Master", and the end and key to whole trilogy, and The Hobbit!
Very true. The BBC version is better but it also leaves out the Barrow Whites and the assault on the house with Fatty Bulger
I probably listened to this 2-3 times a year as a teenager. Having read the books many (MANY!) times and watched Jackson's trilogy, I'm.. conflicted. Some things work about this adaptation, and some things were total disasters. As an adaptation, it's excellent in what it chooses to portray, in that it distills LotR into exactly what it needed to be in the time format. The material cut didn't really need to be in a radio adaptation, and every major story point is well represented with most words being verbatim Tolkien. I almost get a sense that I'm getting the "full story", at least far more than I have from any other medium (including film). Some voice actors are very good, like Bernard Mayes's Gandalf, and Gail Chugg's narration (and Gollum). Others like Tom Luce's Aragorn are serviceable, and I have a soft spot for "Lou" Bliss's Samwise. Inappropriate voice, but yeah, I grew to love it. And I think Bernard Mayes played the ever-whimsical Tom Bombadil as well as anyone could.
The other voices though... not great. No good voices for the elves, background characters sound inappropriate like cartoon characters (Louise Bliss does her smurfette voice a few background lines and it totally takes me out of the spell they try to weave). There's a fair amount that works here, and a lot that doesn't. Very little music, favoring narration instead, and the sound effects and background voices are pretty awful. Pronunciation was pretty bad, but not many people in 1979 would have been able to pronounce many of those names well.
If you're used to big elaborate, professional productions, you'll be disappointed here. But if you aren't offended by the charm of amateurs giving it their best go by recording dialogue in their bathrooms with microphones taped to rubber ducks (yes, this is true) and can see that for what it is, then you might really enjoy it. Younger audiences especially would love this paired with an LotR picture book.. at least until they found the movies.
My experience growing up in the 1980s was getting a sense of the visuals from the Rankin-Bass animated movies, reading the books way too many times, and laying in bed after dark, listening to a 15 minute segment of this adaptation one tape side at a time.
I have read the part about the microphone taped to the rubber duck but there are so few sources available online about this (and all seem unreliable) I was wondering if you had information from anywhere else or just the few snippets online? Thanks
@@LCplDwayneHicks Just the snippets I've heard online. Unfortunately, any primary sources I might have seen this in have disappeared -- I only see reference to that now in reviews posted online, so it may be apocryphal. It's not in the wikipedia page, so primary source to follow up on.
@@ianwestc I’ve been trying to research this off and on for years now. I love these old stories. I found and spoke to the actor who played Frodo on Facebook but he wasn’t very forthcoming. More recently I’ve reached out to the NPR archives for more information about this. They have Bernard Mayes’ papers which he donated to them but they cost money to access.
If you’re interested in this, I follow a company called Jabberwocky Audio Theater which is named after Mind’s Eye/Jabberwocky. They are considering hosting a page for information about Mind’s Eye for sites like Wikipedia to use as a source.
Bless you for posting this. I’ve only listened to THE HOBBIT by Minds Eye and I love it. I didn’t know they also did LOTR.
same! Grew up listening to this radio production doing the hobbit but for lotr I hd the bbc one. Always wanted to hear the minds eye version!
SO stoked! My parents used to play this whenever we would go camping to get my sister and I to sleep. This is so hard to find! We still have some of the tapes but a few of them have gone missing over the years (my fault). If anyone knows where I can get this on CD for my folks please tell me!
I use to listen to this on cassette when I was a kid. I admit its not as good as modern stuff but I do enjoy it nonetheless.
If someone has just the music from these tapes hit me up. My favorite tapes in the whole world .
I think they're mostly random songs. I remember hearing one of the pieces in a Star Trek The Next Generation episode and nearly fell out of my seat. "That's that music from my Hobbit cassette tapes!" It was Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1, and you can find a recording of it by searching for that on UA-cam.
i have some from the Mind's Eye production of the hobbit there is some crossover so there might be some that you recognize
This is great! I haven't heard this in twenty years!
I remember when I accidentally downloaded this version instead of the BBC one.
This is perfect!
