Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
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Cast
Jason Robards
Narrator (voice)
Erik Barnouw
Self - Historian
Susan Douglas
Self - Historian
Garrison Keillor
Self - Writer
Fred Allen
Self - Predicts Demise of Radio (archive footage)
Gene Autry
Self - Sings (archive sound)
John Barrymore
Hamlet (archive sound)
Winston Churchill
Self - Finest Hour Speech (archive sound)
Lee De Forest
Self - Objects to Quality of Radio Programming (archive footage)
Ralph Edwards
Self - Host of 'This Is Your Life' (archive footage)
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Self - Announces Landing in Normandy (archive footage)
Marie Mosquini
Self - with Lee De Forest (archive footage)
Nelson Rockefeller
Self - Eulogizes Sarnoff (archive footage)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Self - Makes Broadcast About Banking Reform (archive footage)
Frank Sinatra
Self - Serenades Sarnoff (archive footage)
Arturo Toscanini
Self - Conducts NBC Symphony (archive footage)
Harry S. Truman
Self - Announces Bombing of Hiroshima (archive sound)
Orson Welles
Self - Professor in War of the Worlds Broadcast (archive sound)
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