Radio: Family Circle

The worst is yet to come for some of the 20,000 G.I.s and the English girls they married overseas. The brides have yet to meet their U.S. in-laws. To help them cross this bridge before they come to it, England's BBC and the Mutual network teamed up last week in the first of a weekly trans-Atlantic series, Here Comes the Bride. The 15-minute broadcast, short as it was, broke some ice.

In London, two G.I.s and their English brides went on the air, talked back & forth with their relatives in the U.S. Announcers on both sides of the Atlantic nervously hovered in the background, with advisable self-restraint stepped in only when there was a hitch in the conversation.

Newlywed Pamela Schwartz, whose in-laws live in Brooklyn, said that she wasn't "scared of Jack's family."" She hoped to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play, but added determinedly: "I don't promise to support them just because Jack does." At the Brooklyn end of the wire Mother-in-law Schwartz asked how they (Pam and Sergeant Jack) wanted their bedroom done. Said Pam: "In crushed strawberry and white."

Not so self-assured was Helen Matoff, an only child, who felt a little sad about leaving England. She said that her husband of one year, Sergeant Nick Matoff, was already addicted to tea. They had first met in church, Helen said, which led her new sister-in-law of Waterbury, Conn., to remark: "We're very pleased about Nick's going to church. . . ."

With thousands listening in, the program was all sweetness & light, thanks to being pretty well rehearsed. Even so, Here Comes the Bride caught some of the flavor of a situation that has the stuff of drama in it.