Lux Radio version of Lost Horizon

Just today I listened to the Lux Radio version of Lost Horizon (http://otrarchive.blogspot.com/2009/07/lux-radio-theater.html) which was originally transmitted in 1941. The only one remaining from the original cast is the most important one, Ronald Colman. The interesting thing about this radio version is that it is not based on the movie script but on the novel. Here, as in the novel, the hero's name is Hugh, not Robert. There is no brother, no funny archeologist, no sick prostitute. As in the novel, there is Conway's assistant, Mallinson, not his brother, and instead of the prostitute there is a female missionary. And Sondra Bizet and the chinese "villain" girl who is the brother's love interest are melded into one person as in the novel, a Chinese girl with whom both Conway and Mallinson are besotted, and who follows them from Shangri-La but does not die, instead comes back to "civilization" a very old woman.

The radio version also starts as originally filmed by Capra, with the amnesiac Conway aboard a ship, playing a piece by Chopin which was never published but which he learned from a pupil of Chopin's at Shangri-La. As most people know, this was the original beginning of the movie, but a disastrous preview in Santa Barbara made Capra cut the first reel.

As that footage was incinerated by Capra himself, the Lux Radio version is probably the closest thing we can experience to that original beginning of Lost Horizon. I also find it a bit odd that they did not base the radio version on the movie but the novel, since this was unusual and the movie was so indelibly inprinted in the public's mind.