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Series: Columbia Workshop
Show: Madame Curie
Date: Jan 29 1938

CAST:
ANNOUNCER
MARIE
PIERRE
WOMAN
NARRATOR
2ND NARRATOR
3RD NARRATOR

Bits:
2ND ANNCR
PHYSICIST
CHEMIST
1ST LADY
2ND LADY
3RD LADY
plus fourteen VOICES
and two CROWDS

ANNOUNCER:

The Columbia Workshop presents "Madame Curie."

MUSIC:

INTRODUCTION ... THEN OUT BEHIND--

PIERRE:

It's pretty hard, this life we have chosen, Marie.

MARIE:

No. It's perfect, Pierre. We have our work, and we have each other. (UNCERTAIN) But, Pierre--?

PIERRE:

Yes?

MARIE:

We can't exist without each other, can we? If one of us should -- (SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT WORD) -- disappear, the other would not survive.

PIERRE:

You are wrong, Marie. Whatever happens, even if one has to go on alone, like a body without a soul, one must work just the same.

MARIE:

Yes, I was forgetting. In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN OUT BEHIND--

ANNOUNCER:

Tonight the Columbia Workshop presents an experiment in biography by radio. Now available at booksellers throughout the land is a great biography of a great woman. Published by Doubleday Doran, "Madame Curie" -- the story of the discoverer of radium, written by her daughter, Eve Curie -- has this month won widespread critical acclaim as a best seller.

In a single half-hour, no radio program can adequately present either an entire life story nor describe as intricate a scientific phenomenon as radioactivity, to the study of which Madame Curie devoted her life. Yet the Columbia Workshop tonight will try, by utilizing the impressionism which is possible in radio, to bring to you both a sense of the greatness of the woman who was Marie Curie and an appreciation of the magnitude of the achievements of the scientist who was Madame Curie. In this production, the Workshop's director, William N. Robson, who has written and is directing the broadcast, has disregarded the devices and the sometimes confusing statistical baggage of biography and instead has sought by a technique still unfamiliar to American listeners to interpret a great human being. We want to know what you think of the results. We ask again for your comments, criticisms, and suggestions.

2ND ANNCR:

The Columbia Workshop presents "Madame Curie."

MUSIC:

A WARM INTRODUCTION ... THEN BEHIND WOMAN--

WOMAN:

The life of Marie Curie contains prodigies in such numbers that one would like to tell her story like a legend. She was a woman; she belonged to an oppressed nation; she was poor; she was beautiful. A powerful vocation summoned her from her motherland, Poland, to study in Paris, where she lived through years of poverty and solitude. Then she met a man whose genius was akin to hers.

SOUND:

DOOR OPENS

MARIE:

(LAUGHS HAPPILY) Oh, I feel so good, so good.

PIERRE:

There's nothing like a day in the country to sweep the cobwebs out of your brain.

MARIE:

Yes, and get your brain nice and clear so you can put more cobwebs in it.

PIERRE:

(CHUCKLES)

MARIE:

Mathematical cobwebs -- to spin out all over those examination papers next week.

PIERRE:

Ah, you'll pass. Top of the list again, I'll wager.

MARIE:

I hope so.

PIERRE:

Of course you will.

MARIE:

Would you like some tea?

PIERRE:

Love it.

MARIE:

(MOVING OFF) I'll have some ready in a moment. (BEAT, FROM OFF, LAUGHS)

PIERRE:

What are you giggling about?

MARIE:

(OFF) I was just thinking about that day I first met you at Monsieur Kovalski's, and how frightened I was of you.

PIERRE:

Frightened?

MARIE:

(OFF) Well, impressed, to be talking to such a famous scientist.

PIERRE:

(CHUCKLES) And now?

MARIE:

(OFF) And now I'm proud that scientist is my friend. (MOVES CLOSER) Oh, Pierre, this spring has been such a happy one.

PIERRE:

Yes, Marie, it has.

MARIE:

And it will be over so soon. Examinations, next week -- and then, back home to Warsaw.

PIERRE:

But you're coming back in October. Promise me that you will come back.

MARIE:

Now, you know what I told you that afternoon we met. There's work for me in Poland. My father to care for, a position in the girls' school--

PIERRE:

But if you stay there, you can't possibly continue your studies. You have no right to abandon science now.

