Radio Drama · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection

Let's Pretend

Heard
1947–1954
Episodes
2

Let's Pretend was a happy and wholesome radio program for children. It evolved from a few different series, starting in the late 1920s, with various names and approaches through the early 1930s. Young actors played the parts in dramatized fairy tales and stories such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Arabian Nights, Beauty and the Beast, Rumpelstiltskin, and many others.

More about it

In 1930, Nila Mack became the Director of Children's Programs for CBS. In March 1934, she took over as director and changed the title from Land o' Make Believe to Let's Pretend. It became one of radio's most successful and longest-running programs. Mack died in January, 1953, one of radio's most successful production executives. The series received two Peabody Awards, and continued until Fall 1954.

Many of those young actors were on the program for much of its 20-year run. Most all of them continued their acting careers with great success in television dramas and movies for decades after, and maintained life-long friendships with their fellow cast members.

The series inspired books and records, some of which are in the Internet Archive.

Book

Records

* * *

These recordings are part of the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection. Mr. Hehn (1931-2020) was a pioneering collector of radio recordings when the hobby emerged in the 1960s. Digitizing his collection of reel tapes and discs is the effort of a wide range of North American volunteers, and includes assistance of some international collectors. The groups…

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. Six Swans

    · 24 min

  2. Jorinda & Joringle

    · 29 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. Let's Pretend

    The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection · 2 episodes here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

From the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection, at the Internet Archive.

More from The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection

Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.