Radio: Let’s Pretend

To parents distracted and alarmed by the Shadow and Superman, few radio programs are as welcome as CBS’s Let’s Pretend. Adapting fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin, Let’s Pretend is an unsponsored show. More popular with children than many of its murder & mayhem rivals, it attracts some 1,000 letters weekly.

Scripteuse for Let’s Pretend is blonde, broad-beamed Nila Mack, who used to be an actress, now lives with a Persian cat in Manhattan. Last week Storyteller Mack celebrated her tenth anniversary in radio by directing The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins for the Columbia Workshop. It was the 1,304th show that she had had a hand in. First, in 1930, was Sinbad the Sailor, with a cast of grownups and children. Dissatisfied with the adults in Sinbad, Miss Mack decided to round up a group of untrained small fry, to teach by her own methods. Among others, she has taught the Mauch twins and Billy Halop, the Dead End Kid. Miss Mack’s performers are paid $5 for three hours’ rehearsal and a half-hour on the air.

Stern is the surveillance of her tender audience, which permits her to take no liberties with favorite stories. Only human, it likes plenty of gore along with its fantasy. Miss Mack keeps in constant touch with her fans, being a specialist at deciphering childish handwriting. Best letter she’s received to date: “Will you please send me a free fairy.”