The Battle of the Bard: Shakespeare on US Radio in 1937 9781641890786

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THE BATTLE OF THE BARD

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THE BATTLE OF THE BARD SHAKESPEARE ON U.S. RADIO IN 1937 Michael P. Jensen

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library © 2018, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-​ NonCommercial-​NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is an exception or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/​29/​EC) or would be determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94–​553) does not require the Publisher’s permission.

ISBN: 978​16 ​ 4189​077​9 e-​ISBN: 978​1​64189​078​6

https://​arc-​humanities.org Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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CONTENTS

General Editors’ Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

A Note on the Text?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction: What Was Radio?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1. Preliminary Bouts: Shakespeare on American Radio before the Battle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 2. In This Corner: Streamlined Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 3. And in That Corner: The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Chapter 4. And the Winner Is? Aftermath, Afterlives, After Shows, and Alternative Shows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Afterword: A Brief Murky Consideration of Recreational Shakespeare as a Concept in Light of the Battle, with Some Personal Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Selected Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

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Dedicated to Cydne Haws Jensen, who has given me a life that allowed me to write this book.

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GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE

There is a divide between the energy and joy with which the public engages in Shakespeare and what we do as academics. The Recreational Shakespeare series crosses this divide with a series of new, playful, and challenging voices that look at public engagements with Shakespeare in popular culture and education. Recreational Shakespeare has two emphases. The first is the study of the ways that artists have recreated Shakespeare and his texts on screen, stage, radio, the internet, in other performance media, and in novels, comics, and poetry. Adaptations, riffs, and reimaginings that are clearly inspired by Shakespeare and those that partly or completely hide their origins are in the purview of this series. The other “recreational” element emphasizes the ways these artifacts are consumed as people spend their money and free time enjoying them. Books in this series are quite short. Academic rigour is required. Academic language is not. Recreational Shakespeare books are fun. The General Editors invite new and established authors to contribute to the Recrea­ tional Shakespeare series. We are looking for writers of monographs and editors of anthologies. Please visit the website for a more technical introduction and all the contact information: https://​arc-​humanities.org/​our-​series/​arc/​recs/​ Jeffrey Kahan, University of La Verne Eric S. Mallin, University of Texas, Austin Michael P. Jensen, Contributing Editor, Shakespeare Newsletter

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PREFACE

An article in the June 23, 1937 show business newspaper Variety began,

CBS and NBC’s “Battle of the Bard” went into round two this week with both webs doing exploitative horn-​blowing a-​plenty and making claims to prior discovery of the works of the Avon scribbler, dead 208 years.1

Difficult as it is to imagine today, America’s two leading media companies fought over which had the better claim to Shakespeare. The Battle of the Bard explores this episode in US cultural history when the dominant broadcast networks, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), deployed their best resources to appropriate Shakespeare’s prestige and the print media described it with the nomenclature of boxing. These fourteen broadcasts are among the more remarkable recreations of Shakespeare of their time. Shakespeare audio, meaning radio broadcasts and other audio Shakespeare, are the neglected corner of Shakespeare performance scholarship, yet there have been more audio productions of Shakespeare than film and television productions combined, hundreds more, often with big name stars in the lead roles. I offer this book as an example of just how interesting and rewarding the study of Shakespeare audio can be. Americans born in the fifties did not experience network radio as their parents knew it. Those born in the twenty-​first century arrived in a world in which radio has largely been supplanted by downloads, CDs, and “radio” delivered by satellite. Many today may be surprised to learn the power the medium had from the twenties through the early fifties. The introduction of this book, therefore, will show that radio was the dominant medium in these decades, for the Battle of the Bard cannot be understood without that context. Chapter 1 surveys Shakespeare broadcasts in the United States prior to the Battle to understand why the networks presented heavily abridged adaptations in time slots of forty-​five and sixty minutes. The formats of the Battle programs met the expectations of most listeners. The second chapter introduces the Battle and explains why the networks were so angry that each wanted to lord Shakespeare’s prestige over the other, how they put their series together, and tells the story of the first series broadcast, Streamlined Shakespeare on NBC. This will include a summary of each episode, its critical reception, and an analysis comparing the radio “texts” to Shakespeare’s texts. The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle was the second series aired. That series will receive the same treatment in ­chapter 3. 1  “ ‘Who Discovered Shakespeare?’ Is Now Strictly NBC-​CBS Bone of Contention,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 39.

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Preface

Alternate Shakespeare series, other literary broadcasts inspired by the Battle, and the afterlives of the Battle programs and players will be explored in ­chapter  4 to bring closure to this fascinating story and in order to show that all the hoopla did not bring the prestige the combatants craved. This final chapter is followed by a very brief Afterword that ponders the Battle as “Recreational Shakespeare,” tries to understand how well and ill it fits that description, and comments on the murkiness of that taxonomy. With a choice of writing about mass culture from the perspective of cultural and media theory or reporting the events as people of the time understood them, I chose the latter—​though the word “mediation” will be used a few times. These theories are an excuse to judge the past from the vantage of the present. I do not do that sort of criticism. I leave it to others to build on this study and judge the Battle of the Bard and the people who produced it. I will make moral observations from time to time, but these are not based on academic theory. Acknowledgements must be made. The first goes to Jeffrey Kahan and Eric S. Mallin, the creators of this series, who asked me to be on the Advisory Board then enthusiastically embraced telling this story. They later invited me to join them as a General Editor. Likewise, Erika Gaffney, my generous editor who did all she could to allow this book to be as I hoped it would be. Susan Anderson helped me understand why the ghettoizing of African-​Americans on radio series such as Darktown Strutters Jamboree was offensive to many people. She also helped me understand that “sepian” was an inoffensive synonym for “colored,” used by many people of different races in the thirties. Ian Dickerson told me of the February 20, 1928 production of The Tempest on WLIT and supplied a newspaper clipping of that day’s radio listing. Further thanks to Susan Gay for supplying some of the relevant passages of Elaine Barrie Barrymore’s book, All My Sins Remembered. Mark Ekman and Todd Kmetz made listening to the Battle programs in The Paley Center for Media in New  York effortless, and my friend Susanne Greenhalgh expressed her concerns about certain choices in this book during lunch the weekend before I began making the final edits. I must also acknowledge the then anonymous reviewer, now outed as Grace Tiffany, who supplied a wonderful quote for the back cover of this book.

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A NOTE ON THE TEXT?

Yes, a question mark, for these things are supposed to be called “A Note on the Text,” but this note is as more about the footnotes, especially the odd punctuations, spellings, italics, and other idiosyncrasies in the quotations and citations that may drive my poor copy editor crazy. I have tried to preserve these faithfully and hope that I made no mistakes. For example, the company name “Warner Bros.” is correct; “Warner Brothers” is not. Most radio reviews in the thirties were unsigned. Reviews names have been supplied when known, but most are unknown. One reason this book uses footnotes instead of a bibliography is that a bibliography would have pages and pages of citations under “Anonymous,” greatly increasing the difficulty of readers who want to see the reviews cited. I encourage you to find them. Many are even more interesting when read in full. I name-​drop dozens of people who were big stars in the thirties without explaining who they were, for this would take us far from the points I am trying to make. I hope that readers unfamiliar with these women and men will use Google to understand their impact on American popular culture. Quotations are from the second edition of the Oxford University Press Complete Works, General Editors Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 2005.

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INTRODUCTION: WHAT WAS  RADIO? Radio was the

first mass medium. Before broadcasting, home entertainment was limited to card games, board games, sing-​a-​longs, newspapers, and magazines. No newspaper had national distribution as the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal do now. There were too many magazines for large numbers of readers in any community to read the same few. The only electronic medium was the family phonograph, the forerunner of CD players and downloads, but the sound was only heard in the same room. Phonographs were media, but not a mass media. There were shared entertainments outside the home such as cinema, concerts, plays, dances, lectures, church socials, and athletic events, but it would be a stretch to call these “mass.” While many people would see a Charlie Chaplin film, the neighbourhood did not attend together. It was not until radio sets were brought into the home that a media became mass, for you and many of your neighbours, schoolmates, and co-​workers enjoyed the same programs at the same time. The New York Times was effusive on November 12, 1921 describing the first address to the nation by an American president, Warren G. Harding: “The very voice of the President of the Republic can be heard by tens of thousands of people, in hall and park and street, at the selfsame moment in New York and San Francisco.”1 In the earliest days, there were only local stations but within a few years broadcasters joined to carry events such as Harding’s speech. However, these “chain” broadcasts, as they were called, are better understood as ad hoc stations signing on for a single broadcast or the joining of a few small stations in a geographical area. It took the networks to make regular programming national, starting in 1926. George H.  Douglas notes that most homes acquired a radio during the Great Depression (1929–​1939), “masses of people lacked the money to go out for dinner or to a nightclub. Staying home became an obligatory form of relaxation, but one that could be made enjoyable by the purchase of an inexpensive radio.”2 Radio dominated recreation time the way that television later did and internet content increasingly does. Charles A. Siepmann summarized radio’s impact well, “here in America radio is our main pastime. More than 90 percent of American homes have at least one receiving set. Millions have several. The average man or woman spends more leisure hours in listening to the radio than in anything else—​except sleeping.”3 J.  Fred MacDonald put it historically, “commercial radio programming was the most popular medium of entertainment in the United States from the 1920s until the 1950s.”4

1  Quoted in J. Fred MacDonald, Don’t Touch that Dial! Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–​ 1960 (Chicago: Nelson-​Hall, 1979), 8. 2  George H. Douglas, The Early Days of Radio Broadcasting (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1987), 204. 3  Quoted in MacDonald, Dial, 38. 4  MacDonald, Dial, 327.

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2 Introduction Radio presented programming variety unmatched even by the explosion of cable TV channels in the eighties. If you liked mysteries and crime drama, comedy and variety programs, drama anthologies, Westerns, soap operas, children’s programs, sports broadcasts, discussion shows, science fiction, horror anthologies, adventure shows, super hero shows, romantic drama, aviation stories, thrillers, war stories, classical music, jazz, swing, country music (when it was still called Hillbilly Music), contests with amateur performers, game shows, cooking shows, educational programs, or news and current events programming, radio had broadcasts for you—​many shows in each of these categories. Big stars from outside of radio had their own series, amongst them were the Marx Brothers, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart (we shall meet the last two later). Radio also created some of America’s biggest stars, such as Fred Allen, Eve Arden, Jack Benny, Gertrude Berg, Eddie Cantor, Bring Crosby, Bob Hope, Mary Margaret McBride, Rudy Vallee, and Orson Welles. Turning to the interest of this book, most literary adaptations were on commercial-​ free programs. The best known literary show is Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast by CBS in 1938 before it picked up a sponsor and became The Campbell Playhouse (1938–​1941) in December of that year. Amongst the works Welles adapted are William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and the show is notorious for the heavily adapted broadcast of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds that sounded so much like a typical music broadcast interrupted by a news flash that many people were convinced Martians really had invaded Earth. Most literary programs remained commercial-​free. Commercial-​ free shows were called sustaining programs because they were sustained by the broadcasters, not by selling commercials. These included book review, human interest, religious shows, current affairs programs, political shows, and patriotic dramas. Educational broadcasts, arts shows, and what the networks deemed “experimental” series that told unusual stories or took an unusual approach to telling stories were also sustaining. Shakespeare broadcasts were nearly always sustaining. I have tried in the last few paragraphs to give an idea of the range of programs broadcast in the United States from the late twenties into the fifties. Radio narrows, however, when considering a single year and narrows further when you look at a single time slot. There were four networks in 1937 when NBC’s Blue network and CBS sent their series Streamlined Shakespeare and the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle to duke it out. Even the people in the biggest US market, New York City, could hear only the four networks and five independent stations. Some small communities had a single station. No matter where you lived, choices at a given hour of the broadcast day were limited, especially in the summer of 1937 when half of the networks broadcast Shakespeare in the 8:00 p.m. slot on Monday nights.

The Character of Network Radio

To avoid commercial broadcasting, the governments of most English-​speaking nations set-​up alternate financing for their initial radio networks. All of these networks have broadcast Shakespeare’s plays both periodically and as a series, with the United Kingdom

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Introduction

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being by far the most prolific Shakespeare broadcaster in every decade since the BBC’s first Shakespeare broadcast in 1923. It is believed that Shakespeare is the sort of programming government-​sponsored radio ought to produce even if listenership is small. This independence from commercials, and therefore ratings, gives these networks the freedom to broadcast small audience programs. Shakespeare was more marginalized in the United States where the government, under a Republican administration and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, left radio’s “control in the hands of businessmen and entrepreneurs, reserving for the government the nebulous right to interfere to protect the public interest.”5 The result was such chaos that in 1927 station operators actually wanted government regulation. Congress built on earlier statements in this declaration: “The ether and the use thereof for the transmission of signals, words, energy and other purposes is hereby reaffirmed to be the inalienable possession of the people within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and their Government.” To protect this, licences to operate radio stations were not permanently granted, but needed to be renewed: the public owned the airwaves, so stations and networks needed to benefit the public. Broadcasters made sure some programming was in the public interest so as to not lose their licences at renewal time.6 NBC appointed a board to advise on the network’s social obligations,7 which were met by broadcasting some non-​commercial arts, educational, and public affairs shows. There was mutual benefit to the arrangement. CBS reported that between 1929 and 1940, “Senators addressed radio audiences over Columbia sustaining programs more than 700 times and Representatives more than 500 times,” so these regulations benefited the politicians who passed them as well as the networks who put the politicians on the air.8 Those broadcasts were usually public affairs shows. The public service requirement is all but ignored today, but networks needed to accommodate it at the time, and by 1937 they took pride in presenting arts and educational programs intended to be of high quality even when listenership was small. Critics were negative about all aspects of radio broadcasting. Television has been called “a vast wasteland,” a phrase coined by then Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow, who acknowledged radio had received similar if less rhetorical criticisms.9 Jack Woodford declared that radio had destroyed the art of conversation.10 Dr.  John R.  Stampey, President of the Southern Baptist Convention, was a 5  MacDonald, Dial, 21.

6  67th Congressional Record 4152 (February 18, 1927). The idea was further enshrined in the 1934 Communications Act. 7  Douglas, Broadcasting, 135.

8  Carl J. Friedrich and Evelyn Sternberg, “Congress and the Control of Radio-​Broadcasting, I,” The American Political Science Review 37:5 (1943): 797–​818, at 808.

9  Newton N. Minow in the speech “Television and the Public Interest” given to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961. The speech may be accessed here:  www. americanrhetoric.com/​speeches/​newtonminow.htm. 10  Jack Woodford, “Radio: A Blessing or a Curse?” The Forum (March 1929), p. 170.

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4 Introduction

regular preacher on the Baptist Hour radio program on local Louisville, Kentucky station WMAZ. He voiced a common concern that commercials were themselves evil.11 Donna Lee Harper reports that racial issues received criticism from all sides: radio was blamed for presenting racial stereotypes, putting non-​whites on the air, and for allowing the Klu Klux Klan to have its own radio station.12 Harper also notes complaints that “radio was affecting diction” and had an “impact on public opinion.”13 The critique from political conservatives was that “radio represented the eclipse of established cultural norms and values by a new kind of vulgar, democratic populism” that “debased and trivialized the things that mattered … in favor of mass mentality.” In other words, radio ignored traditional conservative authority. The left was unhappy because, “commercial radio represented the triumph of capitalist and consumer culture in its most naked form,” and represented the status quo.14 Sustaining programs were the oasis watering the wasteland. They helped networks answer many of the concerns voiced by these critics, making the wasteland seem a little less vast and a little more green. Charges of dumbing-​down the populace could be answered with educational and arts programming. Discussion shows such as public affairs and book programming encouraged the art of conversation right on the air. If commercials were evil, they were a necessary evil to bring America the wonderful sustaining fare supplied by broadcasters. As for having an impact on public opinion, the networks could point to its commercial-​free patriotic programming. Who can knock giving three cheers for America? These rationalizations are a bit like closing a trench with a band-​aid, but the networks had to give an answer, their sustaining shows were often their answer, and the answers had merit. As Douglas points out, “when the 1920s began, only a small fraction of the American population had ever heard the performance of a symphony orchestra, and had little hope of ever hearing one; yet radio made it possible to hear such orchestras on a regular basis.”15 Norman Corwin, considered one of radio’s great writers, had it about right when he said that radio, “rises no higher, and sinks no lower than the society which produces it … Radio today is neither as good as the program executive will have you believe … nor as bad as the intellectual guest at the dinner party makes it out to be.”16 Not that the controversies on the fringes of broadcasting mattered to the vast majority of listeners. They liked radio just fine. They would not have listened if they did not, and millions listened. 11  David Goodman, Radio’s Civic Ambition:  American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 65–​66.

12  Donna Lee Harper’s Ph.D. thesis for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Neil Postman’s Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early Radio 1920–​1935” (2011), 483. 13  Harper, “Neil Postman’s Missing Critique,” 190.

14  Michelle Hilmes, Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States, 3rd ed. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011), 131–​32. 15  Douglas, Broadcasting, 207.

16  Quoted in MacDonald, Dial, 89–​90.

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Introduction

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David Sarnoff founded NBC in 1926 for his employers at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and started a second NBC network the next year after it acquired the stations owned by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). These were designated the Blue and Red networks, named for the coloured lines linking affiliated stations on NBC’s maps; the blue lines indicated the original NBC stations and the red those acquired from AT&T.17 William S. Paley bought the fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System in 1927.18 The Mutual Broadcasting System began in 1934 when several independent stations agreed to share programming.19 A few other networks sprang up from time to time, but these were either not national or short-​lived. With only three networks until 1934, CBS and the two owned by NBC, competition between these corporate entities was fierce. It began with the differing styles of their leaders. Douglas calls Sarnoff a visionary. In 1920, he advocated the creation of radio stations to broadcast entertainment as a “household utility,” the first person to do so. His employers did not share his vision,20 so others began the first radio stations in 1922.21 Sarnoff held the upstart Paley in personal contempt. Sarnoff wanted programming that promoted RCA radios, phonographs, and records in order to sell his company’s products without outside sponsors. The program The Magic Key of RCA (1935–​1939) was his ideal, about which more below, though as early as 1925 Sarnoff realized that radio’s viability was likely to depend on commercials,22 and NBC began broadcasting some commercial programs as early as 1930. While Sarnoff was not happy with this necessity, Paley fully embraced it with the result that CBS brought in more revenue,23 so by 1935 CBS had ninety-​seven affiliates, more than either NBC network, in part because several NBC affiliates in big cities switched to the more lucrative CBS.24 CBS produced more creative programming in the latter thirties while NBC played catch up.25 The rivalry between the two companies appeared in all aspects including publicity, prime time 17  Norman H. Finkelstein, Sounds of the Air: The Golden Age of Radio (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1993). The detail about company maps comes from MacDonald, Dial, 25. The Blue network was sold and renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1942 after the US government brought an anti-​trust suit. 18  Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume 2: 1933 to 1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 56.

19  Ron Lackmann, The Encyclopedia of American Radio: An A-​Z Guide from Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern, Updated Edition (New York: Facts of File, 2000), 246. 20  Douglas, Broadcasting, 2.

21  Douglas, Broadcasting, 1–​37. 22  MacDonald, Dial, 19.

23  Barnouw, Golden, 16–​17. Local sponsorship has been around since New  York station WEAF broadcast America’s first sponsored program on August 28, 1922. See also John J. Floherty, On the Air: The Story of Radio (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1937), 14. 24  Barnouw, Golden, 58. 25  Barnouw, Golden, 55.

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6 Introduction line-​ups, news and sports programs, later the coverage of World War II, and as we shall see, sustaining shows.26 Some programs were sponsor produced and even had the sponsor’s name in the title, such as The Philip Morris Playhouse (1939–​1953) and Lux Radio Theatre (1934–​ 1955). When a network wanted a show on another network, it could woo the sponsor with attractive rates for airtime. Other shows were network produced and star-​driven. Then a network could lure away the star with more money.27 This was done most notoriously in 1948–​1949 when CBS signed many of NBC’s and ABC’s biggest programs and stars. The network began with acquiring the popular Amos and Andy (1928–​1960) for the second time,28 and eventually hired away Benny, Edgar Bergen, Groucho Marx, and Red Skelton, amongst others. The acquisitions enriched the CBS schedule and created holes that rivals had to fill with less popular fare.29 “By December 1949, CBS had sixteen of the top twenty shows … conversely, in the first four months of 1949, NBC lost almost $7 million in advertising revenue” compared to the year before.30 With this background information about American radio, sustaining programs, and the networks and their rivalry, we are ready to survey the Shakespeare broadcasts that preceded the Battle of the Bard so that we may understand the kinds of Shakespeare American broadcasters expected to produce and listeners expected to hear.

26  Donald Miller, “How Competition Created the Industry that Changed the World,” Entrepreneur, October 13, 2014, www.entrepreneur.com/​article/​238360.

27  There was tremendous overlap, but there was a movement from sponsored produced shows in radio’s early days to more network produced shows over time. This arc is documented by Cynthia B. Meyers, “The Problems with Sponsorship in US Broadcasting, 1930–​1950s: Perspectives from the Advertising Industry,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 31:3 (2011): 355–​72. 28  The program originated on WMAQ in Chicago in 1928 but went to NBC network the next year. CBS lured it away in 1939, but the show returned to NBC in 1943 until CBS bought it outright in 1948. From 1955 the program had a format change from a situation comedy to a disc jockey show with recorded music and was renamed the Amos and Andy Music Hall.

29  Reprint:  “Is NBC Finished,” Old Time Radio Digest 48 (November–​December 1991):  4–​10. Original article: Radio Best 2:5 (April 1949). 30  MacDonald, Dial, 82.

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Chapter 1

PRELIMINARY BOUTS: SHAKESPEARE ON AMERICAN RADIO BEFORE THE BATTLE Shakespeare was not

an obvious source of programming for commercial radio. The higher the ratings, the more a network could charge for airtime, but ratings for cultural programs were expected to be low. Networks eventually met the obligation to broadcast sustaining programs with bravado, producing the best educational, public affairs, and arts shows they could, including adaptations of plays. A 1942 article in Time magazine complained, “last week, for the first time in more than twelve radio seasons, neither NBC (the old Red network) nor the Blue Network broadcast an hour-​long adaptation of a stage play. Possibly not many millions of listeners noticed this, but it meant that the book was closed on an era of radio.” The article looks back to what it identifies as the first Shakespeare broadcast, a NBC production of The Tempest in 1928,1 and then describes some of the playwrights whose works were broadcast including Henrik Ibsen, John Galsworthy, James M. Barrie, and George S. Kaufman. NBC producers and directors blamed the demise of these adaptations on a trend toward original radio scripts.2 There are three qualifications the writer might have made, but did not: original radio scripts much predated 1942, adaptations of plays were still being broadcast—​just not that week, and local stations presented plays five years before there the networks were organized. Understanding the formats of previous Shakespeare broadcasts will explain why the Battle programs were severely abridged. This chapter will therefore survey past programs. We will probably not survey everything. Susanne Greenhalgh writes, “research on radio thus offers that rare phenomenon in Shakespeare studies, a history still in the process of being outlined and documented.”3 Please remember this as I describe all known American Shakespeare broadcasts until the Battle begins, local and network. I  have not yet researched the years 1923–​1926, though I  did stumble upon some local productions from 1924. There are almost certainly more to be found.

1  So far, nobody has been able to find the details of this Tempest broadcast. I have looked for the date and the program on which it may have appeared, but aside from this brief mention in the Time article, nothing has been found to verify it. A list of past Shakespeare programs prepared by NBC in 1937 gave the first as Macbeth, broadcast on September 8, 1929. 2  “Great Plays,” Time 39:15 (April 13, 1942), pp. 43–​44.

3  Susanne Greenhalgh, “Shakespeare and Radio,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, ed. Mark Thornton Burnett, Adrian Steete, and Ramona Wray (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 541–​57, at 544. In this chapter, I add thirty broadcasts previously unknown to Shakespeare scholars.

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8

Preliminary Bouts

Shakespeare on Local Stations It has long been believed that the first Shakespeare broadcast and the first dramatic broadcast of any kind was a program presenting three Shakespearean scenes, heard February 16, 1923 on the BBC.4 However, a local station in Schenectady, New  York presented The Wolf, a 1908 play by Eugene Walter, on WGY radio on August 3, 1922,5 six months before the BBC broadcast, making WGY the first known broadcaster of drama. The WGY Players went on to present dozens of plays in a forty-​minute format, including The Merchant of Venice on March 28, 1924.6 The flood gate was open. Actor and educator Mona Morgan created a program called Interpretations of Shakespeare for WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, which served the New York market. She had worked on Broadway and toured with Walter Hampden in Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice.7 The earliest Shakespeare broadcast found anywhere in the world (so far) is Morgan’s sixty-​minute October 12, 1922 reading of The Merchant of Venice. Following this was The Taming of the Shrew (October 22), Julius Caesar (November 5), As You Like It (November 12), Romeo and Juliet (November 19), Scenes from Henry V (November 24), Hamlet (November 26), a remounting of the Romeo and Juliet broadcast (December 1), and a show described as “a mixed Shakespearean program” (December 3).8 After a break for the holidays, Morgan returned on January 7, 1923 for what is called a “Program of Shakespeare interpretations,”9 then went off the air. The second Shakespeare broadcast appears to be an October 18, 1922 show called Entertainment from Shakespeare, with Recitations and Facts, by Kizzie B. Masters, broadcast in two fifteen-​minute parts on WEAF, New York. Suzanne Greenhalgh mentions that the same station broadcast eight Shakespearean abridgements in 1926.10 WEAF soon became the station originating all NBC east coast programming. WOR was also a Newark station on October 25, 1922,11 when it presented a thirty-​minute program called Synopsis of [sic] Shakespearian play “Much Ado About Nothing.” This was followed on October 31 by a twenty-​minute program entitled Witchcraft that included the scenes with the Weird Sisters from Macbeth read 4  Those who get this wrong include Paul Donovan, The Radio Companion (London: HarperCollins, 1991), 86, John Drukakis, “Introduction,” in British Radio Drama, ed. John Drakakis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1–​38, at 2, and most egregiously, Jensen, Shakespeares, 577. 5  MacDonald, Dial, 6.

6  “History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614–​1925, Chapter 114: ‘W. G. Y.’ ” www. schenectadyhistory.org/​resources/​mvgw/​history/​114.html. 7  “New York and Eastern District,” Radio Broadcasting News 2:19 (October 7, 1922), p. 9.

8  “New York and Eastern District,” Radio Broadcasting News 2:26 (November 25, 1922), p. 8.

9  “New York and Eastern District,” Radio Broadcasting News 2:31 (December 30, 1922), p. 12. 10  Greenhalgh, “Radio,” 547.

11  WOR has long since relocated to New York City.

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by James G.  McLaughlin. WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio presented Mary Sullivan Brown reading the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet on November 16.12 Station KDKA in East Pittsburgh, Philadelphia presented With Shakespeare in France and Italy on December 17, a thirty-​minute reading excerpted from the book Shakespeare and the Heart of a Child by Gertrude Slaughter.13 Four broadcasts have been found from 1924. On July 12, a fifteen-​minute program called Shakespere [sic] Recital was performed by James O’Connell and broadcast on WHN, New  York.14 The Merchant of Venice was popular that year. The Pasadena Community Broadcasters presented the play in February 1924 on Los Angeles station KHJ. The specific date is not given.15 KGO, then in Oakland, California, broadcast the court scene from the play directed by Wilda Wilson Church as part of a two-​hour variety show on July 15.16 The same play was given a thirty-​minute broadcast on WLS in Chicago, Illinois during the first week of October. Director Henry D. Sadler “rebuilt” that script for the sound-​only medium. This was a pilot for a series of “old classics.”17 The date was not specified. A recital of The Tempest by Helen E. Winnais shared a thirty-​ minute time slot on WLIT (Philadelphia) with news and something called WLIT Boys on February 20, 1928.18 The first known full length broadcast of a Shakespeare play was in November 1922, a student production of As You Like It at St. Olaf’s College, Minnesota. The show was wildly popular on stage and was presented on the college’s radio station WCAL. No date is given in the article describing this show.19 This is the only full length production found in the twenties on US local radio. All the other known Shakespeare broadcasts are abridgements, so it is clear that local broadcasters thought of Shakespeare’s works as something to be excerpted or condensed. The networks followed suit. 12  Most of these 1922 examples of local Shakespeare broadcasts were found at the American Radio Drama website which has some errors that I hope I have corrected: www.oocities.org/​emruf7/​ 1922.html. Unfortunately, the site does not list programs from 1923 or beyond. 13  Gertrude Slaughter, Shakespeare and the Heart of a Child (New York: Macmillan, 1922).

14  “Galaxy of Popular Radiocast Stars Feature Week’s Programs,” Radio Digest Illustrated 10:1 (July 12, 1924), p. 11.

15  Shawn Gary VanCour, “The Sounds of ‘Radio’: Aesthetic Formations of 1920s American Broad­ casting” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-​Madison, 2008), 281. 16  “Galaxy,” Radio Digest Illustrated, 12.

17  “Directs WLS Theater, New Radarist Group,” Radio Digest Illustrated 10:13 (September 27, 1934), p. 9.

18  “WLIT,” The Morning News (Wilmington, DE, February 20, 1928). The newspaper had no other identifying information. WLIT was an NBC affiliate but it is difficult to imagine the network broadcasting the WLIT Boys, so I am doubtful this is The Tempest broadcast mentioned in Time magazine. A Chicago station took these call letters in 1989. 19  Franklin Clement, “What a College Can do in Broadcasting,” Radio Broadcasting 4 (November 1923): 58–​61, at 60.

