OTHER A TO Z GUIDES FROM THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.
The A to Z of Buddhism by Charles S. Prebish, 2001. The A to Z of Catholicism by William J. Collinge, 2001. The A to Z of Hinduism by Bruce M. Sullivan, 2001. The A to Z of Islam by Ludwig W. Adamec, 2002. The A to Z of Slavery and Abolition by Martin A. Klein, 2002. Terrorism: Assassins to Zealots by Sean Kendall Anderson and Stephen Sloan, 2003. The A to Z of the Korean War by Paul M. Edwards, 2005. The A to Z of the Cold War by Joseph Smith and Simon Davis, 2005. The A to Z of the Vietnam War by Edwin E. Moise, 2005. The A to Z of Science Fiction Literature by Brian Stableford, 2005. The A to Z of the Holocaust by Jack R. Fischel, 2005. The A to Z of Washington, D.C. by Robert Benedetto, Jane Donovan, and Kathleen DuVall, 2005. The A to Z of Taoism by Julian F. Pas, 2006. The A to Z of the Renaissance by Charles G. Nauert, 2006. The A to Z of Shinto by Stuart D. B. Picken, 2006. The A to Z of Byzantium by John H. Rosser, 2006. The A to Z of the Civil War by Terry L. Jones, 2006. The A to Z of the Friends (Quakers) by Margery Post Abbott, Mary Ellen Chijioke, Pink Dandelion, and John William Oliver Jr., 2006. The A to Z of Feminism by Janet K. Boles and Diane Long Hoeveler, 2006. The A to Z of New Religious Movements by George D. Chryssides, 2006. The A to Z of Multinational Peacekeeping by Terry M. Mays, 2006. The A to Z of Lutheranism by Günther Gassmann with Duane H. Larson and Mark W. Oldenburg, 2007. The A to Z of the French Revolution by Paul R. Hanson, 2007. The A to Z of the Persian Gulf War 1990–1991 by Clayton R. Newell, 2007. The A to Z of Revolutionary America by Terry M. Mays, 2007. The A to Z of the Olympic Movement by Bill Mallon with Ian Buchanan, 2007.
27. The A to Z of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia by Alan Day, 2009. 28. The A to Z of the United Nations by Jacques Fomerand, 2009. 29. The A to Z of the “Dirty Wars” by David Kohut, Olga Vilella, and Beatrice Julian, 2009. 30. The A to Z of the Vikings by Katherine Holman, 2009. 31. The A to Z from the Great War to the Great Depression by Neil A. Wynn, 2009. 32. The A to Z of the Crusades by Corliss K. Slack, 2009. 33. The A to Z of New Age Movements by Michael York, 2009. 34. The A to Z of Unitarian Universalism by Mark W. Harris, 2009. 35. The A to Z of the Kurds by Michael M. Gunter, 2009. 36. The A to Z of Utopianism by James M. Morris and Andrea L. Kross, 2009. 37. The A to Z of the Civil War and Reconstruction by William L. Richter, 2009. 38. The A to Z of Jainism by Kristi L. Wiley, 2009. 39. The A to Z of the Inuit by Pamela R. Stern, 2009. 40. The A to Z of Early North America by Cameron B. Wesson, 2009. 41. The A to Z of the Enlightenment by Harvey Chisick, 2009. 42. The A to Z of Methodism edited by Charles Yrigoyen Jr. and Susan E. Warrick, 2009. 43. The A to Z of the Seventh-Day Adventists by Gary Land, 2009. 44. The A to Z of Sufism by John Renard, 2009. 45. The A to Z of Sikhism by William Hewat McLeod, 2009. 46. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature by Brian Stableford, 2009. 47. The A to Z of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands by Max Quanchi and John Robson, 2009. 48. The A to Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema by Albert Moran and Errol Vieth, 2009. 49. The A to Z of African-American Television by Kathleen FearnBanks, 2009. 50. The A to Z of American Radio Soap Operas by Jim Cox, 2009. 51. The A to Z of the Old South by William L. Richter, 2009. 52. The A to Z of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Passage by Alan Day, 2009. 53. The A to Z of the Druzes by Samy S. Swayd, 2009. 54. The A to Z of the Welfare State by Bent Greve, 2009.
