Golden Age of Radio

December 27, 1976 FEATURE ROBERT DRYDEN, ACTOR, ON O.HENRY, WRITER “Somehow, and I really don’t know how, I missed reading O. Henry,” says Robert Dryden who will star as the master short story writer for seven consecutive nights when the CBSRMT MP3 , starting its fourth year on Monday, Jan. 10, presents seven adaptations of O. Henry stories. “By playing the roles, I have become fascinated with the man,” say Dryden . “He was an artist with words, to be sure, and here and there you see flashes of great depth. He seems to have been a complex sort of person, enormously lonely, and sombre. “He had an uncanny awareness of the human condition and an understanding of people. whom he treated with a combination of toughness and tenderness. But apparently he had a low image of himself, thus a gravitating toward people on the bottom of the pile. “ He also had a marvelous ability to not use too many words, presenting his stories in a straightforward, simple manner. And he