The Mind's Eye production of both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is a flawed, but charming product of it's era. At the time (1979), Bernard Mayes was the President of NPR and wanted to have more dramatic productions of this sort. But, being public radio, he couldn't get much funding. The shoestring nature of the production is reflected everywhere ... including the use of public domain music & sound effects, rounding up volunteers he knew from local theater groups, sometimes goofy ad-libbing, and a generally low overall level of production quality. However, they were dedicated to being thorough and the Hobbit & LotR are both very thorough adaptations that include most (if not all) the text from Tolkien's books.
So while it's easy to poke holes at its obvious (and many) flaws, the Mind's Eye versions were limited by several factors beyond their control and deserve to be cut a fair amount of slack. This is not the multi-million dollar production of a slick, well-financed company or studio. This is a cobbled-together labor of love. That doesn't make it any less groan-worthy when "Lou" Bliss attempts to act or anything, but it does perhaps put things in better context. :)
And even though this was done with less money than an average high-school play ... it somehow still managed to be better in every way than "Rings of Power" which Amazon spent billions on.
The Gaffer sounds like he's off his meds.
I liked him. Even reading through the book I got the sense that the gaffer really was a crotchety old dude that never got the meds he needed.
@@ianwestc I'm sure he were happy with 'is pipeweed and ale!
@@CosmicClaire99 self medicating, yes! :-D
@@ianwestc I wouldn't say crotchety. Eccentric, yes. But he was always very pleasant and was one of the few hobbits who enjoyed when Gandalf visited.
Lol or he took too many
How fascinating.
You know maybe its the nostalgia filter from listening to this version as a kid but I actually prefer this to the BBC version. The voice actors for Aragorn, Gimli, and Treebeard (among others) are better in this version imo. The battles in this version also sound more visceral due to having better sound effects.
I love that Ian Holm plays Frodo (not in this episode but all the others afterward). His voice sounds the same as it did in the films as Bilbo.
Ian Holm voices Frodo in the BBC radio drama version, not this one. Ray Reinhardt does the voice of Bilbo in this version. The BBC version also features the voices of other well-known actors Michael Hordern as Gandalf and Bill Nighy as Sam. Also, John Le Mesurier, a well-known character actor, voices Bilbo.
Ian Holm's Frodo is actually in an entirely different production, the BBC one.
Why was part 2 deleted?
I kinda liked this version, I have them on CD
I probably would be bashing this production firmly into the ground were it not for the fact that it was my first real exposure to Tolkien whenI was a child. As such though it does have a special place in my heart. I just wish they'd handled it more like the BBC, getting actors together to record rather than recording each actor's parts separately which is what they did here. It might have felt a bit more unified that way if nothing else. TO be fair I did like Gollum in this production.
The best audio version by a country mile is by Phil Dragash.
No, it is Rob Inglis.
Sorry dislike one person reading the book doing all the voices, the 1981 BBC version is the pinnacle.
It’s nice to hear returning voices from the old The Hobbit radio drama. Grew up on that old CD set
thx soooo much, can't wait to listen :D
Felidae08 how'd you like it :)
Thank you for uploading. While this undoubtedly holds sentimental value, it is almost comically bad - an unfortunate admixture of the Smurfs and Disney. In all fairness, do yourself a favour and get the 1981 BBC version which features many British theatrical knights such as Ian Holm - and Peter Woodthorpe's iconic and unassailable performance as Gollum/Sméagol.
@@wowwhyisthistaken Homeless guy ?? only highly regarded Shakespearan actor the late Sir Robert Stephens.
Almost comically awful. This was made by amateurs who seem to have conceived of Tolkein's masterful creation as a sort of grown-up version of the Smurfs. While I'm not a huge fan of Peter Jackson's films, they're gems compared to this gag-inducing version. The BBC Radio version with Ian Holm, Bill Nighy and Michael Horndern is the real standard in LOTR adaptations; I highly recommend that.
Gail Chugg's narration is pretty good, though.
Strange you mention the SMURFS. Lucille Bliss, the voice of Smurfette from that series provides the voice of Samwise and some of the other characters.
Wow...I had no idea. It all makes even more sense now!
This radio adaptation of the Lord of the Rings was produced in 1979, two years before the SMURFS was produced by Hanna-Barbera in collaboration with cartoonist Peyo and televised for Saturday mornings. Lucille Bliss was doing cartoon voices before SMURFS?
