What's on the air (Nov 1929-Feb 1931)

WHAT'S ON THE AIR Page 39 Margaret Anglin THE National Broadcasting Company has inaugurated a twentysix-week series of educational broadcasts, embracing the outstanding plays of all time, with the leading roles enacted in many instances by the actors and actresses most prominently identified with each play. Under the general title of Radio Guild, the series will be heard each Friday afternoon from 4 to 5 o'clock, E. S. T., throughout the winter. A coast-to-coast network of stations associated with NBC is broadcasting the series. The plays, selected from the reading-lists of secondary schools and colleges throughout the United States, are planned as an extracurricular course in dramatic literature. Each broadcast will last an hour. Such stars of the legitimate stage as Margaret Anglin, Tom Powers, Eva Le Gallienne, Dudley Digges, Margaret Kennedy and Basil Rathbone, to mention only a few, have been or will be identified with the series. The plays in the series include such classics as "Iphigenia in Aulis," "Twelfth Night," "The Doll's House," "The Green Goddess," "Milestones," "Lady Windermere's Fan," "Mr. Pirn Passes By," "Hamlet," "The Melting-pot," "Beau Brummel," "Romeo and Juliet," and others. Several of these have already been presented. A special microphone adaptation of each play to be presented is made by Vernon Radcliffe, veteran of the stage and screen, who directs the programs. The same cast of Broadway and microphone actors who played in the original Radio Guild programs on Wednesday after Eva Le Gallienne noons are heard in the current series, in addition to the guest stars. They include Florence Mai one, Charles Webster, Alfred Shirley, Guy Kibbie and Charles Warburton. In announcing the inauguration of the educational series, John W. Elwood, vicepresident of NBC, said: "Two years ago the National Broadcasting Company undertook its first experiment in strictly educational programs with the Music Appreciation series of concerts under the direction of Walter Damrosch. Through our combined coast-to-coast networks we put the program into over fifteen thousand schools and within hearing of an estimated five million students. The success we hoped for was most definitely achieved. "With the new Radio Guild series we hope, through the co-operation of schools, colleges and the students, to achieve the same or an even greater objective. Every play to be presented has been selected from the reading-lists in English literature. Their importance in acquainting students, who know drama only from the printed page, with great plays and great actors, is inestimable. "It is our hope and expectation that the reaction to this broadcast series will in every way equal in the dramatic field the success of the Music Appreciation series." What, then, could have been more fitting than the vehicle chosen to inaugurate this "drama appreciation" series? The presentation of Euripides' classic, "Iphigenia in Aulis," marked the first time for early Greek drama to find its way to a radio network! CAST OF NBC's "RADIO GUILD" AT INAUGURAL BROADCAST Left to right: Charles B. Tramont, announcer; Wright Kramer; Allele Ronton; William Shelley; Cesarc Sodcro. director of orchestra; Margaret Anglin; William S. Raincx, production manager; Charles Warburton; Marjoric Gateson; Vernon Radcliffe, director of the series; Florence Malone; Alfred Shirley; Charles Webster; Ka/herine Proctor and Olive Reeies-Smilh. DR. FRANK H. VIZETELLY, who speaks every Tuesday evening over the Columbia network of his "adventures in words" during a thirty -nine -year association with the New Standard Dictionary, of which he is now editor, has had adventures of other kinds as well. He was at school in Paris, at the age of seven, when the city was besieged just before the end of the Franco-Prussian War, and was subjected to all the privations of those nightmare days. Then, thirty years later, when the British maintained a Boer prison camp on the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda, he was the only civilian who penetrated the lines, which brought him to the point of the bayonet. But he brought back his story. He should be able to tell a good many of them with his vocabulary of 450,000 words. & "Believe It or Not" Ripley, NBC fact expounder, was asked if there was any chance of his running out of material. Ripley replied that, should he stay in his own home for four years, drawing continuously, he could not exhaust the material now on hand. You have only to watch Mary Charles, La Palina soprano, sing in order to understand why her voice can convey so wide a range of emotion, according to David Ross. Feeling a part and acting it as well constitute one great secret of radio success, he says. Apparently on the verge of tears one moment, shining with happiness the next, Miss Charles' face runs the gamut of expressions demanded by the song she happens to be delivering. Most of the men who preside over the control panels in Columbia's monitor rooms are either musicians or know how to read music. By following the score of a program, they arc enabled to cut down power to the microphones a split second before the players sound an especially loud passage. Georgia Backus is studying the science of graphology in her odd moments. She's said to be learning so fast that none of the Columbia staff is safe in writing his name while she's about. The things an odd twist to a letter or .1 missine. dot to an "i" indicate to Miss Backus are always surprising ami generally dismay ing to the subjects of her analyses. /;:..■ — Dej says dat dat young ni>;gah I'xodus Johnsing done got a terrible position wiv de army. Mtndy—h dai so? What sort ob er position is it? / izj — Why, dey says he's done attached to a tlyin" corpse. MA