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January 18, 2011 14:41 Intellect/RJ-ISBAM Page-105 RJ-8-2-Finals
RJ-ISBAM 8 (2) pp. 105–119 © Intellect Ltd 2010
The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media
Volume 8 Number 2
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/rjao.8.2.105_1
MATTHEW KILLMEIER
University of Southern Maine
America(n) abroad:
The Third
Man
, international
audiences and the Cold War
KEYWORDS
The Third Man radio
series
international radio
broadcasting
Cold War popular
culture
cultural history of radio
Orson Welles
ABSTRACT
This article offers a cultural historical interpretation of The Third Man: The Lives
of Harry Lime (1951–52), an internationally syndicated radio series based on the
film The Third Man (Reed 1949). It argues that the series’ cultural meanings can
only be fully assessed through accounting for the programme’s international framing
or encoding, which critics have heretofore overlooked. As an internationally encoded
series, The Third Man has a high degree of interpretive openness in order to appeal to
and resonate with heterogeneous audiences. The article examines the ways in which
the series creates interpretive openness through its ambiguous characterization of the
protagonist Harry Lime, use of Lime’s American nationality, international settings
and through drawing upon the Cold War for dramatic material. The series’ interna-
tional encoding, interpretive openness and period of broadcast during the Cold War
ground interpretations of its cultural meanings. The article claims that the series offers
critical perspectives on the Cold War through Lime’s presentation as a metonym for
the United States, and through plots that allegorically and satirically dramatize the
Cold War milieu.
In the twilight of radio’s golden age, a remarkable series aired. The Third Man:
The Lives of Harry Lime (1951–52) was a weekly programme based on the film
The Third Man (Reed 1949).1Orson Welles reprised his role as Harry Lime.
1OutsidetheUnited
States, the series was
also titled The
Adventures of Harry
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Lime was Welles’s last regular radio role, and The Third Man featured his
Lime and The Lives
of Harry Lime
(Dern 2004: 171). final radio writing (Heyer 2005). Welles also tried out story elements he would
develop into the film Mr. Arkadin (The Third Man 1952h, 1952j; Welles 1955).2
2Interestedreaders
can listen to the
plays in MP3 form
at: http://www.archive.
org/details/TheLivesOf
HarryLime
The series is an early example of a prequel: As Lime dies in the film, The Third
Man set its stories prior to the film’s narrative. Also significant was the radio
translation of Harry Lime.
Critics have emphasized the radio Lime’s shift from an immoral scoundrel
in the film to a ‘beguiling rogue dealing in an amiable cynicism’ (Drazin 2000:
138). The chief reason is the medium and its weekly domestic post-war audi-
ence (Tavares 1976: 67; Dern 2004: 184; Heyer 2005: 204). Harry Lime was
sweetened for post-war radio palates.
This change is attributed to form, ideology, point of view, setting and genre.
Tavares (1976) ascribes the characterization to the series adopting a picaresque
form, with Lime as a picaro (67). Rather than the political morality tale of the
film, the picaresque augurs humour and satire. Lime as picaro is a ‘charm-
ing rogue’, socially marginal and slightly shy of being a criminal (Tavares 1976:
68–70). Drazin (2000) reads Lime’s radio refashioning ideologically; the ‘psy-
chopathic criminal’ of the film becomes ‘the suave confidence trickster’ through
‘the kind of myth-making that once turned thieves and gunmen into the Wild
West heroes’ (138–39).
Dern (2004) argues Lime’s softening is partly predicated on point of view.
In the film, Lime’s friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) serves the function of
narrative protagonist, with Lime largely the object of narration. Radio Lime
serves as narrator and protagonist, thus combining aspects of Martins and
Lime’s characters. Lime usually provides framing narration at the beginning
and end of the play, and oftentimes provides exposition through voiceovers,
internal monologues and visual description. Therefore, the audience shares his
point of view, and presumably identifies with him (173–74). The series’ set-
tings are also germane. As an international peripatetic protagonist, radio Lime
is no longer metaphorically characterized by the corruption and ‘moral disor-
der’ of the film’s post-war Vienna (179). And his radio rehabilitation is tied
to generic transformation: Lime is a species of radio’s ‘glamorous detective
genre’ (181; MacDonald 1979: 172–83). He becomes a guide to exotic locales,
‘through whom listeners vicariously experience the romantic appeal of travel’
(Dern 2004: 181).
Lime’s radio characterization contrasts with the film, but qualifications are
warranted. While Lime is ‘not quite a scoundrel’ in the series, his charac-
terization is not consistent (Heyer 2005: 204). Sweetened to be sure, Lime
nevertheless retains a core sourness. Lime indeed does good deeds but his
motives are often Machiavellian, and his moderation is often a function of
falling victim to greater miscreants. He appears comparatively good – ‘a tol-
erable criminal’ (Dern 2004: 174). Lime’s inconsistency is attributed to the
glamorous detective genre in which the protagonist skirts the law, ‘but does
not absolutely ignore the dictates of conscience’ (Dern 2004: 176). The incon-
sistency may also originate in production flaws – implausible narratives and
poor writing (Drazin 2000: 142; Heyer 2005: 204). These are plausible explana-
tions; however, critical interpretations have overemphasized Lime’s makeover
to the detriment of his consistency with the film. More importantly, they have
failed to appreciate the constituents of The Third Man’s audience.
