We Came This Way

October 6, 1944 – September 6, 1945 · 30 broadcasts

In October 1944, with the outcome of the war still in doubt, NBC's University of the Air launched a history series with an unusually blunt thesis: no freedom has ever been given, every one has been taken, and the taking has always cost. We Came This Way dramatized that argument one half-hour at a time, beginning with Magna Carta and working forward through the Peasants' Revolt, the Dutch rising against Spain, Joan of Arc, Valley Forge and the French Revolution, then on into the nineteenth century -- Kosciuszko, Shelley, John Bright, Mazzini, Carl Schurz, Garibaldi, Kossuth, Herzen, Tolstoy, Gambetta and Zola. The "we" of the title is deliberately not American but human: the American episodes sit inside a European sequence rather than crowning it. Each program was narrated -- by NBC commentator John W. Vandercook while the series came from New York, then by Clifton Utley after production moved to Chicago -- scored by a staff conductor and played by a repertory company. It was sustaining, carried at NBC's own expense, and buried at 11:30 on Friday nights, with a printed study handbook to go with it. Variety liked it, calling the series "a commendable addition to NBC's public service programming." A year on, Tune In was blunter -- "sometimes interesting, sometimes not." Both verdicts are fair, and the ambition is what survives.