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The Networks Begin

A notable  1928 broadcast was on NBC’s Blue network. The March 29 Dodge Brothers Hour was as variety special that was not only broadcast via radio, but into cinemas in fifty-​five cities around the country. Alan Crosland’s and Gordon Hollingshead’s Warner Bros. film The Jazz Singer had popularized talking pictures the year before, so the conceit of this one-​off program was to showcase cinemas that had converted to sound while broadcasting the voices of several silent screen stars under contract to Unite Artists. The actors came on after a ten-​minute advertisement for Dodge automobiles. Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, and Douglas Fairbanks were amongst the stars, with John Barrymore giving Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (3.1.58–​92). The broadcast was a debacle. Rainfall hindered reception in much of the Northeast and ice storms in the Midwest kept people home. That show was so bad that audiences at New York’s 5th Avenue Playhouse are said to have chanted, “Take it off!” According to Rob Faar, “exhibitors in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Rochester and San Francisco reported similar audience demonstrations of whistling, hooting and clapping.” One assumes that listeners at home changed the station. It could not have helped that Barrymore gave his recitation whilst drunk.20 Beginning in 1929, most of the Shakespearean energy was on a NBC Blue series called The Radio Guild (1929–​1940). The show claimed to be an experimental program, but like much cutting-​edge art Guild quickly became mainstream and did not reinvent itself to remain experimental. Producer, director, and often scripter Vernon Radcliffe did tell some truly experimental stories using experimental techniques, but the vast majority of episodes were sixty-​minute abridgements of plays, starting with the first Radio Guild episode, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, July 14, 1929.21 Aside from perhaps that hard to pin down 1928 Tempest, this was new to American network radio. Most of the plays chosen for Radio Guild were found on “school and college reading lists, and schools all over the country used [the broadcasts] in conjunction with classroom study.”22 Some early adaptations include A. A. Milne’s Mr. Pym Passes By and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Lady from the Sea. If one playwright dominated Radio Guild it was certainly Shakespeare. The first broadcast of one of his plays was Macbeth on September 8, 1929 followed by Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It at two-​month intervals. Radio Guild broadcast Shakespeare a dozen times in 1930.

20  Rob Faar, “Screened But Not Heard: The Big Broadcast of 1928” (2000), www.otr.com/​1928.html.

21  Many, many sources, including formerly me, claim that the first ever Radio Guild broadcast and its first Shakespeare broadcast was Romeo and Juliet on November 6, 1929, but this is corrected by Shawn Gary VanCour who went through the NBC Archives and examined scripts and broadcast dates for his dissertation. VanCour, “Sounds,” 283. 22  Louise M. Benjamin, The NBC Advisory Counsel and Radio Programming, 1926–​1945 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 44.

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Radcliffe and his frequent Shakespeare adapter Charles Warburton experimented with presenting Shakespeare in two sixty-​minute episodes starting with Hamlet on August 3 and 10, 1930. Much Ado About Nothing and Julius Caesar next received the two part treatment. Most plays, however, were limited to one sixty-​minute episode until Radcliffe decided to explore Shakespeare’s histories. On consecutive weeks between November 7, 1935 and February 13, 1936, listeners could hear King John and Richard II in one-​hour broadcasts, and then both parts of Henry IV and Henry V were given two episodes each. It was back to one-​hour broadcasts for the Henry VI plays, then two episodes for Richard III. The sequence was rounded with a one-​hour Henry VIII. The experiment over, Radio Guild stuck to one-​hour Shakespeare adaptations thereafter. Radio Guild made over forty broadcasts adapting Shakespeare, the last being Julius Caesar on April 22, 1938. The series broadcast occasional Shakespeare related programs such as Will Shakespeare, Clement Dane’s play about the playwright. This went out early in the run, April 24, 1931, the broadcast date closest to Shakespeare’s traditional April 23 birthday. The repeat on April 24, 1933 was a remounting of the same script with possibly a different cast. A play about David Garrick, the great eighteenth-​century Shakespearean actor, was broadcast on May 27, 1932 with remountings on July 3, 1933 and September 24, 1934. Vernon Radcliffe remained as the producer until the end, even after being named NBC’s Program Director.23 Many Radio Guild scripts were rebroadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with Canadian casts after their US airing. The 1930 CBC Shakespeare broadcasts were titled An Hour with Shakespeare. This was not the end of Radio Guild scripts being remounted by the CBC, as we shall see in ­chapter  4. It is difficult to evaluate Radio Guild today. It was unusual to make transcription disks of shows until the mid-​thirties, and it was syndicated programs that were most reliably transcribed. The transcribing of network shows could be spotty, and most Radio Guild episodes seem to be lost in the ether. Few of the episodes that survive are available commercially or in pirated copies on the internet. I was able to hear the second episode of the two-​part Henry IV, part one broadcast that originally aired December 19, 1935. Clayton Hamilton is introduced as the host of the history cycle. He mentions a few plot points from the previous broadcast to set the scene. Music throughout is loud and attention getting, but used to bridge scenes and does not add mood behind the dialogue. The actors of the comic characters give silly performances, but the actors playing most of the nobility perform with a weight that signals to the audience that they are hearing high and ennobling art. The broadcast is laughable today, but was obviously effective to its first listeners for Radio Guild was considered the cream of network radio. The respected actor Alfred Shirley played Hal and no less than Jeanette Nolan was Doll Tearsheet. The broadcast ends with an offer for a free study guide. Front Page Drama (1933–​1950) presented a rare sponsored Shakespeare adaptation on May 5, 1934. The Hearst newspaper group created and syndicated radio programs to sell their Sunday papers, including broadcast versions of the comic strips Flash Gordon 23  “Radio Advertisers,” Broadcasting (February 8, 1944), p. 44.

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(1935) and Jungle Jim (1935–​1954). Front Page Drama usually featured ripped from the headlines dramatizations, but this episode is an exception. The Hearst Sunday magazine American Weekly published a series of collectable cover pictures, so this fifteen-​minute version of Antony and Cleopatra was aired to sell the issue with a Cleopatra cover. To reduce the play for a fifteen-​minute time slot, the uncredited scripter uses just four characters: Antony, Cleopatra, Charmain, and the Messenger, and the story is told in four scenes: 1.1, 2.5, 3.13, and 4.15 merged with Cleopatra’s 5.2 death. The editing is skilful. A narrator does not fill listeners in on all the events cut, only those needed to make sense of the next scene. The Magic Key24 was a sixty-​minute variety show on NBC Blue that thrilled David Sarnoff, who occasionally appeared on the show. NBC stars were showcased to sell radios and so were top RCA recording talent to sell their records and the phonographs to play them. Some shows included a short dramatic presentation. The October 20, 1935 broadcast featured a number of classical and popular music pieces, a political interview, and scene from Othello that began with 1.3.47 and with light abridgement ended with line 300. The credited actors were Walter Huston and Nan Sutherland as Othello and Desdemona. These seems to be the last Shakespeare network broadcast in the United States until a flurry of broadcasts surrounded the release of George Cukor’s 1936 MGM movie Romeo and Juliet. The first program to exploit the film was Hollywood Hotel (1934–​1938), the CBS variety show co-​hosted and run by gossip columnist Louella Parsons. Parsons was so powerful that she could make or break careers, so she forced many of Tinseltown’s top talents to appear on her show with no more compensation than a supply of the sponsor’s soup.25 Episodes featured musical numbers and the reenactment of scenes from a current picture. On September 4, 1936, the day after release of MGM’s Romeo and Juliet, the scenes between Juliet (Norma Shearer) and the Nurse (Edna May Oliver) were recreated for the broadcast. The Magic Key presented the balcony scene performed by thirty-​five-​year-​old Alexander Kirkland and thirteen-​year-​old Jean Dante on October 18, 1936. The student reviewer for the Stanford Daily wrote that Dante had just the right mix of immaturity and earnestness.26 Jack Benny had just made the switch from NBC Blue to Red when The Jell-​O Program (1934–​1942)27 exploited the MGM film. The show often presented comic burlesques of 24  The program’s original title, The Magic Key of RCA, had been shortened by the time of this broadcast.

25  The sponsor was the Campbell Soup company. See John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-​Time Radio (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 323–​24. 26  Phil Bernhelm, “The Scrapbook,” The Stanford Daily 90:18 (October 21, 1936), p. 4.

27  These dates are deceptive. Benny was contentiously on the air between 1932 and 1956 with the name of his show changing with each new sponsor, so it was The Canada Dry Program until early 1933, then The Chevrolet Show for a year, and so on. For a complete his of Benny’s titles, see Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs, http://​otrsite.com/​logs/​logj1007.htm.

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motion pictures, and so for two weeks The Jell-​O Program plugged a Romeo and Juliet skit to be broadcast on October 25, 1936. Benny attempts to play Rome-​O in the balcony scene on that broadcast, but an actor impersonating the sponsor complains that nobody knows the story anymore and insists Benny perform a minstrel show instead, which was promised for the week following. Much of the November 1 program seems racist today, as minstrel shows invariably do. After several minutes of typical minstrel fare, a skit introduces blackface versions of Antony, Macbeth, and a character named Othell-​O Jell-​O, who competes with Rome-​O for Juliet’s heart. Nobody can reach Juliet up in the balcony, so another racially charged character, Tarzan, enters and climbs to her. This series of programs achieved two things: satirizing the hoopla surrounding the MGM film and it kept Jell-​O Program listeners returning to Benny’s new network week after week.28 The Jell-​O Program ended the Romeo and Juliet broadcasts, but a few months later a third Magic Key featured a reading from Richard II. English actor Maurice Evans had opened the play on Broadway February 5, 1937 to great acclaim, so the Magic Key brought him in for a short recital on April 25, two days after Shakespeare’s traditional birthday. Evans recorded scenes from the play that year, but for rival Columbia Records, not RCA. Radio Guild, Hollywood Hotel, and The Magic Key are barely known today. The thirty-​ minute Columbia Workshop (1936–​1943) is different. Old Time Radio fans venerate the program as an attempt to make radio into art. This was the dream of sound man Irving Reis, who was allowed to produce. The innovative stories and sound patterns aspired to by Radio Guild and other programs were finally realized under Reis’s leadership, though not all episodes are successful. Dunning has some very helpful comments about the critical ups and downs of the program.29 For our purposes, we note that the Workshop had a stellar reputation with the more intellectual members of the public and that it employed Brewster Morgan, later the director of the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle. Workshop broadcast Shakespeare multiple times and in different types of shows. Most of these aired after the Battle, but some notable productions went out before. The show’s first foray into Shakespeare was the third episode, August 1, 1936. The bulk of the program was a story called Cartwheel by Vic Knight, but this was preceded by former Hamlet30 Ray Collins of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre reading the “To be, 28  Though not in our purview, the forty-​four-​minute BBC program Entertainment Parade aired October 19, 1936. Basil Rathbone, who played Tybalt in the movie, introduced the MGM film to British audiences. His talk was illustrated by excerpts from the soundtrack. One other 1936 Shakespeare-​related program was not about the MGM film, but the Warner Bros. A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the year before. Co-​director Max Reinhardt was the interview guest on The Lux Radio Theatre on October 5. Reinhardt discussed filming Shakespeare and said he wanted to film Twelfth Night, a project never realized. Reinhardt suggested that radio is an ideal medium for Shakespeare. 29  Dunning, Air, 168–​72.

30  Collins says he played the role on the broadcast, but I have not been able to find evidence of the production.

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or not to be” speech to demonstrate the difference in sound quality between older and newer microphones as the engineer switched between them. The eighth program was the first Workshop adaptation of a Shakespeare play, Hamlet. The first two acts were abridged on September 19, 1936, with twenty-​one-​ year-​old Orson Welles adapting and directing the actors. Reis directed the audio effects. The announcer mentions two of Welles’s previous credits: producer of Macbeth on Broadway31 and his book Everybody’s Shakespeare.32 He does not mention that Welles first played Hamlet in Dublin in 1932. The cuts make the story Hamlet-​centred, or is it really Welles-​centred? The episode ends with Hamlet saying, “The play’s the thing /​ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.633–​4), which invites resolution. The announcer asked listeners to write and request the rest of the story if they liked part one. Many letters were received. Hamlet, part 2 was the fifteenth episode, broadcast November 14. Only Welles and Sidney Smith as Horatio returned. Other characters appearing in both parts were recast, perhaps because the original actors were not available. Some characters, such as Ophelia and Laertes, appear for the first time. Welles again adapted and directed the actors. Brewster Morgan directed the other audio elements. The cuts are even more severe in an effort to squeeze the final three acts into thirty minutes. In both parts, a narrator skilfully provides most of what listeners need to know for the story to cohere, though there are loose ends such as how Hamlet returned to Denmark from England and the fates of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The cast is far more natural than the actors on Radio Guild, who tried to overwhelm listeners with the greatness of their art. These less pretentious Hamlet broadcasts tell a riveting story. Welles really plays Hamlet rather than letting his rich voice substitute for a characterization. This episode began with a call to action: “If you enjoy the drama and you believe after tonight’s performance that Shakespeare should become a regular feature on radio, write to us and say so. We are eager to have this gage of radio public opinion.” Listeners wrote again. Hamlet returns as a character on January 2, 1937 in, Public Domain: Characters from Fiction Freed from the Copyright Lane. He joins fictional characters by Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll to discuss the desirability of living different lives than those created for them by their authors. Writer Eustace Wyatt has Hamlet complain that Shakespeare made him mad. The characters do not notice that their appearance on this program gives them a life that was not created by their authors. This episode now appears to be in the public domain, or so I assume from the many websites where the program may be heard. The final Workshop Shakespeare program before the Battle was the elusive Orson Welles adaptation of Macbeth on February 28, 1937. Nobody who has written about Welles’s audio Shakespeare seems to have heard the episode, for many mention it but none describe it and pirated copies are not available for download or purchase. Welles adapted and directed the actors again and Reis was back to direct everything 31  Performed in 1936. See Bernice W.  Kliman, Shakespeare in Performance:  Macbeth, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 112–​27. 32  Co-​edited with Roger Hill and published by Todd Press in 1934.

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else. He planned to use innovative sound patterns for the scene in which the Weird Sisters fly, according to an article in the Harrisburg Telegraph published the day before the broadcast. The article also mentions that the supporting cast is “well known in Shakespeare stage roles.”33 Co-​producer John Houseman describes the broadcast as “a shambles.”34 April 23, the date of Shakespeare’s traditional birthday, produced multiple Shakespeare programs in 1936 and 1937. In 1936, both NBC networks carried a broadcast featuring Leslie Howard reciting the “To be, or not to be” speech that was also transmitted to the English-​speaking world. Howard starred in the current Romeo and Juliet movie and would open in Hamlet on Broadway later that year. Celebrating Shakespeare from Stratford-​upon-​Avon was Sir Archibald Flower, on the boards of both the Shakespeare Birthplace and the Memorial Theater. He spoke on a program with local singers and was followed by a talk by Dixon Ryan Fox, President of Union College, and a presentation of the first scene of Macbeth. This was a NBC Red broadcast. The Radio Guild presented one of its A Midsummer Night’s Dream abridgements that day and The Kraft Music Hall presented Shakespearean actor Fritz Leiber. The radio schedule does not indicate what Leiber would do on the show.35 1937 included a 45-​minute BBC program entitled Speeches from the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations on NBC Blue, where it was advertised under the title From Stratford-​ upon-​Avon, England: Shakespeare’s Birthday Luncheon. The 1937 speakers included the novelist Hugh Walpole, playwright Sir Edward S. Hicks, and politicians. In the afternoon was the Radio Guild production Shakespeareana, presenting some of Shakespeare’s best known scenes.36 CBS got into the act with the sixty-​minute Commemoration of the Birth of Shakespeare featuring Shakespeare Society of America president A. S. W. Rosenbach. The program presented readings by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and others. Will of Stratford was a thirty-​minute educational drama broadcast on NBC Blue for the occasion of Shakespeare’s 373th birthday, though it aired April 26, three days after the traditional date. The program was written by theatre critic Bosley Crowther in what he thought resembled Shakespeare’s style. Crowther finds many excuses to have actors recite Shakespeare’s lines, sometimes turning the lines into dialogue between Shakespeare and others, including a scene showing a close, supportive relationship between Shakespeare and the Queen. At other times, Crowther contrives excuses to enact scenes from the plays. The cast featured several Radio Guild regulars. 33  www.digitaldeliftp.com/​DigitalDeliToo/​dd2jb-​Columbia-​Workshop.html.

34  John Houseman, Run-​Through: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 365.

35  “Special Broadcasts Today Will Mark Shakespeare’s Birthday Anniversary,” San Bernardino Daily Sun, April 23, 1936, 7.

36  The April 15, 1:47 Radio Daily reported that NBC would broadcast these programs on April 26, “NBC Shakespeare Broadcasts,” p. 2. The April 23 radio listings in the New York Times, p. 243, lists these programs on that day. The “Coast-​to-​Coast” column in the April 22 issue of Radio Daily 1:52, p. 2, reported that actors A. P. Kaye and Olive Deering would appear in a Shakespeare program on New York State’s WINS the following day.

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Charles Laughton was a guest on Rudy Vallee’s Royal Gelatin Hour on NBC Red from London on May 3, 1937. He extolled the virtues of Shakespeare, talked about the historic Old Vic Theatre, and overacted excerpts from three plays including two by Shakespeare: Macbeth (which he had performed for the Old Vic Company and the BBC in 1934) and Measure for Measure. Two weeks later, May 20, on his first program back in America, Vallee could not resist exchanging a few lines of Richard II with Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans, then performing the play on Broadway. Bits of Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet were thrown in for fun.

Shakespeare on Local Radio after the Networks Began

Local stations continued to broadcast Shakespeare, though not as often. New York City station WEVD presented a short Hamlet from 10:30 to 11:00 p.m. on November 16, 1933. Other details are elusive. In Buffalo, New  York, sister stations WGR and WKBW produced Romeo and Juliet in three thirty-​minute segments in January 1937 with Program Manager Herbert Colin Rice as Romeo and his wife Lorraine Pahkow as Juliet.37 One finds occasional Shakespeare lectures when browsing newspaper radio listings. The actor Leslie Howard gave a fifteen-​minute talk called “Shakespeare and the Theatre Today” at Chicago’s English Speaking Union, that was broadcast on WJZ New  York, December 28, 1936. Stations DJB and DJD in Germany broadcast a seventy-​five-​minute German language Taming of the Shrew on May 25, 1937. It could be heard on short wave receivers in the United States. Symphonic Drama presented A Midsummer Night’s Dream April 26, 1937 on New York’s unaffiliated WQXR. The actors in the sixty-​minute drama were members of the Work Project Administration. It should be clear that listeners to both local stations and networks were used to scenes and speeches such as those heard on The Dodge Brothers Hour, Hollywood Hotel, and The Magic Key, or heavily abridged productions of an hour or less.38 No American broadcaster offered full length plays, the exceptions being the St. Olaf’s College As You Like It and a series on a local Los Angeles station. 37  “Buffalo’s Own ‘Hamlet’,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 28.

38  If it ever existed, a possible outlier is the February 27, 1933 episode of the Marx Brothers comedy series Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel on NBC Blue, which supposedly uses a production of Romeo and Juliet as the setting in the latter part of the story. That episode was not transcribed or the transcription is lost. Descriptions of the show’s episodes do not mention the play or this storyline. The BBC recreated the series by cobbling together parts of the original scripts, Marx Brothers films, and new material to create not quite new and not quite old episodes, and the June 9, 1990 BBC Radio 4 broadcast has the Romeo content. The usually exemplary Radio Gold Index (www. radiogoldindex.com/​frame1.html) says that this episode is based on the February 27, 1933 original. Radio logs for the series indicate that the series was not broadcast in February of that year. This minor point in my history hardly seems worth a trip to the Library of Congress, so I will leave it for others to settle.

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KECA, a NBC Blue affiliate, had the most ambitious plan for broadcasting Shakespeare of any local station or network in America. Program Director Forrest Barnes launched a series of Shakespeare’s plays uncut and directed by himself. A young actor named Hans Conried was in every episode. Conried was just eighteen years old when he heard about Barnes’s forthcoming series. He had appeared as Polonius in a school production of Hamlet when he was twelve and just played Sebastian in The Tempest at Columbia University.39 He introduced himself to Barnes as an experienced Shakespearean actor and was cast in the series, his first radio work. The initial KECA broadcast was Othello (January 14, 1936) in which Conried doubled some small parts. This was followed by King John (February 11), Twelfth Night (March 10), Coriolanus starring Conway Tearle, whom we shall meet again (April 14), Richard II (May 12), The Merry Wives of Windsor (June 17), and Julius Caesar (July 14). The canon was not completed. After the first few episodes, Conried was cast in a variety of other KECA broadcasts, including some that went out on local west coast chain networks, and worked on a few network series originating in Los Angeles. I cannot prove that John Barrymore heard the Shakespeare series, but he lived in the area and hired both Barnes and Conried for his Streamlined Shakespeare series. Beyond broadcasting, American entertainment had a Shakespeare revival throughout the thirties. There were just four Shakespeare openings on Broadway in 1928, none in 1929, but more than a dozen in 1930 and dozens throughout the thirties. Highlights include Katherine Cornell’s productions of Romeo and Juliet (1934–​1935) and the Alfred Lunt/​Lynn Fontanne Taming of the Shrew (1935). Hamlet was performed in 1936 with John Gielgud and Leslie Howard playing the part in different theatres at the same time. Orson Welles’s famous Voodoo Macbeth played the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem that year. In 1937, Evans portrayed Richard II and Welles produced his fascist version of Julius Caesar. Evans starred in Broadway’s first uncut Hamlet in 1938. Welles’s mash-​up of Shakespeare’s history plays entitled Five Kings (Part One) had a Boston tryout in 1939, though it was not a success and did not go to New York. Hollywood made two feature Shakespeare films. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, dirs., Warner Bros., 1935) and Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, dir., MGM, 1936) were made not for commercial reasons, but to bring prestige to their studios. These were supported by a number of short films ancillary to both.40 Books were published to capitalize on the hoped-​for popularity of these films.41 There was also the Battle of the Bard. 39  Suzanne Gargiulo, Hans Conried: A Biography; With a Filmography and Listing of Radio, Television, Stage and Voice Work (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), 13–​16.

40  The short films include a number with Warner Bros. stars plugging the forthcoming Dream, and according to Douglas Lainer (private correspondence), a few others not as obviously designed to promote that film but were part of the larger marketing strategy. These include Master William Shakespeare (Jaques Tourner, dir., MGM, 1936) and Shake, Mr. Shakespeare (Ray Mack, dir., Warner Bros., 1936). 41  The CBC produced a sixty-​minute adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that presented the Reinhardt/​Dieterle film and not Shakespeare’s play, broadcast December 1, 1935.

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Chapter 2

IN THIS CORNER:  STREAMLINED SHAKESPEARE On May 28, 1937, Radio Daily reported:

First major radio production of Shakespeare’s plays featuring stars of the theater and screen will be presented by CBS during July and August. Twenty-​five ranking artists of the stage and films, supported by more than 100 players of note, will be cast in one of the most ambitious series in the history of radio drama. The plays will be offered weekly in a cycle of eight one-​hour productions.1

The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle would broadcast Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear,2 As You Like It, Henry IV, and Twelfth Night from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Monday nights as the summer replacement for the popular Lux Radio Theatre, a weekly series of film adaptations. These sustaining broadcasts would lack the commercials for Lux soap. CBS called it “the first major radio production of William Shakespeare’s plays.”3 Perhaps the history cycle on Radio Guild was not “major” in Columbia’s estimation. Every aspect of US radio evolved over time, and that includes sustaining programs. Paley had the idea in 1934 that CBS might be best served by broadcasting shows that explore new radio techniques and tell different types of stories than had been tried before. William Bennett Lewis was hired to develop and nurture such programs, the weekly showcase being The Columbia Workshop.4 The resulting experiments brought the network prestige and put it on the cutting edge of broadcasting. The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle was part of this initiative. The show was not expected to attract a huge audience, but CBS wanted bragging rights to Shakespeare. Lewis appointed Brewster Morgan of the Columbia Workshop to direct. NBC’s approach to sustaining programming was different. Vice President of Pro­ gramming John F.  Royal saw the networks “in terms of competing marquees,” and monitored CBS programming.5 The competition between NBC and CBS sustaining programming became fierce in 1937 when Royal decided to counterprogram against 1  “Shakespearian Series Being Offered by CBS,” Radio Daily 1:78 (May 28, 1937), p. 1.

2  Sometimes misreported as Macbeth, which was one of the plays later broadcast by NBC. See, for example, Burns Mantle, “Shakespeare to Be Given Over Airwaves,” Chicago Sunday Tribune 96:161 (July 7, 1937), pt. 6, p. 5. 3  Dunning, Air, 644.

4  Barnouw, Golden, 63–​64. After the war, sustaining network hours became profitable when affiliates did not broadcast the network sustainers and hired local disk jockeys to play recorded music. This resulted in a decline in network sustaining programs, see 216–​19. From the corporate end, the networks need to make every dollar to subsidize their new television networks, and so limited sustaining programs, 244–​45. Government oversight was comparatively lax at that time. 5  Barnouw, Golden, 70.

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20 In This Corner some CBS series that had been on the air for a while. Erik Barnouw writes that Royal’s dismay over the success of New York Philharmonic broadcasts (which started on CBS in 1927) led him to create the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1937, hiring retired New York Philharmonic maestro Arturo Toscanini to conduct. CBS had broadcast the educational program American School of the Air since 1930, so in 1937 NBC created University of the Air, overseen by retiring Yale President James Rowland.6 The networks even one-​upped each other when it came to identifying affiliates. Columbia was preparing a careful study of rural listening that put a favorable interpretation on the network’s national coverage. NBC put out a rival study first, “a heavily illustrated but superficial job” that preempted the CBS survey, which was scrapped. Then there was sport programming. Variety noted that “NBC has been cutting red tape and giving CBS competition in its own idiom and with its own speed.” A “promotional booklet that NBC rushed out almost on the eve of the James Braddock—​Joe Lewis fight,” stole Columbia’s thunder with the “claim that [NBC] had covered every major heavyweight bout since the Jack Dempsey—​George Carpenter tangle.” CBS had its own promotional piece “in preparation” showing its historic sporting events, but felt it had to “junk” it in light of the stronger claims by NBC.7 Both networks were hitting below the belt. In another Variety article, NBC accused CBS of broadcasting portions of the American Athletic Union’s meet in Milwaukie to which NBC had exclusive rights. CBS broadcaster Ted Husing was in a building where he could see the action and made periodic reports on the air, and there was evidence he used material from sportscaster Bill Stern’s live NBC broadcast. NBC played its own dirty trick at a golf tournament for which CBS had broadcasting rights. NBC made deals with ten of the golfers in the tournament in order to get the winner on the air before CBS.8 According to Radio Mirror: The big Shakespearean battle started in the first place all because of a squabble between the networks over athletic events—​which is a new reason for putting Shakespeare on the air.9

In response to the CBS announcement about its Shakespeare series, NBC teletyped a nine-​page statement to its member stations, widely leaked to local papers, stating that NBC had already broadcast Shakespeare’s works seventy times, though, in fact, NBC had not produced a Shakespearean only series like Columbia’s. As a countermove, Royal appointed NBC’s Hollywood Studio Manager John Swallow to engage America’s best-​ known Shakespearean actor John Barrymore at $2000 an episode for a six-​week sustaining series of Shakespeare broadcasts on the Blue Network to be entitled Streamlined

6  Barnouw, Golden, 71.

7  “NBC Overtaking CBS Sales Promotion Runaway; Redtape Getting Scissors,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 28. 8  “More NBC—​CBS Rivalry,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 28. 9  “What’s New,” Radio Mirror 8:5 (September 1937): 79.

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Shakespeare.10 “Streamlined” now seems an unusual word choice, but it was a common term at the time to indicate shortened Shakespeare productions. Swallow, who would double as the series program director, wanted a longer series, but Barrymore had a film commitment which made this impossible. A  series of four Eugene O’Neill broadcasts and George Bernard Shaw’s own abridgement of Back to Methuselah were programmed against the rest of the CBS series, with Barrymore returning to NBC for two more broadcasts of modern plays immediately after the CBS series ended.11 Barrymore would adapt the Shakespeare scripts, take the lead roles, and direct each episode, according to the publicists. NBC would get Barrymore on the air three weeks earlier, June 21, to ensure its would be the first Shakespeare radio series and to get listeners into the habit of tuning in to its program.12 The forty-​five-​minute time slot would begin during the last half-​hour of the CBS series, running from 9:30 to 10:15 p.m. because the very popular Johnson’s Wax Program starring Fibber McGee and Molly would be stiffer competition for the Cycle. The Johnson’s Wax Program was on NBC Red, but listeners could easily switch to Blue instead of tuning in to the last half of Columbia’s program. Paley cancelled a trip to Normandy after this was announced. “The NBC-​CBS Shakespearian feud is believed to be the reason.”13 Variety called these duelling press releases a mudslinging campaign.14 It was a Tempest in a teapot, but teapot tempests are taken very seriously by those tossed in them (1.1.35). CBS responded with a statement of its own. NBC released last night announcement of a Shakespeare series from 9:30 to 10:15 p. m. Monday nights. This places NBC Shakespeare directly opposition [sic] Columbia Shakespeare through several weeks. We presumed it was a mistake on NBC’s part and requested them yesterday afternoon to change time of their broadcasts. They have refused despite the fact that our plans and announcements were all prior to theirs. We believe our Shakespeare presentation will have far wider public appeal due to constant succession of superlative stars, each creating new Shakespearian role [sic] for the air, rather than expecting one actor to play different parts from week to week.15

10  “NBC Signs Barrymore in Shakespeare War,” Radio Daily 1:89 (June 15, 1937), pp. 1 and 8.

11  The programs were, Beyond the Horizon (August 2), The Fountain (August 9), Where the Cross is Made (August 16), and The Straw (August 23). Back to Methuselah aired August 30. The modern plays were Philip Barry’s The Animal Kingdom (September 6) and Samuel Raphaelson’s Accent on Youth (September 13).

12  It seems obvious that another reason to put the series on the air earlier is that Barrymore was available as early as June 21 and NBC needed to come as close to matching Columbia’s eight broadcasts as they could if they wanted to claim the same prestige. However, I have found no contemporary statements that put the decision this way. 13  “Paley Cancels Sailing,” Radio Daily 1:90 (June 16, 1937), p. 2. 14  “NBC Overtaking,” 28.

15  “ ‘Who Discovered Shakespeare?’ Is Now Strictly NBC-​CBS Bone of Contention,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 39.

