Radio: For TV Listeners

Charles Laughton thinks that the modern world has been brought up to look rather than to listen. This week he goes on TV with This Is Charles Laughton to help redress the balance. All that viewers will have to look at is Actor Laughton himself, a fat man in a rumpled suit, leaning on a stool placed on a table. But they will hear his sonorous voice descend to a whisper and rise to a shout as he reads stories from the Bible and Guy de Maupassant, from James Thurber and Dickens and Thomas Wolfe.

The filmed series will be shown on two Manhattan stations (WPIX and WJZ-TV) and in 21 other cities. The idea is an outgrowth of the readings which Laughton did in U.S. Army hospitals during World War II (TIME, March 31), and which also generated the record-breaking Don Juan in Hell tour of the First Drama Quartette (Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, Agnes Moorehead). The biggest problem faced by Producer Paul Gregory: how to make Laughton stand still long enough for the filming of the 15-minute shows. Laughton finally made nine of them in two days. Sponsor Duffy-Mott plans to repeat the 26 shows after they have had one run. Said a spokesman: "By that time, we think people will be ready to hear their favorite stories all over again."