Radio: LiFE’s People

After a successful 15-year parade of singing mice, hermits, retired admirals, reformed criminals and such, We, the People (Fri. 8:30 p.m., NBCTV) last month tried a change of pace. Jovial M.C. Dan Seymour was given a vacation, and Sponsor Gulf Oil set out to win a new kind of popular success. With the help of the editors of LIFE, We, the People is presenting a 13-week series devoted to the race for the Presidency. The story of the candidates and issues is being told in a mixture of live interviews, films, animated cartoons and commentary. On its opening show, LIFE’S editors and Producer Frank Telford made a clean break with the old People by borrowing and staging the Wintergreen for President number from the current Broadway revival of Of Thee I Sing, followed it with a filmed flashback covering the seven decision-filled years of the Truman Administration and a Washington interview with Vice President (and now Candidate) Alben Barkley.

Other We, the People highlights:

¶ The second TV profile was of Candidate Estes Kefauver, who had just narrowly lost the Florida primary to Georgia’s Senator Russell. It made news with Russell’s announcement that if the Democratic platform contained a strong civil rights clause he would “repudiate it,” and by Illinois’ Senator Paul Douglas’ strong endorsement of Kefauver as the only way to “clear out the chiselers and fixers who hang around the Washington hotels.”

¶ The third and most dramatic show took a few healthy digs at bossism in politics by examining the situation in Pennsylvania, where the voters had overwhelmingly endorsed the candidacy of General Eisenhower, while most of the convention delegates had decided to remain unpledged. Governor John S. Fine (who controls 32 convention votes) made a last-minute appearance before the People camera, confided that “I have come to no conclusions up to this very moment,” but thought he would before Chicago.

¶ Last week; We, the People gave a 30-minute preview of the kind of political fighting General Eisenhower may expect when he steps into the political ring. The gravest warning was spoken by Maryland’s Republican Congressman James Devereux, the’ex-Marine brigadier general who was the commander at Wake

Island when it was stormed by the Japanese. Said Devereux: “In politics, sometimes, you never know when you get hit . . . It is an entirely different kind of battle, a kind of battle out of uniform.”

This week We, the People takes a searching look at Democratic Candidate Averell Harriman and the problem of the Labor vote. Next week, the show hopes to look at the crucial unpledged Michigan delegation. And next month People will go right down to the wire with the winning candidates at the hard-fought conventions in Chicago.