The Young Love Radio Program

Background

Education at all levels had become a national priority during World War II and even more important to the Nation's recovery in the wake of a second world war during only 30 years. Both CBS and NBC, the two giant networks of the era, had embarked on a long-running era of educational programming; in several instances conferring College Equivalency credits from participating schools and colleges. 'College by Air,' though a highly laudable undertaking for its time, soon became eclipsed by the hundreds of thousands of G.I.s returning to high schools, colleges, trade schools and universities across the Nation under the aegis of the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights and its generous educational subsidies and stipends.

From both NBC and CBS' perspectives, the time seemed right to mount popular programming anchored around higher education. CBS first teased their Our Miss Brooks concept to the trade papers in a January 10th 1948 press release. Our Miss Brooks quickly became one of the network's most successful productions.

NBC, in no small part due to the accelerating success of CBS' Our Miss Brooks, mounted its own college-based situation comedy, The Halls of Ivy in June of 1949. The Halls of Ivy was a comparatively unexpected entry into the NBC lineup of the post-World War II years of Radio. What seems even more unexpected was why no one at NBC had evisioned such a production on the heels of World War II. Our Miss Brooks, arguably the high school precursor to The Halls of Ivy, had already been airing for well over a year prior to The Halls of Ivy. Any comparisons--or contrasts--between the two education-themed productions are admittedly slight, but they do bear a brief acknowledgment. More slapstick, by comparison, Our Miss Brooks did, indeed, re-introduce America to formal education in the post-War years. Their only two uniting performers--Gale Gordon and Jane Morgan--leant the same flavor to both productions [both Our Miss Brooks and The Halls of Ivy] in their respective performances, although Jane Morgan in a somewhat smaller capacity. Don Quinn and his staff included some of the finest writers in Radio history, including Lawrence and Lee, Barbara and Milton Merlin, Walter B. Newman, and Hector Chevigny.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

The most helpful provenances were newspaper listings.

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