The To the President Radio Program

Background

While clearly at home with the hundreds of horror, mystery and comedic plays he penned over the years, Arch Oboler had an equal--if not greater--passion for inspiring, thought-provoking, patriotic prose; and he was a both eloquent and persuasive anti-war proponent throughout his life. His Everyman's Theater, Plays for Americans, and Free World Theatre series were riveting fare in both the run-up to, and America's involvement in, World War II. His To the President over The Blue Network was equally compelling, crafted as it was as letters to The President on the status of the Homefront during the first years of War.

From the November 3rd 1943 edition of the New York PM Daily:

     Arch Oboler introduced a new, grisly "parlor game" Sunday on the third of his To the President broadcasts (WJZ).  He called it, "They're here--for me."
     Oboler's protagonist was a man named Fred, who, back home after several years on the front, found that his family considered the war little more than an impersonal and remote unreality, "to be talked about intellectually or to be considsered from the growing chain of petty annoyances of rationing and other Governmental interferences in one's private comforts."
     Fred's relatives included sister Ellen, to whom the war was a matter of uniforms, "part of her social life, substituting for bridge and club work . . ."
     There was Fred's mother, to whom the war meant laying in a cellarful of canned goods; grandmother, who thought the Nazis could be beaten by right thinking; his brother, a college professor, who regarded the war, abstractly, as a page in a textbook of the future.  All of them held it as a conversation piece; not a battle against Fascism.
     So, to them, Fred introduced "They're here--for me."  "You simply say it to yourself," he explained, "and one of those headlines you've been reading about comes to life."
     The college professor was first.  He repeated the phrase and, as he did, listeners heard the voice of Joseph Goebbels rant, "Intellectual activity is a danger to the Greater Reich."  Then came the march of soldiers' feet, barked commands in German.  The professor was executed.
     Ellen's headline was "Germans Ship Women in Occupied Countries to Soldier Camps;" mother went into forced labor in a German war plant; grandmother, too old to work, was beheaded.
     Oboler's play was grimly effective.  If it was custom-built, and its bare bones exposed by reducing the plot to outlines, it still doesn't alter the fact that the Lights Out man is one of the few in radio who is bringing the war home to radio listeners, something spot announcements can never do.  Radio needs more of the same.

An Embarassment of Propaganda Riches

A review of a typical evening's Radio fare during this period would show any of the following sample of similarly themed programming throughout the week:

• The Army Hour
• Letters from England
• An American In England
• We Believe
• Tillie The Toiler
• Reviewing Stand
• Dear Adolf
• We, The People
• War In The Air
• Star Spangled Theatre
• Stars and Stripes in Britain
• Halls of Montezuma
• This Is Our Enemy
• To The President
• This, Our America
• This Is War
• London's Answering You
• Yanks In Australia
• Victory Volunteers
• Victory Front
• Victory Theatre
• Victory Parade
• Wings To Victory
• Wings Over America
• Soldiers with Wings
• Commandos
• Spirit of '42

The Office of War Information (OWI) was itself becoming entangled in a deepening snake pit of problems with both the Networks and their commercial sponsors of the era. The understandable demands for more and more of these patriotic propaganda programs, while clearly raising public interest in the War effort, its progress, and the extraordinary demands it was making on the American economy, were placing commercial Radio programming at a distinct disadvantage.

Commercial Radio had been a seemingly limitless cash cow for sponsors and the networks alike--prior to America's official entry in The War. While America's performers were unstinting in their willingness to volunteer for all manner of patriotic anthologies of one sort or another, America's commercial sponsors weren't quite as philanthropic or altruistic as a group--to put it mildly.

While it was certainly true that for some industries, the War was clearly a boon, many other industries were suddenly experiencing shortages of what had once been a free-flowing logistics and raw materials supply. The dramatic rationing that was at first suggested for these industries, then imposed upon them--since very few of them actually complied with suggested guidelines--caused as many industries to founder as to thrive.

Those industries that were foundering began demanding all manner of price supports, tax incentives and offsets, union-organizing sanctions, and government subsidies. Kinda rings a familiar bell, doesn't it? Network Radio, as an industry, was no exception. In the final analysis, despite the endless stream of patriotic anecdotes regarding Network Radio's contributions to The War Effort, the ugly reality was quite a different story. The pressures being exerted on the networks from government agencies such as the Office of War Information's Radio Bureau, the Office of Price Administration and the War Department were playing the devil with both their commercial sponsors and the 'business' of Network Radio. These were undercurrents that Network Radio--and Television--wouldn't soon forget.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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