The cultural historical significance of the series can only be fully assayed
through accounting for its international audience. As an international series,
The Third Man is aimed at heterogeneous audiences. To be culturally
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
meaningful and commercially viable, the series must have a high degree of
polysemy. Furthermore, the show offers critical perspectives on the Cold War,
which are in part derived from its film roots. As a prequel centred on the Harry
Lime character, the series is bound to inherited elements of Lime’s charac-
terization. He remains a charming scoundrel and a morally equivocal figure,
but Lime becomes – owing to the series’ characterization, settings and plots –
a metonym for America. The Third Man seeds plural interpretations of Lime
through his inconsistencies and ambiguities. The show’s film roots, interna-
tional encoding and broadcast time frame bear upon its use of the Cold War as
setting and plot element. The film is set in the early days of the Cold War,
and the series targets an audience living through a particularly hot period
of that war. This article supports these claims by respectively examining the
series’ international encoding, Lime’s film lineage and radio characterization,
the show’s Cold War settings, Lime’s interpretive openness and plots that
allegorically and satirically dramatize the Cold War.
LIME’S INTERNATIONAL LIVES
The Third Man is an international programme syndicated and structured for
heterogeneous international audiences. Stuart Hall (1993) argues that the pro-
duction of media texts encodes them with certain preferred meanings and
inflections. Encoding does not prefigure how texts are interpreted or decoded,
but encoding is determinative: It circumscribes or canalizes the text. Audiences
may interpret or read a text in a variety of ways, but encoding sets parameters
for interpretation. Encoding determines the signifiers with which audiences
make meaning. The series is encoded to be comprehensible, pleasurable and
resonant with diverse audiences. Its encoding suggests the programme was
quite polysemic, and may partly explain why it was more successful outside the
United States than in it (Heyer 2005: 204).3British radio producer and writer
3 Heyer (2005) claims the
series’ less favourable
US reception was due
to ‘uneven
distribution’ (204).
Harry Alan Towers of Towers of London Ltd. produced and internationally
syndicated the series; Towers was the largest international producer and dis-
tributor in the early 1950s (Tavares 1976: 42). The first sixteen episodes aired
on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) – the first time it had broadcast
an independent production (Tavares 1976: 42). In the United States, the show
was syndicated through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was carried on the Mutual
Broadcasting System and WJZ New York (Tavares 1976: 51). The Third Man
was also broadcast in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana
(Newsweek 1952: 69). Spanish, French, Hebrew, Dutch, German and Italian
language versions also aired (Tavares 1976: 52).
Towers and Orson Welles’s contributions amplified the series’ international
character. Towers characterized all his shows as having ‘an international flavor’
(Newsweek 1952: 69), and he visited foreign countries in advance of production
(The New Yorker 1952: 41). Welles wrote perhaps ten episodes and ‘fine-tuned
all the others’ (Heyer 2005: 204). Towers claimed Welles had an outsized influ-
ence on the series (Pedrick 1951: 5). Welles brought his film influence to the
production, using the new medium of magnetic tape to record the programmes
one scene at a time and edit them afterward (Tavares 1976: 49). According to
Towers, ‘Orson was made for Europe and Europe was made for Orson. It’s a
mutual romance’ (The New Yorker 1952: 41). Welles had been living and work-
ing in Europe for a number of years, wrote some plays for the series and had
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a hand in its direction and staging.4The one episode set solely in the United
4Wellesmayhave
written ten scripts
for the series.
Tavares (1976)
credits Welles with
six scripts (The
Third Man 1951a,
1951b, 1951c,
1951d, 1951p,
1952a, 1952n).
Only sixteen of the
programmes have
a documented
author (Tavares
1976: 248–49).
Welles claims
authorship of one
other show (Welles
and Bogdanovich
1998: 410; The
Third Man 1952e).
According to Heyer
(2005), Welles
penned two other
scripts (206; The
Third Man 1952j,
1952k). ‘A regular
(and usually
uncredited)
collaborator was
Ernest Borneman’
(Heyer 2005: 204).
States drew criticism from a New York Times reviewer for ‘distorting the Ameri-
can way rather seriously [...] perhaps Mr. Welles has been abroad too long to
deal authoritatively with events here in the United States’ (Gould 1951: 37; The
Third Man 1951d).5The radio incarnation of American Harry Lime condenses
5Welles’sEuropean
films of the period
were also said to be
out of touch with
American culture
(Naremore
1989: 175).
characteristics of Americans and the United States that resonate with interna-
tional audiences. Although radio Lime is ‘less loathsome’, his characterization
is consistent with the film, which also contributes to the series’ encoding (Dern
2004: 171).
