James Earl Ray Interview: Assassin of Civil Rights and Anti-War Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 -- April 23, 1998) was an American criminal convicted of the assassination of civil rights and anti-war activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ray was convicted on March 10, 1969, after entering a guilty plea to forgo a jury trial. Had he been found guilty by jury trial, he would have been eligible for the death penalty. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and tried unsuccessfully to gain a new trial. He died in prison of hepatitis C.
Martin Luther King was shot and killed by a sniper on April 4, 1968, while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
Ray fled north to Toronto, Ontario, where he hid out for a month and acquired a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd. On June 8, 1968, a little more than two months after King's death, Ray was captured at London's Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on the false Canadian passport. At check-in the ticket agent noticed the name on his passport -- Sneyd -- was on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police watchlist. At the airport, officials noticed that Ray carried another passport under a second name. The UK quickly extradited Ray to Tennessee, where he was charged with King's murder. He confessed to the crime on March 10, 1969, and after pleading guilty was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Three days later, he recanted his confession. Ray had entered a guilty plea on the advice of his attorney, Percy Foreman, in order to avoid a potential trial conviction, which could have led to a sentence of death. The method of execution in Tennessee at the time would have been electrocution.
Ray fired Foreman as his attorney and derisively called him Percy Fourflusher, thereafter. Ray began claiming that a man he had met in Montreal, who used the alias Raul, had been deeply involved. Instead he asserted that he did not personally shoot Dr. King, but may have been, partially responsible without knowing it, hinting at a conspiracy. Ray sold this version of King's assassination and his own flight to William Bradford Huie. Huie investigated this story and discovered Ray sometimes lied. Ray told Huie he purposely left the rifle with his fingerprints on it in plain sight because he wanted to become a famous criminal. Ray was convinced he was so smart that he would not be caught. He believed Governor of Alabama George Wallace would soon be elected President, and Ray would only be confined for a short time. He spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a trial.
On June 11, 1977, Ray made his second appearance on the FBI Most Wanted Fugitives list, this time as the 351st entry. He and six other convicts had escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, on June 10, 1977. They were recaptured on June 13, three days later, and returned to prison. A year was added to Ray's previous sentence, to total 100 years.
Ray had hired Jack Kershaw as his attorney, who promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the shooting, which was said to have been the result of a conspiracy of the otherwise unidentified man named Raul. Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and convinced the committee to run ballistics tests — which ultimately proved inconclusive — that would show that Ray had not fired the fatal shot. Kershaw claimed that the escape was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail. Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. The magazine said that the test results showed that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone. Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview and hired conspiracy theorist Mark Lane to provide him with legal representation.
The Groucho Marx Show: American Television Quiz Show - Door / Food Episodes
Contestant teams usually consisted of one male and one female, most selected from the studio audience. More Groucho:
Occasionally, famous or otherwise interesting figures were invited to play (e.g., a Korean-American contestant who was a veteran and had been a prisoner of war during the Korean War).
After his signature introduction of Here he is: the one, the only... by Fenneman and finished by a thunderous GROUCHO! from the audience, Marx would be introduced to the music of Hooray for Captain Spaulding, his signature song. After which, Groucho would be introduced to the contestants and engage in humorous conversation for a lengthy period of time where Groucho both improvised his responses and employed prepared lines written by the show's writers using preshow interviews.
Some show tension revolved around whether a contestant would say the secret word, a common word revealed to the audience at the show's outset. If a contestant said the word, a toy duck resembling Groucho with a mustache and eyeglasses, and with a cigar in its bill, descended from the ceiling to bring a $100 bill. A cartoon of a duck with a cigar was also used in the opening title sequence. In one episode, Groucho's brother Harpo came down instead of the duck, and in another a model came down in a birdcage with the money. Marx sometimes slyly directed conversation to encourage the secret word to come up. The duck was also occasionally replaced with a wooden Indian figure.
After the contestants' introduction and interview, the actual game began. Couples chose from a list of 20 available categories before the show, then tried to answer a series of questions within that category. From 1947--1956, couples were asked four questions.
