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[• / Best Broadcasts of 1939-40 SELECTED AND EDITED BY MAX WYLIE Director of Script and Continuity Columbia Broadcasting System; Editor, Best Broadcasts of 1938-39 rHis is the second anthology bring¬ ing together a year’s crop of he outstanding scripts in all fields if radio broadcasting. Like Best Broadcasts of 1938-39, this new vol- ime is not only valuable to everyone uofessionally interested in radio, but ilso contains a great deal of highly njoyable reading. As in the previous volume, the cripts this year have great interest ;nd variety of appeal. Emphasis s on comedy programs, news broad- :asts, and radio drama. Comedy cripts include outstanding programs rom Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Burns ind Allen, Bob Hope, and the Aldrich ramily. Among the news broadcasts ire the historic account by William ... Shirer of the signing of the irmistice in the old railroad car at Ympiegne, and the dramatic eye- continued on back flap) eA o w Best Broadcasts of 1939-40 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Media History Digital Library https://archive.org/details/bestbroadcastsofOOwhit Best Broadcasts of 1939-40 Selected and Edited by MAX WYLIE Director of Scripts and Continuity, Columbia Broadcasting System; Lecturer, New York University Radio Workshop JLSULOJLRJLOJLSULOJLtLfLSLSLfLOJLSULiLSLlLOJLOJULOJLtLOJLfLSLSL^ New York WHITTLESEY HOUSE London MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. Copyright, 1940, hy the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. “My Client, Curley," copyright, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. “In the Fog,” copyright, 1939, by Milton E. M. Geiger. “The Dark Valley,” copyright, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. “For Richer—For Richer,” copyright, 1939, by True Board- man and reprinted by special arrangement with the International Silver Company. “This Lonely Heart,” based upon “Beloved Friend: The Story of Tschaikowsky and Nadejda von Meek,” by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meek, published and copyrighted, 1937, by Random House, Inc. “The Clinic,” copyright, 1940, by the National Broadcasting Company, Inc. Fred Allen material, copyright, 1940, by Fred Allen. Burns and Allen program, copyright, 1939, by George Burns. Bob Hope program, copyright, 1940, by Bob Hope and reprinted by special arrangement with the Pepsodent Company. The Aldrich Family, copyright, 1940, by Clifford Goldsmith. The Pursuit of Happiness, copyright, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. Meet Mr. Weeks, copyright, 1940, by the National Broadcast¬ ing Company, Inc. Ruth Gordon’s diary material included in program Meet Mr. Weeks, copyright, 1939, by the Atlantic Monthly. Excerpts from “The Journal of Arnold Bennett, 1896-1928” included in program Meet Mr. Weeks, copyright, 1932, 1933, by Viking Press, Inc., New York. “The Human Adventure,” copyright, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting Sys¬ tem, Inc., and reprinted by special arrangement with the University of Chicago. The Lone Ranger, copyright, 1940, by The Lone Ranger, Inc. Pepper Young’s Family, copyright, 1939, by the National Broadcasting Company, Inc. Material of Major George Fielding Eliot, Elmer Davis, Edward R. Murrow, and William L. Shirer, copyright, 1939, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. Material of Wythe Williams, copy¬ right, 1940, by Wythe Williams and reprinted by arrangement with Mutual Broadcasting System. Material of Raymond Gram Swing, copyright, 1940, by Raymond Gram Swing. “The Graf Spee,” copyright, 1939, by the National Broadcasting Company, Inc. Material on the Belmont Stakes, copyright, 1940, by the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. Notice: This book is copyrighted, and no part or section thereof may be reprinted, rebroadcast, or performed for any purpose whatever by any per¬ son without permission of the copyright owners. PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE A Division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Printed in the United States of America hy the Maple Press Co., York, Pa. Preface JLOJLfiJLOJLSLSUUULOJLOJLOJLOJUULOJULJLOJ^^ his book is Volume II in a series of annual collections X of outstanding radio material. Some of the pieces re¬ printed in the following pages are very good from every standard, and some of them are very bad from every standard except radio’s. American, radio shares the standards of the public it serves. It does not, in contrast to British radio (before the war), decide what the public should have, put it on, leave it there for months, and ignore the fact that it brings small delight to few people. English friends have told me, for example, that you