Alonzo Deen Cole, Grand View Memorial Park, Los Angeles

This photo is courtesy of http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=47485069, which offers some interesting biographical information regarding Cole:

 

"Alonzo D. Cole has been hailed by early radio fans as a prolific genius and legend of the golden age of radio drama. He created the popular gothic radio horror classic, "The Witch's Tale". Later he became the only writer for the famous radio series "Casey, Crime Photographer", producing 384 scripts. In addition, he wrote scripts for the legendary "Shadow" series, "Gangbusters", "Seth Parker", the "Hour of Charm", and the "Kate Smith Hour" creating a total of almost 900 radio plays.

 

Cole began acting in school plays as a young man in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and toured in dramatic plays and stock companies. While in New York, Cole convinced WOR to air his horror series devoted to the supernaural.

 

"The Witch's Tale" was first broadcast on May 28, 1931 through the Mutual Broadcasting System and ran for 7 years, until June 13, 1938.  He crafted, wrote, produced, directed, and even starred in his gothic brainchild along with his wife Marie O'Flynn, who played the key female roles. "The Witch's Tale", is credited by early radio scholars as the first of its genre in old time radio. Importantly, author Read G. Burgan noted that "nearly all radio, television, and even comic book horror series that followed borrowed liberally, and often shamelessly from the conventions first developed by Cole". A cackling witch named Nancy introduced the half hour program with her meowing cat, Satan. She created the atmosphere for the show by inviting the listener to put out the lights and listen to her terrifying tales.

 

Cole created a new tale each week featuring murderous dummies, vampires, crawling hands, haunted houses, devils, curses, werewolves, and mirrors leading to other dimensions. The series became statistically the top radio program of its day. "People like to be scared", said Cole, "just as they like to eat candy."

 

After the series had ended, while packing to move to California, Cole destroyed all of his original recordings of "The Witch's Tale". Only about 30 recordings of the original 332 episodes still exist in poor condition. Cole did however, keep the scripts. If not for David Seigel, an avid old radio buff, the series might have been lost forever. He copied all 332 of the fragile scripts from the program, and his wife typed each script. He chose 13 scripts to publish in his book on "The Witch's Tale". KLOS in Los Angeles and 15 other west coast stations aired a remake of two of Cole's original scripts in recent years using well known actors and actresses for the parts."