Rupert Hughes - Pgm 4 - September 4, 1944

Here’s another anti-FDR speech from the 1944 Presidential campaign, this one originating on the West Coast.

This is the fourth program in a series of 15 minute commentaries by Rupert Hughes sponsored by the Republican Party of California and heard on KMPC, Los Angeles, California.  The series was broadcast at 6:30 pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Rupert Hughes was a writer who was the uncle of billionaire Howard Hughes; he served as president of the American Writers Association, a group of anti-Communist writers, and is most well-known for his biography of George Washington.

Hughes spends his quarter hour commentary raising fears about FDR’s death and what might happen if his inexperienced VP Truman took over the Oval Office.  He’s suspicious of FDR’s dealings with Churchill and Stalin and the ability of Truman to serve as President, noting how he had been left out of the Tehran Conference.  Hughes goes on to liken Roosevelt to a king or dictator - “Is he going to liquidate the American republic?  He’s already liquidated the Democratic party … This is an election that’s coming up - not a coronation!”

Our mp3 was transferred from a single-sided 16” glass-based NBC Reference lacquer.  I think this may be the only surviving episode of this series and it appears to not be currently in circulation among old time radio enthusiasts.

I had a very difficult time playing this program - it was cracked long ago from the edge to the label and, typical of glass-based discs, the lacquer coating was beginning to flake off and deform.  I had to “ride the needle” to get it to track, especially in the first few minutes.

Please note that I did a “copy and paste” of one phrase from the end of the program to the beginning, where the announcer states that the program was paid for by the Republican Party of California - there was a nasty skip in the opening and I did the alternation since the announcer was saying the same phrase to preserve the continuity of the program content.  I also saved a raw wav file of the full transfer.

By the way, the label fell off this disc.  Here’s what was underneath it.