According to Wikipedia, there were 2 BBC Radio productions of Lord of the Rings around 1979 and 1981. I happened to record the 1981 NPR broadcast of the entire 26 half-hour parts over 5 months in Oregon when it was first broadcast. Captured on an Advent 201 cassette tape recorder mostly at home. Some of the last episodes were recorded on the best machine I could find at the stereo repair shop in which I worked as a technician. The 26 weekly episodes were begun by Tammy Grimes who gave a boilerplate introduction. I got lazy or got home just in time, to sometimes start recording part way through her introduction. I originally contemplated removing her introductions, and experimented with stripped version, but was advised against it by an audiophile friend. So, I painstakingly reconstructed her introductions from other weeks. Her spiel wasn't exactly the same each week, so I had to be creative. I'd say there were no more than 5 reconstructions and no one could tell the difference. My audiophile friend, with a +$100,000 sound system, said my recording was better than the retail boxed set offered in stores, so he took a copy of mine. When I eventually heard a retail tape, it was muffled sounding and mass produced. I also recorded the Star Wars episodes the same way - which were superior than retail. I later ripped the tapes to CDs when the technology became available. Hopefully, I still have them somewhere and should put them on UA-cam if the copyright allows.
Where can you find part 2?
Always thought that the Mind's Eye version(1979 National Public Radio dramatization) was the best adaptation. It even included Tom Bombadil.
thx for the upload,!!!!
but could you please try and either put thinks in an order that one can understand or to create a playlist with the correct order. im totally lost....
Like Lord of the Rings performed by the Goon Show cast.
I'm getting a parody vibe from this version... Which is not a good thing for a lord of the rings dramatisation... Needs a sense that they were committed to the magic, not gifting 'a little dancing figure with a wand' (if anyone's familiar with Smith of Wootton Major) . The BBC radio version had more love and respect put into it I feel.
I wonder if anyone's managed to complie a list of the music tracks used in these programs. I've been trying to find that out for years, but so far I've only been able to come up with one name, Gymnopedi #1 by Erik Satie.
That narrator sounds exactly like Mike Pollock.
2/9 for Part I seems to be missing.
The Whole Shire = 6 people. XD
Do you think they would let you broadcast this on a community/internet radio station, the BBC one I do prefer but that'll be copyright restricted.
Will you be uploading the rest?
My Mum had the same but not cd version lol
does anyone know another version, this skips some parts of the text of the actual book. I'm looking for an american accent narrated version, I couldn't find anything yet
This may be abridged from the original radio series. I have the Mind's Eye LotR on cassette tape, but apparently the Mind's Eye production released on CD and MP3 have been trimmed down considerably.
10 minutes for goodness sake
awesome! fun!well done! not perfect but good
OMG This version is terrible compared to the acting in the BBC version.
Anyone know where I can get the soundtrack from the NPR version?
There is no official soundtrack for the Mind's Eye version of Lord of the Rings. All of the music was public domain, and so you'll actually hear it all over the place if you listen to productions of that era ... particularly children's works or other low-end productions who were trying to save a buck.
@@WinstonfieldQPP I did a real double-take when Picard listened to Erik Satie ua-cam.com/video/S-Xm7s9eGxU/v-deo.html in the Star Trek TNG episode "Where Silence Has Lease." I immediately thought "it's that music from the Lord of the Rings radio broadcast!" I thought it was a weird choice and had no idea at the time that it was public domain.
i've been looking for the same thing
I've got some on my channel from NPRs version of the Hobbit they shared som songs
The narrator is American? The story is English… 🤔
3:35 is when Gaffer Gamgee goes off his medications and has a Biden moment... :)
This series is pretty horrible compared to the BBC version.
This is horrendous. The BBC adaptation is far superior.
An American narrator ? To a classic English novel, really ? Sorry but this pales in comparison to the BBC 1981 adaptation.
They went way too dramatic with the voices lol They all sound like witches. Lol At least the first few minutes.
Actually, this is awful because of the narration and voice acting.
fuck i hate this version so much; not only that its so much worse than the BBC one but it also just creeps me out.
If I'd heard this first, I'd have never experienced the greatest books of all time. Wow. Ugh.