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Author: John Dunning
Quotes of Author: John Dunning

John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
There was an uneasiness in doing the Blitzstein play, which had deep anti-capitalist themes. It gave a vivid picture of an industrial tyrant, boss of the fictional "Steeltown," and the fight of Labor against his tyranny. The WPA was already under fire for staging what some people thought were too many labor plays, and there were rumblings in Washington that its funds might be cut. The shoe fell less than three weeks before the June 16, 1937, preview-a sweeping WPA funds cut, followed by a directive prohibiting new openings until the "reorganization" caused by the cuts was implemented. Welles flew to Washington to argue his case. Failing in that, he threatened to open the play himself. The government's response was severe: as Houseman would recall it in his memoir, on June 15 "a dozen uniformed guards took over the building in force. Project members arriving to sign in found their theater sealed and dark. The Cossacks, as they came to be known, guarded the front of the house and the box office; they hovered in the alley outside the dressing rooms with orders to see that no government property was used or removed.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
The original Martha Deane idea was soon changed: one day early in the series, McBride simply admitted that she was no grandmother, predicted that she'd be fired for saying it, and told her listeners that if she wasn't back the next day, they'd know the reason why. This began her open chatter. From then on she just talked about anything that came into her mind. "It was about the oddest kind of chatter heard on the air,
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
Men Against Death followed the one-man campaign of writer Paul De Kruif against disease, hunger, and poverty. De Kruif burst on the scene with Microbe Hunters, which became a worldwide bestseller upon its publication in 1926. Other titles were Hunger Fighters, Why Keep Them Alive?, The Fight for Life, and Men Against Death. Though the latter book gave the series its name, the WPA writers selected liberally from all of De Kruif's books, which the author donated without royalty to the cause. The lives of scientific trailblazers {Lister, Pasteur, etc.} were dramatized; an introductory broadcast June 30, 1938, was followed by the first drama on July
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
For the record, Welles was contrite. Forty years later-removed from the threat of mob assault-he confessed only to amusement, and amazement that people could be so gullible. For three full days the fate of The Mercury Theater on the Air hung in the balance. No one at CBS could decide, as Houseman told it, whether they were heroes or scoundrels. Dorothy Thompson seemed to speak for the majority: after pronouncing the broadcast unbelievable from start to finish, she lauded Welles for demonstrating how vulnerable the country was in such a panic. As for Welles, he was an overnight star on the world stage. Campbell Soups stepped up with an offer to sponsor, and in December the show moved up to first-class status.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
The most frightening part of the evening, for Houseman and Welles, was just beginning. Even as the closing Tchaikovsky theme flooded the studio, police swarmed in, confiscating scripts and segregating the players. They were kept for a time in a back office, then were thrown to the press. The questions were hard and terrifying. How many deaths had they heard of? … implying, as Houseman later told it, "that they knew of thousands." Had they heard of the fatal stampede in the Jersey hall? Were they aware of the traffic deaths and suicides? The ditches must be choked with corpses, Houseman thought. Then they were released, taken out a back exit. Houseman found it "surprising to see life going on as usual in the midnight streets." In fact, there were no deaths. There were some bumps and scrapes, a broken
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
Inside Studio One at CBS, the drama rolled to its conclusion. Taylor had heard frightening reports of affiliate reactions to the show. Casualties were mounting across the nation, he had been told: there were deaths by suicide and mob tramplings, with more coming in every minute. He returned to the booth with orders to interrupt immediately and announce that the play was fiction. But Welles had reached the 40–minute break; Dan Seymour stepped to the microphone and said, "You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and The Mercury Theater on the Air in an original dramatization of The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
The last pathetic voice was that of a shortwave operator, breaking through from some outpost. 2X2L calling CQ, New York … isn't there anyone on the air? … isn't there anyone on the air?… isn't there anyone …? At about this time, Davidson Taylor was called away from the studio. The telephone began ringing. When Taylor returned, Houseman recalled, his face was ashen. The panic had begun in New Jersey and spread north and west. Men staggered into bars babbling about the end of the world. Bartenders tuned in just in time to hear Kenny Delmar-playing the "Secretary of the Interior" but sounding enough like Roosevelt to chill their marrow-putting faith in God and the armed forces in this national catastrophe. In Newark, traffic ran wild through the streets. People wrapped their faces in wet towels and roared past puzzled traffic cops in their haste to get out of town. One Newark hospital treated 20 people for shock.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
The show was not generous with acting credits: the unmistakable voice of Frank Lovejoy can sometimes be heard among the East Coast actors who worked the series
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
McGARRY AND HIS MOUSE, comedy detective drama. BROADCAST HISTORY: June 26–Sept. 25, 1946, NBC. 30m, Wednesdays at 9. Summer substitute for Eddie Cantor. Jan. 6–March 31, 1947, Mutual. 30m, Mondays at 8. General Foods. CAST: Wendell Corey {1946} as Detective Dan McGarry, a stumblebum hero, whose friend and companion, Kitty Archer, was known as "the Mouse." Roger Pryor and Ted de Corsia also as McGarry. Peggy Conklin as Kitty Archer. Shirley Mitchell and Patsy Campbell also as Kitty. Betty Garde as Kitty's mother. ANNOUNCER: Bert Parks. MUSIC: Peter Van Steeden {NBC}.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
They were sometimes closer to truth than the government wanted radio to be. Anticipating an invasion of Sicily, Robson sent writer Allan Sloane to Massachusetts, where engineers were being trained in the art of beachhead landings. "I knew they were gonna go in someplace," he said, "and there had to be beachfront landings. So we knew ahead of time all the techniques that were being taught, and we just dramatized a textbook landing." The news bulletins came on a Friday evening, Robson remembered. "I called Allan and asked how the script was going. He said he was nearly finished. I said, 'You'd better be finished, because we're goin' with it on Sunday.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
The Man Behind the Gun was a major series, highly respected within the industry and by the modest but enthusiastic audience that heard it. It was a three-time winner of Billboard's "top documentary program" citation and in 1943 won a Peabody Award as radio's outstanding dramatic program. It was "dedicated to the fighting men of the United States and the United Nations," presented "for the purpose of telling you how your boys and their comrades-in-arms are waging our war against Axis aggression." The stories were "based on fact," but the names and characterizations were "wholly fictitious," giving the writers and director maximum freedom to develop composite representations of fighting-man types.
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John Dunning _ On the Air: The Encyclopedia
Welles wanted a spook show, deciding against better judgments to dust off the 40-year-old H. G. Wells fantasy The War of the Worlds and air it Oct. 30. The dissenting voices were afraid that the story would be hopelessly dated, and dull on the air. But Koch had his assignment, and the date was six days away. Welles laid out some general guidelines: he wanted the story told in a series of news bulletins, with cutaways to first-person narrative. As Koch read the original work, a sense of despair set in. H. G. Wells had set his tale in England, and his writing style was long past its prime. This was no simple cutting job: as Koch would recall in his memoir, "I realized I could use very little but the author's idea of a Martian invasion and his descriptions of their appearance and machines. In short, I was being asked to write an almost entirely original play in six days.
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