Orson Welles and war loan drive kickoff was a shining moment
It was 1944 and not even a week since D-Day when Texarkana became the kickoff point for the fifth War Loan Drive in a most dramatic way. Texarkana stepped up to the plate to be a part of history— you could hear on the radio.
Orson Welles and other Hollywood stars came to Texarkana and, on June 12, 1944, broadcast nationwide from what was then called the Paramount Theatre (now the Perot Theatre) to promote the war effort and ask Americans to back that effort with their money.
To have Welles and a large production arrive here made it a special moment for Texarkana. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. was in town to vociferously make the case for a war loan drive.
The event put Texarkana in the spotlight as an allAmerican place where patriotism ran strong and supporting the war was the right thing to do. It came naturally to Texarkana. The city was a military town at the time, recalls Hayes McClerkin, who as a teenager was awestruck by the stars on stage.
“I remember they had a great big ceremony in front of the Post Office where they started with Orson Welles,” remembered McClerkin. Later he was in the Paramount, watching a radio show being produced and broadcast nationally. “(Welles) was on the stage, and they were putting on a fictional radio show,” said McClerkin, who was about 10 when World War II began. He said the Paramount was packed to see and hear Welles and company broadcast the show.
He remembers sitting there with his mouth wide open.
The radio broadcast exhorted Americans to buy bonds and support the righteous cause of defeating the enemy. President Roosevelt also delivered one of his fireside chats, encouraging citizens to participate. Fictional elements dramatized the need to help the cause.
According to a script for the live broadcast made available by the Texarkana Museums System, Welles introduced the show by saying, “The eyes of the world are upon the soldiers and sailors and airmen of the allied expeditionary force. In the words of their supreme commander, they have embarked upon the great crusade. The when of the invasion was a well-kept military secret, but not the why of it. This broadcast is about the why of it.”
Morgenthau was straightforward about the dire need. “I have a mes-staff
sage for you—for civilian America—from our military leaders. Here it is in a couple of words: The War isn’t over yet,” he said.
Later, Morgenthau details some of the costs for different arenas in the war (such as the march from Naples to Rome). “I leave it to you to imagine what it will cost to march from Rome to Berlin,” he said.
Texarkanians who worked at Red River Arsenal at the time knew this firsthand as the new ammunition depot’s mission was expanded for tank repair and supply storage. These were busy days for Red River and the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant.
“Obviously Red River Arsenal and Lone Star Ammunition Plant were in full swing and there were a lot of soldiers in town. This was a military town at that time,” McClerkin said. His mother was co-chairman of a committee to organize the local war loan kickoff announcement. “It was a gung-ho attitude.”
He remembers rationing during the war and seeing troops come in on the train downtown. “There’d be a group of people feeding them and giving them Hershey’s bars and things of that nature,” he said. There was a USO building downtown.
Hollywood personalities of the day—Walter Huston, Gloria Jean and Agnes Moorehead among them—appeared with Welles on the broadcast.
By the time he came to Texarkana in 1944, Welles himself had extensive experience in radio in addition to a budding film career, most notoriously in the “War of the Worlds” broadcast in 1938.
“War of the Worlds” was done through his Mercury Theatre on the Air program.
He’d also directed two films considered among his very best, “Citizen Kane” and “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
Other radio series to which Welles lent his talent included “The Campbell Playhouse,” “The Orson Welles Show,” “Suspense,” “The Lives of Harry Limes” and many others through the years.
In Welles’ broadcast here, Texarkana is mentioned and praised.
“The State Line runs up Main Street in this bright and busy little city—Texarkana—where we’ve taken our microphones for the opening of the fifth War Loan Drive,” Huston says.
A hermit character insists to him the towns are called Tex and Ark.
Huston corrects him and says that’s not the case anymore.
“It’s a fine, neighborly, lawabiding community they’ve got here nowadays. ... You ought to see how well they get along together here in Texarkana. And when you write a letter here, you just address it Texarkana, USA. You couldn’t ask for a nicer, friendlier settlement of a border dispute,” Huston says.
Texarkana may have been all that.
But with its patriotic spirit and commitment to supporting the war, it was also a good place to kick off the drive to support those war efforts in the final year of the conflict.