55. The A to Z of the War of 1812 by Robert Malcomson, 2009. 56. The A to Z of Feminist Philosophy by Catherine Villanueva Gardner, 2009. 57. The A to Z of the Early American Republic by Richard Buel Jr., 2009. 58. The A to Z of the Russo–Japanese War by Rotem Kowner, 2009. 59. The A to Z of Anglicanism by Colin Buchanan, 2009. 60. The A to Z of Scandinavian Literature and Theater by Jan Sjåvik, 2009. 61. The A to Z of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif by Jean Michaud, 2009. 62. The A to Z of Judaism by Norman Solomon, 2009. 63. The A to Z of the Berbers (Imazighen) by Hsain Ilahiane, 2009. 64. The A to Z of British Radio by Seán Street, 2009. 65. The A to Z of The Salvation Army edited by Major John G. Merritt, 2009. 66. The A to Z of the Arab–Israeli Conflict by P R Kumaraswamy, 2009. 67. The A to Z of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny by Terry Corps, 2009. 68. The A to Z of Socialism by Peter Lamb and James C. Docherty, 2009. 69. The A to Z of Marxism by David Walker and Daniel Gray, 2009. 70. The A to Z of the Bahá’í Faith by Hugh C. Adamson, 2009. 71. The A to Z of Postmodernist Literature and Theater by Fran Mason, 2009. 72. The A to Z of Australian Radio and Television by Albert Moran and Chris Keating, 2009. 73. The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage by JoAnne Myers, 2009.
The A to Z of American Radio Soap Operas Jim Cox
The A to Z Guide Series, No. 50
The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2009
Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2005 by Jim Cox All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The hardback version of this book was cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows: Cox, Jim, 1939– Historical Dictionary of American radio soap operas / Jim Cox. p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of literature and the arts ; no. 3) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Soap operas—United States—Dictionaries. 2. Soap operas—United States— History and criticism. I. Title. II. series. PN1991.8.S4C695 2005 79.45'6—dc22 2005013855 ISBN 978-0-8108-6833-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8108-6349-1 (ebook)
⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America
To Iris Cox—awesome, charming, gentle, kind . . . and to Eric Reed—affable mentor and pal . . . from an undeserving, gratified father-in-law
Contents
Editor’s Foreword (Jon Woronoff) Acknowledgments
xi xiii
Acronyms and Abbreviations
xv
Chronology
xvii
Introduction
1
The Dictionary
21
Bibliography
259
Overview
259
Reference Works
260
Radio in General
262
Soap Operas
263
Major Soap Opera Figures
264
Periodicals
286
Websites
287
Email Forum
287
Archives
288
About the Author
291
ix
Editor’s Foreword
During its relatively brief existence—roughly from 1925 to 1960—the “soaps” were probably among the most popular forms of “art,” listened to by millions of persons (men as well as women), highly appreciated by this public and amazingly effective in educating them to the ways of the world, filling emotional voids, and, not to be forgotten, selling the products of their sponsors. The “soaps” were not solely American; similar products existed in other places as well, but they were a peculiarly American institution. Obviously, one might ask, if they were so good, why did they die out in 1960? The answer is that they did not die; although no longer commanding the lion’s share of broadcasting time, they have simply moved to the more pervasive medium of television and are still thriving there. This A to Z of American Radio Soap Operas is a much-needed guide to this genre. The dictionary part, which is obviously of most interest to readers, includes brief entries on, among other things, the serials themselves, persons directly contributing to them (mainly the actors and writers), organizations that were involved in generating them (the networks, the sponsors, and professional organizations), some of the themes and topics more commonly dealt with, and other related matters. But it would still be best to start at the beginning, namely with the introduction, which explains how soap operas originated, what—and who—they were about, and the commercial motives that sustained them. The chronology charts the brief but brilliant trajectory. And the bibliography, last but not least, points toward further readings on radio in general and “soaps” in particular. A book like this, to be authoritative, has to adopt a rather scholarly approach. But that does not mean that it cannot also be interesting and lively. Jim Cox, the author of this volume, has done an unusually good job of combing both characteristics. That is perhaps because his career xi
xii •
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
was reasonably varied, having worked in several fields closely related to the topic, such as copywriting, marketing, and advertising, although much of his more recent life has been devoted to a passion for radio in general and “soaps” in particular. In the contemporary epoch, he has authored a dozen books, the most relevant of which is The Great Radio Soap Operas and Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory. This book, Cox’s eighth on radio, grew out of the earlier writing but it also sprang from his fascination with live radio, which emerged when he was younger and has continued to date as he built an impressive collection of literature, recordings, and other memorabilia from old-time radio. So, tune in; you won’t regret it. Jon Woronoff Series Editor
Acknowledgments
There are always folks who earn accolades as a project of this magnitude materializes. No author works by himself and a handful of researchers can be credited for portions of the data integrated within the volume. The distinct contributions of these jog my memory as their names appear in alphabetical order: Chris Chandler, Claire Connelly, Doug Douglass, Colin A. Hanna, J. Fred MacDonald, Gary Mercer, William L. Murtough, Charles Niren, Ron Sayles, Derek Tague. The task was made infinitely easier with the support of my greatest cheerleader and longtime companion, Sharon Cox. Her indulgence of an uncompromising passion in preserving details for present and future generations is acknowledged categorically.
