NOTE: PBS will be presenting a Ken Burns Documentary on the life of Ernest Hemingway. Listening to this prior to the Burns Documentary will give you a very good background on Hemingway's life. NBC's excellent documentary series, "Biography In Sound" was broadcast from 1954 to 1958. A NBC newsman, Joesph Meyers, began the series with a documentary on Winston Churchill for his 80th birthday on November 30, 1954. The program was an instant success and highly praised by critics for its production values and historical accuracy. The second program in the series was based on the writer Ernest Hemingway... and again there was wide acclaim for the show. After a third documentary on Gertrude Lawrence, the show became a serial and aired on a weekly basis for an hour beginning in February of 1955. Meyers combined comments made by friends and foes of the subject of the documentary with sound clips from a tape library that he had collected since 1949. Audiences were enthralled by how well this show was put together. Many wonderful biographies, including WC Fields, Fred Allen, Babe Ruth, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ethyl Barrymore, Frank Sinatra Orson Welles and many more were produced until the series ended in 1958 with the Biography of Theodore Roosevelt. More programs from this series are found in the "Biography of Sound" Playlist.
