Radio varieties (Sept 1940-June 1941)

RADIO AND YOUR IMAGINATION CecU B. DeMille. world famous motion picture director produces the Lux Theater programs over the CBS each monday at 8:00 p.m. CST. DeMille, one of the screen's foremost figures for more than 25 years, is the first big film director to devote a regular portion of his time and talent to radio. In this story he explains the technique used to stimulate the imagination of the radio audience. By Cecil B. DeMille Strength of the radio dramatization of any story involving action and excitement lies in the ability of producers and players to stimulate the listener's imagination. This was clearly demonstrated for me recently when we produced Louis Bromfield's novel, "The Rains Came", on the CBS "Lux Radio Theater." You will recall the climax of the story — the earthquake that releases a flood on the province of Ranchipur, India, taking an appalling death toll, and violently changing the destinies of all who are left alive. The day after we produced this story on the air I received the congratulations of a motion picture actress who had listened to the performance at home. "That was the greatest flood scene I've ever witnessed," she said — and then laughed at her slip. "I mean," she corrected, "that I've ever heard." But I told her she was right the first time. We had tried to make that flood visible to our audience, and to her it apparently was. She had enough imagination to visualize the whole scene that we could merely suggest with sound. And in this combination of powers — imagination and stimulation— lies the great magic secret of radio. The radio listener, his imagination stimulated by the sounds and effects, becomes for the moment a motion picture director. Let us'suppose a war story is being broadcast. There are sounds of battle, and ^a single line of dialogue: "There are 15,000 men storming that hill, sir." CECIL B. DEMILLE The listener with imagination immediately creates that scene in his mind. He visualizes trees, rocks, parapets, distributes thousands of men through the scene. Perhaps, like a general, he places guns, tanks, planes, puffs of smoke here and there, hand-tohand fighting. The listener with imagination can "see" this effect, I repeat, but. only if his imagination is properly stimulated by the sound we give him. Not long ago, I imported hundreds of 70 and 100 foot pine trees from the San Bernardino mountains, "planted" the forest at Paramount and populated it with 500 Indians for a single scene in the picture, "North West Mounted Police," The total bill made me think, with some chagrin, how much easier it would be to create the same scene when we do "North West Mounted Police" on the Lux Radio Theater — with a few words of description, some dialogue, and a number of supernumerary voices, back from the microphone f o r "atmosphere." Yes, motion pictures are much more expensive. In a motion picture, each member of the audience will see that scene in exactly the same way. But the radio audience, hearing it on the air, will have thousands of individual concepts. It is this "imaginative elasticity" of radio that fascinates me. Once I asked a room full of people to sketch for me their impressions of a great temple referred to as the scene of a broadcast. Of course, all the sketches differed greatly in conception and detail. Yet each was striking, and revealed how vividly the subject had impressed each listener. So, too, with a complete drama on the air — projected through a single microphone, it is transformed into as many imaginative dramas as there are pairs of ears to hear it. RADIO VARIETIES — OCTOBER Page 5