George Orwell: Cold War radio warrior?

[First published in Orwell Today edited by Richard Lance Keeble in 2012, Abramis Academic Publishing, in Section Two ‘Orwell and the media’ as Chapter 6 ‘George Orwell: Cold War radio warrior? pages 102 to 122. This is based on a paper presented to a conference for CRASHH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at Cambridge University in 2011.]

Abstract

Through a detailed analysis of the first US radio production of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, Tim Crook argues that it managed to express the author’s independent position and intellectual integrity. It was thus ‘probably a more potent weapon of cultural public relations against the vagaries of oppressive, free-market liberal capitalism, fascism, Stalinism and imperialism than any CIA-funded or covertly-backed Cold War cultural enterprise.’

Introduction
It is not widely known that the first ever radio dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four was on the US radio network, NBC. In 1949, an un-sponsored, 56-minute adaptation of the novel, starring the British actor David Niven in the role of Winston Smith, was produced for the programme strand NBC University Theater.

This followed Orwell’s own dramatisation of Animal Farm for the BBC in 1947. To what extent was his radio fiction used in Cold War ‘white’ propaganda? Can it be argued that Orwell was a witting radio warrior for the West during the Cold War? Using textual and contextual analysis of the first electronic dramatised representation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, this chapter argues that it succeeded in expressing the author’s independent ideological position and intellectual integrity. Indeed, through its cultural aestheticism, the play was probably a more potent weapon of cultural public relations against the vagaries of oppressive, free-market liberal capitalism, fascism, Stalinism and imperialism than any CIA-funded or covertly backed Cold War cultural enterprise.

The chapter argues that a further radio adaptation broadcast by NBC in a radio drama strand, sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation in 1953, appeared to remain true to the political philosophy of Orwell’s original novel, though the introduction by a news reporter performing the role of narrator expressed a clear view of the position of the novel in relation to the West’s Cold War communist enemies.

NBC production

The dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty Four by the NBC University Theater (American spelling) was broadcast from 6.30 to 7.30 pm. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, 27 August 1949. It is possible that the announcer was either Don Rickles (Grams 2000: 344) or Don Stanley (Dunning 1998: 482). Grams cites the series producer as Wade Arnold, and Dunning cites the series director as Andrew C. Love (ibid). Apart from the participation of David Niven in the role of Winston Smith, the surviving audio archive distributed on American Old Time Radio discloses no other creative credits (Grams 2000: 344-348). Peter Davison speculates that ‘Julia sounds like Mary Morris’ (Davison 2006: 162). More recent research by J. David Goldin confirms Milton Wayne as adaptor, Don Stanley as announcer, Albert Harris as musical composer and conductor, Andrew C. Love as director, Ramsay Hill as narrator, and a cast including women actors Queenie Leonard and Constance Cavendish, and the male actors Raymond Lawrence, George Pembroke, Tom Dillon, Dan O’Herlihy, Alec Harford, and Eric Snowden – all reputable British and American performers with Hollywood film, television, and radio credits during the middle of the 20th Century (Goldin 2011: 9).

Davison goes on to observe that this radio version of the novel ‘is not mentioned in John Rodden’s excellent and comprehensive The Politics of Literary Reputation (1989)’ (ibid). The NBC production was a significant cultural event associated with the novel during the lifetime of the author and does not appear to have been the focus of any considerable attention by Orwellian biographers, critics and academic researchers.

Shaw, in his study of the struggle to claim the Orwell legend during the Cold War, focuses on radio, film and television productions after the novelist’s death and how the British and American governments used Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four ‘as part of their anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda campaigns’ (Shaw 2003: 144). This chapter argues that Orwell’s first electronic dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four by NBC’s radio network production in Hollywood retained the author’s textual and ideological objectives and integrity, and resisted the Cold War propagandist and ideological morphing and appropriation present in what Shaw rightly describes as the feverish contestation of Orwell’s legacy and image after his death in 1950.

In the midst of NATO government manipulation of Orwell’s texts by distribution, translation and adaptation, NBC broadcast a further 51-minute dramatisation for the sponsored radio drama series The United States Steel Hour on 26 April 1953 starring Richard Widmark in the role of Winston Smith. Close textual analysis indicates this further radio adaptation remained faithful to the ideological spirit of Orwell’s original novel though it showed more inventiveness in finding original perspectives to the narrative and dramatic structure. The changes had more to do with creative dramaturgy than political propagandising about ‘reds under the beds’ and Soviet global expansionism.

As Davison observes, the first radio production of Nineteen Eighty-Four was aired just two and a half months after the publication of the book’s hardback edition in New York on 13 June 1949 (Davison 2006:162). Such is the positive scale of radio archiving in the USA, we are fortunate to be able to hear and study the production in the present day – and, indeed, it is regularly re-broadcast online and on contemporary old time radio shows. This is also true of the United States Steel Hour production in 1953. Sound archiving of the earliest BBC radio dramatisations of George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-Four has not been archived and only the scripts survive. The modern BBC regrets not having preserved any archive of George Orwell’s voice and no electronic recording of his speech appears to have survived anywhere in the world:

Unfortunately, none of Orwell’s broadcasts survive in the BBC’s archives. Wartime shortages and a lack of storage space, together with the fragile nature of the shellac discs used to make recordings, meant that development of the fledgling archive was very much on hold during the war years, although a collection of some 2,000 discs had been established by 1939 (BBC Online Archive/Orwell/7422).

The BBC also retained in its archives the great sense of regret in losing Orwell from its employment as his head of department LF Rushbrook Williams wrote a memo praising his character, moral dignity, artistic taste and declaring that he would be re-employed without reservation (Rushbrook Williams 20/11/1943 BBC Online ibid).

