Against the Storm

"Against the Storm" was a radio daytime drama which had three separate runs over a 13-year period on NBC and ABC. It ran in the years 1939 to 1942, 1949 and finally in 1951-52. Created and written by Sandra Michael, the drama was the only daytime radio serial to ever win a Peabody Award (1942). However, by the end of that year it was off the air.

The program pivoted around the activities of Professor Jason McKinley Allen (Roger DeKoven, who starred in all three runs), his wife, daughters and friends. Allen, who lived in Hawthorne, Connecticut at Deep Pool Farm, taught classes at the fictional Harper University, which is not to be confused with the real Harpur College in Binghamton, New York.

With Allen an outspoken pacifist, war resistance was an underlying theme, and his position as a professor made it possible for Sandra Michael to incorporate literature and poetry readings into her storylines. In one memorable episode, a shortwave broadcast from England enabled real-life Poet Laureate John Masefield to speak in Allen's fictional classroom.

Axel Gruenberg directed Sandra Michael's scripts. The show's theme music was by Alfred Newman, taken from his score for "The Song of Bernadette".

"Variety" praised a 1941 episode about a girl refugee seeing the skyscrapers of Manhattan as "one of the most distinguished and stirring broadcasts in the history of commercial daytime radio."

The serial's title was taken from "King Lear": "... disconnect in watching Lear rage against the storm in a sun-drenched redwood... His rage against the storm and decline into madness are laced with lightning..."

Listen to

* [http://www.freeotrshows.com/otr2/Against_The_Storm.html OTR: "Against The Storm" (eight 1940-41 episodes)]