Helen Hayes Theatre, 1940. Original script. Script, 9 x 11 inches, 32 pp. Bound in original boards. Mild wear to boards, especially at head and base of spine. Slight toning to page borders (not affecting text) and minor smudging to certain pages from prior use. Pencil marks and notations throughout, including corrections and strike outs, possibly made in connection with the original October 27, 1940 radio broadcasting of the production. Item #36

An original radio script for the October 27, 1940 broadcasting of an adapted version of Rose Wilder Lane’s (1886–1968) classic novel, Let the Hurricane Roar. Helen Hayes MacArthur (1900–1993) was an American actress and radio personality whose prodigious career spanned eighty years. Hayes would earn the nickname the “First Lady of American Theatre,” and she remains among only a handful of performing artists to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. Hayes was the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting, and she would also receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, from President Reagan in 1986 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988 prior to her death in 1993. The Helen Hayes Theatre opened on September 29, 1940 and produced several radio shows starring Hayes until 1941. The radio shows were drawn from a variety of novels, stage plays, motion pictures, and magazine stories of the day. This exceptional—and possibly one of a kind—radio script dates the production as “Oct. 27, 1940 8–8:30 P.M. WABC,” and is sponsored by Lipton’s Tea, which sponsored the Helen Hayes Theatre until it withdrew its sponsorship in December 1941 in light of tea shortages caused by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The script has Helen Hayes playing “Caroline,” the heroine in the tale of two newlyweds who pack up their lives to move west across the plains in search of a new homestead. Let the Hurricane Roar was first published in 1932 in serial format in the Saturday Evening Post, and then in book form by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1933. The book was later reissued in 1976 under the title The Young Pioneers. Rose Wilder Lane was an American journalist, novelist, and political theorist and daughter of American writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. Lane is often celebrated as a founder of the American libertarian movement alongside fellow writers Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand.

Price: $225.00