{
  "title": "THE REGIMENTED DEAD",
  "category": "[RADIO-SCRIPT]",
  "article": "“The Legion of the Dead,” a piece of “message horror,” was presented to acclaim on Armistice Day\nin 1938 on Chicago’s Lights Out series, but it was, in fact, not originally written for Lights Out. It\nhad already been performed on the air several years earlier in conjunction with a series of\npreviously unpublished world war pictures that were being run in the Hearst newspapers. Written\nby W. J. Parker and Ken Robinson of the Chicago American, it was first broadcast on Chicago\nstation KYW on January 12, 1934 (two weeks before Lights Out premiered on WENR) under the\ntitle “Regimented Dead.” A publicity release described it as follows: “What do fallen heroes talk of,\nand do, in the hereafter?... The story is based on the idea that the legion of the dead, recruited\nfrom fallen fighters of all nations, must keep on marching—although dead—until there is peace on\nearth. It is a touching epic of the wars that man fights—and of their consequences.” KYW\nsubsequently repeated the broadcast the following Thursday (January 18), and the script was\napparently made available across the country. In my files I have an announcement from the\nSeattle Post-Intelligencer (also a Hearst paper) that lists no less than seven stations in\nWashington state doing their own enactments of the script—all of them on Friday, January 26.\nRetitled “The Legion of the Dead” (and credited only to Ken Robinson), it was revived for Lights\nOut in observance of Armistice Day.]",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "(KYW, SAN FRANCISCO)\n[\nJanuary 12, 1934\n“Regimented Dead”\n(WSYR, SYRACUSE)\n[Monday—10:00-10:30 PM]\nDecember 10, 1934\n“Regimented Dead”\n[SYRACUSE HERALD: “…American Legion…”]\nLIGHTS OUT (WMAQ, CHICAGO—NBC-RED)\n[Wednesday—11:30 PM-12:00 MIDNIGHT]\nNovember 9, 1938\n“The Legion of the Dead”\n[“…This Armistice Day drama is based upon the horror of war and upon\nthe grief that follows the rumble of cannons…”]\nSCRIPT: Ken Robinson.\nCAST: Willard Farnum (The Boy), Bob Griffin (The Captain), Arthur Kohl (The\nGerman), Phil Lord (The Sergeant), Mercedes McCambridge (The Nurse).\nNOVEMBER 11, 1938:\n[Miami Herald]\n“Even the spooky Lights Out program Wednesday night dealt with the\nArmistice. The weird program, coming over the air well past midnight, was a\nnightmare of the Legion of the Dead, marching on into eternity. The lost souls\ndescribed how each had died in battle, decided that they had died in vain.\nHorrifying as these programs try to be, at least this one attempted to drive home\na moral.”",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}