 The Cavalcade of America, presented by DuPont. Songs of Stephen Foster, an American legend, narrated by Channing Pollock. The DuPont Company, Makers of Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry, tonight presents a man who knows and is known by all America. His lectures have taken him to almost every city in the country, and his books and plays, notably The House Beautiful, The Pool and The Enemy, have brought him distinction as one of America's foremost men of letters. He is Channing Pollock, and in this radio portrait of America singing, he will act as our narrator as we offer tribute to a man who touched life and found song. Stephen Foster, whose melodies have an important place in the Cavalcade of America. Sometimes I think the history of peoples is written in their music, not so much in the works of great composers, as in songs that come from the souls of humble men and women. Tennyson said, the song that serves a nation's heart is in itself a deed, and what deeds have echoed in, or been inspired by our country's melodies. Victor Herbert told me once that he thought no song survived that did not bring tears to the eyes, or cause some human being to reach out for the touch of another. The novelist Zola said, we have only four elemental things, love, hunger, birth and death. There was a man who expressed those things in song. His name was Stephen Foster, and his songs are deathlessly dear to us because of their common touch. One of them may be our earliest memory. Close your eyes. That's a good boy. He was a very young author. A famous dramatist told me, if you write of love for sweetheart or wife or husband or child or home, you write of what the world knows. For every man of us, there was a certain girl, the most beautiful girl in the world, and for Stephen Foster, there was Jeannie. I thought you'd be alone. Well, I'm sorry, Stephen. I didn't know you were calling this evening. You know Mr. Richard Cowan? Evening, Mr. Cowan. Glad to know you, sir. You see, Stephen, Mr. Cowan... I'm sure Mr. Foster feels no embarrassment. I certainly don't. Very plain to see, Mr. Cowan. I'm sure you two gentlemen will want to know each other better. Mr. Cowan is in law, Stephen. Stephen writes songs. Songs? Interesting. I knew a chap once who wrote songs. I knew a lawyer once. I had no idea it was so late. No, I'm afraid I must take my leave now, Miss Jeannie. It's time a gentleman retires. Thank you for a most charming evening. It was kind of you to call, Mr. Cowan. Good night. Good night, Miss Jeannie. Going my way, sir? Nope. Stephen. Well, I really must get on now. Good night again, Miss Jeannie. And thank you. Stephen, really, how could you be so rude? Mr. Cowan is one of our up-and-coming young men. Stephen, stop playing that piano and listen. Sit down here with me. Well, I shouldn't. I want your answer. Is it yes or no? My answer, Stephen? Yes or no? It's yes, Stephen. Oh, Jeannie. Oh, my dear sweet Jeannie, I... Yes, darling. Oh, Jeannie. I'm not much good, but I'll do my best for you to try to make you happy. I know you will, Stephen. America sang it then, and we are singing it tonight. There have been and there are millions of Jeannie's. There will be millions more. Maybe one of them is sitting beside you this minute. Maybe her hair is light brown and maybe it's gray, and the sight of her brings back memories of glad moments and sad ones together. Love is a song, and song is the universal language. We all know it. The dark is on a plantation. The fiddler at a country dance. And they knew it, too, in the America that was expanding to the West. Hardship and danger couldn't daunt these pioneers, and with the morning sun at their backs, they found song in their hearts, too. At dawn, they were ready to shove off. Somewhere in Missouri, a cabin would stand empty. The woods closing in around it. Right now, Paul and his two tall sons are loading the bedding into the wagon. Here's you with that parcel, Jim. Name's Mars Cochry. All right. Easy does it, Paul. Are you ready, Ma? Yeah. I reckon we're now ready to go. Look at them harness skin, Jim. Only have no trouble. No, they're plum secure, Paul. Better start. Yeah, yeah. Not just yet, though, Paul. Much trouble, Ma. Figured we all sort of ought to take a last look at the old place. Be kind of lonesome about us. Yeah. I reckon you're right, Ma. Go ahead now. Start the mule, Jim. Ah. Get up there, Miss. Get up, Jimny. Get up. Be a long ways, but it'll be a pretty way, Ma. Sunshine on the plains, as far as you can see, like the book Jim was reading to say, and there'll be us all together. A young man playing a tune likes right now. Maybe you're right, Paul. The right cherry tune is playing now, ain't it? Yeah. It's a new one we heard to dance, Ma. Remember, they called it out? Written by an Eastern fella. They can't think of his name. Not one family, but thousands of families. Not one voice, but thousands of voices. And all singing, oh, Susanna's America marched westward over the prairies. That is the spirit of America. There are still planes to cross. There are still frontiers and dangers to be faced and problems to be met. May we face and meet them together. A united America with America first in our hearts, courage still in our souls, and the song still on our lips as in the days of 49. Home is any place where the world is shut out. Or, as James Whitcomb Riley said, any place that holds love and the smiling face of her. That's the kind of a home Stephen Foster dreamed about as he took Jeannie down the Mississippi for their honeymoon and they stood on the deck of the old river-side wheeler. Happy, Donnie? So very happy, Stephen. I think this is the loveliest night of all. The moon's almost full, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Look, Jeannie, the lights of that plantation on shore. Yes. Beautiful. It's like the end of a song. The song, I'm the sprite. Well, that's us, Jeannie. You and I. We'll have a home. May not be as nice as that plantation of the little they are. We'll have it. We'll have ourselves. And our memories there. The Mississippi steamboat turned on through the night. The enchantment and the soft fading lights of the river plantations drove dreams of longing in the mind of Stephen