BBC dramatisation of Animal Farm

In April 1947, Orwell gave permission for a Dutch version of Animal Farm to be broadcast … Heppenstall produced a second adaptation of Animal Farm after Orwell’s death … broadcast on 3 March 1952. The reason for a new adaptation, by Peter Duval Smith, Heppenstall explained to Ian Willison, was ‘a certain lameness in Orwell’s version’ (ibid 122).

The Manchester Guardian’s radio critic observed that satire in broadcasting was ‘one of the most interesting lines to be worked … partly because satirical work lends itself to a stylised form of radio production’ (Manchester Guardian 25 February 1952) and dissented from Heppenstall’s view that Orwell’s adaptation in 1947 was not a successful radio work: ‘Orwell’s Animal Farm came out splendidly … One does not remember having heard a “fantasy” which took so strong a hold of the imagination’ (Manchester Guardian, 18 January 1947).

Shaw correctly observes that ‘Orwell’s characteristically clear style’ made Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four ‘easily translatable and suitable for radio and cinema adaptation’ (Shaw 2003: 146). Orwell had had experience of writing and producing for radio having been a staff talks producer at the BBC during World War Two (see Orwell: The War Commentaries and Orwell: The War Broadcasts by W. J. West) and he had written dramatisations for Heppenstall of The Voyage of the Beagle and Little Red Riding Hood, the latter for BBC Children’s Hour (Orwell/Davison 1998, Vol. 8: 116)

While producing what he was prepared to concede was cultural propaganda for the British Empire during the war, he personally adapted A Slip Under the Microscope (1896), by H. G. Wells, L’Affaire Crainquebille (1901) by Anatole France, and The Fox (1934), by Ignazio Silone, the scripts being included in W. J. West’s edited volume of his broadcasts (Orwell 1985b: 130-138, 139-148, 149- 158). All three scripts indicate Orwell’s apparent enthusiasm for narrative voice that Rayner Heppenstall later felt was unbalanced vis-à-vis the need to represent dramatic action in sound drama.

Orwell’s views on radio drama technique

It is somewhat intriguing that Orwell’s views on radio drama technique were more ambiguous as was evident from his Observer 5 August 1945 review of the published verse play script of The Rescue by Edward Sackville-West. Orwell praised Sackville-West on his decision to script dramatic action that did more showing than telling: ‘As nearly as possible the strict dramatic form is followed, and that dreary figure, the Narrator, is got rid of: his place is taken by Phemius the poet and the goddess Athene, who are able to give the necessary explanations while taking part in the action’ (Observer, 5 August 1945).

Animal Farm does not appear to have been adapted and dramatised for US radio before its Hollywood cartoon film production in 1954. Shaw makes a reference to a ‘Voice of America broadcast [of] Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four in Eastern Europe in 1947 and 1949 respectively’ (Shaw 2003: 153), an assertion that is notated to pages 115 to 124 of Davison’s volume on Animal Farm in the collected works series, and page 202 of Rodden’s The Politics of Literary Reputation (2001). Davison’s volume does not cross-reference or confirm any information about Voice of America radio dramatisations during these years. Rodden’s claim is not attributed to any archive in his published text and certainly does not tally with US National Archives (USNA) holdings of CIA audio-visual files produced for the agency.

The first reference to Animal Farm relates to a black and white cartoon created in 1954 and described as an animated film and ‘political fable about farm animals who rebelled against their cruel master, the farmer. It is an anti- communist story by George Orwell’ (USNA 1954). The first reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four in the Central Intelligence Agency holding entitled ‘Moving Images Relating to Intelligence and International Relations Record Group 263’ is a black and white film described as ‘a political story by George Orwell about totalitarianism’ (USNA 1953).

The CIA-backed cartoon version of Animal Farm became a considerable source of regret for Orwell’s widow, Sonia Orwell (née Brownell). As one of Orwell’s biographers, Gordon Bowker writes:

The problems of the political distortion in the US-backed films were noticed and debated in the contemporary British media. The Times felt that it did not matter that the Halas and Batchelor cartoon allowed a gleam of hope at the end as ‘the bitterness of the evangel who discovers his message to be false’ was fully translated by the film (Times, 12 January 1955). The contrast between a largely faithful BBC television drama production of Nineteen Eight-Four and the Hollywood film generated a debate on Panorama in 1956:

The producers were there and discussed the different twist that has been given in the film to the end of the story. One was glad to see that Nigel Kneale, the author of the television play, stood up uncompromisingly for his view that Orwell’s own ending should have been left, and that to alter it, so as to give a message of hope rather than despair, is to defeat Orwell’s whole purpose (The Times, 6 March 1956).

The NBC University Theater is faithful to Orwell’s original novel. Indeed, the climactic and disillusioning rather than defiant end of the novel is produced with a chilling audio-psychology. The adaptation script cleverly turns the narrative voice to direct its venom towards Smith and the listener at the same time:

Narrator: Forty years it has taken you to learn what kind of smile lies behind the dark moustache. Oh cruel, needless misunderstanding. Oh stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast.

Smith: [Weeping]

Narrator: Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of your nose. It’s alright. Everything is alright. The struggle is finished. You have won the victory over yourself.

Smith: [Continuing to weep] I … I love you Big Brother. FADE UP Music.

Compared to the last paragraph in the book, dramatic English had replaced prose and the narrative voice was directed to the second person present rather than third person past:

Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother (Orwell/Davison, Vol. 9, 1998: 311).

NBC radio production of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1953
The later Theatre Guild On The Air NBC radio production in 1953 deployed a third person narrator in the same style of the book, but in the present tense and active mood to give it the immediacy of news and contemporary current affairs. The broadcast ended emphatically with the ironic line: ‘Winston has won the final victory over himself. He loves Big Brother.’

