"WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 157, 26 June 1942, Page 6

"WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS"

Dramatic American Programme On United Nations Day

celebrated fittingly by both the NBS and CBS, one of the most striking programmes being We Hold These Truths, a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the American Bill of Rights, broadcast in the first instance in the United States on December 15, 1941, eight days after Pearl Harbour and 150 years to the day after the signing of the document. Reaching American listeners over a combined hook-up of the NBC, CBS, and Mutual networks, We Hold These Truths was heard by an _ audience claimed to be the " greatest ever." We Hold These Truths, which was secured from America by the CBS and broadcast in New Zealand over all Commercial and the main National stations, won for its author and director, Norman Corwin, the Peabody Award, which is to American broadcasting what the Academy Award is to Hollywood. The climax was an address by President Roosevelt, and the cast included Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Rudy Vallee, Bob Burns, Marjorie Main, and Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The compére was James. Stewart, now a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Just as he did in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart took listeners on a radio tour of the capital city of America, pointing out the significance of this and that monument, noting the many and varied inscriptions written up here and there on buildings, and then pausing to consider the background to the Bill of Rights, and the motives which prompted the citizens of the newly-constituted United States to set down on paper the liberties and rights upon which they intended to build. U NATIONS DAY was

Amendment by amendment the Bill was discussed, and to the average New Zealand listener it must have been a dramatic lesson in American history. Stewart’s peroration was typical of the high level which the programme reached. ". . . United proudly on a solemn day, knit more strongly than we were 150 years ago this day, can it not be progress if our Bill of Rights is stronger now than when it was conceived? Is not that what you would call wearing well? The incubation of invincibility? Is not our Bill of Rights more cherished now than ever, the blood more zealous to preserve it whole? Americans shall answer it, for they alone know the answer — the people of America from East, from West, from North, from South."