Norman Corwin's One World Flight: The Lost Journal of Radio's Greatest Writer - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826434118 ISBN 13: 9780826434111

Publisher: Continuum, 2009

Synopsis

In 1946, legendary broadcaster Norman Corwin traveled to 17 countries to document the postwar world for the radio series, One World Flight. Here, recently discovered and now published for the first time, is his personal journal of that historic trip.
A towering figure in broadcast history, Norman Corwin has long been known as "Radio's Poet Laureate." In the late 1930s, a creative revolution was underway in the medium. What some people still called "the wireless" was maturing from a novelty into an art form. After a ten-year career as a newspaperman, columnist, and critic-which began at the age of 17-Corwin joined the ranks of aural provocateurs such as Archibald MacLeish, Arch Oboler, and Orson Welles.

Toward the end of 1944, with an Allied victory in Europe apparently assured, CBS asked Corwin to prepare a program celebrating the anticipated event. On May 8, 1945, just after the collapse of Germany, CBS aired On a Note of Triumph, an epic aural mosaic. This program is considered to be the climax of the luminous period in radio history when writing of high merit, produced with consummate skill was nurtured and protected from commercial interference.

After the broadcast, phone calls and letters of praise flooded the network, including a letter from Carl Sandburg calling On a Note of Triumph "one of the all the all-time great American poems." Corwin went on to win the first Wendell Willkie Award-a trip around the world sponsored by Freedom House and the Common Council for American Unity. Corwin accepted the Willkie Award on the condition it would be a working trip. He wanted the opportunity to record people in various countries and develop a series of documentaries on the state of the postwar world. CBS offered full support. The thirteen-part series, One World Flight, aired in 1947.

Norman Corwin's One World Flight provides the reader with an unrivaled perspective. During Corwin's travels to 17 countries in 1946, he kept a journal of his personal thoughts and observations. It was put in a drawer where it remained for decades. More than sixty years after the trip, media historian Michael Keith asked Corwin-who is now in his nineties-if he had kept a log or journal of his One World travels. He had, and his analysis of international communications still rings true today.

About this title

Book Description:

"The multitude who admires Norman Corwin as the iconic figure of radio can only be thrilled that the journal of his global expedition has been rescued. He is a writer of conscience whose work reflects an abiding interest in the lives of all peoples and their quest for a durable peace."

About the Author:

Michael C. Keith is a member of the Communications Department at Boston College. He is the author of over 20 books on the electronic media, including Talking Radio, Voices in the Purple Haze, Signals in the Air, Sounds in the Dark, the classic textbook The Radio Station, and a critically acclaimed memoir The Next Better Place. Keith is the recipient of several awards, including the Stanton Fellow Award.


Mary Ann Watson is a professor of Electronic Media &Film Studies at Eastern Michigan University. She earned her Ph.D. in Communications at The University of Michigan in 1983. Watson is the author of The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years, published by Oxford University Press in 1990, which has become a widely referenced work in the literature of media history. She is also the author of Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience in the 20th Century, 2nd edition, published by Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0826434118
• ISBN 13: 9780826434111
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Keith Michael C., Watson Mary Ann