Thanks again to “Dan_UK” for finding the several “hidden” Welles radio programs which are not listed as part of the Lilly Library’s new “Orson on the Air” website, but are, for some mysterious reason, embedded in the website’s source code.
One of these is a 13-minute program called “We, the People”, which I had never heard of before.
We, The People, 1943.11.14Code: Select all
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/wowza4/welles/_definist_/mp4:324.high.mp4/324.high.m3u8
Dan lists it as having a broadcast date of November 14, 1943, but it had to have been recorded in 1947, since Welles mentions (and criticizes) the Truman Doctrine, which was not announced publicly until March, 1947. Welles also indicates that this is his first radio program in eight months, so this would appear to put this show at around June, 1947, right around the time between staging Macbeth in Salt Lake City and filming it at Republic Pictures, and about three months after finishing retakes on The Lady From Shanghai, that were ordered by Columbia Studio head Harry Cohn.
In the "We the People" program, Welles rails against the fact that he has been prohibited from having any kind of platform on radio, whether political or not, unless his show’s content is approved by sponsors. He also mentions that several sponsors have made generous offers to him concerning a new radio series, but only if he agrees to have all his statements approved by those sponsors...both on and off the air.
I don't know if this show was ever broadcast or not.
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/wowza4/ ... .high.m3u8***
WE THE PEOPLE (excerpts)-
"We the People" is not a majority of the people. It is, simply and absolutely, ALL of us. Our laws and law enforcement are what a majority permits or plans, but the laws and the leaders must answer to all.
Sometimes it's not a party but a man for whom the ballots are marked, and we've seen in a short time how much can happen, or how little, when it is a man we vote for and the man dies.
Today where stand we? Two brief and bitter years after the first dread fanfare of the atomic age, where are "We the People" headed? Backwards. Backwards into war and waste. We have set our course toward chaos. Numb with dispair, we have become the pilots of suicide.
The hour belonged to us, but we resigned it, scared and awestruck at the dimensions of our published and professed ideal. It's been said that when the ideal dies, so dies the civilization that was supported by it. But perhaps we're wrong. Perhaps our American ideal is not so perishable. It may be that this ideal of ours is only hibernating.
But there are no apparent signs of Spring. The "Winter of our discontent" now not only envelops cranks and minor sects of political dissent, but also the major opposition...the Roosevelt way, unhappily, was not a political party, but it was more than the great man who fathered it; it was a way of life for most of us who work for our living.
That way has now become a conspiracy!...we stand accused of every black brand of disloyalty, condemned as traiters...we are no longer spokesman because we cannot speak. Not one of us is small or casual enough to have escaped attention.
Our radio voices were not crying in the wilderness. America was not a wilderness; it was a planted garden. Radio commentary, like all forms of journalism, may tend towards irresponsibility, but we were on the side of something much bigger than ourselves, and so we didn't absolutely fail.
So, they kicked us, absolutely, off the air. "They" are not simply the networks. They are the old, old interests, the brutal aggregations of nearsighted wealth on which all radio depends. The spokesman, the concerned among whom I'm proud to number myself, are the radio commentators, because it is with radio, and this strange new radio silence, that tonight's meeting is dedicated.
There are still newspapers openly for sale in scattered communites whose editorialists still permit themselves the old-fashioned American luxury of criticism. Here and there, a suggestion that the Truman Doctrine may not after all have been handed down from some new Mt. Sainai is permitted to get into print.
But the preportionate relationship between newspapers, the popular liberal outlook, and the radio, has been most drammatcally pointed up in at least three elections. Franklin Roosevelt won his campaigns - all of them - on the radio. We who call ourselves Roosevelt democrats...we must depend, as he did, on the radio networks.
"Freedom of Assembly" assumes a place of meeting where people can gather. Airtime was our meeting hall, and we are now denied it's use...We simply wanted a continuity of the Roosevelt way, and we were instead offered this alternative: a killing censorship by Roosevelt's old enemies. Collaborate, or else...
Oh, it was all very pleasant and urbane, and the results would please the strictest standards of the toughest police state in the world. In this new and marvelous medium of speech, free speech has been politely and unobtrusively murdered. Very few of us gave in, I'm glad to say. We had nothing to lose but our microphones, and we lost them.
Your obediant servant, as a result of his efforts as a radio commentator, has been successfully muffled, now even in his old profession of radio actor. This indeed is the first occasion in eight months that he's been involved in anything resembling a broadcast. Not that he hasn't had some offers; the radio is always available if you promise never to use the radio to say anything.
A big, big manufacturer of breakfast food, for example, sent out a feeler that five shows a week at big money might be mine if I would deal exclusively with the "human interest" side of the news. The proposed contract covered not only airtime, but all my waking time. Every public utterance of mine was to be checked for content by a special board of advertising agency ideologists. In short, they were putting up a heap of dough to buy outright a man's total longterm opinion.
We are demobilized, and that's how the big boys plan to keep it...Me and my fellow commentators and spokesman were the debators, and the debate was most necessary. Now the debate is closed. It must be opened, and it is here that the issue reaches towards that enormous proposition: the mighty "We".
It is the people's business that the people's business be freely discussed. On the platform and press, and on the radio, the American and world dillema must be dealt with fairly and by all concerned. This new radio silence must be broken now. Something more than peace and plenty depend on it. The proposition itself depends on it. "We the People" depend on it. As always, the true outcome depends on We the People.
And now until next time, the next time our American radio airs free again, I remain as always obediantly yours.
