Lately there's been lots of talk about radio with Orson Welles a subject of interest. Despite the lack of availability of Welles's scripts, there is still a lot of excellent material available. As I and (someone who's name I forgot) mentioned Welles kept on revising up until air-time, so even his scripts would not always represent his intended ideas. Beginning with the late 1930s a lot of books were published dealing with how to write, direct - even how to compose music for radio. Additionally, there are several good collections of scripts. If enough people want a very brief bibliography, I'll upload one. What has all this got to do with cinema studies? Depends on whether you want to use it or not. Like tv, radio was virtually always under the restraint of time. Radio writintypically evinces desire to be act, economic, creating the grpression with the least amount of meansnt of means. Unlike tv or film however, the images conjured by radio were dependent on the listener's vision. Radio could quickly take you through a sound collage that, if tied to visuals, would appear clumsy. That touches on what I feel is the best reason to study radio: for the sensitivity to sound. I would posit that there is not a single film created today that does not have an enormous attention put on the soundtrack - and I don't mean music, but just the mixing of sounds. I believe this was radio's contribution to film - the idea that careful attention to sounds - even ones that appear natural - can contribute just as lighting, cinematography, etc. to the final film product. Of course this is not to say that there was "no" attention prior to the popularization of radio. Elisabeth Weis discusses a some of Hitchcock's British films in her book "The Silent Scream." Given radio's nascent stage, I doubt that it influenced him at that time. Several authors of radio-writing manuals say that the proper incorporation of sounds into a radio script is an art; that one must pay special attention in order to use sound effectively. Go back and look at CITIZEN KANE and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS once again and you'll see that Welles really treated sound very differently and with much more sensitivity than anyone else at the time (again I point you to that simulataneous 6-person conversation at the end of the Amberson party - each voice was dubbed separately, then mixed to achieve total control of sound). Even Dieterle's DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (originally called ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY - 1941) makes occasional use of expressionistic sound, though that film is heavily influenced by Welles. Radio music also had a noticeable influence on film, basically by utilizing shorter span of music (aha! but that's going to be the last chapter of my dissertation! ;-) ) Bob Kosovsky Student, PhD Program in Music Librarian Graduate Center Music Division City University of New York The New York Public Library [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] -------My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions-------