Alexanders Ragtime Band

Lux presents Hollywood. The Lux Radio Theatre brings you Alice Fay, Ray Meland, and Robert Preston in Alexander's Ragtime Band. Ladies and gentlemen, your producer, Mr. Cecil B. Demille. Greetings from Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen.

The real history of our time isn't all in the textbooks. Some of it's in the song books. And if you look under the name of Irving Berlin, You will find songs that represent a whole chapter in the American saga.

That history has never been told, but it's been whistled and sung on the broad ways and byways of America for more than thirty years. The first Irving Berlin song hit, paved the way for the Jazz Age, was the granddaddy of swing and gives the title to tonight's play, Alexander's Ragtime Band.

This is the story of a singer, a songwriter, and an orchestra leader, who started as a professional trio and became an emotional triangle. It begins in the days before the World War, and as it comes down the years, you'll hear those Irving Berlin songs that are linked with the memories of our own time. As the singer in this cavalcade of melody, Alice

Faye has the same part she played in the picture. In fact, playing singers of the more glamorous kind seems to be a very special talent with this young lady, the most recent evidence being her success in Daryl Zanuck's 20th Century Fox production, Lillian Russell.

The second member of our dramatic triangle is Ray Meland as the orchestra leader, the Alexander of Alexander's Ragtime Band. It's a perfect part for Ray and I think you'll like what he does with it. In the role of the songwriter, we've cast Robert Preston, now one of Paramount's brightest stars, but when I first met him just an attendant in