THE DuPONT "ART PLAYERS" PERFORM ONE OF 781 BROADCASTS.
THE CAVALCADE OF AMERICA
“On the air it virtually represented American history.”
In those few words broadcasting historian Erik Barnouw summed up the 18 season, multi-network run of Cavalcade of America from 1935 into 1953. Barnouw once wrote for Cavalcade, as did Arthur Miller, Norman Rosten and a list of notable authors in their younger days. (1)
In reality, the program was conceived for public relations purposes by the E. I. DuPont de Nemours Corporation when a 1935 investigation headed by North Dakota Senator Gerald P. Nye disclosed that DuPont had sold over a Billion dollars in gunpowder and explosives to the Allies in World War I which resulted in profits exceeding $237.9 Million. (2)
DuPont was suddenly seen as a war monger which its founding family, (and stockholders), found unfair and offensive. To combat the negative publicity stirred up by Nye’s investigation, DuPont called in its ad agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, (BBDO). Together they created a weekly radio program designed to wrap the company founded by French immigrants in the American flag, honoring the United States of America and the people who founded and developed it. The only subject off limits at its start was war and the sounds ruled unacceptable were gunshots or explosions.
The Cavalcade of America debuted on CBS Wednesday nights at 8:00, opposite NBC’s One Man’s Family on October 9, 1935. (The opening few minutes are garbled in the recording of this 85 year old broadcast.) Its original, and questionable format consisted of two abbreviated dramatic vignettes. Noted actor Walter Hampden starred in both scenes of the premiere broadcast which ranged in time from the Pilgrim era to the locust invasion of South Dakota farmland in 1931, which was not so surprisingly rescued by crop-dusting aircraft spraying chemical pesticides. If listeners failed to get the point, the program’s closing commercial made it clear and emphasized what would eventually become one of America’s most familiar advertising slogans: Better things for better living through chemistry.
Variety missed DuPont’s primary objective in financing Cavalcade of America, but concentrated on its secondary theme in its review of the premiere broadcast: “As entertainment, this is somber and dubious. DuPont, a leader to fight communist propaganda, has seemingly carried this campaign a step further. … The sales copy is primarily institutional so the impression is given that the sponsor is more concerned in what America is thinking than what America is buying .That, in itself, marks the program as exceptional. … Program may, if such is the DuPont motive, help galvanize the already conservative thinking to stout resistance against the stirrer-uppers of revolt and dissatisfaction. Question remains: Will the average person bother to listen? And that’s hard to believe…”
The review was correct on the last count. Cavalcade only managed a 4,9 rating in the 1935-36 season and its 94th place finish was clobbered by the Carlton Morse family drama on NBC which scored a 14.0 season rating at 16th place.
DuPont and BBDO got the message with it’s first broadcast in the New Year on January 1, 1936, when it scrapped the two stories within one show concept and focused on one story per episode, beginning with The Declaration of Independence. Nevertheless, its ratings continued to struggle in single digits on Wednesday nights. As a novelty, GOld Time Radio presents the final broadcast of its Wednesday night run on June 29, 1938, the sound biography of Eleuthere Irenee DuPont, pioneer of American gunpowder manufacturing and founder of program’s sponsoring corporation, “…at the request of many of our listeners.”
After a long hiatus and yet another format revamp, Cavalcade was moved to Mondays at 8:00 p.m. on December 5, 1938 for the remaining seven months of its CBS run. The new format was introduced by newsman Gabriel Heatter and narrated by stage personality Thomas Chalmers. Its stated objective was to celebrate the lives of famous Americans and chose for its first subject legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. (3)
Variety again greeted its return with a shrug on December 7, 1938: “Notable for the restraint and dignity of the DuPont commercial copy, Cavalcade of America returns to CBS with its narrative formula substantially the same.. It is a pleasant half hour along serious but not ponderous lines.”
Despite the new timeslot and refreshed format on CBS, Cavalcade’s ratings didn’t budge. DuPont and BBDO went shopping for a fresh start on a new network. It found the network on Blue and took six months to freshen the format for this initial production on January 2, 1940 starring Burgess Meredith.