HARRY LIME’S LINEAGE
Radio Lime’s characterization is rooted in the film, and derives from the artis-
tic and political sensibilities of his chief creators: Graham Greene and Welles.
British author Greene wrote The Third Man screenplay and created Harry Lime.
Although Towers innovated, adapting the character for radio, he had to secure
permission from the film’s producer – Alexander Korda – and Greene. Greene
controlled the character and retained script approval over the series (Tavares
1976: 47).
Lime’s characterization echoes some of Greene’s political concerns. A key
theme throughout his life and work ‘was the role of America in politics’ (West
1997: 29). Churchill claimed the Soviet Union constructed a Cold War Iron Cur-
tain; Greene described the United States as lowering a plastic one (West 1997:
132). A lifelong leftist, Greene rejected the Manichean perspective promoted
by the Cold War superpowers. Like his collaborators on The Third Man (Reed
1949), Greene separated ‘personality from morality’ in his art (Carpenter 1987:
63). Lime’s morality is unambiguous and condemned in the film; however, he is
charming – the ‘most dangerous of the “angelic” or Luciferian killers who pop-
ulate Greene’s fiction’ (Naremore 2008: 77). Additionally, the naïveté of Lime’s
American friend in the film – Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) – symbolizes posi-
tive American characteristics that are nevertheless ‘dangerously destructive and
doomed’ in the post-war context (Palmer and Riley 1980: 15). Martins and Lime
illustrate how Americans are sometimes perceived abroad.
The US superpower – like empires throughout history – is viewed with
affection and scepticism even by close allies such as Britain. Former British
premier Harold Macmillan said that the British ‘find Americans much as the
Greeks found the Romans – great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous
than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more
corrupt’ (Dumbrell 2006: 17). Such affection and scepticism were exacerbated
by Cold War geopolitical gamesmanship, with nations seen as pawns by the
superpowers.
Welles’s aesthetic and political commitments also bear on Lime’s radio
encoding. Michael Denning claims Welles is ‘the American Brecht, the single
most important Popular Front artist in theater, radio, and film, both politi-
cally and aesthetically’ (1996: 362). Welles and Greene shared an anti-fascist
aesthetic, exemplified in Greene’s spy thrillers, which were ‘one of the few
popular forms that narrated international plots’ (Denning 1996: 378).6Fascism
6 Both Greene and Korda
were familiar with
espionage through
their involvement in
MI6 during the war.
Greene characterized
espionage ‘as an
intoxicating “racket”
in which principles
counted for little’ and
Lime epitomizes this
as ‘a callous,
self-seeking
opportunist with wit
and charm whose
underworld knows no
rules’ (Shaw 2001:
28–29).
was a pre-eminent concern for Welles, one that animated his art and poli-
tics, and he viewed it broadly. Neither limited to Europe nor eradicated after
World War II, Welles saw fascism as an American problem manifested in racists
and authoritarian figures. As with Greene, Welles constructed such figures
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
as complex characters – not one-dimensional embodiments of evil. ‘Welles’s
gigantic hero-villains were both fascinating and repulsive, tricksters that dis-
obeyed any straightforward political logic’ (Denning 1996: 377). Such polysemic
hero-villains were a Welles’s staple: Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane (Welles
1941), Charles Rankin in The Stranger (Welles 1946), Hank Quinlan in To u c h o f
Evil (Welles 1958), Gregory Arkadin in Mr. Arkadin (Welles 1955) and Harry
Lime in The Third Man (Reed 1949; Denning 1996). In Citizen Kane (Welles
1941), Charles Foster Kane is a complex, enigmatic character with progressive
ideals and totalitarian tendencies; Welles considered titling it ‘American’.7In
7 In the film’s newsreel
sequence, Kane
describes himself to a
reporter as ‘an American,
always been an
American’ (Welles 1941).
his film, theatre and radio work, Welles often married progressive politics and
art, staging classic works accessible and relevant to working-class audiences to
‘democratize elite culture’ (Denning 1996: 371). He claimed ‘radio is a pop-
ular, democratic machine for disseminating information and entertainment’
(Denning 1996: 381).
Welles’s anti-fascist aesthetic was intertwined with his politics. He was
politically active on the left, advocating for internationalism and against fas-
cism, supporting Roosevelt and the New Deal and agitating against racism. In
1945, Welles became ‘a political commentator, with a New York Post newspaper
column and an ABC radio show, Orson Welles Commentaries’ (Denning 1996:
373). The network cancelled his show in 1946 after Welles took up the cause of
Isaac Woodward, a black veteran who was blinded in a racist attack by police
(Denning 1996: 373).8Welles’s politics and politically animated work garnered
8Woodward’scase
inspired the civil
rights movement and
contributed to
President Truman’s
1948 decision to
desegregate the US
military. It also
influenced Welles’s
film Touch of Evil
(1958) (Denning
1996).
