More by Corwin

Everything in radio, Fred Allen once said, is as fleeting as a butterfly's cough. One exception he might have made is the work of Norman Corwin, Columbia's boy wonder, whose radio scripts draw down ecstatic fan mail, are frequently rebroadcast, even attain the comparative immortality of book publication (13 by Corwin; More by Corwin). Last week Corwin did it again. His full-hour V-E day program, On a Note of Triumph, had a Sunday repeat performance, and in book form, without too much ballyhoo, was selling so fast that Publishers Simon & Schuster rushed out a second printing of 25,000 copies.

Triumph has all of the virtues and some of the faults of Corwin's craftsmanship. It uses contrast effectively (a taut-voiced announcer says, The voice you hear will be that of the Conqueror: the man of the hour, the man of the year, of the past ten years and the next twenty--and a hesitant, uncertain G.I. voice speaks up). Corwin's text likewise relies on sharply contrasted images:

How much did it cost?

Well, the gun, the half-track and the fuselage come to a figure resembling mileages between two stars. . . .

High octane is high, and K-rations in the aggregate mount up; also mosquito netting and battleships.

But these costs are calculable, and have no nerve-endings. . . .

In the matter of the kid . . . who died on a jeep in the Ruhr,

There is no fixed price, and no amount of taxes can restore him to his mother.

In the book, set as if it were verse (and with all staging directions eliminated), Corwin adds many lines that the program had no time for, changes a few broadcasting bowdlerisms (bejeepers becomes beJesus). But what makes the scalp tighten when backed by sound effects and Bernard Herrmann's excellent score and eloquent silences frequently looks tinselly in type. The eye sometimes misses the dramatic moment that Corwin skillfully devises for the ear: the sounds of underwater sloshing, a metallic pounding on a sunken sub, to ask the men inside if they've heard the V-E news--and no answer comes.

Without the interruption of an impish, hillbilly doggerel song (Round and Round Hitler's Grave) Triumph's unrelieved pounding at its worthy message (internationalism) sometimes takes on the sound of an hour-long lecture; and occasionally, with the best intentions in the world, it is mawkishly patronizing about the little people to whom it is addressed. Yet the best of Corwin is a kind of poetry, and is U.S. radio at its best:

Lord God of test-tube and blueprint

Who joined molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,

Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,

Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:

Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer for his father's color or the credo of his choice:

Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:

Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of little people through expected straits.. . .

That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.

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