The cynical review Variety gave the following week to Cavalcade’s premiere on Blue oddly concentrated on its subject, not its intent or performance by Meredith or supporting players John McIntire and Karl Swenson, all dismissed twice as the “DuPont art players,” a not too subtle comparison to Fred Allen’s Mighty Allen Art Players :
“The new Cavalcade series launched the DuPont art players along somewhat hackneyed lines. They did the story of Amerigo Vespucci, who discovered America - at least on paper - and because of a remarkable historical fluke, later regretted by a 16th Century mapmaker, gave his name to the mainland. … He’s strictly a textbook footnote in small italics. … Actually, the DuPont art players may have more trouble this time around than on previous broadcasts when they had the boards more to themselves. Just now, quite a few radio troupes are setting the U.S. Constitution to music and swinging it. Democracy and Main Street, our guys and our ways, are getting a big romance from Ford, Westinghouse, NBC, CBS and whathaveyou. DuPont will have to keep the competition in mind. Americanism is now everybody’s formula, second only to bingo in program appeal to advertisers.”
After six months on Blue and a ten percent loss in its already mediocre ratings, DuPont moved Cavalcade to its third and final network in October, 1940. Before it’s Wednesday night debut on NBC, producers issued a press release announcing the signing of playwrights Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood and Marc Connely along with screen stars Loretta Young, Edward Arnold and Charles Laughton for its 1940-41 season. Cavalcade then followed with its first episode on October 2, 1940, the radio adaptation of Paul Green’s historical drama, The Lost Colony, starring Loretta Young.
Again there was no pleasing Variety in its review of the opening show on NBC: "After several years association with historical reenactments, a plus value, timeliness has stepped into stride beside the DuPont show. Hurrah-for-our-side spirit which suffuses the nation at the moment with the pink of high patriotic pressure provides Cavalcade with improved opportunities of mentions in radio columns, endorsements by councils, societies and dispensers of plaques. That DuPont is aware and happy about this is an open secret around Radio City.
The first program of the 1940-41 series was dull. It painted a blurred picture of a blurred episode in American history, the Roanoke Island colonists who wandered off and were swallowed in the Indian thickets. Nobody ever found them or their scalps. There was little real action. The DuPont program educationally recalled it, but that’s hardly the best such a series can achieve. Actually, this weak starter should not be blamed on the author, the fault is in an essentially static story that has been told and retold.”
Although its 7:30 p.m. Wednesday timeslot on NBC was without much competition, (Meet Mr. Meek on CBS, local programs on Blue and The Lone Ranger on Mutual), Cavalcade’s 1940-41 ratings sank lower. Most alarming was its February Hooperating of 5.3. A quick fix was ordered to save the program and NBC moved it to Monday nights at 7:30 on March 31, 1941 which, in its lengthy string of biographies of famous Americans, presented a scene from the life of noted American actor Edwin Booth written by Norman Rosten and starring Paul Muni. Despite the time shift, Cavalcade ratings dropped to 6.8 and its season ranking bottomed out at 100th place.
The program evolved again in the fall of 1941, taking a tip from the success of Lux Radio Theater and enlisting more Hollywood stars like Ingrid Bergman, Walter Huston, Claude Rains, Fredrick March, Florence Eldridge, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Joan Bennett, Irene Dunne, Franchot Tone and Paulette Goddard. A peak was reached in its adaptation of RKO’s 1939 film, The Great Man Votes, from December 15, 1941, its tribute to the 150th anniversary of The Bill of Rights. (4) This program has often been lost in the shadow of Norman Corwin’s classic We Hold These Truths which followed two hours later over most of the country’s combined stations. (See We Hold These Truths.)
Nevertheless, listeners suddenly seemed to discover The Cavalcade of America and its closing two-minute patriotic messages. Ratings responded into double digits over the next four months, averaging 11.2 from December through March. A resulting break for the show came on April 6, 1942, when NBC reshuffled its Monday night cultural block and moved Cavalcade ahead to 8:00 p.m. as the lead into The Voice of Firestone and The Telephone Hour which would be its home for the next seven years. The overall result was a 20% bump in Cavalcade's ratings to 8.8 for the 1941-41 season and up to 72nd place in the annual rankings.
Another transition came to Cavalcade of America on January 5, 1942 when gunshots were finally heard, however faintly, in the program’s presentation of Maxwell Anderson’s Valley Forge, starring Lionel Barrymore who was 20 years older than the General George Washington he portrayed in the play.
All avoidance of warfare sounds were gone in the broadcast of September 21, 1942, in the episode titled, The Eagle To Britain, outlining the risks involved in flying American-made bombers to Great Britain. John Dunning reports in his comprehensive Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio: “It was like a different show during the war, caught up in the frenzied pace and the immediacy of the moment, rivaling such thrill shows as ‘Suspense’ in pure narrative power.”