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) attention and inclusion in the infamous
blacklist book Red Channels (American Business Consultants 1950: 155–57).
Welles also helped create Lime through his dramatic interpretations of the
character. Reflecting on the film role, Welles said Lime is ‘the character he most
detests of all those he has played. “I hate Harry Lime [...] He has no passion;
he is cold; he is Lucifer, the fallen angel” ’(McBride 1972: 8). Welles linked radio
Lime to the post-war milieu: ‘a symptom of the age [...] the man always out
to make a profit on a quick deal’ (Pedrick 1951: 5). In 1958, Welles told Cahiers
du Cinéma, ‘I’ve played a lot of unsavoury types. I detest Harry Lime, the little
black market hustler’ (Denning 1996: 377).
Lime’s radio characterization combines elements of the film’s Lime and
Martins creating a complex polysemic figure – at times naïve and a charming
confidence man, and often ‘concerned with justice only when there is some-
thing in it for him’ (Heyer 2005: 204). Heterogeneous audiences can appreciate
Lime owing to his encoding. He can be read as an inherently good bad guy –
a reckless rogue with positive intentions – or Lime can be interpreted as a
solipsistic scoundrel. Furthermore, as in the film, radio Lime is the ultimate
utilitarian, illustrating a characteristic of Cold War U.S. foreign policy: Lime
describes himself as a ‘realist’ (The Third Man 1951f). He is the ‘epitome of
amoral self-interest’, working for anyone and willing to sell anything or anyone
(Lipschutz 2001: 7).
AMERICA(N) ABROAD
The series’ settings illustrate the programme’s international encoding, license
Lime as a metonym for the United States and seed critical perspectives on the
Cold War. Harry Lime travels all over the world, with most shows set in Europe,
several in the Middle East and a few in North Africa or the Americas. Plots
commonly develop across several countries, and only one show is set solely
in the United States (The Third Man 1951d). The international settings can be
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Matthew Killmeier
interpreted as a signifier of genre, exemplifying ‘the wanderlust of radio’s glam-
orous detective’ appropriate background for ‘a bon vivant adventurer’ (Dern
2004: 181; Heyer 2005: 204). However, Lime’s characterization and the series’
settings connote that the Cold War is a critical interpretive context.
Hegemonic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union
was strong in Europe and rising in the Third World during this period. Post-war
decolonization sparked struggles for the allegiance of new nations. Sometimes
these struggles became conflicts – as with the US–USSR proxy war on the
Korean peninsula (1950–53). Superpower competition also involved espionage,
which in the 1950s became a regular means of direct and indirect influence and
intervention. ‘For the United States, the 1950s were the Golden Age of Espi-
onage’, with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interventions in the Philippines,
Syria, Egypt, Iran and Guatemala (Lipschutz 2001: 57). US military power was
intertwined with economic expansion – both increased as never before during
this period (Barnet 1973: 140). Industry ‘followed the flag’ across the globe, and
the United States expanded into the Middle East and other ‘strategic resource’
areas (Barnet 1973: 189).
The Cold War’s global military and economic competition is explicitly ref-
erenced in several plays. In one episode set in Haiti, Lime’s framing narration
telegraphs a climate of cover espionage:
I arrived there as a sort of political refugee. A small revolution I’d been
promoting in a nearby banana republic had fizzled out on me, and the
general I’d been backing backed out. And I found myself holding the bag;
the bag luckily just happened to contain a few rolls of the U.S. Treasury’s
best lettuce.
(The Third Man 1951a)
In another play that opens in Tehran, Lime suggests competition for strategic
resources: ‘a country with all that oil, and all that intrigue, with so many peo-
ple playing the game of empire building and empire busting’ (The Third Man
1951f). Oil concessions in a fictional Middle Eastern country motor the plot of
another play: Lime describes the international competition over them as ‘an
undeclared world war in miniature’ (The Third Man 1952b). Two plays involve
the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which was a salient Cold War setting given
that socialist nation’s exclusion from the Warsaw Pact and its distancing from
the Soviet Union after 1948 (The Third Man 1951g, 1952e).9In another episode,
9 In the 1940s, Welles was
involved with the
anti-fascist
organization ‘Yugoslav
Relief’ (Denning
1996).
Lime helps foil Soviet espionage aimed at acquiring nuclear secrets, which was
timely given the Russian bomb test of 1949 and the contemporaneous super-
power competition for the hydrogen bomb (The Third Man 1952l). Likewise,
Lime plans on blackmailing a US military traitor in the Panama Canal Zone
when he overhears him contacting his Soviet comrades, but Lime ends up
helping to reveal him (The Third Man 1952m). The setting’s rendering of the
Cold War – both superpowers are represented negatively – is indicative of its
polysemy. Its cultural politics are akin to Lime’s: ‘like a pair of socks, I’m neither
right nor left’ (The Third Man 1951n). The use of setting is equivocal enough to
cultivate a broad range of readings.
