Best broadcasts of 1938-39 (1939)

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHOW No Help Wanted by William N. Robson ijamflaflfiaflflaaflaflgflga000 gQ0gfl0B0Qflfl00Q0Q0QQ0.QQQQ, No Help Wanted” is one of a series of documentary broadcasts produced in New York for the British Broadcasting Corporation and broadcast from sound film over the BBC transmitters in England. It has never been heard in this country. This series has included thus far “Crosstown Manhattan,” a documentary inspection of a New York street; “G Men against Crime,” an examination of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and “No Help Wanted,” a panorama of the nation’s depression and the efforts of the Works Progress Administration to solve the nation’s unemployment problem. The first of the American documentary broadcasts was “Ecce Homo,” by Pare Lorentz. It was repeated in London in the summer of 1938, with BritishAmerican actors. The BBC has for years been presenting documentary or “actuality” broadcasts, but “Ecce Homo,” which presented a picture of American unemployment, was the first American experiment in this technique. To produce such a broadcast in London was perhaps an audacious attempt to carry coals to Newcastle, but the British press received the production with unanimous acclaim and editorially asked why their own radio producers did not give them such a picture of the British “distressed areas.” The British press acceptance of the American documentaries that followed has been increasingly generous and enthusiastic. Upon hearing “No Help Wanted,” London newspapers insisted, “Nothing finer has yet come from America, including “Job To Be Done” [the British title for “Ecce Homo”]. As may readily be seen upon reading the script, the documentary technique differs greatly from the technique