Norman Corwin is widely considered radio's most revered and celebrated dramatist.and poet. His career began during the medium's late infancy at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and extended into the 21st century with critically acclaimed work for public radio. Corwin wrote, directed, and produced more than 200 original radio plays that featured many of the most prominent actors of the day.

     For his extraordinary output and talents, spirit and sensibilities, Corwin has been honored and admired by heads-of-state as well as by the literary and broadcast communities worldwide. Among his most noted radio works are We Hold These Truths, On A Note of Triumph, 14 August, The Undecided Molecule, The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, and The Odyssey of Runyon Jones. Along with countless awards, Corwin has the distinction of being the first writer inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. In his landmark history of American broadcasting published several decades ago, Erik Barnouw proclaimed Corwin the "unofficial" poet laureate of radio. Today this designation has rightfully attained "official" status.

Words in the Air

     Corwin was born to emigrant parents in Boston in 1910. Unlike his siblings, who pursued college studies after graduating from high school, Corwin chose to go to work. Enamored of the power and beauty of words since early childhood, he first sought and gained employment as a writer and reporter for newspapers. He landed his first job in 1927 at The Recorder in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and not long after he was able to transfer his growing skills to the pages of Spring­field's The Daily Republican.

     While at The Daily Republican, Corwin edited the news and produced a popular poetry feature for a local radio station, but he had not seriously considered a career in radio. Following a dispute with the station's management concerning its unwillingness to cover strike-related stories, Corwin headed for New York. After a brief stint as a film publicist for 20th Century Fox, he convinced experimental station W2XR .(later WQXR) to let him offer a show called "Poetic License." Not long after the show's debut, Corwin was doing clever and witty recitations on NBC, and in 1937 these would capture the attention of CBS's William Lewis, who would hire him to direct the network's just formed Columbia Workshop.

     Between 1938 and 1949, Corwin wrote, directed, and produced dozens of highly acclaimed radio plays as the CBS network provided him uncommon freedom to innovate during sustained (unsponsored) segments of its broadcast schedule. Later Corwin would attribute his great success to CBS's willingness to allow him to work without interference and strictures. Through evocative and imaginative scripts and technological mastery of the medium wherein the use of sound effects and music were redefined, Corwin took the radio drama in new and extraordinary directions. In his hands it became a legitimate and respected form. Not only were his works rich in meaning and scale, but his output was amazing as well. In order to meet airtime demands, he often turned out a new play every week for months on end. His great energy and creativity brought added prestige to CBS.

     Among Corwin's early network successes were The Plot to Overthrow Christmas (1938), which became a holiday standard in both broadcast and published form, and his dramatic disquisition against fascism, They Fly Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease (1939). Corwin's vast range became immediately apparent, and he soon was the driving force behind the medium's most auspicious series of programs offered under the rubric The Columbia Workshop. This distinguished effort provided a venue for the works of prominent literary figures of the day, such as Archibald MacLeish and Stephen Vincent Benet, as well as for Corwin himself. Many critics view CBS's Workshop as radio's high water mark.

Themes and Works

     Corwin wrote programs that challenged the listener's emotions and intellect. His were dramas that dealt with the principle issues and concerns of the common man. Hatred, prejudice, deceit, and injustice were familiar themes in his plays. Given the era in which he worked, war became his foremost subject. For some critics, Corwin proved to be too much of a flag waver. The propagandistic and nationalistic nature and quality of many of his war-related scripts may have concerned some people but it won the praise and admiration of many more. Corwin was unabashedly patriotic, this stemming from his deep-seated passion for fairness and justice for all people. His dramas served to bookend the World War II era. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and President Roosevelt's declaration of war, his play We Hold These Truths--celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights-was broadcast to the nation and commanded the largest audience for a play in the medium's history.

     During this dark period in world affairs, Corwin contrib­uted extensively to series like This Is War in 1942 and a host of other network programs that zealously promoted the Allied cause. To mark the war's end, Corwin penned and presented what many consider his masterwork, On a Note of Triumph in I945· So poignant was its affect and impact that many who heard its broadcast were able to recite lines and even whole passages from it decades later. His war dramas had a galvanizing effect on the American public during a time when it was most needed.

     Global conflict was not the only recurring or prominent theme in his protean repertoire during this period. Corwin excelled as much when writing about other aspects of the human condition. The more mundane experiences and actions of mankind intrigued him as did the curious machinations of the biological, mythical, and spiritual worlds.