There is only one tantalising reference and glimpse to George Orwell’s satisfaction with the NBC radio broadcast in 1949 in The Complete Works of George Orwell when he wrote to Leonard Moore on 21 July 1949: ‘I am, of course, very pleased about the NBC broadcast of 1984, & its serialisation in Der Monat [a German publication]’ (Orwell/Davison, Vol. 20, 1998: 149-150). It is not clear if the letter has been written after he has seen the adaptation script (the letter was originally dated 20 September 1949 but Davison believes this was a mistake) or that he is simply reacting to the fact that NBC had or were going to broadcast an adaptation of the book.

What is clear from a close textual analysis of the NBC radio production is that Orwell’s work has not been hijacked by what one of his biographers Gordon Bowker describes as ‘CIA-backed Hollywood production companies’ (Bowker 2003: 422) misrepresenting his writing ‘in the service of the right-wing Cold War cause’ (ibid).

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Correction and note March 2024

The Orwell scholar Dr John Rodden also made references to the Martin Esslin dramatisation of 1984. In The Politics of Literary Reputation, Transaction, 2002 [1989] he said ‘It was adapted for radio by Martin Esslin.’ This is repeated in note 117 at page 447 ‘…Martin Esslin, who worked with Orwell at the BBC during the war and later adapted Nineteen Eighty-Four into a radio play.’

And in the German Quarterly he mentioned more or less the same in ‘The Spectre of Der Große Bruder: George Orwell’s Reputation in West Germany’, 1987, p 545- ‘Fyvel’s claim, however, conflicts with the memories of the Austrian-born drama critic Martin Esslin, who worked with Orwell at the BBC during the war and later adapted 1984 into a radio play.’

The BBC genome project digitisating past issues of the Radio Times and records of BBC broadcasts had not been completed and was not available online when this paper was being researched. Subsequent searches of the Genome Project’s online resources at https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ do not yield any references at all of a BBC radio dramatisation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by Martin Esslin.

A search of all Martin Esslin’s papers donated to the Special Collections of Keble College library Oxford University has not established the existence of the script of this adaptation/dramatisation. BBC Written Archives have searched all of the documentary files they hold for Martin Esslin and have been unable to locate an adaptation script by him of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A thorough day by day examination of every published schedule of the drama programmes broadcast by the BBC’s Third Programme in 1950 does not indicate the existence of any broadcast of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

An exculpatory search of the British Library’s digitisation of national, regional and local newspapers yields no report or reference at all to any BBC radio dramatisation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by Martin Esslin or anyone else on the Third Programme or any other domestic radio service in 1950 or in any other year.

The first evidence of a BBC domestic broadcast of a radio dramatisation of the novel is the scheduling of the broadcast of a one and a half hour dramatisation by the BBC Home Service on Monday 11th October 1965 from 8.30 p.m.

This radio dramatisation in 1965 was by Eric Ewens. Furthermore, a regional newspaper report by the journalist Nick Wright in the Wolverhampton Express and Star on 14th October 1965 states that this BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four ‘was broadcast for the first time as a radio adaptation’ in Britain.

Consequently, the sentences in the original chapter under investigation for accuracy are placed in square brackets until the issue of whether, when and on what BBC radio channel Martin Esslin ever wrote a dramatisation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty- Four is properly resolved.

It is quite conceivable that Esslin wrote a dramatisation for either the BBC’s Third Programme or the BBC’s World Service; particularly as his Hungarian background and first employment for the BBC from 1940 during the Second World War was with the BBC’s monitoring services.

The BBC’s Written Archives have kindly searched all the editions they have for the BBC’s London Calling magazine during 1950 listing productions and broadcasts for listeners abroad. Such a transmission would not necessarily have been publicised to UK newspapers or heard by many UK listeners. Unfortunately, there is no record in London Calling of any BBC World Broadcast of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four in English during 1950.

Martin Esslin was a producer for the BBC’s external European Service (funded by Britain’s Foreign and Colonial/Commonwealth Office) prior to his appointment as Editor of domestic BBC Radio Drama in succession to Val Gielgud in 1963. It is still a possibility that Esslin was commissioned to write the script, but it was not produced.

It is more likely that the false trail of a Martin Esslin dramatisation may emanate from the fact that when he became Head of BBC Radio Drama, he commissioned the first BBC radio dramatistion of Nineteen Eighty-Four from Eric Ewens with the production by John Gibson in October 1965 starring Patrick Troughton and Sylvia Syms.

The BBC Hidden Treasures project, a collaboration by the Radio Circle and BBC Archives, succeeded in recovering a recording of the 1965 production and releasing it on the BBC Sounds platform in 2025 at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0029gnk

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[First BBC dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1950]
Orwell himself had been alive to these dangers and would have avoided them, as he had in standing up to the Book-of-the-Month Committee (see Shelden 1992 470) and complaining about the misrepresentation of Nineteen Eight-Four in Life magazine (ibid).

[The first dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four for BBC Radio was by Martin Esslin with transmission on the Third Programme in 1950.]

American television first aired a visual electronic dramatisation on NBC TV in September 1953, starring Eddie Albert, a year before the controversial BBC live television dramatisation in 1954.

[Orwell’s debut on BBC Radio was through an audience targeted and defined as the cultural elite. It could hardly be said that the Third Programme (precursor to BBC Radio Three) was by any means a platform for high-impact, mass popular audience. This may account for the fact that Nineteen Eighty-Four’s UK inauguration in sound was uncontroversial,] but its televisual dramatic introduction four years later attracted a political and media censorship row which the BBC endured with a successful second broadcast – unlike the fate of Val Gielgud’s political comedy Party Manners in 1950 (Barry 1991: 142-143). The repeat broadcast of Nineteen Eighty-Four probably survived because the novel and treatment linked the representation of totalitarian nightmare with the Soviet bloc. The British controversy arose out of the shocking realism and content of Orwell’s depiction of oppressive brutality and torture and its representation through live BBC television drama.

