Bill (William N.) Robson was in love with radio and a great contributor. He never seemed to attain the stature of Norman Corwin but he was responsible for many program innovations. Even after radio drama was gone Bill was active in the medium running the Voice of America programs from a closet in the basement of some government building in Washington. Bill was a master of the mechanics of radio. The first time I worked with him was on an episode of Escape in 1947, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. He took the script apart almost letter by letter and put it back together with the greatest precision, paying special attention to the complicated sound. Although he was the starting director of The Man Called X which was obviously a commercial venture, more importantly he introduced high quality sustaining programs which added to the luster of CBS. In all fairness I have to note that working with Mr. Robson sometimes involved a certain ingenuity from the actor. He might spend so much time working with the first act of a show that the only work on the balance of the script came in the form of a dress rehearsal. Somehow, it always seemed to be all right on the night.

I wish I had had more contact with Norman Corwin. The only radio script I kept besides the one in which my entire role consisted of a wolf whistle on an Irene Rich commercial was On a Note of Triumph. That was quite an experience. It had a big cast and a big orchestra and it played twice on VE Day and it was all very exciting. Although my experience with Norm was limited he displayed a technique which I have never forgotten. We were on the air after what must have been a troubled dress rehearsal and although I didn't know it we were running very long. Out of the corner of my eye while I was at the microphone I saw Norman come out of the booth, walk quietly to where I was standing. He reached over and thumbed through the script I was using, pulled out a page, did the same thing with the other actor I was working with and walked back to the booth. Now that was a way to make cuts!

Jack Johnstone was a personal friend and that makes judgment of his abilities very difficult, especially since he called me for 85 appearances on The Man Called X and I don't know how many on the various versions of Hollywood Star Playhouse. Jack directed in the studio wearing a large set of headphones with his script on a music stand right in the middle of the action. From this vantage point he had a clear field for cuing the actors, sound, and music. This had more advantages for Jack than it had for the actors. First of all, he acted out every syllable of the script, not loud enough to be picked up by the microphone but disconcerting to the actors who heard muffled noises along with the dialogue. His proximity also presented a physical hazard. He once threw a wild cue and hit the actor right in the nose. Jack, in all the years I knew him, never displayed any particular knowledge of music but on his master script he would write five or six musical notes to indicate when he would cue actors or fade music. That he could locate those notes in the midst of a long music cue with full orchestra was a miracle to me and I never knew another director to do it

Jack was the only director for whom I acted inside a piano. He did a show called Somebody Knows! a sort of forerunner of TV's Unsolved Mysteries. The show opened with a very mysterioso reading of the show title and the effect was amplified by the sound of the vibrating strings. So was my head but it was a good effect. It is unfortunate that another Johnstone project which was really excellent never hit the air. There was a convention of airline pilots in Los Angeles and the guest of honor was Brigadier General James Stewart. Jimmy had obtained a tape of conversation between the LA tower and the pilot of a United Airlines flight that was in big mechanical trouble. They couldn't get their landing gear down. While the airplane was in the air they tried all sorts of things to no effect and the pilot finally brought the airplane in on a belly landing. It was the first time foam was used on a runway to prevent fire. Stewart played the pilot and I did the dispatcher. Jack converted the tape into a radio script and it was a beauty. Unfortunately it was played only in the hotel ballroom for the pilots. However, not all was lost. Years later I was called to do a Johnny Dollar. I played an airline dispatcher in Alaska and Johnny had to take over the flight of an airplane when the pilot was disabled. But there was trouble with the plane. Jack had stolen his own dialogue and plot.

Norman MacDonnell was a joy to work with. When I first met him he was a page at CBS. He later became an assistant director and then a director-producer. He was very quiet but he had a kind of innate courtesy and dignity. Other directors threw cues. Norm seemed to just let them roll off the ends of his fingers. He had great taste and a wonderful way of dealing with actors and writers. I have a hunch that it came in handy in working with John Meston who wrote almost all of the earlier Gunsmoke episodes. John was capable of some bizarre and occasionally very gritty subject matter. Norm guided actors and sound effects into a whole new channel of reality while maintaining dramatic tension. Characters on Gunsmoke sounded like people, not actors, because he took the time for them to do it. A character could not cross the street in two seconds. As a result of this treatment, a Gunsmoke script was about half the length of a Dragnet script which forced tempo in the other direction. Rehearsals were always easy and fun. There was a feeling of mutual trust among the personnel on MacDonnell shows and I think it contributed strongly to a sense of unity in the finished product. That feeling held true on Escape and Fort Laramie as well as Gunsmoke.

It seems that I have spent a large part of my life defending Jack Webb. I guess my defense wasn't really necessary. He did all right without it. The main bone of contention had to do with the accusation that everyone on Dragnet spoke in the same monotone and that is patently not true. Jack's Sergeant Friday spoke very rapidly and his voice range is quite limited. The tempo of Dragnet as a whole was very rapid which means that the actors didn't have the flexibility of choice they might have had with the same dialogue in another show. The only restriction Jack placed on his actors was that he didn't want them to project. He felt that brought a false note to what was almost always an intimate setting. If one listens closely, he will find a great deal of color and variety in the delivery of supporting actors and, in cases where it is called for, a lot of shouting. It was more of a problem in TV than in radio, but Jack's personal movement and speech was sometimes very mannered. What was for him quite natural didn't always fit other people at all. We sometimes differed on the reading of a line, a fact which he was quick to point out. Sometimes I won. Mostly I couldn't argue with his statement: I'm not saying this is the only way to read the line or even that it is the right way. What I'm saying is that it is the only way to read the line on this show! End of discussion.

I must include a director named George Allen. Over the period of a year or more he directed two long- forgotten fifteen minute shows at CBS. One was called It Couldn't Happen and the other was That's A Good Idea. Each contained several short episodes involving a wide variety of people and I liked working on it which I did almost every Saturday. It was a great place to discover and experiment with voice doubles and I played all sorts of characters. The general ambience of the show was a gentle shambles. Despite his own opinion, George was not a great director. One of the regulars on the show was Lew Merrill. Lew was basically a nice, kindly man but he could get very prickly at times. One day, after he had stopped after every sentence to give "directions" George made a strategic error. He tried to give Lew a line reading. Lew flatly refused to read it that way and the atmosphere heated up considerably. In an attempt to smooth things out George said, "Well directors have to make a living, too". To which Lew replied, "Yes, but they don't have to do it all at one time and in one place". At any rate, after some time George was promoted to directing The Whistler and I suddenly noticed that I wasn't getting any casting calls. I went up to his office to inquire about this strange condition and was greeted with one of the stupidest statements I ever heard. With all seriousness he said, "Well, you're just not the right type for The Whistler." You can't win 'em all!