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22 In This Corner The Battle of the Bard was just the current manifestation of bad sportsmanship by these networks, but it was a rivalry reviewers and the public understood. CBS played catch-​up after NBC announced that Richard III would star Barrymore and his wife Elaine Barrie. A few days later, CBS announced that its Hamlet would co-​star Margaret Perry, the wife of the already announced Burgess Meredith, creating a kind of spousal parity.16 Barrie would, in fact, appear in five of the six Streamlined shows. The press sometimes read too much between the lines. A letter sent “over William S. Paley’s signature” invited educators to become members of the board of patrons of the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle. The Radio Daily writer who reported this claimed it was “Columbia’s latest slap at NBC for horning in on its Shakespeare cycle,” noting that “the letter assures [educators] that CBS will present Shakespeare ‘without distortion or vulgarization’.” The letter, in fact, does not mention NBC, so the condescension toward Streamlined Shakespeare is the reporter’s interpretation.17 Even radio listings played-​up the rivalry. Radio Mirror announced the Streamlined broadcast of Taming of the Shrew this way, “John Barrymore is streamlining away on the Bard on NBC, while CBS is continuing its self-​imposed task of corralling every actor in Hollywood and tuning him in a Shakespeare declaimer.”18 Radio Guide had a different attitude: The spectacle of our two major networks squabbling over the writings of William Shakespeare is amusing to some commentators. To them, it smacks of childishness. To us, it smells more like a roughly effective bit of press-​agentry … Now, with CBS snarling with rage and NBC panting with defiance, we find a nation of listeners turning in eagerly to Monday night. And why? Not because Shakespeare is scheduled, certainly, but because these rival broadcasters represent a good fight.19

Press-​Agentry Columbia’s press agents seem to have been far more active than NBC’s, if the number of press releases described in the trade and popular press is a reliable indicator. June 16–​21, Variety reported the CBS broadcasts would originate from New York, Los Angeles, and possibly Chicago and St. Louis. Leonard Hole would produce with Harry C. Ommerie as associate producer. Music would be played by a twenty-​piece orchestra.20 In the end, the first seven broadcasts came from Los Angeles and the last from New York, where the program’s stars lived. Radio Daily reported that Columbia had lined up “the largest group of stations ever to carry a series of sustaining features on the CBS 16  “New Chapter in Shakespeare War,” Radio Daily 2:5 (July 18, 1937), p. 5. 17  “Double-​Edged,” Variety 127:5 (July 14, 1937), p. 44.

18  “Monday,” Radio Mirror 8:5 (September 1937), p. 47.

19  “Happy Listening,” Radio Guide 6:38 (July 10, 1937), p. 2.

20  “Library Tie-​Ins For Shakespeare Series on CBS,” Variety 127:1 (June 16, 1937), p. 32.

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network … 93 outlets and the prospect of more coming in.”21 CBS signed the American Library Association (ALA) to mobilize libraries to promote the program with Columbia supplying posters, biographical pamphlets about Shakespeare, and a reader’s course for distribution in the nation’s libraries. Libraries were encouraged to install radios to air the programs in conjunction with a lecture.22 The ALA suggested libraries display the plays to be broadcast, literary criticism of those plays, books about Shakespeare and “Elizabethan stage, literature and society,” old playbills, pictures, early Shakespeare editions, create readings lists, and provide reading course No. 59 of the ALA’s “Reading with a Purpose” series. The ALA further suggested contacting local papers and women’s clubs to arrange announcements about the library’s Cycle-​related activities.23 Libraries as distant as Los Angeles and Rochester participated.24 The Phoenix and New Orleans libraries put a bookmark in each book checked out with the time and dates of the CBS broadcasts.25 June 22, Radio Daily announced that CBS installed a sound studio in the famed Music Box Theatre so that large audiences could attend the Los Angeles broadcasts.26 June 23, Variety reported that Lewis was in Hollywood hiring actors. It was expected that about $7000 would be spent on talent per episode. A rumour had it that John Barrymore’s brother Lionel turned down the role of Lear because he did not like Shakespeare, but Broadway actor Burgess Meredith would play Hamlet.27 It was further rumoured that both networks were after Broadway actor Edward Emery to play Claudius in Hamlet.28 June 24, “College presidents, Shakespeare scholars, stage and screen players and producers who have make names in Shakespeare” were invited to the studio to see the first NBC broadcast.29 The drama faculty of University of Southern California would attend the second.30 Principal casting for the Columbia series was announced on June 27 in the New York Times, and the schedule was published in two issues of the house organ CBS Sponsored 21  “CBS Sets Record Web for Shakespeare Cycle,” Radio Daily 1:90 (June 16, 1937), p. 4. 22  “Library,” New York Times, June 16, 1937, 32.

23  “Shakespeare on the Air,” Wisconsin Library Bulletin 33:6 (June 1937): 116–​17.

24  The Los Angeles participation is described in the article “Shakespearean,” Broadcasting 13:1 (August 1, 1937), p.  89. Rochester’s is described with a photo in “Shakespeare As You Like It,” Broadcasting 13:6 (September 15, 1937), p. 30. 25  “Promotion-​Bard on Arizona Planes,” Radio Daily 2:11 (July 21, 1937), p. 6, and for New Orleans, see “The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle-​July 19, 1937,” http://​randsesotericotr.podbean.com/​e/​ columbia-​shakespeare-​cycle-​july-​19–​1937/​. 26  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 1:94 (June 22, 1937), p. 8.

27  “Inside Stuff-​Radio,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 44. 28  “Broadway,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 67.

29  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 1:96 (June 24, 1937), p. 5.

30  “Shakespeare Buildup,” Radio Daily 1:99 (June 29, 1937), p. 2.

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and Sustaining Programs, July and August 1937.31 It was announced on June 29 that “recordings are being planned for museum archives and perhaps for school use.”32 July 1, $60,000 was announced as the budget for the eight Cycle episodes, twice the budget of the six Streamlined shows, meaning Columbia would spend an extra $2500 per show.33 Lewis predicted that the series would establish Shakespeare and other classics for regular yearly cycles.34 July 2, NBC announced that John Barrymore would be Caliban and Elaine Barrie would play Ariel in the Streamlined production of The Tempest ten days later. The publicity value of this will be explained shortly. July 7, Radio Daily announced that Conway Tearle would narrate the Columbia series,35 and reported that signs had been put up in the work camps of prisoners building highways in North Carolina as reminders to listen to the CBS series on the camp radio.36 July 8, it was reported that Broadway actor and producer William A. Brady would play the Ghost in Hamlet for Columbia and write a series of articles about Shakespeare to promote the series. The first would be titled, “The Melancholy Dane Goes on the Air.”37 By July 11, over one hundred stations agreed to carry the CBS series.38 The next day, NBC announced the signing of recent Academy Award winner Walter Brennan to play Stephano in The Tempest.39 July 14, CBS affiliates sponsored Shakespeare lectures in cities as diverse and San Francisco, California and Columbus, Ohio.40 Lewis failed to hire Broadway veterans Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who shunned radio.41 31  The July issue summarized the series and gave the listings for the first two broadcasts on p. 19. The play for the July 26 broadcast had not been decided at press time, and so is listed as “to be announced.” The August issue also lists that month’s programs on p. 19. 32  “Shakespeare Buildup,” Radio Daily 1:99 (June 29, 1937), p. 2.

33  “Networks’ Shakespeare Rivalry: CBS and NBC Dramatic Series Originate in Hollywood Featuring Movie Stars,” Broadcasting 13:1 (July 1, 1937), p. 36. 34  “Hollywood,” Broadcasting 13:1 (July 1, 1937), p. 35.

35  “Tearle as Shakespeare Narrator,” Radio Daily 2:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 2. 36  “Promotions,” Radio Daily 2:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 8.

37  “Promotions-​Articles on Shakespeare,” Radio Daily 2:5 (July 8, 1937), p. 4.

38  “CBS Shakespeare Cycle to Open Monday With Meredith In Leading Role of Hamlet,” Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star, July 11, 1937, www.digitaldeliftp.com/​DigitalDeliToo/​Images/​Lincoln-​ Sunday-​Journal-​and-​Star-​37-​07-​11.pdf. 39  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 2:7 (July 12, 1937), p. 6. Brennan won the award for Best Supporting Actor in the 1936 film Come and Get It directed by William Wyler and Howard Hawks for Samuel Goldwyn Productions.

40  “KSFO’s Shakespeare Bally,” Variety 127:5 (July 14, 1937), p.  39, and “Radio Showmanship: Attention-​Getters, Tie-​ups, Ideas,” on p. 42 of the same issue. 41  “$10,000 No Air Lure to Lunts,” Variety 127:5 (July 14, 1937), p. 38. The $10,000 was for another radio appearance, but the article also mentions that the couple turned down Lewis’s offer for the Columbia series.

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July 22, CBS would sponsor an essay contest for high school students, “critical essays dealing with Columbia’s presentation” of the Cycle. The judges would be educators and Shakespeare scholars, with a first prize of $250 and fifteen second prizes of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s works autographed by Brewster Morgan. The Network hoped that ideas for future prestige series would be suggested by these essays.42 NBC broadcast an interview with John Barrymore and Elaine Barrie about its series on June 25, four days after the first show, but CBS broadcast multiple ancillary programs before and after its series began. On June 28, drama critic and broadcaster Burns Mantle gave a fifteen-​minute talk entitled “Broadcasting the Dramas of William Shakespeare.” A July 1 program, Music From Shakespeare, featured Tchaikovsky’s “Overture to Hamlet” and German’s arrangement of dances by Henry VIII. These were chosen by the orchestra leader for the Cycle, Victor Bay.43 Burgess Meredith and other members of the Hamlet cast were interviewed by Kathryn Cravens on the July 12 episode of News Through a Woman’s Eye to publicize that evening’s broadcast. Leslie Howard and Rosalind Russell were Craven’s guests the following Monday. On the August 1 Lewisohn Stadium Concerts Philharmonic-​Symphony Orchestra program, George King Raudenbusch conducted “a program of music inspired by the plays of Shakespeare.” A week later on the same program, Willem van Hoogstraten conducted the overture of Weber’s Oberon.44 On the afternoon of the August 16 As You Like It broadcast, CBS aired Shakespeare Today and Yesterday, a fifteen-​minute program featuring performers talking about acting Shakespeare, which included Buford Hampden who would soon be in Twelfth Night.45 Performers from Twelfth Night and previous broadcasts would appear on The Curtain Calls of the 1937 Shakespeare Cycle, broadcast thirty minutes after the last Columbia episode.46 There is more about that in the next chapter. Radio Daily wrote about a new hire at CBS and compared the CBS promotions to those of NBC, “CBS has added Hal Rourke … to its staff to ‘do’ nothing but Shakespeare. Men have been put on the road, contacting newspapers, clubs and educational groups … NBC, with its campaign launched two weeks ago, is still flashing special bulletins, hosting college prexies, Shakespeare authorities and students at the Barrymore performance.” NBC’s comparative passivity is why this section has overwhelmingly been about Columbia’s publicity efforts.47 This chapter has reached a fork in the road. It will take the fork that leads to NBC because that series was broadcast first. The better publicized CBS series will be described in the next chapter. 42  “C. B. S. Sponsors Shakespeare Cycle Essay Contest,” The Grosse Pointe Review 11:48 (July 22, 1937), p. 6. 43  CBS Sponsored and Sustaining Programs (July 1937), p. 24.

44  CBS Sponsored and Sustaining Programs (August 1937), p. 22. 45  CBS Sponsored and Sustaining Programs (August 1937), p. 19.

46  CBS Sponsored and Sustaining Programs (September 1937), p. 46.

47  “West Coast Bureau, ‘Shakespeare Buildup,’ ” Radio Daily 1:99 (June 29, 1937), p. 2.

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Streamlined Shakespeare John Barrymore had long been a star of the stage and screen. During his younger years, he was called “The Great Profile” to celebrate his handsome best angle, but he was not afraid to appear ugly when a role called for it, as it did in parts of the film Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde (John S. Robertson, dir., Paramount, 1920) and Svengali, in which Barrymore twice gave Hamlet’s lines from 1.5.168–​9 to drive home the point of the story (Archie Mayo, dir., Warner Bros., 1931). Much of Barrymore’s reputation derived from his two Shakespearean stage roles. He was a famous Richard III in 1920 and a celebrated Hamlet in the United States in 1922 and in the United Kingdom in 1925. Barrymore recorded a soliloquy from Hamlet and one of Richard’s speeches from Henry VI, part three on a seventy-​eight RPM record for NBC’s parent company RCA in 1928, and in 1936 he recorded two speeches from Hamlet released on a picture disk by the Famous Record Company, a subsidiary of RCA. He appeared in the variety film Show of Shows (John G. Adolfi, dir., Warner Bros., 1929) giving the same speech from Henry VI, part three, about which more below, and was Mercutio in MGM’s Romeo and Juliet. Barrymore was still America’s best known Shakespearean actor in 1937. He had done relatively little Shakespeare, but he did that little famously. Barrymore had been on radio before, starting with a thirty-​minute BBC Hamlet broadcast in 1925, and read scenes and soliloquies from various plays and playwrights on a number of variety shows, including the disastrous Dodge Brother's Hour program in 1928. A  Newsweek article reported that Barrymore already “wanted to do more” radio Shakespeare when NBC offered the Streamlined series to him. The actor praised radio’s capacity “to carry those flowery vowels,” and noted that Shakespeare’s plays were written for mass audiences with radio as a modern equivalent. His series might especially appeal to youth since “Shakespeare was a high school boy until he died.” He claimed Shakespeare would not approve of the reverent performances by Barrymore’s contemporaries. “He wanted them played the way we intend to play them.”48 These doubtful claims continued on the Hamlet broadcast. The Bard of Avon actually wrote a very simple study of a man equipped with the indecision one finds in almost everyone today, gave him a sense of humor and imbued within him the emotions for love, hate, fear, and weep and laugh [sic] exactly as you and I.

Portraying these emotions were Barrymore’s strengths. He came with disadvantages, as well. Barrymore had an emerging reputation as a man reduced to giving hammy perfor­ mances in bad films because he squandered his talent on women and booze. The film Sing, Baby Sing (Sidney Lanfield, dir., 20th Century Fox, 1936) had characters that are analogs to Barrymore and Elaine Barrie. The big difference is that the Barrie film character does not end up with the Barrymore character.49 The short film Hamlet and Eggs (William Watson, dir., Educational Pictures) is the story of a Barrymore type actor out of 48  “DRAMA: John Barrymore Will ‘Air-​Streamline’ Shakespeare,” Newsweek, June 26, 1937, 22. 49  “Profile: June Wilkins,” Kodiapps, https://​kodiapps.com/​movie-​218365.

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place on an Arizona dude ranch. It was released June 18, 1937, the Friday before Hamlet was broadcast by NBC.50 Barrymore’s drinking alarmed producers. He could be unreliable, even dangerous on the air. An extreme example was on the December 14, 1935 Shell Chateau (1935–​1937) program. Barrymore performed a twelve-​minute scene from Sem Benelli’s play The Jest, his Broadway successes of 1919. Producer Carroll Carroll conspired with Barrie to keep Barrymore sober during rehearsals and the broadcast, but he snuck away on broadcast day. He was found in time and taken to the studio. Though he gave a marvellous performance for the ear, Barrymore was shaking and so obviously sick that one person in the booth averted his eyes, afraid Barrymore was about to die. He collapsed as soon as his segment was over. The story seems apocryphal, but is not told as such.51 One rumour in circulation during the Streamlined series was that there was a clause that would allow NBC to cancel Barrymore’s contract “should he imbibe before going on the air.”52 Though Barrymore had several months of relative sobriety, it seems risky for NBC to entrust him with such an important series. Writing, acting, directing? What would become of the series if he went AWOL again? If the publicity department is to be believed, NBC took an unacceptable risk, but the network was not so foolish. Swallow put together a team to produce the show that included himself and production manager Marvin Young as directors and Will Prior as composer and musical director. Forrest Barnes from KECA would adapt the plays for radio in some sort of collaboration with Barrymore. Barrymore’s main costar was Elaine Barrie. They wed in November of 1936. Barrie might be usefully understood as a proto-​Kim Kardashian. There was no Instagram or Twitter then, but Barrie wrote a series of articles about their relationship for the New York Mirror in 1935, which was the closest equivalent at the time. The first article included the revelation that Barrie turned “faint with exultation” upon learning that Barrymore and his third wife Dolores Costello were divorcing. They had not yet met. She was born Elaine Jacobs, but took Barrie as a stage name because it sounded like Barrymore. It was said she vowed to marry Barrymore after seeing Svengali in 1931, a film in which Barrymore’s character used hypnotism to control women. Barrie was a nineteen-​year-​ old fledgling actor in 1935 when she visited the fifty-​three-​year-​old actor in hospital, she said to interview him for the Hunter College newspaper. The couple were often in gossip columns for their many public fights and reconciliations. In a Shakespearean version of “Beauty and the Beast,” they called each other Ariel (Barrie) and Caliban (Barrymore). Gossip writers loved this, and the public came to know the couple by these nicknames. Barrymore sometimes insisted that Barrie be given roles in his projects to boost her acting career. She certainly got more work with him than she found on her own.53 50  Douglas Lanier, “The Idea of a John Barrymore,” Colby Quarterly 37:1 (March 2001): 39.

51  Peter Hay, Canned Laughter:  The Best Stories from Radio and Television (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 44–​46. 52  Evans Plummer, “Plums and Prunes,” Radio Guide 6:39 (July 17, 1937), p. 12.

53  Douglas Martin, “Elaine Barrie, 87, Dies: Married Barrymore,” New York Times, March 4, 2003, www.nytimes.com/​2003/​03/​04/​arts/​elaine-​barrie-​87-​dies-​married-​barrymore.html.

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28 In This Corner The ups and down of their relationship was the butt of jokes, as in this dialogue from the radio comedy Town Hall Tonight: Fred Allen: You say Miss Barrie has received her final decree? Actor: Yes, Elaine is returning to the stage. Allen: Which name will she use, Barrie or Barrymore? Actor: Barrie. Barrie’s all there is. There isn’t any “more.”54

The couple were even satirized in the Porky Pig cartoon Porky’s Road Race (Frank Tashlin, dir., Warner Bros., 1937). Their marriage was off in April of 1937 when a Superior Court judge in San Francisco granted a divorce. During their estrangement, Barrie toured in a one-​act play entitled The Talented Talcotts about a bickering theatrical couple, which is why she was in San Francisco. She also made a short strip film, How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (Darwin Esper, dir., 1937).55 This is equivalent to a divorced celebrity wife appearing in Playboy today. She is billed as Elaine Barrie Barrymore in both. Barrie claimed the billing was made without her consent, though that is difficult to believe in the case of the play, and her 1964 autobiography was published under the name Elaine Barrie Barrymore.56 Their May reconciliation rescued her from this exploitation career. Barrymore wanted to put Barrie in a new production of Hamlet at the Hollywood Bowl. That production unravelled because director Richard Breen refused to accept Barrie as Ophelia.57 Because Barrymore sometimes insisted that she act with him, Barrie is often viewed as a talentless exploiter of a great man. There is a grain of truth to this, however, in a break with the Kim Kardashian analogy, Barrie made whatever respectability Barrymore had in his later career possible. She “rehabilitated [and] reglamorized” Barrymore by curbing his excesses, monitoring his health, organizing his schedule so he would not miss rehearsals, and quite a bit more. Hiring her meant Barrymore would show up on time and in good condition. He was grateful.58 Barrie does not appear in Hamlet, but she is in all the other Streamlined programs. Barrie’s status in the first broadcast is a puzzle. She claimed that she and Barrymore were hired as a couple to appear in the Streamlined Shakespeare series, “NBC signed us both to do a series of Shakespearean broadcasts.” Her autobiography is riddled with easily demonstrable errors, one being that The Tempest was the first of the Streamlined plays.59 None of the publicity material prior to the series premiere that I have seen 54  “Wednesday,” Radio Mirror 8:3 (July 1937): 15.

55  The film may be viewed on YouTube: www.youtube.com/​watch?v=OvqvHu-​9kLE.

56  Elaine Barrie Barrymore and Sandford Dody, All My Sins Remembered (New  York:  Appleton-​ Century, 1964), 174. 57  Michael A. Morrison, John Barrymore: Shakespearean Actor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 283.

58  John Carlson, “The Barrymore Break-​Up: A Too Realistic Stage Spanking Lost John His Elaine—​ Perhaps His Radio and Film Career Too!” Radio Guide 8:33 (June 3, 1939), pp. 7 and 37. 59  Barrymore, Sins, 154–​55.

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mentions Barrie, so skepticism is warranted. Morrison writes that Barrie was not in the Hamlet broadcast because the couple were estranged, but reconciled in time for Richard III. This explains Barrie’s absence from Hamlet, but Morrison supplies no citation for his claim. The same page shows that Morrison is aware of the May reconciliation.60 Barrymore and Barrie were interviewed about the series on the Blue network on June 25, three days before their Richard III broadcast. The New York Times lists the interview on that day,61 and so must have learned about the broadcast on the 24th or earlier, meaning NBC sent the press release on the 23rd or earlier. Since Hamlet was broadcast two days before that, there is very little time after the Hamlet broadcast for the reconciliation Morrison mentions. It is possible their reconciliation occurred before the Hamlet broadcast but too close to air for the script to be revised to include Ophelia and Barrie. The problem is that I have to imagine this justification for Morrison’s claim, and there is a very small window for all the required scheduling. I wonder if Morrison is mistaken to imply that another split occurred after May with another reconciliation between the Hamlet and Richard III broadcasts? Whatever happened, Barrie is not in the Hamlet. Barrie’s mother was often with her daughter, much to Barrymore’s chagrin. Radio Mirror reported that Barrie’s mother stood at her side during the broadcasts to give her confidence. Barrymore, however, was “so full of nervous energy that his glasses popped off his chiseled nose as he spoke.”62 Five actors appeared in half the episodes or more. We have already met Hans Conried, the only actor besides Barrymore to appear in all six Streamlined broadcasts. He played Laertes in Hamlet, Catesby in Richard III, Malcolm in Macbeth, Antonio in The Tempest, Sebastian in Twelfth Night, and Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew. He became one of Barrymore’s favourite actors, which is not surprising since they had a similar speaking style.63 The others are British born Mary Forbes, who came to America in the twenties and had a successful film career. She appears as Gertrude in Hamlet, Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, and Gentlewoman in Macbeth. Henry Hunter had just begun his long film career in 1936 before being tapped for Streamlined Shakespeare. He was Lennox in Macbeth, Ferdinand in The Tempest, and Hortensio in Taming of the Shrew. Miles Mander was another British actor who came to the United States in 1935 to continue his film career in Hollywood. He was Polonius in Hamlet, Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night, and Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew. None of these three had busy radio careers before or after the Streamlined series, but Frederick Shields did. He was Horatio in Hamlet, Tearle in Richard III, the Master in The Tempest, and appeared in roughly three hundred known radio productions from ca. 1932 to 1960. 60  Morrison, Barrymore, 283. An email to Morrison remains unanswered.

61  The New York Times gives the title as John Barrymore and Elaine Barrie, Actors, Interviewed (June 25, 1937). 62  “Behind the Hollywood Front,” Radio Mirror 8:6 (October 1937): 70. 63  Gargiulo, Conried, 18.

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30 In This Corner Despite a rumour that Barrymore would only narrate the series and let others do the acting,64 he played one role in three of the broadcasts and two roles in the others. He was Hamlet and the Ghost in Hamlet, Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, and Prospero and Caliban in The Tempest. He also played the title characters in Richard III and Macbeth, and the tamer in The Taming of the Shrew. Barrie was Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. She was Lady Anne in Richard III and may have doubled the young Prince of Wales since the actor who has the role shares her distinctive elocution and no one is credited with the part. She definitely doubled Miranda and Ariel in The Tempest.

Broadcasts and Reviews

Most episodes begin with Will Prior’s fanfare followed by Barrymore’s opening remarks, though the first broadcast featured Swallow in-​between. He was instructed to introduce that show should Barrymore be too drunk to handle it. Swallow staked NBC’s claim to Shakespeare by boasting that this was the seventy-​first broadcast of a Shakespeare play on NBC. The music and overall tone are standard for prestige shows at that time. Announcer Gayne Whitman then asks Barrymore a question, Barrymore’s answer becoming his opening remarks. Barrymore makes a number of syntactically tortured statements in his introduction, as if he is not reading from a script, though he was. He did not follow the scripts as closely in the introductions as he did when Shakespeare’s lines began. Barrymore seems relaxed and sounds informal, as if he is in our homes, which in a way he was. Barrymore narrates all the bridges between the scenes. Brandon Hurst plays Claudius, instead of Edward Emery. The play was heavily abridged, naturally, with one scene transposed. The Streamlined story begins with the discussion on the battlements about the Ghost, informing Hamlet that the Ghost has appeared, the Ghost tells Hamlet about his murder, then Polonius tells Hamlet that the actors have arrived through the “play’s the thing” speech. This is followed by Hamlet in Gertrude’s closet with the death of Polonius, the King’s plot with Laertes, and the deaths at the end of the play, which Variety described this as a series of grunts in a review that also said that Barrymore was a little hammy.65 Robert West wrote, “Barrymore made the mistake of trying to double as the ghost in ‘Hamlet.’ As a result, Hamlet sounded like the ghost, and the ghost sounded like Hamlet.”66 An electric storm over Long Island, New  York, disrupted this first broadcast for listeners in that most important market. “The ghost howled weirdly through space to the accompaniment of static, stirred by a violent lightning storm … Trees were uprooted, houses unroofed, cellars were flooded and lights went out—​so did the radio.”67 One Long Island listener nevertheless heard flashes of Barrymore’s greatness in the broadcast: 64  “What’s New,” Radio Mirror 8:5 (September 1937): 79. 65  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 40.

66  Robert West, The Rape of Radio (New York: Rodin, 1941), 69.

67  “Hamlet Caught in the Storm,” New York Times, June 27, 1937, section 10, 10.

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“The reading was sonorous and pleasantly reminiscent of the time this frequently brilliant actor was taking his Shakespeare more or less seriously and giving us the best Hamlet we had had for many seasons.”68 Variety faulted Barrymore’s Hamlet abridgement: “NBC forgot that the show has to be there … and it wasn’t. Main difficulty is the script. Barrymore is credited with having made the radio adaptation himself. That’s a tip-​off. What is needed, and quick, is an adaptor.” There are story problems. Laertes receives no introduction at all. He just speaks at his cue when he is heard for the first time on the program complaining about the death of his father in 4.7. “[Barrymore] shouldn’t be permitted to do everything.”69 Barrymore was so credited in publicity materials, but the credits at the end of the broadcast clearly say that “Forrest Barnes assisted Mr. Barrymore” with the adaptation. To answer the complaints, Barnes was announced as the adaptor of future broadcasts, which seems to have fooled the critics. Nevertheless, Barrymore left his fingerprints on the Richard III script, which was influenced by his stage performance and the film The Show of Shows. Barrymore incorporated Richard’s soliloquy from Henry VI, part three, 3.2.125–​95 into his five-​hour stage production,70 and that speech was given in the film. The radio episode includes a slightly abridged version of it. In introducing the speech and without mentioning the film, Barrymore invited the audience to picture Richard “alone, atop a seething mound of dying bodies, his feet in blood wet mud,” a description of the film’s set. Including this speech seems more likely to have come from Barrymore than Barnes, and so does the description of the set. Beyond Richard III, it is possible, even probable, the Barrymore and Barnes discussed the scenes Barrymore most wanted to act and that Barnes made a point of including these in his scripts. Richard III informs listeners that this is the seventy-​second Shakespeare broadcast on NBC. Two format changes are that Barrymore’s introduction is not in answer to a question and the narrative bridges are now handled by Whitman, not Barrymore, changes that will stay in place for the rest of the series. The introductory material, including the speech from Henry VI, part three, takes up seven minutes of airtime, more than a sixth of the program. This version of the story begins with the unlikely wooing of Lady Anne, the complaints about a child becoming king and the journey to meet him, the meeting, Richard’s instruction to Buckingham to infer that the prince is a bastard and to bring the Mayor and citizens to Baynard’s Castle, Richard’s meeting with the mayor and citizens when he is proclaimed king, Richard’s request that Buckingham kill the nephews, his arrangement with Tyrrell to kill them when Buckingham hesitates, Buckingham’s decision to leave Richard, and the portion of 4.4 in which Richard asks Queen Elizabeth 68  Burns Mantle, “Shakespeare to Be Given Over Airwaves,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, July 7, 1937, pt. 6, 5. 69  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 40.

70  Barbara Freedman, “Critical Junctures in Shakespeare Screen History:  The Case of Richard III,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. Russell Jackson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47–​71, at 52.

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32 In This Corner to teach him how to woo her daughter through the news that Richmond has landed with an army in England. The show ends with a bit of Richard’s nightmare in 5.5, which is merged with the end of the play and Richard’s death. The Radio Daily reviewer complained that the cutting made “Richard III hard to follow,”71 but Variety praised the script: “This piece seemed better edited for the air … and was a more compact job all the way.” That reviewer noted the “fine performance of Barrymore. The old Barrymore. It was close to being one of the most provocative things the loudspeaker has ever slipped the populace.” Especially praised was the death scene in which Barrymore made “a magnificently gory sound.” The evaluation of Barrie is notable: “She turns out not to be a hopeless trouper. She may be a one-​emotion actress, but boys, she can handle scorn.”72 The series was front-​loaded with Barrymore’s previous triumphs, Hamlet and Richard III, so he took untested roles starting with the next broadcast. Richard III ends with the announcement that the next play will be King Lear. The next play was not King Lear. The show begins with the emblem that this is NBC’s “Seventy-​third presentation of a play by William Shakespeare,” followed by the note that Macbeth had been substituted for King Lear “after mature consideration,” which is not further explained. In his introduction, Barrymore seems to concede that they have not done well by the play. To attempt summing up the full force of Macbeth … is comparable to building a battleship between sunrise and sunset, but the exigencies of radio demands brevity and I refuse to admit myself less able to be brief when the occasion demands. Macbeth is considered by many people to be Shakespeare’s most perfect play due probably to the fact that it is shorter and its plot less detailed by bi-​plots. Macbeth is a strong, violent, splendid figure for his times, a potential flaming sword that needs someone to wield it. His celebrated wife proves the excellent swordsman, and with a dominance that makes his own soldiery look slightly armature, she directs his path through blood to the throne of Scotland.