The NBC University Theater of the Air
There is no evidence of any censorship or political controversy relating to either the radio or television dramatisations of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 and 1953 on the NBC broadcasting networks that had not made any effort to divide its audience in terms of the BBC’s ‘Home’, ‘Light’ and ‘Third’ programmes. The NBC University Theater of the Air was, however, scheduled as an educational dimension of broadcasting as it was deliberately linked to an Open University- style of assessed correspondence course in literature. Dunning writes:

Its productions were fully the equal of any commercial radio series and better than most, though it got stuck with the ‘education’ stigma early in its run and never attained much more than its targeted academically motivated audience (Dunning 2001: 482).

The series of 95 mainly one-hour qualitative productions of classical and modern novels was accompanied by a correspondence course developed at the University of Louisville, the University of Tulsa, Washington State College and others. Support booklets survive in the libraries of Brooklyn College and the University of Tulsa. Dunning reports that Radio Life described University Theater as ‘one of the most ambitious and artistically successful dramatic series on the air’ (ibid: 482).

The introduction warned the NBC audience that they would be hearing something that was most challenging, would disturb them, would be current and about totalitarian techniques. But the production appeared adamant about wanting the listeners to decide for themselves the meaning of the plight of the individual in these circumstances:

Here with a disturbing broadcast. A dramatisation by Milton Wayne of George Orwell’s 1984. In his current and very widely discussed novel Mr. Orwell has projected the totalitarian techniques abroad and in the world today to their terrible extreme. The plight of the individual we leave you to assess for yourselves as you listen to the story of Mr. Winston Smith played today by the internationally known British actor David Niven. At intermission we will bring you a commentary of Mr. Orwell’s writing by another distinguished author, Mr. James Hilton. Here then is David Niven in George Orwell’s 1984 (NBC, 27 August 1949).

Undoubtedly, there is something amusingly incongruous about the casting of the debonair and quintessentially English gentleman film star, David Niven, in the role of Winston Smith. Physically and emotionally, of course, they could not have been more distinct: ‘Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way’ (Orwell/Davison, 1998 Vol. 9: 3).

David Niven … a national treasure at home and a much-loved personality the world over as the embodiment of an exemplary form of Britishness, or more specifically Englishness. He was handsome and debonair, with a high forehead, dark and gently wavy hair, and sporting a thin, neatly trimmed moustache that hugged the full length of his upper lip (Phillip French quoted in Niven 2009: vii).

David Niven’s extraordinary performance

Yet Niven’s profoundly emotional and realistic performance of Winston Smith’s inner destruction through the infamous scenes in Room 101 and his character’s encounter with rats, sounding eerily modernist and electronic, challenged the late John Mortimer’s witty aphorism that he did not think his acting ever quite achieved the brilliance or the polish of his dinner-party conversations. Niven is directed to reach depths and aspects of audio-dramatic performance in 1949 that could be considered pioneering and important.

In the more understated scenes that are less dystopian than the end, it might be argued that the performance sounds as if Niven is playing himself – the cheerful army officer educated at Sandhurst and lucky enough to be plucked from playing a mute extra in the first film of Mutiny On The Bounty (1935) and spend the rest of his life being overpaid for dressing up and playing games. But when convincingly evoking the dark chambers of totalitarian disemboweling of human identity and dignity, there is evidence he is bringing his experience of the twentieth century to the part. He was once quoted as saying that his exterior optimism was motivated by the thought: ‘Well, old bean, life is really so bloody awful that I feel it’s my absolute duty to be chirpy and try and make everybody else happy too’ (see Massingberd 2003).

Niven glossed over what he witnessed in World War Two. He was re- commissioned as a lieutenant and discharged as a lieutenant colonel serving in the commandos and a ‘phantom’ or ‘ghost’ unit behind enemy lines. Niven admitted in his best-selling autobiography that he had encountered madness when overwhelmed by the inconsolable grief of losing his first wife in a fall at a Hollywood house party in 1946 (Niven 2009: 242-246).

The dramatisation used a narrative voice in the second person and applied accusative voice so that the listener was and is being spoken to directly as ‘You’ – a creative and interesting resetting of the omniscient function of narrative in drama to participate in the emotional fold of ‘Big Brother is Watching You’. The effect of the device is to energise and activate the narrator as a dialogic character within the world of the play. He objectifies the listener as well as Winston Smith. Take this section, at 18 minutes 4 seconds:

Smith (singing to himself) Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements. You owe me three farthings say that…

Narrator: Suddenly your heart turns to ice. A figure in blue overalls is coming towards you. A dark haired girl in her twenties. The narrow scarlet sash of the junior anti-sex league is wound around her waist. You know her but have never spoken to her. She looks straight into your face and walks on quickly as though she hadn’t seen you. For a few seconds you’re … you’re too paralysed to move. Then you turn and walk heavily away.

Smith: It’s at night they come for you. Always at night. The proper thing is to kill yourself before they get you. And they’ll get you. Once you succumb to thought crime, you’re dead. FOOTSTEPS FADE AWAY (NBC 27 August 1949).

