The Request Performance Radio Program Log

Alan Ladd, Dale Evans, Abbott and Costello

AFRS 'Request Performance' Program Log

The Request Performance Radio Program Biographies

• Acting as one of the Sponsors of an Artists Front to Win the War meeting he helped organize at Carnegie Hall in 1942.
• A December 1946 speech he gave on the encroachments being made against free speech.
• Being a signator to a 1948 full page 'We Are for Wallace' ad in the New York Times.
• A masthead listing him as an Associate for the Hollywood Quarterly, a scholarly journal of Film, Radio and Television history.

That's apparently all the extreme Right Wing needed during those shameful post-War years to destroy any great professional's career--through whispers and innuendo. Robson had been one of CBS's premiere Radio and Television talents, but their withering support of Robson, fueled by the spurious comments in Red Channels eventually pressured CBS into discharging Robson. The long-festering Right Wing backlash from F.D.R.'s famous Four Freedoms Speech had traversed full-circle. And so it evolved that anyone speaking out for the protection of those very freedoms was targeted for ostracization.

But despite the attempts to destroy his reputation, Robson's career in Radio and Television and in service to his country still stand as one of the finest records of acheivement of the Golden Age of Radio. Indeed, it was Edward R. Murrow himself, under the administration of John F. Kennedy that gained an appointment for Robson as a Director for The Voice of America. His security clearance for that highly sensitive position was expedited without a hitch.

William Robson had every expectation of having a storied career. He showed early promise at Yale, began his writing career with Paramount Pictures, then in 1936, entered Radio while still in his twenties. He was a staff writer and director for CBS for almost 20 years. So instrumental was his role in early CBS Radio dramas that his name was rountinely attached to the promotional efforts for the programs he wrote, directed or produced for CBS--and rightly so. By the mid-1940s Robson had already received two prestigious George Foster Peabody awards for CBS--for 1943's Man Behind the Gun and the documentary, Open Letter on Race Hatred.

Robson's Philosophy degree served him well throughout his career, and its influence on his Radio and Television productions is readily apparent throughout his body of work. Always sensitive to the eternal conflicts between morality and amorality, many of Robson's pet projects strove to shine a light onto the murkier aspects of American society. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons that the first half of his career attracted the prurient interests of the extreme Right Wing during the infamous HUAC era.

And indeed, despite all extreme Conservative attempts to squelch his 'voice' in the Media, he could not be restrained for long. Robson may well have argued himself, that the second half of his career was even more productive and influential on the World Stage than his years in American Radio and Television.

William N. Robson capped an outstanding career in Communications with a highly influential position producing Pro-Democracy documentaries as Chief Documentary Writer, Producer and Director for the Voice of America. Indeed, he won four more Peabody Awards for his work at The Voice of America. How fittingly ironic.

And though his work with The Voice of America may well have eclipsed his work during The Golden Age of Radio, his personal influence in shaping and giving a conscience to those Golden Years stands head and shoulders above his peers.

William Robson died of Alzheimer's disease at his home in Alexandria, Va in April of 1995, survived by his wife, Shirley, and three sons, Christopher, Anthony and Michael.

Leith Stevens was already a musical child prodigy at the age of 5. By the age of 14 he was making his performing debut. At the age of 16, he was Madame Schumann-Heink's accompanist and mentor to her own students. At the age of 21, the Columbia Broadcasting System wisely scooped him up as a network vocal arranger and within three more years he was a CBS composer/conductor for many of the network's top recurring programs.

From the Star-News - July 24, 1970, Pasadena, California:

Fatally Stricken
When Told Wife
Killed in Crash

HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Leith Stevens, director of television music at Paramount Studios, was called to an extension telephone to take an emergency long distance call.

The party on the other end advised him his wife, Elizabeth, 40, had been killed when her car plunged over a 150-foot cliff in the Santa Rosa Mountains near Palm Springs.

Stevens, 60, nominated three times for Oscars for songs or movie scores took the telephone call about his wife on a Hollywood studio phone, put down the receiver, walked across the room and slumped in death Thursday, witnesses said.

Stevens was a composer and a conductor during his long career. He was nominated for an Academy Award three times. He was founder and first president of the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America in 1954.

Stevens' wife was driving with her three pet dogs when she was killed. The accident occurred on California 74, the co-called "Palms to Pines Highway," near where Jimmy Durante simulated an accident in the movie "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The dogs escaped with minor injuries when the vehicle rolled over and landed upside down.

Oscar nominations were accorded Stevens' movie scores for The Five Pennies and A New Kind of Love. His melody Julie was given an Oscar nomination as Best Song.

What is the function of a director of television music at a studio producing many hours of video entertainment every week for the consumption of millions of viewers?

Does he select the composer? How closely does he supervise the work during writing? How much of his personal touch is reflected in the finished piece? Leith Stevens, the bearded Director of Television Music at Paramount Studios, is eminently qualified to answer these questions regarding the writing of music lor television.

A child prodigy, Stevens took his first piano lesson from his father when he was five years old. He made his piano debut at 14, and when he was 18 he was a coach for the students of the legendary Madame Schumann-Heink. He subsequently went on tour with the contralto as her accompanist.

He was 21 when he joined CBS as a vocal arranger and three years later he was made a composer and conductor for many of the network's top radio shows. In 1941 he began composing for motion pictures--he had been nominated three times for an Academy Award--and when television came along he entered that field.

Stevens said that assigning a composer is like casting an actor for a part. "A composer is chosen whose particular talents fit certain dramatic problems." he explained. "This is usually done in conjunction with the series producer, who has specific ideas about what he wants the music to accomplish. My chore is to guide the composer right and see that he follows through."

"Bruce Geller has strong instincts in this area and almost without exception selects the composer for his productions of Mission: Impossible and Mannix." Bruce chose Lalo Schifrin, a comparative newcomer to the business, to write the theme for Mission four years ago. "Schifrin's ability to provide the right music in the right context is why Bruce also had him write the music for Mannix."

Stevens points out how it is possible to angle music several different ways, giving mysteries as an example. "A producer may wish to highlight the romance in a whodunit and play down the mystery." And then he may wish to go the other way. "I usually check the score while it is in progress and supervise the recording.", Stevens said. "But I try to keep my personal touch out of the work. I don't want our composers sounding like Leith Stevens. A composer's stock in trade is his own personal sound which gives a distinctive quality to his music and I wouldn't want to take that away from him."

Summing up his role as music director, Stevens said: "My function is not to have musicians do something I want them to do but to make sure that what the composer does is in his own style and that the result is right for the show."