WRITERS STAY AFLOAT DESPITE MAN SHORTAGE

This is the fourth in a series of articles written by the former president of the Crimson Network about the Network's early days of broadcasting.

Somebody stood close to the microphone and emitted a long whistle which rose in pitch, until suddenly a fellow on the other side of the studio raised his arms and brought down a pillow smack on the top of a piano. An airplane had fallen out of the skies and had crashed.

A professional radio group would undoubtedly have produced this same effect in a slightly different manner. But then, the Harvard Radio Workshop has always been forced to work out its problems, in a depressingly home-made fashion.

Born one full year before the Crimson Network, the Workshop was started in February 1939, by Archibald MacLeish, then Curator of the Nieman Collection. Its purpose: to experiment in forms of radio broadcasting. Its staff: at least a dozen of the leading members of the Faculty, in addition to a large number of students.

Slow Start

The records show very little activity during the first eight months of the organization's existence. When it got under way during the following autumn, Archibald MacLeish had left, the Faculty members had become mere names on the Workshop stationery, and a nucleus of three undergraduates remained to carry out that high purpose of experimenting in forms of radio broadcasting.

But the three undergraduates knew that people don't go experimenting in a field until they've mastered the fundamentals of that field. For that reason they started to read all the books on radio drama that they could find, and began to write a series of plays on American civilization.

Short-wave Broadcasts

The plays, on such subjects as The Westward Movement and Immigration, were surprisingly well written, and the Workshopmen set about the task of producing them. Boston's short-wave station, WRUL, served as an adequate medium, even if practically no members of the student body were able to tune in.

The first play went over well enough. But the second, in which this writer was to make his debut in the role of Mayor LaGuardia, didn't quite get by the WRUL, censors: and the records show that the Radio Workshop, as such, never again performed on the Boston station.

While waiting for the Crimson Network to get started, the Workshop, its members politely sniffing at the upstart radio organization, did not idly mark time. Using the facilities of the Harvard Film Service, the Workshoppers put on two more non-experimental plays and had them recorded.

With the Network finally on the air, the Workshop began to produce a play every week not an easy task. They were low on actors (but the Dramatic Club helped out), and they were miserably low on script writers (and nobody helped out).

Aid from Faculty

With only three men turning out scripts, the Workshop heads turned to their "colleagues", the Faculty members. They asked the Faculty to build up interest in radio writing. In many cases the Faculty complied. Then they asked that classes in radio writing be set up. with experienced radio writers teaching them. Here they were flatly turned down.

So little did instructors know or care about radio writing that one student was given back a script in English A-1 on which had been written: "This does not say enough in its first paragraph. You answer the questions when and where but not who and what"--advice which can be found in any manual on newsstory writing, but which certainly cannot be applied to radio writing.

Network helps out

The Workshop staff began to crumple. After a while it consisted of only one man, Nathaniel P. Lauriat '43. Unable to afford the time needed to nurse the ailing organization, Lauriat turned it over to the Network's dramatics director. Harold C. Fleming '44. Harvard's two radio organizations were finally combined.

For one full year the "Net-Workshop", using the Network's cramped quarters, did its best to turn out a play a week. Some of the efforts met with student approval. For example: Fleming's commentary on undergraduate life last winter, "The Leaning Tower of Ivory"; the organization's only semi-experimental shows -- Louis Eno's and John Lawlor's "radio music dramas"; a couple of plays by Milton Van Dyke.

But once again Workshop personnel has dwindled to the point where continued activity is tremendously difficult. There is, however, much to look back on some experience, much fun, and a general existence which can be symbolized by the occasion on which Fleming directed a show, acted in it, and handled some of the sound effects, while holding a stand-less microphone before his cast