MARIE:

Well, I should like to come back, Pierre. Very much.

PIERRE:

Marie, you mean that?

MARIE:

Yes, Pierre, I do.

PIERRE:

Then, Marie, you must come back. You must go on with your work. We can work together and--

MARIE:

We, Pierre?

PIERRE:

Oh, don't you see, Marie? To have found someone who thinks as I do, who feels about science as I do, someone whose intelligence I can respect above all others-- I love you, Marie. I want you to marry me.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN BEHIND NARRATOR--

NARRATOR:

What held and fascinated Pierre Curie was Marie's total devotion to her work. It was her genius he felt. It was also her courage and nobility. This graceful girl had the character and gifts of a great man. He would win the girl, the Pole, the physicist -- three persons who had become indispensable to him. By words of reason, by words of tenderness, by the deep irresistible charm of his daily presence, Pierre Curie gradually made a human being out of a young hermit. By the following spring, she had capitulated. In July, they were married.

MUSIC:

UP, FOR AN ACCENT ... THEN IN BG--

2ND NARRATOR:

Now Pierre's existence had only one ideal -- to engage in scientific research at the side of this woman who also lived for science.

WOMAN:

Marie's was a harder life, because to the obsession of work was added the humble and tiring tasks of womankind. She could no longer neglect material life as she had done in the austere and careless days of her study at the Sorbonne.

MUSIC:

OUT BEHIND--

2ND NARRATOR:

Eight hours of scientific research and two or three hours of housekeeping were not enough. In the evening Marie Curie sat down at one end of the white wood table and became absorbed in her preparations for a fellowship competition. On the other side of the lamp, Pierre was drawing up the program for his new course at the School of Physics.

WOMAN:

Often when she felt her husband's fine eyes upon her, she lifted her own eyes to receive a message of love and admiration. And a little smile was silently exchanged between this man and woman who loved each other. There was a light at the window of their room until two or three in the morning, and the only sound that could be heard was the ardent pianissimo of the running pen, the quiet rustle of the turning pages.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN IN BG--

NARRATOR:

By the end of her sixth year in Paris, Marie Curie had acquired two university degrees, a fellowship, and a husband; had produced a monograph on the magnetization of tempered steel, and had given birth to a beautiful baby girl.

WOMAN:

The next step in the logical development of her career was a Doctor's degree, and Marie began reviewing with Pierre the most recent works in physics in search of a subject for a thesis.

MUSIC:

OUT

MARIE:

I can't put this discovery of Henri Becquerel's out of my mind, Pierre.

PIERRE:

You mean his researches with X-rays?

MARIE:

No. What resulted from it -- the rays he found originating in uranium salts.

PIERRE:

Oh, yes.

MARIE:

Do you know, he found that uranium and its compounds emit these rays even after the material had been kept in total darkness for months?

PIERRE:

Then the rays can't come from absorbed light.

MARIE:

Exactly. And the question is -- where do they come from?

PIERRE:

Why don't you find out?

MARIE:

I think I shall try. It's a completely new field.

PIERRE:

Yes, Becquerel's reports were only made last year.

MARIE:

Do you think the University would consider the subject important enough for a Doctor's thesis?

PIERRE:

No question about it.

MARIE:

Then I'll begin at once.

SOUND:

BABY CRYING, OFF

MARIE:

That is, after I take care of the baby.

PIERRE:

(LAUGHS)

MARIE:

(LAUGHS)

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN BEHIND WOMAN--

WOMAN:

Established in a makeshift laboratory in a damp storeroom on the ground floor of the school where Pierre taught, Madame Curie set out on her great adventure. Each day, they left for the school together. Each evening, Pierre called for her in her dark, chilly laboratory.

SOUND:

DOOR CREAKS OPEN

PIERRE:

Well, what's my little scientist discovered today?

MARIE:

Oh, Pierre, it's so exciting. I've just finished examining all the known elements to find if these rays come from uranium alone.

PIERRE:

And what did you find?

MARIE:

Thorium has the same property, Pierre. They both have radioactivity.

PIERRE:

(PUZZLED) Radioactivity? Where did you pick up that term?

MARIE:

Well, I -- I thought it up -- to describe the properties of uranium and thorium.

PIERRE:

(CHUCKLES) And a very fine name it is. So, my little Marie is adding words to the language as well as knowledge to science.

