WHEN RADIO LIFTS

Radio Record, 17 June 1938, Page 10

WHEN RADIO LIFTS

BETWEEN the ordinary man -and woman of everyday life and the realm of the outside world, where men sweat and work, there is a thick curtein. To-day, everywhere in the world, radio is lifting the curtain. In the States, film camera-men take snapshots of sound of actual events and broadcast them from radio stations ever the air. They teke recordings of interviews with actors in the countless dramas of everyday life and build these into their stories of actual happenings. Through careful, detailed work, radio con build in the listener's imagination the texture of the life that is all about him. For me, last week, it lifted the curtain on an ordinery everyday, thrilling drama of the sea. USBAND and wife in any typical suburban home at breakfast. Wife's voice is heard singing in the kitchen. Husband rapidly skimming the morning newspaper. Wife enters. Wife: Any news in the paper ? Husband (running true to form): Nothing much. (Then, grudgingly.) Shipping is striking rough weather. The Monmouth is meeting a gale and will be late at Panama. I must get along to the office. Where’s iny hat? lash back to the Monmouth. The Monmouth’s bells sound, for three am. The wind howls in the rigging and the timbers creak, Two men are shouting on the bridge mate and a junior officer, Their yoicos ring out against the wild background of sound that makes the mind justantiy form a picture of a eargo steamer in the bitter Atlantic, riding the great hump-backed seus. First mate: Look out, there's a green one. Watch that steering, quarter. Don’t let her vawl. Junior offieer: It’s ay dark as the inside of a vow I hate not being able to see in this weather, PIS is how radio takes the ghost of you out of the cosy room in whieh you sit before the fire and plunges you, thousands of miles away, into the ship in the middle of the Atlantic, in the new NBS production, "Behind the News," graphic scascape that will be heard from Station 2YD on

June 26, and after from the main National stations. It tells a story that is almost as old as the sea itself, without heroics, and with a care for detail that gives au authentic ring to every word. "THE odd thing about it is that it is almost as commonplace a story of the lonely places of the sea as a traffic jam in the crowded places of the city. It happens time and time again. News of it appears briefly in a newspaper paragraph, But behind that paragraph lies a vivid story of courage and hardship that, like most stories of everyday ' courage, is dumb and wadvertised, Until some artist like Kipling seizes on it, grapples with it in words that are hard come by, and let’s you see the whole fine scene that lies too often always. hidden behind the eurtain. Tn this production, seript written by °Taffrail?’ and neted and produced by the NBS, radio Jifts the curtain. The view for all seamen---aud for all dJandsmen with a spark of life in them as well-is decidedly worth gettin. PINTIE, Monmouth is ploughing through the seas, at a leisurely gait. She is settling down to ride out the storm. From the bridge, the scene goes to the captain’s chart-room. Silence in there. An astonishing silence, shut away from the raging of the sea. There’s no sound in the chartroom except for the vibration of the ship's engines, maryellously reproduced, A sort of rapt expression came over the faee of the "4man-who- had- -been-to-sea," who was listening with me to the vvreview..