To illustrate his point Dunning recommends the following Cavalcade episodes: Diary On A Pigboat, (January 11, 1943), Soldiers of The Tide, (January 18, 1943), Fat Girl, (May 10, 1943), and Dear Funny Face, (August 30, 1943). To this list Gold Time Radio offers The Flying Tigers, (January 25, 1943) and The Enemy Is Listening, (June 7, 1943).
Audiences again responded favorably to Cavalcade of America’s increasing trend of humanizing the war effort, both overseas and on the home front. DuPont’s series jumped to 10.5 in the 1942-43 ratings and could finally claim to be one of the season’s Top 50 Shows, (in 50th place). And, although it lost its time period to Vox Pop on CBS, Cavalcade was one of Monday’s Top Ten programs. At long last BBDO could show its client ratings results for its weekly production outlay that could run as high as $7,500 including guest star fees and original scores for the full Donald Voorhees or Robert Armbruster orchestras.
The war stories mixed with historical dramas continued into the 1943-44 season and ratings fell temporarily to 9.4 but bounced back again in 1944-45 to what would be Cavalcade’s all-time peak of 10.8. It sensed the end of World War II with The Philippines Never Surrendered on April 30, 1945 and put an exclamation point to it with Assignment For The Prof on August 27, 1945.
For a change, Variety gave the show a positive review two days later: “Cavalcade of America kicked off its new season with a show which put the DuPont people, BBDO and acting editor Erik Barnouw definitely on the pro side of the current dispute regarding the desirability of the ‘now it can be told’ type of show. ‘Assignment For The Prof’ was frankly announced as in the category of curtain lifting on wartime censorship and it was a swell story, too. Further, Burgess Meredith as star of the piece was a decided asset. … Preceding the show NBC lopped a couple minutes off the stanza for a special newscast from Manila to report the first landings in Japan. Coming late as that interruption did it must have caused a headache to the producers of ’Cavalcade’ who nevertheless carried their show off without a hitch. … Commercial was in good taste no middle plug being used and most of it at the end being confined to a statement on reconversion plans by the prexy of the DuPont outfit. It was a good combination of institutional advertising and common sense.”
With the war over, Cavalcade returned to its format of historical dramas. It achieved its highest rating in the halcyon season of 1947-48 when it hit 14.0. (5) The show was moved on August 30, 1949, to NBC’s Tuesday night schedule, opening the evening’s fare that included Bob Hope and Fibber McGee & Molly. Its initial program was Wire To The West and Variety followed with another unexpected good review:
“Cavalcade of America started its 15th season on the air on the same high level it has shown in previous years, It is a slick professional job that combines good scripting, top flight acting and all-around production values into an entertaining and informative show. … It added up to good listening if a somewhat simplified interpretation of history. Occasionally, too, the scripting hit trite notes and the tone leaned toward rah-rah flag waving. … Commercials for DuPont were institutional, plugging the firm’s integrity and skill. It was effective public relations.”
In other words, the program achieved everything it set out to do in 1935. (6)
Cavalcade of America’s final radio broadcast, A Time To Grow, was broadcast on Tuesday, March 31, 1953. (7) The show’s 4.8 season rating was doubled by the night’s top show on CBS, People Are Funny. Nevertheless, Cavalcade was among the night’s Top Ten shows and it told listeners to tune to its new television series which ran for 117 episodes from 1952 to 1957.
However, few series - radio or television - could match Cavalcade of America’s 781 broadcasts which were truly - if DuPont and BBDO will excuse us - Better radio for better listening through chemistry.
(1) Erik Barnouw devotes several pages to Cavalcade of America in his 1968 text, The Golden Web.
(2) Republican Senator Nye had made headlines in the 1920’s when his Public Lands Committee uncovered the notorious Teapot Dome scandal.
(3) The Cavalcade of America biography, including George Gipp’s, “Win one for the Gipper” deathbed wish, predated the Warner Brothers film, Knute Rockne, All American, by two years.
(4) In Cavalcade’s adaptation of The Great Man Votes, Orson Welles takes the title role originated by John Barrymore in the 1939 film, considered by many critics to be Barrymore’s final great performance before his death three years later.
(5) Cavalcade of America reached Monday’s Top Ten list over five seasons.
(6) Hundreds of Cavalcade of America broadcasts are available for free downloading at: radioechos.com and otrrlibrary.org.
(7) Cavalcade’s final episode featured Walter Hampden who also starred in its first broadcast on October 9, 1935.