AMBIGUOUS AMERICAN
Lime’s characterization contributes to the series’ polysemy and provides fod-
der for reading him as a metonym for the United States. It likewise seeds the
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
show’s satire through Lime’s hypocrisy and self-promotion. Lime exhibits three
germane characteristics: (1) His actions and his accounts of them are often
irreconcilable; (2) Lime is a self-interested scoundrel who is softened by being a
victim and (3) his accounts and actions conflate his criminality with capitalism.
Despite his worst intentions and actions, Lime often promotes himself as a
good guy. This is epitomized in an episode in which Lime plans to make money
off a rich American businessman visiting Haiti (The Third Man 1951e). Lime
tells him he can get an invaluable ‘souvenir’ – the first king of Haiti’s sceptre.10
10 Welles’s 1936
production of
Macbeth for the
Federal Theater
Project’s Negro
Theater Unit cast
Macbeth as Henri
Christophe – Haiti’s
first king (Denning
1996).
A Haitian friend who is indebted to Lime offers to steal it for him but tells Lime
he will be killed for doing so. Nevertheless, Lime has him steal it. Lime later
discovers the businessman is dead and his Haitian friend captured and about
to be killed; he frees his friend and they flee. In his closing narration, Lime
presents himself as heroic: ‘You’re saying that wasn’t Harry Lime at all. You’re
saying the noble hero that pulled off that fancy rescue party wasn’t The Third
Man, he was a couple of other guys. Just goes to show how I’m misjudged.’
In other episodes, Lime’s image is enhanced through doing the right thing
in the end. However, his initial intentions are frequently ill. In some plays, Lime
is rewarded. For example, Lime double-crosses an acquaintance of his over
some opium (The Third Man 1951f). He plans to plant it on marks to smuggle it
into the United States; but Lime is fooled by the marks who are in cahoots with
his acquaintance. Lime tracks them down and gets the drugs at gunpoint, but
the police arrive. Lime tells the police he was going to turn the criminals in and
asks if there is a reward. In his closing narration, Lime claims he had planned
to contact the authorities because dope is against his principles.11 In a similar
11 In an earlier episode,
Lime dumps heroin
he acquired into the
sea; however, he
plans to sell sugar
instead (The Third
Man 1951p).
episode, Lime receives a reward for a piece of jewellery he had pilfered (The
Third Man 1951g). Likewise, after his larcenous plans fail, Lime occasionally
does the right thing (The Third Man 1952c, 1952d, 1952e).
Lime’s encoding as a good guy is also elevated in episodes where he is
duped. The self-interested scoundrel is somewhat sweetened when Lime suf-
fers the fate he usually dispenses. This is magnified as Lime’s intended victims
are often presented as greedier than he (Dunning 1998: 663). As Lime is often
hoodwinked because he falls for a woman – a consistent motif, Heyer (2005)
notes – his character is humanized. Such characterization is epitomized by
Lime’s attempts to leverage a woman’s love to secure oil concessions from her
father’s Middle Eastern kingdom (The Third Man 1952b). At the end of the play,
Lime learns the woman used him to attract bidders’ money and that there is no
oil.12 In another episode, Lime is working with two partners to steal a necklace
12 This episode is notable
for its humorous
reflexivity. Forced to
wear drag and hide
in a harem to escape
pursuers, Lime
mentions in a
narrative monologue
that this wasn’t what
he or the audience
expected given the
titillating title – ‘A
Night in a Harem’.
from a baron (The Third Man 1952f). One of the partners, Suzie, is Lime’s love
interest, and she conspires to make Lime suspicious of the other partner, lead-
ing Lime to take the stolen necklace from him at gunpoint. The police arrive
and arrest the partner, who is revealed to be an ex-Nazi, and Lime is thanked
by the police. Afterwards, Suzie confesses she is in love with the baron and
plans to marry him. Other episodes offer variations of this characterization (The
Third Man 1951f, 1951h, 1951i, 1951j, 1951k, 1951l, 1952g).
CAPITALIST, NOT CRIMINAL
Lime’s inconsistency and ambiguity are also advanced through the conflation
of his criminal endeavours with capitalism. This characterization is consistent
with the film – Lime rationalizes his penicillin racket in economic terms, in
a memorable exchange with Martins on the Prater Wheel. Radio Lime tells a
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Matthew Killmeier
client in one play, ‘I never break the law – except on a strictly commercial basis’
(The Third Man 1952h), while in another, he describes himself as ‘just a clean-
cut American boy looking for a chance to hustle an honest buck’ (The Third Man
1951l). Working as a counterfeiter, Lime describes his endeavours as ‘business
transactions’ (The Third Man 1951m). In another play’s framing narration, Lime
describes himself – and the plot – in economic terms:
The one thing I’ve never been called is the one thing I am:abusinessman.
Did somebody laugh? Let me give you a little lesson in economics. All
business pays in direct proportion to the amount of risk involved – the
safest investment, therefore paying the lowest return. Now my returns are
likely to be high, because I’m willing to take risks, outside the law. That’s
where high finance starts getting really high – high, wide and handsome.
