1951. The Nation's Nightmare

The Nation's Nightmare

The album cover illustrated by Andy Warhol

In late 1951, CBS Radio aired a six-part series entitled "The Nation's Nightmare," narrated by Bill Downs. Two parts, "The Narcotic Evil" and "Crime on the Waterfront," were released on record. The record is notable in part because the cover art was designed by Andy Warhol. Only about 3,000 copies were made.

Lou Dorfsman, the creative director at CBS, discussed Warhol's work:

"... radio was the big business of CBS then, television was the step-child growing up... and you could see that one was going to take over, there was no question about that, so we wanted to keep [radio] alive and vital... Andy Warhol had the visual impact that I wanted for such a subject. There's a gritty quality about the style... [Ben] Shahn brought the same thing to it; that's where I cast Andy in that role... I'd say... what about a guy shooting up; here's the layout I'm doing and I don't want to restrict you... I just explained to him what the program was all about... and left it to him... A big difference between an artist and a graphic designer... is that the artist works in quiet desperation all by himself and advertising is a big collaboration... Silk screening Monroe twelve different ways and different colour breakdowns is fine - it's a graphic design schtick... to me that's graphic design, I could do that. Would I have thought of doing twelve Monroes? I don't think so. I wouldn't have thought of it as a great accomplishment but they're very gorgeous women..."

In many sales descriptions the recording itself is described as bizarre, and "The Narcotic Evil" is compared to "Reefer Madness" and dismissed as a bit of a novelty. But the description (also published in Newsweek) on the back of the album cover gives a little more insight; it was a long, heavily researched documentary piece on crime in the United States with quality content, despite the use of phrases like "the animal screams of a marijuana-crazed addict." It was still very much a time in which television and radio had their own strengths, and the article stresses heavily the ability of radio to capture what television could not at the time.

Description:

(Reprinted from Newsweek, August 13, 1951) 

As far as CBS was concerned, the well-televised Kefauver crime-investigating committee had done a great job in exposing contemporary American crime. But exposure wasn't enough. The people had to act to clean up the slime, and they had to be needled constantly to act. To do the needling, CBS turned to radio. 

Last week, The Nation's Nightmare (CBS, Thursday, 8:30-9 p.m. EDT) dug into the muck of the bookie business. In the previous two weeks the program had outlined the dope problem and the pattern of casino and slot-machine operations in the United States. Still to come are three more shows—on the policy and numbers rackets, waterfront crime, and gambling in sports. Here was no rehash of old material. Irving Gitlin and his CBS documentary crew had gotten new information on the underworld. The New York Times called the series "a solid contribution in the interests of an informed public." Harriet Van Horne, radio and TV editor of The New York World-Telegram and Sun, wished in print that "television would shut down Thursday evenings at 8:30 so that everybody could turn on the radio." 

Gitlin had started his research by reading the entire fourteen volumes of the Kefauver testimony. He then dispatched telegrams to every CBS station asking for specific local crime information, help in lining up talkative stooges, live or on tape recordings, CBS reporter David Moore was dispatched with his own recorder on tour of Eastern crime beds. Gitlin talked at length with Virgil Peterson, operation director of the Chicago Crime Commission, and with Judge Morris Ploscowe, chairman of the Commission on Organized Crime of the American Bar Association. From them he learned which local police departments could be trusted for help and what local crime commissions were active. Then the cloak and dagger work set in. 

In Miami, Moore went to see Honest Frenchie Gips, a reformed gambler who had been warned by former associates not to talk. The reporter was steadily tailed in Miami by an unknown thug. But Gips did squeal, and with the help of $25 or $50 bribes to other "little fish," Gitlin, Moore, and crew began to hear things. From Dallas, Texas, came a remarkable police recording. A hidden microphone caught a conversation between Herbert Noble, a warring gangster, and Harold Shimley, a big-time mob man who had come to restore peace between Noble and Benny Binion, another Dallas darkling. Noble wanted revenge on the murderer of his wife, killed in a plot designed to catch him. Shimley promised, in a slow Texas drawl, that we can get that [man] killed in the penitentiary." In Los Angeles, a local radio station had recorded the pathetic words of the mother of a doped son, describing the way in which pushers and addicts kept at her boy. "For a while they thought he was dead," she said. "I let them believe it. It was better that way." In New York, Gitlin went after Tom Kelly, head of the Continental Press, a race-track wire service, for a statement. For days, Kelly desisted, until Gitlin finally agreed to an interview which Kelly himself could edit. 