Perhaps the battleship comparison indicates that time spent trying come up with an acceptable King Lear script gave Barrymore and Barnes fewer days to write an acceptable Macbeth script. The character analysis at the end of this quote may have been added to make up for script deficiencies. The first scene in this broadcast is the initial meeting of Macbeth and Banquo with the Weird Sisters. Lady Macbeth reads the letter and Macbeth arrives to talk to her. She exits and Macbeth’s gives his “If it were done when ‘tis done” speech that begins in 1.7.1. and incorporates the “dagger of the mind” speech from 2.1. The Porter answers the door and the discovery of the murder is given a fairly full rendition. The narrator describes Macbeth coronation and indicates that the new king wants to kill Banquo and Fleance. Macbeth commissions the murderers who quickly report Banquo’s death and Fleance’s escape. The banquet scene follows. Macbeth again meets the Weird Sisters and the 71  “Program Reviews and Comments,” Radio Daily 1:100 (June 30, 1937), p. 7. 72  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:3 (June 30, 1937), p. 38.

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plan to kill Macduff’s family is revealed. Lady Macbeth’s illness and death follow. The program ends with Barrymore giving himself another gurgling death followed by some of the final speeches. Variety was not pleased by the cuts. “It is probably mauled out of necessity rather than irreverence … It is now clear that Shakespeare as adopted to allow a monologist a chance to strut his stuff violates what has generally been considered proper radio play-​ building … The tug-​o’-​war between original text, theatrical tradition and the bald, cold limited scope of radio tends to defeat as astute a Shakespearian as John Barrymore.” The critic was fairly kind to Barrie as Lady Macbeth. “She’s not bad as radio is familiar with badness in acting. She is unexpectedly passing … She summons a native shrewdness and adds clear diction. The fire and fury that Lady Macbeth calls for she lacks.” Less pleasing were the other parts of the broadcast for its “general mumble-​jumble of voices and characters combined with the archaic phraseology, and fragmentary bits of plot threaded together, all makes it hard listening.” However, praise was given to William Farnum as Macduff, the sound patterns, musical embellishments, and Barrymore for making “the grander passages eloquent.”73 NBC dropped its count of Shakespeare broadcasts with The Tempest. In its place, Gayne Whitman reads, “The performances already given have aroused widespread discussion and many expression of gratitude.” Nevertheless, Barrymore says that his introductions have been a “verbal tourniquet” to stop the flow “of historical blood,” caused by cutting Shakespeare’s plays. He hopes The Tempest does not need a tourniquet. It helps that this is one of Shakespeare’s shorter plays. There are just two scenes entirely cut, 2.1 and 3.3, both scenes with Alonso, Gonzalo, and Antonio in which Prospero does not appear. Most scenes are thinned, especially the Trinculo and Stephano scenes, 2.2 and 3.2. It is not necessary to recount the plot of this broadcast because it follows the story of the play fairly closely. Radio Daily complained that The Tempest was “a 50-​50 affair” due to the lack of “acting opportunities” compared to “some of the Bard’s other work,” but felt that Barrymore “realized all the possible values in the dual role [sic] of Prospero and Caliban … there is magic in the very speech of Barrymore that makes almost any of his utterances a joy to hear.” The reviewer was less impressed by Barrie’s double of Miranda and Ariel: “She was too out-​shadowed by seasoned troopers” who did “grand jobs.” Overall, “this fourth in the NBC series … was quite efficiently handled.”74 1937 was a more tolerant time than today, if by tolerant we mean that people tolerated bigotry. Radio Guide reported that at the end of The Tempest, Barrie “found a deputy sheriff waiting for her with a summons in which the Bank of America charged that she owed them several thousands of dollars in a real-​estate deal. The incident would have been funnier had John and Elaine just finished doing ‘Shylock’.”75 The premiere of the 73  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 44.

74  “Program Reviews and Comments,” Radio Daily 2:9 (July 14, 1937), p. 6.

75  Martin Lewis, “Inside Stuff,” Radio Guide 6:41 (July 31, 1937), p. 13. The Barrymores went house hunting the week before. See, “Los Angeles,” San Bernardino Sun, June 25, 1937, 16. I have been

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Columbia Shakespeare Cycle began thirty minutes before the start of this broadcast. CBS presented Hamlet. Starting with Twelfth Night, Barrymore and Barnes greatly simplified the stories. This script transposes more than most, so Viola’s arrival in Illyria is followed by introductions to the characters of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria, then the 1.5 dialogue with Olivia and Malvolio. The narrator informs us that Olivia has fallen in love with Viola in her guise as Cesario. The program now presents the famous first line of the play combined with Orsino sending Cesario a second time to Olivia’s house. Next is Malvolio admonishing the revelers and the plot to gull Malvolio, culminating in the gulling. Malvolio arrives in yellow stockings and Sir Toby takes him into custody. Sebastian meets Olivia who quickly proposes marriage. The program concludes with the Act 5 explanations, heavily abridged. The only review found was in Radio Daily, and it was brief. The reviewer felt that “Barrymore suffered a little by shouldering two roles,” but praised Alan Dinehart’s Orsino.76 CBS broadcast Much Ado About Nothing. Barnes script for The Taming of the Shrew is a tribute to Barrymore’s vanity. He is in all the scenes not streamlined away. The story opens with 1.1–​2.1, these scenes abridged into one. The story skips to 3.2 through 4.1. 4.5–​6 is next, followed by the 5.2 conclusion. The broadcast concentrates on the set up for Petruchio’s wooing of Katherine, the feisty wooing scene, the wedding, the arrival at Petruchio’s house, the return to Padua, and the bet over wifely obedience. Previous episodes ended with Barrymore announcing his next Shakespeare broadcast. This last episode ended with a reminder that he would appear in The Animal Kingdom and Accent on Youth a few weeks hence and Barrymore gave an elaborate thanks to those who worked behind the scenes to create Streamlined Shakespeare, bursting the narrative that he did it all. Radio Daily concluded that Barrymore and “Barrie were at their best in this lively comedy, and they had a fine supporting cast.”77 NBC had broadcast Giuseppe Verdi’s Shakespeare derived opera Falstaff (1893) from Salzburg, Austria that afternoon. CBS offered Julius Caesar that evening. Critics were mixed about the series. There was general agreement that streamlining was a disservice to the plays, but that Forrest Barnes had improved the scripts after the first episode. Most felt the overall presentations were alright, most praised Barrymore’s readings, most even praised Barrie’s readings, though pains were taken to put her in her place. Supporting casts were generally appreciated.

Evaluating Streamlined Shakespeare

Compromises must be made when turning Shakespeare’s plays into radio broadcasts or the adapters will fail to exploit radio’s strengths and succumb to its limitations. Good unable to learn if this summons was related to this or how it was resolved. The couple were constantly in debt. 76  “Program Reviews,” Radio Daily 2:14 (July 21, 1937), p. 7. 77  “Program Reviews,” Radio Daily 2:19 (July 28, 1937), p. 5.

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adaptations change the texts to suit these strengths and overcome the limitations. Radio is an auditory medium; all visuals are created in the mind’s eye. Louis Marder, writing about the abridged Living Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet long playing record noted the difficulty of following that recording without a narrator: “It might be wise to insert an unobtrusive voice to indicate time, place, and speakers before the scenes begin. With the proper amount of continuity supplied it would be easy to visualize the play.”78 Time and place probably matter less than Marder believes, but listeners cannot see a new character enter as audiences do in a theatre, and so cannot identify a new speaker. The need to clarify Streamlined scripts is even greater because the scenes broadcast need new connections when cuts are made. Virtually every aspect of a broadcast remoulds the story: textual changes made for audio clarity, casting, music, sound patterns, the pace of the program, and the style of introductions and closing credits. This section will analyze the Streamlined adaptations by comparing the transcriptions to Shakespeare’s texts, analyzing interpretative choices, and other program elements. We begin by cutting through some of the hype produced by NBC. A Radio Guide review of the Richard III broadcast quotes the network’s claim that the series presents “the first performances specifically designed to take advantage of special conditions under which classic drama is broadcast.” One of the special conditions named is the network’s limitation on length. The plays would be cut. While we do not know enough about the 1928 Tempest broadcast to be certain of its length, we know that the next network Shakespeare adaptation, the Radio Guild episode of Macbeth on September 8, 1929, was sixty minutes and as we have seen, cut Shakespeare was standard practice on American radio. Every known network broadcast was abridged. Despite the boast in Radio Guide, this was is not the first time Shakespeare was reduced on the air. The second claim is that Streamlined Shakespeare would use “the ancient Greek device of the chorus and narrator” to explain the bits removed to shorten a play for broadcast. This too was not a first. The earliest Shakespeare adaptation I have heard, the fifteen-​minute 1934 Antony and Cleopatra on Front Page Drama, has five narrative passages. All extant early Shakespeare broadcasts studied use narrators to connect excerpts. Cut plays and narration go together for the more of the story cut, the more need there is to mediate between the play and listeners. Front Page Drama is also the answer to the final claim, that musical background would accompany narration for the first time. The older show used this device, but NBC apparently changed its mind. Streamlined Shakespeare has no music underlying the narrative breaks, even in the Hamlet broadcast which preceded publication of this article.79 Episodes begin with Will Prior’s opening fanfare. It is short but gives the impression something worthwhile will follow. Gayne Whitman’s announcing of the title and 78  Louis Marder, “Romeo & Juliet on Records,” The Shakespeare Newsletter 2.6 (September 1952): 27. 79  “ ‘Richard III’ Second In Barrymore Series,” Radio Guide 6:37 (July 3, 1937), p. 15.

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36 In This Corner introduction is effective, if not remarkable. To give the opening a classic motif, a snatch of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Romeo and Juliet plays between the announcing of that week’s title and Barrymore’s introductions. All this is over in a minute and a half. Whitman ends the broadcasts by saying, in part:  “This series of plays by the immortal Bard of Avon have been produced in the Hollywood studios of the National Broadcasting Company.” It is dignified, uses one superlative, “immortal,” and is in most ways a typical bookend for a prestigious show in that era. As we shall see in the next chapter, these opening and closing sound patterns lack the intricate hype that made the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle openings and closings more effective. Barrymore seems relaxed when he introduces the plays. His tone is conversational, yet he seems authoritative. His mediation takes the form of an expert actor informing listeners of the wisdom gained through long experience of Shakespeare. Some of Barrymore’s proclamations are dubious, such as his claim that Shakespeare enjoyed writing Twelfth Night, an impression that is not necessarily factual. Most listeners would not know that. Inappropriate vocalizations are heard during some broadcasts. For example, Barrymore clears his through while Whitman sets the scene for The Taming of the Shrew and breathes heavily into the microphone when getting ready for the “Rogue and peasant slave” speech in Hamlet. Such extraneous sounds were increasingly a problem as Barrymore grew older and more of his performances were on live radio. John Swallow invented a buffer made of iron pipe to keep the actors, plural, it was claimed, the right distance from the microphone. With the buffer placed directly under a dangling microphone, actors could not get too close during a broadcast and mistakenly alter the volume of their performance. According to actor Gale Gordon, this was created to keep Barrymore in place,80 and indeed one critic of the initial broadcast complained of Barrymore’s lack of microphone technique.81 The barrier, however, did not prevent the microphone from picking up Barrymore snorting during subsequent broadcasts. The introduction to the first broadcast is in the form of a question to Barrymore, who makes a tonal switch after a couple of sentences from answering the question to introductory monologue: “In giving the play tonight I have selected a few major moments which should be, I  trust, sufficient to keep the thread of the story.” The selections work fairly well for a while due to the combination of scenes chosen and Barrymore’s narration, which supplies some of the missing plot and reveals the motives and attitudes of the characters. The mistake of having Laertes speak without introducing him merits the condemnation expressed by multiple critics, and there really is a lot missing: 1.3, 2.1, 3.3–​4, all of Act 4, 5.1, and the severe thinning of all the scenes included. Another negative is that the sound patterns sometimes overwhelm the voices, particularly the wind effect in the first scene which makes some words inaudible. 80  Leonard Maltin, The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age (New York: Dutton, 1997), 119 and 242. 81  Quoted in Margot Peters, The House of Barrymore (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 407.

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Barrymore is emotional in his first scene. There is a throb in his voice to indicate Hamlet is crying, yet he switches to anger during certain lines. The two emotions alternate through the scene for Barrymore fails to express both emotions simultaneously. Barrymore did not play the Ghost on stage, but he howls in high-​pitched anguish as that character tells his story, saving big vocal effects for the moments of strongest emotion. These lines are spoken with Barrymore’s trademark rhythm, giving both the Ghost and Hamlet the same sound, though at different pitches. Hamlet is troubled until the Ghost exits, and then rages. Barrymore interacts well with the other actors instead of giving a “great performance” that overwhelms them. He struggles through the closing credits, giving long pauses and sentence fragments. He seems too exhausted to carry on, though it is possible that the recording at the Paley Center for Media is a rehearsal transcription and Barrymore was saving himself for the broadcast. Music fills the last five minutes of the recording. Every line cut changes the meaning of a play however slightly, and hundreds of lines are cut. An uncut audio Hamlet runs well over three hours, the exact length deepening on added sounds such as music and sound effects and the speed of the reading.82 The deletion of several characters and Hamlet appearing in all but two of the scenes broadcast makes the play about Hamlet instead of Hamlet and the court of Denmark. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is very much a triple tragedy, Hamlet’s, Laertes’s, who is Hamlet’s mirror image, and to stretch a point, the tragedy of Denmark which defaults to a foreign ruler in the end. By cutting all but two of Laertes’s scenes, that character’s resonances with Hamlet are hidden and the deletion of Fortinbras leaves Denmark a sovereign state. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern receive a brief mention in the narration, but not by name and they have no dialogue. The plot does not need the pair if you remove Hamlet’s trip to England as the broadcast does, but cutting them has a curious result. One would expect excising two of Hamlet’s three friends would isolate the Prince, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are bad friends invited to Elsinore to betray him. Hamlet’s discovery of this leaves him more alone and wary than he is in this broadcast. This dynamic is lost when the characters do not appear. Cutting Ophelia is so noteworthy that even the 1950 abridgement mentions it, a repeat broadcast explained in ­chapter  4. Hamlet does not treat Ophelia with much tenderness in the play, quite the opposite, but their scenes reveal the past tenderness they shared. The tender side of Hamlet is entirely missing here, and so are a few of Hamlet’s best remembered speeches when these are in dialogue with Ophelia. Cutting her also dilutes the impact of killing Polonius, for he is no longer the father of the woman once close to Hamlet. Barrymore begins Richard III by saying: “In the days of Shakespeare, this House of York was so bitterly hated and feared the playwright built a Richard even more terrible than Richard actually was. The third part of Shakespeare’s play Henry VI is the perfect prologue to tragedy of Richard III, which seems most fitting to be heard as the first 82  The 1997 Naxos recording is three hours and twenty-​two minutes. The 1998 Archangel recording lasts three hours and twenty-​five minutes.

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38 In This Corner voice in tonight’s play.” Thus he sets up the now familiar reading from that play before Richard III begins. It is bravado acting with moments of irony, the occasional swelling of Barrymore’s voice, howls, and other vocalizations that let listeners know they are hearing to a great actor in a great role. This is how old fashioned acting was done. Barrymore tones it down thereafter. The soliloquy allows Barrymore to skip the similar but less colourful soliloquy that begins Richard III. Richard is a showy character that dominates the stage. The Richard-​ centred streamlining is thus truer to the spirit of this play than it had been in Hamlet, but there are still sacrifices. The long portion of 3.7 prior to Richard’s entrance between two clergymen is cut to get to the heart of the scene, which is Richard’s manipulation of the London’s citizens. In the beautifully balanced 5.5, ghosts of those murdered by Richard haunt his nightmares and bring comfort to Richmond’s dreams. The broadcast eliminates Richmond from this scene. His Streamlined part is reduced to his two closing speeches. Richard’s machinations to kill his brother Clarence and wait out the death of his brother Edward are cut. So are all the politics not related to Richard’s plotting. The lamentations of Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth, and the Duchess of York are especially missed. One of the great challenges for any producer of Richard III is to make the wooing of Princess Anne believable. As Richard admits, he “killed her husband and her father” (1.2.218). This works surprisingly well in the broadcast in part because Barrymore sounds so sincere in his expressions of love, his voice throbbing with passion. It probably helps that listeners cannot see the “bunch-​backed toad” Queen Margaret describes in 1.3.244 or the age difference between Barrymore and Barrie. Memories of the “great profile” may also have helped. Barrymore makes Richard sound as if he means all that he tells Anne. The reviewer who called Barrie a one note actor who excelled at “scorn,” was unfair. She is quite tender toward Richard by the end of 1.2. She only has the one scene and a line as a ghost, but she handles both well. The sound effects are inferior. The trotting horses are unconvincing and the weapons sound more like wood than metal. The final battle does not build to a climax as Richard dies. The late substitution of Macbeth for King Lear seems to have caused problems for the third broadcast. I have not been able to learn the reason for the change or when it was made. Barrymore’s comment about the reason the script does not do Macbeth justice suggests it may have been late, perhaps after a few days of trying to make a King Lear script work, then giving up. The problems with turning Macbeth into an abridged audio story are not solved in this production. As in the play, Macbeth murders Duncan off microphone but without the scenes in which Duncan announces he will visit Macbeth’s castle and his arrival. Listeners cannot know why Duncan was at Macbeth’s castle. The banquet scene, 3.4, is important to show that Macbeth is becoming unhinged and is one of the more visual scenes in the play. Banquo is seen only by Macbeth, who is altered by the visitation. Listeners cannot observe Macbeth seeing the ghost or note that the others look past the ghost. A brief tone representing the ghost is sounded twice for both its appearances, but the tone fails to convey that the ghost has appeared and

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sounds as if the engineer pushed the wrong button. The scene gives Barrymore several opportunities for bravado acting, however, so including it must have been appealing. Barrymore is good in the scene: by turns a strong host, confused, frightened, and shrill. He lies without conviction to cover his strange behaviour. His resolution to visit the Weird Sisters at the end sounds desperate. Unfortunately, none of this behaviour is adequately anchored because the scene is too visual for easy translation to radio. Macbeth’s second meeting with the Weird Sisters is included to explain why Macbeth thinks he is invulnerable at the end of the play. Barnes cut the lines contrasting Macbeth with his predecessor and successors to the throne, Duncan, Malcolm, and Fleance. Fleance does not appear on the broadcast, and both Duncan and Malcolm are reduced to plot necessities so that level of meaning is lost. The parade of kings is also cut, deemphasizing the contrast further. Also cut is 4.3, the death of Macduff’s family on Macbeth’s order. This is usually the most harrowing scene on stage because Shakespeare takes the time to made audiences care about the characters about to be murdered. In fact, all the scenes of murder are cut, taking the dagger’s edge off of Macbeth morality. The program wants to end with Barrymore giving another grunting and gurgling death, so the final speeches of hope are nearly all abridged to put the death just seconds before the climax. Barrymore is on the whole impressive. The program begins with 1.3, the Weird Sisters’ encounter with Macbeth and Banquo. Barrymore sounds every inch the noble warrior, but really comes alive in the soliloquy at the end of the scene. “And make my seated hart knock at my ribs” (135) is said with a stress that makes this knocking seem real. The contiguous 1.7 and 2.1 are heavily abridged into one scene. Most of the lines retained come from Macbeth’s two soliloquies with a brief interruption by Lady Macbeth urging him on to murder. Barrymore demonstrates shock by giving sharp exhalations of breath before and after 2.1.33, “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” This works wonderfully in an audio performance. His delivery grows from vacillation to resolution. The Weird Sisters give Macbeth new confidence, but this is shaken when he learns of Lady Macbeth’s infirmity. He is steady again upon hearing that his castle is under attack. Barrymore once more plays a large number of emotions, but these disappear in a moment and are not taken into the next scene. One wants to hear more of an arc in these vacillations than Barrymore performs. He otherwise gives a rich and sensitive reading that features the inner conflict and doom felt by Macbeth. Barrymore remains interactive with the other actors, only vocally upstaging when big emotions are required. He may dominate the uneven ensemble, but this is an ensemble performance. It makes one wish Barrymore had played Macbeth on stage while in his prime. The rest of the cast is generally adequate, but nobody but Barrie has a part large enough to stick in the memory. She is a bit mannered, but her reading is clear and reveals a character driven to power. It would probably not have bothered most listeners, but the pronunciation of Glamis with two syllables is disconcerting. The plot of The Tempest is nearly intact because the only two scenes cut entirely feature the shipwrecked nobles. The play, however, is in part about usurping rightful rulers, so these cuts remove most of the lines of Antonio, Prospero’s usurping brother, King Alonso, who supported Antonio, and Sebastian, would be usurper of Alonso who is egged on by Antonio. These characters are not even mentioned until the narration

40

40 In This Corner summarizing a portion of 3.3, and listeners are told only that they are drawn by “magic means” toward “Prospero’s cave.” Faithful Gonzolo entirely disappears. There is much thinning of the Trinculo /​ Stephano /​ Caliban scenes, 2.2 and 3.2. Just enough of these lines are left to include the subplot to put Trinculo in Prospero’s place. Preserved is the game of chess, a game about conquering a kingdom during which Miranda gives Ferdinand permission to cheat, which introduces ambiguity to the play’s condemnation of unseating rulers. The significance of this game is overlooked by most commentators. On balance, the conquering aspect in the play is greatly reduced. Connected to this idea but completely eliminated is the theme of forgiveness, and the last scene likewise cuts Prospero taking responsibility for Caliban. Prospero’s earlier justification for his treatment of Caliban’s may have been censored: the reference to Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda (1.2.349–​50) is cut, and so is the reference to Miranda’s “virgin knot” that Ferdinand promises to leave tied until marriage (4.1.15). It may be that despite the publicity about Caliban playing Caliban, Barrymore preferred playing Prospero. Barrymore’s Caliban voice has a rough, whiny quality that seems at odds with the character’s unbridled id, but he plays Prospero in his comfort zone as a traditional leading man. Barrie affects a falsetto for Ariel and uses her natural voice for Miranda. She and Ferdinand (Henry Hunter) seem thoroughly smitten. Barnes and Barrymore made some changes in their approach to Twelfth Night. The music and ardent acting style give this program a romantic tone, especially in the scenes with Orsino and Viola. Previous broadcasts did not introduce characters until they were about to speak, but here the narrator introduces most of the lovers before the story begins, Sebastian included. This should make the very complicated plot easier to follow but it is compromised by some of the cuts. Scene 1.5 ends after the Olivia /​Malvolio dialogue before Viola enters disguised as Cesario. Nevertheless, Malvolio attempts to return the ring Olivia claims Cesario gave to her in the meeting we do not hear. This scene is needed to show how Viola comes to realize Olivia is in love with her, and the ring argument with Malvolio makes no sense out of context. It is difficult to imagine this play without the central comic scene, the gulling of Malvolio, and Barrymore played Malvolio so of course it is included. Scenes cut are 1.4, 2.1–​2, 3.1–​3, 4.2, and all but the first few lines of 1.1, so the script emphasizes the love scenes. Well, most of them. Cutting so much of Antonio removes the one character we would now call gay. Antonio has an unrequited fascination for Sebastian that is mirrored in Orsino’s and Malvolio’s unrequited fascination for Olivia, Olivia’s for the disguised Viola, Viola’s for Orsino, and possibly Sir Andrew’s for Olivia. Cutting Antonio removes one variation on impossible loves. Feste is the unkindest cut. All the songs are out. The absence of the beautiful but melancholy “The Wind and the Rain” that ends the play is especially missed. The caterwauling that rouses Malvolio’s ire and pits Sir Toby’s faction against him begins with one of Feste’s songs, but there is no singing here and so no real caterwauling. Malvolio may have been a prig, but he is right about the disorder in this scene. However, Malvolio is less right because of the tamer disorder in this broadcast, so an important ambiguity is compromised. The cruelty that marks this troubling comedy is most manifest in the

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mental torture of Malvolio by Sir Toby and especially Feste in the guise of Sir Topaz, which this show eliminates. Removing this is the only way that Barrymore could possibly claim the play contains the “quaint abandon and free humor in which Shakespeare delighted,” as he does in his introduction. Thus the show does not justify Malvolio’s outburst at the end, though the cast gives a hardy laugh at Olivia’s “How they have baffled you” (5.1.366), adding slightly to Malvolio’s revenge motive. Fabian is also cut from the play, though he is a small loss. Barrymore plays Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch. He uses a slurred drunken version of his natural voice for Sir Toby while laughing through too many of his lines, but speaks soberly, precisely, and in a lower register for Malvolio, stretching some vowels and rolling every “r” to portray Malvolio’s pretensions. Barrymore seems to have a wonderful time, which is infectious. It is difficult to understand why the Radio Guide reviewer singled out Alan Dinehart’s Orsino for praise. The performance seems thoroughly pedestrian, though he and Barrie match well as ardent lovers. Her Viola captures the character’s weariness in the opening scene. Sebastian and Olivia are so throbbingly sincere that they seem ridiculous today. The lines about the necessity of finding a husband for Katherine before her younger sister can be married are the only lines in The Taming of the Shrew about the Bianca subplot not given as narrative, so this broadcast is solely about the taming of Katherine. Shakespeare’s Bianca appears to be agreeable while hiding her wilfulness, and so is not tamed. The final act shows Katherine is now the better person and wife. Whatever problems we may have with this today, this broadcast fails to notice Bianca’s covert shrewishness. The play is also about women as chattel to be bought, sold, bargained, and wagered over. Not all of this was cut, but most of it was, so these aspects are in the background. Though too old for the part, Barrymore makes a strong impression as Petruchio by sounding young in the first scene. That impression made, it stays through the lines when Barrymore lets that youthful tone slip. He makes two of his inappropriate vocalizations, clearing his throat during the narrator’s introduction and again after delivering his last line. Barrie’s adeptness at playing scorn is effective here, though the high jinks aspect of her husband’s performance is out of her range. She makes Katherine’s speech about the proper roles of a husband and wife a dull lecture. The supporting actors are quite awful, playing their parts too broadly. The best moments are a lot of abusive fun.

Post Show Thoughts The Streamlined adaptations were little plays performed by ensembles in support of a star. The cutting guaranteed this, and so did the casting of Barrymore in two roles in half the broadcasts. Writing of Barrymore’s performance in Hamlet, Bernice W. Kliman concludes that “though Barrymore is not at his peak, there are moments that give a listener a sense of what this great actor could do. He offers not only variety but intelligent

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interpretative choices.”83 To broaden that, the Streamlined Shakespeare series gives a fair sampling of what Barrymore could do with Shakespeare at this point in his life. Great acting moments are privileged over narrative, but the acting moments are often great. Barrie wrote, “It was John’s tragedy that his greatest moments were always his first in a new project. His opening nights were pinnacles of genius from which he would slowly descend as a play ran its course.”84 Assuming this is true, and this opinion is not as demonstrably false as some of Barrie’s claims, we may be hearing the aged Barrymore at his best for broadcasts are opening nights. We are not able to sample performances by the great Shakespeareans prior to phonography, and early recordings may not have been truly representative of stage performances due to vocal accommodations made to the recording equipment,85 but this series gives us forty-​five minutes of Barrymore working with other actors in his two great Shakespearean roles plus four other abridged plays in scenes longer than a seventy-​five RPM record permits, and he usually does impress. The cuts to the tragedies tended to emphasize personal losses to the title characters and deemphasize the losses or gains of other characters and of the nations of Denmark, England, and Scotland. The hopeful futures that new kings bring at the end of Richard III and Macbeth are lost by reducing or eliminating the parts of the successors, and the loss of Denmark to the Norwegian Crown is a parallel problem. The Tempest approximates The Tempest story, but the ideas on the play are missing or reduced to cameos. The other comedies are turned into romps about silly characters. The dark sides of these comedies are reduced or eliminated. Each program is enjoyable as a Barrymore showcase, which seems to be the intent. Against the reservations expressed in this analysis, University of California, Los Angeles English department head Alfred E.  Longeuil was so impressed by the first broadcast that he asked NBC for the scripts to study in class.86 I wish I could have been a fly on that classroom wall. Barrymore and Barrie give Streamlined Shakespeare a public face largely lacking in the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle. The mostly changing casts gave CBS the opportunity to make the network and its director, Brewster Morgan, the stars of that series, with mixed success.

83  Bernice L.  Kliman, Hamlet:  Film, Television, and Audio Performance (Rutherford:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), 286. 84  Barrymore, Sins, 184.

85  Douglas Lanier, “Shakespeare on the Record,” in A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, ed. Barbara Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 414–​36 at 423. 86  “Scripts for Shakespeare Class,” Radio Daily 1:96 (June 24, 1937), p. 8.

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Chapter 3

AND IN THAT CORNER: THE COLUMBIA SHAKESPEARE CYCLE CBS reacted to

the signing of Barrymore by hiring stars from Hollywood, Broadway, and radio. Columbia timed the release naming its casts to be in papers the same day as Barrymore’s Hamlet reviews. Leslie Howard, Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Tallulah Bankhead, Claude Rains, Burgess Meredith, Walter Huston, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Rosalind Russell were some of the actors who would play the leads. NBC had the brightest star, but Lewis signed a galaxy of stars for Brewster Morgan to direct. Morgan was born in Kansas City, attended the University of Kansas, and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He acted in Othello for the Oxford Dramatic Society in 1929, became its first American-​born president, and directed the Society’s 1930 staging of Macbeth.1 It seems curious that Columbia produced neither play, but that may indicate the selections were made by higher-​ups in the organization. Morgan worked briefly on Broadway, became a producer for NBC Blue, and then moved to CBS. He directed or co-​ directed some of the Columbia Workshop’s most prestigious programs and co-​directed the second part of the Orson Welles two-​part Hamlet. Morgan would script six Cycle episodes and direct them all. Archibald MacLeish adapted King Lear and Gilbert Seldes adapted The Taming of the Shrew. MacLeish was a prolific writer and modernist poet whose play Panic was produced by John Houseman in 1935. He scripted the Columbia Workshop sensation Fall of the City, broadcast on April 11, 1937.2 He later became Librarian of Congress. Seldes was a well known cultural critic and champion of what he called the lively arts, such as radio, film, comic strips, and jazz, as explored in his book Seven Lively Arts.3 Seldes and Erik Charell co-​adapted a musical called Swingin’ the Dream in 1939, a commercial and critical failure based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have not been able to learn when preparation for the series began, but common sense dictates it was before the May announcement, and we know from one Humphrey Bogart biography that he was asked to play Hotspur as early as June for the August broadcast, so that episode had already advanced to the casting stage, meaning at least a draft script and character list existed by then.4 Just as the Streamlined series had, Morgan used several actors as a kind of repertory company. Most important was Anglo-​American actor Conway Tearle, a veteran of London and Broadway stages and American films. He had played Prince Escalus in 1  “Unique Rhodesman,” Time 15:8 (February 24, 1930), p. 40.

