Radio: Readers

Since most radio programs use prepared scripts, radio performers need nothing so much as the ability to read aloud. But programs like General Foods Corp.'s We, the People, in which the audience participates, run into special script troubles: the program's cross section includes people with poor eyesight, some illiterates. Average for We, the People is one guest a week who cannot see well enough to read an ordinary script. Last week the docket included a man who could not see at all— blind Musician Leonard Burford. For Guest Burford the script was typed in Braille, and he read it swiftly, accurately.

For other guests jumbo type has been used, and for presbyopic Impresario Daniel Frohman the script was hand-printed, in letters several inches tall. More difficult was color-blind Manhattanite Robert Reuschle, who wanted his lines typed in "red," the color he could see best. (The script had to be typed in green, which he saw as red.) Worst of the lot was 119-year-old Flora Williams, a onetime slave. Mrs. Williams had never learned to read, could memorize nothing, had to ad lib her interview with Commentator Gabriel Heatter. Even under the strain of broadcasting she could not keep awake, repeatedly had to be nudged out of a doze to answer questions.