THE REGIMENTED DEAD
[RADIO-SCRIPT]
“The Legion of the Dead,” a piece of “message horror,” was presented to acclaim on Armistice Day
in 1938 on Chicago’s Lights Out series, but it was, in fact, not originally written for Lights Out. It
had already been performed on the air several years earlier in conjunction with a series of
previously unpublished world war pictures that were being run in the Hearst newspapers. Written
by W. J. Parker and Ken Robinson of the Chicago American, it was first broadcast on Chicago
station KYW on January 12, 1934 (two weeks before Lights Out premiered on WENR) under the
title “Regimented Dead.” A publicity release described it as follows: “What do fallen heroes talk of,
and do, in the hereafter?... The story is based on the idea that the legion of the dead, recruited
from fallen fighters of all nations, must keep on marching—although dead—until there is peace on
earth. It is a touching epic of the wars that man fights—and of their consequences.” KYW
subsequently repeated the broadcast the following Thursday (January 18), and the script was
apparently made available across the country. In my files I have an announcement from the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (also a Hearst paper) that lists no less than seven stations in
Washington state doing their own enactments of the script—all of them on Friday, January 26.
Retitled “The Legion of the Dead” (and credited only to Ken Robinson), it was revived for Lights
Out in observance of Armistice Day.]
[CHRONOLOGY]
(KYW, SAN FRANCISCO)
[
January 12, 1934 “Regimented Dead”
(WSYR, SYRACUSE)
[Monday—10:00-10:30 PM]
December 10, 1934 “Regimented Dead”
[SYRACUSE HERALD: “…American Legion…”]
LIGHTS OUT (WMAQ, CHICAGO—NBC-RED)
[Wednesday—11:30 PM-12:00 MIDNIGHT]
November 9, 1938 “The Legion of the Dead”
[“…This Armistice Day drama is based upon the horror of war and upon
the grief that follows the rumble of cannons…”]
SCRIPT: Ken Robinson.
CAST: Willard Farnum (The Boy), Bob Griffin (The Captain), Arthur Kohl (The
German), Phil Lord (The Sergeant), Mercedes McCambridge (The Nurse).
NOVEMBER 11, 1938:
[Miami Herald]
“Even the spooky Lights Out program Wednesday night dealt with the
Armistice. The weird program, coming over the air well past midnight, was a
nightmare of the Legion of the Dead, marching on into eternity. The lost souls
described how each had died in battle, decided that they had died in vain.
Horrifying as these programs try to be, at least this one attempted to drive home
a moral.”
RECORDINGS RECOVERED FROM THE HOUSE OF