Crimson Network and HDC To Continue During Summer

This is the second in a series of reviews and predictions on Harvard's extra-curricular activities.

Would-be actors and playwrights arriving at Harvard in the summer will find no lack of opportunity to demonstrate their skill, for the Harvard Dramatic Club and the Crimson Network plan to continue production on schedules only slightly altered. Both organizations await further word concerning the forthcoming training programs, with the Network perhaps the more anxious about the existence of a nightly listening audience.

The HDC, founded in 1908, did not disband during the last war and intends to maintain its unbroken record of American premiers throughout the duration of this one. Starting with such charter members as H. V. Kaltenborn '09, Robert Benchley '12, and Charles W. Putnam '11, the club's roster has been brightened in the past 35 years with the names of George Abbott, John Dos Passos '16, and Kenneth MacGowan '11.

"Mashenka" Star Scouted

History has repeated itself in a way, for Putnam's daughter, Anne Cabot Putnam, Radcliffe '46, has already attracted Hollywood attention by outstanding performances in the recent HDC-Idler presentation of "Mashenka."

Names alone, however, are not sufficient to build a tradition, and HDC's real claim to fame comes from its unusual selection of plays. Always the first United States showing, the annual productions have occasionally been world premiers as well. Bernard Shaw's next piece on the slate, "In Good King Charles' Golden Days," has been given in England only once before.

Revised Script Successful

Not always content with the original lines, the writing staff has made alterations as necessary, and several revisions have been so successful that Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer have requested HDC scripts.

With about half of the club returning this summer, the officers are considering plans for Army-Navy Relief benefit performances, and possible repetition of last February's stock trip to Camp Endicott in Rhode Island. Increased collaboration with Radcliffe's Idler will be necessary, but merger is regarded as an impossibility.

Network Features Varied

Broadcasting with its lighting circuit set-up on a near-nightly schedule, the Network is able to carry a greater volume of dramatic and variety material to the House-dwellers. Its programs, planned, written and "put on the air" by undergraduates, consist of skits, news bulletins, classic and popular music, quizzes, and interviews blended in the same proportions used by coast-to-coast syndicates. One special service in the past has been the broadcasting of important conferences and addresses from the Lowell Common Room and Emerson D.

Present plans call for 9 to 12 o'clock transmission five nights a week during the summer, as is done during pre-exam reading periods. This, of course, will be changed in event of strict "lights-out" enforcement by training school authorities. Technical work is still to be handled by physics-minded men, but, as is the case with many draft-struck organizations, talented young Cliffe-dwellers will do more of the planning, acting, and preliminary writing.