MARIE:

Well, we must have exact terms.

PIERRE:

Certainly we must, little Marie. Now, what's the next step?

MARIE:

Well, Pierre, do you think you could lend me some of the minerals from the collection upstairs in the school?

PIERRE:

Of course. Why?

MARIE:

I want to examine them, just to check. If my conclusions are right, then those minerals which contain thorium and uranium will be radioactive and those without it will not.

PIERRE:

That's right.

MARIE:

I thought it would be best to make such a check before I go ahead.

PIERRE:

Marie, do you realize most scientists would have stopped when they had examined all the elements in the periodic table. It would not occur to them to check their results with minerals. You are a true scientist.

MARIE:

Pierre, I would rather hear those words from your lips than any other words in the world.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN BEHIND NARRATOR--

NARRATOR:

Experiments with minerals confirmed Madame Curie's prediction. Those that did not contain uranium and thorium did not show any radioactivity. But those that did contain the radioactive elements showed something amazing.

MARIE:

I can't understand it, Pierre. And I'm afraid to. The radioactivity of those minerals containing uranium or thorium is much greater than should be produced by the quantity of thorium or uranium present in the sample.

PIERRE:

Have you checked your experiments?

MARIE:

Oh, yes, yes; over and over again. And there is only one conclusion I can come to.

PIERRE:

What is that?

MARIE:

I hesitate to speak the words, Pierre. Those minerals, those specimens of pitchblende, contain a substance which is much more radioactive than either uranium or thorium.

PIERRE:

What is it?

MARIE:

Remember, Pierre, I have already tested all known chemical elements.

PIERRE:

(QUIETLY STUNNED) Then, those minerals contain a new element!

MARIE:

Yes. That is what I didn't dare say.

PIERRE:

(EXHALES IN AMAZEMENT)

MARIE:

I think I've located the source of a new element.

PIERRE:

I'm not surprised. It is what I would expect of you. Oh, Marie! I am so proud.

MARIE:

Oh, but, my dear, all I have is the evidence of the new element. I haven't found it yet. There is much more work to be done.

PIERRE:

Marie, would you let me help you?

MARIE:

But you are helping me, my dear. You've always helped me.

PIERRE:

No, I mean here in the laboratory, working with you. This is important.

MARIE:

But what about your own work in crystallography?

PIERRE:

That's nothing compared to the work you are doing.

MARIE:

Pierre, you must not ask me to let you help me.

PIERRE:

Why not?

MARIE:

My dear, rather, I must ask you. Pierre, will you help me?

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN IN BG--

WOMAN:

We cannot and must not attempt to find out what should be credited to Marie and what to Pierre during the next eight years of their life together. Let us not attempt to separate these creatures full of love, whose handwriting alternates and combines in the working notebooks covered with formulae, these creatures who were to sign all their scientific publications together. They were to write "we found" and "we observed," and when they were constrained by fact to distinguish between their parts, they were to employ the moving locution, "one of us."

2ND NARRATOR:

In July, Eighteen Ninety-Eight, they announced in the Proceedings of the Academy--

MUSIC:

OUT

MARIE AND PIERRE:

We believe the substance we have extracted from pitchblende contains a metal yet unobserved, related to bismuth by its analytical properties. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed, we propose to call it "polonium" from the name of the original country of one of us.

NARRATOR:

Thus, the little Polish girl had remembered her native land in naming her first discovery.

WOMAN:

But there was yet another discovery to come, for the Curies had found that their pitchblende seemed to contain not one, but two radioactive substances.

NARRATOR:

Six months later, the Proceedings of the Academy of Science carried another joint announcement.

MARIE AND PIERRE:

The various reasons we have just enumerated lead us to believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new element to which we propose to give the name of "radium."

3RD NARRATOR:

But no one had yet seen radium. Scientists were unwilling to embrace a concept of spontaneous radiation which upset the fundamental theories upon which their thinking had been based for centuries. Queried the physicist--

PHYSICIST:

How do you explain this radioactivity?

3RD NARRATOR:

Questioned the chemist--

CHEMIST:

Show us some radium and we will believe you. You have not even given us the atomic weight for it yet.

3RD NARRATOR:

For four years Pierre and Marie Curie worked on the proof science demanded. Four years of hard physical labor, of delicate laboratory experiments, reducing by process after process tons of the pitchblende ore which hid the precious element they knew it possessed.