Gitlin and Moore became used to the company of petty squealers and to vague threats of retribution. They became adept at meeting unknown men in crowds, sneaking off to lonesome bars where they picked up information on microphones, sometimes hidden in cars or under tables. Last week the crew was still recording and had about 40 hours of tape, which was being edited down to about eighteen minutes per program. Where the televised Kefauver hearings produced drama from the sight of mobsters, The Nation's Nightmare had vividness in the sound of actual voices, of the animal screams of a marijuana-crazed addict, of little children describing the process of "main-lining" (see Medicine), of the roll of dice on a crap table—all caught by a tape recorder. Where the Kefauver committee threw down the raw material for all to see, the Nation's Nightmare pulled it together into sound object lessons, which when narrated by the dry voice of Bill Downs had a shock value rarely heard on the air. 

The waterfront show, scheduled for broadcast on Aug. 16, promises to make radio history. The Nation's Nightmare may very well be the year's finest documentary, a sure indication that television has a long way to go to beat the graphic pictures which sound can paint.

The full record:

"The Narcotic Evil"

"Crime on the Waterfront"

1943. Red Justice

Red Justice

"Prisoners mine gold at Kolyma, the most notorious Gulag camp in extreme northeastern Siberia.
From the 1934 documentary film Kolyma. Courtesy of the Central Russian Film and Photo Archive" (source)

From Newsweek, June 7, 1943, pp. 56-57:

Red Justice
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
How Russians Handle Crime, Increased There Also by War
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
By BILL DOWNS

Even as in capitalist Britain and the United States, war has brought Russia special problems in crime. The following cable from Bill Downs, Newsweek's Moscow correspondent, describes Russian treatment of the problems.

I visited the People's Court in the Leningrad district of Moscow the other day. It is comparable to a police court or city court in the United States. A woman judge and two civilian representatives were sitting on the bench hearing cases not unlike those that could be heard in any city in the United States or Britain. One case involved the investigation of a gang of eleven boys charged with robbing evacuated flats in Moscow and selling the stolen goods to waitresses in the trades-school restaurant where they ate. Eighteen girls ranging in age from 18 to 25 also were in court under various charges. The boys ranged from 14 to 18 years of age.

The trial was very involved. The boys and girls had legal representatives who pleaded the cases with the same intensity and determination of any lawyer I have seen in a dozen American police courts. The boys were subject to sentences, upon conviction, of up to five years in one of the juvenile reform colonies. The girls were subject to minimum sentences of one year in a prison colony. The Soviet also has a system of conditional sentencing whereby a person convicted of a minor crime is sentenced to contribute up to 20 per cent of his salary each week until the sentence is served. In addition there are conditional sentences which enforce a curfew on the offender and require him to report to the local militia or remain at home when he is not working. Legal experts say the system has worked exceedingly well, particularly in a wartime when the government by confining the offender would have lost his useful war work.

Courts of War

There is another type of court in the Leningrad district of Moscow. It is a court which tries crimes classified as coming under martial law. With the German attack of 1941 a decree was promulgated reclassifying murder, attempted murder, highway robbery, resistance to representatives of the government, and refusal to join the labor front as crimes subject to martial law. On Dec. 26, 1941, another decree made it a martial crime for any worker in a war industry to quit his job without proper permission.

Judge Taissia Yachudina, a middle-aged, school-teacherish, kindly looking woman and head of the juvenile section of this People's Court said there was a more or less "natural" increase in crime in wartime. She explained that broken families, bombed-out évacués, and transferred war workers all created personal crises which brought about conditions conducive to crime and produced the small gang of boys who robbed the flats.

Also the general emergency condition in Russian life with the lack of the very necessities of life has prompted people to crime. However, Yachudina assured me there was no such thing as a crime wave in Moscow where the situation never was out of control.

Fighting Felons

The martial law section of the People's Court handles another special type of procedure instigated since the outbreak of the war. A prisoner convicted of a crime such as embezzlement, work stoppage, or any other lawbreaking decree which calls for a sentence of usually not more than three years is given the choice of going to the front with the army pending final decision as to whether he shall serve his sentence.

Vladimir Diakonoff, a 35-year-old assistant procurator of the U.S.S.R. in the Moscow region told me this system began when inmates of the Soviet's prison colonies asked for the privilege of shedding their blood for their country. Diakonoff, a dark-haired man, said: "After the German attack we began to receive letters from prisoners such as one saying: 'I had a disagreement and I am serving my sentence. However, that was an international affair between me and my government. Now the Germans are in our country. I plead to be released to help oust them. After that I will return to finish my sentence whereby I will settle the differences between myself and the authorities'."

