I should be working right now -- organizing my multimedia training workshop where the emphasis is how to do great radio while juggling cameras and web text with your third and fourth arms -- but I had to stop and pay tribute to Himan Brown. He's the legendary radio drama producer who died this week. He would have turned 100 next month. Indeed, radio just died some more.
Himan Brown is a hero to me because he played a direct role in my formative years. That is my college radio years, at UGA in Athens, where I created, scripted, cast, acted, engineered and directed my own radio theater series for WUOG.
I first met Hi at the Midwest Radio Theater Workshop, convened by KOPN in Columbia Missouri. It was an annual festival in the 80's and 90's that kept alive, mostly on public radio, the art of radio drama. I was a finalist in a 1981 script writing contest (for my "West Wing Chronicles" -- a polemic piece about revolutionaries in El Salvador of which I was especially proud of the buzzing fly sound effects set within the reverb of a musty jail cell). I also got to meet my radio hero Tom Lopez and work with two of the geniuses behind The Firesign Theater, but that's another post (perhaps when the last nail is buried in the radio coffin?).
I remember Hi being the crusty New York impresario that he was -- railing at Chicago-based Yuri Rasovsky, more out of jealousy than indignation, I believe, because Rasovsky had landed $3 million in funding for his "Star Wars" radio series, a super-slick stereo extravaganza. I remember his rant in front of the assembly, "Funding? Funding? I don't know about funding! We would write scripts and sell them to sponsors and make radio dramas! We didn't need funding!"
Later, back at UGA, I wrote to Himan Brown and invited him to visit my little "Theater of Sound" ensemble and give us some tips. I even enlisted the endorsement of the Grady School of Journalism faculty who agreed they would roll out the carpet for the creator of such classics as Bulldog Drummond and Inner Sanctum.
Remember the famous creaking door? That was Himan Brown's signature SFX:
Inner sanctum clip
To my amazement, Mr. Brown wrote back. A very courteous letter on small stationery written on a manual typewriter (not an electric). He said he would be happy to come down and would I be able to put in a good word for him with the people at the Peabody Awards?
A ha! Perfect! I was well acquainted with the Peabody collection and the people at UGA's J-School who ran the awards program. (I did my masters degree study on the collection. "A Longitudinal Analysis of Radio Public Service 1940-1982." In fact, I was the first researcher ever to get his hands on the actual materials. But I digress.) So, I set up some meetings and the rest is history.
That history includes from that point forward a close relationship between Himan Brown and the University of Georgia. I don't recall if he got a lifetime Peabody award, but he endowed the school with new radio labs. He also established an archive of his work there. Plus he returned to Athens over the years to produce live radio plays for the public and the public radio station.
Radio, Hi always said, was the most powerful medium. The reason is simple: it requires the listener's imagination to complete it. And there's no deeper, personal connection than that.
Though I migrated into news, I remained inspired by radio drama's power. Even after many years, I recall another direct quote from Himan Brown. It was advice he often gave journalists as well as dramatists, "Just tell me a story."
See some pictures of Hi from the "golden age"
Nice backgrounder on Hi's Inner Sanctum series
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