Family Theater: Lodging for the Night

Family Theater presents Dan Duryay, Robert Alda and Ona Munson. From Hollywood, the Mutual Network in cooperation with Family Theater brings you Robert Alda and Ona Munson in Robert Lewis Stevenson's classic, Lodging for the Night, to introduce the drama, Your Host and Airy Her, Dan Duryay.

Thank you Gene Baker. Tonight Family Theater tells the story by Robert Lewis Stevenson, called Lodging for the Night. It concerns a man who was a baffling mixture of good and bad, of the admirable and the infamous.

He was a brilliant student and a common thief. He was a great poet whose verses are still loved today, and a rogue who was constantly in trouble with the police. This man was Francois Villon.

Our story this evening is about one night in his life, a winter night, for the poor people of 15th century Paris, a night cold beyond belief. In the streets of Paris, wolves joined their howls with the whimpering of dogs, and the whistling of the wind.

Within Véon's apartment, a bear addict ironically next to the gallows on Sainte Nie Road, two of the thievish crew with whom he consorted were passing time by rolling dice, While the poet himself, paper and quill pen in hand, stared out the window at the macabre shadows dangling from the gallows' ropes.

Why lords of war dined in stinks? You'll close that window before we freeze to death. Listen, Montini, the wind rattling the jibbets. It's got them dancing the devil's jig up there on the gallows, dancing without a flaw.

Are you close that window? Dance my gallants dance! You'll be none the warmer. Then I'll close it myself, Vyong. But, Montini, I thought you were fond of dancing. I've had enough of your jokes for you.