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The Full Story

Contents

Premise and format

CBS built the Radio Workshop as an act of nostalgia with a mission attached: a weekly half-hour (later trimmed nearer twenty-five minutes) meant to hold on to, and if possible win back, the audience television had been steadily pulling away from radio c1. The show described itself, without much modesty, as "the theater of the mind... dedicated to man's imagination," and Wikipedia records its on-air subtitle as "radio's distinguished series to man's imagination" c2. Each week's broadcast was a fresh, self-contained production, drawn from a wide net of forms -- literary adaptations, sound-poems, satires, opera, documentaries -- built by CBS's own writers, directors and engineers c3. Eighty-six broadcasts survive in full, covering eighty-four distinct stories and documentaries; only two, Brave New World and The Space Merchants, ran long enough to need a second part c4.

Origins

Nothing about the format was actually new in 1956. CBS had tried something close to it twice before -- the Columbia Experimental Laboratory in 1931, the Columbia Experimental Dramatic Laboratory in 1932, and then the longer-running Columbia Workshop from 1936 through 1943 -- and several of the same writers and directors carried straight over into the new incarnation c5. Credit for the underlying idea belongs further back still, to Irving Reis in the 1930s, who wanted an unsponsored workshop where actors, writers and technicians could risk scripts no paying sponsor would touch c6. The specific push to bring it back in 1956 came from William Froug, a CBS Hollywood programming executive with his own history listening to the old Columbia Workshop; he took the pitch to CBS's Howard Barnes, got a yes, and picked Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to launch the revived series c7. None of this happened in a vacuum -- television had already claimed the sponsor money that once funded ambitious radio drama, and it was exactly that vacancy that let CBS gamble on an unsponsored experiment again c8.

Broadcast history

The series ran on CBS from 27 January 1956 to 22 September 1957, one broadcast a week, sustaining -- unsponsored -- for its entire run, which was the whole point of the franchise c9. Production alternated between Hollywood and New York; the New York side of the operation began with "Voice of New York" on 2 March 1956, narrated by Clifton Fadiman and logged as the first program actually aired from New York c10. The show also moved its own timeslot partway through, shifting to Sundays around the broadcast of "Colloquy #4 -- Joe Miller Joke Book" that November c11. It went off the air on 22 September 1957 with "Young Man Axelbrod" -- a short life, but not a surprising one, since by then television had already displaced radio as the dominant medium for popular drama c12.

People and casting

William N. Robson and William Froug produced the series between them, with directing duties rotating among Robson himself, Elliott Lewis, Tony Schwartz, Dee Engelbach, Jack Johnstone and Antony Ellis c13. Composers across the run included Bernard Herrmann, Amerigo Moreno, Ray Noble and Leith Stevens, along with a young CBS staff composer named Jerry Goldsmith, credited on "1489 Words" in February 1957, well before his film-scoring fame c14. As an anthology, the Workshop had no fixed cast -- each week drew on the CBS repertory pools in Hollywood and New York -- but its recurring voices amounted to a who's-who of the era's radio talent: William Conrad, who announced the Brave New World premiere and went on to narrate several later episodes, alongside John Dehner, Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, Hans Conried, Jay Novello, June Foray, Daws Butler, Parley Baer, Stan Freberg, Lurene Tuttle, Virginia Gregg, Joe DeSantis, Ben Wright, Ralph Bell and Everett Sloane c15. Three of its authors did something rarer still: they voiced their own adaptations. Aldous Huxley narrated Brave New World, Ray Bradbury introduced two of his own stories in February 1956, and Robert Nathan narrated his own "A Pride of Carrots" that September c16. Beyond them, the series adapted a genuine literary roster -- John Cheever, Robert A. Heinlein, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Isherwood, Frederik Pohl, James Thurber, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Durham, Archibald MacLeish and Stephen Vincent Benet among them c17.