xiii
Acronyms and Abbreviations
ABC AFI AFRA AFTRA AHP a.k.a. Big Apple BSH CBS Gotham MBS NBC NBC Blue P&G RWG Windy City
American Broadcasting Company (originally NBC Blue) Air Features Incorporated American Federation of Radio Artists American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (successor to AFRA) American Home Products Corporation also known as New York City Blackett-Sample-Hummert advertising agency Columbia Broadcasting System New York City Mutual Broadcasting System National Broadcasting Company (a.k.a. Red network) National Broadcasting Company (a.k.a. Blue network) Procter & Gamble Company Radio Writers Guild Chicago
xv
Chronology
1925 Even though they themselves are loathe to admit it, Jim and Marian Jordan—appearing in The Smith Family on a Chicago station— meld dramatic elements together that will ultimately be tagged as soap opera, the form’s earliest antecedent, several scholars profess. The Jordans will be known forever as Fibber McGee & Molly but they have already begun to refine their vaudeville routines for aural audiences. This will soon interest many others who will build on their humble start. 1926 12 January: Sam ’n’ Henry, a serialized comic conversational exchange between two characters, originates over a Chicago station. The feature is probably the second that most historians point to among early progenitors of soap opera, establishing a dialogue model that will evolve into a more widely accepted Amos ’n’ Andy in 1928. 1927 Frank Hummert is hired by Blackett & Sample advertising agency in Chicago as vice president and creative director, a promising move for himself and for radio programming of the future. He will soon ponder whether women at home on weekdays would enjoy serialized dramatic fare while pursuing their household chores. Anne S. Ashenhurst, his future wife, will help turn his notions into reality. 1930 Spring: Dayton, Ohio schoolmarm Irna Phillips takes a summer job in Chicago as a radio actress. It will change her life and influence broadcast entertainment to the present generation. 20 October: Phillips writes, directs, and stars in what is generally considered the first true example of soap opera by most historiographers. Painted Dreams airs over a Chicago outlet and will join CBS’s daytime agenda in three years. 1931 Robert Hardy Andrews, who will prove a resilient soap opera author, pens his first one for Frank Hummert and his assistant, Anne S. Ashenhurst—The Stolen Husband. Although it does not persist for very xvii
xviii •
CHRONOLOGY
long, it gives the trio insights that will lead them to many subsequent triumphs. 1932 15 February: Clara, Lu ’n’ Em, a popular nighttime feature on the NBC Blue web, becomes the first network daytime serial; it concerns three gossipy neighbors who find mirth in their experiences. Spring: A stroke of luck pushes freelance magazine scribe Elaine Sterne Carrington into creating a radio serial. So successful is she that four more radio soap operas and another for television will flow from her pen before her death 26 years hence. In so doing, she will become the third most fruitful developer of audio daytime drama. 19 September: With the inception of Just Plain Bill, soap opera becomes permanently established and widely recognized. It is the first of the species to demonstrate staying power. Over a 23-year run, it will be a model for numerous successors, often emulated and possibly duplicated by others seeking a winning formula. Frank and Anne Hummert are the producers and Robert Hardy Andrews writes the original scripts. 1933 Hard on the heels of Just Plain Bill’s success, two superior daytime dramas arrive, both possessing enough potential to maintain commanding positions all the way to 1960, setting impressive records for longevity. 24 July: The Romance of Helen Trent bows as a regional narrative, expanding to CBS’s nationwide hookup on 30 October. 14 August: The venerable Ma Perkins, lauded as “the mother of all soap opera,” debuts in Cincinnati; on 4 December it moves to Chicago and is beamed across the nation by NBC. 1934 Procter & Gamble budgets $500,000 for The Gibson Family musical comedy series, a plot-driven production that is likely the costliest venture in serialdom. It flops because of poor audience response and is withdrawn in less than a year. 1937 25 January: The most durable mythical storyline in broadcast history is born with the inception of Irna Phillips’ radio serial The Guiding Light. In 1952, the drama will add a televersion, then depart radio in 1956. As this is written, the tale continues five days weekly on TV, now in its seventh decade on the ether. 29 March: Our Gal Sunday premiers over CBS and is assigned a quarter-hour time zone that it will occupy for 22 years, earning the durability record for its achievement. 16 August: The American Federation of Radio Artists, including many
CHRONOLOGY
• xix