SOUND:

BUBBLING

MARIE:

(WEARY) And to think, once I believed that the radium content of pitchblende was one per cent. I doubt now that it contains a gram to-- (COUGHS) --a ton. (COUGHS)

PIERRE:

This work is too much for you, my little Marie. Your cough is worse again.

MARIE:

Oh, no, no, it's all right. It's just the gas from these smelting basins irritates my throat, I suppose.

PIERRE:

It's a pretty meager life I've let you in for.

MARIE:

It's perfect, Pierre. We have our work, and we have each other. But, Pierre--?

PIERRE:

Yes?

MARIE:

We can't exist without each other, can we? If one of us should --disappear, the other could not survive.

PIERRE:

You are wrong, Marie. Whatever happens, even if one has to go on alone, like a body without a soul, one must work just the same.

MARIE:

Yes, I was forgetting. In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons. (BEAT) Pierre?

PIERRE:

Hmm?

MARIE:

I wonder what it will be like, what it will look like.

PIERRE:

What?

MARIE:

Our radium. What form do you imagine it will take?

PIERRE:

I don't know.

MARIE:

I should like it to have a very beautiful color, Pierre.

SOUND:

TRANSITIONAL PAUSE

MUSIC:

BEHIND WOMAN--

WOMAN:

Kilogram by kilogram, Marie treated the tons of pitchblende sent to her from Bohemia. With her terrible patience, she was, every day for four years, a physicist, a chemist, specialized worker, engineer, and laboring man, all at once. Nearly four years after she had begun her quest, Marie Curie succeeded in preparing a decigram of pure radium, and had determined its atomic weight at two hundred twenty-five. Here was the proof -- radium now existed. That night, Marie and Pierre were irresistibly drawn back to the laboratory they had left but a few hours before.

SOUND:

DOOR OPENS ... THEN CLOSES BEHIND--

PIERRE:

Just a moment. I'll get a light.

MARIE:

No, Pierre. No. Don't light the lamp.

PIERRE:

But why?

MARIE:

Do you remember that day when I said I should like radium to have a beautiful color?

PIERRE:

Yes?

MARIE:

Look.

PIERRE:

(EXHALES)

MARIE:

It is something better than a beautiful color.

PIERRE:

Why, it glows in the dark like something alive. Like a great firefly.

MARIE:

Come, Pierre. Let us just sit here and look at it.

PIERRE:

Like something alive.

MARIE:

Hold me close, Pierre.

SOUND:

TRANSITIONAL PAUSE

VOICE:

Prodigious radium!

MUSIC:

IN BG

NARRATOR:

Its rays were two million times as strong as those of uranium.

2ND VOICE:

It spontaneously produced an emanation, radon, which destroyed itself even when enclosed in a glass tube.

3RD VOICE:

It gave off heat.

4TH VOICE:

It made an impression on a photographic plate through thick black paper.

5TH VOICE:

Its rays penetrated every substance but lead.

6TH VOICE:

In darkness, it gave off enough light to read by.

7TH VOICE:

It was contagious, inducting radioactivity to any object, plant, or animal brought in contact with it.

NARRATOR:

Thus radium upset all the old physical theories of inert matter and the immovable atom.

VOICE:

But -- what was it good for?

MUSIC:

OUT

WOMAN:

Pierre Curie and Professors Bouchard and Balthazard discovered that the emanations of radium, by destroying diseased cells, cured growths and tumors, and, in some cases, certain forms of cancer.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN IN BG--

NARRATOR:

A few months later, Marie Curie received the compensation for which she had discovered radium -- the degree of Doctor of Physical Science, awarded with very honorable mention.

2ND NARRATOR:

Six months later, the Academy of Science in Stockholm, in solemn general meeting, announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics for Nineteen Three had been awarded half to Henri Becquerel and half to Pierre and Marie Curie for their discoveries in radioactivity.

3RD NARRATOR:

Overnight, Pierre and Marie Curie became the rage. Fame, breaking about their heads like a hurricane, stunned the two quiet scientists and stripped them of the privacy in which they had worked. Gone were opportunities for silence and meditation.

