Cavalcade -- Radio Aggie supplement

Thanks to our good friends Aspasia and Erika we now have several additional episodes of Agnes' work for the radio anthology series Cavalcade of America. In parts three and seven of the Radio Aggie series we had a brief introduction to Cavalcade and opportunity to listen to a few episodes. Cavalcade dramatized historical persons and events, illuminating both the prominent figures and those who have worked to better their world from behind the scenes or beyond public attention. These fifteen episodes may now be downloaded from the Internet Archive, and here I'd like to highlight those episodes where Agnes figures most prominently:

Marie Dressler, aired 13 March 1939. Agnes plays the title role. Dressler was an actor and singer; star of theater, the comic opera, and early cinema. One of her most famous stage roles was a character named Tillie Blobbs, in a comedy called Tillie's Nightmare, where she introduced the memorable song "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl." We have the privilege of hearing Agnes sing a portion of this song at the thirteen minute mark:


Eliza Ann Brooks, aired 3 April 1939. Agnes plays the title role, a pioneer wife and mother caring for her six children in Michigan while her husband has pushed on to California for work. In 1852, with encouragement from her husband's letters, Eliza Ann takes it upon herself to move her children westward on her own to rejoin their father:


Dolley Madison, aired 22 May 1939. Agnes plays the title role of a young Quaker widow with a son, who forsakes her faith to remarry with Virginia congressman James Madison, who would go on to become first Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state and then U.S. president. In Dolley Madison's role first as hostess for the widowed Thomas Jefferson at state functions and then as wife of fourth president Madison, she evolved and defined the role of First Lady which would continue as tradition into the twentieth century:


Susan B. Anthony, aired 18 June 1940. Agnes in one of her "nugget roles" for radio portrays near the end of the play Britain's aged Queen Victoria. This brief vocal characterization is more brilliant than words can describe:


The Farmer Takes a Wife, aired 20 November 1940. In this adaptation of the stage play and film of the same name, Agnes takes the supporting role of hotelier Gammy Hennessy:


Light in the Hills, aired 27 November 1940. Agnes portrays Martha Berry, who founded a series of schools in rural northern Georgia, which eventually combined to form Berry College, to bring education to underprivileged children:


Anna Ella Carroll, aired 2 June 1941. Agnes plays feminist heroine A.E. Carroll, the woman whose political career led her to service in President Lincoln's cabinet:


Anne Hutchinson, aired 14 July 1941. Agnes portrays the title character, whose belief and teaching that people should be able to worship god according to their own conscience, according to the principals of religious freedom upon which the new world had been settled, led to her banishment as a heretic from Boston in 1637:


Josephine Baker, aired 4 August 1941. Agnes plays the title role of Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, a crusading health inspector in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City, whose efforts to improve hygiene and nutrition among the poor led to reversals in development and spread of infectious diseases. Dr. Baker identified "Typhoid Mary," a cook who had been spreading that disease, while remaining healthy herself, throughout the households where she worked. This characterization of Dr. Baker foreshadows Agnes' future approach to the character of Ruth Benton, the crusading prison superintendent in the 1950 motion picture Caged:


Party Line, aired 18 June 1945. Agnes portrays Mayfield, California telephone operator Miss Elmira in this humorous scenario adapted from Louise Baker's popular book:


The Hickory Tree, aired 14 October 1946. Agnes plays Elizabeth Jackson, red-haired blue-eyed mother of thirteen year old Andrew, who would later become seventh U.S. president. It's 1780 in rural Waxhaw County, North Carolina; the war of independence is ongoing, and the Jackson family is doing their best to fight off the bushwackers:


Is it any wonder that Agnes used to count Cavalcade as one of the two most exciting radio programs of her career?