Canned Roosevelt
All Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats have been "live" stuff, i.e., not transmitted from recordings. Only "canned" Roosevelt the radio audience ever got was that culled from recordings of his 1932-33 speeches by a Chicago pressagent for Senator Arthur Vandenberg's bizarre "spook" debate with him over CBS in the 1936 campaign. One day last month, however, in the White House's fireside-less Diplomatic Room from which all the fireside chatshave been broadcast, Franklin Roosevelt sat down with National Emergency Council Chairman Lowell Mellett and recorded a 15-minute interview.
Last week, inaugurating a recorded series of NEC get-acquainted interviews with Cabinet members on...