(The Third Man 1952i)
Lime’s words are consistent with his actions.
At its most extreme, Lime’s criminal capitalism involves double-crossing
desperate people by selling them to authoritarian officials. In an episode set in
post-war Hungary, Lime describes himself as a businessman who helps peo-
ple surreptitiously leave the state (The Third Man 1952i). Midway through the
play, we learn that this is false: His real customers are the Budapest police,
and Lime sells the would-be émigrés to them. But when Lime learns the police
plan to arrest him along with his ‘client’, he helps her escape and likewise flees.
Much more common, subtle and malevolent is the way Lime treats friends and
intimates with an instrumental logic akin to market exchange. Lime quickly
sacrifices both friendship and love for the prospect of easy money (The Third
Man 1951e, 1951f, 1951o, 1952d).
Lime’s claim that he is not a criminal but a capitalist advances his ambiguity
and illustrates the text’s polysemy. Listeners could interpret Lime’s declara-
tions as attempts to colour ill endeavours in positive terms, and as evidence
of duplicity. On the other hand, such claims set up a parallel between crime
and business, and invite listeners to take seriously the similarities rather than
the differences. Like American gangster films of the 1930s – and some film
noirs in the 1940s and 1950s – the series offers critical commentary on Ameri-
can capitalism by overtly comparing it to crime (Hirsch 2006). Whether or not
that criticism is heard depends in part on who is listening.
COLD WAR ALLEGORY AND SATIRE
The Third Man encodes a text that is meaningful and resonant to international
audiences and a character open to plural interpretations. In constructing a radio
prequel aimed at heterogeneous audiences, Towers and Welles set the series
across the world and drew upon the Cold War for setting and dramatic fodder.
Some elements of Lime’s film characterization were reinforced and others were
refashioned. His polysemy encodes plural interpretations. Lime’s actions and
deeds are often at odds, which augurs a reading of him as hypocritical. As he is
often duped, he can also be interpreted sympathetically. Furthermore, Lime’s
bottom-line instrumental treatment of friends and lovers may make him seem
repugnant. Listeners could reasonably read him as an inherently good rogue
or as a self-interested scofflaw. The series’ international Cold War settings and
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
Lime’s inconsistent ambiguous characterization lend him a metonymic signifi-
cance; The Third Man represents Lime as an American, and as symptomatic of
America. He is a representation in two senses of the term. Lime is a representa-
tion that is a fictional depiction or construction of an American: The character
stands in the place of a real American. Lime is also a representation in that he
stands for or symbolizes Americans and America (Hall 1997: 16). These ele-
ments of the show’s encoding prompt the decoding of some plays as allegorical
and satirical representations of the Cold War and the US superpower. I will
summarize and assess three of the most unified examples: Love Affair,In Pursuit
of a Ghost and The Dead Candidate.
Love Affair
This play’s plot centres on Lime’s attempt to gain oil leases from a Saudi Ara-
bian monarch on behalf of foreign governments (The Third Man 1951j). Initially,
Lime is working for Germany but a French representative offers Lime more
money, telling him ‘your loyalties belong to the highest bidder’, and Lime
switches. Afterwards, Lime encounters a young American woman, Marion
Lawrence, who he attempts to seduce, but she has been forewarned about him
by Harris, the American tour guide. Later, during Lime’s journey to the palace
to seal the deal, a melee occurs, and Lime escapes in a car. Speeding away, he
sees Lawrence in the ‘native quarter’. She flags him down and tells him she
is in trouble. Lime rescues her, and later gets fake papers for them as a mar-
ried couple. They flee, travelling to Istanbul, Bucharest and Vienna. In Vienna,
Harris approaches them during dinner and reveals that he is an FBI agent. He
arrests Lawrence for the murder of her husband in Saudi Arabia and informs
Lime that the monarch awarded the oil leases to the United States.
The plot is partly driven by international competition and espionage, which
offers a thin allegory of superpower jockeying for influence and power over
strategic resources.
During World War II, the United States developed ties with Saudi Arabia
and other Middle Eastern nations. Access to and control over oil was a key-
stone of US power in the post-war period. Cold War competition over resources
often involved unsavoury, unattached confidence men who were sought out by
the great powers. Lime is a self-interested operator who will work for any-
one. Competition’s sometime handmaiden was espionage – leveraging access
and secret information towards competitive advantage. Lime is fooled by the
FBI front-operation, which is working on behalf of expanding American inter-
ests abroad. During World War II – prior to the creation of the CIA – the FBI
operated in Latin and South America (Lipschutz 2001: 64). This plot’s dramati-
zation of the Cold War contest of world-historical forces would likely resonate
with international audiences who could read disinterested accounts of such
competition in their newspapers.