2  The broadcast was so popular that script was rushed into print by Farrar & Reihnart of New York before the end of the month. 3  Gilbert Seldes, Seven Lively Arts (New York: Harper, 1924).

4  A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart (New York: Morrow, 1963), 82.

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the 1936 film version of Romeo and Juliet and Coriolanus for KECA. Tearle narrated each Cycle episode and played Feste in Twelfth Night. Actors featured on at least half the broadcasts include Morris Ankrum, who had appeared in several Westerns before he was Laertes in Hamlet, Antony in Julius Caesar, Curtis in The Taming of the Shrew, Edgar in King Lear, Le Beau in As You Like It, and Vernon in Henry IV. Edward Broadley was a Broadway supporting player trying his luck in Hollywood, but his luck was not very good: he only made three films. He was a watchman in Much Ado About Nothing, a plebian in Julius Caesar, First Lord in As You Like It, and Peto in Henry IV. Silent film star turned frequent Lux supporting player Victor Rodman doubled the Priest and Bernardo in Hamlet, played a plebian in Julius Caesar, Second Lord in As You Like It, and the Lord Chief Justice and third traveller in Henry IV. German born Stefan Schnabel moved to the United States in 1937 and quickly found work with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and on the radio. He doubled the Player King and Marcellus in Hamlet, was Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar, a servant in The Taming of the Shrew, the Captain in King Lear, Charles in As You Like It, and Pistol in Henry IV. Jack Smart, later known as J. Scott Smart, landed his first film role the year before then made seven films in 1937 to launch a busy career as a supporting player. He was Borachio in Much Ado About Nothing, Oswald in King Lear, Biondello in The Taming of the Shrew, and Poins in Henry IV. Phillip Terry began his film career in 1937. He was Guildenstern in Hamlet, Cinna the Poet in Julius Caesar, Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew, a gentleman in King Lear, Amiens in As You Like It, and the Douglas in Henry IV. British born Eric Snowden made a number of films and later television shows, but he was most prolific on American radio. Snowden was the Player in Hamlet, Friar Francis in Much Ado About Nothing, Metellus Cimber and Strato in Julius Caesar, Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew, the doctor in King Lear, Silvius in As You Like It, Hotspur in Henry IV, and was hired to consult on the cycle and assist in production.5 Streamlined critics complained about the cut scripts and there were concerns about cuts in the forthcoming Cycle. A New York Times article claimed Shakespeare fans would be disappointed if anything was missing.6 After hearing Much Ado About Nothing, Thomas Archer of the Montreal Gazette complained that reducing Shakespeare’s plays to one hour cut the careful balance of characters. Most of the cutting in Much Ado was to the Claudio /​ Hero mainplot, giving the Benedick /​ Beatrice subplot too much weight.7 Burns Mantle wrote: “It would … be preposterous … to insist that a three-​quarter hour or even an hour version of any Shakespeare play can be completely satisfying. It is abortive Shakespeare at best,” though he went on to defend the practice.8 Concern was even expressed in England, as Morton Downey reported: 5  “Coast-​to-​Coast,” Radio Daily 2:19 (July 28, 1937), p. 8.

6  “To Be Or Not To Be: Broadcasters Expect to Know by Autumn If Shakespeare Is Popular on the Air,” New York Times, July 11, 1937, section 10, 8.

7  Thomas Archer, “Shakespeare Broadcast:  Advantages of Plays Transmitted by Radio-​Brewster Morgan’s Series-​Complete Performance Needed,” Montreal Gazette, July 24, 1937, 20. 8  Mantle, “Airwaves,” 5.

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A great deal of concern over the fact that United States broadcasting circles have taken up Shakespeare … Opinion is divided into two major camps—​one group is glad that the English classics are to be presented, but shakes its head over the advance word that the original scripts are being “streamlined.” They fear the result may be too modernized. The majority of opinion, however, is mournfully sure that the public will find the Bard’s plots too involved.9

Morgan answered by noting that theatrical producers cut the plays, though not this much, and that some university productions and versions presented at the Chicago and San Diego World’s Fairs in 1933 and 1935 were just sixty minutes. He claimed that cutting highlights “the main themes, while subordinating some of the minor and less important situations … hence I see no reason why they should not be equally pleasing in a radio production.” Morgan felt it was better to cut to an hour than to divide a play into two one-​hour broadcasts for this impairs “the cumulative dramatic action.” He added that, “Shakespeare is ideally suited to radio” since, like radio, his stage used no scenery. Morgan promised not to alter the text beyond the cuts,10 a promise he would break in every episode. Writing before the series began, Rosaline Greene was excited about the possibilities. “Shakespeare’s plays were written for the ear alone … but the most important thing is the fact that a limited knowledge in the science of theatrical sceneries and properties made Shakespeare turn his entire attention to pleasing the ear and the mind,” so the Cycle “should prove to be the biggest thing in radio.”11 Greene clearly did not understand property use and blocking in early modern English drama and the sometimes imaginative ways that theatrical companies created staging effects. There was some difficulty about the order of the CBS programs. It would be Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Henry IV, and Twelfth Night. Like Streamlined, half the plays were comedies. Lionel Barrymore, despite rumours that he turned down the role, had signed to play King Lear but became ill and was ordered to withdraw from King Lear by his doctor. That play was moved back until it could be recast and Julius Caesar was moved up to the third episode. King Lear went out after Shrew. The new schedule made every second program a comedy. The Cycle openings are derivative of the spirit of The First Nighter program (1929–​ 1953), which CBS had lured away from NBC earlier that year. That series used the conceit of taking listeners to opening night of a Broadway play, its brilliant sound patterns capturing street noises before the microphone enters the theatre, a walk through the 9  “Quotes,” Radio Daily 2:1 (July 1, 1937), p. 6. This seems an odd complaint since several of the Shakespeare plays broadcast by the BBC in 1937 were abridged to ninety minutes, unless that was the basis of the complaint. Downey does not seem to be aware of the abridged BBC broadcasts. 10  “The World’s a Stage:  Brewster Morgan Tells How Shakespeare Is Adapted and Broadcast,” New York Times, August 8, 1937, 10.

11  “Viewpoints: Says Radio Will Do Right By Shakespearean Drama,” Radio Daily 2:21 (June 30, 1937), p. 8.

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46 And in That Corner lobby, the ticket-​taker directing listeners to their seats, the murmur of the audience, and the opening of the curtain.12 Morgan does not imitate any of these details, but The First Nighter had the sound of an event. Morgan created the equivalent sound of a radio event with the horn fanfare opening the show, the awestruck announcer introducing the program, and the classical-​like music that bridges the series introduction with the introduction of that week’s play. Even the cutaways at intermission and the announcement of next week’s program seem to be part of an important event, which is excellent sound design and directing. This is much more impressive than the Streamlined opening. The second program begins with that fanfare13 followed by the announcer saying, “From Hollywood, Columbia Presents Leslie Howard and Rosalind Russell in Much Ado About Nothing.” More music, then, “With tonight’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, the Columbia network presents the second in its cycle of Shakespearean plays for the summer season of 1937, a cycle which includes eight of Shakespeare’s finest plays to be heard every Monday night at this time during July and August. In these plays, each especially adapted for a full hour radio presentation, many of the world’s most distinguished actors will join with Columbia in bringing the great dramatist’s work to a larger audience than he has ever reached before.” More music, the introduction of the lead actors, then the narrator says, “Victor Bay, Columbia’s talented young conductor takes the stand to lead the orchestra in the musical introduction, and as the curtain rises, Conway Tearle, distinguished actor of stage and screen, comes forward as narrator to set the stage for the first scene for Much Ado About Nothing.” Change the details and you have the template opening of each episode. Variations were slight. The programs ends with, “From Columbia’s Music Box Theatre in Hollywood, you have just heard Leslie Howard and Rosalind Russell as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, the second production in Columbia’s Shakespearean Cycle for 1937.” The rest of the credits are given, then, “Last week, you heard Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. This week, Much Ado About Nothing, one of his gayest comedies. Next week, Columbia presents one of Shakespeare’s great historical dramas, Julius Caesar, with a brilliant all star cast: Claude Rains as Cassius, Raymond Massey as Antony,14 Walter Able as Casca, Reginald Denney as Caesar. Don’t forget, next Monday, same time, same stations, Julius Caesar with an outstanding all-​star cast.” The announcer ends with, “This is a presentation of the Columbia Broadcasting System.” Adjectives heighten the sense of quality. The narrator is not Conway Tearle, but the “distinguished actor Conway Tearle.” The script is “especially adapted,” instead of merely adapted. Phrases such as “most distinguished,” “great dramatist’s work,” and “outstanding all star cast” are used with words such as “talented,” “greatest,” and “gayest” 12  And quite a conceit it was. First Nighter scripts did not adapt Broadway shows; it pretended to adapt them.

13  I listened to the first program at the Paley Center in New  York, but was not able to take the detailed notes necessary for this section. I own a copy of the second episode, and so am able to study Columbia’s use of voice and language to achieve the effects discussed here. 14  Massey became ill the morning of the broadcast and was replaced by Morris Ankrum.

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carefully deployed. Everything is “exciting” and “superb,” nothing merely is. The plays may be abridged, but they receive a “full hour,” unlike those forty-​five-​minute broadcasts on the other network. By naming Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Julius Caesar, listeners were tacitly informed that the grand sweep of Shakespeare’s genres were brought to them by CBS. The announcer contributes to the prestige by sounding impressed. He does not just say “greatest,” but sounds as if he means exactly that. Who is the recipient of all this prestige? Columbia, which is named six times during the program. The scripts call for the announcer to put a slight pause between “Columbia” and “Broadcasting System” to emphasize the key word. The week to week variations tend to make the program seem even more notable. For example, the Julius Caesar broadcast boasted of an “all-​star production,” with “a stellar cast of sixty.”15 Streamlined Shakespeare used just a fraction of this lofty language and the announcer does not sound as impressed by the program. The hype carefully planted in the Cycle scripts is something the Columbia series did very well. John Barrymore and Elaine Barrie naturally dominated the Streamlined series. Because Columbia’s leading actors were, with two exceptions, hired for a single episode, nobody dominated the Cycle. The Broadcasts and Reviews sections in this chapter will therefore be handled differently than in ­chapter  2. Brief cast biographies are included.

Broadcasts and Reviews

First up was Hamlet with married couple Burgess Meredith as Hamlet and Margaret Perry as Ophelia. Montagu Love played Claudius instead of Edward Emery. The rest of the cast was a mixture of experienced film and stage actors such as Grace George as Gertrude and Walter Abel as Horatio. All had recent successes on Broadway. Meredith began his Broadway career with the small part of Peter in Eve La Gallienne’s 1930 production of Romeo and Juliet and found steady work thereafter. He had just received acclaim as the lead of Maxwell Anderson’s High Tor. When asked the year before if he wanted to play Hamlet, Meredith said, “Not until I’m a good enough actor to make the attempt, and that will be years from now.”16 Radio Mirror reported a behind-​the-​scenes story: “Burgess Meredith … warned the cast to leaf through the scripts to be sure the pages were in order. Then, on the air, he found himself minus page four. However, this actor is a trouper and adlibbed the missing page without a hitch.”17 In Morgan’s script, the Ghost appears and Hamlet is quickly informed. They meet, and the Ghost commissions Hamlet to revenge his murder. A short narration references 15  This is a cheat. The script has twenty-​two speaking parts played by twenty actors with some doubling. Fourteen additional actors are listed as “the crowd,” one of whom also played Pindarus. 16  Florence Fisher Perry, “Real Trouper: A Tribute to the Stage Veteran Who has Come Up from the Ranks,” The Pittsburgh Press, December 6, 1936, Society Section, 8. 17  “Via Wire,” Radio Mirror 8:6 (October 1937): 71.

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48 And in That Corner Hamlet’s “indecision” and notes that “his actions and words become wild and incoherent.” The “To be, or not to be” soliloquy is moved up from 3.1.18 The program returns to 2.1, Polonius’s conversation with Ophelia that results to his suspicion that Hamlet is mad with love for his daughter. 2.2 begins at line 170, the fishmonger conversation between Polonius and Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet Hamlet in the middle part of the scene, which continues through the entrance of the players, the “Rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy, and Hamlet’s plan to stage a play to trap the King. Next is a break for local stations to identify themselves. Though just a minute long, this break is a relief after the intensity of the previous scene. The story resumes shortly before the King’s entrance in 3.2. The Mousetrap is abridged, but lengthy. The narrator informs us that the next scene is in Gertrude’s “room” and “Polonius is hidden behind a curtain.” The lengthy dialogue between mother and son concludes in the death of Polonius and Hamlet’s departure for England. Laertes returns, Ophelia’s mad scene is much curtailed, then the details of it and her death are supplied by narration. The graveyard scene follows. Narration permits the script to skip to a few lines before the duel. The play ends with Horatio’s “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” (5.2.313). Radio Daily liked Meredith’s freshness and sensitive poetic approach, but faulted him for lacking “a driving force,” whatever that means. Variety felt Meredith “does remarkably well. He goes from walk to canter to gallop and reverses,” adding that the broadcast would do his career a lot of good but the show was “indifferent entertainment” marred by “indifferent mike technique.” Some “scenes were shoddy and hard to follow. Voices were not uniformly set apart by tone,” which made it difficult to know who was speaking at times.19 The San Antonio Light polled several listeners. One complained of too much cutting and another that it was hard to follow the action. About half praised the program.20 CBS placed an ad in Variety the following week excerpting the most favourable reviews. One of these proclaimed that Meredith “covered himself with glory … the production as a whole was splendid” (Los Angeles Times) and another that the series was “the most revolutionary step to date in dramatic entertainment on the air” (San Francisco Examiner).21 Hamlet played opposite The Johnson’s Wax Program on NBC Red, which mocked CBS by having Fibber McGee (Jim Jordan) and Molly (Marian Jordan) meet a ridiculous actor on his way east to perform in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and The Taming of the Shrew on the radio. The uncredited actor imitated John Barrymore’s brother Lionel. This was followed by the Ariel /​Caliban in-​jokes on The Tempest broadcast by NBC Blue. 18  This is the approximate location of “To be, or not to be” in the First Quarto. The broadcast, however, did not follow First Quarto scene order throughout. The scene with Polonius and Ophelia precedes the speech in that quarto and the Cycle script uses Folio and Second Quarto names and language. 19  “Burgess Meredith’s ‘Hamlet’,” Variety 127:5 (July 14, 1937), p. 42.

20  Quoted on the Digital Deli web site: www.digitaldeliftp.com/​DigitalDeliToo/​dd2jb-​Columbia-​ Workshop.html. 21  “A Glowing Promise is Completely Kept,” Variety 127:6 (July 21, 1937), p. 47.

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The July 19 broadcast of Much Ado About Nothing starred British heartthrob Leslie Howard as Benedick opposite MGM contract player Rosalind Russell. Howard became a Broadway star in 1921, and a Broadway and Hollywood star when he led the stage and film versions of Philip Barry’s hit play The Animal Kingdom (both 1932), a feat he repeated by starring in the Broadway and film versions of Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest with co-​starred Humphrey Bogart (1935 and 1936). Howard had a double dose of Shakespeare in 1936, starring as Romeo in the MGM film and appearing on Broadway as Hamlet, though his version closed after thirty-​nine performances due to John Gielgud’s competing production, which opened first. The introduction of Howard on the broadcast calls the Hamlet production a “success.” Other members of the cast included Denis Greene as Claudio and Charlotte Evans as Hero. Ben Webster, veteran of a dozen BBC radio Shakespeare broadcasts between 1923 and 1935, played Leonato. Morgan rearranged the play: the story begins with 1.1.155, skips to 2.1, then returns for more of 1.1. Next come excerpts from 2.3 and 3.1. 1.2 is combined with 2.2, then follow 3.2–​3, 4.1, 5.1, back to 4.2, more of 5.1, ending with 5.3–​4. This created a narrative economy that suited radio’s strengths well: the show begins with Claudio expressing interest in Hero, skips to the party scene beginning with the exchange between Leonato and Beatrice about Hero’s single status, then makes the 1.1 plan for Don Pedro to win Hero for Claudio part of the party scene. Most of the party is skipped to get to the revelation that Don Pedro did not betray Claudio, so the match is made, the gulling of Benedick and Beatrice quickly agreed, followed by the much abridged gullings. Don John is introduced twenty-​three minutes into the program when it is time for his plot to ruin the marriage of Claudio and Hero. Next is the teasing of Benedick about Beatrice, Don John’s accusation, and Dogberry’s first scene leading to intermission. The story resumes with 4.1, the first wedding scene, one of the longer scenes on the program. The beginning of 5.1 follows: the different quarrels between Leonato and Claudio and Claudio and Benedick. These are interrupted by Tearle summarizing the capture of Conrad and Borachio, then 4.2, the questioning of the prisoners is presented. 5.1 resumes with Dogberry revealing that Hero is innocent. Tearle summarizes the reconciliation of Hero and Claudio and the broadcast closes with Beatrice and Benedick finally agreeing to marry. This scene uses lines combined from 5.3 and 4. Variety was harder on Much Ado About Nothing than it had been on Hamlet. Amongst the specific complaints were that the performances were so rushed that the sense of the lines was lost. Revisiting a complaint from Hamlet, “voices of the same timbre” make the characters difficult to distinguish and the story hard to follow. The two members of the cast receive praise: Lionel Branam as Dogberry and Leslie Howard as Benedick.22 Radio Daily wrote that CBS “was particularly fortunate” to have Howard and Russell, though without explaining why.23 Twelfth Night was on NBC. Moving Julius Caesar up in the schedule necessitated cast changes. Raymond Massey and Walter Able were out. Reginald Denney came in as Caesar. Claude Rains was due 22  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:6 (July 21, 1937), p. 34.

23  “Program Reviews: Shakespeare,” Radio Daily 2:14 (July 21, 1937), p. 7.

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50 And in That Corner to play Caesar, but played Cassius instead.24 Thomas Mitchell was Brutus, with Morris Ankrum playing Mark Antony. Rains was an experienced stage and film star with little Shakespeare experience. Thomas Mitchell, however, had toured with the Charles Colburn Shakespeare Company and the Ben Greet Players, which took him to Broadway where he stayed for two decades before conquering Hollywood in 1936. Denny supported John Barrymore in his 1920 stage production of Richard III, again in Barrymore’s 1933 screen test for a Hamlet film at RKO, and shared scenes with Barrymore as Benvolio in MGM’s Romeo and Juliet. Denny continued to support Barrymore and lead actor John Howard as a regular in Paramount’s Bulldog Drummond mystery films starting in 1937. He played Drummond’s best friend in eight of the films while Barrymore played Inspector Neilson of Scotland Yard in three. Morris Ankrum was new to radio, but Columbia liked his work so much that he was signed to play Edmund in King Lear.25 The story begins with the feast of Lupercal, which includes a warning of danger to Caesar and leads to the scenes seducing Brutus to the conspiracy. Casca (in this broadcast, Decius in the Folio) talks a reluctant Caesar into attending the senate. The death of Caesar follows. Antony meets the conspirators, offers to speak at Caesar’s funeral, and privately swears vengeance. Intermission. Brutus and Antony speak at Caesar’s funeral. Antony turns Rome against the conspirators and civil war follows. Brutus and Cassius argue before the battle and die after it, then Antony makes his final statement. Radio Daily considered Julius Caesar “one of the best presentations of the Shakespeare windfall,” praising the cast as well as the “staging.” How one stages a broadcast is not explained, but it may mean the integration of voice with other sounds. The reviewer also praised the way the program held interest.26 The final Streamlined program, The Taming of the Shrew, was on NBC. Those who listened to it may not have felt the need to hear The Taming of the Shrew on CBS the following week. That would be a shame. It aired on August 2 with Hollywood’s popular gangster actor Edward G. Robinson as Petruchio, Frieda Inescourt as Katherine, and the in-​demand Charles D.  Brown as Grumio. Neither Insecourt nor Brown were as well known as Robinson, but both were reliable Broadway and film actors. Brown had most recently appeared in High Tor with Burgess Meredith. The retelling is fairly simple. Narration and dialogue establish the problem of marrying the older daughter before the younger, then Petruchio enters, learns of the elder, presents himself to Baptista, wrangles with Katherine, and the wedding date is set. Petruchio arrives for the off-​microphone wedding and forces Katherine to leave before the reception. 24  “Cast in CBS ‘Caesar’,” Radio Daily 2:12 (July 19, 1937), p. 5.

25  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 2:21 (July 30, 1937), p. 5. The article gives the character as Edgar, but Archibald MacLeish’s adaptation cut that character and the cast list in the script confirms that Ankrum played Edmund. 26  “Program Reviews: Julius Caesar,” Radio Daily 2:19 (July 28, 1937), p. 5.

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The scenes in Petruchio’s house come after the intermission. These include the excuses for fasting and the scene with the tailor, capped with Petruchio’s strategy for taming Katherine. The couple depart for Padua, have the sun and moon conversation that convinces Katherine her best course is to play along with Petruchio, and they meet Vincentio. Petruchio and Katherine arrive at Batista’s house, kiss, and enter. The wager is made and won when Katherine gives all but one line of her 5.2.141–​84 speech (180 is cut). Bianca has her only lines in this scene. It is normal for fewer reviews to appear as a series rolls on, and I have found only one for Shrew. Radio Daily liked Edward G.  Robinson and felt that Frieda Inescourt was capable, but did not comment on other aspects of the production.27 NBC counter-​ programmed the first O’Neill play. King Lear finally aired on August 9.  Thomas Mitchell returned to replace Lionel Barrymore as Lear and Morris Ankrum returned to play Edmund Herbert Ranson, a veteran of seven Shakespeare productions on Broadway through 1936, including Leslie Howard’s ill-​fated Hamlet, portrayed Gloucester, now a minor role after the cutting in poet Archibald MacLeish’s adaptation. The unusual number of thirteen scenes were cut along with the usual thinning of the scenes included, greatly changing the story. The program begins with 1.1: the division of the kingdoms, the rejection of Cordelia, and sealing her to France. Goneril complains that her father is abusive to her servants, so Lear departs to stay with Regan. Narration reveals that Regan is visiting Gloucester, so Lear detours. Goneril soon arrives and the sisters tell the King he is unwelcome. Lear leaves cursing them and fearing madness. He is fully mad when the next scene begins, 3.2. The Fool and Kent try and fail to help. After the intermission, Cordelia discusses helping her mad father. Narration reveals much: Gloucester’s son Edmund (mentioned for the first time) tells the English forces of the French invasion led by Cordelia and betrays his father to Cornwall, who blinds Gloucester then dies. The blooming love between Edmund and the sisters is mentioned and so is his elevation. Dialogue resumes with the reunion of Lear and Gloucester, the latter disappearing from the story after this. Lear is reunited with Cordelia. Narration reveals that the battle was lost by France, Lear and Cordelia are captured, and Edmund orders their death just as they find a moment of happiness. In dialogue, Albany realizes that his wife loves Edmund from the way the sisters fight over him, and battles him to the death. Lear laments, dies, and some of the concluding lines by Kent and Albany are given. I have found no reviews for this episode. NBC Blue broadcast the second of O’Neill play. As You Like It followed on August 16. Italian born Elissa Landi played Rosalind, Gail Patrick was Celia, Dennis King portrayed Orlando, Charles D.  Brown returned as Touchstone, and Frank Morgan played Jaques. No one was especially well known. Landi and Patrick were busy supporting film actors, hardly household names, with Landi near the end of her career. King was just starting his film career. Morgan became an MGM

27  “Program Reviews: Taming of the Shrew,” Radio Daily 2:24 (August 4, 1937), p. 5.

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contract player in the thirties and achieved fame as The Wizard of Oz28 two years after this broadcast. Columbia’s As You Like It has a very complicated story. It opens as the court gathers for a wrestling match between Orlando and Charles, which Orlando wins. He meets Rosalind there and they fall in love. Duke Frederick, who usurped the Dukedom from Rosalind’s father, banishes her from court. She disguises herself as a young man and leaves with her cousin Celia and Touchstone. Orlando learns that his oldest brother plans to kill him, so he and the old servant Adam leave. A song about killing a deer introduces Duke Senior and his retinue in exile. They speak of Jaques. Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone banter about arriving in Arden. Adam has nearly starved to death, so Orlando leaves him to search for food. The first verse of “Under the Greenwood Tree” is sung. Jaques, now with Duke Senior and his followers, calls for an encore then mentions meeting Touchstone. Orlando enters, threatening any who touch the dinner. He is shamed and goes to fetch Adam. Jaques gives the Seven Ages of Man speech. Amenis sings, and the interval begins. Poems praising Rosalind hang on trees. Rosalind reads some, Touchstone mocks them, and Celia reveals that the poet is Orlando. Jaques and Orlando trade insults. Jaques leaves and Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, meets Orlando. Ganymede agrees to help Orlando overcome his love for Rosalind. They part and Jaques meets Ganymede. They discuss happiness and sadness until Orlando joins them and Jaques leaves. She teases Orlando and there is a mock marriage. Orlando leaves promising to return soon. Celia accuses Rosalind of abusing Orlando. Touchstone and Audrey discuss her honesty. Rosalind and Celia wonder what delays Orlando. The narrator reveals that Orlando “has been busy killing a lion—​who was about to devour his villainous brother Oliver … In gratitude Oliver reforms and then falls in love with Celia. Elsewhere cupid has been busy too—​for Silvius, a young shepherd, has been smitten with the charms of a country lass named Phoebe. And Phoebe in turn sighs with love for Rosalind—​who, of course, is disguised as a man.” Rosalind, Orlando, Silvius, and Phoebe gather and describe what it is to love. Ganymede arranges the marriages for the next day. “It was a Lover and His Lass” is sung, and the marriage ceremony takes place with most of the characters assembled. A chorus sings four of Hymen’s lines, Rosalind sans disguise greets her father, Orlando acknowledges her and gives most of Hyman’s speech which is completed by the chorus. The broadcast concludes with, as the narrator says, “Rosalind in the person of Miss Elissa Landi” speaking the epilogue. I have found no reviews of this show. NBC Blue presented the third O’Neill broadcast. A brace of film stars took leading roles August 23 for Henry IV. Walter Huston portrayed the King, Brian Aherne was his son, Walter Connolly played Falstaff, emerging star Humphrey Bogart was Hotspur, with May Whitty as Mistress Quickly. Huston was a long time Broadway star who, as we have seen, played Othello on The Magic Key in 1935, again on Broadway in early 1937, and was a leading film actor. Aherne played Iago to Huston’s Othello. He was a busy stage and film actor, recently playing Shakespearean actor David Garrick in The Great Garrick, released two months after this series left the air (James Whale, dir., Warner Bros., 1937). Connolly also divided his time between 28  MGM, Victor Fleming, dir.

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Broadway and Hollywood as a character actor, and occasionally played the lead in B Pictures. He was Bottom in the 1934 Hollywood Bowl staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Max Reinhardt, but was not in the film inspired by that staging. Bogart was then best known for playing villains in films. He made his reputation playing a gangster opposite Leslie Howard in the stage and film versions of The Petrified Forest, but his glory days were ahead of him. Whitty was one of the many English born, American based actors hired for this series. Quickly was a change from the upper crust characters Whitty usually played, though she had been the Nurse in a Romeo and Juliet broadcast for the BBC in 1923. She was the wife of Ben Webster and the mother of director Margaret Webster, who went on to direct and star in As You Like It for the Columbia Workshop on December 7, 1939. Whitty was made a Dame in 1918. In the radio story, Henry and Westmoreland praise Hotspur but express dissatisfaction that he has kept his prisoners. Hotspur arrives and argues with the King about Hotspur’s uncle. Not satisfied with Henry answer, Hotspur and Worcester plot to overthrow him. Falstaff, Prince Hal, and Poins banter in a tavern and plot a robbery. The robbery follows, then Hal and Poins rob Falstaff and his friends. Back in the tavern, Falstaff’s boasts about his valor are exposed as lies and news of the rebellion is received. The Sheriff arrives looking for the robbers and is sent away. Hal and Poins pick Falstaff’s pocket as a gag before the station break. The story resumes with Hal convincing the King that he will fight responsibly. Falstaff accuses Mistress Quickly of admitting thieves into her tavern. Hal and Poins confess they picked Falstaff’s pocket and tease him about what they found. Sir Walter Blunt goes to Hotspur to offer peace. His faction will answer tomorrow. The next day, the King makes another offer to Hotspur’s envoy, but the offer is kept from Hotspur in fear that he will accept it. Hotspur meets Hal in battle and is killed. The narrator says that this ends the rebellion. Hal returns to his old life, and the King becomes ill. Hal goes to his father after hearing he is near death. Thinking him dead, Hal takes the crown into the next room. Henry awakens, is disturbed the crown is missing, learns that Hal took it, and speaks bitterly to him. Hal replies and they are reconciled again as the King dies. Hal is crowned, Falstaff calls to him during the coronation procession, and is rebuked. I found no reviews of Henry IV. The final Eugene O’Neill broadcast was heard on NBC Blue. The stars were out again for the final show on August 30. Broadway star Tallulah Bankhead played Viola, Wunderkind Orson Welles was Orsino, Buford Hampden portrayed Feste, Helen Menken was Olivia, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke was cast against type as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Prior to 1937, Bankhead divided her time between London’s West End, Broadway, and Hollywood. She recently played the lead in George Kelly’s Broadway play Reflected Glory (1936), her first starring role. This broadcast was her first and best brush with Shakespeare. Young Orson Welles was an old hand at Twelfth Night, already enacting Malvolio and Orsino on stage in different abridged productions going back to high school.29 The first surviving film directed by Welles is 29  See Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (New York: Viking, 1996), 137, and Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, This is Orson Welles (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 429.

