Radio: No Horns, No Beard

Since 1950. the A.F.L. has been spending around $500,000 a year to send the angry voice of Mutual Commentator Frank Edwards into U.S. living rooms. Last week C.I.O. President Walter Reuther. back from six weeks in Europe, announced that, beginning Labor Day, the C.I.O. will have a radio voice of its own: Author-Commentator John W. Vandercook. signed up for 52 weeks, five nights a week, over ABC.

Although the C.I.O.,. like the A.F.L., has sponsored occasional radio shows to plump for favored candidates or to berate certain legislation, its Vandercook program (annual cost: some $500,000; stations signed: 128) will be its first big-time use of radio. Last year it sponsored 13 weeks of quarter-hour TV shows (Issues of the Day) to boom some of its favorite themes (civil rights, public housing). Issues was a toe-wetting ‘operation that gave the C.I.O. some experience for a’ once-a-month television show now in preparation and scheduled to start this fall (annual outlay: $300,000). Explained a spokesman: ”Our idea is to say, ‘Folks, here’s the C.I.O. in a goldfish bowl. Here’s what we are and why we’re that way; here’s what we do and why we do it . . .’ We want to convince the public we don’t have horns.”

In John Womack Vandercook, 51, the C.I.O. gets a globe-trotting author (most notable of his ten books: Black Majesty, a 1928 bestseller about Haiti’s famed King Christophe) and onetime (1940-46) NBC correspondent (TIME, Jan. 10, 1944). His cultured, velvety voice was last heard on a 1952 TV show, Campaigning with Stevenson. Unlike A.F.L.’s Edwards, who swings a crusader’s meat ax at “the big-business boys.” Vandercook (who will be on ABC’s payroll) expects to deliver a quiet “expository commentary” without a heavy pro-labor slant. “He seemed in the liberal tradition we liked.” said a C.I.O. man. “That was good enough for us.”

The C.I.O. expects to use its commercial time to play down its reputation as the brash young giant of U.S. labor. In line with this subdued pitch, some C.I.O. leaders began looking askance at Vandercook’s black Vandyke beard, which he has worn ever since hiking 600 miles through the Cameroons 25 years ago. Was it possible that he would look too much like a “character” to listeners? Vandercook rose voluntarily to the occasion: last week in a Manhattan hotel room, he sadly shaved off his beard.