Copyright © 2020, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
“On the air it virtually represented American history.”
In those few words broadcasting historian Erik Barnouw summed up the 18 season, multi-network run of Cavalcade of America from 1935 into 1953. Barnouw once wrote for Cavalcade, as did Arthur Miller, Norman Rosten and a list of notable authors in their younger days. (1)
In reality, the program was conceived for public relations purposes by the E. I. DuPont de Nemours Corporation when a 1935 investigation headed by North Dakota Senator Gerald P. Nye disclosed that DuPont had sold over a Billion dollars in gunpowder and explosives to the Allies in World War I which resulted in profits exceeding $237.9 Million. (2)
DuPont was suddenly seen as a war monger which its founding family, (and stockholders), found unfair and offensive. To combat the negative publicity stirred up by Nye’s investigation, DuPont called in its ad agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, (BBDO). Together they created a weekly radio program designed to wrap the company founded by French immigrants in the American flag, honoring the United States of America and the people who founded and developed it. The only subject off limits at its start was war and the sounds ruled unacceptable were gunshots or explosions.
The Cavalcade of America debuted on CBS Wednesday nights at 8:00, opposite NBC’s One Man’s Family on October 9, 1935. (The opening few minutes are garbled in the recording of this 85 year old broadcast.) Its original, and questionable format consisted of two abbreviated dramatic vignettes. Noted actor Walter Hampden starred in both scenes of the premiere broadcast which ranged in time from the Pilgrim era to the locust invasion of South Dakota farmland in 1931, which was not so surprisingly rescued by crop-dusting aircraft spraying chemical pesticides. If listeners failed to get the point, the program’s closing commercial made it clear and emphasized what would eventually become one of America’s most familiar advertising slogans: Better things for better living through chemistry.
Variety missed DuPont’s primary objective in financing Cavalcade of America, but concentrated on its secondary theme in its review of the premiere broadcast: “As entertainment, this is somber and dubious. DuPont, a leader to fight communist propaganda, has seemingly carried this campaign a step further. … The sales copy is primarily institutional so the impression is given that the sponsor is more concerned in what America is thinking than what America is buying .That, in itself, marks the program as exceptional. … Program may, if such is the DuPont motive, help galvanize the already conservative thinking to stout resistance against the stirrer-uppers of revolt and dissatisfaction. Question remains: Will the average person bother to listen? And that’s hard to believe…”
The review was correct on the last count. Cavalcade only managed a 4,9 rating in the 1935-36 season and its 94th place finish was clobbered by the Carlton Morse family drama on NBC which scored a 14.0 season rating at 16th place.
DuPont and BBDO got the message with it’s first broadcast in the New Year on January 1, 1936, when it scrapped the two stories within one show concept and focused on one story per episode, beginning with The Declaration of Independence. Nevertheless, its ratings continued to struggle in single digits on Wednesday nights. As a novelty, GOld Time Radio presents the final broadcast of its Wednesday night run on June 29, 1938, the sound biography of Eleuthere Irenee DuPont, pioneer of American gunpowder manufacturing and founder of program’s sponsoring corporation, “…at the request of many of our listeners.”
After a long hiatus and yet another format revamp, Cavalcade was moved to Mondays at 8:00 p.m. on December 5, 1938 for the remaining seven months of its CBS run. The new format was introduced by newsman Gabriel Heatter and narrated by stage personality Thomas Chalmers. Its stated objective was to celebrate the lives of famous Americans and chose for its first subject legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. (3)
Variety again greeted its return with a shrug on December 7, 1938: “Notable for the restraint and dignity of the DuPont commercial copy, Cavalcade of America returns to CBS with its narrative formula substantially the same.. It is a pleasant half hour along serious but not ponderous lines.”
Despite the new timeslot and refreshed format on CBS, Cavalcade’s ratings didn’t budge. DuPont and BBDO went shopping for a fresh start on a new network. It found the network on Blue and took six months to freshen the format for this initial production on January 2, 1940 starring Burgess Meredith.
