The world of Stephen Brockelman: Memoir, Arts, Opinion
Creepy. Crawley. Cursed. From CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, E.G. Marshall narrates Black Widow.
It’s no secret—spiders aren’t on my list of cool critters.
I know spiders do good things and are a necessary part of our ecosystem, but they creep me out. Their grotesque form and erratic, spastic movements frighten me. Their quietness unsettles me. And having been bitten over the years by a black widow and a brown recluse only enhances my terrific fear of the ugly little monsters and may be the reason for my life-long arachnophobia.
Each year when Halloween comes around, spiders seem to abound—plastic spiders, plush spiders, greeting card spiders, imaginary spiders, and spiders in every form of entertainment…
On the last day of October, I don’t mind being a little on-edge, so I enjoyed finding this old radio drama from CBS Radio’s Mystery Theatre titled Black Widow. The episode, number 265, is narrated by E G Marshall and first aired on April 29, 1975.
The episode explores the widow of a union official who wants revenge on the man who killed her husband. She goes to a witch to get revenge. The witch uses black magic and black widow spiders to settle the score. I’ve removed the commercials to make it a faster listen with fewer disruptions—like the bright and happy, musical commercial for Buick Century.
As a Sr. Writer at T. Rowe Price, I work with a group of the best copywriters around. We belong to the broader creative team within Enterprise Creative, a part of Corporate Marketing Services.
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A long and winding road: My path to T. Rowe Price was more twisted than Fidelity’s green line. With scholarship in hand, I left Kansas at 18 to study theatre in New York. When my soap opera paychecks stopped coming from CBS and started coming from the show’s sponsor, Proctor & Gamble, I discovered the power of advertising and switched careers. Over the years I’ve owned an ad agency in San Francisco; worked for Norman Lear on All in the Family, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and the rest of his hit shows; and as a member of Directors Guild of America, I directed Desi Arnaz in his last television appearance— we remained friends until his death. In 1988 I began freelancing full time didn’t look back.
In January 2012 my rep at Boss Group called and said, “I know you don’t want to commute and writing for the financial industry isn’t high on your wish list, but I have a gig with T. Rowe Price in Owings Mills…” I was a contractor for eight months, drank the corporate Kool-Aid, became a TRP associate that August, and today I find myself smiling more often than not.
We live in a high rise, so our spooky little visitors are limited to kids in the building. Usually a dozen or so. Because there are so few of them, I have a sense that they make out pretty well.
Do you get many trick or treaters? So far tonight, only 11 kids have showed up at my house.
We live in a high rise, so our spooky little visitors are limited to kids in the building. Usually a dozen or so. Because there are so few of them, I have a sense that they make out pretty well.