1947--1953 -- Each couple began with $20, wagering part or all of their bankroll for each question.
1953--1954 -- Each couple now began with $0, but selected values from $10 to $100 (in $10 increments). A correct answer added the value of the question to their bankroll, while an incorrect answer did nothing. According to co-director Robert Dwan in his book As Long As They're Laughing, Guedel changed the scoring format because too many couples were betting, and losing, most or all of their money.
1954--1956 -- The format was slightly altered to start each couple with $100. Incorrect answers now cut their bankroll to that point in half.
1956--1959 -- Two couples (reduced from three) answered questions until they either gave two consecutive incorrect responses or answered four consecutive questions correctly for a prize of $1,000.
1959--1961 -- For the last two seasons, couples picked four questions worth $100, $200, or $300 each, potentially winning up to $1,200. Winning at least $500 qualified the team to go for the jackpot question.
From 1947--1956, if the couple ended with $25 or less, Marx asked an elementary consolation question for a total of $25 (later $100) which did not count toward the scores. The questions were made easy in hopes that nobody would answer incorrectly, and included such examples as Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?, When did the War of 1812 start?, How long do you cook a three-minute egg?, and What color is an orange? The question about Grant's Tomb became such a staple of the show that both Marx and Fenneman were shocked when one man got the question wrong by answering No one. As the contestant then pointed out, Grant's Tomb is an above ground mausoleum.
In all formats, one of the two players on the team could keep their half of the winnings while the other risked their half. In this case, all amounts being played for were divided in half.
1947--1956 -- The highest-scoring couple was given one final question for the jackpot, which began at $1,000 and increased by $500 each week until won (reaching $6,000 at least once, in 1952). In the event of a tie, the tied couples wrote their answers on paper and all couples who answered correctly split the jackpot.
1956--1957 -- For a brief period following the format change, couples who won the front game could wager half on another question worth $2,000.
1957--1959 -- Winning couples now faced a wheel with numbers from 1--10, selecting one number for $10,000. If the number selected was spun, a correct answer to the jackpot question augmented the team's total winnings to that amount; otherwise, the question was worth a total of $2,000.
1959--1961 -- For the last two seasons, the format was slightly altered to eliminate the risk and add a second number for $5,000.
NYSTV - The Secret Nation of Baal and Magic on the Midnight Ride - Multi - Language
This is the Midnight Ride with David Carrico on NYSTV with Jon Pounders talking about the true occult origins of the US.
See whoever controls the narrative has spin control over the status quo. They decide what's moral or immoral. What's sane and insane. What's possible and not possible. And they especially decide the heros and the villians.
You won't find this information on TV or in your history books. Very informative as always. Check out NYSTV, relevant talk. Not distractions like the rest of the media.
I'm still trying to get these out as fast as possible, and there are a few errors on the subtitles towards the end in some languages. Sorry about that and I'll try to fix them as soon as I can.
Afrikaans
አማርኛ
العربية
Azərbaycanca / آذربايجان
Boarisch
Беларуская
Български
বাংলা
བོད་ཡིག / Bod skad
Bosanski
Català
Нохчийн
Sinugboanong Binisaya
ᏣᎳᎩ (supposed to be Burmese but it doesn't show...)