Significance and legacy

By the time it aired, network radio had only a handful of ambitious drama slots left, and the Workshop is remembered as one of the very last of them -- reviving the Columbia Workshop's own prestige tradition so deliberately that retrospective critics call the whole run a last flowering of radio art c18. That reputation rests heavily on a single broadcast: the Brave New World premiere turns up often on lists of the great radio broadcasts of the twentieth century, and Froug's own Wikipedia entry counts it among the fifty greatest radio programs ever made c19. The series did more than look backward, though -- it gave a young Jerry Goldsmith paid composing work years before his film career took off, and its standing with working radio professionals ran high enough that the East Coast production side wanted its own piece of the show, which is the immediate reason production ended up split between Hollywood and New York c20.

Production

The franchise doubled as a showcase for CBS's own sound engineers, and nowhere more than on its first broadcast. To build the roughly thirty-second effect standing in for Brave New World's mechanized human hatcheries, three sound men and a control-room engineer spent five hours combining a dozen separate elements -- a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, an air hose, a cow's moo, two distinct "boing" noises, an oscillator tone, two different kinds of dripping water, and three kinds of wine glasses struck for their ring -- then ran the finished mix backward on tape with echo layered over it c21. Later broadcasts pushed the format in a different direction entirely, toward full music theater: "The Toledo War" (4 May 1956) was staged as an opera, "The Stronger" (15 June 1956) as a chamber opera, and "Le Grande Greteche" (3 February 1957) as another operatic adaptation c22.

Context and controversies

The whole premise carried its own irony: the series existed because television had already been draining radio drama's audience and sponsors, which means its own late flowering was also a symptom of the trend it was responding to c23. One broadcast, "I Was the Duke" (9 December 1956), is flagged simply "X-rated" in the surviving log -- evidently adult or risque material rather than any formal ratings action, since no censorship incident surfaced in this pass's research, and no blacklist episode did either c24.

Odd bits

A handful of broadcasts stand out even against a series built entirely around one-off ambition. The Easter broadcast "The Son of Man" (21 April 1957) gathered Raymond Burr as narrator alongside Robert Young, Vincent Price, Victor Jory and Herbert Marshall, and "Meditations on Ecclesiastes" (23 June 1957) brought together Edward R. Murrow and Senator John F. Kennedy c25. A recurring "Colloquy" strand ran discussion-and-satire pieces through the series -- an interview with William Shakespeare, a dissertation on love, a study of satire featuring Stan Freberg and company, and a Joe Miller joke-book edition c26. The Workshop also turned, more than once, to real news events for docudrama material: "Disaster! Fire at Malibu" (20 January 1957), "Heaven Is in the Sky" on the Pacoima school air disaster (19 May 1957), and "Grief Drives a Black Sedan," a safe-driving drama that closed with a message from New York Governor Averell Harriman (1 September 1957) c27.

Reception

Time magazine reviewed the premiere's sound-design achievement on 6 February 1956, though this pass worked from Wikipedia's citation of that review rather than the original text c28. Contemporary trade coverage of the series also survives in the Media History Digital Library's Lantern corpus -- Broadcasting, Variety, Radio-Television Mirror and Sponsor all carried period coverage -- confirmed to exist but not yet mined page-by-page c29. Retrospective fan and critical memory of the series has stayed high: it is remembered as a genuinely excellent late-era anthology, "a last flowering of radio art" with, in one retrospective's words, "many excellent episodes" c30.

Cast & Creators

CBS Radio Workshop carried no continuing cast -- its identity came instead from behind the scenes and from voices who returned often enough to feel like a repertory company.

William N. Robson and William Froug produced the series between them; Froug, a CBS Hollywood programming executive who had grown up on the original Columbia Workshop, pitched its 1956 revival, while Robson carried the direct lineage back to that earlier series as its principal director. Directing rotated among Robson, Elliott Lewis, Tony Schwartz, Dee Engelbach, Jack Johnstone and Antony Ellis -- Ellis also carried writing and directing credits on CBS's Escape, Suspense, Gunsmoke and Frontier Gentleman. Composers across the run included Bernard Herrmann and, before his film-scoring fame, a young staff composer named Jerry Goldsmith, credited on "1489 Words" in February 1957.

