Team Play

Radiomen and Government men last week came out of their huddle with what looked at last like real team play. After a vigorous but wobbly kickoff on the all-network Saturday evening This Is War! program (TIME, Feb. 23), followed by a fumble on the second try, last week's production, entitled Your Navy, was well executed--a credit to Maxwell Anderson, who wrote it with affection, Actors Fredric March and Lieut. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who played it with restraint, and Norman Corwin, who directed it and its sea sounds with proper finish.

This week WPB's Donald Nelson gave the first of four 15-minute fight talks which he will give over each network on successive Mondays or Tuesdays. This week, too, (Sunday 10:15 p.m. E.W.T.) Mutual began a notable series of weekly broadcasts, The United Nations Speak. Lead-off man for the U.S. was Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle Jr. He will be followed by representatives of the other 25 nations, short-waved to their native lands, long-waved to the U.S. by Mutual when "applicable to English-speaking people."

To radiomen the best thing that happened last week was a half-hour talk to them on a unique closed telephone network (i.e., not on the air) by OFF's Director Archibald MacLeish. Coherent and down-to-earth, Mr. MacLeish dispelled apprehensions, cleared up the "What can I do?" question and told the broadcasters what kind of guidance they could expect from his office henceforth. Among matters soon to be set right by OFF and a Broadcasters' Victory Council in Washington: excessive bunching and repetition of appeals, pep talks, the national anthem.

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