Foster. And we all know what he felt whenever we hear my old Kentucky home. We have so many memories. So many customs vanished and gone. For example, nothing was ever more American than the old-time minstrel show. Many of Stephen Foster's songs were first heard in minstrel shows. There was E. P. Christie's Sable Harmonists. And I wonder how many of you remember Primrose and West or Haverly's minstrel? My first song was sung by a little minstrel group that played on the second floor of a dime museum in Salt Lake City when I was 12 years old. I can still feel the thrill of the night I climbed up the stairs and heard an end man singing my words. I'm sure one of the reasons my father was glad to have children was that it gave him an excuse to see the minstrel parade. For there was always a parade before the show. How we scrambled for our places at the curb. There they came and Uncle Sam's suit had tall hats. The leader of the band, Whirling is Batten. By the time that parade had passed there was no question in my mind or my father's. We were going to that minstrel show. See you then. A new song entitled Camp Town Racing which will be interpreted separately by that Supreme Vocal Artist, Mr. James Roth. And by those two stars of Turks calling in art and devilry, homes and wheelers doing the new dance sensation The Buck and Wing. There is none of us who cannot of those never-to-be-forgotten melodies of a younger and simpler American. Evening, Master Stephen. Evening, Joe. I'll take your coat. Thank you, Joe. Feeling better now? Oh, I still got the misery, Master Stephen. Old Black Joe always got the misery. How have you been? Making more songs, Master Stephen? Yes. Lots of songs. Too many, I think, sometimes. They're all in the songs. All my friends. Someday you'll be there, too, Joe. Better not, Master Stephen. Nobody care nothing for songs about Old Black Joe. Someone said music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Someone else said architecture is frozen music. There were men who expressed the spirit of our country in soaring bridges and towering structures of stone and steel in poetry and ringing prose and in music. One of these men lives in the memory of every American. The last words he wrote were dear friends and gentle heart. And not all of them knew that he left behind the legacy of a treasure of song. Now, anything about him? Not much. He was sort of peculiar that one. Leave anything? There's his pocketbook on the bureau. Yeah. Let's see. 38 cents. What's that piece of paper stuck in the lining? It says, dear friends and gentle hearts don't make sense, does it? Well, it doesn't make much difference one way or the other. I didn't mean the attention to him anyway. Close that window, will you? That hurty-goody is getting on my nerve. I don't want to close it. That's one of my favorite songs. Oh, it's just one of them things that will be gone next month. They never last anyway. Nobody will ever remember the names of them who lift their voices in the echo of a voice whose owner is long dead but forever deathless. The America of his day so long as we can keep some of that simplicity and tenderness and gallantry we shall have our feet on the earth and our eyes on eternal things. And this is our musical Laurel of tribute to Stephen Foster in the travelcade of America. I hope you've enjoyed this tribute to the spirit of Stephen Foster in American Song and that you will enjoy our story from the wonder world of chemistry. In a DuPont laboratory not long ago there were solemnly frying eggs. Before they put away the frying pan many weeks later, they had fried 1,347 eggs. They fried these eggs to help you get beautiful dishes for your table at low cost. Eggs are hard on the colors in dishes. The reason is that eggs contain sulfur that turns nice bright colors black. A manufacturer who wanted to decorate glass plates in solid opaque colors came to DuPont for help. They used for breakfast sets and had to resist staining by fried eggs. That's what the egg-frying chemists were working on. Their experiments took place in a DuPont plant that provides ceramic colors that is to say colors for glassware in China. They tried using sulfide gas to test the colors but a fried egg still left a dark ring on the plate. So they had to fry egg after egg and work with color after color until they produced colors that fried eggs for breakfast. The result of their research, attractive inexpensive glassware now will remain bright and beautiful in your home even if you have fried eggs for breakfast every morning. There's another interesting story about gold decorations for glassware. Until a few years ago glass of this sort was quite expensive but now handsome tumblers or goblets with a gold decoration or initial can be bought for as little as 5 or 10 cents. And the decoration of gold. This beauty at low cost also came about as a result of DuPont research. A liquid bright gold is supplied to the glass maker who puts it directly on the glass by a stencil process. The usual gold band around a glass tumbler is one tenth of an inch wide. One pound of gold will make such a band 65 miles long. So in this story of ceramic colors you see once more how DuPont chemists helped create things of beauty for your home. Things that give you enjoyment that last long but cost little. Another example of the DuPont pledge better things for better living through chemistry. And now the Cavalcade of America's historian Dr. Frank Monahan of Yale University. Cavalcade's subject for next week is one of the most famous men of American history. Millions have followed the trails he blazed through early America. He cut the wilderness road through the forest and led to the settlement of Kentucky. Daniel Boone always wanted elbow room. If there was a neighbor within 50 miles he felt crowded and moved on beyond the horizon marking the path of America's westward march. Next week in the role of Daniel Boone our star will be John McIntyre. On tonight's program the chorus is directed by Ken Christie. The orchestra and the original musical effects on the Cavalcade of America are under the direction of Don Buries. This is Basil Riesdale saying good night and best wishes from DuPont. This is the National Broadcasting Company.