James Hilton’s intermission analysis

It was at this point the production interpolates an ‘intermission’ with a discussion of the novel’s significance and meaning by the British novelist and screenplay writer James Hilton (1900-1954) whose reputation was based on the success of his books Lost Horizon (1933), Goodbye Mr Chips (1934) Random Harvest (1934) and the Oscar-winning screenplay of the film Mrs Miniver. He comments:

George Orwell is a distinguished English writer who’s desperately concerned, as many others of us are today, with the shape of things to come. And he’s also aware that such early prophecies such as those of Mr. Wells and Mr. Aldous Huxley, were not so much as incorrect as incomplete, and are now in need of restatement and revision before a modern audience. Thus, Mr. Wells has forecast the engulfment of modern civilisation with total war. But war, says Mr. Orwell, is not all. Nor is it quite the worst imaginable thing. And as long ago as 1932, Mr. Huxley satirised the regimented state in his book called Brave New World though some people in those days probably missed the satire and thought that with all its mass production techniques and scientific management Mr. Huxley’s new world might even be worth looking forward to.

But today no one is so naïve as that. Indeed, the crisis of our civilisation is in some danger of becoming a cliché for after-dinner speakers.

Mr. Orwell, however, is the first writer to warn us in the form of fictional satire what might conceivably happen if all the worst features that exist anywhere in our modern world were to prevail over all the others. And if, in addition, all these worst features were to spread all over the earth. Since the story is told with nightmarish detail, and in inexorable logic, the commentator can perhaps serve best by a few mild warnings of his own (NBC 27 August 1949).

Hilton’s commentary was typical of the ‘Open University’ style of educational analysis present in the other editions of the NBC series and echoed Peter Davison’s positive acknowledgement of Orwell’s own educational industry and ethic during his two years as a talks assistant in the Overseas services between 1941 and 1943: ‘…his achievements were formidable and had long-term benefits for the institution and those who tuned in to it long after he was dead.’ (Davison 2011 online essay) Hilton’s commentary is spoken word, inclusive and devoid of pomposity:

First, that despite any easy assumptions that might readily and even excusably occur to both listener and reader, Mr. Orwell’s satire does not bear exclusively against any one country. Certain early symptoms of that breakdown of the human soul which he forecasts are diagnosable in all countries today.

And most of us all, to a greater or lesser extent, are already victims of certain kinds of double-think. And it would be a useful private exercise to examine near home for such instances as well as to recognize them more spectacularly in other parts of the world. Personally I find Mr. Orwell’s picture horrible and timely and fascinating. It will probably take its place among the memorable works of its kind both for its technical virtuosity and for a sort of intellectual passion that pervades it throughout.

Mr Orwell is, as we say, burned up about the state of the world. But the fuel of that fire is not only in the world but in his own mind. This is what makes the satirist in all times and in all ages. And it is why, having read Mr. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four you may not feel you would like to meet any of its characters. But you do feel you would like to meet Mr. Orwell if only for an argument (NBC 27 August 1949).

Outside of literature, however, it might be said that Nineteen Eighty-Four suffers from a philosophic flaw inherent in all such prophetic fiction. It does not allow for the fact that history is not an exact science. Perhaps not even a science at all. And that any equation of the future is bound to contain many variables.

And yet with all the reservations some of us might make, this book that Mr. Orwell has written deserves our serious attention. It is not a likeable story. And one may hope and even believe that it is not a likely story either. But when we think of all that has happened throughout the world during our own lifetimes it does not seem quite an impossible story.

Announcer: Thank you Mr. Hilton. RETURN TO DRAMA

Narrator: The middle of the morning. And you’ve left the work cubicle to go to the lavatory (NBC, 27 August 1949).

Here, then, was commercial radio promoting a profound cultural analysis in a deliberately positioned intermission. Despite the concentric rings of an ideological onion in Orwell’s political novel, described by James Hilton as prophetic satire, NBC does not revert to the very techniques of political persuasion or propaganda mocked and chiseled into painful literary irony in the book itself. There were plenty of ugly models of that style of broadcasting extant in US radio which had been vigorously evaluated by Theodor Adorno nine years previously in The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses (though not published in English until the year 2000).

Cultural remit of US popular radio

And the educational and cultural network remit of US popular radio within the liberal and free market, capitalist frame was already beginning to unravel. By 1948, NBC, CBS and ABC had begun seven-day-a-week television broadcasting – with the viewing figures of affiliate network radio stations falling to 68 per cent (compared to 95 per cent in 1945) and was dropping fast (Gomery 2007). Mashon writes that the creative and cultural talent base of NBC was deracinated by CBS ‘talent raids’ of 1948-1949 that lured the brightest and best through long-term contracts with more favourable tax regimes (Mashon 2004: 998). This secured CBS the pool of production infrastructure to meet the needs of an expanding network television operation (ibid).

The significance of the ‘public service’ role of cultural broadcasting in US radio is reinforced by the fact that the first time the American-born poet, T. S. Eliot, ever read his own poems in front of the live microphone for either an American or English audience was on the University of Chicago Round Table edition on NBC on 12 November 1950 accompanied by a pamphlet edited by Morton D. Zabel. (Eliot & Zabel 1950:1) It is something of an ironic observation that it was Eliot, as the editor of Faber and Faber, who turned down publication of Animal Farm on the grounds it was Trotskyite when the Soviet Union was characterised as romantic and a loyal ally, Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’ and BBC Radio had invested in a major dramatisation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace as a tribute to the Red Army and Soviet people (also accompanied by the publication of an educational booklet) (Bowker 2003: 313). A double irony to consider is that it was Orwell himself who first invited Eliot to read his own work in front of the microphone with ‘Journey of the Magi’ being broadcast on the Eastern Service on 29 December 1942 and a recording that survives in the sound archives (Davison 2011 online). Orwell’s appreciation and progressive ideas about poetry and radio are encapsulated in his memorable essay Poetry and the Microphone first published in 1945 (Orwell/Davison 1998, Vol. 17: 74-80).

