World Without End

Edward Bernds was an American screenwriter and director, born in Chicago, Illinois. While in his junior year in Lake View High School, he and several friends formed a small radio clique and obtained amateur licenses. In the early 1920s there was considerable prestige for amateur operators to have... commercial radio licenses, and Bernds was in a good position to get into broadcasting when he graduated in 1923, a year when radio stations began popping up all over Chicago. He found employment — at age 20 — as chief operator at Chicago's WENR. When talking pictures burst onto the scene in the late 1920s, Bernds and broadcast operators like him relocated to Hollywood to work as sound technicians in "the talkies." After a brief stint at United Artists, Bernds quit and went to work at Columbia, where he worked as sound man on many of Frank Capra's '30s classics. He soon established himself as Columbia's best recording technician. Bernds wanted to be a director, but could not work up the nerve to approach Columbia president Harry Cohn about the reassignment. Frank Capra ran into Bernds one day, and made Bernds promise to talk with Cohn that evening.
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