Lights Out

Lights Out Cast

Series Description

The Lights Out TV show was a 30 minute anthology, horror series on NBC. Each week audiences were treated to tales of terror, mystery, and suspense, often involving the supernatural.

Lights Out Cast

Jack La Rue............... Narrator (1949-1950)
Frank Gallop .... Narrator (1950-1952)
Arlo Hults .... Organist (1949-1952)
Doris Johnson .... Harpist (1950-1952)
Paul Lipman .... Theremin Player (1949) (See Trivia Below)

Lights Out Trivia

The Lights Out TV show was inspired by the "Lights Out Radio Show". It was broadcast from January 1, 1934 to August 6, 1947. It began on a local radio channel (WENR) in Chicago and then after a few months, it moved to the NBC Radio Network.

If you check out the episode list below, you'll see that only four episodes of Lights Out were broadcast in 1946 and then no more until 1949. Ironically, the TV show also broadcast those first episodes on a local NBC station (WNBT-TV) in New York City as a four episode special. Then, three years later, NBC decided to bring it back as a series that would be broadcast nationally. In 1948, ABC, CBS, and NBC expanded their programming from nearly nothing to several hours per day. The shows were mostly simply entertainers (comics, singers, etc.) performing in front of a camera, talk shows, news shows, and a few that had to be produced. In 1949, the number of produced shows (needing actors, scripts, etc.) went way up and Lights Out was one of them!

Since Lights Out was an anthology series, there were no regular Cast from week-to-week. There was a well known guest star or two nearly every week, however. To name just a few, there was John Forsythe ("Dynasty"), Jonathan Harris ("Lost in Space"), Steven Hill ("Law & Order"), Ross Martin ("The Wild Wild West"), E.G. Marshall ("The Defenders"), Burgess Meredith ("Batman"), Leslie Nielsen ("Police Squad"), and Robert Stack ("The Untouchables").

If you look at the cast list above, you'll notice that a musician named "Paul Lipman" is credited as a "Theremin Player". The Theremin is one of the first electronic musical instruments. It has two antennae that sense the position of the musician's hands. One of them varies the tone of the music and the other varies the volume. It's "eerie" sound has made it the instrument of choice as the background music for many movies including "Spellbound", "The Spiral Staircase", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "The Thing", and "The Ten Commandments". It was also used in the soundtracks of several other motion pictures.

Before each episode began, the audience saw a close up of a pair of eyes followed by a bloody hand that reached out to turn off the lights. Then there was an eerie laugh and the narrator said, "Lights out everybody" followed by a candle being blown out. This same technique of getting the audience worked up and ready to be scared to death was used later by Alfred Hitchcock ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents"), Rod Serling ("The Twilight Zone"), and Boris Karloff ("Thriller"), and others.

Lights Out had some stiff competition for viewers when it first went nationwide in July of 1949! CBS was airing "Candid Camera" in the same time slot followed by "The Goldbergs". Both of those were extremely popular shows. To make matters worse, Lights Out was followed by "The Cities Service Band of America" which was a series highlighting a 48 piece band, vocalists, glee clubs, and baton-twirling majorettes.

Like all nationwide shows at that time, Lights Out was broadcast live to New York City and was filmed on "kinescope" for later viewing in the rest of the U.S. Kinescope refers to the filming in black & white of a show using one camera and 16mm film.