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54 And in That Corner of a dress rehearsal for the Chicago Drama Festival production of this play that Welles produced and directed for the stage in 1933 at age seventeen. The script for that production was printed in the 1934 book Everybody’s Shakespeare.30 Welles had toured as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and two non-​Shakespeare plays for Katherine Cornell’s repertory company, and then settled into a Broadway career. With John Houseman producing, the twenty-​year-​old Welles staged his famous Voodoo Macbeth in 1936. He began broadcasting in the mid-​thirties, and was soon one of radio’s few dramatic stars and best paid actors. His previous Shakespeare broadcasts are listed in ­chapter  1. Welles would become the voice of The Shadow for a year on that long-​running series, starting the month after this Cycle broadcast. Helen Menken was just wrapping up her Broadway career in 1937. She had the briefest of film careers and later became a regular on the radio soap opera Second Husband. Hardwicke toured with Sir Frank Benson’s Shakespeare company, then graduated to Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic Theatre. After military service, he returned to the stage and played Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night for the Birmingham Rep in 1922. He soon became a leading man in the plays of George Bernard Shaw and transitioned to American films in 1933, though he made a number of appearances on Broadway starting in 1936. Most of his career thereafter was in film and later television. Hardwick was knighted in 1934. Hampden was on old time Shakespearean actor appearing at age thirteen in Beerbohm Tree’s 1911 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London and later John Barrymore’s 1920 production of Richard III. He worked in several Radio Guild Shakespeare episodes starting in 1935, in the special Will of Stratford, and continued as a voice actor into the fifties. Morgan breaks with previous episodes by having Tearle narrate and play as Feste. He also follows the Streamlined production by having an elaborate introductory sequence. In the Columbia version, each character is described and speaks some lines from the play to identify voices with characters and explain parts of the complicated plot before the play begins. After this introduction, the Captain tells Viola she is shipwrecked in Orsino’s country. She will disguise herself as a boy named Cesario and become a servant in Orsino’s court. Orsino sends Cesario as an emissary to woo Olivia. Olivia banters with Feste, but Malvolio insults him. Viola arrives disguised as Cesario. Olivia is smitten with Cesario. S/​he departs, but Olivia sends Malvolio after “him” with a ring that Cesario supposedly left behind, which Cesario rejects. Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and Feste caterwaul at a late night party that Malvolio interrupts. They trade insults. The others plot to gull him as the show stops for station identification. Viola has returned to Orsino and they have a cryptic discussion about love that makes it clear to listeners that she is in love with the oblivious Duke. He sends her back to fruitlessly woo Olivia for him. Toby and the others gull Malvolio into believing that Olivia loves him and wants him to dress in absurd garb to claim her love, which he does. Olivia is concerned about his odd behaviour and has Sir Toby care for Malvolio. Toby has another gulling project, to get Sir Andrew and Cesario to duel. Antonio 30  Roger Hill and Orson Welles, eds., Everybody’s Shakespeare: Three Plays Edited for Reading and Staged for Acting (Woodstock, IL: Todd, 1934).

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appears. He is in love with Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, mistakes Cesario for him, and intervenes in the duel. This leads to Antonio’s arrest for a past battle against Orsino’s forces. Sebastian later enters and Andrew, mistaking him for Cesario and remembering the latter’s feeble dueling, challenges Sebastian who is far more skilled than his sister. He wounds Andrew. Olivia enters, also mistakes Sebastian for Cesario, and proposes marriage. Sebastian falls in love at first sight, accepts, and they are wed. Orsino arrives, believes that his servant had wooed for himself, and expresses his rage to Sebastian. Viola comes forward, explanations are made, and the couples pair up, including Toby and Maria off microphone. Antonio is freed. Malvolio enters and expresses his grievances. Words do not sooth him, so he exits in a rage. Feste sings two verses of “Wind and the Rain.” Radio Daily considered Twelfth Night “the finest broadcast of the series,” noting the good cast generally, but giving “acting honors” to Hardwicke and Menken.31 The Variety review was truly strange in part because the reviewer was in the audience. Fully a third of it comments on the gowns worn by the woman in the cast, especially Tallulah Bankhead’s backless frock which had a shoulder strap slip during the show. The rest is about other things seen with little reference to the performance. It is noted that Bankhead and Menken applauded a technician who had not been applauded by the audience. Welles is not mentioned at all.32 Radio Mirror was sarcastic about the acting, generally, “CBS is still giving Shakespeare the benefit of the best actors it can find—​ well, anyway, the best known, even if some of them never have had much to do with classics before.”33 Streamlined Shakespeare cut the plays to maximize John Barrymore’s parts. When in an ensemble piece such as Twelfth Night, Barrymore played two roles, and so still dominated the broadcast. Some episodes of the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle were also dominated by their leads, Hamlet, for example, but most were not. Barrymore was “the thing” in Streamlined Shakespeare, but CBS could usually say, “the play’s the thing.”

Evaluating the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle

Early in CBS’s first broadcast, the announcer says, “Columbia hopes to bring the works of the world’s greatest dramatist to a vaster audience than he has ever reached before,” quite ignoring the problem of whether a sixty-​minute condensation is in any meaningful sense a work by Shakespeare. Still, with just fifteen minutes more than the Streamlined broadcast, Hamlet told a more rounded story despite the eliminations of a character as important as Fortinbras and comparatively minor parts such as the Second Gravedigger, Osric, and Reynaldo. Other cuts put Hamlet in all but two scenes, the first 31  “Program Reviews: The Twelfth Night,” Radio Daily 2:44 (September 1, 1937), p. 5.

32  “ ‘Twelfth Night’ Such a Click That Stars Even Applaud Technician,” Variety 127:12 (September 1, 1937), p. 36.

33  “Monday, Aug. 2, 1937,” Radio Mirror 8:5 (September 1937): 47. Radio Mirror is cover dated the month after its actual release, so the August listings are in the September issue.

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56 And in That Corner and Ophelia’s mad scene, so the story is tilted in Hamlet’s direction. Conway Tearle’s narration summarizes some of the missing scenes, but unmentioned are Hamlet telling Ophelia to go to a nunnery, his conversation with Horatio confirming Claudius’s reaction to “The Mousetrap,” though earlier they agreed to watch for this, and Hamlet accusing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of attempting to manipulate him. Also missing are pivotal scenes such as Claudius at prayer when Hamlet chooses to delay execution until Claudius’s soul can be sent to Hell, Hamlet’s return from England, and the plot hatched by Claudius and Laertes against Hamlet. While not vital to the story, the 5.2.163–​8 dialogue between Hamlet and Horatio that culminates in “the readiness is all” is needed to show that Hamlet changes during the action. It too is out. Including Ophelia makes this version a much fuller story with more at stake for both Hamlet and Laertes. The killing of Polonius has a heavier cost when a young maid’s wits are the price. Though Hamlet is still the centre of the story, including more of the play makes Columbia’s telling more political and less a tale of personal revenge than NBC’s Hamlet. Laertes still does not strongly register as a counterpart to Hamlet and Denmark does not fall into the hands of a foreign power, but there is more balance between Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Polonius than there was in the Barrymore version, and scenes with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the First Gravedigger add to the tale’s complexity. Some cuts created different oddities. In 1.2.226, Hamlet asks, “Armed say you?” after Horatio describes the Ghost as wearing armor six lines earlier. The radio script keeps the question but cuts the description that provokes it. The fates of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are left dangling, and not from a rope. Some of Osric’s lines are essential for the duel, so Horatio says these. Morgan makes the mistake that Barrymore and Barnes made in their Hamlet script of not mentioning characters before they speak. Ophelia is not mentioned until “The Mousetrap” scene, nor is Laertes until Ophelia’s mad scene. Both become vitally important when they appear, but seem to come out of nowhere. Morgan promised not to alter the text on any of the Cycle plays beyond the cuts, but he did. Instead of Hamlet greeting all the players in 2.2.171, “Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore,” Morgan paraphrases the line as “You are welcome, master player,” so Hamlet addresses only the First Player. Just before “The Mousetrap,” Hamlet speaks to Horatio of Gertrude, Claudius, and others, “They are coming to the play. I must be idle” (3.2.88). Morgan changed this to “He is coming to the play. (FADING) Get you to a place,—​ Your Majesty!” This addition of pronoun and title focus on Claudius. After Gertrude asks her son to sit with her, he says, “No, good-​mother, here’s mettle more attractive” (105). This is followed by the stage direction, “He sits by Ophelia.” Morgan incorporates the intent of the stage direction into the dialogue, “Here’s mettle more attractive. The fair Ophelia.” The change makes good audio sense since listeners cannot see the mettle. One line is entirely invented. Shakespeare’s dialogue does not give every detail needed to follow the duel in 5.2, so when Hamlet and Laertes exchange rapiers, Horatio says, “Look, they have changed rapiers!” Every Cycle script has similar changes, though I shall only note the most revealing. The narration can challenge sense. On p. 22 of the script, Morgan writes, “Hamlet, meanwhile, has thwarted the King’s plot to kill him.” Yet, three pages later is, “The King

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is now determined to rid himself of Hamlet,” putting the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse. The show did several things well. The wind effects in 1.1 are effectively mood-​setting, yet soft enough to keep the dialogue audible. There is a wonderful thud to indicate that Laertes jumped onto Ophelia’s coffin, and the narrator deftly explains Hamlet’s inner turmoil while introducing “To be, or not to be”: “The cold light of day-​finds young Hamlet balked by a sense of his inadequacy, to meet the horrid problem of revenge … Shall he murder his uncle-​ on the word of a ghost? In this turmoil of indecision, his actions and words become wild and incoherent. He toys with the idea of death and the peace it might bring him.” Unfortunately, this episode uses a tone to indicate a change of scene, with gives the transitions no life. This was abandoned in the next broadcast in favor of music to bridge scenes in imitation of NBC. Radio Daily unfairly compared the two Hamlet broadcasts, “In these competitive network presentations of Shakespearian works it is the player instead of the play that is the thing,” since “the worth of the plays has been proven long ago.” This remarkable assertion ignores important adaptive choices such as the storyline after the cuts are made, narrative information and intrusion, sound patterns, pace, microphone technique, casting, and other staffing matters. The assertion is a rationalization to compare Barrymore and Meredith, even though Dogberry has taught is that “comparisons are odorous” (Much Ado About Nothing 3.5.15). There is no question that John Barrymore has a good edge on Burgess Meredith in their respective portrayals of Hamlet … The edge in Barrymore’s favor is perhaps wholly one of experience, maturity, gift of voice magic and thespic fire. Barrymore infused his Hamlet with all these qualities making him a vivid impassioned flesh and blood creature, whereas Meredith seemed to conceive the Dane more along sensitive, poetic and even genteel lines, aroused by fire and action only in a subdued degree … on the whole Meredith followed a lower pitch and lower register of intensity. He fully realized the poetic values of the dialogue and there was smoothness in his transitions of mood, but the driving force was not there. In short, Meredith sounded a little youthful in the part.

The reviewer confuses the qualities Barrymore used to play Hamlet with the character, so the writer disparages Meredith’s performance based on a mistake. The review eventually concedes that Meredith has “a freshness and poetic gracefulness in his performance that probably pleased many listeners … in fact, this modern age may even prefer this type of acting,” and that “Meredith’s interpretation … was a finely studied performance irrespective of how it compares with any other.”34 The reviewer nearly admits that the comparison is wrong, but makes it anyway. The reviewer for Variety kept it simple: “Meredith made a better impression than Barrymore.” 34  “Reviews and Comments:  Sensitive and Subdued Version of Melancholy Dane by Burgess Meredith,” Radio Daily 2:9 (July 14, 1937), p. 6.

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58 And in That Corner Both are false comparisons. Barrymore gives a classic star performance, an actor portraying a noble soul. Meredith plays the man wearing a prince’s clothes. Meredith’s approach is entirely modern, perhaps ahead of its time. Barrymore’s is old school. The Radio Daily reviewer probably wanted Meredith to build to grand climaxes at the end of his speeches. “The play’s the thing /​Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (3.1.606–​7) lacks emphasis. Barrymore’s reading of that line is thrilling. Both are valid readings. A legitimate complaint might be that the other actors in the Columbia broadcast gave old school performances and Meredith seems to be in another production, or one can praise Meredith’s performance for emphasizing Hamlet’s isolation from the other characters. The program validates both interpretations. This Variety reviewer preferred Morgan’s script, but made the point that radio listeners do not care about Shakespeare, the final words being, “So what?”35 An anonymous wag at Variety wrote that the two series “will give the bard the new experience of turning over in his grave two different ways at once.”36 Perhaps this commenter did not notice the studio audience applaud at intermission and the end of the Columbia Hamlet. Applause was not heard on the Streamlined broadcasts. Morgan completely cut several scenes, but the much shorter Much Ado About Nothing excised only four, 1.3, 3.4–​5, and 5.2. His rearrangement of selected scenes served the broadcast well. Moving the portion of 1.1 in which the Prince offers to woo Hero on Claudio’s behalf to the same scene as the wooing compresses this plotline effectively, and so does moving the questioning of the prisoners to the scene that publicly reveals Hero’s innocence. Morgan’s narration tells listeners that the story is set at “a house party.” That misses the point that Don Pedro’s army and prisoners billet in Mesina for “at least a month” (1.1.143–​4), though there is a party. Since Don John did not lead a civil war in this telling, he is first mentioned twenty-​two minutes into the program. The narrative line, “Enter the villain,” keeps his introduction from seeming abrupt. There is less cut from 4.1, the subverted-​wedding scene, than from most scenes in the play. This gives the heaviness of this comedy proportional weight. Tearle’s summaries of the missing bits are deftly handled with lines such as, “Love conquers all. We may be sure that when Claudio learns that Hero has been alive all this time, the two lovers are once more united. Let us leave them to their recaptured happiness and go with Benedick into the fragrant garden to find Beatrice.” There are also more problematic changes. Antonio is one of Beatrice’s uncles. The broadcast makes him her father, but he does not act as Beatrice’s father in the way that Leonato acts as Hero’s father. The change is unnecessary and counterproductive. This is a very public play. The arrival of the Prince, his army, and his captives is public. The party is certainly public, and so is the thwarted wedding and Claudio’s repentance. Private matters are several times exposed to groups. The gullings of Benedick and Beatrice and the exposure of Hero’s supposed infidelity are examples. Even the coupling 35  “Radio Reviews,” Variety 127:4 (July 14, 1937), p. 49.

36  “Double Turnover,” Variety 127:2 (June 23, 1937), p. 39.

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of Borachio and Margaret is witnessed by Don John, Don Pedro, and Claudio, though it occurs off stage. One of the public scenes is made private in this broadcast, for Benedick and Beatrice are alone when they grudgingly confess their love at the end. Public declarations of love are the point of this unconventional love story. The program ends with partial cast credits. All the men in the cast are mentioned, but Russell is the only woman named. I cannot explain nor justify this. Though he was praised by some reviewers, the hole in the show is Leslie Howard. He seems under-​rehearsed. On one occasion he gives his answering line before Russell gives her questioning line. He sometimes puts a pause in the wrong place, then, perhaps realizing his mistake, says the rest of the line without meaning just to get through it. Did he miss the rehearsal? Rosalind Russell is the brightest spot in this broadcast. There are only a few of laughs by the studio audience, who clearly did not find this version of the comedy very funny. Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s shorter plays, so few entire scenes were cut and most of these are short: 1.1, which does not involve the principal characters, 2.3–​4, additional predictions of Caesar’s demise, the 3.3 death of Cinna, the poet, the 4.1 pricking of the enemies by Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, and the six-​line 5.2, Brutus describing the battle. Much of this action was summarized by the narrator. The more famous long speeches are intact or virtually so, and this play has some very long speeches. Brutus’s address at Caesar’s funeral, 3.2.12–​47, is complete. Antony’s oration and his interaction with the mourners beginning with l.74, loses only about a dozen lines, several of those by the mourners. The most devastating cuts are the women, removing most of the little domestic life in this play. Calpurnia has only a few lines after 1.2, and so does not urge her husband to avoid the senate. Portia disappears altogether. The political story is all that is left, though the politics are changed and the Octavius part is so minimized that Antony is the main antagonist in the latter part of the story. Shakespeare’s complex Brutus is made simple. His soliloquy revealing he is not certain that Caesar will become a tyrant but will kill him as a precaution is cut (2.1.10–​ 34). The only line remaining that indicates Brutus may not be heroic are his final lines, “Caesar, now be still. I killed not thee with half so good a will” (5.5.50–​1), immediately mediated by Antony’s, “This was the noblest Roman of them all” (l.67). Shakespeare carefully builds four warnings to Caesar in consecutive scenes, 2.2–​3.1. All of these are cut, leaving only the Soothsayer’s warning in 1.2. With these scenes go the hope that Caesar might heed one of the warnings and protect himself on the Ides of March.37 There are narrative references to the storms in Rome and the violence in the streets, but these have less impact when the characters do not discuss them with the result that the human and natural tumult caused by Rome’s political problems are lessened. The impact is further diluted when the death of Cinna the poet and the report of 37  For a more detailed look at the effect of cutting these scenes, see Michael P. Jensen, “The Noble Romans: When Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra were Made Sequels,” Shakespeare Survey 69 (2016): 79–​91, at 87.

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Cicero’s death are cut. All Cycle broadcasts routinely cut extended metaphors, such as the bed in 2.1.113b–​21 of this play. Morgan’s narration deftly describes some situations: Caesar is “the idol of the republic. The servile senate would like to make him king, but Caesar bides his time.” One of the longer cuts moves from the funeral orations to the argument between Brutus and Cassius, and Morgan moves us there with admirable simplicity: “Brutus’ noble dream of saving the republic by murdering Caesar is quickly shattered. The conspirators are corrupt. Even Cassius is avaricious and quarrelsome. But the legions of Cassius and Brutus finally unite for battle against the enemy. Now the two leaders are quarreling in Brutus’ tent.” Morgan can be prose-​poetic. After Antony’s funeral oration, Tearle reads, “The people are plucking down the bonchos of the forum, to build a funeral pyre for Caesar’s body. A flame springs up, and then another—​and in these sacrificial flames all that is mortal of great Caesar disappears. But the fire spreads out and out over the land, consumed in its turn by the greater flame of Civil War.” This moves the narrative forward while suggesting the consuming effect of these events. The flatter narration is out of tune with Shakespeare’s verse, but both combine with sound patterns to make a lively story. In American radio terms, this is a terrific production. It is dramatic and riveting because the actors are so well spoken and cast, though Thomas Mitchell as Brutus rolls the ends of words a little. At the end of Julius Caesar, the announcer gives highlights of the cast for The Taming of the Shrew. Charles D. Brown will play Christopher Sly. It would be interesting to know what changed between these broadcasts, for Sly does not appear and Brown plays Grumio. Consciously or not, Seldes followed David Garrick’s revision, Catharine and Petruchio (1756), by both cutting the Christopher Sly induction that makes the Petruchio /​ Katherine story a play within a play and excising most of the Bianca subplot. One way to shorten a play is to entirely cut characters. Seldes finesses this approach with Bianca and Hortensio. Bianca is in the narrative to explain the urgency of finding a husband for Katherine, but has just one line before the last minutes of the broadcast. Hortensio appears when needed to advance the plot, but his frequent commentary is removed from the dinner and tailor scenes in 4.3 and the journey to Padua, 5.1. Several scenes in this play begin or end with lines that involve minor characters and do not significantly advance the main plot, such as the first forty-​seven lines of 1.1. Seldes begins most scenes when the main characters speak. These large cuts and the more lightly thinned rest of the play result in a fairly full retelling of the main plot. Seldes also censors. 2.1.113–​16, the comments about a wasp’s tail and Petruchio putting in tongue in Katherine’s are removed. The cock joke (ll. 221–​5) and the word “whoreson,” are cut from 4.1.115 and 143. Whereas Morgan usually stays close to Shakespeare language unless he adds the name of a character so listeners will know who is being addressed or changes a tense to make grammatical a line that survived an adjacent cut, Seldes adds many lines. Most are short interjections, as when Katherine several times said “Oh!” in response to Petruchio’s more outrageous statements about how much she loves him and “Whoa”

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twice to indicate the horses have stopped when Petruchio brings Katherine to his house. There are dozens of similar additions. Some things in the play lend themselves to radio’s verbal storytelling, as when Petruchio’s outlandish wedding costume is described in 3.2.43–​61. Seldes simply typed Shakespeare’s lines and Morgan had the ensemble guffaw at appropriate moments. The word picture was complete. The outlandish costume audiences see in the theatre was not needed. Another visual is surprisingly included: the whip. Philip Kemble introduced a whip to bring Catherine into submission when he produced Garrick’s revision, and the whip became a stage tradition.38 A whip may be heard cracking three times in the broadcast, though Petruchio uses it on Grumio instead of Katherine in 1.2. Seldes’s added more narrative description than was customary for Morgan and some of these lines are unnecessary. To give just one example, the reason that Gremio is said to disguise Lucentio as a Latin teacher is that Gremio is too fat to convincingly disguise himself. Listeners could easily forget the Bianca subplot, but Seldes restores her with some questionable narration. It goes against the play when Seldes introduces Bianca as “quiet as a mouse, sweet, and a little frightened by the trouble she has caused.” Shakespeare carefully contrasts the rough personalities and smooth marriage of Katherine and Petruchio with the smoother courtship and rougher marriage of Bianca and Hortensio. The story still resolves Shakespeare’s way, but Seldes does not seem to realize that Bianca is not as sweet as she is reputed to be. The cast and Morgan give the script wonderful energy. There is not a dull performance or slow speaker in the company, and Robinson is remarkable:  energetic, well-​ spoken, and entirely likable. The studio audience can be difficult to hear at times since the microphones are distant, but they are certainly more responsive than the studio audience at Much Ado About Nothing. Granted, King Lear is a long play, but cutting thirteen scenes contrasts with the practice of both Morgan and Seldes, and 2.2 does not begin until line 261. 1.5, 2.1, 3.1, 3.3–​ 4.2, 4.4, and 5.1–​2 are entirely removed. Why did MacLeish cut so deeply? One reason is that he used a fairly complete 1.1, beginning with Lear’s entrance and cut only lightly after that. It is as dramatic as any scene in the play and sets up the main plot, so MacLeish allows the scene to have its impact. The problem is that 1.1 and Columbia’s branding takes the first sixteen minutes of the broadcast. Something had to give. MacLeish seems to have fallen in love with his own mediations. There are several places where he interrupts dialogue for narration in an otherwise unedited speech, as when Lear says, “Come, noble Burgundy” and France turns to Cordelia and says, “Bid farewell to your sisters,” in 1.1.266, a shared poetic line. MacLeish interrupts this to add eight lines of narration between the speakers. Some of this is helpful, explaining that 38  This tradition is explored briefly by Barbara Hodgdon in her introduction to her edition of The Taming of the Shrew (London: Arden, 2010), 98–​99.

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62 And in That Corner Lear and much of his entourage leave the stage, but most radio writers would handle this by adding a line for somebody such as Gloucester to say, “Attend the King,” with the sound effect of people leaving. This would allow the next moment to be an intimate conversation between the sisters and France. Blocking via dialogue could equal one line of airtime instead of eight. MacLeish occasionally blocks verbally, but there are a dozen unnecessary time-​consuming interruptions. Some narration is effective, especially passages that cover cut scenes. I  quite like, “Cordelia, learning of her father’s injuries, forgetful of her own, returns from France to help him,” two lines that illuminate an important plot point and add motivation and characterization. The price of all the cutting, however, is that the broadcast concentrates on Lear and his problems; the subplot is essentially lost. Cutting Edgar is especially problematic. He is the loyal son of Gloucester, betrayed by his bastard (in more ways than one) brother, who convinces their father that Edgar wants to control Gloucester’s wealth, but Edmund is lying to control the wealth himself. The main plot of Lear giving his lands away contrasts with this. The two plots explore ideas of stewardship, loyalty, kindness, and worthiness. These explorations are cut with Edgar. Edgar is no longer in the story to kill Oswalt, so the letter proving Goneril’s attachment to Edmund is also cut. Albany is instead made to suspect his wife from the way the Goneril and Regan fight over Edmund. Morgan and his cast fail to make this convincing. Gloucester only speaks when advancing the Lear plot. His subplot is given in a few lines of narration and only to explain who Edmund is and why Cornwall dies. Nobody is kind to Gloucester, and so his eventual perseverance in tragic circumstances is lost. Though Kent does challenge Lear to reconsider his rejection of Cordelia, he disappears until he is needed for the last scene and almost seems to come out of nowhere. Lear’s other friendly challenger, the Fool, is so curtailed that with him goes the articulation that Lear lacks the wisdom to make the correct decision about abdicating. This is hardly the same play. Despite the problems with McLeish’s script, Morgan did a marvellous job with the cast and sound patterns. Lear and his followers travel in a scene that bridges the cuts between 1.4 and 2.2. It is a feast of audio storytelling, with the sounds of marching, riding, and stopping as Lear and his hundred knights go to Regan’s house, learn she is visiting Gloucester, then ride that way under narration that describes all this. Such effective sound patterns set this series above Streamlined Shakespeare, which eschewed other sounds during narration. Thomas Mitchell is a very good Lear, energetic and self-​ possessed. He stands out in a way Mitchell seldom did on film. To list the cut scenes in As You Like It, 3.5, 4.2, and 5.1, misses the point for Morgan so rearranges the text that five lines from 1.1 appear in the narration between 2.2 and the song from 4.2. The order of the longer scenes is 1.2, 2.3, 4.2, 2.1, 2.4, 2.6, 2.5, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1, 4.3, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4, with snippets from some of these scenes and others, such as a line from 1.3, moved elsewhere. Morgan puts some scenes together that have central characters, such as two scenes with Jaques and others:  2.5 combined with 2.7, and three scenes with Rosalind and others: 3.2–​3 combined with 4.1. These compressions kept Frank Morgan at the microphone without using broadcast time for a musical bridge to change the cast away from

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him and later back to him. It did the same for Elissa Landi, however these transpositions alter the rhythm of the story. The elimination of some characters dilutes two of the play’s contrasts: courtiers versus foresters and selfish people versus generous people. These contrasts give thematic balance to this play and to some extent are represented by the eliminated characters Corin, Jaques de Bois, Sir Oliver Martext, Denis, William, and Hymen. Oliver is mentioned only in the narration. The play also looks at different kinds of romantic love. The pairings of Rosalind /​ Orlando and Celia /​Oliver represent love at first sight. Silvius and Phoebe are an unbalanced couple, one loving more than the other. Touchstone and Audrey illustrate men who will do anything to satiate their lust and the women who extract a price from them. William, in love with Audrey, represents losing at love. Familial love is shared by Rosalind and Celia, who are close cousins. Brotherly love gone wrong is shown in Oliver’s neglect of Orlando, the plot to kill him, and Duke Frederick usurping Duke Senior. These brotherly relationships go right when Orlando saves Oliver from a lion and Duke Frederick has a religious conversion. The servant Adam has a protective love for Orlando. The broadcast includes the standard romance of Rosalind and Orlando, but the parts of Silvius and Phoebe and Touchstone and Audrey are cut enough to diminish those contrasts, especially by deleting Sir Oliver, the fake minister employed to convince Audrey she is married to Touchstone and so accept the marriage bed. Cutting William eliminates unrequited love from the story. He is a better match for Audrey than Touchstone, and this is one way that courtiers and foresters are contrasted. Touchstone’s conversation with Corin about the impracticality of courtly manners in the country (3.2, greatly reduced), his conversation with Audrey about what it means to be poetical and foul (3.3, largely retained), and his insults to William (5.1, completely cut) carry much of this weight in the play. The late entry of Silvius and Phoebe does as well. Moving the Oliver and Orlando conflict and reconciliation to the narration similarly limits the exploration of brotherly love. Orlando speaks several lines of the eliminated Hymen, the Roman god of marriage. More of Hymen’s lines are sung by a chorus. This redistribution replaces the masque. The level of approval, then, moves from the heavens to Orlando, who says the characters should accept things as they are and get on with the wedding, though he lacks the authority to do so (5.4.123–​8). Most casual references to the gods throughout the plays are cut. The result is a play that seems more Christian than the original, with its many pagan references. The first Henry IV play is presented in the first forty-​nine minutes of the broadcast, so the cuts to Part Two are especially deep. Scenes cut from Part One are 2.1, 2.4, 3.1, 4.1–​2, 4.4, and 5.3, plus the usual thinning of the scenes included. The only excerpts from Part Two are 4.3.166–​349, though without eighty-​five of those lines, and 5.5.5–​71, though without thirty-​three of those lines, one added line, and one of Pistol’s lines, 42, given to Falstaff. One can argue that eliminating most of the parallel plot points in the two Henry IV plays was an advantage in such a radical adaptation, since Morgan was able to quickly go from the death of Hotspur to King Henry’s death, the ascension of Henry V, and the

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64 And in That Corner rejection of Falstaff, a reasonable choice once you commit to reducing five hours of audio to one.39 The result, however, was a disservice to both plays. Henry IV, Part Two is a darker play, as parallel scenes show. To note just three, Falstaff’s misuse of the press in part one is revealed in monologue (4.2.13–​48), but is acted out in part two where we meet the characters who will die as the result of this second misuse (3.2). Both scenes are cut for the broadcast. After the rebellion is quelled in part one, just two rebels are executed and the rest forgiven (5.5). This contrasts sharply with part two in which the rebels are told they may depart. When the army leaves, all the rebel leaders are taken to execution (4.1), a scene cut from the broadcast. The hour includes both of Hal’s reconciliations with his father, that before the battle in part one in which Henry is angry at his misbehaving son (3.2), and in part two when the King is angry and hurt because he believes his son loves the crown more than him (4.3). The force of this parallel is diluted, however, for there are no other parallels to make listeners aware that Shakespeare has structured these plays as a series of parallels. Starting with Richard II and flowing through of Henry V, Shakespeare explores variations of succession, deposing, and the attempted deposing of kings. Some of this remains in the broadcast since there is one rebellion and Hal succeeds his father, but most of the boasting in part one that Hotspur and his faction had put Henry on the throne is gone, as are most allusions to Henry’s doubtful right to rule and Hal’s to succeed him. Gone also are the hints that valour may better indicate worthiness to rule than blood succession. Perhaps most interestingly, this play has wrongly been claimed to be a story about which father Hal will follow, his biological father, Henry, or his father in misrule, Falstaff. In the speech that begins, “I know you all” (1.2.192–​214), Hal makes clear that he has already chosen the side of his royal father, but plays in taverns to learn about his people and his kingdom. This pivotal speech is cut. So is the delightful interlude in which Falstaff and Hal play King Henry and Hal in an extemporaneous play, and then switch roles. This portion of 2.5 hits the themes of Hal’s troubled relationship with his father, his dissolute company, succession, and deposition in a comic way, but not in this broadcast. The central theme of honour is entirely missing. Hotspur is boastfully obsessed with it and with killing others to possess their honour. Hal modestly will claim Hotspur’s honour. Falstaff mocks honour and equates it with death in a famous speech (5.1.127–​ 40), then steals Hotspur’s honour to the public mind by a despicable trick. The concept of honour drives the characters in this play and centres one of its moral debates, but is eliminated from the broadcast. Sanitizing bawdry seems to be the reason for a change of gender. Mistress Quickly tells Prince Hal that an emissary from his father has come to speak with him. Hal replies in 2.4.293–​4, “Give him as much as will make him a royal man and send him back to my mother.” Morgan changes “mother” to “father” so it will not seem that Hal suggests country matters. Morgan also changes some oaths in 2.5. Line 140 substitutes “plague 39  Both Archangel recordings are “Approx. 2HRS 30 MINS,” according to the packaging.

