The popular CBS Radio Workshop series is back with Volume 2! This seven hour set contains fourteen radio dramas, including children’s author, lyricist and playwright Edward Eager’s “The Toledo War”; an adaptation of the best-selling “The Little Prince”, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s most famous work which was autobiographical; John Cheever’s “The Enormous Radio”, which allows a family to hear what goes on in their neighbors’ residences; “A Matter of Logic”, in which writer-director Anthony Ellis and announcer William Conrad, known to radio audiences as Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, struggle to deal with a script; “The Stronger”, the famous 1889 play by August Strindberg which consists of two characters, only one of whom speaks.
The CBS Radio Workshop debuted at the end of the Age of Classic Radio, which was a time of innovation and experimentation, especially in terms of radio drama. The broadcasts consisted of a variety of formats, including a folk ballad enacted with music and rhyme, an interview with Shakespeare and an analysis of satire.
The man behind CBS Radio Workshop, which debuted in 1956, was William Froug. Inspired directly by the work of Norman Corwin on the original Columbia Workshop, Froug put all the pieces together to produce a program that took the best of what had come before it and succeeded even further in production, performance and storytelling.
Premiering with a two-part adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which was narrated by the author himself, with a score by famed film composer Bernard Hermann, Froug drew upon the works of many popular writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Frederick Pohl, Thomas Wolfe, James Thurber and Robert Heinlein.
CBS Radio Workshop not only continued to push boundaries in terms of utilizing story, music, voice and more in exciting, modern ways, it broke new ground in radio drama. In short, the CBS Radio Workshop set the standard for modern audio drama.
Blending sound effects with story, music with voice, and quality with substance, the episodes on CBS Radio Workshop, Volume 2 shows how boundless storytelling can be with audio drama.
#13 Living Portrait - William Zeckendorf, Tycoon
Friday, April 20, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#14 The Record Collectors
Friday, April 27, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#15 The Toledo War
Friday, May 4, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#16 The Enormous Radio
Friday, May 11, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#17 Lovers, Villians and Fools
Friday, May 18, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#18 The Little Prince
Friday, May 25, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#19 A Matter of Logic
Friday, June 1, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#20 Bring on the Angels
Friday, June 8, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#21 The Stronger
Friday, June 15, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#22 Another Point of View or Hamlet Revisited
Friday, June 22, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#23 The Eternal Joan
Friday, June 29, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#24 Portrait of Paris
Friday, July 6, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#25 The Case of the White Kitten
Friday, July 13, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
#26 Portrait of London
Friday, July 20, 1956 - 30:00 - CBS
