A question about "The Third Man"--anyone know how it was
explained in the radio series that Harry Lime survived the
shootout in the sewers?
--Dave Z.
The series, titled The Lives of Harry Lime, offers an
explanation at the beginning of each episode. Welles goes on
about how Harry Lime may have died in the sewers (hope that
wasn't a spoiler for anybody), but before that he led many
lives. He ends the pitch with "How do I know? Because I am
Harry Lime." Don't know if that's a suggestion that we're
listening to a dead man or that Lime didn't really die. The
plots for each story are pretty good, but the character is
closer to Charteris' the Saint than to Greene's Harry. The
1950s TV version, titled The Third Man, starring Michael
Rennie, is set several years after Lime's death, with no
explanation whatsoever. In the show's pilot, set in Paris,
the character is similar to the movie Lime. That is, he
admits to having done unscrupulous things for money and,
while he's stopped the really awful stuff, he's still pretty
shady. In the subsequent episodes I've seen -- there's a DVD
with ten half-hours -- Lime is a totally reformed
international businessman with a main office in San Francisco
and a fluttery, affected British assistant.
Dick Lochte
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