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of a” for “whoreson.” “I am a Jew else” is cut forty lines later, and “Jesu” is removed from 287. These are not the only oaths cut, but others are part of longer cuts. These words are surgically removed, and so are more likely to have been censored. Wes Folkerth notes that eight minutes pass before the first scene begins in Twelfth Night. Tearle introduces each character, then the actor steps forward to say a line in character. This differentiates the voices in this ensemble for listeners.40 Narrative passages are lengthened with visual details that Morgan previously said were unnecessary in a radio broadcast, such as “The sand on the shore is white. From the moss on the glistening rocks spring small white flowers.” Tearle narrates and plays a Feste. Feste sometimes narrates, sometimes acts in the story, and occasionally does both simultaneously. Previous episodes had as many narrative intrusions, but Tearle repeatedly telling us he is breaking into the story as Feste feels more intrusive than the better integrated narration in earlier episodes. The narrative itself is sometimes problematic. Tearle says that Sir Toby would like to see Sir Andrew “married to Olivia to make, ah, borrowing money a bit easier,” but Sir Toby is already taking financial advantage of Sir Andrew. Drastic cuts were needed to accommodate the long introduction and padded narrative. Five scenes were cut in their entirety, 2.2–​3, 3.2–​3, and 4.2. 4.3 was reduced to a few lines, 1.1 was integrated into 1.4., and 3.1 was transposed with 2.5. Despite these structural changes, the show makes better story sense than the Streamlined broadcast because Feste and Antonio are not cut. With Antonio remains one example of unrequited love, and Feste brings music to this most musical of Shakespeare’s comedies. The catch is sung in 2.3, so there is real caterwauling. Also sung are the first and last verses of “The Wind and the Rain” to close the play, though the third, which includes, “when I came, alas, to wive,” is cut, and that seems the point of this marriage-​ conscious play that is steeped in so much melancholy one wonders if all the lovers will be happy. Those who lost in love, Antonio, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew, certainly will not. An oddity in the play that there is a plot to gull Malvolio that involves Feste (2.3.167–​8), but a new character, Fabian, is introduced in 2.5 with no indication as to why Feste does not witness the gulling. Cutting Fabian and putting Feste in his place is an advantage in this version. The cast is very strong throughout. Hardwicke uses what Folkerth calls a “speech affectation,” adding an “h” to words that begin with vowels and dropping the “h” from words that begin with it. This vocalizes Malvolio’s pretentions.41 Bankhead is a notable Viola with a voice deep enough to be believable in male guise. Welles is appropriately melancholy through most of the broadcast, but then this play was dear to him in his early career. Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, and The Taming of the Shrew may have compromised and deleted important ideas from the original plays, but in terms of entertaining radio drama, these are as good at the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle gets. 40  Wes Folkerth, “Fitting Shakespeare into the Radio:  CBS’s 1937 Twelfth Night,” unpublished, 2007, p. 9. 41  Folkerth, “Shakespeare,” 11.

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Post Show Thoughts

To counter NBC signing Barrymore, Columbia boasted that its famous stars would be cast in parts far different than roles they usually played on stage or screen. This was not always the case, for Leslie Howard played yet another troubled leading man and at this point in his career Humphrey Bogart was often cast as an angry young man on the wrong side of the authorities, but giving Burgess Meredith the role of Hamlet, supporting player Thomas Mitchell that of Lear, and the very modern Tallulah Bankhead a classic part certainly fulfilled this promise. With the exception of Archibald MacLeish’s disaster of a King Lear script, even problem scripts such as Henry IV and As You Like It manage to have a beginning, middle, and end, thus delivering at least the outline of a story. Beginnings, middles, and ends are difficult to discern in the early Streamlined broadcasts. Most Streamlined episodes had a strong central actor supported by merely competent players. The casts of the Columbia series were deep in nearly every episode. It may have been smart marketing to hire John Barrymore to lead the NBC series, but all his performances sound like “John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor.” Columbia showed that there were many compelling ways to play Shakespeare’s lead roles and the series benefited from the variety. In its production work on the show openings, closings, and sound effects, CBS outclassed NBC in every way, though NBC’s haste to be on the air first gave CBS three weeks to study NBC’s approach and best it. Columbia’s follow-​up broadcast is, therefore, ironic. The Curtain Calls of the 1937 Shakespeare Cycle was presented thirty minutes after the end of Twelfth Night. It featured host Bob Trout interviewing actors who had participated in the cycle. They came to praise the program, not to bury it. A listener handled that. Lackmann writes that Trout interviewed people on the street who were screened to give only praise, but the interviews went out live. One man said the show was “wonderful,” then added, “I don’t understand a word they’re saying, but I think it’s wonderful.”42

42  Lackmann, Encyclopedia, 246.

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Chapter 4

AND THE WINNER IS? AFTERMATH, AFTERLIVES, AFTER SHOWS, AND ALTERNATIVE  SHOWS

Aftermath How seriously did the public take the Battle? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say at this remove. Certainly, there was more interest in large cities, if only because not everybody in outlying areas had to choose which program to hear. Variety published a list of cities with CBS stations, but no NBC affiliate, and on the same page a list of cities with NBC outlets, but without a CBS station. NBC did not broadcast in Austin, Texas or Green Bay, Wisconsin or Mobile, Alabama; in all forty-​three radio markets could hear the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle that could not near the NBC broadcasts.1 CBS did not broadcast in Albuquerque, New Mexico or Boise, Idaho or Jackson, Mississippi; in all forty-​six markets could hear Streamlined Shakespeare that could not hear the CBS broadcasts.2 The producers and actors at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival,3 then in its third year, heard neither show. The only radio station in that part of Southern Oregon, KMED, was unaffiliated, carrying neither CBS nor NBC programming. KMED became a long time NBC affiliate on September 15, but the Battle of the Bard ended in August, so both programs completely bypassed one of the two Shakespeare festivals in the United States at that time.4 It was a different matter for cities with both networks. William A.  Brady, who played Claudius for Columbia, was quoted in the New York Times as saying he missed the common use of Shakespearean phrases by the American people that he heard growing up in New York’s Bowery, and was confident that these broadcasts would restore phrases such as “Lay on, Macduff” and “To be, or not to be” as idioms. Since these phrases are common idioms today, though the garbled “Lead on, Macduff” is what we actually hear, it may be tempting to claim that these shows gave Brady his wish, but I doubt that they did. Brady’s sampling is too anecdotal to be meaningful, and so is mine. I have been unable to find an article that studies the proliferation of Shakespearean phrases after these broadcasts and doubt that one was written. The same newspaper article posted the question, “Is Shakespeare too highbrow for radio?” It is a good question. Writing when the Columbia series was about to begin, Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr. did not attempt to answer this question, saying the ratings would tell. He noted that while Shakespeare was on Broadway quite a bit of late, that there had never been a huge 1  “CBS But No NBC,” Variety 127:6 (July 21, 1937), p. 49. 2  “NBC But No CBS,” Variety 127:6 (July 21, 1937), p. 49.

3  The name was later changed to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

4  The other was in San Diego, California, which had an NBC station, but had no CBS affiliate.

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68 And the Winner Is?

Shakespearean success on the level of Abie’s Irish Rose, a 1922 comedy by Anne Nichols about a religiously mixed marriage that ran for 2327 performances. Dunlap was dubious that the two Shakespeare series would rack up the big ratings of the amateur talent shows that were popular on radio at the time, adding, “in popularity surveys to date the literary efforts among the broadcasters have not been in the running compared with Jack Benny, Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor and the long cavalcade that marches daily across the wave lengths of America.”5 As the editorial writer for Radio Guide noted of previous Shakespeare broadcasts, “the total number of listeners over a period of years … could probably be accommodated in a half-​dozen telephone booths,” though the writer’s point was that all the controversy would boost listenership for the Battle of the Bard.6 The big question, then, is which network won the Battle? Unfortunately, we do not know. The rating services, Hooper and Crossley at that time, did not book summer broadcasts in 1937 and networks did not trust the rating services, anyway. Martin Grams, Jr., wrote, “All ratings systems at that time were generally unreliable and in some cases varied considerably in their results.”7 We can only look at statements made at the time supplemented by some research commissioned by the networks, and make cautious observations. Broadcasting magazine went out of its way to embarrass CBS and NBC by putting the title “Networks’ Shakespeare Rivalry” above a paragraph that had nothing to do with either series. It simply listed the ten most popular radio stars and could have been titled “The Most Popular Radio Stars.” No actor from either Battle series made the list, which was the point.8 At least two people used The Johnson’s Wax Program starring Fibber McGee and Molly to expose network folly. Alton Cook estimated “that the Fibber McGee and Molly program commanded a fifty percent larger audience than the two Shakespearian productions on the air at the same hour.”9 In an interview Betty Wragle said: With the networks waging intense rivalry over dramatic offerings, not much attention is being paid to the consistently pleasing work of the every-​day-​in-​ the-​week dramatization—​the radio serial. Yet, I’ll wager that the general run of script shows have a far wider audience than the works of Shakespeare, O’Neill or Shaw. This was almost conclusively proven when network statistics showed that the Fibber McGee and Molly program outdrew Shakespeare by two to one.10

5  Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., “Shakespeare is Radio’s Midsummer Night’s Dream,” New York Times, July 11, 1937, Section 10, 8. 6  “Happy Listening,” Radio Guide 6:38 (July 10, 1937), p. 2.

7  Martin Grams, Jr., via the “Old Time Radio Researchers” Facebook page, February 9, 2017.

8  “Networks’ Shakespeare Rivalry: CBS and NBC Dramatic Series Originate in Hollywood Featuring Movie Stars,” Broadcasting 13:1 (July 1, 1937), p. 36. 9  West, Rape, 78.

10  Betty Wragge, “One Minute Interview,” Radio Daily 2:59 (September 23, 1937), p. 8.

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The source of neither statistic is revealed, and there is a vast difference between “fifty percent” and “two to one,” but it does not look good for the Battle either way. Randy A. Riddle uncovered some research done by the networks and found a different view of the impact of these series: CBS was interested in how this outreach worked in promoting the series. The “Wilson Bulletin for Libraries” (Volume 12 No 2, page 138, October 1937) noted that the network received 4,200 letters praising the series. CBS sent a questionnaire to 900 libraries. Thirty-​ four reported an increased demand for Shakespeare’s works and 66 noted a small increase. Twenty four thought the series had no effect on demand for works by the Bard. The article also noted that NBC received only 91 letters in June and 118 in July as “indirect mail” in response to their competing “Streamlined Shakespeare” series.11

Neither series impressed one Variety writer, “The nation as a whole would trade in John Barrymore and Burgess Meredith combined for Jack Benny’s version of Hamlet. It’s also pretty clear that neither Columbia nor NBC is thinking of listeners, but of that vague value known as ‘prestige’.”12 Networks hoped for a small but impressed audience for their sustaining shows, but that audience must be large enough to bring the network prestige. The higher the listenership, the greater the prestige. My impression, based on these accumulated facts, findings, and which network embraced broadcasting Shakespeare in subsequent years and which network avoided him, is that while the greater exposure to Shakespeare did stimulate interest amongst some listeners, most had other uses for their recreation time. The two networks mostly succeeded in showing that they could produce abridged Shakespeare and get a lot of attention for doing it. It was hoped that putting Shakespeare in the Lux slot would keep that program’s regular listeners.13 However, the competing shows, classical music on Mutual, The Johnson’s Wax Program from 8–​8:30 on NBC Red and the “All-​Girl Orchestra” on The Hour of Charm which followed at 8:30, were the alternatives for anyone who wanted recreational listening that was not Shakespeare. Columbia estimated that 7.5 million heard Shrew, a number it publicized and so must have liked,14 but the network did not publicize the numbers for other Cycle plays. Whatever the numbers, they were not enough. Despite the extra weeks preparing, money spent, and publicity efforts by CBS, NBC’s counterprogramming was effective. Lewis 11  rand’s esoteric otr, June 10, 2010, http://​randsesotericotr.podbean.com/​e/​columbia-​shakespeare-​ cycle-​july-​19–​1937/​. 12  Quoted in Martin F.  Norden, John Barrymore:  A Bio-​Bibliography (Westport, CT:  Greenwood, 1995), 143.

13  Normal Siegel, “Behind the Mike,” Charleston Daily Mail, July 25, 1937, www.digitaldeliftp.com/​ DigitalDeliToo/​dd2jb-​Streamlined-​Shakespeare.html. 14  West, Rape, 79.

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70 And the Winner Is? hoped the series was the first of many summer dramatic cycles. That idea died with the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle. Columbia also got out of the Shakespeare business except for a few broadcasts on the Columbia Workshop, the revival of that show called The CBS Radio Workshop (1956–​1957), and some other programs, a mere eight Shakespeare broadcasts over twenty years. The most notable of these were Orson Welles’s production of Julius Caesar on Mercury Theater on the Air, September 11, 1938, a ninety-​minute production of Richard III by the Old Vic company with Laurence Olivier in the title role on the Columbia Workshop, June 2, 1945, Welles again in scenes from King Lear on the Mercury Summer Theater, September 13, 1946, and a two-​part Othello on the series Suspense, May 4 and 11, 1953. CBS was responsible for the Columbia Workshop, but Orson Welles chose his own content and so did Suspense producer Elliot Lewis, so CBS only chose to broadcast Shakespeare five times in the ensuing years. The Battle did not make Columbia the radio home of William Shakespeare. NBC, however, carried on almost as if there had never been a battle. Streamlined seems to have moved Shakespeare out of the Radio Guild, which had been NBC’s primary Shakespeare outlet. Radio Guild produced six of his plays in 1936 but only three in 1937, and two in 1938 when a series called Great Plays took over the bulk of NBC’s Shakespeare production, so NBC continued to broadcast Shakespeare, but in a different time slot. Radio Guild thereafter gave more airtime to original scripts, other playwrights, and adaptations of fiction and poetry. Great Plays was a Sunday morning sustaining educational series that condensed mostly European drama for sixty-​ minute broadcasts. Shakespeare was broadcast eleven times between 1938 and 1941. From the ending of Great Plays until 1950, most Shakespeare on NBC was confined to readings on variety shows by well known Shakespeare performers such as Maurice Evans, Orson Welles, and John Barrymore. Reviewing Streamlined and the Cycle must have been difficult for newspapers because most had one person assigned to write about radio. Radio Daily reported that Mary Little of the Des Moines Register-​Tribune “has been having [a]‌tough time on Mondays trying to give a proper break to both Shakespeare series … Miss Little, report says, was heard one night reciting ‘To be or not to be’ in her sleep.”15 Radio was over its Shakespeare obsession, but literary drama was broadcast more than ever. The Variety Radio Directory noted that in the year beginning May 1938, 164 adaptations of stage plays were broadcast. So were sixty adaptations of prose and poetry.16 Radio was still in love with literature.

Alternate Shakespeare during the Battle and Other Literary Programs

With so much media coverage of the Battle programs, how could local stations compete? Some came up with their own Shakespeare programming. The previously 15  “Shakespeare Dilemma,” Radio Daily 2:14 (July 21, 1937), p. 1. The identity of the person overhearing this is not revealed. 16  Quoted in MacDonald, Dial, 54.

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mentioned Herbert Colin Rice of WGR-​WKBW Buffalo announced a series of transcribed Shakespeare programs presenting plays in two thirty-​minute parts. The first would be Hamlet starring himself. Distribution would be handled by an unnamed “commercial firm,” but I find no evidence that these programs were broadcast in Buffalo or elsewhere.17 Another local broadcast that may not have aired was announced in Radio Daily:  “Bert Phillips … is negotiating with Huntington Library and Leslie Howard, planning to use one of their original Shakespeare manuscripts for a 30 minute transcontinental airing of the poet’s own version of a scene from one of his plays.” The Huntington has no manuscripts in Shakespeare’s hand, so that is a problem. No evidence has been found that the show aired, but it does indicate the way others besides NBC and CBS tried to climb aboard the Shakespeare bandwagon.18 East Lansing, Michigan station WKAR broadcast a fifteen-​minute show called “Shakespeare’s Comedies” a few days after the NBC Hamlet.19 A short wave broadcast entitled Scenes from Richard II aired on August 26.20 New  York area stations offered four series advertised as alternatives to the Battle programs. The thirty-​minute Shakespeare A La Carte on WNEW invited listeners to bring in their favourite Shakespeare passages and read them on the air. Readers on the first program included “a doctor, teacher, secretary, students” and Frank Lea Short, president of the Shakespeare Fellowship.21 WINS broadcast a program of love scenes from Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and The Taming of the Shrew. Martin Weldon produced. Variety found it disjointed and indifferently acted.22 Soon to be popular radio writer Norman Corwin read poetry on Poetic License, a show on WQXR located in Newark, but heard in the New York market. The five-​minute series debuted opposite the Barrymore broadcasts, before the Columbia series began. Radio Daily noted it was different than most radio poetry readings because there was no music in the background and praised Corwin’s voice, his readings, and the brief explanations of the poems he was about to read.23 A racially problematic program was Darktown Strutters Jamboree, described by Radio Daily as “a program of all sepian talent in a half hour of hot music and comedy.” The show aired for a short time on Mondays on WHN, New York. The Harlem Heatwaves was the house band. Talent on the first episode included singer Eddie Mathews, the Jazzters, comedy by Sam and Lee, Bob Howard, and “Edna Brevard, a singer who could have done a much better job.” The plus is that African-​American talent was employed, even if it was 17  “Buffalo’s Own ‘Hamlet’,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 28. 18  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 1:87 (June 11, 1937), p. 6. 19  “Morning,” Radio Guide 6:36 (June 25, 1937), p. 41.

20  “Short Waves,” Radio Guide 6:45 (August 28, 1937), p. 18. I have not been able to learn details about this show, which is a puzzle. The program is titled like many BBC “scenes” broadcasts, but the BBC did not broadcast this play in 1937. This would not seem to be a BBC broadcast or rebroadcast, except that the short wave signal originated in England. 21  “Shakespeare A La Carte,” Radio Daily 1:99 (June 29, 1937), p. 7. 22  “New Ideas,” Variety 127:8 (August 4, 1937), p. 58.

23  “Program Reviews and Comments,” Radio Daily 1:100 (June 30, 1937), p. 7.

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72 And the Winner Is? in a broadcasting ghetto. Presenting the program as an alternative to Shakespeare is odd since the first episode aired from 9:15 to 9:45 p.m. on June 28, just as the Streamlined episode of Richard III ended.24 Networks, with their set schedules and usually sponsored shows, did not have the flexibility of independent stations to counterprogram, but one network variety show riffed on Shakespeare radio. The August 5 episode of The Royal Gelatin Hour on NBC Red featured its regular cast member, the African-​American comedian Eddie Green, giving “his interpretation of Hamlet” in an eight-​minute segment.25 Another did not air. The Chase and Sanborn Hour on NBC Red wanted to burlesque the Streamlined series by bringing in Elaine Barrie for a scene with ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy in early July. Barrie was not available.26 Comedian W. C. Fields used the expression “the milk of human kindness,” an expression originated in Macbeth 1.5.16 on the June 27 episode, but that is probably a case of using a familiar idiom without having Shakespeare in mind. As we have already seen, the Johnson’s Wax Program on NBC Red, which played opposite the first half-​hour of the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle and directly before Streamlined Shakespeare, made fun of the Columbia series while that program’s Hamlet was being broadcast. The program took a final shot at Shakespeare two weeks after the Cycle ended, September 13. Fibber McGee (Jim Jordan) wrote a travesty of Julius Caesar for his community theatre. In this version, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony compete in a chariot race to see who will be stuck marrying the unpopular Helen of Troy. The performance is a disaster, but lines from Julius Caesar and Hamlet are quoted or paraphrased and the Merchant of Venice is called the Merchant of Venison to make a joke about deer hunting. Though not related to Shakespeare, another series devised to capitalize on radio’s sudden literary interest was on Mutual, which contracted Orson Welles to create a seven-​part serialization of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the half-​hour episodes airing Fridays at 10 p. m. starting July 23.27 This was three days before Columbia’s Julius Caesar and the final Streamlined broadcast, so Welles appeared on this series the same week he performed Orsino for CBS. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation decided to launch its own series. A representative came to America to learn the logistics from NBC and CBS. Neither network was cooperative, wanting instead to sell the rights to rebroadcast their shows.28 In the end, the CBC opted to produce its own, but hired Charles Warburton who supplied his old Radio Guild scripts, directed most of the episodes, and acted in the series. The eleven-​episode 24  “Program Reviews and Comments,” Radio Daily 1:100 (June 30, 1937), p. 7. Radio had a history of creating all African-​American variety shows. See MacDonald, Dial, 330–​31 for several examples. 25  “Negro Hamlet,” Radio Daily 2:24 (August 4, 1937), p. 1. 26  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 2:2 (July 2, 1937), p. 5.

27  “Behind the Scenes,” New York Times, July 11, 1937, Section 10, 8.

28  “Shakespeare in Canada:  NBC and CBS Example May Be Followed,” Variety 127:4 (July 7, 1937), p. 40.

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CBC Shakespearean Cycle aired in 1938.29 Canadian-​born American actors Walter Huston and Raymond Massey, who were respectively in and nearly in the Columbia series, were brought north to star in two of the episodes. Other well known US based actors were also employed as leads. The Battle changed the programming balance on NBC. Radio Daily reported that the percentage of dance music on the network declined from 33.6% to 29.6% in July while “drama jumped to a total of 213 hours for the month, mostly due to the Shakespeare series.”30 As already noted, Streamlined Shakespeare was immediately followed by a four-​week series called NBC Presents Eugene O’Neill, featuring four of his shorter works. According to Dunning, this was to “contrast Elizabethan with modern genius.”31 It also gave listeners a prestigious alternative to the remaining episodes on the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, if they wanted it. The Shakespeare programming received more criticism when Barrymore returned in the modern plays:  “John Barrymore and Beverly Roberts, playing the leads in ‘The Animal Kingdom’ over NBC-​Blue … provided some of the best entertainment of its kind heard on the air in months. With material much better suited than Shakespeare when it comes to pleasing a vast radio audience, Barrymore gave a deft performance, while Miss Roberts held her own.”32 One of the points of this chapter is that despite all the huffing and puffing by NBC and CBS, the Battle of the Bard did not really change the proliferation of Shakespeare on US radio. That changed in a small way starting in 1950.

Afterlives

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre contacted NBC in 1950 suggesting it repeat the Streamlined series. I have been unable to learn the reason for this, but the request was announced on each of the four repeats, if they may be called repeats. NBC cut each show by fifteen minutes. The new title was John Barrymore and Shakespeare. A ridiculous comment was made by the unnamed new announcer at the beginning of each episode. After giving the title of that week’s abridgement, he said, “not all of the play, but that part selected by John Barrymore himself, thirteen years ago. Would there were more,” that last phrase longingly spoken. There is more, as we know, fifteen minutes of each repeated broadcast and two additional episodes. 29  Marta Straznicky, “ ‘A Stage for the World’:  Shakespeare on CBC Radio, 1947–​1955,” in Shakespeare in Canada:  A World Elsewhere?, ed. Diana Brydon and Irina R.  Makaryk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 92–​107, at 93.

30  “Dance Music Declines, Drama Hours Increase,” Radio Daily 2:40 (August 26, 1937), p. 1. The percentage of dramatic shows is not given. 31  Dunning, Encyclopedia, 522.

32  “Program Reviews and Comments,” Radio Daily 2:48 (September 1937), p. 6.

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74 And the Winner Is? Always cut was the non-​Barrymore material at the beginning and ending of each show. The narration was revised to be shorter and most of the music was eliminated, including the music that marks a new scene, so the 1950 Hamlet broadcast presents 1.1–​2 and 1.4–​5 as if these four scenes are one. This is all that was needed to get Hamlet down to time, but some of Shakespeare’s lines were excised if more cuts were required. The few lines from 2.2–​3 used in 1937 were eliminated from Richard III along with the music and sounds of horses hoofs that bridged 1.2 and 3.1, and careful editing eliminated Barrymore’s cough that precedes 5.5. Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene is removed from that play. The revisions were especially painful in Twelfth Night. The person responsible for editing the program and rewriting the narration understood that Viola disguises herself as Cesario, but apparently thought that she took her brother’s name. Sebastian is not named Cesario in Shakespeare or in the 1937 broadcast, but he is in this abridgement, which makes the story entirely confusing. Lawyers became involved. “Elaine Barrie is huddling with attorneys on NBC’s rebroadcast of John Barrymore’s Shakespearean readings. It’s Elaine’s beef that her voice was used in several of the recordings and that the network failed to get her OK.”33 I have not learned how this was resolved, but networks owned the rights to their sustaining programs. Audio Rarities released the abridgements on two long playing records titled John Barrymore Reads Shakespeare, vol. 1 and 2 the same year. The recordings were later released as a two disk boxed set. Louis Marder reviewed the albums: “Although Barrymore inserts some ‘continuity,’ only those who really know the play will be able to follow the thread intellectually … Since the stress of the series is on Barrymore, little else is to be expected; and since we can only have about 24 minutes per record little else can be desired.”34 These 1950 rebroadcasts revived interest in Shakespeare at NBC. A new sitcom began three months after the Barrymore abridgements ended when the Shakespeare infatuated Magnificent Montague started on November 10, 1950. It concerns a broken down Shakespearean actor who is unable to get a job on Broadway and so has a miserable existence as the host of a children’s radio program. The character is not really a Barrymore type, more of a Sheridan Whiteside type from the play (George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, 1939)  and film (William Keighley, dir., Warner Bros., 1942)  The Man Who Came to Dinner, if only because the character was played by the film’s lead, Monty Woolley. Barrymore would have been very different, but he could have played the role as written had he been alive. The program was unable to find a sponsor and went off the air a year later.35 The summer that John Barrymore and Shakespeare was broadcast, Program Director of KMED in Medford, Oregon, Jennings Pierce, invited an old friend from NBC in 33  “In Hollywood,” San Bernardino Sun, October 23, 1950, 4.

34  Louis Marder, “Record Review: BARRYMORE READS SHAKESPEARE,” The Shakespeare Newsletter 4:6 (December 1954): 47.

35  This series is a second type of sustaining program: a commercial-​type show without a sponsor. These were broadcast in the hope of attracting one.

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Hollywood to visit Southern Oregon for the hunting and fishing and to visit the Oregon Shakespearean Festival to see if their stage productions were worth putting on the air. Andrew C. Love was NBC’s current person for literary adaptations, producing the series NBC University Theater (1948–​1951) which presented one-​hour versions of novels. Love liked what he saw and the Festival began a series of annual sustaining broadcasts on NBC the next year. The series lasted until 1974, by far outlasting other dramatic series on network radio, Shakespeare or otherwise.36 An August 1953 article in Billboard announced that NBC and RCA Victor Records would record eight full-length Shakespeare broadcasts to be released on LP shortly after. The Old Vic Theatre and EMI Records in the UK were contracted to create the first two, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. The Old Vic was producing Romeo and Juliet with Claire Bloom and Alan Badel as the lovers at that time. The stage cast was used in the recording. The company did not produce Macbeth that year, so Alec Guinness and Pamela Brown were hired to star. Actors from the Old Vic completed the cast. Macbeth aired on September 27 and Romeo and Juliet on November 7, 1953. The project was then dropped. The recording and broadcast of The Taming of the Shrew and Othello with American-based stars and four unnamed plays were not realized.37 Finally, the WNBC, New  York poetry show Anthology presented a four-​part series excerpting Shakespeare from long playing records. The July 11, 1954 second part excerpted ten minutes from the John Barrymore and Shakespeare abridgement of Richard III. The half-​hour was filled-​out by Maurice Evans as Richard II and Laurence Olivier as Henry V. The Cycle also had an afterlife, but unlike John Barrymore and Shakespeare and as with the original series, it had no lasting impact. Five of the Cycle recordings were released on LP. The plays were Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night. The title of the set was Hollywood Immortals Perform Shakespeare: Five Original Radio Broadcasts, released by Murray Hill Records in 1970. The pirated copies of both the Cycle and Streamed Shakespeare programs found on the internet are usually from the LP releases.

The Major Players after the Battle of the Bard

We turn to the afterlives some of the major players in these series. Before Streamlined, Forrest Barnes had a brief stint as a screenwriter. Radio Daily dubiously indicated that Barnes was hired to adapt Harold Bell Wright’s novel Helen of the Old House for the movies on the strength of his Cycle adaptations.38 The final script is credited to Barnes 36  The full story of OSF’s various radio shows in told in Michael P. Jensen, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Radio: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Radio Series,” Shakespeare Survey 65 (2013): 121–​37. 37  “Network Cashes In: NBC, Victor Pact Shows by Old Vic,” The Billboard, August 29, 1953, 4. The network was not quite done with the Old Vic. The company’s 1956 production of Romeo and Juliet toured to New York with Bloom reprising her role of Juliet and John Neville playing Romeo. NBC television presented an abridgement of that production on March 7, 1957. 38  “Los Angeles,” Radio Daily 2:9 (July 14, 1937), p. 7.