A struggling NBC University Theater decided to drop the word ‘University’ by October 1949 ‘to make it sound less academic and lead to higher ratings’ (Dunning 2001: 482). It was not enough that the radio dramatisations resulted in libraries reporting the depletion from their shelves of the original works and that ‘the University of Louisville received 250 queries a day when the show as at its peak’(ibid).

In the Theatre Guild adaptation networked by NBC three years later, there are no overtures towards educational contextualisation. The drama is provided as entertainment and is fully sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation. By 1953 the selling point at the beginning of the play is that a newsman, Kenneth Banghart, should perform the role of narrator because he is ‘reporting the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (NBC 26 April 1953). The explanation is overtly ideological and recognises that Orwell’s novel and its radio dramatisation is political and contemporary:

Perhaps you are wondering why a newsman is appearing in a Theatre Guild On The Air dramatisation? It’s because George Orwell’s great novel 1984 deals with a most terrifying subject in the news today. The threat to all free men of Communism or totalitarian domination in any form. In fiction, Orwell creates for us a picture of what life might be should the totalitarian forces succeed with their plan to become the earth’s masters. It is fiction that projects into a kind of prophetic reporting of the future. It is our blessing that we can see it so and thus alert ourselves (ibid).

As Bowker writes (2003: 421): ‘Orwell’s reputation benefited from the advent of the Cold War, guaranteeing him a huge readership throughout the world.’ At the time of the publication of Bowker’s biography of Orwell combined sales of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four were in excess of forty million in sixty different translations (ibid).

How Orwell’s last two novels were used in the Cold War propaganda wars

Orwell’s publisher Fredric Warburg would be closely involved in the distribution of Encounter magazine secretly funded by the CIA and brokering the film rights of Animal Farm with the notorious CIA operative Howard Hunt (Saunders 1999: 293-298). Frances Stonor Saunders has seriously challenged the claim that the CIA’s substantial financial investment came with no strings attached: ‘…official documents relating to the cultural Cold War system seriously undermine this myth of altruism’ (ibid 4). Mainstream media texts during the Cold War provide considerable explicit evidence of the use to which Orwell’s last two anti- totalitarian novels were used in the intelligence and propaganda wars:

Leaflets are thrown into the letter boxes of small Thuringian towns or stickers put on the walls of Mecklenburg villages. An anti-Communist satirical paper and a collection of ‘whisper jokes’ are circulated with a camouflaged pocket-edition of George Orwell’s last novel 1984 whose terrifying vision of a totalitarian future has been discussed by intellectuals all over Eastern Germany (Scotsman, 29 December 1950).

I do not think that George Orwell should be canonised as a dissident and disgusted counter-propagandist nor for that matter be diminished as someone incapable or reluctant to deploy and engage the fine art of public relations in the dissemination of his politics. The charming BBC archive page presenting documents on his time as a producer of cultural propaganda to India and the East during World War Two is entitled: ‘The writer of Nineteen Eighty-Four holds true to his ideals.’ The evidence seems to suggest that Orwell walked away from the job on the grounds that he was not convinced of its efficacy and he had novels he wanted to write (see Kerr 2002: 473).

Between September 1940 and June 1941, the ghastliest totalitarian dictatorships of the world, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union were comrades in arms and directing intelligence and military munitions towards allied satellite countries, some albeit under the weakening imperialist rule of Great Britain. Orwell’s political positioning was always ambiguous, awkward, and bloody- minded, but there were constancies about human and social values that were relativist and tethered to the gravity of human decency, fight against injustice and compassion for the disadvantaged, oppressed and poor.

Orwell joined the BBC fully aware that he was enlisting in what Louis Althusser would describe as an ideological state apparatus (Kerr 2002: 477). After Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and the fall of Singapore, India faced an imperialist substitution by the Japanese with German connivance, and the imperialist designs of the Soviet Union had only been suspended. As Kerr observes: ‘Orwell found himself directing propaganda for the Raj at the most disaffected and anti-British section of the India population. But it was a matter of priorities’ (ibid: 475).

It is to the credit of the intelligence officer at MI5, assigned to spy on George Orwell in 1942, that he understood Orwell’s independent ideological position. He wrote:

… Serg. EWING described BLAIR as being rather an ‘unorthodox Communist’ apparently holding many of their views but by no means subscribing fully to the Party’s policy. I gathered that the good Sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line, hence the expression ‘advanced Communist Views’.

This fits in with the impression we have of BLAIR@ORWELL. It is evident from his recent writings – The Lion and the Unicorn and his contribution to Gollancz’s symposium, The Betrayal of the Left – that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him, 4.2.42, signed W. Ogilvie (Security Service file p. 3 kv/2/2699).

Orwell’s warning against the totalitarian tendencies in our societies

The dramatisation hauntingly demonstrates the dangers of newspeak which in the words of the character Syme explains ‘is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings ruled out and forgotten’ (quoted in Jones 2004: 1,774).

Derek Jones argues that Orwell was perfectly capable of being ‘philosophical about BBC censorship’ (ibid: 1,775). He was happy to subversively book speakers such as J. B. S. Haldane and Kingsley Martin whom the BBC had tried to blacklist. Perhaps it needs to be appreciated that Orwell’s eloquent fictional exploration of ‘doublethink’ was informed by his own practice and expertise in the phenomenon.

Orwell’s professional propagandist experiences in the BBC most likely informed his imaginative construction of the Ministry of Truth. Moreover, W. J. West reported that Orwell’s first wife Eileen ‘worked in a highly secret world in wartime London [postal censorship] which gave her access to knowledge which complemented Orwell’s gained through his work at the BBC’ (West 1992: x). One example is the similarity between the Ministry of Information’s telegraphic address ‘Miniform’ with ‘Minitrue’ of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Interception and surveillance of publishers was intrusive and detailed. While at the BBC even Orwell’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth needed the censor’s stamp (ibid: 80-81).

