This week, the latest installment in the Star Wars film saga is posting record numbers around the world. In 1981, NPR hoped the interstellar fable would do the same for its audience numbers. That's right: Some of you may have forgotten (and some might not even know) that the network created three radio dramas based on George Lucas' original three movies.NPR figured it could maybe get more listeners by reviving the radio drama, which had been out of fashion for some 30 years. So the network called Richard Toscan, then-head of the theater program at the University of Southern California. He remembers asking a colleague for advice on what story to dramatize: "There's this long pause, and he says, 'Create a scandal.' "Toscan was at a loss. Then he mentioned the problem to a student. "And he said, 'Oh, why don't you do Star Wars?' " Toscan recalls. "There was the scandal."See, Star Wars was a commercial juggernaut. And as Toscan puts it, "Folks working at NPR thought, 'Oh good grief, we're
↧