Tag: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

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"We will interrupt all programs": Radio Drops a Bombshell

It certainly threw a wrench into the well-oiled works of radio as a commercial enterprise. The attack on Pearl Harbor, that is. On this day, December 7, in 1941, American broadcasters had to find ways of accommodating the “word from our sponsor” to the considerably more “important message” that would alter—or end—the lives of people the world over. Comedians Edgar Bergen and Jack Benny were both on the air as scheduled that Sunday, entertaining the multitude with their commercially sponsored programs.

Both broadcasts were prefaced by the following announcements: “Ladies and gentlemen. We will interrupt all programs to give you latest news bulletins. Stay tuned to this station.”

The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war on Japan and its allies marked an uneasy transition of American radio as a source of advertising to one of propaganda, of information and indoctrination. As US President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his public radio address on 9 December 1941, “free and rapid communication” needed to be restricted in wartime.

It was “not possible to receive full and speedy and accurate reports” from all theaters of war, since even in those “days of the marvels of the radio” it was “often impossible for the Commanders of various units to report their activities by radio at all, for the very simple reason that this information would become available to the enemy and would disclose their position and their plan of defense or attack.”

Still, the medium that had long fallen into the hands of corporations, had an obligation toward the American public it ostensibly served, a duty to operate in the “public interest” that it might have neglected over the years, notwithstanding the President’s occasional and popular Fireside Chats.

Necessary delays in reporting aside, Roosevelt vowed “not hide facts from the country” if such were known and the enemy would “not be aided by their disclosure.” He reminded “all newspapers and radio stations, “all those who reach the eyes and ears of the American people,” that they had a “most grave responsibility to the nation now and for the duration of this war.”

While “sudden” the “criminal attacks” were but the “climax of a decade of international immorality,” Roosevelt argued. From Japan’s invasion of Manchukuo, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, Hitler’s occupation of Austria and his invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Russia; Italy’s attack on France and Greece, the Axis domination of the Balkans, and the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Thailand, to the bombing of Pearl Harbor—each occurring “without warning”—the events were “all of one pattern.”

America had “used” their awareness of that pattern “to great advantage. Knowing that the attack might reach us in all too short a time,” the US “immediately began greatly to increase” its “capacity to meet the demands of modern warfare.” The war, Roosevelt cautioned, would not only be “long” but “hard,” warning of shortages and a general cutting down on consumerism. He expressed himself confident that businesses and individuals alike would “cheerfully give up those material things that they are asked to give up,” and that they would “retain all those great spiritual things without which we cannot win through.”

Those who recall the attack on and fall of the World Trade Center towers might recall the sudden change in significance of a medium that could be relied upon for its mindless and commercials-riddled entertainment one day and then, suspending all advertising and most regular programs, engaged in an image blitz on a stunned audience that, having had so little introduction to the events leading up to them, regarded them as unprovoked, inexplicable, and without any historical connection to the dramatically altered present.

The image bombardment and the relative blackout of comprehensive world news by a largely irresponsible commercial medium did much to get Americans in the mood for the war that is still being waged and lost to this day. By comparison, the broadcasting day following the attack on Pearl Harbor proceeded pretty much according to schedule; it was only gradually that commercials made way for—or merged with—public announcements, that comedians told topical jokes and soap operas dealt with the realities of war. Before one can fully understand what it means never to forget, one has a lot of catching up to do with the world.

Having spread this “important message” about the imperative of keeping up with and following up on the allegedly out-of-date and the seemingly unrelated or tiresomely repetitive news of the world, the broadcastellan journal will go on a brief hiatus and won’t resume regular day-to-day postings until the beginning of 2007, aside from a few scattered reports of cultural events and reviews of seasonal radio and television offerings. If you have glanced at, read, perhaps even enjoyed, a few of the roughly two hundred essays shared here throughout the year, I encourage you to drop me a line.

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Election Day Special: Could This Hollywood Heavy Push You to the Polls?

Well, I don’t know how many voters turned out to re-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt on this day, 7 November, in 1944 because they had been listening to the radio the night before. Those tuning in to affiliate stations of the four major networks were informed that regular programming was being suspended for a “special political broadcast.” Stepping up to the microphone were Hollywood leading ladies Claudette Colbert, Joan Bennett, Virginia Bruce, Linda Darnell, and Lana Turner, composer Irving Berlin, radio personalities Milton Berle and “Molly Goldberg,” as well as the gangster elite of Tinseltown—Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and James Cagney (pictured). Along with fellow Americans “from a great many walks of life,” Humphrey Bogart explained, they all had a “deep and common interest” in the outcome of the election.

Heading the parade of A-listers was Judy Garland, who burst into song with this “suggestion for tomorrow:”

Here’s the way to win the war, win the war, win the war
Here’s the way to win the war, you gotta get out and vote.
To get the things we’re fighting for, fighting for, fighting for,
To get the things we’re fighting for, you gotta get out and vote.
To clinch that happy ending,
On the Tokyo, the Berlin, and the Rome front,
The fellow with the bullet is depending
On the fella with the ballot on the home front.
Oh, we wanna have a better world, better world, better world,
Wanna have a better world? You gotta get out and vote.