SOUND:

CROWD BUSTLES AND MURMURS IN BACKGROUND TILL END OF SCENE ... THE NEXT VOICES OVERLAP ONE ANOTHER

8TH VOICE:

(BRITISH) An interview for the London Times, Madame Curie? It will take just a moment of your time.

9TH VOICE:

Couldn't you prepare just a brief article for us, Monsieur Curie?

10TH VOICE:

So this is the laboratory in which you worked.

11TH VOICE:

[Can you tell us in a few words how you happened to discover radium?]

MARIE:

Why don't they let us alone, Pierre? How can we work in the midst of so much hubbub?

PIERRE:

We'll have to do the best we can. At least, the money we get for articles and lectures pays for new materials and young men to help us.

MARIE:

But I'm so tired, and there's so much work to be done, and all these people leave us no time to do it. I want to be free to work now, because soon I shall have to stop for a while.

PIERRE:

Why, Marie, why? Is your cough worse?

MARIE:

No. Don't you remember that in five months--?

PIERRE:

Oh. Oh! Oh, yes. I - I had forgotten.

12TH VOICE:

(COARSE GLAD-HANDING AMERICAN) The Curies are a great little couple!

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN IN BG--

WOMAN:

In December, Nineteen Hundred and Four, a plump baby was born -- another daughter, Eve. Relaxed by this forced rest, Marie regained her taste for life. She approached her laboratory apparatus with a pleasure she had forgotten, and for the next year and a half, the Curies resumed with productive vitality their familiar collaboration.

NARRATOR:

The French government made plans to give them a fine new laboratory, but the plans always fell through. Marie and Pierre might have resented it, but they were too happy with their other work, their children, and each other, to be deeply hurt by it. Then on April nineteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Six--

MUSIC:

OUT

MARIE:

Did you enjoy your omelet, Pierre?

PIERRE:

Mmm? Did I eat an omelet? It's quite possible.

MARIE:

(CHUCKLES) You grow more absent-minded every day, my dear.

PIERRE:

(EXHALES) There is so much to think about.

MARIE:

Yes, I know, but please try to remember not to make any plans for Saturday.

PIERRE:

Oh? Why not?

MARIE:

We promised the children we'd take them to the country again.

PIERRE:

Mm. I shan't forget, I promise. I am blessed above all men to have two such children.

MARIE:

They're growing so fast.

PIERRE:

And blessed in you, Marie. Life has been sweet with you.

MARIE:

Our life is sweet, Pierre.

SOUND:

CLOCK CHIMES

PIERRE:

So late already? Oh, well, I must rush. (MOVING OFF) Goodbye, my dear.

MARIE:

Goodbye, Pierre.

PIERRE:

I'll be back in plenty of time for dinner.

SOUND:

DOOR OPENS, OFF

MARIE:

Take your coat, Pierre. It's raining.

SOUND:

DOOR SLAMS, OFF

MARIE:

Oh! He'll catch his death of cold some day.

SOUND:

TRANSITIONAL PAUSE

MUSIC:

SNEAKS IN BEHIND NARRATOR--

NARRATOR:

That afternoon, coming from his publishers, Pierre Curie walked along the Rue Dauphine in the driving rain. The sidewalk was narrow and crowded. Pierre, by instinct, sought for a free road. He walked sometimes on the stone curb, sometimes in the street itself, with the uneven step of a man who pursues his meditation. He had been walking on the cobblestones for several minutes behind a closed cab when -- when he decided to cross the street to the other sidewalk. With the sudden movement of an absent-minded man, he abandoned the shelter of the cab and turned abruptly to the left, directly into the path of a heavy wagon drawn by two horses.

3RD NARRATOR:

Surprised, Pierre, in an awkward movement, attempted to hang onto the chest of one of the horses, which suddenly reared. The scientist's heels slipped on the wet pavement, and he fell beneath the feet of the powerful animals. His body passed between the feet of the horses without even being touched, and then miraculously between the two front wheels of the wagon. But the enormous mass, dragged on by its weight of six tons, continued for several yards more. The left back wheel encountered a feeble obstacle which it crushed in passing -- a forehead, a human head. The cranium was shattered and a red, viscous matter trickled in all directions in the mud -- the magnificent brain of Pierre Curie.

