Editing Radio drama (section)

=== 1880–1930: early years ===
Radio drama traces its roots back to the 1880s: "In 1881 French engineer Clement Ader had filed a patent for 'improvements of Telephone Equipment in Theatres{{' "}} ([[Théâtrophone]]).<ref>Tim Crook: ''Radio drama. Theory and practice''. London; New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 15.</ref> English-language radio drama seems to have started in the United States.<ref>Historian Alan Beck reports in [http://www.savoyhill.co.uk/invisibleplay ''The Invisible Play: B.B.C. Radio Drama 1922–1928''] that [http://www.savoyhill.co.uk/invisibleplay/body/2a2.html "The first English experiment in radio drama"] took place October 17, 1922, in Great Britain. But U.S. stations were broadcasting drama prior to this. See following.</ref> ''A Rural Line on Education'', a brief sketch specifically written for radio, aired on [[Pittsburgh]]'s [[KDKA (AM)|KDKA]] in 1921, according to historian Bill Jaker.<ref>Bill Jaker, March 27, 1998, email post to the [http://lists.oldradio.net/otrdigest ''OTR Digest'']</ref> Newspaper accounts of the era report on a number of other drama experiments by America's commercial radio stations: [[KYW (AM)|KYW]] broadcast a season of complete operas from Chicago starting in November 1921.<ref>"Opera carries 1,500 miles by radio phones", November 12, 1921 ''Chicago Tribune;'' "Radi-Opera" November 17, 1921 ''Chicago Tribune''</ref> In February 1922, entire [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] musical comedies with the original casts aired from [[WABC (AM)|WJZ]]'s Newark studios.<ref>"Two plays by wireless", February 4, 1922, ''New York Times;'' "Million to hear musical comedy", February 12, 1922 ''Los Angeles Times;'' "You can hear entire show by radio phone", February 19, 1922 ''Mansfield (OH) News.''</ref> Actors [[Grace George]] and [[Herbert Hayes]] performed an entire play from a San Francisco station in the summer of 1922.<ref>July 1922 wire service story which appeared in the July 19, 1922 ''Lima (OH) News'' (under headline: "Acting by radio is a weird sensation") and the July 23, 1922 ''Charleston (SC) Daily Mail'' (under headline: "Presenting a play over the wireless in newest wrinkle")</ref>

An important turning point in radio drama came when [[Schenectady, New York]]'s [[WGY (AM)|WGY]], after a successful tryout on 3 August 1922, began weekly studio broadcasts of full-length stage plays in September 1922,<ref>''New York Times'' and ''Hartford (CT) Courant'' radio listings, August 3, 1922; ''New York Times'' radio listings, September 11, 19, and 25, 1922; "Will Give Dramatic Productions By Radio" September 2, 1922 ''The (Fort Wayne, IN) News-Sentinel;'' Local Radio Fans to Hear "Officer 666" November 3, 1922 ''Fayetteville (AR) Democrat;'' "Madame X" From WGY Thursday Night, November 21, 1922 ''Fayetteville (AR) Democrat.''</ref> using music, sound effects and a regular troupe of actors, The WGY Players. Aware of this series, the director of [[Cincinnati]]'s [[WLW]] began regularly broadcasting one-acts (as well as excerpts from longer works) in November.<ref name="Lichty">Lawrence Lichty, "Radio Drama: The Early Years" in Lawrence Lichty and Malachi Topping (eds): ''American Broadcasting'' (New York, Hastings House, 1975).</ref> The success of these projects led to imitators at other stations. By early 1923, original dramatic pieces written specially for radio were airing on stations in Cincinnati (''When Love Wakens'' by WLW's Fred Smith),<ref name="Lichty" /><ref>April 2, 1923 ''Hamilton (OH) Evening Journal'' radio listing.</ref> Philadelphia (''The Secret Wave'' by Clyde A. Criswell)<ref>"Writing radio plays is latest", May 27, 1923 ''Oakland (CA) Tribune.''</ref> and Los Angeles (''At Home'' over [[KHJ (AM)|KHJ]]).<ref>April 22, 1923 ''Los Angeles Times'' radio listings; "KHJ Travels in Pretense Land", April 23, 1923 ''Los Angeles Times.''</ref> That same year, WLW (in May) and WGY (in September) sponsored scripting contests, inviting listeners to create original plays to be performed by those stations' dramatic troupes.<ref name="Lichty" /><ref>"Contest for Prize Radio Drama Opens September 1", August 19, 1923 ''Washington Post;'' "G. E. Company Has Prize for Radio Drama", September 7, 1923 ''Waukesha (WI) Daily Freeman''.</ref>

Listings in ''[[The New York Times]]''<ref>Compare [https://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&daterange=period&query=&srchst=p&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&mon1=09&day1=18&year1=1851&mon2=12&day2=31&year2=1980 The New York Times – Archive 1851–1980]</ref> and other sources for May 1923 reveal at least 20 dramatic offerings were scheduled (including one-acts, excerpts from longer dramas, complete three- and four-act plays, operettas and a [[Molière]] adaptation), either as in-studio productions or by remote broadcast from local theatres and opera houses. An early British drama broadcast was of [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' on [[2LO]] on 25 July 1923.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britishdrama.org.uk/shakespeare.html|title=SHAKESPEARE|website=www.britishdrama.org.uk}}</ref>