The cynical review Variety gave the following week to Cavalcade’s premiere on Blue oddly concentrated on its subject, not its intent or performance by Meredith or supporting players John McIntire and Karl Swenson, all dismissed twice as the “DuPont art players,” a not too subtle comparison to Fred Allen’s Mighty Allen Art Players :
“The new Cavalcade series launched the DuPont art players along somewhat hackneyed lines. They did the story of Amerigo Vespucci, who discovered America - at least on paper - and because of a remarkable historical fluke, later regretted by a 16th Century mapmaker, gave his name to the mainland. … He’s strictly a textbook footnote in small italics. … Actually, the DuPont art players may have more trouble this time around than on previous broadcasts when they had the boards more to themselves. Just now, quite a few radio troupes are setting the U.S. Constitution to music and swinging it. Democracy and Main Street, our guys and our ways, are getting a big romance from Ford, Westinghouse, NBC, CBS and whathaveyou. DuPont will have to keep the competition in mind. Americanism is now everybody’s formula, second only to bingo in program appeal to advertisers.”
After six months on Blue and a ten percent loss in its already mediocre ratings, DuPont moved Cavalcade to its third and final network in October, 1940. Before it’s Wednesday night debut on NBC, producers issued a press release announcing the signing of playwrights Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood and Marc Connely along with screen stars Loretta Young, Edward Arnold and Charles Laughton for its 1940-41 season. Cavalcade then followed with its first episode on October 2, 1940, the radio adaptation of Paul Green’s historical drama, The Lost Colony, starring Loretta Young.
Again there was no pleasing Variety in its review of the opening show on NBC: "After several years association with historical reenactments, a plus value, timeliness has stepped into stride beside the DuPont show. Hurrah-for-our-side spirit which suffuses the nation at the moment with the pink of high patriotic pressure provides Cavalcade with improved opportunities of mentions in radio columns, endorsements by councils, societies and dispensers of plaques. That DuPont is aware and happy about this is an open secret around Radio City.
The first program of the 1940-41 series was dull. It painted a blurred picture of a blurred episode in American history, the Roanoke Island colonists who wandered off and were swallowed in the Indian thickets. Nobody ever found them or their scalps. There was little real action. The DuPont program educationally recalled it, but that’s hardly the best such a series can achieve. Actually, this weak starter should not be blamed on the author, the fault is in an essentially static story that has been told and retold.”
Although its 7:30 p.m. Wednesday timeslot on NBC was without much competition, (Meet Mr. Meek on CBS, local programs on Blue and The Lone Ranger on Mutual), Cavalcade’s 1940-41 ratings sank lower. Most alarming was its February Hooperating of 5.3. A quick fix was ordered to save the program and NBC moved it to Monday nights at 7:30 on March 31, 1941 which, in its lengthy string of biographies of famous Americans, presented a scene from the life of noted American actor Edwin Booth written by Norman Rosten and starring Paul Muni. Despite the time shift, Cavalcade ratings dropped to 6.8 and its season ranking bottomed out at 100th place.
The program evolved again in the fall of 1941, taking a tip from the success of Lux Radio Theater and enlisting more Hollywood stars like Ingrid Bergman, Walter Huston, Claude Rains, Fredrick March, Florence Eldridge, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Joan Bennett, Irene Dunne, Franchot Tone and Paulette Goddard. A peak was reached in its adaptation of RKO’s 1939 film, The Great Man Votes, from December 15, 1941, its tribute to the 150th anniversary of The Bill of Rights. (4) This program has often been lost in the shadow of Norman Corwin’s classic We Hold These Truths which followed two hours later over most of the country’s combined stations. (See We Hold These Truths.)
Nevertheless, listeners suddenly seemed to discover The Cavalcade of America and its closing two-minute patriotic messages. Ratings responded into double digits over the next four months, averaging 11.2 from December through March. A resulting break for the show came on April 6, 1942, when NBC reshuffled its Monday night cultural block and moved Cavalcade ahead to 8:00 p.m. as the lead into The Voice of Firestone and The Telephone Hour which would be its home for the next seven years. The overall result was a 20% bump in Cavalcade's ratings to 8.8 for the 1941-41 season and up to 72nd place in the annual rankings.
Another transition came to Cavalcade of America on January 5, 1942 when gunshots were finally heard, however faintly, in the program’s presentation of Maxwell Anderson’s Valley Forge, starring Lionel Barrymore who was 20 years older than the General George Washington he portrayed in the play.
All avoidance of warfare sounds were gone in the broadcast of September 21, 1942, in the episode titled, The Eagle To Britain, outlining the risks involved in flying American-made bombers to Great Britain. John Dunning reports in his comprehensive Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio: “It was like a different show during the war, caught up in the frenzied pace and the immediacy of the moment, rivaling such thrill shows as ‘Suspense’ in pure narrative power.”
