Broadcasting (Jan - June 1942)

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH ARCHIBALD MacLEISH has the difficult job of helpingAmericans tell themselves the truth. As director of the Office of Facts & Figures, overall information agency in Washing, MacLeish has an assignment made complicated by wartime secrecy, by the human tendency to repeat rumors and gossip, by the immensity of our war effort, and by an unscrupulous enemy propoganda machine. Some of his knowledge he is expected to impart to NAB conventioneers, for he is a principal speaker on the Cleveland program. Last year OFF was a tiny bureau hidden away in a converted apartment house, part of the Office of Civilian Defense. As the defense effort speeded up, the public demanded a clearer idea of what the Government was doing, and why. Last October, the President set up the Office of Facts & Figures as an independent agency. Its assignment was to work out "the most coherent and comprehensive presentation to the nation of the facts and figures of national defense." It was instructed to consult with the already existing Government information agencies, coordinate their work, and see that the public got a well-rounded picture of America's defense drive. MacLeish was appointed director. He had achieved fame before this as a poet, as Librarian of Congress and as a top-flight journalist. Radio men know that he knows radio — for he showed America the limitless possibilities of radio as a new medium for creative expression. His stirring Fall of the City was broadcast by CBS April 11, 1937, and on Oct. 27, 1938 CBS produced his Air Raid. Here was one of the country's greatest living poets setting the airwaves pulsing with a new kind of poetry for a new streamlined age. MacLeish, incidentally, thinks the radio announcer has a dramatic function akin to the role of the ancient Greek chorus. Forty-four days after MacLeish was appointed OFF's director, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Overnight a defense effort changed to a war effort. OFF shot up in importance, took on the vital job of pulling together all the activities bearing on the catch-all term "morale". It became the clearing-house for all Governmental broadcasts, with William B. Lewis, ex-CBS program vice-president, as coordinator. It clears all public speeches by top Government officials. It serves as the funnel for all posters issued by Federal agencies. It summarizes the war effort, as in its pamphlet Report to the Nation, and in its four-network radio series This Is War. It exposes Axis propaganda, as in its striking new booklet Divide & Conquer. It checks on the state of public opinion to guide the Government on what the public doesn't know about the war effort. Archibald MacLeish, who directs this work, was born May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, 111., "in a wooden chateau overlooking from a clay bluff and a grove of oak trees, the waters of Lake Michigan." His father was a Scotsman who came to Chicago from Glasgow, a respected merchant and philanthropist. His mother, "intelligent and energetic and tireless and virtuous", was a school teacher and a college president. MacLeish went to Yale, class of 1915. He played football and he was on the swimming team; he was chairman of the Literary Magazine and he made Phi Beta Kappa. His class book reported that "MacLeish expects to take up the study of literature." Instead he went to Harvard Law School, topping his class for "scholarship, conduct and character". He married Ada Hitchcock, a NOTES •C. L. MENSER, national program manager of NBC, and Irene Sexton, of New York, were married in New York May 2. The bride is a graduate of Barnard College and is office manager for a New York camera supply company. RUSKIN STONE, member of sales department of WSPD, Toledo, has had his oil portrait of J. Harold Ryan accepted for display in the annual exhibition of work of Toledo artists at the Toledo Museum of Art. MORRIS (SteT^e) MUDGE of the MBS eastern sales staff, is temporarily replacing Ade Hult, Mutual's western sales manager in the Chicago office. Mr. Hult is recovering from a serious illness in Henrotin Hospital, Chicago. DON BILLINGS has resigned from KYA, San Francisco, as account executive on May 1 and left for Washington to engage in Government work. LEO O. RICKBTTS, sales manager of KFBK, Sacramento, Cal., is the father of a baby girl born April 26. ORVILLB SHUGG, supervi.sor of Canadian Broadcasting Corp. farm broadcasts at Toronto, is making a tour of Western Canadian stations carrying CBC farm broadcasts, and will attend the National Farm Radio Forum meeting at Winnipeg, May 2.527. WILLIAM F. MAAG .Jr., owner of WFM.J, Youngstown, O., has been