Corsu
Nehiyaw
Česky
словѣньскъ / slověnĭskŭ
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Esperanto
Español
Eesti
Euskara
فارسی
Suomi
Võro
Français
Frysk
Gàidhlig
Galego
Avañe'ẽ
ગુજરાતી
هَوُسَ
Hawai`i
עברית
हिन्दी
Hrvatski
Krèyol ayisyen
Magyar
Հայերեն
Bahasa Indonesia
Igbo
Ido
Íslenska
Italiano
日本語
Basa Jawa
ქართული
Қазақша
ភាសាខ្មែរ
ಕನ್ನಡ
한국어
Kurdî / كوردی
Коми
Kırgızca / Кыргызча
Latina
Lëtzebuergesch
ລາວ / Pha xa lao
Lazuri / ლაზური
Lietuvių
Latviešu
Malagasy
官話/官话
Māori
Македонски
മലയാളം
Монгол
Moldovenească
मराठी
Bahasa Melayu
bil-Malti
Myanmasa
नेपाली
Nederlands
Norsk (bokmål / riksmål)
Diné bizaad
Chi-Chewa
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ / पंजाबी / پنجابي
Norfuk
Polski
پښتو
Português
Romani / रोमानी
Kirundi
Română
Русский
संस्कृतम्
Sicilianu
सिनधि
Srpskohrvatski / Српскохрватски
සිංහල
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
Gagana Samoa
chiShona
Soomaaliga
Shqip
Српски
Sesotho
Basa Sunda
Svenska
Kiswahili
தமிழ்
తెలుగు
Тоҷикӣ
ไทย / Phasa Thai
Tagalog
Lea Faka-Tonga
Türkçe
Reo Mā`ohi
Українська
اردو
Ўзбек
Việtnam
Хальмг
isiXhosa
ייִדיש
Yorùbá
中文
isiZulu
中文(台灣)
tokipona
Words at War: The Ship / From the Land of the Silent People / Prisoner of the Japs
The Yugoslav Front, also known as the National Liberation War, was a complex conflict that took place during World War II (1941--1945) in occupied Yugoslavia. The war began after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was overrun by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and client regimes. Primarily it was a guerilla liberation war fought by the communist-led, republican Yugoslav Partisans against the Axis occupying forces and their locally-established puppet regimes, such as the Independent State of Croatia and the Nedić government. At the same time, it was a civil war between the Yugoslav Partisans and anti-communist paramilitaries, such as the Serbian royalist Chetniks and the Slovene Home Guard, whose level of collaboration and coordination with the Axis occupiers varied.
Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the occupation. However, after 1941, the Chetniks adopted a policy of collaboration. They collaborated extensively and systematically with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation, and thereon also with German and Ustaše forces.[13][14] The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in winter and spring of 1943. Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, gaining recognition from the Western Allies and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav state. With support in logistics, equipment, training, and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade Offensive, the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of border regions of Italy and Austria.
The human cost of the war was enormous. The number of war victims is still in dispute, but is generally agreed to have been at least one million. Non-combat victims included the majority of the country's Jewish population, many of whom perished in concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Jasenovac, Banjica) run by the client regimes. In addition, the Croatian Ustaše regime committed genocide against local Serbs and Roma, the Chetniks pursued ethnic cleansing against the Muslim and Croat population, and Italian occupation authorities against Slovenes. German troops also carried out mass executions of civilians in retaliation for resistance activity (Kragujevac massacre). Finally, during and after the final stages of the war, Yugoslav authorities and Partisan troops carried out reprisals, including the deportation of the Danube Swabian population, forced marches and executions of thousands of captured collaborators and civilians fleeing their advance (Bleiburg massacre), and atrocities against the Italian population in Istria (Foibe killings).
Our Miss Brooks: Conklin the Bachelor / Christmas Gift Mix-up / Writes About a Hobo / Hobbies
Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television (1952--56), it became one of the medium's earliest hits. In 1956, the sitcom was adapted for big screen in the film of the same name.
Connie (Constance) Brooks (Eve Arden), an English teacher at fictional Madison High School.
Osgood Conklin (Gale Gordon), blustery, gruff, crooked and unsympathetic Madison High principal, a near-constant pain to his faculty and students. (Conklin was played by Joseph Forte in the show's first episode; Gordon succeeded him for the rest of the series' run.) Occasionally Conklin would rig competitions at the school--such as that for prom queen--so that his daughter Harriet would win.
Walter Denton (Richard Crenna, billed at the time as Dick Crenna), a Madison High student, well-intentioned and clumsy, with a nasally high, cracking voice, often driving Miss Brooks (his self-professed favorite teacher) to school in a broken-down jalopy. Miss Brooks' references to her own usually-in-the-shop car became one of the show's running gags.
Philip Boynton (Jeff Chandler on radio, billed sometimes under his birth name Ira Grossel); Robert Rockwell on both radio and television), Madison High biology teacher, the shy and often clueless object of Miss Brooks' affections.
