CORWIN, NORMAN LEWIS

CORWIN, NORMAN LEWIS (1910– ), U.S. radio and film writer, director, and producer. Corwin, who was born in Boston, first achieved prominence in the 1930s with dramatic scripts for CBS radio. His highly experimental programs in the series "Columbia Workshop" and "Columbia Presents   Corwin", many of them proclaiming the menace of Fascism, blazed a trail in radio script writing. His style gave his work a literary distinction new to radio, while his production technique had a vast influence on broadcasting both in the United States and in Great Britain. Some of his scripts were collected in Thirteen by Corwin (1942) and More by Corwin (1944). His most famous radio play was On a Note of Triumph (1945), written to celebrate the Allied victory in World War II. In 1949 he joined the United Nations as chief of special projects in radio and later went to Hollywood to write film scripts. He wrote and directed the Broadway productions of The Rivalry (1959), a documentary drama based on the Lincoln-Douglas debates over slavery and national unity, and The World of Carl Sandburg (1961), a dramatic mélange of the poems and sayings of the American poet. (Jo Ranson)