This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 95: Radio And The Classroom (1939 - 1965)

_________________________

As the end of Summer turns into Autumn, the weather cools off and Friday night football games, dances, and eventually All Hallow’s Eve become part of school functions.

In 1820 Washington Irving, one of America’s first great novelists, penned a short story called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

The tale is about a schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, a superstitious outsider. He’s competing for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer.

Sleepy Hollow is a small village in Westchester County, just north of New York City. This aired on NBC’s American Novels from WMAQ Chicago on Friday September 19th, 1947 at 10:30PM.

Part of a larger series called The World’s Great Novels, the concept was born from the NBC Education Department.

Ichabod Crane sees marriage to Katrina as path to wealth, but his rival Van Brunt plays a series of pranks on the jittery schoolmaster, and tensions among the three are soon brought to a head. On a cool autumn night, Crane attends a harvest party at the Van Tassels' homestead. He dances, feasts, and listens to ghostly legends told by Van Brunt and the locals. He leaves after failing to secure Katrina’s hand, riding his horse through woodland between the Homestead and Sleepy Hollow.

It was renamed The NBC University Theater of the Air, and production moved to Hollywood on July 30th, 1948,

The series was offered as a college accredited course and was considered one of the most ambitious radio programs on the air. It now featured intermission commentary from luminaries and won a Peabody Award before going off the air on February 14th, 1951.