In Pursuit of a Ghost
The plot of this play is also allegorical, but rather than strategic resources it
concerns spheres of influence (The Third Man 1951h). Lime meets an English-
man at a bar in an unnamed Central American country. He tells Lime there
is a pending coup d’état, headed by General Valdez and financed by El Zorro –
an American mobster. Lime figures he can make money by contacting Valdez
and posing as El Zorro’s associate. He visits Valdez, who tells Lime El Zorro
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Matthew Killmeier
double-crossed him and absconded with the money. Valdez threatens to kill
Lime unless he finds El Zorro, who is hiding out in Cuba. After their meeting,
Lime plans to escape but is deceived by a beautiful woman, knocked out by
Valdez’s associate and taken to Havana on a yacht. Lime is forced to find El
Zorro and, when he does, Lime tells him Valdez has all escape routes blocked
and that his men are closing in. For $100,000, Lime will help El Zorro escape
with his private yacht. El Zorro agrees, and he and Lime go to Valdez’s boat,
where Valdez apprehends El Zorro. Afterwards, the ship is attacked and El
Zorro, Valdez and his henchman are killed. The attackers are the police force
of the unnamed country. The captain of the police is the Englishman from the
bar, who used Lime to thwart the coup.
The plot invokes power politics in the United States’ ‘backyard’. Cuba is
the pivot for the play’s allegory, serving as refuge for the American mobster
El Zorro. US mobsters were intimately involved with the US-backed Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista during this period. American mob leaders held the
so-called ‘Havana Conference’ in 1946, during which they discussed their crim-
inal plans for making the city into the ‘Latin Las Vegas’. Cuba was the mob’s
de-facto, extraterritorial turf, where they expanded their criminal enterprises.
Furthermore, Cuba was officially controlled by the United States following the
Spanish–American War, and would remain subject to periodic US interventions
until the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s (Kinzer 2006). The play likewise
invokes a particular form of espionage common in the Cold War – the coup
d’état. The United States was involved in numerous hemispheric coups during
this period (Grandin 2006).
The Dead Candidate
In the plot, Lime wins a ‘Buzzo’ soda franchise in a game of craps (The Third
Man 1951h). The franchise is located in the fictional Mediterranean island
republic of Molenia. On the ship to Molenia, Lime is mistaken for a US pres-
idential adviser by Susie, the fiancé of a Molenian official named Joaquimo.
Joaquimo thinks Lime is surreptitiously scrutinizing the republic for the United
States, as Molenia is a repressive dictatorship that has unsuccessfully lobbied
for US aid. Joaquimo aims to exploit this situation and comes up with an idea
to refashion the island’s image. He advises the dictator to hold an election to
cast Molenia as a democracy. The dictator will run against the former president,
Campo, who was overthrown in a coup and believed dead. They plan to frame
Campo as a Red, so Molenia also appears sufficiently anti-communist. Lime
does not reveal that he is not the adviser and parlays his status to Buzzo’s ben-
efit. Soon, however, Buzzo has competition from another soda – Freezo. The
election is held and Campo wins; he is alive and has been working at Freezo’s
bottling plant in the United States. In his closing narration, Lime remarks, ‘yes,
democracy has come to Molenia, by courtesy of Freezo’. Underneath a crowd
can be heard shouting ‘Viva Freezo!’
The soda franchise and Lime’s mistaken identity as presidential adviser
allude to and satirize historical details and events. James Farley – the chair-
man of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation – was a former aide to President
Roosevelt and ‘militant anti-communist’ (Kuisel 1991: 99). The role of US cor-
porations in spreading American culture, values and economic power became
a concern during the Cold War. American consumer products such as Coca-
Cola were powerful symbols and concrete examples of the spread of Ameri-
can culture and power. Coke crystallized and exported American commercial
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
culture: ‘mass advertising, a high consumption society and free enterprise’
(Kuisel 1991: 98). The 15 May 1950 cover of Time magazine ‘showed the globe
drinking a bottle of Coke with the caption: “World and Friend: love that piaster,
that lira, that tickey, and that American way of life” ’ (Kuisel 1991: 99). The post-
war expansion of Coke into France provoked criticism that it was an attempt
to colonize the country a la ‘cocacolonization’, and critics also charged that
Coke distribution would function as a front for American espionage (Kuisel
1991: 102). That Campo was working for Freezo in the United States and is
brought back at their behest dramatizes this concern. Indeed, when Lime first
encounters the American Freezo representative, his description suggests Jones
is more than a franchise functionary: He is a ‘dapper, ambassadorial type with
a crew-cut’. When the Freezo representative returns Campo to the country, the
representative authoritatively announces that Molenia is ‘liberated’.
The episode also invokes the Cold War competition for strategic influence
over nations and the Red-baiting it inspired in countries trying to secure US
favour and largess. The Molenian officials recognize that democracy is a con-
comitant of the free world. They also understand democracy is a contrasting
concept to communism. Joaquimo tells the dictator ‘since the communist men-
ace is just as necessary as an election [...] we combine the two’. The dictator
will ‘run against the Red’. Campo wasn’t a communist, but a social democrat.