MUSIC:

SOMBER TRANSITION ... THEN OUT BEHIND--

13TH VOICE:

(SADLY MATTER-OF-FACT) Madame Curie, widow of the illustrious scientist who died so tragically last April, has been named to her husband's chair at the Sorbonne, and will deliver her first lecture on Monday, November fifth, Nineteen Six, at half-past one in the afternoon.

SOUND:

SORBONNE CROWD MURMURS ... CONTINUES IN BG

1ST LADY:

I wonder what she'll say.

2ND LADY:

Well, her subject is the theory of irons and gases.

3RD LADY:

Yes?

1ST LADY:

But a new professor at the Sorbonne is supposed to thank the minister and the university. And it's the custom to begin by pronouncing the eulogy on one's predecessor.

2ND LADY:

Oh, but this is different. Madame Curie is the first woman ever asked to lecture at the Sorbonne. And her predecessor was her husband.

1ST LADY:

What do you suppose she'll say about him?

3RD LADY:

There she comes now.

SOUND:

APPLAUSE

1ST LADY:

Oh, she's so small and pale.

2ND LADY:

Oh, I - I think she's lovely.

SOUND:

CROWD GROWS QUIET

MARIE:

(OFF, EVENLY DELIVERING A LECTURE) When one considers the progress that has been made in physics in the past ten years, one is surprised at the advance that has taken place in our ideas concerning-- (FADES OUT WITH MUSIC)

NARRATOR:

(OVERLAPS WITH ABOVE) Madame Curie had resumed the course at the precise sentence where Pierre Curie had left it.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION ... THEN SIMPLY IN BG--

MARIE:

(FILTER) Pierre, we can't exist without each other, can we? If one of us should -- disappear, the other would not survive.

PIERRE:

(FILTER) You are wrong, Marie. Whatever happens, even if one has to go on alone, like a body without a soul, one must work just the same.

MARIE:

(FILTER) Yes, I was forgetting. In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.

MUSIC:

UP, FOR AN ACCENT ... THEN BEHIND NARRATOR--

2ND NARRATOR:

And Marie Curie went on and on. Pierre had been a great scientist before they had met. Their collaboration defies individual identification, so much was it the work of both, functioning as one mind. But now Marie Curie was to go on alone -- pale, slight, sad-faced. This little woman was to gain fame and celebrity such as no woman has ever known in the world's history. And yet, for the next twenty-eight years of service to science, Marie Curie probably was never fully conscious of the greatness that was hers.

14TH VOICE:

(NEAR MONOTONE) --Benjamin Franklin Medal; second-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Nineteen Eleven; Member Extraordinary of the Royal Academy of Sciences; Honorary Member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain; Foreign Member of the Chemical Society of London; Corresponding Member of the Batavian Philosophical Society--

3RD NARRATOR:

The list is long -- eight prizes, sixteen medals and decorations, one hundred five honorary titles -- showered upon this magnificent woman by a grateful and admiring world. She died in Nineteen Thirty-Four -- finally a victim of the radium she had discovered.

WOMAN:

A year later, the book which Marie had finished before "disappearing" brought her last message to young lovers of physics. At the Radium Institute, which she had founded, the enormous volume was added to other scientific works in the light-filled library. On the gray cover was the name of the author, Madame Pierre Curie, professor at the Sorbonne, Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The title was made of one severe and glowing word -- "Radioactivity."

MUSIC:

CURTAIN ... THEN IN BG

ANNOUNCER:

You have just heard a radio interpretation of "Madame Curie," a biography of Eve Curie, published by Doubleday Doran and Company, and now available at bookstores from coast to coast. William N. Robson adapted the book for radio; Miss Ann Boley played the role of Madame Curie; Mr. House Jameson the role of Pierre Curie. Bernard Herrmann conducted the orchestra. The entire production was under the direction of Mr. Robson.

MUSIC:

UP, FILLS A PAUSE ... THEN IN BG

ANNOUNCER:

The Columbia Workshop has employed in this broadcast a technique of radio presentation unfamiliar to American listeners. The Workshop wants to know whether this device of multiple narrations and long quotations from a book has been effective; whether by its use we have conveyed to you the character of Madame Curie and the magnitude of her work. Please address your comments, criticisms and suggestions to The Columbia Workshop, care of the Columbia network, New York City.

MUSIC:

UP, FILLS A PAUSE ... CONTINUES TILL END

ANNOUNCER:

This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.