Monday, May 3, 2010

The Big Broadcast celebrates a century of Norman Corwin

WAMU's Sunday night umbrella of vintage radio, The Big Broadcast, has devoted a couple of hours plus to Norman Corwin's impressionisitc documentaries, for those who'd like to sample them or recall them. (After 90 minutes of (usually good) Big Broadcast staples: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Dragnet, and Gunsmoke. Dragnet's hostility toward the general public can be a bit trying (nearly every witness tries to make her- or himself the star of their account or otherwise is a pain in the ass).

I must admit I often have found Corwin florid over the years, and Orson Welles's narration does nothing to overcome the wartime Chauvinism against the Japanese in the first offer...wartime, yes...atrocities, yes...still hard to take the demonisation of the entire people.

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