     His plays, although nearly always intended to convey a serious or thought-provoking message, were not unrelentingly somber in nature. Corwin possessed a wonderful comedic sense and loved to offer up delicious satires, fantasies, and parodies on politics, business, and human behavior. On the lighter side of Corwin's canon are My Client Curley, A Soliloquy to Balance the Budget, Good Heavens, The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, The Cliche Expert, and The Undecided Molecule. His keen humor and playful imagination are evident in dozens of other radio plays as well. Corwin also applied his pen to the making of operas, documentaries, and essays for consumption by network audiences. Versatility became one of his legendary hallmarks.

     Perhaps the only person to have entered big time national radio through the portal of poetry, Corwin enjoyed writing in verse more than prose, and because of this most of his plays assume a distinct poetic life of their own. Among those who most greatly influenced him as a writer were poets like Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg. The latter greatly admired Cor­win's work and considered him one of the country's best practitioners of the rhyme form.

     As the bard of radio's golden age, Corwin helped to lift the medium from its adolescence to its adulthood. His high ideals and moral vision demanded that radio become more socially and culturally astute. His symphonic (music was an integral ingredient of his plays) and altruistic inscriptions raised the stakes for practiced and aspiring radio dramatists alike and provoked and schooled its audience. The poet Carl Van Doren wrote that "Corwin was to radio what Marlowe was to the Elizabethan stage." Indeed, Corwin's work held its listeners in thrall as it conveyed the enduring truths-albeit both sad and delightful-about the human condition in unforgettable words and sounds.

Global Reach

     Corwin's acclaim as a radio dramatist spread to the international arena and ultimately made him the most produced radio writer worldwide. Presaging this distinction, he set out on a global expedition to record the perspectives of people in many nations for use in a CBS documentary. Subsidized by the bestowal of the first ever Wendell Wilkie Memorial Award in 1946, this became a 13 part series called One World Flight, wherein many of the most compelling personalities of the time were interviewed on a host of propitious questions about the status of mankind. During Corwin's four month fact-finding journey he met and recorded the thoughts of people from all walks of life-heads-of-state, generals, waiters, actors, farmers, writers, composers, artists, orphans, and scientists. Corwin narrated the series, which particularly focused on the war's tragic aftermath and hopes for the future.

     In one program he interviewed a widowed Italian woman and observed: "This voice and the echo of guns only lately stilled, and the silence of the cemeteries ... the begging of alms, and the whimper of hungry children; this voice, and the mute rubble of wasted towns and cities-these were the sounds of need: need for the hope and for the reality of a united world."

     Corwin has been cited as the first radioman to circle the globe as a journalist, and his passion for world justice and peace have informed his creative efforts throughout the last half of his exceptional career. Since the fade of radio's much heralded golden age following the arrival of television in the late 1940s, he has contributed to the efforts of the Voice of America, U.S. State Department, and several other world organizations by speaking on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. In the early 1950s Corwin served as Chief of Special Projects for United Nations Radio. Over the decades many of his radio plays have been rebroadcast to underprivileged areas of the world, and he has been invited to conduct seminars on the medium in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Golden Age to Graylist

     In the 1950s, Corwin's star faded as television took over the American living room. The market for radio drama all but vanished as the networks pursued television's more lucrative bottom line. Within a few short years, Corwin's name was no longer a household word. Forced to seek work elsewhere, he wrote scripts for television and movies, where recognition for his writing gifts was soon forthcoming. In 1956, Corwin penned the screenplay Lust for Life and received an Academy Award nomination. In the years to follow, despite his appearance on the McCarthy era graylist of those suspected of associating with communists, he would be honored with several prominent awards and citations.

     Corwin continued to earn the public's affection and attention with five stage plays and over a dozen books. Yet despite his foray into other writing venues, radio would still command his greatest attention. There would be a steady but modest flow of writing assignments for the medium even as it became dominated by pop music and deejays.

     In the late 1990s, public radio would prompt a rediscovery of Corwin's ethereal artistry by digitally remastering and airing 13 by Corwin and commissioning him to undertake a series of original works, culminating in his rousing salvo for New Years Eve 2000, Memos to a New Millennium, narrated by Walter Cronkite. At 90 years of age, the medium's grand "radio­ wright" (a term coined by Corwin) was still an undisputed master of the airwaves.