persons affiliated with soap opera, is formed. 1939 16 October: The Right to Happiness becomes soap opera’s first true spin-off drama, emanating from the storyline of The Guiding Light. Irna Phillips is the creator–writer of both serials. 1941 25 August: Bright Horizon becomes the second veritable spinoff soap opera, growing out of the plots on Big Sister. 1942 Against the Storm, extolling wartime themes, becomes the first soap opera to win a coveted Peabody Award. The serial is withdrawn the same year after creator Sandra Michael and sponsor Procter & Gamble cannot agree on a format. 1943 28 June: Budgeting $3,000 for talent every week, Procter & Gamble launches a weekday morning version of the popular Lux Radio Theater, sans a live audience, which is sponsored by rival soapmaker Lever Brothers. The “noble experiment” called the Dreft Star Playhouse supplies Hollywood headliners in adaptations of major movies. America’s homemakers are largely unimpressed by the matinee fare, however; the series will be gone in less than two years. 13 December: Soap opera impresario Irna Phillips experiments with a “crossover effect” in a trio of dramas occupying adjacent timeslots. Figures in the casts of The Guiding Light, Woman in White, and Today’s Children navigate interchangeably between the series, appearing in the action and dialogue of all three programs. 1944 1 January: Radio soap opera’s most prolific creatives, Frank and Anne Hummert, form Air Features Incorporated (AFI). Distinguished for its assembly line techniques, AFI will churn out scores of daytime dramas, many of those airing concurrently on all the major networks. Several hundred writers, editors, directors, actors, musicians, clerk–typists, and attorneys begin to depend on AFI for all or most of their livelihoods. 1946 A single episode of Big Sister is simulcast before a radio microphone and television camera with actors simply reading their scripts. This initial experiment in putting a soap opera on TV will lead to phenomenal changes affecting both mediums within a few years. 4 February: General Mills allocates $5 million for radio advertising this year, half of the firm’s total advertising budget. A large percentage of that in-
xx •
CHRONOLOGY
vestment is in daytime serials. 1948 A study reveals a single episode of a typical daily quarter-hour soap opera can be produced for $3,600 ($18,000 per week). Within two years several major nighttime shows featuring name celebrities will be budgeted at $40,000 weekly. 26 October: The 1,200-member Radio Writers Guild sets a strike for this date chiefly to gain better compensation rates; the walkout is avoided when the prime target, Air Features, owned by Frank and Anne Hummert, vows to cooperate. 1949 31 January: These Are My Children, the first soap opera created especially for TV, debuts over NBC and airs just four weeks. But it extensively broadens creator Irna Phillips’ horizons; she will never confine her thinking to an audio-only audience again. 1951 3 September: Proving that soap operas on the tube can effectively compete against radio, Search for Tomorrow premiers on CBSTV. For the next 35 years, it will be a video matinee mainstay, the first of many to come. 1952 30 June: The Guiding Light premiers on CBS-TV while continuing to offer radio listeners the very same tale; it will do this for four years until it drops the radio interpretation. 1953 12 October: A rendering of radio’s Valiant Lady surfaces on CBS-TV after the radio series has expired; it will persist in video for four years. 1954 A quartet of radio soap operas makes trial runs on daytime TV— The Brighter Day (4 January), One Man’s Family (1 March), Portia Faces Life (5 April), and The Road of Life (13 December). Only The Brighter Day will flourish, lasting nearly nine years; the others will be gone by 1955. 1955 January: The industry announces that radio time sales for 1954 slipped 5 percent below 1954, to $453,385,000. It is the first dip in medium time sales since 1938 and may be a harbinger of things to come. 7 November: A time-honored radio listening pattern at NBC preceding the debut of a multihour magazine, Weekday, is interrupted and irretrievably broken. Most of the chain’s long-playing daytime serials (e.g., Backstage Wife, Just Plain Bill, Lorenzo Jones, The Right to Happiness, Stella Dallas) are canceled to allow for the new programming
CHRONOLOGY
• xxi
innovation. When Weekday fails eight months later, much of NBC’s faithful sunshine audience—that made the web a formidable competitor for decades—permanently evaporates, failing to connect with several replacement serialized features currently being introduced. 1958 29 December: A separate plotline for Young Doctor Malone, unrecognizable by radio audiences, arrives on NBC-TV and will continue into 1963. 1959 2 January: The last two chains still airing daytime serials drop a plethora of longrunning soap operas. NBC banishes Pepper Young’s Family that—with several antecedents—dates back to 2 October 1932. CBS unloads a quartet of its hardiest perennials including Backstage Wife (acquired from NBC in 1955), Our Gal Sunday, Road of Life, and This Is Nora Drake. If one is looking for a sign about the future of radio serials, the handwriting is on the wall—in indelible ink. 24 April: The epic drama One Man’s Family, which originated on a San Francisco station in 1932, is withdrawn, signaling the end of NBC’s commitment to daytime soap opera. 