Three authors did something the series rarely allowed anyone else: narrate their own work. Aldous Huxley opened the series narrating his own "Brave New World"; Ray Bradbury introduced two of his own stories that February; and Robert Nathan narrated his own "A Pride of Carrots" that September (his own page is still pending).

With no fixed cast, the Workshop's real company was a pool of recurring radio voices drawn from CBS's Hollywood and New York repertory rosters. William Conrad -- who also starred as Marshal Matt Dillon on radio's Gunsmoke -- announced the Brave New World premiere and later narrated several episodes outright, and John Dehner anchored others. Behind them stood a working ensemble who turn up again and again in the surviving log: Hans Conried, Jay Novello, Joe DeSantis, Joseph Kearns, June Foray, Lurene Tuttle, Virginia Gregg, Jack Kruschen, Ralph Bell, Everett Sloane, Alan Reed, Parley Baer, Ben Wright and, on multiple dramatic broadcasts, Raymond Burr.

Sources & Citations

  1. CBS built the Radio Workshop as a weekly (later ~25-minute) sustaining anthology intended to hold on to, and recapture, the audience television had drawn away from radio. en.wikipedia.org
  2. The series described itself as "the theater of the mind... dedicated to man's imagination," with an on-air subtitle Wikipedia gives as "radio's distinguished series to man's imagination." archive.org, oldtimeradioreview.com, en.wikipedia.org
  3. Each week's broadcast was a fresh, self-contained production spanning literary adaptations, sound-poems, satires, opera, and documentaries made by CBS's own writers, directors and engineers. en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com
  4. Eighty-six broadcasts survive, covering eighty-four distinct stories and documentaries -- only Brave New World and The Space Merchants ran as two-part adaptations. oldtimeradioreview.com, archive.org
  5. The 1956 series revived CBS's own earlier experimental strand -- the Columbia Experimental Laboratory (1931), Columbia Experimental Dramatic Laboratory (1932), and Columbia Workshop (1936-1943) -- reusing several of that lineage's writers and directors. en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com
  6. The original concept belonged to Irving Reis in the 1930s: a sustaining, unsponsored workshop where actors, writers and technicians could try scripts sponsors were afraid to back. archive.org
  7. William Froug, a CBS Hollywood programming executive who grew up on the old Columbia Workshop, pitched its revival to CBS's Howard Barnes and chose Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to open the new series. archive.org, en.wikipedia.org
  8. The timing was deliberate: television had already taken the major sponsor money by the mid-1950s, freeing CBS to try a sustaining experimental concept again. archive.org
  9. The series ran on CBS from January 27, 1956 to September 22, 1957, weekly, sustaining (unsponsored) throughout. en.wikipedia.org, archive.org, otrsite.com
  10. Production alternated between Hollywood and New York; the New York side began with "Voice of New York" (March 2, 1956, narrated by Clifton Fadiman), logged as the first program aired from New York. archive.org, otrsite.com
  11. The show moved to a Sunday timeslot around the broadcast of "Colloquy #4 -- Joe Miller Joke Book" in November 1956. otrsite.com
  12. The series was cancelled September 22, 1957 with "Young Man Axelbrod," a short run reflecting television's displacement of radio as the dominant popular-drama medium. en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com
  13. William N. Robson and William Froug produced the series, with directing duties rotating among Robson, Elliott Lewis, Tony Schwartz, Dee Engelbach, Jack Johnstone and Antony Ellis. en.wikipedia.org, archive.org
  14. Composers across the run included Bernard Herrmann, Amerigo Moreno, Ray Noble and Leith Stevens, plus young CBS staff composer Jerry Goldsmith, credited on "1489 Words" (February 1957) years before his film-scoring fame. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com