‘We only called him a Red,’ Joaquimo says. The play satirizes the increasing role
image management was playing in the way that countries represented them-
selves, suggesting the superpowers may favour repressive regimes with proper
public relations. Molenia is ‘an awful little dictatorship’, Susie notes, and its
election efforts are cynical propaganda. Joaquimo indicates as much when he
telegrams the dictator:
Lime will be looking for evidence of despotism, brutality, and terrorism
in a police state. Need I say that he will not find any such things? I repeat,
Lime will not find any such things. Yours, democratically, Joaquimo.
The play also implies that the United States’ championing of democracy rests
on a hypocritical foundation. Running against a dead candidate mocks democ-
racy, but Joaquimo tells the dictator that he observed how dead voters were
used to fix elections in the United States. Therefore, he figures a dead candidate
will work even better.
Its humour and satire make The Dead Candidate one of the better plays
in the series. It was written by Welles and illustrates his political aesthetic,
epitomized in his remarks in a piece he wrote for the Daily Worker:
When our art has some temporary connection, some valid and live
relationship with such things as reported in this evening’s newspapers,
then it is worth making [...] The minute we lose sight of this, we are
necromancers, spellbinders’.
(Welles 1938, quoted in Denning 1996: 362)
Many of the plays likewise draw upon, allude to or dramatize current events
of the Cold War. This was a savvy strategy for making the series resonant with
heterogeneous audiences whose nations and lives were affected in small and
momentous ways by the power plays of the superpowers. And it also presented
an opportunity for the show to critically represent elements of the Cold War
through allegory and satire.
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Matthew Killmeier
CONCLUSION
I claim that The Third Man is an international text that is polysemically encoded
to be resonant with heterogeneous audiences. Contrary to criticism of the
series, I take this encoding to be a determinative index for decoding some
of its significations. Contextualizing the series’ international encoding with
Welles and Greene’s political-aesthetics and characterization of Lime suggest
the show’s allusions to and satire of the Cold War. The series’ international
Cold War settings and Lime’s interpretive openness likewise support this
interpretation. This argument has several implications.
Recognizing and attending to this series’ international encoding and sig-
nifications suggests the need for further research on historical internationally
targeted radio. Within the sparse body of radio research, such studies are rare.
More importantly, our knowledge of such heterogeneous cultural forms and
their implications for cultural history are limited because of this void. We also
need to examine such programming in its complex contexts to uncover and
recover a fuller picture of the cultural history and politics of the post-war period.
Post-war programming – in particular lowbrow or pulp radio – warrants fur-
ther attention in the context of the Cold War. Late golden age radio demands
greater scrutiny as coverage has hitherto been relatively scant, and it is a period
of radio expansion, ferment and change. Shows such as The Third Man are
not notable for strong production values, writing or originality, which may lead
to their neglect in favour of better-financed and realized programmes.13 How-
13 Arguably, The Third
Man would be little
studied save for
Welles’s involvement
and its linkages to
the film.
ever, as is increasingly being recognized, this type of programming is a rich
resource for cultural history, especially of the Cold War (Jancovich 1996; Lip-
schutz 2001; Shaw 2001; McCracken 2002; Miller 2003). The popular cultural
crystallization of the Cold War, particularly in radio drama, is an imperative area
for further study. Indeed, although The Third Man can be fruitfully assessed in
generic contexts, its Cold War context challenges prevailing industry and critical
classifications.
Finally, another germane context raised by this study is radio genre and
its usage as a heuristic tool. While The Third Man exhibits characteristics of
the glamorous detective and adventure genres, its international orientation and
polysemy suggest the need for a broader consideration of genres, and recog-
nition of their hybridity in radio studies. Considered thusly, and with its Cold
War context, The Third Man shares a good deal in common with the spy thriller
(Denning 1987) and anticipates the spy/espionage genre that would become
prevalent in the 1960s (Miller 2003).14
14 Drazin (2000) suggests
the series anticipates
the spy or espionage
genre, noting that
James Bond ‘went
nowhere that Lime
had not already been
before’ (141).
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Killmeier, M. (2010), ‘America(n) abroad: The Third Man, international audi-
ences and the Cold War’, The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast
and Audio Media 8: 2, pp. 105–119, doi: 10.1386/rajo.8.2.105_1
CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Matthew A. Killmeier is an assistant professor of communication and media
studies at the University of Southern Maine. His research interests include the
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America(n) abroad:
The Third Man
, international audiences and the Cold War
cultural history of American radio, media technology, consumerism and media
ecology. He has published articles on automotive radio, post-war American disc
jockeys, advertising representations of radio and the broadcast ban of the Dixie
Chicks. He is currently researching the use of music in US television political
ads, American horror radio and the consumerist construction of environmental
problems.
Contact: Department of Communication & Media Studies, University of
Southern Maine, 19 Chamberlain Ave., Portland, ME 04104 USA.
E-mail: mkillmeier@usm.maine.edu
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