1960 24 June: After airing 7,222 times The Romance of Helen Trent, the longest-running daytime serial, is canceled by CBS. With its departure, Frank and Anne Hummert are no longer responsible for any broadcast series. 27 June: Best Seller debuts on CBS, earning the dubious distinction of the final entry in network radio’s daytime serial lineup; it dramatizes popular novels in five weekly installments over a five-month period. 15 August: Under mounting pressure from its affiliates, CBS—the last holdout among the major chains—sets an execution date (25 November) for its seven remaining continuing yarns. They include a quartet of open-end soap operas (The Right to Happiness [which shifted from NBC in 1955], Ma Perkins, Young Doctor Malone, The Second Mrs. Burton) and a trio of closed-end serials (The Couple Next Door, Best Seller, Whispering Streets). In the ensuing years, purists will nostalgically refer to the occasion as “the day radio drama died” even though a couple of dramatic nighttime CBS adventures will persist into late 1962. Radio researcher Luther Sies and some other historians since claimed that 25 November 1960 was the end of “the era of American radio’s Golden Age.” They probably got it right.
Introduction: The Span of the Radio Serial
“The daytime air before soaps was a radio wasteland” opined a couple of media observers.1 Ah ha!—but following that initiation . . . ! The Museum of Radio and Television, with branches in New York and Los Angeles, submits that—in the early 1940s—more than 70 daytime serials crossed the ether every weekday. Their audience was comprised of about half of the American women then at home.2 In addition, hundreds of thousands more tuned in to serialized features that surfaced on the air after dark and on weekends, some of those weekly and others broadcast on multiple evenings. The continuous storyline constructed upon previous action and dialogue and meted out in bite-size portions was a classic form of dramatic radio programming in the United States that aired between the mid1920s and late 1960. A substantial segment of the audience was attracted to it verily like an addiction. So popular was the species, in fact, that by 1941, the serials constituted no less than 90 percent of all sponsored network programming during the daylight hours.3 This was a phenomenon that no one could have predicted, but the numbers of its adherents could not be denied. When in 1934 a thousand homemakers were asked to name their most essential household appliances, the top four replies were—in order of usefulness—an iron, a radio, a vacuum cleaner, and a refrigerator.4 The responses to that sampling fervently suggested where milady was staking her priorities. As late as 1948, the 10 highest-rated daytime radio features were all serials, shutting out even Arthur Godfrey Time, banished to 12th place. Of the top 30 shows, 25 were soap operas.5 Figures like these are tough to refute. A myriad of sobriquets were coined to classify the daytime serials. Some of the most common were dishpan dramas, drainboard dramas, soapy sagas, and washboard weepers, each one reflecting an aspect of 1
2 •
INTRODUCTION
the homemaker’s ongoing everyday jobs. A few appellations were less flattering. By 1939 journalists—seeking a shortened handle and disapproving the cumbersome daytime dramatic serials that was then in common use—branded those series as soap operas. They did so because several major soapmakers were underwriting the lion’s share of the aural narratives.6 The new moniker stuck and to this day the label (or a shortened form, soap) is applied to contemporary daytime dramas shown on television. Countless historians of the breed have repeated the definition of soap opera issued by media critic James Thurber in 1948. Yet its succinct descriptive quality is so apropos it bears repeating again. A soap opera is a kind of sandwich, whose recipe is simple enough, although it took years to compound. Between thick slices of advertising, spread twelve minutes of dialogue, add predicament, villainy, and female suffering in equal measure, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week.7
There was never any doubt about who comprised the soap opera audience. The majority were women; possibly nine out of 10 listeners were of that gender. Their take on things then was that a little amusement while performing their routine chores could spice up even the most discouraging life and make it bearable. In the Depression and post-Depression era, many women lived extremely difficult existences. Historian Robert LaGuardia summarized their plight: “Mid-century time-saving appliances had not yet appeared. The whole morning or afternoon could be spent rubbing a big bar of soap across a washboard, lifting a heavy scalding-hot iron, cooking budget foods from scratch. There were often too many children. Divorces were neither afforded nor tolerable. Men were the undisputed masters of their homes.”8 Introduce into that gloomy setting some imaginary heroines who lived in a world of escapism that a dispirited housewife could only fantasize about, but which ferried her for a few moments each weekday far beyond the reaches of her depressed solitude. “Is it any wonder that so many women became almost religiously involved with The Romance of Helen Trent?” inquired LaGuardia. “She lived, inexplicably, a spectacularly glamorous life as a Hollywood dress designer who attracted one handsome devil after another with her invisible charms. At