To illustrate his point Dunning recommends the following Cavalcade episodes: Diary On A Pigboat, (January 11, 1943), Soldiers of The Tide, (January 18, 1943), Fat Girl, (May 10, 1943), and Dear Funny Face, (August 30, 1943). To this list Gold Time Radio offers The Flying Tigers, (January 25, 1943) and The Enemy Is Listening, (June 7, 1943).
Audiences again responded favorably to Cavalcade of America’s increasing trend of humanizing the war effort, both overseas and on the home front. DuPont’s series jumped to 10.5 in the 1942-43 ratings and could finally claim to be one of the season’s Top 50 Shows, (in 50th place). And, although it lost its time period to Vox Pop on CBS, Cavalcade was one of Monday’s Top Ten programs. At long last BBDO could show its client ratings results for its weekly production outlay that could run as high as $7,500 including guest star fees and original scores for the full Donald Voorhees or Robert Armbruster orchestras.
The war stories mixed with historical dramas continued into the 1943-44 season and ratings fell temporarily to 9.4 but bounced back again in 1944-45 to what would be Cavalcade’s all-time peak of 10.8. It sensed the end of World War II with The Philippines Never Surrendered on April 30, 1945 and put an exclamation point to it with Assignment For The Prof on August 27, 1945.
For a change, Variety gave the show a positive review two days later: “Cavalcade of America kicked off its new season with a show which put the DuPont people, BBDO and acting editor Erik Barnouw definitely on the pro side of the current dispute regarding the desirability of the ‘now it can be told’ type of show. ‘Assignment For The Prof’ was frankly announced as in the category of curtain lifting on wartime censorship and it was a swell story, too. Further, Burgess Meredith as star of the piece was a decided asset. … Preceding the show NBC lopped a couple minutes off the stanza for a special newscast from Manila to report the first landings in Japan. Coming late as that interruption did it must have caused a headache to the producers of ’Cavalcade’ who nevertheless carried their show off without a hitch. … Commercial was in good taste no middle plug being used and most of it at the end being confined to a statement on reconversion plans by the prexy of the DuPont outfit. It was a good combination of institutional advertising and common sense.”
With the war over, Cavalcade returned to its format of historical dramas. It achieved its highest rating in the halcyon season of 1947-48 when it hit 14.0. (5) The show was moved on August 30, 1949, to NBC’s Tuesday night schedule, opening the evening’s fare that included Bob Hope and Fibber McGee & Molly. Its initial program was Wire To The West and Variety followed with another unexpected good review:
“Cavalcade of America started its 15th season on the air on the same high level it has shown in previous years, It is a slick professional job that combines good scripting, top flight acting and all-around production values into an entertaining and informative show. … It added up to good listening if a somewhat simplified interpretation of history. Occasionally, too, the scripting hit trite notes and the tone leaned toward rah-rah flag waving. … Commercials for DuPont were institutional, plugging the firm’s integrity and skill. It was effective public relations.”
In other words, the program achieved everything it set out to do in 1935. (6)
Cavalcade of America’s final radio broadcast, A Time To Grow, was broadcast on Tuesday, March 31, 1953. (7) The show’s 4.8 season rating was doubled by the night’s top show on CBS, People Are Funny. Nevertheless, Cavalcade was among the night’s Top Ten shows and it told listeners to tune to its new television series which ran for 117 episodes from 1952 to 1957.
However, few series - radio or television - could match Cavalcade of America’s 781 broadcasts which were truly - if DuPont and BBDO will excuse us - Better radio for better listening through chemistry.
(1) Erik Barnouw devotes several pages to Cavalcade of America in his 1968 text, The Golden Web.
(2) Republican Senator Nye had made headlines in the 1920’s when his Public Lands Committee uncovered the notorious Teapot Dome scandal.
(3) The Cavalcade of America biography, including George Gipp’s, “Win one for the Gipper” deathbed wish, predated the Warner Brothers film, Knute Rockne, All American, by two years.
(4) In Cavalcade’s adaptation of The Great Man Votes, Orson Welles takes the title role originated by John Barrymore in the 1939 film, considered by many critics to be Barrymore’s final great performance before his death three years later.
(5) Cavalcade of America reached Monday’s Top Ten list over five seasons.
(6) Hundreds of Cavalcade of America broadcasts are available for free downloading at: radioechos.com and otrrlibrary.org.
(7) Cavalcade’s final episode featured Walter Hampden who also starred in its first broadcast on October 9, 1935.
Copyright © 2020, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com