Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

46 professionally speaking Drama in Radio Writing for the Unseen Audience Requires a Special Technic An interview with Basil Loughrane, of WHK, Cleveland, by Marvell Lenoir. DRAMA in Radio has a long long way to go before it reaches the heights of either the dramatic stage, or the talking screen. People have for centuries, ever since the first traveling minstrels in ancient times, been educated to see their plays. Now comes a complete reversal, to hear and not to see. It is much harder to hold an audience that cannot see you. Then the voices, at once the greatest handicap and the greatest asset. For years Radio has been educating listeners to deep resonant voices, soft and pleasing, with an evenness of trend that is, however pleasing to the ear, entirely lacking in the heights and depths of feeling necessary for good drama. The lack of the versatile trained talking voice is the chief detriment to the present complete success of radio drama. The usual studio dramas are played by the station's staff with a few exceptions. There are several stations which have a separate staff for the presentation of all dramatic works and these few present much better dramas and improved interpretation of roles than the more handicapped stations can present. Please do not misunderstand. The staffs try hard and do very good work but in most cases they are not actors and but poorly fitted for the work. The announcers are pressed into service for all the leading male roles and the minute they begin to speak, their deep resonant voices, so pleasing for announcing, identify them at once to the listener and tend to destroy the character they are trying to create. He is as a rule so well trained in speaking in the well modulated not too expressive voice from a very close position to the microphone, that to speak well away from the "mike" and give a dissertation in full voice is very hard for him. Sometimes he forgets and speaks softly when away from the "mike" and loudly close to it, which causes his voice to fade and then to blast. The greatest disadvantage is the spoiling of his carefully cultivated announcing voice. The dramatic voice especially trained for radio presentation is the proper solution. The use of the other Basil Loughrane JLL things come to him who waits, providing he works hard enough to achieve them while he is waiting. So with Basil Loughrani, who as a brown-eyed, curlyheaded youngster with a big ambition started working very hard in the University of Toronto to become the world's leading physician. Somehow that physician got side tract, and gave us instead Basil the very versatile leading man, who has deserted the legitimate theater for the past two years, and Jtas become one of Cleveland's most interesting announcers, radio playwrite, and director in chief of WHK's dramatic staff. delineation of character, as those played by Ethel Barrymore, Margaret Anglin and Ruth Cornell. Dramatic producers in the radio field have their minds set on the fact that a program must move slowly to give the listener full chance to grasp the events. They must until radio actors with radio drama voices are evolved. The theater itself has seven media of expression. Action — the players move to and fro, enter and leave, and gesture effectively to convey meaning. Line — which is interpreted in beauty of form and line in background and grouping. Color — of course needs no explaining. Word and Voice go together, yet they are two separate media, and last, but most important, comes human contact — that intangible something that projects personality across the barrier of the footlights, and makes you settle in your seat and draw a breath of enjoyable anticipation at the first appearance on the stage. Here comes poor little Radio and of all of these media what has it? Voice and words alone. In a very few isolated cases it has pub type voices, while less expensive, is like trying to kill two birds with one stone. Then there are the still lighter voices to consider — the ladies. Here too the deeper contralto voice has long been favored'. Basil feels the contralto voice is excellently adapted to character women but not to leads. Even on the stage very, very few leading women with contralto voices have achieved successes. Most of these women play roles demanding mature licity, for the average radio drama the publicity is limited to a line in small type on the daily program and even the actors are not accorded the distinction of being other than a voice. One of the least things radio drama could do is present the cast and describe the settings to be used and not leave the entire burden with the actor who is already struggling against a larger unaccustomed handicap. The action must be suggested, in that the settings are entirely missing. DOES THE LISTENER LISTEN G. A. RICHARDS President JOHN F. PATT Vice-Pres. and Gen. Mgr. Patronize a Quality Station with a Quantity Audience to any particular Cleveland station? No, he tunes in on programs that entertain, educate and give him the news of the. day. In Greater Cleveland radio listeners habitually tune in on WGAR, The Friendly Station of Cleveland. The only station in Northern Ohio to carry Amos V Andy and other famous features of the N. B. C. Blue Net Work. W G A K THE WGAR BROADCASTING COMPANY, Inc. STUDIO AND OFFICES, STATLER HOTEL, CLEVELAND • Affiliated with N.B.C. Blue Net Work