Early Sunday Afternoon Radio

The two hours between noon and 2:00 PM on Sunday were devoted largely to religious, cultural and public affairs programming, much of which was carried on a sustaining basis without commercial advertising. Among the more interesting shows:

12:00 noon: Invitation to Learning on WABC

The show grew out of the Great Books program of St. John’s University in Maryland. A panel of writers and intellectuals discussed a classic work each week. The series began airing in 1940 and continued for 24 years. Some critics hailed the show while some in the industry sneered at it as CBS’s “Hour of Silence.” Some intellectuals derided it as a middlebrow presentation of canned culture. This week the book under discussion was Dickens’ The Cloister and the Hearth and the panelists were historian and biographer Marvin Lowenthal, Times book critic Charles T. Poore and novelist Glenway Wescott .

12:00 noon: The Eternal Light on WEAF

The Jewish Theological Seminary produced the series. Passover began this week and the show was airing its perennial holiday drama "The Tender Grass."

1:00 PM: The Peoples Platform on WABC

This was a public affairs program This week the topic was the postwar housing crisis. The guests were Nathan Straus, a former head of the US Housing Authority, and economist Arthur Burns.

1:15 PM: Orson Welles on WJZ

According to Wikipedia, Welles had some difficulty finding a focus for this fifteen-minute talk show but later that year he sparked controversy when he joined in the outrage over the case of Isaac Woodard, an African American veteran who had just been discharged when he was pulled off a bus in South Carolina, allegedly for drinking, and beaten so severely by police that he was blinded. That great “Christian” state of South Carolina had refused to investigate the incident. When Welles joined the protest his movies were banned in some Southern localities where mobs gathered to hang him in effigy. Racial tensions were flaring in the South and in some urban northern areas. There were a number of particularly ugly, violent incidents in the Deep South perpetrated against returning African American veterans who seemed to have forgotten their place, assuming that wartime military service entitled them to citizen rights like voting.

1:30 PM: The University of Chicago Round Table on WEAF

Discussions with faculty members on public affairs. The topic this week was the responsibility of companies for worker's healthcare. The "free enterprise" crowd back then was opposed to employer provided healthcare as well as government provided healthcare, a position echoed by some libertarian conservatives today who appear to believe that healthcare should be a privilege reserved for the young and healthy and the wealthy.

1:30 PM: Sunday Serenade on WJZ

The big band sound of Sammy Kaye

Other shows of interest included:

12:00 noon: Fiorello LaGuardia on WJZ

Commentary from the former New York City mayor who had left office in January

12:00 noon: The Show Shop on WOR

Interviews and music from recording artists

12:00 noon: Missing Persons Alarms on WNYC.

A five-minute presentation of the New York City Missing Persons Bureau (WNYC)

12:30 PM: Transatlantic Call on WABC

News from the CBS London bureau

12:30 PM: The Stradivari Orchestra on WJZ

Conductor Paul Lavalle, tenor Nino Venture. Music: Voices of Spring (Strauss)/Ziguener (Coward)/I Know of Two Bright Eyes (Clutsam)/You Are Free(Jacobi)/Angels’ Serenade (de Bragga)/Habanera from Carmen (Bizet)/Since First I Met Thee (Rubinstein)/Love’s Dream After the Ball (Czibulka)/Hejre Kati (Rubay)

12:30 PM: Keeping Up With The Wiggleworths on WOR

Economics lessons presented as a family serial drama.

1:00 PM: Cliff Edwards on WJZ

Fifteen minute music program with Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, a big star of the 1920s and early 30s later known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket

1:00 PM: The Canary Pet Show on WOR