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Chicken Heart was first dramatized on March 10, 1937. Part of the half-hour NBC run from NYC, the script was approved by the NBC censors on March 4. Surprisingly, Arch Oboler is not credited as the script writer on the original script. The script was dramatized a second time on February 23, 1938 and no one is credited on the front of the script as author.

When LIGHTS OUT was revived in 1942-43 for Ironized Yeast/CBS, November 24, 1942, Arch Oboler was credited as the author.

It is possible that Oboler was using a pen name from 1936-38 to write more scripts and make more money, hence the reason why two different people are credited.

In 1964, Arch Oboler produced an LP record entitled DROP DEAD! He could not use the name LIGHTS OUT on the album because NBC still retained the trademark and rights to "Lights Out" at the time. For the 1964 LP record, Oboler decided to offer six or seven short horror stories. All new and original productions, not recording of past LIGHTS OUT broadcasts, some were original stories while others like "The Future" and "Chicken Heart" were edited versions of old radio scripts.

The only recording nown to exist of "Chicken Heart" is the 1964 recreation. None of the 30-minute versions from 1942, 1938 or 1936 are known to exist. There are a lot of differences between the LP record version and the former radio broadcasts - most notably that when the heart started growing, in the radio brodcasts, the flesh grew and morphed tentacles and reached across the room to grab scientists and drag them into the heart (ala the 1980s screen version of THE BLOB). The tentacles were not featured in the LP version.

Bill Cosby once commented a recollection of the thumping heart beat and connected it with his father's feet stomping on the stairs in an LP comedy album of his own. Cosby was referring to the 1942 broadcast sponsored by Ironized Yeast, not the 1936 or 1938 version.

In 1999, the Gotham Radio Players (Steve Lewis, Bill Nadel, etc.) produced a recreation of the half-hour script and there is a recording that floats about in circulation. It was broadcast over NY radio station WBAI. They also recreated the performance at the Friends of Old-Time Radio in Newark, New Jersey a few years ago, if memory serves me correct, held annually every October.

LIGHTS OUT is best remembered for the cleverness of the sound effects now, but when the show aired, it wasn't as popular as it is today. One of those shows that got more popular and a cult status as the decades passed. METACOM in the 1980s was responsible for commercially releasing the episodes to the stores in the 1980s and revitalizing the series as Arch Oboler (who claimed he owned the rights to the show and didn't really) licensed the series to METACOM.

Arch Oboler was a dramatic playright and he was for radio was Rod Serling was for the Golden Age of Radio. Oboler came up with a few good ideas, but overall he was more a dramatist than clever with plots. Wyllis Cooper (later changed to Willis to please his wife's numerological inclanations) was better at coming up with stories of a gruesome nature, but was never good with the dialogue. Had Cooper wrote the story treatments and Oboler wrote the dialogue, the show would have been top-notch.

If you want one a par above LIGHTS OUT, I recommend QUIET, PLEASE. It aired in the mid-forties and was completely scripted by Cooper. Very enjoyable.