Cavalcade of America

Radio

Each episode of Cavalcade of America opened with DuPont’s slogan, “Maker of better things for better living through chemistry,” and the stories focused on humanitarian progress—especially how technology improved women’s lives. The show was created to fix DuPont’s reputation after the Nye Committee investigations revealed the company had profited from World War I, leaving it demoralized and with a bad public image during the Great Depression. Since DuPont’s products weren’t sold directly to consumers, regular ads wouldn’t work.

Roy S. Durstine, a creative director at the advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, suggested the series as a way to rebrand DuPont as a company devoted to public well-being, using the motto. Durstine had hired Arthur Pryor Jr. in 1927 to run BBDO’s radio department, and Pryor helped develop the program. BBDO offered DuPont two choices: a monologue by Channing Pollock or Cavalcade of America. Lammot du Pont II and the company’s executive committee reviewed the show closely until Bruce Barton stepped in.

Durstine and CBS worked out deals with network affiliates to broadcast it. Edgar Kobak, NBC’s vice president of sales, was unhappy that his network lost the show to CBS.

Television

In the 1950s, DuPont moved its advertising focus from radio to TV, and Cavalcade of America became a television program primarily produced by Jack Chertok. A total of 131 episodes ran across five seasons from 1952 to 1957. For half a year, both the radio and TV versions were on the air. The series aired on NBC during the 1952-53 season and on ABC from 1953 to 1957.

In August 1955, it was retitled DuPont Cavalcade Theater, and during its final year it was called DuPont Theater. For the fall 1957 season, it was succeeded by DuPont Show of the Month, a 90-minute live show that adapted popular novels, short stories, or condensed films and plays, and it continued until 1961. Many kinescopes of the series are preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The debut episode, Poor Richard, first aired on October 1, 1952.

Season 3, episode 23, Sunrise On A Dirty Face, showed the founding of the American juvenile justice system in 1899 in Cook County, Illinois. Season 3, episode 25, The Palmetto Conspiracy, featured Detective Allan Pinkerton trying to thwart a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln. Season 4, episode 25, The Major of St. Lo, covered the Battle of Saint-Lô and the death of Major Thomas D. Howie.

Books

In the late 1930s, a book series based on Milton Bradley Company publications was edited by Dixon Ryan Fox, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, and William Sanderson. A 1956 adaptation became the volume Cavalcade of America: The Deeds and Achievements of the Men and Women Who Made Our Country Great, featuring chapters on Abraham Lincoln, Hiram Sibley, James Eads, John Quincy Adams, and Clara Barton. Martin Grams, Jr.'s The History of the Cavalcade of America provides episode guides for both the radio and television versions.