Norman Corwin
Several times in his life, Norman Corwin had the nation hanging on his every word. As the producer-writer-director of some of CBS radio's most memorable programs during World War II, Corwin had unfettered freedom to present his interpretations of the fall of Nazi Germany and the role of America's British allies. Well into his 90s, this erudite Renaissance man is still teaching at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A documentary on his life, A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, won an Academy Award. Writer Allison Engel spoke with Corwin from his home in Los Angeles.
Your father lived to be 110. Your brother, now 101, retired when he was 98. You are nearly 96 and you've been a visiting professor for a quarter of a century. You've been "visiting" for a long time.
Yes, I have. It's like "The Man Who Came to Dinner."
What is it that keeps the Corwin men so vital?
I think it's good genes. I am hopeful that I will escape the usual ravages of rapidly fading memory.
There have been recent stirrings of interest in sound plays. Are you considering creating new radio dramas?
There has been interest expressed by one of the new commercial radio stations, XM radio. But my stuff is being done, even without my knowledge. I got an e-mail from a man expressing his enthusiasm after (recently) hearing a program I broadcast 64 years ago, called “We Hold These Truths." It was on the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. The broadcast went on all four networks, for the first time in American radio history.
In the bicentennial year, you wrote a play, “Together Tonight: Hamilton, Jefferson, Burr.” If you wrote something similar today, who would you choose and why?
If I did it with people I admire, it would have to have Jimmy Carter. It's too bad Henry Thoreau is dead, but it would be someone of Thoreauvian philosophy. In our midst, I would think Steve Lopez, the L.A. Times columnist. And Geoffrey Cowan [University Professor and holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership]. I think he's a great man.
2005 was the Norman Corwin year at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. What did that mean to you?
There are a lot of wonderful writers. And they are great enough for me not to preen over what I consider a local success. It's not modesty. I have a good streak of vanity like everybody else. I think that's healthy: You can't go around with a negative charge. Yet I would say 80 percent of what I have written and published I would like to have back to rewrite. [pause] That's too high. I'll say 60 percent.
What writers do you particularly enjoy these days?
The marvelous philippics that are being written against the current administration. Among those would be works from E. L. Doctorow and John Le Carré and Sen. Byrd of West Virginia. Even Garrison Keiller made a blast.
For those of us unfamiliar with ancient Greece, what are "philippics"?
Demosthenes, at the time of ancient Athens, was very angry at his fellow Athenian intellectuals and politicians because they weren't paying enough heed to the menace of Philip of Macedonia. He warned Athens against appeasing Philip, and those warnings were powerful orations, angry and explosive, and they were called 'philippics.' And of course his warnings were ignored and that was the death of Athens.
As a longtime friend of Edward R. Murrow, what was your reaction to the current film, “Good Night and Good Luck?”
I loved it. I had the honor of sitting on a panel after the showing at the Los Angeles County Museum beside [University Professor] Geoff Cowan and George Clooney and the other writer of the film. It showed Murrow at the hour of his greatest single contribution to American civil liberties. It was the key block in bringing down [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy.
Norman Corwin still teaches regularly in the USC Annenberg School for Communication. For a 2005 interview by journalism professor Bryce Nelson, go to http://ascweb.usc.edu/asc.php?pageID=573.