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76 And the Winner Is? and Earl Snell. The film was directed by Howard Bretherton and released under the title Western Gold by 20th Century Fox on August 27, 1937, just a month and a day after the final Streamlined broadcast. This is hardly enough time to get the script written, approved, make the film, edit it, and create the publicity materials. Barnes probably contributed to the script before helping Barrymore. He had, in fact, supplied dialogue for the feature Valley of Wanted Men, directed by Alan James for Conn Pictures Corporation in 1935, and worked on five short films in 1936–​1937, which may explain why the KECA Shakespeare series ended. The shorts were a combination of Westerns and historical biographies, experience that would serve Barnes a few years later. He seems to have stuck with radio after this, writing dozens of shows. Those with some Shakespeare content are the 1938 Australian series The Great Gunns. It was about a theatrical family with some resemblance to the Barrymores and another character based on Orson Welles. These scripts were remounted for the Mutual Network in 1941 as a summer replacement series. Barnes also acted in one episode.39 Barnes scripted episodes of Treasury Salute in 1944, a syndicated program sponsored by the Treasury Department to sell War Bonds. Most episodes were about historical figures such as frontiersmen and war heroes, but one had a connection to Shakespeare. The episode on Edwin Booth purported to be a biography of the Shakespearean actor, though there was more music than biography. It aired on June 19. A Barnes scripted episode of the First Nighter Program entitled Old Lady Shakespeare was broadcast July 16 of that year after the program had moved to Mutual. It was about an aging Shakespearean actress making a comeback. This script was remounted in 1951. The one real acting success to come out of this series was Hans Conried. He appeared in the Barrymore broadcast Accent on Youth shortly after the Streamlined broadcasts, but more to the point he became a very busy radio actor through 1962, performing in over 10,000 broadcasts.40 Conried was called back for an attempt to revive radio drama in the seventies and did other voice work for animated features and television until his death in 1982. He was also a busy film actor from 1938, and later a television actor and presenter. Barrie wrote that the Streamlined “series and the reaction to it made me feel that I achieved some measure of dignity.” Her career did go uphill for a while. She was back for the two modern plays, The Animal Kingdom and Accent on Youth, though she had a supporting role in the first. Another broadcast was the December 17, 1937 CBS program Hollywood Hotel. She acted in scenes recreated from the movie Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge (Louis King, dir., Congress Films, 1937). Barrymore was in the original film; Barrie was not. The couple were host Ed Gardner’s guests on the short-​lived sustaining CBS series This is New York on February 19, 1938. Three more joint radio appearances were on CBS variety shows. Camel Caravan was hosted by Eddie Cantor, who interviewed Barrymore on the June 6, 1938 episode. They mocked one of the eccentric characters on the series then discussed recipes and 39  Ryan Ellett, “The Great Gunns: a Forgotten All-​Star Show,” The Old Radio Times 70 (November /​ December 2013), pp. 25–​29. 40  Girgiulo, Conried, 183.

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show business. Barrymore introduces Barrie, here called Elaine Barrymore, who talks about life with her husband. The Barrymores perform a burlesque show with Cantor. The couple appeared twice on Texaco Star Theatre, October 12 and December 7, with Barrymore hosting. They recreated a scene from The Jest on the October show. I have not been able to find a date, but according to Radio Daily their last appearance together was a scripted interview on the music program Francis Craig’s Serenade on NBC Blue in early 1939. One of Barrymore’s lines paraphrased Hamlet 2.2.552 as an insult to himself over the way he treats Barrie, “I did complement her once, and now—​Oh, what a peasant slave am I!”41 Barrie barely had a career after their 1940 divorce since they were no longer a package deal. She was a regular on the 1939–​1940 CBS soap opera Society Girl during their separation. She appeared is three episodes of the syndicated dramatic series Hollywood Academy Award Program between April and June 1944, and she starred in the story Hold Back the Dawn on the syndicated Academy Award on July 31, 1946. I find no other acting credits for Barrie. Her only major film was the rather good Midnight (Mitchell Leissen, dir., Paramount, 1939), a Claudette Colbert vehicle in which Barrymore was billed third and she was farther down the cast list. It was her last film except as a talking head in documentaries about Hollywood stars she had known. John Barrymore had a rare moment of dignity after the Streamlined series ended. The Baker’s Broadcast was a thirty-​minute comedy /​variety show. On October 10, 1937, reporter Feg Murray and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson interviewed Barrymore about his career and how he came to love Shakespeare, and then invited him to give a reading from Hamlet 2.2. The ten-​minute segment included Barrie. He soon spent two and a half months hosting the Texaco Star Theater variety show on CBS, November to mid-​January 1938–​1939. The two appearances of Barrie on the show have already been noted. Barrymore left the show to appear in the play My Dear Children with Barrie playing one of his character’s daughters, but she left the production and Barrymore when a scripted on-​stage spanking was much too hard one night. Barrymore’s place as a national joke concretized after Barrie left him. The basic joke had been signaled in Sing, Baby Sing and Hamlet and Eggs, but accelerated after the divorce with the release of other films and radio shows with dissipated Barrymore types played by other actors.42 Barrymore became a regular on the Rudy Vallee Sealtest Show in 1940. He was the butt of jokes for snorting into the microphone, snorting in the other sense, his oversized ego, trouble with women, and many divorces. It was a way to pay his bills. He was ill and sometimes indisposed during these years. When the show had enough notice that Barrymore could not go on, his brother Lionel substituted. Hans Conried stood by in case Barrymore could not go on at the last minute.43 This arrangement lasted until Barrymore’s 1942 death. 41  “The Radio Newsreel,” Radio Daily 8:32 (May 27, 1939), p. 14. 42  These are detailed in Lanier, “Barrymore,” 37, 39–​40. 43  Maltin, Golden, 15.

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Barrymore made some very impressive readings of Shakespeare on the Sealtest show, but the Bard was often mocked along with Barrymore. To give one especially sad example, on the August 7, 1941 show Barrymore is living in a boarding house for old performers. The car of a radio station owner breaks down outside. The station owner asks to use the phone and Barrymore accosts him, saying, “What the world needs is a great Shakespearean actor, like me. ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.’ Shakespeare!” After everyone living in the house auditions, Barrymore plays Romeo in a portion of the balcony scene with Edna Mae Oliver as Juliet. There is extensive paraphrasing to make jokes at Barrymore’s expense. At the end of the skit, Vallee says, “If this be Shakespeare, I be nuts.” At the close of the program, Barrymore says that he memorized all of Shakespeare’s plays when he was young. One of the characters quips, “When you were young, there weren’t that many of them.” Not every episode referenced William Shakespeare, but every episode made fun of John Barrymore. His nadir was the film Playmates (David Butler, dir., RKO, 1941) in which Barrymore played himself as an aging ham actor who slums in bandleader Kay Kayser’s show because he needs money, an exact parallel of the reason Barrymore made the film. Barrymore is unable to give a Shakespearean aria in the story because of some sabotaged throat spray, though others perform a musical parody of Romeo and Juliet. Barrymore was such a cultural icon that people continued to make fun of him for years after his death. One parody is former Shakespearean actor Vitamin Flintheart, introduced in the comic strip Dick Tracy in 1944. Flintheart tries to quote Shakespeare in that first adventure, but cannot remember the lines. He spouts dozens of lines from Shakespeare in a 1950 story. All those lines were found in the 1946 edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.44 Flintheart still looked like Barrymore in subsequent stories, but did not quote Shakespeare again.45 There is little to report about those who participated in the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle. Because most of the best known actors appeared in only one episode, the series had no more impact of their careers than if they had guest appeared on a comedy or variety show. The exception is Edward G. Robinson. He had been on radio before, but not often. After the Cycle broadcast, Robinson played the lead in the radio series Big Town from October 19, 1937 to July 2, 1942, playing the crusading editor of a big city newspaper. The program continued into 1952 with Edward Pawley as Robinson’s replacement. This should not be seen as a step down for Robinson, who continued to make two to three films a year while on the program. As the only actor to appear in all eight Cycle episodes, Conway Tearle deserves special notice. He had a long and successful career prior to the Columbia series, and then played Antony in a misconceived Broadway production of Antony and Cleopatra that paired him with Tallulah Bankhead. It closed after a few days in November of 1937. This appears 44  Christopher Morley and Louella D. Everett, eds., Bartlet’s Familiar Quotations, 11th ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1946). 45  Michael P. Jensen, “Tracy and the Bard,” Hogan’s Alley 18 (2009): 60–​62.

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to be his last work on stage, film, or radio. Tearle died in 1938. Radio Guild presented Antony and Cleopatra the day after the November 11 Broadway opening, perhaps to capitalize on the publicity generated by the stage version. It was thought that Brewster Morgan’s film career was launched when MGM signed him as a producer prior to the end of the Columbia series.46 He does not seem to have made any films for the studio and was back at CBS producing the variety series Hollywood Hotel in 1938 and the news program Forecast in 1940. Morgan served as the Chief of Broadcasting and Communications for the Psychological Warfare Branch of the Twelfth Army during World War II, then was put in charge of the “de-​nazification of German radio at the war’s end.” He went into advertising in 1946, creating radio and television shows for the Compton Advertising Agency.47

46  “Brewster Morgan to M-​G-​M,” Radio Daily 2:33 (August 17, 1937), p. 8. 47  www.idmb.com/​name/​nm1965570/​bio?ref_​=nm_​ov_​bio_​sm.

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AFTERWORD: A BRIEF MURKY CONSIDERATION OF RECREATIONAL SHAKESPEARE AS A CONCEPT IN LIGHT OF THE BATTLE, WITH SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS Taxonomies. You can’t live with them and you can’t write without them. When

I was asked to join the Advisory Board of this series of books and then to write this book, I assumed that Recreational Shakespeare (RS) was about silly people like me who love Shakespeare so much that we devote part of our leisure time to him. I initially missed the main point of this series: recreating Shakespeare. Streamlined Shakespeare and the Columbia Shakespeare Cycle certainly recreated Shakespeare by presenting some of his plays in new formats on new media that reached new audiences in a different century, but were these series also recreational? The answer to that is not very clear. Who would listen to these shows? Some listeners would certainly be educators, reviewers, broadcast professionals, and friends of those involved in producing them, but the bulk of listeners would be people giving some of their recreation time to Shakespeare. This leans toward RS, but with qualifications. The RS picture is murky. Barrymore, Lewis, Conried, Morgan, and anybody else who made these programs on a weekly basis probably thought of these shows as work, not recreation. However, if Meredith, Robinson, Seldes, or Brennan listened for fun to episodes in which they did not appear, then it was recreation for them. More murk. NBC invited educators to their Hamlet broadcast and made scripts available for school study. CBS also released their scripts for study and enlisted libraries around the nation to work with them to promote Shakespeare. Assuming some people studied Shakespeare because it was required and others did so because all the publicity stimulated interested, it is difficult to differentiate between the murkiness of educational Shakespeare and RS. There is no doubt that the Battle of the Bard was recreation for some listeners and work for others. Is a Shakespearean performance ever a pure leisure time activity? I knew a young woman when I was in high school who told me that her family went to Ashland to see the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on their vacation every summer. I  thought that was daft. I now live in Ashland, a three-​minute drive from the Festival’s theatres, and have the chore of finding a place to park when most spaces are taken by some of the 150,000 tourists that visit the Festival each year. Most of those tourists are here for RS. A friend, who I think would prefer not to be named, used to direct the Shakespeare Studies minor at Southern Oregon University at the other end of town. He required his students to attend OSF performances and read the plays for class. With another friend, Michael W. Shurgot, I co-​teach a summer class for mostly high school teachers getting personal improvement credits. Our class also reads and sees the plays. The students in both classes and their teachers sit amongst mostly RS audiences, but we are not there for

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82 Afterword recreation. We are working. On the other hand, when a show is really great we enjoy it as much as anybody in the theatre, and maybe more because we understand it at a deeper level. Inescapable murk. Shakespeare scholars are murky in other ways. We often spend enormous amounts of money going to England to see Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Globe, and other venues, and we sometimes write about what we see or take classes to plays in England. You can say that is part of the job, but we make it part of the job because we like it. This is a little bit like work and a little bit like recreation. The history of audio Shakespeare is just as murky. In the fifties, both the Marlowe Society of Cambridge and Caedmos Records in New York released the thirty-​seven play canon on long playing records. They were intended for classroom use, but also for those who wanted to enjoy uncut Shakespeare at home. The BBC has produced more radio Shakespeare than the rest of the world combined. As a state originated corporation, it does so out of a requirement to produce great drama, though the programs are available for educational purposes in the UK and heard over the internet for a few weeks after broadcast so that Shakespeare lovers worldwide may enjoy them. In decades past, departments of the BBC such as Schools and Entertainment produced their own Shakespeare programs for educators and recreational listeners. Murk is built into audio Shakespeare. I first heard most of the Battle programs around 2005 so that I could briefly describe each in Shakespeare’s After Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture, Volume Two, edited by Richard Burt and published by Greenwood Press in 2007. I was paid for this, so that was not recreational listening. For fun, I have since listened to the episodes I was able to copy. That was certainly recreation. That came full-​ circle with the close listening done for this book. I am not writing this book for money. It is ironic that many of the people who prepare this book for publication get a pay-​cheque, but the publisher’s royalty schedule is so unfavourable to authors that sales must far exceed expectations for us to receive a penny. I am retired, not chasing tenure, so why go to all this work when there is no financial reward (though there is expense) and no career advancement? Dr. Johnson would call me a blockhead. I am. I am a crusading blockhead trying to convince Shakespeare performance scholars that they must give as much attention to audio as they do screen and stage Shakespeare, and I know of no moment in audio Shakespeare more interesting than the Battle of the Bard. I want to advance the cause of audio in scholarship, and so decided to contribute to this series with little hope of financial reward.1 So, is writing this book an example of RS? The answer is, say it with me, murky. I wrote the book over a year of what would have otherwise been recreational time. I could have had more holidays, visited more used bookstores, seen friends and family more often, and taken my dog on more overnight trips to the ocean, but I chose to spend 1  My manifesto is, “ ‘Prithee, Listen Well,’ the Case for Audio Shakespeare,” in The Shakespearean World, ed. Jill L. Levenson and Robert Ormsby (London: Routledge, 2017), 405–​17.

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Afterword

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my recreation time writing this book. So, yes, it is undoubtedly recreation, but it was a heck of a lot of work and often a chore. An outsider looking at my life might object that recreations are not chores. That imagined scoffer has a point, but I chose to spend my recreation time this way. I am up to my neck in murk and badly need a shower. I have no idea what the leisure aspect of RS is objectively, or even if there is one. I know what it is for me, even when there is a mixture of recreation and responsibility that prevents it from being pure recreation. As you read your way through what I hope will be a long and fascinating series of books, I hope you will reflect on what RS is to you. I have no doubt the answer will sometimes be murky, as it is for the Battle of the Bard and the writing of this book.

The Battle of the Bard Website

The author has created a webpage with photos from the Battle of the Bard and links to some of the broadcasts: michaelpjensen.com/​battle_​of_​the_​bard_​photos/​

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SELECTED INDEX

Able, Walter, 46, 47, 49 Allen, Fred, 2, 28 American School of the Air, 20 Amos and Andy, 6 Ankrum, Morris, 44, 46n14, 50, 51 Antony and Cleopatra radio: Front Page Drama, 11–​12, 35 stage, 78 As You Like It radio: Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 25, 45, 51–​52, 62–​63, 66 Columbia Workshop, 53 Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 Johnson’s Wax Program, (allusion), 48 Radio Guild, 10 WCAL, 9, 16

Bankhead, Tallulah, 43, 53, 55, 65, 66, 78 Barnes, Forrest, 17, 27, 31, 34, 40, 56, 75–​76 Barnouw, Erik, 5n18, 19n4, 20 Barrie, Elaine, x, 25, 26, 27–​29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 47, 72, 74, 76–​77 book: All My Sins Remembered, x, 28n56 film, 28, 77 radio acting after Streamlined Shakespeare, 76–​77 stage, 28, 77 Barry, Philip The Animal Kingdom, 21n11, 34, 49, 73, 76 Barrymore, John, 10, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26–​27, 28, 29, 30–​34, 36–​41, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 69, 70, 71, 73–​74, 75, 76–​78, 81 film, 26, 27, 31, 76, 77, 78 parodies about, 26–​28, 77, 78 radio, 26, 27, 76–​78 recordings, 26, 74 stage career, 26, 77

Barrymore, Lionel, 23, 45, 48, 51, 77 Bay, Victor, 25, 46 BBC. See British Broadcasting Corporation Benny, Jack, 2, 6, 12, 68, 69 Bogart, Humphrey, 2, 43, 49, 52, 66 Brady, William A., 24, 67 Brennan, Walter, 24, 81 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 3, 8, 15, 16n38, 45n9, 49 Brown, Charles D., 50, 51, 60 Bulldog Drummond films, 50, 76

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 11 Cantor, Eddie, 2, 68, 76 CBC. See Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC Shakespeare Cycle, 72–​73 CBS. See Columbia Broadcasting System CBS Radio Workshop, 70 CBS Sponsored and Sustaining Programs, 23–​24 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), ix, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 15, 19, 20, 23, 25, 43, 45, 47, 50, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 76, 79, 81 CBS/​NBC rivalry, 5–​6, 19–​22 Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, ix, 2, 13, 19, 21, 36, 42, 43–​65, 67, 70, 72, 73, 75, 81 cast, 24, 25, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49–​50, 51, 51–​52, 52–​53, 53–​54, 67 released on LPs, 75 Columbia Workshop, 13–​15, 19, 43, 70 Public Domain Characters from Fiction Freed from the Copyright Lane, 14 Commemoration of the Birth of Shakespeare, 15 Connolly, Walter, 52–​53 Conried, Hans, 17, 29, 76, 77, 81

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Selected Index

Coriolanus radio: KECA, 17, 44 Cornell, Katherine, 17, 54 Corwin, Norman, 4, 71 Crosby, Bing, 2, 68 Curtain Calls of the 1937 Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 25, 66

Dane, Clement radio: Will Shakespeare, 11 Darktown Strutters Jamboree, x, 71 David Garrick, 11, 52 Catharine and Petruchio, 60, 61 Denney, Reginald, 46, 49 Dodge Brothers Hour, 10, 16, 26 Douglas, Gordon H., 1, 3n7, 4, 5 Dunning, John, 12n25, 13, 19n3, 73

Emery, Edward, 23, 30, 47 Entertainment from Shakespeare with Recitations of Facts, 8 Evans, Maurice, 13, 16, 70, 75

Fibber McGee and Molly (characters), 21, 48, 68, 72 First Nighter, 45–​46, 76 Old Lady Shakespeare, 76 Fontanne, Lynn, 17, 24 Grams, Jr., Martin, 68 Great Plays, 70 Greenhalgh, Susanne, x, 7, 8

Hamlet, 10, 13, 26 film: Barrymore (screen test), 50 Svengali (quotation), 26 radio: Baker’s Broadcast (reading), 77 BBC, 26 Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 34, 45, 46, 47–​48, 49, 55–​58 Columbia Workshop, 14, 43 Dodge Brothers Hour (reading), 19 Francis Craig’s Serenade (gag), 77 Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 John Barrymore and Shakespeare, 73–​74 Johnson’s Wax Program (gag), 72

KECA, 17 Radio Guild, 11 The Royal Gelatin Hour (reading), 16, 72 Streamlined Shakespeare, 27, 29, 35, 36–​37, 55, 56, 71, 81 WEVD, 16 WGR-​WKBW, 71 recording: Barrymore, 26 John Barrymore and Shakespeare, vols. 1 and 2, 74 stage: John Gielgud, 17, 49 Leslie Howard, 15, 17, 49, 51 Maurice Evans, 17 Hampden, Buford, 25, 53, 54 Hardwicke, Sir Cedric, 15, 43, 53, 54, 55, 65 Henry IV radio: Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 45, 52–​53, 63–​65, 66, 75 Henry IV, part one, 63–​65 radio: Radio Guild, 11 Henry IV, part two, 64 radio: Radio Guild, 11 Henry V, 64 radio: Anthology, (reading), 75 Radio Guild, 11 Scenes from Henry V, 8 Henry VI, part one radio: Radio Guild, 11 Henry VI, part two radio: Radio Guild, 11 Henry VI, part three film: Barrymore, 26 recording: Barrymore, 26 radio: Radio Guild, 11 Streamlined Shakespeare (exerpt), 31, 37 Henry VIII radio: Radio Guild, 11 Hollywood Hotel, 12, 13, 16, 76, 79 Hour of Charm, 69 Hour with Shakespeare, 11 Houseman, John, 15, 43, 54 Howard, Leslie, 15, 16, 17, 25, 43, 46, 49, 51, 53, 59, 66, 71 Huston, Walter, 12, 43, 52, 73 Inescourt, Frieda, 50, 51

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Jensen, Michael P., 8n4, 59n37, 75n36, 78n45, 81–​83 John Barrymore and Shakespeare, 73–​74, 75 Johnson’s Wax Program, 21, 48, 68, 69, 72 Julius Caesar radio: Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 34, 45, 46–​47, 49–​50, 59–​60, 65, 72, 75 KECA, 17 Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 Johnson’s Wax Program (gag), 72 Radio Guild, 11 Mercury Theater on the Air, 70 stage: Orson Welles, 17

Kardashian, Kim, 27, 28 King John radio: KECA, 17 Radio Guild, 11 King Lear radio: Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 43, 45, 50, 51, 61–​62, 66 Mercury Summer Theater, 70 Streamlined Shakespeare, 32, 38 Kliman, Bernice W., 14n31, 41–​42 KMED, 67, 75 Kraft Music Hall, 15

Lackmann, Ron, 5n19, 66 Landi, Elissa, 51, 52, 63 Lanier, Douglas, 17n40, 27n50, 42n85, 77n42 Lewis, William Bennett, 19, 23, 24, 43, 69–​70, 81 Lewisohn Stadium Concerts Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, 25 Lunt, Alfred, 17, 24 Lux Radio Theater, 6, 13n28, 19, 44, 69 MacDonald, J. Fred, 1, 3, 4n16, 5n17, 6n30, 8n5, 70n16, 72n24 MacLeish, Archibald, 43, 50n25, 51, 61–​62, 66 radio: Fall of the City, 43 stage: Panic, 43 Macbeth, 19n2, 42

Selected Index

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radio: Chase and Sanborn Hour (gag), 72 Columbia Workshop, 14–​15 NBC 1929, 7 NBC and RCA Victor, 75 NBC Red, 15 Radio Guild, 10, 35 Royal Gelatin Hour (reading), 16 Streamlined Shakespeare, 32–​33, 38–​39 WOR, 8 stage: Orson Welles, 14, 17, 54 Oxford Dramatic Society, 43 Magic Key of RCA, 5, 12, 13, 16, 52 Magnificent Montague, 74 Maltin, Leonard, 36n80, 77n43 Mantle, Burns, 19n2, 25, 31n68, 44 Marder, Louis, 35, 74 Massey, Raymond, 46, 49, 73 Measure for Measure, radio: The Royal Gelatin Hour (reading), 16 Menken, Helen, 53, 54, 55 Merchant of Venice, 33 radio: Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 Johnson’s Wax Program (gag), 72 KGO (reading), 9 Pasadena Community Broadcasters, 9 WGY Players, 8 WLS, 9 Mercury Theater, 13, 44 Meredith, Burgess, 22, 23, 24n38, 25, 43, 47, 48, 50, 57, 58, 66, 69, 81 Merry Wives of Windsor radio: KECA, 17 MGM, 12, 13, 17, 26, 49, 50, 51–​52, 79 Midsummer Night’s Dream, 43 film: Warner Bros., 11, 13, 17, 53 radio: CBC, 17n41 Johnson’s Wax Program (allusion), 48 Radio Guild, 15 Symphonic Drama, 16 stage: Hollywood Bowl, 28, 53 Mitchell, Thomas, 50, 51, 60, 62, 66 Morgan, Brewster, 13, 14, 19, 25, 42, 43, 44n7, 45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 56–​57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64–​65, 78–​79, 81 Morgan, Frank, 51–​52, 62–​63

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Selected Index

Morgan, Mona, radio: Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 Program of Shakespeare, 8 Morrison, Michael A., 28–​29 Much Ado About Nothing, 57, 58–​59 radio: Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 34, 45, 46–​47, 49, 58–​59, 75 Radio Guild, 11 WOR, 8 Music Box Theatre, 23, 46 Music From Shakespeare, 25 Mutual Broadcasting System, 5, 69, 72, 76

National Broadcasting Company (NBC), ix, 5, 6, 25, 31, 35, 45, 49, 50, 51, 57, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 81 radio: NBC Presents Eugene O’Neill, 21, 51, 52, 53, 68, 73 NBC University Theater, 75 NBC. See National Broadcasting Company News Through a Woman’s Eye, 25 Oliver, Edna May, 12, 78 Olivier, Sir Laurence, 70, 75 Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 67, 75, 81–​82 Othello radio: KECA, 17 The Magic Key (reading), 12, 52 NBC and RCA Victor unrealized broadcast, 75 The Royal Gelatin Hour (reading), 16 Suspense, 70 stage: Oxford Dramatic Society, 43 Broadway, 52 Paley Center for Media, x, 37, 46n13 Paley, William S., 5, 19, 21, 22 Perry, Margaret, 22, 47 Philip Morris Playhouse, 6 Prior, Will, 27, 30, 35

Radcliffe, Vernon, 10, 11 Radio conservative critique, 4 history, ix, 1–​6 liberal critique, 4

Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 5, 12, 13, 26 Radio Guild, 10–​11, 13, 14, 15, 54, 70, 72, 79 Shakespeareana, 15 Rains, Claude, 43, 46, 49–​50 RCA. See Radio Corporation of America Reinhardt, Max, 13n28, 17, 53 Reis, Irving, 13, 14–​15 Rice, Herbert Colin, 16, 71 Richard II, 64 radio: Anthology (reading), 75 KECA, 17 The Magic Key (reading), 13 Radio Guild, 11 The Royal Gelatin Hour (quotation), 16 Scenes from Richard II, 71 Richard III, 42 Anthology (reading), 75 Columbia Workshop, 70 John Barrymore and Shakespeare, 74 Radio Guild, 11 Streamlined Shakespeare, 21, 29, 31–​32, 35, 37–​38, 72 stage: John Barrymore, 26, 31, 50, 54 Robinson, Edward G., 2, 43, 50, 51, 61, 78, 81 Romeo and Juliet film: MGM, 12, 13, 17, 26, 44, 49 Playmates, 78 music: 36 radio: Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, (allusion), 16n38 Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 The Jell-​O Program (minstrel show), 12–​13 The Magic Key (reading), 12 NBC and RCA Victor, 75 Radio Guild, 10 The Royal Gelatin Hour (reading), 16 Rudy Vallee Sealtest Show (parody), 78 WGR & WKBW, 16 WINS (reading), 71 WLW (reading), 9 recording: Living Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, 35 stage: Katherine Cornell, 17, 54

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Eve la Gallienne, 47 television, 75n37 Royal, John F., 19–​20 Rudy Vallee Sealtest Show, 77–​78 Russell, Rosalind, 25, 43, 46, 49, 59

Sarnoff, David, 5, 12 Seldes, Gilbert, 43, 60, 61, 81 book: Seven Lively Arts, 43 stage: Swingin’ the Dream, 43 Shakespeare A La Carte, 71 Shakespeare Today and Yesterday, 25 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 73 Shakespere Recital, 9 Shaw, George Bernard, 54, 68 radio: Back to Methuselah, 21 Speeches from Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, 15 Streamlined Shakespeare, ix, 2, 17, 20–​21, 22, 26–​42, 45, 47, 50, 54, 55, 58, 62, 65, 66, 67, 70, 72, 73–​74, 76, 77, 81 supporting cast, 24, 29, 33, 40, 41 sustaining programs, 2–​3, 4, 6, 7, 19–​20, 22, 69, 70, 74n35, 75, 76 Swallow, John, 20–​21, 27, 30, 36

Taming of the Shrew radio: DJB & DJD, 16 Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 43, 45, 50–​51, 65, 69, 75 Johnson’s Wax Program (allusion), 48 Interpretations of Shakespeare, 8 NBC and RCA Victor unrealized broadcast, 75 Streamlined Shakespeare, 22, 34, 36, 41, 50 WINS (reading), 71 stage: Alfred Lunt/​Lynn Fontanne, 17 Tearle, Conway, 17, 24, 43–​44, 46, 49, 54, 56, 58, 60, 65, 78

Selected Index

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Tempest, 21, 42 radio: KECA, 17 NBC, 7 Streamlined Shakespeare, 24, 33, 39–​40, 42, 48 WLIT, 9 Twelfth Night, 13n28 Columbia Shakespeare Cycle, 19, 44, 45, 53–​55, 65, 66, 71, 75 KECA, 17 John Barrymore and Shakespeare, 74 Streamlined Shakespeare, 34, 40–​41, 49 WINS (reading), 71 stage: Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 54 Orson Welles, 53–​54

University of the Air, 20

Vallee, Rudy, 2, 16, 68, 77–​78

Warburton, Charles, 11, 72 Warner Bros., xi, 10, 17, 26, 28, 52, 74 Webster, Ben, 49, 53 Welles, Orson, 13, 43, 44, 53–​54, 55, 65, 70, 76 book: Everybody’s Shakespeare, 14, 54 radio: Campbell Playhouse, 2 Les Misérables, 72 Mercury Theatre on the Air, 2 The Shadow, 54 stage: Five Kings (Part One), 17 WEAF, 5n23, 8 Whitman, Gayne, 30, 31, 33, 35–​36 WHN, 9, 71 Will of Stratford, 15, 54 WINS, 15n36, 71 With Shakespeare in France and Italy, 9 WJZ, 8, 16 WQXR, 16, 71

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