Many Orwell biographers and cultural critics (Shelden 1992: 467-469, Hitchens 2002: 111-121, Bowker 2003: 428-430, Taylor 2003: 408-410, Davison 2006: 208-212) are able to rationalise and explain Orwell’s enthusiastic submission of the notorious list of suspected communist fellow-travellers to the Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office in 1949. Hitchens is not alone in concluding that ‘in the late 1940s Orwell was fighting for survival as a writer, and also considered the survival of democratic and socialist values to be at stake in the struggle against Stalin’ (op cit: 114). It might be an almost self-evident analysis that George Orwell’s allegorical and satirical prophecies in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four represented his own struggle and self-awareness of the sadistic, authoritarian, double-think and newspeaking tendencies present within all human beings and the recognition and expression of that degree of honesty is usually the starting point for taking any path towards liberty and freedom.

References

Adorno, Theodor (2000) The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press

Barry, Michael (1991) From The Palace to the Grove, London: British Television Society Bowker, Gordon (2003) George Orwell, London: Little Brown

Cheles, Luciano and Sponza, Lucio (eds) (2001) The Art of Persuasion: Political Communication in Italy from 1945 to the 1990s, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press

Crick, Bernard (1992) George Orwell: A Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin (2nd edition)

Davison, Peter (ed.) (2006) The Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell, London: Timewell Press

Dunning, John (1998) On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press

Eliot, T. S. and Zabel, Morton D. (1950) Poetry by T. S. Eliot: An NBC Radio Discussion, Chicago: University of Chicago Round Table, No. 659

Gomery, Douglas (2007) Talent Raids and Package Deals: NBC Loses Its Leadership in the 1950s, Hilmes, Micelle (ed.) NBC America’s Network, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press

Grams, Martin, J. R. (2000) Radio Drama: A Comprehensive Chronicle of American Network Programs, 1932-1962, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland and Company, Inc.

Greenberg, Emil, Stern, Bernard Herbert (1949) Reading for Pleasure: A Study Guide to Modern Literature, New York: National Broadcasting Company Inc; WNBC (radio station, New York, N. Y.)

Hitchens, Christopher (2002) Orwell’s Victory, London: Allen Lane, Penguin

Jones, Derek (2001) George Orwell, British novelist, essayist, and journalist (real name: Eric Blair), 1903-1950, Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, Volume 3, l-R, London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn pp 1773-1776

Kerr, Douglas (2002) Orwell’s BBC broadcasts: colonial discourse and the rhetoric of Propaganda, Textual Practice, Vol. 16, No. 3 pp 473-490

Lee, Robert A. (1969) Orwell’s Fiction, London: University of Notre Dame Press

Mashon, Mike (2004) National Broadcasting Company, Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Radio, Volume 2, F-N, edited by Sterling, Christopher H, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearbon pp 996-998

Meyers, Jeffrey (1975) A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell, London: Thames and Hudson

Niven, David ([1971] 2009) The Moon’s Balloon, Harmondsworth: Penguin, and London: The Folio Society

Orwell, George (1958) George Orwell: Selected Writings, edited by Bott, George, London: Heinemann Educational

Orwell, George (1971) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1 An Age Like This 1920-1940, edited by Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Orwell, George (1971) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 2 My Country Right or Left 1940-1943, edited by Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Orwell, George (1971) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3 As I Please 1943-1945, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Orwell, George (1971) edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose 1945-1950, edited by Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Orwell, George (1985a) Orwell: The War Broadcasts, edited by West, M. J., London: Gerald Duckworth and British Broadcasting Corporation

Orwell, George, (1985b) Orwell: The War Commentaries, edited by West, M. J., London: Gerald Duckworth and British Broadcasting Corporation

Orwell, George (1998a) Animal Farm, Vol. 8, The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Davison, Peter, London: Secker and Warburg

Orwell, George (1998b) Nineteen Eighty-Four, Vol. 9, The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Davison, Peter, London: Secker and Warburg

Orwell, George (1998c) I Belong To The Left 1945, Vol. 17, The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Davison, Peter, London: Secker and Warburg

Orwell, George (1998d) Our Job Is To Make Life Worth Living 1949-1950, Vol. 20, The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Davison, Peter, London: Secker and Warburg

Orwell, George (2001) Orwell and the Dispossessed, edited by Davison, Peter, introduction by Clarke, Peter, Harmondsworth: Penguin

Rodden, John (2001) The Politics of Literary Reputation, London: Transaction

Saunders, Frances Stonor (1999) Who Paid The Piper? CIA and the Cultural Cold War, London: Granta

Shaw, Tony (2003) ‘Some Writers are More Equal than Others’: George Orwell, the State and Cold War Privilege, Cold War History, Vol. 3, Part 1, London: Taylor and Francis pp 143-170

West, W. J. (1987) Truth Betrayed, London: Gerald Duckworth

West, W. J. (1992) The Larger Evils. Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Truth Behind The Satire, Edinburgh: Canongate Press

Williams, Raymond (1971) Orwell, London: Fontana

Further reading

Bernhard, Nancy E. (1999) US Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

DeForest, Tim (2008) Radio By The Book: Adaptations of Literature and Fiction on the Air, Jefferson, North Carolina and London: MacFarland and Co.

Lee, Robert A. (1969) Orwell’s Fiction, London: University of Notre Dame Press

Nelson, Michael (1997) War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting In The Cold War, New York: Syracuse University Press

Oxley, B. T. (1967) Literature in Perspective: George Orwell, London: Evans Brothers Limited

Puddington, Arch (2000) Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky

Shelden, Michael (1992) Orwell: The Authorised Biography, London: Minerva

Soley, Lawrence C. and Nichols, John S. (1987) Clandestine Radio Broadcasting: A Study of Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Electronic Communication, New York, Westport, Connecticut, London: Praeger

Stansky, Peter (ed.) (1984) On Nineteen Eighty Four, London: W.H. Freeman and Co. Ltd Stiles, Richard (ed.) (1995) Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press

Tye, Larry (1998) The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and The Birth of Public Relations, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.

