Breaking Walls James Scully

Perry Mason debuted over CBS airwaves on October 18th, 1943. On D-Day it was airing at 2:45PM from New York.

Mason was a crime-busting lawyer, famous in fiction for unmasking killers in court. Though it came in the guise of crime drama, the show was full-bore soap opera. At points, Jan Miner played Della Street, Mason’s secretary. Mandel Kramer played Police Lieutenant Tragg.

That was the voice of Joan Banks Lovejoy who played the scheming Arline Harrison Manning on Portia Faces Life. During World War II she was all over New York radio.

On Portia Faces Life, Lucille Wall starred as Portia Blake, a young woman lawyer who battled corruption in the small town of Parkerstown. The show debuted with a crisis on October 7th, 1940 and throughout its entire nearly eleven-year run, the crises never ended.

The show moved to CBS in April of 1944 and on D-Day it was airing weekdays at 2PM. The run on CBS would be relatively brief, as on October 3rd, 1944 Portia Faces Life would move back to NBC.

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That was the voice of Fran Carlon, who at times starred as Joyce Jordan, MD. Jordan started as a girl intern at Heights Hospital, slowly progressing to a doctor, facing the difficulty of being an intelligent woman in a man’s world.

Ken Roberts was the announcer. He’d been a radio staple since the mid-1920s, beginning first at WMCA in New York before becoming a CBS staff announcer. On D-Day, Ken was thirty-five years old. Here’s Ken talking with Chuck Schaden about those early days of Network radio. Himan Brown was often the director.

12:45PM brought a forty-minute CBS news update featuring Edward R. Murrow from London, Douglas Edwards recapping CBS coverage, and a Quincy Howe analysis.

Following this broadcast John Daly immediately signed on.

At 12:15PM Big Sister took to the air over CBS starring the just-heard Alice Frost as Ruth Evans.

Ruth centered her life around her sister Sue and their crippled brother Neddie. When Sue married reporter Jerry Miller, Ruth was able to give her full attention to the care of little Ned. Then, unexpectedly, Ruth fell in love with Neddie’s new doctor, John Wayne, played first by Martin Gabel and later by Staats Cotsworth.

It’s nearly twelve o’clock and time for me to get back to 485 Madison Avenue. At least I got about five hours sleep, that’s more than I can say for many of my colleagues. I just phoned in. The allies are pushing inland in France. A few thousand have been killed on the beaches of Normandy, but the German resistance has been much lighter than expected. The Luftwaffe are nowhere to be found. The Allied command is uneasy, we know it won’t be all quiet on the western front forever.

Kate Smith is signing on CBS. There’ll be news updates to follow.

At 11:45AM on D-Day, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories took to the air over CBS featuring Dan Seymour as both announcer and actor. Later this year Seymour would play Vichy French Captain Renard in To Have and Have Not.

Unlike most daytime serials, Aunt Jenny confined its tales to five-chapter stories which were completed each week. The cast shifted with the only continuing characters being Aunt Jenny and announcer Dan Seymour, who dropped in each day to hear her tale.