BW - EP143—010: September 1957—The Bing Crosby Road Show And The Report On School Integration

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

In September of 1957, Bing Crosby, now fifty-four years old, was gearing up to host the Edsel TV special and generating praise for his recent dramatic role as Earl Carlton in Man On Fire. He’d won an Academy Award, had his own radio show since 1931, and championed the widespread use of Prime Time, network transcription. The Ford Road Show featuring Bing Crosby debuted on September 2nd, 1957. It aired five days per week on CBS for five minutes. These were taped segments edited by Murdo MacKenzie and written and produced by Bill Morrow The just-heard John Scott Trotter conducted the orchestra. It included an opening theme, one or two songs by Bing and commercials by Ken Carpenter. This episode aired on September 24th. Ford’s Agency of Record J. Walter Thompson saturated radio with five-minute segments. They also sponsored a show with Rosemary Clooney, a chit chat by Arthur Godfrey and news by Edward R. Murrow. Earlier in this episode we spoke about The Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Hattie Cotton Elementary School bombing in Nashville, Tennessee. With forced integration underway, federal troops needed to be called out to Little Rock, Arkansas where a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School were stopped from attending by the state’s governor. On September 27th CBS Radio ran a special report on the progress, or lack thereof, in southern school integration in the three years following Brown vs. The Board of Education.