National Archives, Kew, London

Metropolitan Police Special Branch MEPO/38/69 Eric Arthur Blair/George Orwell The Security Service/MI5 kv/2/2699 Eric Arthur Blair

Media

Newspapers (in chronological order)

Animal Farm in London: A Cartoon Film of Orwell’s Fable (1955) Times, 12 January BROADCASTING REVIEW (1947) Our Radio Critic, Manchester Guardian, 18 January

BERLIN KIDNAPPING WAR (1950) East German Efforts to Stifle Underground Propaganda, Scotsman, 29 December

BROADCASTING ANIMAL FARM (1952) By Our Radio Critic, Manchester Guardian, 25 February

‘HORROR’ PLAY – OR A WARNING?: 1984 (1954) Discussed By Our Radio Critic, Manchester Guardian, 16 December

IN FIELDS OF AIR (1945) Orwell, George, Observer, 5 August

WRECKED CAMERA AND 1984: A Well-Mixed Panorama (1956) By Our Radio Critic, Manchester Guardian, 6 March

Radio

NBC University of the Air (1949) 1984 by George Orwell, starring David Niven, broadcast by the NBC network, 27 August

The Theater Guild On The Air (1953) 1984 by George Orwell, The United States Steel Hour, distributed on the NBC network, archive transmission, air-checked WORZ, 26 April

Websites

BBC: George Orwell at the BBC: The writer of Nineteen Eighty-Four holds true to his ideals. Source for the explanation why no archive recordings have survived of Orwell’s broadcasts and the memo by L. F. Rushbrook Williams regretting the loss of Orwell from its employment. Available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/orwell/7422, accessed on 18 November 2011. This link and resource was no longer active when checked 28th March 2024.

Davison, Peter (2011) Orwell at the BBC: Two Wasted Years?, first posted at http://www.finlay-publisher.com/archives/Jan-Mar%202011-Peter%20Davison.pdf [This link is no longer active when checked 28th March 2024] and then on 22 November 2011 at http://www.orwellsociety.com/2011/11/22/orwell-at-the-bbc-two-wasted-years-by-prof-peter-davision/, accessed on 2 April 2012. Again this link was not active when checked 28th March 2024 but the resource is now accessible at https://orwellsociety.com/orwell-at-the-bbc-two-wasted-years-by-prof-peter-davison/

Goldin, David, J. (2011) The NBC University Theatre. Available online at http://www.TheNBCUniversity TheatreDavidGoldin.htm, accessed on 13 January 2012. This link was no longer active when checked 28th March 2024.

James Hilton Society. Available online at http://www.jameshistonsociety.co.uk/index, accessed on 21 November 2011. This link was inactive when checked 28th March 2024 and the resource is now accessible at https://www.jameshiltonsociety.co.uk/

Kinoy, Ernest: The Definitive NBC University Theater Radio Log. Available online at http://www.digitaldeliftp.clm/DigitalDeliToo/dd2jb-NBC-University-Theater.html, accessed on 2 January 2012. This link was no longer active when checkd 28th March 2024.

Massingberd, Hugh (2003) It’s being so cheerful that keeps me going, Spectator Book Club, 15 November. Available online at http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/20678/its-being-so-cheerful-that-keeps-me-going.html, accessed on 6 October 2011. The url for this article subsequently changed and when checked 28th March 2024 was accessible at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-being-so-cheerful-that-keeps-me-going/

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The Radio Dramatisations of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four– Links researched 28th March 2024.

Read David Ryan’s excellent online article ‘Winston Smith and his multiple personalities: In 70 years, 10 very different actors have played the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984. But will we ever see a Winston who isn’t white?’ published in 2019 at:- https://davidryan-62445.medium.com/winston-smith-and-his-multiple-personalities-8872f060669c

The NBC University Theater production from 1949 is very widely available online and here are some links:

The script of the NBC 1949 dramatisation is available at https://www.genericradio.com/show/M0MFSE33S

Old Time Radio NBC University Theater Nineteen Eighty Four

The NBC 1953 Theatre Guild on the Air adaptation of George Orwell’s novel with Richard Widmark performing the role of Winston Smith. https://archive.org/details/NineteenEightyFour_1953

BBC Home Service 1965 dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty Four- one and a half hours in duration starring Patrick Troughton (the second BBC television Dr Who) and Sylvia Syms. The dramatisation was by Eric Ewens. This copy appears to have been recorded off medium or long wave transmission.

BBC Radio Four dramatisation in 2013 of Nineteen Eighty Four by Jonathan Holloway and Christopher Ecclestone (another BBC Dr Who) performing the role of Winston Smith. In two one hour episodes.

The Lux Radio Theatre series (commercial radio) in Australia produced a dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty Four which was broadcast from its Sydney Station 2UE in 1955 and has been made available on YouTube. Vincent Price performed the role of Winston Smith.

The audio of the 1955 Australian 2UE Lux Radio production was released on a website in 2013. This does provide the full credits and cast list though the audio no longer seems to operate. https://www.sffaudio.com/2ue-lux-radio-theatre-nineteen-eighty-four-starring-vincent-price/

The audio and more information about the production is available online at “Nineteen Eighty-Four (1955) | When Vincent Price headed Down Under to star in the ‘radio event of the year’” https://www.thesoundofvincentprice.com/nineteen-eighty-four-australian-radio-play/ with a further YouTube presentation at:-