There was no doubt just what kind of “suggestion” Garland and company had in mind. What radio listeners were treated to was an hour-long campaign ad for the Democratic party. Sing it, Judy:

Now we’re on the right track, right track, right track,
Now we’re on the right track, we’re gonna win the war.
Right behind the President, President, President,
Right behind the President for 1944.
The track ahead is clear now,
Let’s keep the engines humming.
Don’t change the engineer now,
‘Cause the ‘New World Special’ is a-coming.

Throughout the program, those fighting overseas or laboring at home for victory voiced their fears of a “Third World War,” presumably less likely under the current administration, expressed themselves grateful for Democrat bureaucracy (which, they held, kept the groceries affordable to everyone), or openly attacked a dangerous “amateur” of a Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, by whom they claimed to have been “torpedoed.” Dewey was argued to have rigged the voting laws of New York State, making it “impossible” for “thousands” to go to the polls and cast their ballots for FDR. Even registered Republicans came out in support of the President, expressing themselves dismayed at or ashamed of the candidate representing their party.

It’s a rousing hour of radio electioneering, concluding with an address by the President—and his prayer. With all the microphones on the Democrats that night, the opposition (even if aided by Dewey’s decimating system) simply had none.

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Wireless Women, Clueless Men: Gracie Allen, Presidential Candidate

Well, are you ready to tap your toes to the “The Cabinet Shuffle,” sing “The Tory Blues” or stand up for the “Thatcher Anthem”? That’s right, the Iron Lady is back in business. Show business, that is. Thatcher: The Musical is going on tour. Now, as someone who enjoys representing the past (albeit a past I have never experienced as present until its “now” turned to “then”), I don’t seem to be in a position to throw mossy stones. No, I’m not going to argue, as you well might, that the producers of this show are about two decades too late.

Dwelling in the half-forgotten and digging up the misremembered, I am not among those who opine that there is nothing older than yesterday’s news. A musical review of such faded headlines strikes me as being decidedly more quaint and questionable. The only contemporary touch appears to be the politically correct or overly cautious disclaimer attached to the announcement: the show’s producers aim at being “entertaining and provocative,” yet insist that the “politician’s lasting legacy” is being neither “glorified nor denigrated.” Too recent for revisionism, too tired for satire?

I’d much rather join a chorus of “Vote for Gracie.” Now there was a woman ahead of her time—and her man. As early as 1940, Gracie Allen decided to stop knitting sweaters and run for President instead. To the comic relief of millions of New Deal weary Americans, she ran so fast and so wild that her husband and comedy partner, straight man George Burns, could not possibly keep up with her, let alone keep her down.

“I admit that the election of the first woman would let the country in for a flood of corny jokes,” Gracie remarked (in a slim volume you may read online in its entirety). That does not have to be a deterrent, to be sure. Besides, many of those very jokes were told on the Burns and Allen Program, on which Gracie’s campaign started in February 1940.

The vaudeville routine of Burns and Allen was beginning to sound rather creaky; ratings were crumbling, sponsors grumbled. Soon the husband and wife banter would make way for a novel concept in radio comedy—the sitcom. Before their program was thus reinvented in 1942, Burns and Allen were trying to reinvigorate the old formula by heightening Gracie’s nuttiness, by adding currency and topicality to their gags, and by developing a running joke that would encourage repeat listening. The “Vote for Gracie” campaign was such an attempt to salvage their act.

“You’re, you’re running for President?” an incredulous George Burns burst out when he first learned about his wife’s political ambitions on the 28 February 1940 broadcast. “Gracie, how long has this been going on?” “For a hundred and fifty years,” Gracie retorted, “George Washington started it.” To George the whole idea was “preposterous.” “Not only that,” Gracie added, “it pays good money.”

A clever idea it turned out to be—or a quick fix for the ailing show, at any rate. Soon, Gracie was where she’d always been: all over the place. Spreading her outlandish ideas about democracy, the ditzy candidate got to promote the Burns and Allen act on a number of other high-rated radio programs, including those hosted or headlined by fellow vaudevillians Edgar Bergen, Rudy Vallee, and Jack Benny.

At least Roosevelt’s opponents, candidates like Republican Thomas F. Dewey and Democrat John Nance Garner had “political affiliations,” George cautioned. “Well,” replied Gracie undeterred, “maybe that’s because they weren’t vaccinated.” “Have you got a Republican or Democratic machine in back of you?” George cautioned. “No,” Gracie replied nonchalantly, “that’s a bustle.”

