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Babbitt — KCRW radio play illustration
Illustration for the 1987 KCRW / L.A. Theatre Works radio production of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt — a marathon public-radio broadcast from Santa Monica.
Byrd illustrated Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt for a groundbreaking 1987 radio dramatization produced with L.A. Theatre Works (L.A. Classic Theatre Works) and broadcast on KCRW, the NPR public-radio station in Santa Monica.
Poster Child records that producer Judith Auberjonois hired him; René Auberjonois (Carnegie Tech classmates with Byrd) was in the cast and arranged the novel for radio. The Thanksgiving Day broadcast ran about fourteen and a half hours with a star ensemble headed by Ed Asner as George F. Babbitt.
This is its own Los Angeles journey stop — separate from the 1981 Van Halen Fair Warning tour-book art direction.
Sources: Poster Child · Los Angeles (p. 158); LA Times radio review (Nov 26, 1987); L.A. Theatre Works / KCRW production record.