Margaret Davis (Jane Morgan), Miss Brooks' absentminded landlady, whose two trademarks are a cat named Minerva, and a penchant for whipping up exotic and often inedible breakfasts.
Harriet Conklin (Gloria McMillan), Madison High student and daughter of principal Conklin. A sometime love interest for Walter Denton, Harriet was honest and guileless with none of her father's malevolence and dishonesty.
Stretch (Fabian) Snodgrass (Leonard Smith), dull-witted Madison High athletic star and Walter's best friend.
Daisy Enright (Mary Jane Croft), Madison High English teacher, and a scheming professional and romantic rival to Miss Brooks.
Jacques Monet (Gerald Mohr), a French teacher.
Our Miss Brooks was a hit on radio from the outset; within eight months of its launch as a regular series, the show landed several honors, including four for Eve Arden, who won polls in four individual publications of the time. Arden had actually been the third choice to play the title role. Harry Ackerman, West Coast director of programming, wanted Shirley Booth for the part, but as he told historian Gerald Nachman many years later, he realized Booth was too focused on the underpaid downside of public school teaching at the time to have fun with the role.
Lucille Ball was believed to have been the next choice, but she was already committed to My Favorite Husband and didn't audition. Chairman Bill Paley, who was friendly with Arden, persuaded her to audition for the part. With a slightly rewritten audition script--Osgood Conklin, for example, was originally written as a school board president but was now written as the incoming new Madison principal--Arden agreed to give the newly-revamped show a try.
Produced by Larry Berns and written by director Al Lewis, Our Miss Brooks premiered on July 19, 1948. According to radio critic John Crosby, her lines were very feline in dialogue scenes with principal Conklin and would-be boyfriend Boynton, with sharp, witty comebacks. The interplay between the cast--blustery Conklin, nebbishy Denton, accommodating Harriet, absentminded Mrs. Davis, clueless Boynton, scheming Miss Enright--also received positive reviews.
Arden won a radio listeners' poll by Radio Mirror magazine as the top ranking comedienne of 1948-49, receiving her award at the end of an Our Miss Brooks broadcast that March. I'm certainly going to try in the coming months to merit the honor you've bestowed upon me, because I understand that if I win this two years in a row, I get to keep Mr. Boynton, she joked. But she was also a hit with the critics; a winter 1949 poll of newspaper and magazine radio editors taken by Motion Picture Daily named her the year's best radio comedienne.
For its entire radio life, the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, promoting Palmolive soap, Lustre Creme shampoo and Toni hair care products. The radio series continued until 1957, a year after its television life ended.
Suspense: Sorry, Wrong Number - West Coast / Banquo's Chair / Five Canaries in the Room
Banquo is a character in William Shakespeare's 1606 play Macbeth. In the play, he is at first an ally to Macbeth (both are generals in the King's army) and they are together when they meet the Three Witches. After prophesying that Macbeth will become king, the witches tell Banquo that he will not be king himself, but that his descendants will be. Later, Macbeth in his lust for power sees Banquo as a threat and has him murdered; Banquo's son, Fleance, escapes. Banquo's ghost returns in a later scene, causing Macbeth to react with alarm during a public feast.
Shakespeare borrowed the character of Banquo from Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of Britain published by Raphael Holinshed in 1587. In Chronicles Banquo is an accomplice to Macbeth in the murder of the king, rather than a loyal subject of the king who is seen as an enemy by Macbeth. Shakespeare may have changed this aspect of his character in order to please King James, who was thought at the time to be a descendant of the real Banquo. Critics often interpret Banquo's role in the play as being a foil to Macbeth, resisting evil where Macbeth embraces it. Sometimes, however, his motives are unclear, and some critics question his purity. He does nothing to accuse Macbeth of murdering the king, even though he has reason to believe Macbeth is responsible.