INTRODUCTION
• 3
thirty-five, Helen had romance and no husband, and no children, and no drudgery. . . . Although her life was a fantasy, Helen herself was real enough for women to feel that, just possibly, they could be living as she was living.”9 Soap opera permitted women to achieve fulfillment in a couple of ways, an official of Columbia University’s Office of Radio Research pontificated. Agency director Paul Lazarsfeld acknowledged that the gratifications conflicted with each other. The first, implied already, was the form’s escapist properties, in which the fan was carried well beyond the grind of her ordinary existence. The second, moral guidance, assisted her in unraveling the dilemmas in which she herself was mired.10 Despite all of it, the narratives were characterized by agony, hatred, suspense, love, and tribulation. “By following the plots of several serials simultaneously, listeners encountered stimulating fantasies they could incorporate into their own ordinary realities,” observed media critic Fred MacDonald.11 “The soap operas proffered a world of action where a wide range of human and social developments—murder, marriage, birth, death, love affairs, accidents, divorces, and disease—could be vicariously experienced through regular listening,” he continued. But MacDonald was just as quick to point out that there was another attribute of soap operas. “Regardless of the pain,” said he, “there were wholesome love affairs, marriages, births, business successes, recoveries from illness, worthwhile children, and personal triumphs. As morose as they might be at times, soap operas could also generate moments of joy.”12
THE ORIGINS OF SOAP OPERA The soap opera is an entertainment genre native to America that has been exported around the globe. Its origins are contained in a handful of dialoguing exchanges that were derived from the historic principles of storytelling, both verbally and in print. Continually refining its rudimentary attempts, the radio tales were shared in continuous—although interrupted—installments. The Dictionary in this volume provides brief fascinating accounts of several primitive series that laid the groundwork for serialized programming to an aural audience. One can trace the heritage while visiting features like Sam ’n’ Henry, The Smith Family, Real Folks,
4 •
INTRODUCTION
Happy Hollow, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Rise of the Goldbergs, Clara, Lu ’n’ Em, Moonshine and Honeysuckle, Painted Dreams, The Stolen Husband, and a few more antecedents of the strain that was rapidly approaching. Who was responsible for the first soap opera? Legend has it that New York WJZ announcer Norman (Broke) Brokenshire took credit for the passage about 1923.13 It actually occurred as the result of an on-air calamity. As his account goes, Brokenshire agreed to fill a half-hour on the ether with a variety program, inviting several artists to appear with him. By some quirk of fate, all of the other participants arrived late for the broadcast, after the show was already on the air. In the meantime, a floundering, enterprising Brokenshire picked up a book of short stories he spotted. He began to read aloud. When the performers arrived they interrupted his finale and finished the half-hour themselves. As the story goes, over the next few days, hundreds of frustrated listeners contacted the station, all petitioning for the conclusion to Brokenshire’s fable. Out of the incident, he later argued that he had found the original audience for an unnamed performing art—it was, of course, drama by installment, though not yet labeled soap opera. Obviously, even then people were clamoring for the rest of the story. As you examine the early beginnings of soap opera in the dictionary, be certain not to overlook the individuals who were present in that incubatory epoch. Foremost among them were Irna Phillips, Elaine Sterne Carrington, and Frank and Anne Hummert—the undisputed trilogy of radio’s most prolific serial creators. Each left large imprints on the daytime serial; for three decades, they clearly dominated the field. The legacy of one, Phillips, is still witnessed in the televised serials broadcast in contemporary times. Phillips put together what is considered the first bona fide soap opera, Painted Dreams, bringing it to the air on 20 October 1930 via a local Chicago station. She was quick to proliferate as a daytime serial developer, responsible for influencing no fewer than 18 dramas on radio and television, and creating most of them unaccompanied. In the early days, Phillips typed every word of every script on a manual typewriter. When that method became too unwieldy, she dictated her scripts to a secretary. At the time, she was originating five chapters of three separate narratives every week. After a while that, too, became burdensome. She hired some writers, paid them well, and set them to work, an arrangement that continued for many years.
