Of Thee They Sing

Author James Boyd (Drums, Marching On) decided the time had come for U. S. writers to fill the air full of the cause of democracy. Elmer Rice and Sherwood Anderson agreed. Together they shaped up an outfit called The Free Company, invited many another literary craftsman to join them in confecting a series of radio dramas designed to sing the various aspects of freedom in the U. S. This week, over a coast-to-coast hook-up (Sunday: 2-2:30 E. S. T.), The Free Company will get going. The Company's initial venture, characteristically entitled The People With Light Coming Out of Them, is some of the patriotic night-thoughts of William Saroyan, who examines the residents of one U. S. city block, reaches his characteristic conclusion that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and even better in the U. S.

Writers of The Free Company contribute their services gratis, with CBS underwriting all other costs, including the expense of short-waving the show to Latin America. The Bill of Rights provides a pattern for the series. Following Saroyan's lyric outbursts on illuminated Americans, Robert Sherwood will dwell on freedom of the press, Marc Connelly on freedom to teach, Orson Welles on freedom of assembly, Archibald MacLeish on freedom of speech, Paul Green on racial freedom. Filling out the broadcasts, now designed to run 13 weeks, will be scripts on freedom in general by Stephen Vincent Benet, Sherwood Anderson, George M. Cohan, Ernest Hemingway. Not entirely indiscriminate in its praise of the U. S., The Free Company will include in its broadcasts a bit of salutary criticism, with Founder Boyd offering as his stint the fight of a worker against capital's frauds and labor's finks. But of the average shortcomings of the average citizen no mention was scheduled on the show.

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