can learn how to flash the chimney of your smokehouse, how to tell the Douglas plaid from the Cameron plaid, and how to keep bees—all this over the wireless. American radio tries to teach, too; but we somehow act on the assumption that a man will be coming around to flash the chimney, that a good Cameron will know his own plaid. As to the bees, we, too, approve of them as the English do, and we believe in them; but we seem to feel that a bee knows his business. As a race we feel that bees have been around a long time and have done well. As a race we do not believe we can bring much to the bee. We do not see a commercial in it. Over here we don’t bother with bees; so radio doesn’t bother with them either. But Englishmen hear a great deal about one thing and another that has no possible affinity with their life. It is the difference between arbitrament and volition. Nor does American radio, in contrast to German radio, decide what the public should have, put it on, leave it there, and see to it that all Germans behave as if they were having a whale of a time listening to Goebbels’ romancing and Mr. Schicklgruber’s helminthic fiddle-faddle. English radio is a schoolmaster. German radio is a drill- master. American radio is the reciting pupil of its own 130 v PREFACE million tutors. In Germany you take your radio and like it. In England you take it or leave it. In America you get what you ask for; and if you don’t like what you get, it is taken off for you. In general, American radio gives out what it has taken in. This is healthy, this is sensible, and this is fair. It would seem logical to go on from here and point out that our great national genius for “squawking” is America’s best check and balance to keep radio doing the things Americans want it to do. But it is at this precise point that we encounter a severe, and in some ways inexplicable, breach in our logic. Radio hears much squawking, to be sure, and it considers each squawk according to its merit; but thus far its millions of listeners have not yielded a true critic of the industry. To me this is very strange. Nothing in this world has impinged upon the active consciousness of a whole people as radio has impinged upon Americans. I have heard many explanations as to why radio or the great body of its lis¬ teners has not supplied broadcasters with good critics. It is claimed that art produces critics and that radio is not an art and so does not deserve and does not need critics. It is said that critics are concerned with form and that radio is innocent of form. Another and far too popular answer to the whole thing is this: criticizing radio is as futile as criticizing the Atlantic Ocean. Here the reasoning seems to be that you can say all you want about the ocean without changing its temperature or moving it out of its bed. All these arguments make a lot of sense, and they have all been enunciated at one time or another by sensible people. But they do not make enough sense. They bring no direction of development to the world’s most overgrown baby, no dietary control, no educational toys, nothing but diapers. All of this is to be deprecated because it is all negative. The simple fact of the matter—with a few scattered exceptions that I wish presently to mention—is this: radio is its own critic and has been so ever since the busi¬ ness began. With much patience, many mistakes, and great trouble it has written millions of letters, called people on vi PREFACE the telephone, rung doorbells, and Q.S.T.’d entire networks to see what listeners were listening to and why, and to see what they were not listening to and why. It has spent millions of dollars and millions of man-hours in finding out as much about its own business as its public would let it know. Terrific energy has been put into this search by radio people. Little energy has been put into it by radio listeners. Broadcasters want to know where they are, and the public is not helping them as much as it should. Few discerning men within the industry itself would claim that broadcasting as a whole is an art or even that broadcasting as a whole has artistic form. Most of them know pretty exactly what radio is. Most of them know that it is the most fluid medium that we have for bringing some of the arts (and only some) to their largest audiences. That much is a good deal, but it can never reach its peak of self-realization without the assistance of intelligent and sympathetic public review. To lump radio with the Atlantic Ocean and say that one might as well criticize the one as the other is a very dan¬ gerous thing to do. The risk and the fallacy in this rugged analogy are at once apparent; several people have criti¬ cized the Atlantic Ocean with very good results.

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