Serious study of American radio drama of the 1920s and early 1930s is, at best, very limited. Unsung pioneers of the art include: WLW's Fred Smith; [[Freeman Gosden]] and [[Charles Correll]] (who popularised the dramatic [[Serial (radio and television)|serial]]); ''[[The Eveready Hour]]'' creative team (which began with one-act plays but was soon experimenting with hour-long combinations of drama and music on its weekly variety program); the various acting troupes at stations like WLW, WGY, [[KGO (AM)|KGO]] and a number of others, frequently run by women like Helen Schuster Martin and Wilda Wilson Church; early network continuity writers like Henry Fisk Carlton, William Ford Manley and Don Clark; producers and directors like Clarence Menser and Gerald Stopp; and a long list of others who were credited at the time with any number of innovations but who are largely forgotten or undiscussed today. [[Elizabeth McLeod]]'s 2005 book on Gosden and Correll's early work<ref>Elizabeth McLeod, ''The Original Amos 'n Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial.'' McFarland & Co, 2005.</ref> is a major exception, as is Richard J. Hand's 2006 study of horror radio, which examines some programs from the late 1920s and early 1930s.<ref>Richard J. Hand, ''Terror on the Air!: Horror Radio in America, 1931–1952'' McFarland, 2006.</ref>

Another notable early radio drama, one of the first specially written for the medium in the UK, was ''A Comedy of Danger'' by [[Richard Hughes (writer)|Richard Hughes]], broadcast by the [[BBC]] on 15 January 1924, about a group of people trapped in a Welsh coal mine.<ref>[http://www.savoyhill.co.uk/invisibleplay/body/4a2.html Richard Hughes, 'A Comedy of Danger'] in '' 'The Invisible Play': B.B.C. Radio Drama 1922–1928'' by Alan Beck.</ref> One of the earliest and most influential French radio plays was the prize-winning ''Marémoto'' ('Seaquake'), by Gabriel Germinet and Pierre Cusy, which presents a realistic account of a sinking ship before revealing that the characters are actually actors rehearsing for a broadcast. Translated and broadcast in Germany and England by 1925, the play was originally scheduled by [[Radio-Paris]] to air on 23 October 1924, but was instead banned from French radio until 1937 because the government feared that the dramatic [[SOS]] messages would be mistaken for genuine distress signals.<ref>"Maremoto, a radio play (1924)", ''Réseaux,'' 1994, Volume 2, Numéro 2 p. 251–265</ref>

In 1951, American writer and producer [[Arch Oboler]] suggested that [[Wyllis Cooper]]'s ''[[Lights Out (radio show)|Lights Out]]'' (1934–47) was the first true radio drama to make use of the unique qualities of radio:
{{blockquote|Radio drama (as distinguished from theatre plays boiled down to kilocycle size) began at midnight, in the middle thirties, on one of the upper floors of Chicago's Merchandise Mart. The pappy was a rotund writer by the name of Wyllis Cooper.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/windy.html|title=''Theatre Arts'' (July 1951):"Windy Kilocycles" by Arch Oboler|website=richsamuels.com}}</ref>}}

Though the series is often remembered solely for its gruesome stories and sound effects, Cooper's scripts for ''Lights Out'' were later recognised as well written and offered innovations seldom heard in early radio dramas, including multiple first-person narrators, [[Stream of consciousness writing|stream of consciousness]] [[monologue]]s and scripts that contrasted a duplicitous character's [[internal monologue]] and his spoken words.

The question of who was the first to write stream-of-consciousness drama for radio is a difficult one to answer. By 1930, [[Tyrone Guthrie]] had written plays for the BBC like ''Matrimonial News'' (which consists entirely of the thoughts of a shopgirl awaiting a blind date) and ''The Flowers Are Not for You to Pick'' (which takes place inside the mind of a drowning man). After they were published in 1931, Guthrie's plays aired on the American networks. Around the same time, Guthrie himself also worked for the [[Canadian National Railway radio network]], producing plays written by [[Merrill Denison]] that used similar techniques. A 1940 article in ''Variety'' credited a 1932 [[NBC]] play, ''Drink Deep'' by Don Johnson, as the first stream-of-consciousness play written for American radio. The climax of Lawrence Holcomb's 1931 NBC play ''Skyscraper'' also uses a variation of the technique (so that the listener can hear the final thoughts and relived memories of a man falling to his death from the title building).

There were probably earlier examples of stream-of-consciousness drama on the radio. For example, in December 1924, actor [[Paul Robeson]], then appearing in a revival of [[Eugene O'Neill]]'s ''[[The Emperor Jones]]'', performed a scene from the play over New York's [[WINS (AM)|WGBS]] to critical acclaim. Some of the many storytellers and monologuists on early 1920s American radio might be able to claim even earlier dates.