The Victory Front Radio Program

Background

Throughout American history, and in all fairness throughout the histories of most modern nations, when faced with political, economical, or State crises there emerge patriots and scoundrels. It's an immutable fact of world history in general. History can, of course be revised. Indeed, revisionist history has become something of a cottage industry among huge corporate interests, religious interests and political interests of the Post-World War II years. And it's only become even more elaborate and outlandish during each subsequent decade.

With America's entry into World War II, hoarders, war profiteers, and black marketers soon became a regrettable, yet prevalent fact of Life throughout America. Some of it was right out in the open. Most of it transpired via backroom deals, neighborhood-level black markets, and good ole American free-enterprise capitalism. The common aim of all these unpatriotic practices was, throughout time immemorial, to benefit the few at the expense of the many--yet another time honored American tradition finding fashion again in the 21st Century.

The rightness or wrongness of these practices has always been hotly debated--and continues to be so to this day. Thankfully, for the vast majority of Americans, the concept of free-enterprise has always been understood to have an underlying--and absolutely essential--moral component. On the opposing side, natural human greed has always been the bane of any society and only becomes even more pronounced in times of distress. America during the post-Depression era still had a strong moral component. Even more importantly, Radio, the most important communication medium yet to emerge, was still controlled by literally thousands of family owned, 'mom and pop' Radio stations across the nation.

Those thousands of independent 'voices' were still virtually impossible to squelch. Thus revisionists, profiteers, fact-spinners, and truth-benders might well succeed in a few small geographic pockets across the America, but the overwhelming number of Radio stations across the country simply told--and disseminated--the truth as they were told it, by whichever news bureaus to which they subscribed. Those stations affiliated with the three major networks and the seven to eleven other smaller networks of the era were naturally obliged to air their respective networks' points of view--or find another network with which to associate themselves. The other thousands of as yet unaffiliated stations and groups of stations were free to adopt their own standards, viewpoints and practices within their respective communities or broadcast range.

When it became obvious to the Government that hoarding, gouging, profiteering and black-marketeering were significantly affecting the War effort, it fell upon the Office of War Information's Office of Fact and Figures to undertake a national campaign to discourage such detrimental and unpatriotic practices. Newspaper, print media and poster campaigns were proving effective, but it was obvious that Radio could most effectively reach the widest audience with the most timely messages.

The messages were quite simple: hoarding, profiteering, black-marketeering and price-gouging were unpatriotic, un-American and illegal. While the O.W.I. understood that such messages would be lost on the violators themselves, the notion of the messages was to curtail the demand-side of the practices. If enough people were reminded that these illegal practices were not only unpatriotic, but were seriously constraining the War effort, demand for such illegal practices and supplies could be curtailed.

The Office of War Information's Office of Facts and Figures was responsible for approaching the broadcast networks with the idea of obtaining commitments of blocks of prime airtime to get out their various War messages. The first of the O.W.I. programs to take to the air was Victory Parade, over NBC. Beginning at 6 p.m Sunday night, the 7th of June, 1942 and running through August 23, 1942, NBC mounted a 12-week series of Victory Parade renditions of some of their most popular prime time Radio features, such as Baby Snooks, The Red Skelton Show, and The Jack Benny Program.

CBS' imposed contributions to the War effort were Victory Theater and Victory Front, produced in cooperation with and under the auspices of the Office of War Information. As with NBC's Victory Parade that preceded them, O.W.I. War messages were delivered in place of commercial announcements as a vehicle for disemminating messages of national importance to the wider public.

The O.W.I. taps CBS again. This time for their Daytime Serials

It's not surprising that the O.W.I. held such sway with the Columbia Broadcasting System in particular. Many of CBS' top executives had been drafted to man, manage and promote the Office of War Information's Office of Facts and Figures in an effort to help launch the O.W.I.'s Radio Bureau. And while there was undoubtedly some arm twisting involved in persuading CBS--and its soap and detergent sponsors--to give up a couple of months of their wildly successful daytime serials to the War effort, it was arm-twisting between friends.

And so it was, that following the success of Victory Theater, CBS undertook to repeat that success in a similar promotion with twelve weeks of its most identifiable daytime serial programming. CBS and the O.W.I. contemplated the following special presentations for CBS' Monday to Friday morning lineups:

• Week 01 Our Gal Sunday
• Week 02 Big Sister
• Week 03 Life Can Be Beautiful
• Week 04 Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories
• Week 05 Young Doctor Malone
• Week 06 We Love and Learn
• Week 07 The Goldbergs
• Week 08 Bright Horizon
• Week 09 The Romance of Helen Trent
• Week 10 Joyce Jordan, M.D.
• Week 11 Second Husband
• Week 12 Give Us This Day (Special O.W.I. serial)

The casts, crew and production facilities were, as with Victory Theater, donated by the respective parties.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were magazine and newspaper listings.

OTRisms:

Much in the fashion of the times we live in, vintage Radio history revisionists are making money hand over fist rewriting the Radio history of the 1920s through 1960s -- the Golden Age of Radio. As we've demonstrated--and supported--within hundreds of our own Radio articles, the cottage industry in 'OTR Books' continues to exponentially disseminate all manner of unsupported revisionism regarding many of the more interesting Radio programs of the era. Apparently Victory Front hasn't escaped theses OTR authors' fanciful musings. One 'author' in particular makes the absolutely absurd claim that the first five contemplated weekly series' of Victory Front never even aired. And yet we have the Billboard review in the sidebar and the numerous newspaper and magazine listings below to support our proof that the entire contemplated 13-week series did actually air. This, let alone the notion that with the O.W.I.'s exensive ties to CBS management, CBS would refuse to actually air what CBS had so painstakingly helped to produce for them. This is what passes for 'OTR scholarship' these days.

We don't know what to make of this latest spate of revisionist phenomena. The "OTR community" in particular has reset the bar of integrity so low as to negatively affect the entire vintage Radio collecting pastime throughout the world. The OTRR and its OTTER logs don't seem to care a whit about historical accuracy and the "credentialed OTR experts" of that community, seeing how low the bar has been set, are cleaning up with all manner of vanity books on Radio history and programs of the era. They offer no proof whatsoever of their assertions other than citing the demonstrably inaccurate commercial catalogues of vintage recordings vendors. And so the rampant misinformation continues to spread like lymphatic cancer throughout the vintage Radio hobby.

Just as the O.W.I. attempted to do with the Victory Front series, the only way to stop this revisionist nonsense in its tracks is to curtail the demand. To that end, we continue to cite the more blatant revisionists wherever we can--and we'll continue to do so. As long as the demand for revisionist OTR misinformation continues, the usual suspects will continue to supply it. If the demand ceases, the supply will cease with it.

We don't pronounce our Golden Age Radio research as 'certified' anything. By the very definition, research is imperfect. We simply tell the truth. As is our continuing practice, we provide our fully provenanced research results--to the extent possible--right here on the page, for any of our peers to review--or refute--as the case may be. If you take issue with any of our findings, you're welcome to cite any better verifiable source(s) and we'll immediately review them and update our findings accordingly. As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

All rights reserved by their respective sources. Article and log copyright 2009 The Digital Deli Online--all rights reserved. Any failure to attribute the results of this copywritten work will be rigorously pursued.

[Date, title, and episode column annotations in red refer to either details we have yet to fully provenance or other unverifiable information as of this writing. Red highlights in the text of the 'Notes' columns refer to information upon which we relied in citing dates, date or time changes, or titles.]