named general chairman of the Community and War Chest campaign of Youngstown and Mahoning County. MIKE LAYMAN, manager of WSAZ, Huntington, W. Va., has .ioined the Navy as a yeoman, third class. John L. Henry, advertising manager, will serve as acting station manager. JAMES L. HOWE, of WBTM, Danville, Va., recently was elected state president of the junior chamber of commerce at its annual convention in Roanoke. FRANCIS C. BARTON Jr., manager of the program service division of CBS; has succeeded Joseph H. Burgess Jr. as personnel manager of CBS. TOM FRY, of the BLUE sales staff, is the father of a baby girl born April 30. Bob Eastman, of the BLUE spot sales staff, is the father of a boy. singer and talented musician, and to them a son was born early in 1917. Later that year, MacLeish went to France with an American hospital unit, shifted to the more dangerous Field Artillery "out of shame", fought at the front north of Meaux, came home a captain. Then he taught law for a year at Harvard, practiced law in Boston for three more years. He did pretty well, but he couldn't get enough time to write. So he threw up his job, and went back to poetry. Best known are his Streets in the Moon (1926). Nobodaddy (1926), The Hamlet of A. MacLeish (1928) , Conquistador (1932), Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City (1933), Panic (1935) , Public Speech (1936). His poetry improved greatly as it went along, until finally Conquistador won the Pulit{Coyitinued on page 88) JOHN AUSTIN DRISCOLL, for seven years general manager and commercial manager of KRKD, Los Angeles, resigned that post in late April because of ill health, and has moved to Chicago. Although no successor has been announced, it is expected Ned Connor, appointed commercial manager, will supervise other activities. He has been with KRKD for 13 years as account executive. BURRIDGE D. BUTLER, president of WLS, Chicago, and operator of KOY, Phoenix, and KTUC, Tucson, has returned to Chicago office after spending the winter in Arizona. VINCENT F. CALLAHAN, director of press and radio of the war savings staff. Treasury Dept., has been appointed a colonel aide-de-camp on the staff of Gov. John E. Miles, of New Mexico, in recognition of the publicity campaign he directed in that State. MALCOLM NEILL, assistant station relations supervisor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. at Toronto, and son of Stewart Neill, owner of CFNB, Fredericton, N. B., on May 2 became the father of a son. R. ' SANFORD GUYER, sales man^ ager of WBTM, Danville, Va., is tha father of a baby girl, Sandra Jean, Edward S. Gardner, formerly in the tobacco business, has joined the WBTM sales staff. RALPH HATCHER, formerly in the sales promotion department of WTAB, Norfolk, has left to join the Army and has been replaced by Shirley Enright. Ken Given, formerly of WCHS, Charleston, W. Va., and Frank Warrington and Hal Barton, of WARM, Scranton, have joined the WTAR announcing staff. WAYNE RICHARDS former assistant promotion director of KSL, Salt Lake City, was recently promoted to a captaincy in the Army Air Force, stationed at Mather Field, Cal. LT. HARRY MILLER, formerly of the Lou Cowan publicity organization ; Lt. Thomas A. Denton, account executive of H. W. Kastor & Sons ; Ensign Richard Belt, formerly of the program department of WHIO, Dayton, have recently been assigned as Navy public relations men in the Chicaga radio section. JOHN DOUD, former assistant tariff manager of CBS, is now administrator of tariff facilities at the Office of the Coordinator of Information. BOB BURN, who recently served four yeai-s in the Navy and was a member of the all-fleet football and baseball teams, has joined WWRL, New York, as salesman. HAROLD W. WILSON, manager of WWPG, Lake Worth, Fla., has resigned and the management has been taken over by Charles B. Davis, chief owner. Cairns Heads CFAC BERT CAIRNS has been appointed manager of CFAC, Calgary, succeeding Victor F. Neilsen. Cairns has been in Calgary since last November on sales promotional work for All-Canada Radio Facilities; and Taylor-Pearson & Carson, coming from A. McKim Ltd., Toronto, where he had been that agency's radio director since May, 1940. Prior to joining A. McKim he had been with the Toronto sales office of All-Canada for three years, coming from western Canada when that organization opened its eastern Canadian office. He has served with a number of stations in Edmonton, last on CJCA, before coming east with All-Canada. Neilsen, before becoming manager of CFAC, had been general manager for both CJRC, Winnipeg, and CJRM, Regina, since September 1939 and before that had managed CFCF, Montreal. BROADCASTING • Broadcast Advertising May 11, 1942 • Page 7a