INTRODUCTION
• 5
Carrington, on the other hand—who was responsible for but a third of Phillips’ output, a grand total of six serials—performed everything by dictation. She spent four lengthy days every week acting out the parts of a myriad of characters while speaking their lines into a recording device. She, too, had an efficient secretary who turned her mellifluous metaphors into finished scripts that exhibited some of the most radiant lines to cross the ether during the daylight hours. Had she not gotten such a late start in serialdom (even though she was there at the dishpan drama’s baptism, she was still 41 when she penned her first soap), who knows how far her literate gifts might have taken her? Yet it was the Hummerts that most in the industry were beholden to. Alas, they controlled a radio empire from 1931 to 1960 that was responsible for much of what stay-at-home Americans were turning their dials to. Their abilities apparently knew no boundary for they comfortably produced shows in the species of music, juvenile adventure, crime detective thrillers, and a few other breeds, in addition to soap opera. They are credited for having introduced to the airwaves no less than 125 separate features; there is compelling evidence that there may have been more than 125. Among the daytime dramas, nobody could touch them for at least 61 different series were directly linked to their watchful eye.14 In 1932 and 1933, the duo brought a trio of yarns to the national airwaves that would define soap opera for the next three decades—Just Plain Bill, The Romance of Helen Trent, and Ma Perkins. Against these venerable epics, all other stories to follow would be reflected and the majority would be found wanting. How did the Hummerts produce so many shows? By perfecting an assembly-line technique that required a staff of scores of stenographers, writers, editors, and directors for their various programming pursuits. This, in addition to hundreds of freelance actors, announcers, and musicians who were cast as on-air performers in their many programs. The Hummerts outlined a serial’s daily plot in the sparsest of essentials, then turned it over to a “dialoguer” (their term) who would flesh out a script that included banter and action. The couple still worked 14-hour days seven days a week but having so many minions made it possible for their organization (Air Features) to supply as many as 18 serials concurrently and—together with their other series—fill as much as 30 hours of network radio time every week.
6 •
INTRODUCTION
The twosome majored on quantity; the quality suffered as a result and critics blamed them for furnishing “the most banal scripts in radio.” But their aim, contended Robert LaGuardia, was “the spectacle and glamour beneath the plain words their writers wrote, bringing dreams to life for adult women much as comic-book heroes did for children.”15 Doing it “their way” made the inexhaustible pair millionaires several times over and that obviously contented them—regardless of what anyone said to the contrary about how they achieved it.
NOT ALL THESES MIRED IN MELANCHOLY Radio soap opera was almost universally perceived as a misery mill that ground out little more than pathos, jealousy, and dissension in the lives of its inhabitants. Although there was enough of that to go around to confound the most incredibly long-suffering heroine, those wretched circumstances were not the predominant distinctives of dozens of continuing serials. Otherwise, listeners would have missed the action and adventure, the lighter and sometimes uplifting fare stemming from Caroline’s Golden Store, Clara, Lu ’n’ Em, The Couple Next Door, Easy Aces, Ethel and Albert, Friendship Town, Gasoline Alley, The Gibson Family, The Gumps, Hotel for Pets, Judy and Jane, Just Neighbors, The Light of the World, Lorenzo Jones, Minnie and Maud, Perry Mason, Red Adams, Red Davis, Scattergood Baines, Seth Parker, Two on a Clue, Vic and Sade, We Are Always Young, Your Family and Mine, and other features of similar persuasion. Notwithstanding, the predominant hypothesis of the majority of serialized narratives was a woman’s circumstances, notably as the head (or possibly figurative head) of a household, as a married or betrothed partner, as a professional or career businesswoman or—in rare cases—as a lady railing against supernatural odds by herself. In the majority, the focus was on the family and a beleaguered heroine’s struggle to make sense out of what life hurled her way. In most of those yarns, she intermittently traversed the chasm between anguish and bliss, although the dramas were more frequently tilted toward despondency in place of ecstasy. The premises upon which those stories rested usually dictated that her environment could never be encountered any other way. Without regard to order, 10 presuppositions are identified as the most ubiquitous