Today’s critics, listeners like Leah Lowe, label Gracie’s antics “transgressive,” which is the academy’s validation of playfulness (and of our engagement with it). “One of the greatest problems today is about the people who would rather be right than be President,” Gracie explained in her startling and disarmingly frank simplicity (as it expresses itself in the aforementioned book outlining her campaign). “I have a solution for that. You can be Left and President: that way you can eat your cake and halve it too. Or you can stay in the middle of the road and get run over.”

“Mr. Roosevelt has been President for eight years,” Gracie went on reasoning in her signature non sequitur and pun-driven unreasonableness,

I’m sure he wouldn’t mind getting up and giving his seat to a lady. That old saying about not changing horses in the middle of the stream is ridiculous, when you remember that people have been changing babies in the middle of the afternoon for years and everybody takes it for granted.

Being oracular, the oratrix declared that

women are getting very tired of running a poor second to the Forgotten Man, and with all the practice we’ve had around the house the time is ripe for a woman to sweep the country. I’ll make a prediction with my eyes open: that a woman can and will be elected if she is qualified and gets enough votes.

It sure worked for a lot of clueless men, even those who, unlike Gracie, didn’t have a “Surprise Party Platform” to stand on.

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Anodyne Thrills, Abject Thraldom: Broadcasting “fear itself”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt insisted in his 1933 inaugural speech. These days, as bombs are going off again in London (and, for that matter, in many other places east and west) and as people are being victimized both by terrorism and the measures taken to control it, this famous aphorism seems particularly poignant. What is to be feared, certainly, is the abject thraldom of fear, the suspicion it breeds, and the potential it has to quell the spirit of humanity, to diminish our ability to act within reason and with understanding. As is the case with all epigrams, however, FDR’s becomes shorter on wisdom the longer it is pondered.

What might this be, “fear itself”? Is fear not always a reaction, whether reasonable or not? As a response to stimuli or surroundings, it is neither to be feared in “itself” nor as part of our being. The avoidance of conditions potentially harmful to us is an instinct it would hardly behoove us to conquer in our efforts to become more civilized, less primal. I lived in New York City when the World Trade Center towers crumbled in a cloud of asbestos-filled dust. What impressed me most during the immediate aftermath was that those living in fear and trembling were reminded of their mortality, encouraged to examine their everyday lives in order to find ways of making themselves useful to others. Even heroes were publicly shedding tears.

While often admired, warriors who prefer fight over flight are often less civilized than the worriers who respond to threats by trying to avoid them or void them with circumspection. In any case, fear is hardly the “only thing” to be dreaded, no matter how dire the situation. Recklessness and heedless indifference of dangerous consequences beget more horrors than caution, awe, or diffidence. What is to be feared most, perhaps, is fearmongering—the deliberate provocation of fear, the manufacturing of fear for profit or political gain. The media are open, the masses vulnerable to such designs. Yet when the fears are real and not sensed keenly enough, imagined terror may assist in making true horrors apparent.

The 7 December 1941 broadcast of Inner Sanctum Mysteries‘s “Island of Death” suggests just slow the radio industry was to react to the terror that had finally hit home. The show, however inappropriate, had to go on, for the sake of the sponsors. The titular island is not, of course, Hawaii; but it is doubtful that either this “strange and terrible tale” of black magic or the sponsor’s product, “Carter’s Little Liver Pills” (the “best friend to your sunny disposition”) could do much to get people’s minds off the topic of the day or alleviate the anxieties the news—or lack thereof—must have produced.

The government could not afford radio drama to remain escapist. Within a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, fear became a weapon aimed at mobilizing the homefront. In Arch Oboler’s “Chicago, Germany,” for instance, listeners were confronted with the dystopia of an America annexed and governed by the Nazis. With nightmarish fantasies like these, the Treasury hoped to raise millions for defense.

It is too simplistic to argue that audiences then were more gullible or less sophisticated than today’s consumers of popular culture. Certainly, the 1940s, when millions of civilians perished or faced irreparable losses as the result of global warfare, were not “innocent” times, as those pining for nostalgia might opine. They were times of uncertainty like any “now” any time, times of suffering, hardship, and frustration—times during which those tired of threats or numbed by pain needed to be reminded that a present free from fear might bring about a future without freedom, that to stop fearing might well mean to stop living.

The weekly blood-and-thunder anthologies were deemed particularly suitable to the awakening of real terror through imaginary thrills. Underlying the tension of such melodramas, wrapped up neatly within less than 30 minutes, were the anxieties of war, which were often driven home with a final curtain call appeal. Even shortly before the end of the war in Europe, when those listening to the tales of The Mysterious Traveler were invited to rejoice as ”Death Comes for Adolf Hitler” (24 March 1945), a mere month prematurely, they were cautioned that the dangers of Nazism were still very much alive. So, rather than being purely escapist, the terror of the airwaves provided anodyne thrills to impede abject thraldom.

Today, the uses of fear are well understood by the terrorists, that new breed of indiscriminals holding the world hostage; but the weapon that once was the thriller is too rarely being honed to prepare us for them.