DIMENSION X - The Parade (George Lefferts)

DIMENSION X
The Parade
Aug 25, 1950
George Lefferts was a writer, producer, and director. In addition to television, radio, and movie dramas, he was a documentarian. He wrote The Parade for radio in 1950. It was first performed on Dimension X, August 25, 1950, and again on the show X Minus One, May 1, 1955.
The story plot is rather predictable, but the social commentary and observation about human nature are not so easy to anticipate. Lefferts unravels the simple complexities of how media shapes our society, our psyche, and our expectations, through the story of a wealthy client who hires a publicity firm to promote a mysterious product.
Ironically this radio show was sponsored by Wheaties boxed cold cereal, whose heavy handed advertisement before and after the show are an apt example of the position advertising holds in the American psyche, as it is described by Leffert's character Luchar when he says, "...advertising and publicity are the very backbone of Earthly civilization."
HISTORICAL GLOSSARY
Ryan thinks Luchar is joking about being a Martian so he responds with, “I’m a Rotarian myself.” A “Rotarian” is someone who belongs to the Rotary Club, an organization founded in 1905 as a men's club that promoted community service. At the time there were many private social clubs, mostly upper class, in which the membership networked and supported each other in business as well as socially. These clubs had stringent parameters for who could join and were elitist in nature. The Rotary club was a reaction to that, founded by professional men, it was open to professional as well as working class men of diverse backgrounds. Ryan is just making a joke because the words “Martian” and “Rotarian” sound alike. But the author is using this as a way to develop the character of Ryan. If he is a Rotarian then he would be involved in service projects as well as networking, making him well known and active in the community, so it isn’t hard to believe he could get the Fifth Avenue Merchants Association to support his parade project.
Ryan calls a booking agent and asks, “Benny, how ya fixed for midgets?” In this context “fixed” refers to having a supply of something. And “midget” describes an extremely small person who is otherwise normally proportioned, in contrast to a dwarf who is affected by a medical condition that causes his or her torso, appendages, and head to be disproportionate. Today it may be impolite to refer to someone as a midget, but in the 1950s the word “midget” was simply a descriptor of stature and not pejorative.
When Heilman describes the costumes worn by the aforementioned midgets he says they are wearing, “weird-looking pink-and-blue space suits, carrying Rube Goldberg weapons”. Rube Goldberg was a writer and artist, born in 1883. He published a cartoon series in Collier’s Weekly magazine from 1929 to 1931 called The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. The illustrations showed humorously elaborate machines meant to accomplish ridiculously simple tasks in an overly complicated way, like tipping a man's hat or wiping his mouth with a napkin after eating soup. Therefore this reference, along with the description of the costumes, gives the audience a picture of a comedic troop of theatrical aliens, creating a contrast for the army of actual Martians.
When Ryan speaks to the booking agent, Benny, regarding the Martian “actors” Benny asks, “Are you in the bag?” And Ryan responds, “Never felt better.” Being “bagged” means to be drunk. This refers to the stereotype of a drunk walking down the street trying to hide his drinking by keeping his bottle of alcohol in a brown bag (grocery bags at the time were brown paper bags), the drunk hoping passersby would think he was sipping milk or orange juice out of the mystery bottle in his bag. So a person “in the bag” they had their face in a brown paper bag, drinking alcohol.
Marty at Century Pictures tells Ryan that the studio “shelved” the movie about an alien invasion. He goes on to say it is “back in the can”. Literally they had begun filming so they had reels of film but decided not to continue so they put the film reels back in their metal containers (cans) and put them on a shelf. Therefore both “shelved” and “back in the can” are referring to a movie which has stopped production with no foreseeable date to resume.

[@sandeakilpatrick2386]

It's another good one! Thank you.

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I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for watching :-)