Banquo's role, especially in the banquet ghost scene, has been subject to a variety of interpretations and mediums. Shakespeare's text states: Enter Ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth's place.[28] Several television versions have altered this slightly, having Banquo appear suddenly in the chair, rather than walking onstage and into it. Special effects and camera tricks also allow producers to make the ghost disappear and reappear, highlighting the fact that only Macbeth can see it.[29]
Stage directors, unaided by post-production effects and camera tricks, have used other methods to depict the ghost. In the late 19th century, elaborate productions of the play staged by Henry Irving employed a wide variety of approaches for this task. In 1877 a green silhouette was used to create a ghostlike image; ten years later a trick chair was used to allow an actor to appear in the middle of the scene, and then again from the midst of the audience. In 1895 a shaft of blue light served to indicate the presence of Banquo's spirit. In 1933 a Russian director named Theodore Komisarjevsky staged a modern retelling of the play (Banquo and Macbeth were told of their future through palmistry); he used Macbeth's shadow as the ghost.[30]
Film adaptations have approached Banquo's character in a variety of ways. In 1936 Orson Welles helped produce an African-American cast of the play, including Canada Lee in the role of Banquo.[30] Akira Kurosawa's 1957 adaptation Throne of Blood makes the character into Capitan Miki (played by Minoru Chiaki), slain by Macbeth's equivalent (Captain Washizu) when his wife explains that she is with child. News of Miki's death does not reach Washizu until after he has seen the ghost in the banquet scene. In Roman Polanski's 1971 adaptation, Banquo is played by acclaimed stage actor Martin Shaw, in a style reminiscent of earlier stage performances.[31] Polanski's version also emphasises Banquo's objection to Macbeth's ascendency by showing him remaining silent as the other thanes around him hail Macbeth as king.[32] in the 1990 telling of Macbeth in a New York Mafia crime family setting, Men of Respect the character of Banquo is named Bankie Como played by American actor Dennis Farina.
Words at War: Faith of Our Fighters: The Bid Was Four Hearts / The Rainbow / Can Do
Wanda Wasilewska (21 January 1905 -- 29 July 1964) was a Polish and Soviet novelist and communist political activist who played an important role in the creation of a Polish division of the Soviet Red Army during World War II and the formation of the People's Republic of Poland.
She had fled the German attack on Warsaw in September 1939 and taken up residence in Soviet-occupied Lviv and eventually the Soviet Union.
Wasilewska was born on 25 January 1905 in Kraków, Austria-Hungary. Her father was Leon Wasilewski, a Polish Socialist Party politician. She studied philosophy at the Warsaw University and Polish language and Polish literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. After she graduated she remained at her alma mater and passed her doctorate exams in 1927. While studying she started cooperation with the Union of Socialist Youth and Society of Workers' Universities.
Soon after she finished her studies she started working as a school teacher and a journalist for various left-wing newspapers, among them Naprzód, Robotnik, Dziennik Popularny and Oblicze Dnia. She also became the chairperson of the Płomyk and Płomyczek monthlies for children, where she introduced Soviet propaganda. Although she was often criticised for her radical left-wing opinions, she joined the PPS instead of the communist party, where she was soon promoted to a member of the main party council. In her early political career she supported an alliance of all the left-wing parties with the communists against the ruling Sanacja. She was also an active supporter of many strikes in Poland. During one of the demonstrations in Kraków she met Marian Bogatko, whom she later married.
After the Polish defeat in the Polish Defensive War of 1939 and the partition of Poland into Soviet and German occupied zones, she moved to Lviv where she automatically became a Soviet citizen. The Gestapo — acting at the request of the NKVD — helped to transfer her daughter and her furniture from Warsaw to Lviv.[1] She became a member of various communist organisations uniting local Polish and Ukrainian communists. She was also a journalist for the Czerwony Sztandar (Red Banner), a Soviet propaganda newspaper printed in Polish language. In early 1940, Joseph Stalin awarded her a seat in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She also became the chair of the Dramatic Theatre in Lviv. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union Wasilewska fled advancing Nazi army and joined the Red Army as a war correspondent and a functionary of the Political Commandment (Politupravleniye) of the Red Army. She held the military rank of a colonel.[2] She was also one of the founders (together with Jerzy Putrament) of the Nowe Widnokręgi monthly.