  15. As an anthology with no fixed cast, the Workshop drew recurring voices from the CBS Hollywood and New York repertory pools, including William Conrad (who announced the Brave New World premiere and later narrated several episodes), John Dehner, Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, Hans Conried, Jay Novello, June Foray, Daws Butler, Parley Baer, Stan Freberg, Lurene Tuttle, Virginia Gregg, Joe DeSantis, Ben Wright, Ralph Bell and Everett Sloane. archive.org, otrsite.com
  16. Three authors voiced their own adaptations: Aldous Huxley narrated Brave New World, Ray Bradbury introduced two of his own stories (February 1956), and Robert Nathan narrated his own "A Pride of Carrots" (September 1956). en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com, otrsite.com
  17. Adapted authors across the series included John Cheever, Robert A. Heinlein, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Isherwood, Frederik Pohl, James Thurber, Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Durham, Archibald MacLeish and Stephen Vincent Benet. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com
  18. The Workshop is remembered as one of American network radio's last major experimental dramatic anthologies, a late-era revival of the Columbia Workshop's prestige tradition called "a last flowering of radio art." en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com
  19. The Brave New World premiere is frequently cited among the great radio broadcasts of the 20th century; William Froug's own Wikipedia entry lists it among the 50 greatest radio programs. en.wikipedia.org
  20. The series gave rising talent an early stage -- Jerry Goldsmith scored episodes years before his film career -- and was popular enough within the industry that the East Coast wanted a share of production, driving the bicoastal arrangement. en.wikipedia.org, otrsite.com, archive.org
  21. The Brave New World premiere's roughly 30-second "manufacturing of babies" montage took three sound men and a control-room engineer five hours to build from a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, an air hose, a cow's moo, two kinds of "boing," an oscillator, dripping water and clicking wine glasses, then played back on tape backward with echo. en.wikipedia.org
  22. Several broadcasts were produced as operas or chamber operas: "The Toledo War" (May 4, 1956, opera), "The Stronger" (June 15, 1956, chamber opera), and "Le Grande Greteche" (February 3, 1957). otrsite.com
  23. The series existed because television had already been draining radio drama's audience and sponsors -- its own late flowering was itself a symptom of the trend it responded to. en.wikipedia.org, oldtimeradioreview.com
  24. One broadcast, "I Was the Duke" (December 9, 1956), is flagged "X-rated" in the surviving log -- evidently adult or risque material rather than a formal ratings action; no censorship or blacklist incident surfaced in this research pass. otrsite.com, en.wikipedia.org
  25. The Easter broadcast "The Son of Man" (April 21, 1957) gathered Raymond Burr as narrator alongside Robert Young, Vincent Price, Victor Jory and Herbert Marshall, and "Meditations on Ecclesiastes" (June 23, 1957) brought together Edward R. Murrow and Senator John F. Kennedy. otrsite.com
  26. A recurring "Colloquy" strand ran discussion-and-satire pieces through the series: an interview with William Shakespeare, a dissertation on love, a study of satire featuring Stan Freberg, and a Joe Miller joke-book edition. otrsite.com
  27. The series also produced docudramas from real news events: "Disaster! Fire at Malibu" (January 20, 1957), "Heaven Is in the Sky" on the Pacoima school air disaster (May 19, 1957), and "Grief Drives a Black Sedan," a safe-driving drama closing with a message from New York Governor Averell Harriman (September 1, 1957). otrsite.com
  28. Time magazine reviewed the premiere's sound-design achievement on February 6, 1956, cited via Wikipedia; the primary text was not separately captured this pass. en.wikipedia.org, Time
  29. Contemporary trade-press coverage of the series survives in the Media History Digital Library's Lantern corpus -- Broadcasting, Variety, Radio-Television Mirror and Sponsor all carried period coverage -- confirmed to exist but not yet mined page-by-page. lantern.mediahist.org
  30. Retrospective fan and critical memory rates the series a high-quality "last flowering of radio art" with "many excellent episodes." oldtimeradioreview.com