Turnabout's Fair Play: The Way It Was, 18 April

1945: OR, AS THE WORM TURNS---Radio 1212---the so-called "black propaganda" operation based at Radio Luxembourg (who turned its facilities over to the U.S. Army after the Grand Duchy had been liberated) and operated by the U.S. Office of War Information's Psychological Warfare Division (supervised by CBS chief William S. Paley), whose mission it was to broadcast as though from Nazi Germany and gain an audience of loyal Nazis before using that influence against them---turns its worm and cranks up a broadcast effort that trapped 350,000 German troops. The 1212 effort's finale includes a farewell broadcast of a sort giving the impression that the Allies have captured their fictitious station.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

1943: THE CORPSE THAT WASN'T THERE---He is when Britt (Al Hodge) and Kato (Rollon Parker) deliver a found letter to what proves the home of a war plant official, but he isn't after Britt returns from phoning police to revive a knocked-out Kato, on today's edition of The Green Hornet. (NBC Blue.)

Miss Case: Lee Allman. Lowry: Jack Petruzzi. Writer: Fran Striker.

1948: DRUMS OF THE FORE AND AFT---A raw British regiment, sent to the front against a fanatical Muslim troop during the Afghan War, is shamed back to battle after a crushing retreat by a pair of young drummer boys (Gil Stratton, Jr., Jimmy Ogg), adapted from the Rudyard Kipling story, on tonight's edition of Escape. (CBS, first broadcast; AFRS, rebroadcast.)

Kipling: Eric Walsh. Writer: Les Crutchfield.

PREMIERING TODAY . . .

1880---Donald Crisp (actor: Jonathan Trimble, Esquire), Aberfeldy, Scotland.
1882---Leopold Stokowski (conductor: NBC Symphony of the Air), London.
1887---Bill Hay (announcer: Amos 'n' Andy), Dumfires, Scotland.
1889---Gene Carroll (comedian: Fibber McGee and Molly, Quaker Early Birds, Gene and Glenn), Chicago.
1902---Harry Owens (bandleader: Hawaii Calls), O'Neill, Nebraska.
1904---Pigmeat Markham (as Dewey Markham; comedian/singer: Jubilee), Durham, North Carolina.
1907---Miklos Rozsa (composer: Lux Radio Theater), Budapest.
1912---Wendy Barrie (as Marguerite Wendy Jenkins; actress/hostess: Detect and Collect, The Jack Haley Show, Star for a Night), Hong Kong.
1913---Al Hodge (actor: The Green Hornet, Columbia Workshop), Ravenna, Ohio.
1918---Page Gilman (actor: One Man's Family), San Francisco; Tony Mottola (jazz guitarist: The Gordon McRae Gulf Spray Show), Kearney, New Jersey.
1922---Barbara Hale (actress: Lux Radio Theater, Screen Guild Theater, This Is Hollywood), DeKalb, Illinois.
1925---Bob Hastings (actor: Archie Andrews, Sea Hound), Brooklyn.