Best broadcasts of 1938-39 (1939)

Foreword JLJULOJUULJLOJLJL5LOJL5L!LOJUUU^^ The collection of broadcasts here presented will bring forcibly to the lay reader an acceptance of the known but neglected fact that in its daily service to the public radio is constantly producing material not only amazing in its scope but rich and various in its literature. Max Wylie’s selection of the Best Broadcasts of 1938-39 is a timely, sensible, and truthful representation of the industry’s output in the range of its interests and the quality of its workmanship. Every accepted type and form of broadcast has been included from the best talk to the best variety program, and each appears in its uncut “as broadcast’’ version. In length these vary from a few minutes to a full hour. But it is the sharp juxtaposition of contrasting themes that compels and sustains the reader’s interest. One moves from the elucidating remarks of Raymond Gram Swing on the postMunich situation to the curling metaphors of MacLeish’s poetry; from an eye-witness description of the rescue of the Squalus survivors to the jostling nonsense of Fred Allen’s Town Hall. The book is by turns sober and exciting, fanciful and realistic, an authentic reflection of the mood and purpose of contemporary broadcasting in America. That there is so much good writing in radio today will surprise many of the readers of this volume. That it has here been set down permanently for the pleasure of the average reader and for the critical attention of the student of the techniques of the industry is one of the happiest contributions in many years to the health of broadcast enterprise. I feel confident that the anthology of broadcasts will establish itself as a regular annual collection and take its proper place beside its cousins of the stage and the short story. During the past twenty years radio has delivered to America’s loud-speakers many hundreds of superior xvtt