Drama & Anthology · CBS
Encore Theater
June 4, 1946 – August 27, 1946 · 13 broadcasts
Encore Theater was CBS's medical anthology of the summer of 1946 -- thirteen Tuesday-night half-hours that gave a radio "encore" to hit motion pictures, every one of them a story of medicine. Sponsored by Schenley Laboratories, a wartime penicillin maker, the series ran from Magnificent Obsession and The Life of Louis Pasteur to Dark Victory and the finale Disputed Passage, dramatizing surgeons, researchers, and nurses and the diseases they fought. Each week brought a marquee lead -- Ronald Colman, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, Ida Lupino, Maureen O'Sullivan, Charles Bickford among them -- backed by a seasoned West Coast radio company. Producer-director Bill Lawrence, announcer Frank Graham, and composer Leith Stevens gave it a polished house style, with scripts by Jean Holloway. An overlooked little season, but a coherent one: thirteen well-made plays on the achievements of the healing art.
Collection status:
13 of 13 held (100% complete)
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Episode Spine
1946
June 4, 1946
Magnificent Obsession
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(MP3)
A reckless playboy, to blame for a good doctor's death and the widow's blindness, remakes himself into the surgeon who can give her back her sight.
June 11, 1946
The Life of Louis Pasteur
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(MP3)
The French chemist Louis Pasteur battles disbelief and disease alike to prove the germ theory that would save millions.
June 18, 1946
Yellowjack
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(MP3)
Major Walter Reed and the soldiers who volunteer their own bodies corner the mosquito that spreads yellow fever in Cuba.
June 25, 1946
Green Light
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(MP3)
A young surgeon takes the blame for an older man's fatal mistake, then risks his own life against spotted fever to earn his way back.
July 2, 1946
The Man in White
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(MP3)
A dedicated young doctor must choose between a wealthy fiancee's comfortable world and the research -- and the nurse -- that give his work meaning.
July 9, 1946
White Angel
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(MP3)
Florence Nightingale forces a reluctant army to accept modern nursing amid the wounded of the Crimean War.
July 16, 1946
Now, Voyager
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(MP3)
Psychiatric care and an ocean voyage draw a repressed woman out from under a domineering mother and into a bittersweet love.
July 23, 1946
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
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(MP3)
Physician Paul Ehrlich hunts for a "magic bullet" -- a compound that strikes one disease and spares the patient -- and opens the age of chemotherapy.
July 30, 1946
Dark Victory
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(MP3)
A spirited socialite, secretly doomed by a brain tumor, falls in love with the surgeon treating her and learns to face her own end.
August 6, 1946
A Man to Remember
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(MP3)
A poor country doctor spends himself for his town and dies leaving a legacy no fortune could buy.
August 13, 1946
The Prisoner of Shark Island
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(MP3)
Dr. Samuel Mudd, jailed for setting John Wilkes Booth's broken leg, finds a chance at redemption when fever sweeps his island prison.
August 20, 1946
Nurse Edith Cavell
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(MP3)
An English nurse in German-occupied Belgium risks -- and gives -- her life smuggling Allied soldiers to freedom in the First World War.
August 27, 1946
Disputed Passage
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(MP3)
A brilliant, single-minded medical student clashes with his mentor and his love, forced to weigh a life of pure science against the claims of the heart.
The Story
Encore Theater was CBS's medical anthology of the summer of 1946 -- thirteen Tuesday-night half-hours that gave a radio "encore" to hit motion pictures, every one of them a story of medicine. Sponsored by Schenley Laboratories, a wartime penicillin maker, the series ran from Magnificent Obsession and The Life of Louis Pasteur to Dark Victory and the finale Disputed Passage, dramatizing surgeons, researchers, and nurses and the diseases they fought. Each week brought a marquee lead -- Ronald Colman, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, Ida Lupino, Maureen O'Sullivan, Charles Bickford among them -- backed by a seasoned West Coast radio company. Producer-director Bill Lawrence, announcer Frank Graham, and composer Leith Stevens gave it a polished house style, with scripts by Jean Holloway. An overlooked little season, but a coherent one: thirteen well-made plays on the achievements of the healing art.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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