World Film and Television Progress (1937-1938)

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RADIO AMERICAN RADIO COMMENTARY Edited by Thomas Baird The American School of the Air of the Columbia Broadcasting System, returns to the air for its ninth season with an expanded programme in which the National Education Association, representing three-quarters of a million teachers and officials, takes part. The Progressive Education Association, of some 10,000 teachers and administrators, also takes part in the development and presentation of another programme representing a new departure in subject matter of radio education. Each school day during the term, the American School of the Air is heard over the network. Nine separate series will run during the term. Monday has been divided into two divisions, the first "Exit and Entrances" filling the full halfhour for thirteen weeks, and the "Human Relations Forum" running half an hour, the final thirteen. "Exits and Entrances" is the new programme sponsored by the NEA. It is devoted to dramatisation and comment on current events. Shepard Stone, assistant to the Sunday Editor of the New York Times, is the commentator. Mr. Stone is in Europe now making a survey of the present situation there and his first two talks will go to American listeners by short wave from London. "The Human Relations Forum" which occupies the final thirteen Mondays is the broadcast arranged in conjunction with the Progressive Education Association. It will consist of discussions among high school students. American literature and music, designed for high school students is given on alternate Tuesdays. Dr. Louis Woodson Curtis, director of music in the public schools of Los Angeles, writes the script for the musical portions and Bernard Herrmann conducts the orchestra. The National Council of Teachers of English brings to the microphone eminent American authors. These include H. L. Mencken, Zona Gale, Robert P. T. Coffin, and Constance Skinner. Dorothy Gordon's "Songs for Children" which occupies fifteen minutes for the first fifteen Thursdays, is followed by short wave broadcasts from foreign lands of children singing folk songs and greeting American Youth. Future broadcasts will come from Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Wales. Japan and China will be included if possible. A boy and girl sing native folk songs, and send greetings in their native tongues. These are translated immediately. Dramas, interviews with youngsters recently out of high school, and expert advice comprise the vocational guidance programme. * * * Internationally famous scientists and explorers unite in presenting a new series of programmes over the WABC-Columbia network. Entitled "New Horizon" the new series is given 34 in co-operation with the American Museum of Natural History as part of the latter's Ten Year Development Plan. "New Horizon" enlists the talents of the explorers and scientists attached to the Museum staff, plus nationally known figures. Listeners are transported from pole to pole, across deserts into jungles, deep into unexplored mountains, through the Seven Seas and back into prehistoric ages for glimpses at aweinspiring monsters. The following prominent scientific personalities take part : Dr. Vilhjamar Stefansson, noted Arctic Explorer and president of the Explorers Club; Dr. Walter Granger, curator of Fossil Mammals of the Museum ; Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, famed Asiatic explorer; Dr. Harry C. Raven, gorilla expert of the Museum ; Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., one of the world's outstanding big game hunters; Dr. Barnum Brown, currently studying dinosaur relics in Wyoming, and Dr. Harold E. Anthony, leader of the Museum's Expedition which is exploring Shiva Temple and Wotan's Throne, two of the Sky Island features in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. * * * The Columbia Broadcasting Systems Department of Talks have inaugurated a new series of network programmes entitled "News and Reviews" combining last minute news reports and expert analysis of current events. A trio of commentators, H. V. Kaltenborn, Bob Trout, and Pierre Bedard combine their talents for reporting and comment. Kaltenborn discusses and analyses foreign news of the week and Bedard reviews domestic events in a similar manner. Trout gives a resume of the day's news events. Bedard is director of the French Institute of New York and Secretary General of the Alliance Francaise. He is heard regularly in France through CBS facilities. Trout covered the Coronation for CBS and has introduced President Roosevelt on almost every occasion the President has been heard since his inauguration. * * * George Olsen and his famous band playing from New York's New International Casino and Cab Calloway and his orchestra broadcasting from his familiar place at the Cotton Club in Harlem, are now being heard. Olsen's orchestra, which has been a Columbia feature for several years, has been one of America's most popular dance organisations since playing for the Broadway production of "Kid Boots" with Eddie Cantor. Olsen played his first hotel engagement at the Multnomah Hotel in Portland sixteen years ago. Cab Calloway, son of a Rochester, N.Y., lawyer and real estate broker, began his career in music as a choir singer at a Bethlehem Methodist Episcopal Church. When his family decided to train him for the law, he took up his studies at Chrain College in Chicago. To support himself he joined his sister in a coloured show. The career he has established for himself on those beginnings should be simple to trace for those who know the origin of Scat and Hy-De-Hi, and the true Calloway tradition. * * * Scientific contributions to the endless battle against crime are presented in drama form in the "Crusade Against Crime," "Gang Busters." Cases in which minute pieces of evidence prove to be the deciding factor in "breaking" the crime, are the subjects. Ordinarily "Gang Busters" re-enacts the activities of some notorious criminal, but the new evils bring to the attention of the radio audience cases showing the futility of even the most carefully planned crimes when science is drawn into the solution of the case. In one of the cases — a murder — scientists determine that a bullet had passed through a woman's breast before entering the body of the victim. One case hinged on the imprint of a trouser leg on the window sill, which when photographed and enlarged was found to match the weave in the cloth of a pair of trousers owned by suspect. In a third case, a letter written with six words to each line, an occupational trait of telegraphers, led to the solution of a major crime. "The Fall of the City9 The first of a series of experiments in radio drama was transmitted on the National Programme on Thursday, October 1th. The play chosen was "The Fall of the City" by Alexander McLeish. This work was first broadcast by the Columbia Broadcasting System, and directed by Irving Reis. Other experimental programmes will be given by the B.B.C. at regular intervals. We had expected that the B.B.C. would tell us what the experiment was to be. But no, the play was presented as any other play would have been and with no more introduction. We were left to pursue internal evidence to discover the experimental qualities ; and there was very little evidence. There was very little reason to label the play experimental. It obeys all the classical conventions ; it has the unities of time, space and action: it has messengers to report off-stage action and confidential dialogue to interpret the movement of the play. It is not a radio play at all. Within these limits the production of Peter Cresswell was extremely competent and his actors played up with fine inflection and precise timing. But again neither of these elements is peculiarly experimental. We have had good acting and speaking and good production from the B.B.C. in the past.