The Adventures of Horatio Hornblower: CBS Radio, 1952-53

[sanguinity]

I just finished listening to the CBS radio plays, The Adventures of Horatio Hornblower.

There are a ton of places that you can get the radio episodes free online, but most of those sources have mislabelled and missing episodes. The best source I found is on Archive.org: Horatio_Hornblower. I can’t 100% vouch for it (I listened to the Lieutenant and Happy Return episodes elsewhere), but I never found an error in it, which is more than I can say for every other source I tried.

So, some basics: the radio show first aired in 1952-53, and cover all the books that had been published up to that point. They begin with Happy Return and A Ship of the Line, before diverting to Lord Hornblower (why put Lord so early, I don’t understand?) and the short story about Barry McCool, then coming back to pick up where it left off with Flying Colours, continuing on to Commodore, and finishing with the prequel novels Midshipman and Lieutenant. Commodore and Midshipman are slightly interleaved: the first couple of Midshipman stories are framed as Hornblower and Bush shooting the breeze, first on the Nonsuch and later at Smallbridge, telling stories about their youth.

The radio show mostly closely follows the books, but there are significant departures here and there. Some things that caught my attention (assume spoilers for everything):

• In the little before-credits scene at the beginning of every episode, Bush is a captain, not a lieutenant. I always have a little moment of aww about that, every time.
  
  
• In an effort to increase Lady Barbara’s airtime during Happy Return (and thus make the romance more plausible), they added a shark-fishing episode on the return from Panama. I quite liked the shark-fishing episode.
  
  
• At the end of Ship of the Line, Hornblower out-and-out faints and is carried away by… well, they never really say who. I assumed it was Bush! Mostly because I kept listening-listening-listening for Bush to get injured during that battle, and I swear it never happened. And if Bush is uninjured, is he gonna let someone else carry Hornblower away after he faints?? No he is not. So that’s a thing that definitely seemed to happen: Hornblower fainting, and Bush stepping in to carry him away.
  
  
• Cut to Lord, where Hornblower keeps revisiting how upset he is about Caudebec. It’s Barbara who actually cries for Bush, though.
  
  
• Back to Flying Colours, we find out that Bush did lose a leg back on the Sutherland, although it was never mentioned at the time. (!??) But they cut out all the hurt/comfort from the novel, plus everything about the trip down the Loire, so whatever. All in all, I found it a pretty bloodless adaptation of Flying Colours, both figuratively and literally.
  
  
• By the time they get to Commodore, Bush is calling Hornblower “Horatio.” Not “Sir Horatio” — I listened very carefully! — just “Horatio.” Bush is still “Bush,” though. I went and looked it up, and Bush only acquired a first name in September of 1951, when Lieutenant was first serialized. I can’t quite decide if writing and production on the radio show predated Bush acquiring a name in print.
  
  
• Hornblower doesn’t get it on with the Russian Countess. He turns her down and goes back to the ship and writes to his wife instead.
  
  
• It is Bush and the Nonsuch who stay behind in Russia to bring Hornblower home. idler_1814’s Casting Loose is so prominent in my mind that I was kinda horrified by Bush’s clear dereliction of duty as Acting-Commodore.
  
  
• The first couple Midshipman stories, as I mentioned before, are told to Bush, which suggests a much more intimate relationship than we’re ever told about in the books. One of the midshipman stories is told during downtime in the Baltic, and the other when Bush is visiting Hornblower at Smallbridge. Sadly, we never hear any stories of Bush being a middy! This is a clear oversight, and I object very strongly.
  
  
• You know how Kennedy is a only a very minor character in the books, and the miniseries expanded him far beyond his original role? In the radio show, they took one of Kennedy’s two canonical scenes, gave it to an OC named “Jack Chase,” and then brought Jack Chase back for a few more stories, almost exactly like the miniseries did with Kennedy. (Jack Chase was very concerned that Hornblower was dressed properly for his lieutenant’s exam!)
  
  
• The Lieutenant episodes are only a little less shippy than the book — you lose that Bush-can’t-stop-watching-Hornblower narration, after all, but they kept many of the character moments, and they added in stuff like Bush asking for permission to call Hornblower by his first name. (Complete with over-the-top orchestral fanfare!) The episode where Hornblower and Bush first meet is super-cute, Bush smitten and Hornblower blushing, and I seal-clapped with joy all through it.
  
  
• In Lieutenant, they flat out say that Wellard pushed Sawyer down the hold. And then Wellard ups and drowns himself. Which made for a very quick turn-around from seal-clapping with joy to O_O with horror. Happily, that was only the second episode of Lieutenant, so we still had cows and flying fish and pineapples yet to come.

ETA: One more thing: I had no idea how attached I was to miniseries-Pellew, until I heard this Pellew, who is ponderously stiff and distant. It just felt so wrong!

All-in-all, it was an enjoyable listen!