BW - EP159—002: NYC In January 1956 With Johnny Dollar—Orson Welles Returns To A Changing New York

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers It’s a cold, rainy Sunday evening on January 8th, 1956. We’re heading south on Riverside Drive in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. On the air is NBC’s Monitor with a New World Today discussion about the differences in American life in the past twenty years. The United States is changing. Psychiatry is on the rise as the cold war rages onward. The internal Red Scare has subsided, but Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said this week that the U.S. won’t stop testing nuclear weapons, despite pleas from Pope Pius XII on Christmas Day. While nuclear fears are understandable, the U.S. government thinks the USSR’s presence in emerging nations means they can’t be trusted to follow suit and stop their own testing. In Ecuador today, five evangelical American Christian missionaries were speared to death by members of the Huaorani people after attempting to introduce Christianity to them. Meanwhile, Algeria is in the midst of a war for Independence between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front. It began in November of 1954 and by now it’s considered the world’s only active war of note. It’s a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare and the use of torture. Gunsmoke is far and away radio’s highest-rated dramatic show. It airs on CBS Sunday evenings with a Saturday afternoon repeat broadcast. The combined rating of 6.5 means somewhere between six and seven million people are still tuning in from their homes. When factoring in car and transistor radios, nearly ten million people are listening. CBS remains the home for the top-rated prime-time shows. Our Miss Brooks is pulling a rating of 4.3, and both Edgar Bergen and Two For The Money are pulling a 3.9. Meanwhile, on daytime radio, CBS has the twelve highest-rated programs. So where am I heading? I’m a roving CBS producer. I’ve worked on both coasts, including with Norman MacDonell on Gunsmoke in Hollywood, but last year programming directors Guy Della Choppa and Howard Barnes sent me back home to New York. I’m heading to the City Center at 131 West 55th street. I’m to cover a preview of Shakespeare’s King Lear starring Orson Welles. It features Viveca Lindfors and Geraldine Fitzgerald and begins at 8:30PM. I helped with Welles’ Omnibus production of Lear on CBS-TV in October 1953. I had drinks with him last week. He kept raving about two things: Carl Perkins’ new hit, “Blue Suede Shoes,” and friend Jack Johnstone’s production of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Johnstone directed Welles’ Almanac series from the west coast during World War II. I phoned Jack yesterday. He had this to say. Jack was sure to mention that this week’s upcoming Dollar story would take place in New York. If all goes well, Orson might be interested in returning to network radio in some capacity. Welles is once again a father. His daughter Beatrice was born last November 13th. He’s been looking for more stable projects and wants to get dinner after the performance. Lear doesn’t officially open until Thursday the 12th. The City Center was built as The Mecca Temple and opened in 1923. It’s part of a small section of galleries, apartments, and performing spaces, but development is possibly encroaching. Last April, The Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee, chaired by Robert Moses, was approved to designate the area just west in Lincoln Square for urban renewal. The residents, many of them Hispanic, have been protesting the decision, but Robert Moses usually gets his way.