Spotlight on Lee Falk - The WWII Years
The WWII Years
Chief of Radio of the Foreign-Language Division of the OWI
In October 1941 Archibald MacLeish was appointed director of the "Office of Facts and Figures" (OFF), an independent government information agency. To head the "Foreign Language Division" within the OFF MacLeish chose Alan M. Cranston [footnotes 1]. To assist him Cranston enlisted Lee Falk [footnotes 2] to serve as associate chief of the FLD and handling radio issues and David Karr to head the press section.
Lee Falk had some experience with radio from his work for an advertising company in St. Louis in the years 1932 to 1934. In Cranston's letter inducing Falk to take the job, he explained that Falk would compose radio scripts for use in foreign-language broadcast designed to provide information about the war, to boost morale, and to sell the war to the German, Italian, and other groups in this country. For this, Cranston said, Falk would have to relocate to a Washington slum, work constantly, and take thyroid pills.
June 13, 1942, the "Office of War Information" (OWI) was established as a federal agency, to conduct the government's wartime information and propaganda programs. The office came into being by integrating several agencies — including the OFF, already engaged in information and intelligence activities.
By 1943 Congress made a varity of accusations against the OWI, as a political tool, and began its investigation. A more specific accusation involving the work of the Radio Section of the FLD and its head, Lee Falk. The inquiry, chaired by Edward E. Cox, claimed that in addition to the initiated moral- and unit-building foreign-language programs they also removed from the air broadcasters who were considered pro-fascist. The Cox Committee claimed that radio stationes were pressed to dismiss personnel by holding the treat of license suspension over their heads, attendent to force upon radiostations a pro-Russian or an arbitrary OWI slant, and that Falk usd the division to secure publicity for himself and employment for his friends.
The inquiry started in August (1943) and by the end of the month Lee Falk had quietly quit his job at OWI.
Army Signal Corps
Lee Falk was transferred to the Army Signal Corps, enlisted at Fort Devens (Massachusetts) on Mars 7, 1944. He said that he promptly was shipped from one end of the country to another. 12 times he was on the verge of going overseas, and 12 times the orders were cancelled and he was sent to some other post.
Note
- ↑ Lee Falk's friend and collaborator of "The Big Story"
- ↑ In the newspaper strip of June 30, 1942 there is an interesting real-time connection. Mandrake is talking about a new job, some sort of espionage, in Washington!
Sources
- ancestry.com; U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947, U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946
- Horten Gerd, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda During World War II
- Lees Lorraine M., Yugoslav-Americans and National Security During World War II
- Sweeney Michael S., Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II