Public Hero Number One (Aired July 28, 1950)
"MGM Theatre of the Air" wasn’t able to offer up a "big gun" host like Lux’s Cecil B. DeMille, so the series settled instead for Howard Dietz. Though not the legendary self-promoting showman that DeMille was, Dietz was certainly no slouch when it came to his chosen field; he was MGM’s vice president at the time and had also made his name as a publicist, lyricist of such tunes as "Dancing in the Dark". "By Myself," and "You and the Night and the Music" and librettist for such Broadway successes as "The Band Wagon" and "Revenge with Music". Assisted by announcer Ed Stokes, Dietz would announce with great fanfare the program's weekly production and guest star, serve as sort of a quasi-narrator throughout the broadcast, and then at the end would chat up the week’s star, allowing them to plug their latest project. Like most MGM radio productions - and, in fact, most syndicated series in general - "MGM Theatre of the Air" had a fairly tight budget to work with each week and (if you’ll pardon the pun) the lion’s share usually went towards securing that week’s big name performer. But the production wasn’t pennywise and pound-foolish; they wisely chose the cream of New York radio actors - Gertrude Warner, Eric Dressler, Parker Fennelly, Alice Frost - for supporting roles in each production, expertly adapted by the likes of William Kendall Clark, Welborn Kelly and Joseph Ruscoll. Raymond Cass was the producer, with Marx B. Loeb directing and music composed and conducted by Joel Herron.
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