“Forgotten Holywood”- Radio Pioneer Leaves a Huge Legacy!

Posted on October 19, 2011 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here…

   Norman Corwin, who has died, was a giant during Radio’s Golden Age. His contributions spanned seventy years, and he worked with many of the greats of news and Hollywood. normancorwin

   Norman Corwin joined CBS in 1938 at the height of the radio network’s glory, and he worked with such pioneers as Edward R. Murrow and Howard K. Smith. He focused on writing, producing, and directing when not working behind the microphone.

   In 1941, Corwin wrote We Hold These Truths, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights which featured the voices of Lionel Barrymore, Walter Brennan and Orson Welles. This patriotic exercise was aired on all four radio networks just days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His nightly chronicles of life during World War II kept America focused on our collective effort to combat Axis aggression. He composed On a Note of Triumph, broadcast nationwide on May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), at the moment of our Allied victory in Europe.

   Corwin received numerous awards in media and the humanities, including two Peabody medals. During his career, he earned Emmy and Golden Globe awards. He also received an Oscar nod for his screenplay, Lust for Life, the biography of Vincent Van Gogh that starred Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn. In 1993, he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fameand  the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters Diamond Circle a year later. We Hold These Truths was added in 2005 to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

   He would inspire a wide range of scribes and actors including Rod Serling, Norman Lear, Gene Roddenberry, J. Michael Straczynski, and William Shatner.

   Norman Corwin was 101.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 2:29 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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