Episodes List With Original Air Dates

Season 1

  1. First Person Singular (6/30/1946)
  2. Something in the Wind (8/11/1946)
  3. DeMortius (9/1/1946)
  4. The Brave Man with a Cord (10/13/1946)
Season 2
  1. Edna Warren (7/19/1949)
  2. Promise (7/26/1949)
  3. Long Distance (8/2/1949)
  4. Crater (8/9/1949)
  5. Souvenirs of His Dead Wife (8/16/1949)
  6. The Housekeeper (8/23/1949)
  7. Dressing Gown (8/30/1949)
  8. The Whisper (9/23/1949)
  9. Conqueror's Isle (11/7/1949)
  10. Pengallen's Bell (11/14/1949)
  11. The Fall of the House of Usher (11/21/1949)
  12. I Dreamt I Died (11/28/1949)
  13. Something In the Wind (New Production) (12/5/1949)
  14. Justice Lies Waiting (12/12/1949)
  15. The Elevator (12/19/1949)
  16. The Man Who Couldn't Lose (12/26/1949)
  17. The Riverman (1/2/1950)
  18. Judgment Reversed (1/9/1950)
  19. The Green Dress (1/16/1950)
  20. The Devil to Pay (1/23/1950)
  21. Reservations For Four (1/30/1950)
  22. Dead Pigeon (2/6/1950)
  23. The Invisible Staircase (2/13/1950)
  24. Graven Image (2/20/1950)
  25. Portrait of a Dead Man (2/27/1950)
  26. The Strange Case of John Kingman (3/6/1950)
  27. The Emerald Lavalier (3/13/1950)
  28. The Scarab (3/20/1950)
  29. Mary, Mary Quite Contrary (3/27/1950)
  30. The Queen Is Dead (4/3/1950)
  31. The Faithful Heart (4/10/1950)
  32. A Toast to Sergeant Farnsworth (4/17/1950)
  33. The Man Who Couldn't Remember (4/24/1950)
  34. The Gloves of Gino (5/1/1950)
  35. The Silent Voice (5/8/1950)
  36. The House That Time Forgot (5/15/1950)
  37. Rendezvous (5/22/1950)
  38. How Love Came to Professor Guldia (5/29/1950)
  39. The Heart of Jonathan O'Rourke (6/5/1950)
  40. The Determined Lady (6/12/1950)
  41. A Child Is Crying (6/19/1950)
  42. An Encore (6/26/1950)
  43. The Whisper (New Production) (7/3/1950)
  44. I Dreamt I Died (New Production) (7/10/1950)
  45. The Devil to Pay (New Production) (7/17/1950)
  46. The Strange Case of John Kingman (New Production) (7/31/1950)
  47. The Queen Is Dead (New Production) (8/14/1950)
  48. The Heart of Jonathan O'Rourke (New Production) (8/21/1950)
Season 3
  1. The Ides of April (8/28/1950)
  2. Benuili Chant (9/4/1950)
  3. The Dark Corner (9/11/1950)
  4. The Leopard Lady (9/18/1950)
  5. Sisters of Shadow (9/25/1950)
  6. The Posthumous Dead (10/2/1950)
  7. Just What Happened (10/9/1950)
  8. The Thing Upstairs (10/16/1950)
  9. The Skeptics (10/16/1950)
  10. The Martian Eyes (10/30/1950)
  11. The Half Pint Flask (11/6/1950)
  12. The Waxwork (11/13/1950)
  13. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment (11/20/1950)
  14. The Mule Man (11/27/1950)
  15. Beware This Woman (12/4/1950)
  16. Masque (12/11/1950)
  17. The Men On the Mountain (12/18/1950)
  18. Jasper (12/25/1950)
  19. The Haunted Skyscraper (1/1/1951)
  20. Bird of Time (1/8/1951)
  21. The Bottle Imp (1/15/1951)
  22. For Release Today (1/22/1951)
  23. The Masque of the Red Death (1/29/1951)
  24. The House of Dust (2/5/1951)
  25. Curtain Call (2/12/1951)
  26. Strange Legacy (2/19/1951)
  27. The Dispossessed (2/26/1951)
  28. The Man With the Astrakhan Hat (3/5/1951)
  29. Leda's Portrait (3/12/1951)
  30. Western Night (3/19/1951)
  31. The Power of the Brute (3/26/1951)
  32. The Mad Dullaghan (4/2/1951)
  33. The Crushed Rose (4/9/1951)
  34. The Witness (4/16/1951)
  35. The Fonceville Curse (4/23/1951)
  36. Grey Reminder (4/30/1951)
  37. The Lost Will of Dr. Rant (5/7/1951)
  38. Dead Man's Coat (5/14/1951)
  39. Cat's Cradle (5/21/1951)
  40. The Pattern (5/28/1951)
  41. The Martian Eyes (New Production) (6/4/1951)
  42. Pit of the Dead (6/11/1951)
  43. Dead Freight (6/18/1951)
  44. The Passage Beyond (6/25/1951)
  45. And Adam Begot (7/2/1951)
  46. The Meddlers (7/9/1951)
  47. The Devil In Glencairn (7/16/1951)
  48. Zero Hour (7/23/1951)
  49. The Fingers (7/30/1951)
  50. The Faceless Man (8/6/1951)
  51. The Man With the Watch (8/13/1951)
  52. Follow Me (8/20/1951)
Season 4
  1. Mrs. Manifold (8/27/1951)
  2. Blackwood Hall (9/3/1951)
  3. Prophet of Darkness (9/10/1951)
  4. To See Ourselves (9/17/1951)
  5. Rappaccini's Daughter (9/24/1951)
  6. Will-O'-the-Wisp (10/1/1951)
  7. Dark Image (10/8/1951)
  8. I Spy! (10/15/1951)
  9. The Deal (10/22/1951)
  10. The Veil (10/29/1951)
  11. The Chamber of Gloom (11/5/1951)
  12. The Beast In the Garden (11/12/1951)
  13. Friday the Nineteenth (11/19/1951)
  14. The Far-Off Island (11/26/1951)
  15. The Silent Supper (12/3/1951)
  16. The Angry Birds (12/10/1951)
  17. Perchance to Dream (12/17/1951)
  18. This Way to Heaven (12/24/1951)
  19. Of Time and Third Avenue (12/30/1951)
  20. The School For the Unspeakable (1/7/1952)
  21. Blood Relation (1/14/1952)
  22. The Intruder (1/21/1952)
  23. The Third Door (1/28/1952)
  24. The Chain (2/4/1952)
  25. Cries the String (2/11/1952)
  26. The Eyes From San Francisco (2/18/1952)
  27. The Perfect Servant (2/25/1952)
  28. Private - Keep Out (3/3/1952)
  29. The Upstairs Floor (3/10/1952)
  30. The Borgia Lamp (3/17/1952)
  31. Another Country (3/24/1952)
  32. The Pit (4/7/1952)
  33. The Men On the Mountain (New Production) (4/14/1952)
  34. A Lucky Piece (4/21/1952)
  35. For Rent (4/28/1952)
  36. A Journey Into the Shadows (5/5/1952)
  37. The Green Thumb (5/12/1952)
  38. Little Girl (5/19/1952)
  39. The Death's Head (5/26/1952)
  40. Night Walk (6/2/1952)
  41. Blind Man's Bluff (6/9/1952)
  42. Nightmare (6/16/1952)
  43. The Coins of Death (6/23/1952)
  44. The Lonely Albatross (6/30/1952)
  45. The Corpse In Room Thirteen (7/7/1952)
  46. The Bog Oak Necklace (7/14/1952)
  47. Death Trap (7/28/1952)
  48. Man In the Dark (8/4/1952)
  49. The Killer's Moon (8/11/1952)
  50. Twist of Fate (8/18/1952)
  51. Death Is a Small Monkey (8/25/1952)
  52. The Verdict (9/1/1952)
  53. The Red Rose (9/8/1952)
  54. The Darker Night (9/15/1952)
  55. Flight Thirteen (9/22/1952)
  56. The Hollow Man (9/29/1952)

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