1941–1945 · CBS and combined networks
The poet the networks handed a microphone
Corwin is the answer to the question of whether radio ever produced literature. CBS gave him an unheard-of freedom — write what you like, weekly, with an orchestra — and he used it to write verse for a mass audience that had no idea it was listening to verse. We Hold These Truths went out eight days after Pearl Harbor on every network at once. On a Note of Triumph, broadcast the afternoon Germany surrendered, asks who exactly won and what they are owed, and it is still the least sentimental thing anyone said out loud that day.
3 broadcasts · 2 seasons held · CBS, New York
1 January
1941
CBS and combined networks
28 min
A boy searches the afterlife for his dog. One of the twenty-six programmes Corwin wrote, produced and directed at the rate of one a week for the Columbia Workshop.
15 December
1941
CBS and combined networks
1h 0m
Commissioned for the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Bill of Rights and broadcast eight days after Pearl Harbor, simultaneously on all four American networks — the largest audience a radio play has ever had.
8 May
1945
CBS and combined networks
58 min
Corwin's V-E Day programme, written and broadcast the day Germany surrendered and heard by an estimated sixty million Americans. CBS.