After consultations with Stalin (and most probably by his direct order) she became the head of the newly formed Związek Patriotów Polskich (Society of Polish Patriots), a Soviet-created provisional government that was to control Poland. In 1944 she also became the deputy chief of the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), another provisional government which was also sponsored by the Soviet Union and opposing the Polish government in exile as the legal government of Poland. She favoured the incorporation of Poland as a republic of the Soviet Union.
After most of Poland was occupied by the Red Army she decided to stay in the Soviet Union. She also became involved in a relationship with Ukrainian playwright Oleksandr Korniychuk, with whom she moved to Kiev.
Although both her Russian and Ukrainian language abilities were very limited, she remained a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union for several decades. She did not return to public life, however. She died on July 29, 1964 in Kiev. She is buried in the Baikove Cemetery.
She was triple recipient of the Stalin prize for literature (1943, 1946, 1952). During the life of Joseph Stalin she was considered a classic writer of Soviet literature and her works were included into the school curriculum throughout the Soviet Union, but she was almost completely forgotten after his death.
Governors, Senators, Diplomats, Jurists, Vice President of the United States (1950s Interviews)
Interviewees:
John Sherman Cooper, politician, jurist, and diplomat from the U.S. state of Kentucky
Herbert O'Conor, a Democrat, was the 51st Governor of Maryland in the United States from 1939 to 1947. He also served in the United States Senate, representing Maryland from 1947 to 1953.
Homer S. Ferguson, United States Senator from Michigan
Hubert Humphrey, served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota from 1945 to 1948. Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but lost to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.
Irving Ives, American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from New York from 1947 to 1959. He was previously a member of the New York State Assembly for sixteen years, serving as Minority Leader (1935), Speaker (1936), and Majority Leader (1937--1946). A moderate Republican, he was known as a specialist in labor and civil rights legislation.
John Sparkman, American politician from the U.S. state of Alabama. A Southern Democrat, Sparkman served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from 1937 until 1979. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice President as Adlai Stevenson's running mate in the 1952 U.S. presidential election.
Joseph McCarthy, American politician
Joseph Raymond Joe McCarthy (November 14, 1908 -- May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.
The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character and/or patriotism of political opponents.
Born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, McCarthy earned a law degree at Marquette University in 1935 and was elected as a circuit judge in 1939, the youngest in state history. At age 33, McCarthy volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and served during World War II. He successfully ran for the United States Senate in 1946, defeating Robert M. La Follette, Jr. After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring who were employed in the State Department. McCarthy was never able to prove his sensational charge.
In succeeding years, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, Voice of America, and the United States Army. He also used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. With the highly publicized Army--McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity faded. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The official cause of death was acute hepatitis; it is widely accepted that this was caused, or at least exacerbated, by alcoholism.
Dragnet: Big Cab / Big Slip / Big Try / Big Little Mother
Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show takes its name from an actual police term, a dragnet, meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
Scripts tackled a number of topics, ranging from the thrilling (murders, missing persons and armed robbery) to the mundane (check fraud and shoplifting), yet Dragnet made them all interesting due to fast-moving plots and behind-the-scenes realism. In The Garbage Chute (December 15, 1949), they even had a locked room mystery.
Though rather tame by modern standards, Dragnet—especially on the radio—handled controversial subjects such as sex crimes and drug addiction with unprecedented and even startling realism. In one such example, Dragnet broke one of the unspoken (and still rarely broached) taboos of popular entertainment in the episode .22 Rifle for Christmas which aired December 22, 1949 and was repeated at Christmastime for the next three years. The episode followed the search for two young boys, Stanley Johnstone and Stevie Morheim, only to discover Stevie had been accidentally killed while playing with a rifle that belonged to Stanley—who'd be receiving it as a Christmas present but opened the box early; Stanley finally told Friday that Stevie was running while holding the rifle when he tripped and fell, causing the gun to discharge, fatally wounding Morheim. NBC received thousands of complaint letters, including a formal protest by the National Rifle Association. Webb forwarded many of the letters to police chief Parker who promised ten more shows illustrating the folly of giving rifles to children. (Dunning, 211)
Another episode dealt with high school girls who, rather than finding Hollywood stardom, fall in with fraudulent talent scouts and end up in pornography and prostitution. Both this episode and .22 Rifle for Christmas were adapted for television, with very few script changes, when Dragnet moved to that medium. Another episode, The Big Trio (July 3, 1952), detailed three cases in one episode, including reckless and dangerous (in this case, fatal) driving by unlicensed juveniles. With regard to drugs, Webb's strident anti-drug statements, continued into the TV run, would be derided as camp by later audiences; yet his character also showed genuine concern and sympathy for addicts as victims, especially in the case of juveniles.
