"BETTY AND BOB"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 68, 11 October 1940, Page 40

"BETTY AND BOB"

Two People With Thousands Of Friends

T interests’ people’ most in @& story? What fascinates them? The answer is to be found in the great stories of all time. The writers of those stories wrote for and about the people who read and listened to their stories. They dramatised the common problems of humanity. The "Betty and Bob" story, which is broadcast over the ZB stations at 2 o'clock each Monday to Friday afternoon, has these qualities. For over a year in New Zealand, and for eight years over the NBC in America they have been "ordinary folk" who "lead ordinary lives." Millions of people have been entertained, enlightened, and inspired by the story of their struggle for happiness. And today we find them at the most exciting period of their lives. Betty and Bob are now the parents of twins, a boy and a girl, and are the owners

of a crusading newspaper in a typical American city. All the good causes of American. life are their causes. Into their lives come the characters and conflicts, the good and evil, the underworld and the upperworld, the strong and the weak, of a typical city. Their newspaper "The Trumpet," is the pulse of the community. When the story opens, Betty and Bob are returning to their home in the country so that Bob can convalesce from a serious illness. Bob is restless in the country, constantly longing to get back to his paper in the city. Suddenly the news comes through that startling things are happenirg in the city. There has been a complete and unaccountable change in the city government-the city manager and the police commissioner have resigned. Betty and Bob, knowing that they were honest and capable men, realise that the forces

of corruption, which they have been valiantly fighting, have gained a victory. So they return to the city. There they meet Ellsworth Jameson, the new city manager, and his strange and restless daughter, Margaret. Betty and Bob sense in Margaret a lack of respect for her father, even a sense of shame. Being suspicious of Jameson to begin with, Betty and Bob feel that through his daughter they may learn the true circumstances of his becoming city manager, and just who his political bosses are. Betty attempts to win the friendship of Margaret, and finally persuades her to be sponsor in a playground campaign which "The Trumpet" is promoting. Slowly Betty wins the confidence of this bewildered, tormented girl. And one night, following a quarrel with her father, Margaret bursts into the Drake home, and tells the whole sordid truth of her father's career, of political intrigue, of her mother who died of a broken heart, of her father’s servility and terror, of her hate. Betty and Bob" is a thrilling story. It is broadcast each afternoon from Monday to Friday at 2 o'clock over the ZB Stations.