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Called "The Poet Laureate of Radio" by critics, Norman Corwin was the top writer at CBS when CBS reigned supreme in radio, and when radio itself dominated public attention. This biography tells the story of Norman's unlikely rise from a triple-decker tenement on Bremen Street in East Boston to the top rung of radio writers during the Golden Age of Radio. A self-taught writer who never graduated from high school, he learned what audiences craved, and he gave it to them. His nuanced "theater of the mind" dramas, tender love stories, and witty comedies were hits talked about long after they were broadcast, and, when his scripts were published, became bestsellers. The week after Pearl Harbor, Norman's show "We Hold These Truths" was broadcast to the largest radio audience ever. His V-E Day broadcast on May 8, 1945, "On a Note of Triumph," made a similarly enduring mark and still constitutes the gold standard for wartime drama.
List of contents
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Norman's December Surprise: "We Hold These Truths"
Part One: Norman to Nineteen (1910-1929)
A "Tough Kid" in Eastie
Three Arts and a Boy
His Father's Business
His Mother's Boy
Norman's First War Story
Norman Types and Discovers Radio
No Bar Mitzvah for Norman
Winthrop
Restart in High School
The "Lost Year" and Greenfield
Greenfield and Its Paper
Meeting Heywood Broun
See Him When in New York?
1928, After Broun
Springfield
Norman Proposes to His Coauthor
Enter "Jumbo"
Part Two: Norman in His Twenties (1930-1939)
Taking a Reading in 1930
The Tragedy and Norman's Resolution
Innocents Abroad, 1931
The "Interruption"
Hits and Misses
He's Back
Trouble in Paradise
Norman's Roller Coaster
Poetic License
CBS
Norman Corwin's Words Without Music
A Book for Mr. McKenzie
"Seems Radio Is Here to Stay"
Curley and Pursuit of Happiness
"Ballad for Americans"
Hollywood
"To Tim at Twenty"
Part Three: Norman to Age Forty (1940-1950)
Requiem for Alfred Eisner
26 by Corwin
Washington
This Is War!
England
"The Long Name That None Could Spell"
Columbia Presents Corwin
"On a Note of Triumph"
Kate
Postwar to 1950
Epilogue
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Wayne Soini is a retired labor lawyer living in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He has researched and written six nonfiction books.