The tone was usually serious, but there were moments of comic relief: Romero was something of a hypochondriac and often seemed henpecked; Frank Smith continually complained about his brother-in-law Armand; though Friday dated, he usually dodged women who tried to set him up with marriage-minded dates.
Due in part to Webb's fondness for radio drama, Dragnet persisted on radio until 1957 (the last two seasons were repeats) as one of the last old time radio shows to give way to television's increasing popularity. In fact, the TV show would prove to be effectively a visual version of the radio show, as the style was virtually the same [including the scripts, as the majority of them were adapted from radio]. The TV show could be listened to without watching it, with no loss of understanding of the storyline.
Political Figures, Lawyers, Politicians, Journalists, Social Activists (1950s Interviews)
Interviewees:
Harold Himmel Velde, United States political figure
Hugh D. Scott, Jr., American lawyer and politician
John V. Beamer, U.S. Representative from Indiana
Orland K. Armstrong, Republican United States Representative, journalist, and social activist
Edward L.R. Elson, Presbyterian minister and Chaplain of the United States Senate
Richard Russell, Jr., American politician from Georgia
Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. (November 2, 1897 -- January 21, 1971) was an American politician from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he briefly served as Governor of Georgia (1931--33) before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 until his death in 1971. As a Senator, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 1952 Democratic National Convention, coming in second to Adlai Stevenson.
Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate. He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.
Russell competed in the 1952 Democratic presidential primary, but was shut-out of serious consideration by northern Democratic leaders who saw his support for segregation as untenable outside of the Jim Crow South. When Lyndon Johnson arrived in the Senate, he sought guidance from knowledgeable senate aide Bobby Baker, who advised that all senators were equal but Russell was the most equal—meaning the most powerful. Johnson assiduously cultivated Russell through all of their joint Senate years and beyond. Russell's support for first-term senator Lyndon Johnson paved the way for Johnson to become Senate Majority Leader. Russell often dined at Johnson's house during their Senate days. However, their 20-year friendship came to an end during Johnson's presidency, in a fight over the Chief Justice nomination of Johnson's friend and Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas in 1968.
While a prime mentor of Johnson, Russell and the then-president Johnson also disagreed over civil rights. Russell, a segregationist, had repeatedly blocked and defeated civil rights legislation via use of the filibuster and had co-authored the Southern Manifesto in opposition to civil rights. He had not supported the States Rights' Democratic Party of Strom Thurmond in 1948, but he opposed civil rights laws as unconstitutional and unwise. (Unlike Theodore Bilbo, Cotton Ed Smith and James Eastland, who had reputations as ruthless, tough-talking, heavy-handed race baiters, he never justified hatred or acts of violence to defend segregation. But he strongly defended white supremacy and apparently did not question it or ever apologize for his segregationist views, votes and speeches.) Russell was key, for decades, in blocking meaningful civil rights legislation that might have protected African-Americans from lynching, disenfranchisement, and disparate treatment under the law. After Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Russell (along with more than a dozen other southern Senators, including Herman Talmadge and Russell Long) boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
A prominent supporter of a strong national defense, Russell became in the 1950s the most knowledgeable and powerful congressional leader in this area. He used his powers as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1951 to 1969 and then as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee as an institutional base to add defense installations and jobs for Georgia. He was dubious about the Vietnam War, privately warning President Johnson repeatedly against deeper involvement.