The Camps

The Soviet has two types of camps, unlike the walled prisons of other countries. The first are "correction colonies"—camps for persons serving up to three years of a comparatively mild type of confinement during which prisoners are made to feel they can again become useful citizens after serving terms. These are mostly agricultural camps, brick factories, or such industries.

The second type, the "correction labor camps," are for the more serious criminals serving more than three years. The regime in these camps is more severe. They are often in remote sections of the country. However, the same system of rehabilitation is aimed at Many camps have theaters, libraries, hospitals, and industrial shops. Some even have newspapers, the latter an innovation introduced by Maxim Gorky. In both cases the prisoners are paid, and if they work hard and honestly they get additional privileges and food and clothing quarters, more freedom and more opportunities to see their families. It is not uncommon for a hard-working prisoner to be given a few days to live with his family as a reward for good conduct and work.

1943. American Films in Moscow During WWII

Hollywood in the USSR

Deanna Durbin

CBS' Moscow Rep Details How U.S. Pix Click in USSR

By BILL DOWNS

April 21, 1943

(Following comments on the current tastes of Moscow film-goers, transmitted in advance by cable to CBS' N.Y. headquarters, was to have been broadcast from Moscow as part of the network's 'World News Today' program Sunday matinee (18), but reception trouble intervened).

Moscow theater-goers like American films. Any kind. There's an old Lawrence Tibbett film whose American title I've forgotten, but in Russian called "Thrilled by You." And suburban theaters for the past two years have been showing Deanna Durban's 100 Men and a Girl. People get up at six o'clock in the morning and stand in front of box-offices to get a seat to see a Walt Disney reel.

These American films are the closest link people in the United States have with Russian people. I was talking to the old Soviet film commission the other day. He said his department had been buying American films, "but prices [are] so high we can't get [as] many as we want—we need money for the war." Then he said he thought it important that the two nations exchange films to let each see how the other is fighting and living in this was against the common enemy.

One of the best known women in Moscow today is "Lady Hamilton." She's a favorite topic of conversation...subway, street corners; anywhere you find a group of Russians. It took me several days to discover that when Moscow speaks about the the lady friend of Britain's famous Lord Nelson—"Lady Hamilton," it's a film. Last week the British-produced motion picture Lady Hamilton opened in Moscow theaters and immediately set record[s]. It's now playing in one theater and seems set for [a] permanent run. I have known dozens of Russians who have seen the picture three four times—and Russians never go to the theater alone. They go in groups.

It's a mystery to foreigners here why Russians take such an avid interest in last century doings [of] a man and woman they never saw or heard of before. But this, in many ways, is a mysterious country.

For example, no one ever figured out why a not-too-good Hollywood comedy, The Three Musketeers starring the Ritz Bros., has been running steadily somewhere in Moscow for over six months. When a Russian likes something, he really likes it, and he doesn't consider he knows anything about a motion picture or play unless he sees it three or four times. That tradition extends even to film and theater critics. They don't write anything about a production until they see it a half dozen times or more.

1953. An Interview with Eleanor Roosevelt: What is a Liberal?

An Interview with Eleanor Roosevelt

This segment of the "Longines Chronoscope" aired on August 26, 1953 at 11:00 PM.

Full transcript.

Excerpt:

BILL DOWNS: You have become known as the leader of what is loosely called the "liberal movement" in this country, or what used to be called the liberal movement in this country, and some people call them "do-gooders" and the rest of it—could you define a liberal for us in your own words?

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: ...I would feel that a liberal was a person who kept an open mind, was willing to meet new questions with new solutions, and felt that you could move forward. You didn't have to always look backward and be afraid to look forward.

DOWNS: And that's what this National Issues Committee that you're...

ROOSEVELT: The National Issues Committee is going to try to look at the issues, to put them in simple terms so that the people can understand them as objectively as possible and to feel that they can as the liberals do move forward.

EDWARD P. MORGAN: ...We've been told by our experts that we may have to live in this world of uncertainty and indecision short of war, in a Cold War for X number of years to come. What is your recipe for us to face up to it?

ROOSEVELT: Well, I think the study of our history. Certainly the people who settled this country didn't have any great security, and it's hard for the young to live in uncertainty; they love to be sure of the future. But I really think that we have the stamina, particularly if we look at what we came from, to live through uncertainty.