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• 7
(and therefore, persistent) themes among the continuing storylines in which emotional distress, torment, and sorrow were dominant forces. It can be added that, in nearly all of them, the heroine is usually resolute, widely respected as morally and ethically erect, capable of rising above the petty differences that beset other individuals of lesser strength, while exuding a persona that typified her demeanor yesterday and will influence her exhibition tomorrow. Such qualities invariably launched her head and shoulders above the conventional figures of the soapy sagas. Here are the 10 schemas that appear to be most prevalent in characterizing the matinee melodramas of angst. 1. The woman who struggles to maintain orderliness and provide for her brood against imposing odds (such as a worthless or absent spouse, crushing economic blows, and/or out-of-control adolescent offspring). Examples are Dan Harding’s Wife, Home Sweet Home, Houseboat Hannah, The Life of Mary Sothern, The Man I Married, Manhattan Mother, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Orphans of Divorce, The Right to Happiness, Rosemary, Valiant Lady, When a Girl Marries, Woman of Courage. 2. The woman who faces staggering career challenges pitted against the heartrending tug of being a wife and/or mother or sweetheart. Examples are Brent House, Doctor Kate, Hilltop House, Kitty Keene Incorporated, Portia Faces Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, The Story of Holly Sloan, The Story of Mary Marlin, The Story of Sandra Martin, This Is Nora Drake, Wendy Warren and the News, Young Widder Brown. 3. The woman who hails from a nondescript background and marries several rungs above her social strata. Examples are Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, Backstage Wife, Lora Lawton, Modern Cinderella, Our Gal Sunday, Rich Man’s Darling, Stella Dallas. 4. The woman, while married, who is thrust into a romantic triangle in which her spouse has decided to include another female (usually without his wife’s knowledge initially). Examples are Betty and Bob, John’s Other Wife, The Stolen Husband, Wife Versus Secretary. Note: Most of the heroes and heroines in number 3 above will become objects of romantic chases again and again by people outside their marriages, a ploy to infuse the storylines with recharged passion.
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INTRODUCTION
5. A woman who attempts to successfully moderate intergenerational or second spouse conflicts that arise within a family. Examples are The Carters of Elm Street, Kay Fairchild—Stepmother, Mother-in-Law, Mother O’ Mine, The O’Neills, Second Husband, Second Wife, We Love and Learn. 6. A male or female protagonist who is generally recognized as a helping-hand figure, to whom everyone else appeals for problem solving, proffering good-natured tips and sage advice and occasionally even assisting in bringing wrongdoers to justice—all of this while processing acute doses of personal adversity. Examples are Aunt Mary, Big Sister, The Brighter Day, David Harum, The Goose Creek Parson, The Guiding Light, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Just Plain Bill, Ma Perkins, The Open Door, Sweet River, Woman in White, Road of Life, Young Doctor Malone. 7. Family stories in which life experiences seem to be plausible, nearer reality than in most soap operas. Examples are Forever Young, House Beside the Road, House in the Country, One Man’s Family, Pepper Young’s Family, The Second Mrs. Burton, Those Happy Gilmans, We the Abbotts, The Woman in My House. 8. Ethnic dramas with experiences, actions, and dialects favoring one sect. Examples are Ada Grant’s Neighbors, Foxes of Flatbush, The Goldbergs, The Johnson Family, Little Italy, My Man, Painted Dreams, Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories, The Romance of Julia Davis, The Story of Ruby Valentine, Today’s Children. 9. A man is placed in family dilemmas normally encountered by a feminine figure, becoming the chapter play’s hero. Examples are Bachelor’s Children, Bob and Victoria, Doc Barclay’s Daughters, The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters. 10. Characters operate against a backdrop of real-time action, specifically World War II. Examples are Against the Storm, American Women, Barry Cameron (a.k.a. The Soldier Who Came Home), Brave Tomorrow, Buck Private and His Girl, Chaplain Jim U.S.A., The Gallant Heart, Green Valley U.S.A., Hasten the Day, Helen Holden—Government Girl, Lonely Women, Thanks for Tomorrow, This Changing World.
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THE CHARACTERS OF SERIALDOM A couple of reporters, Madeleine Edmondson and David Rounds, observed that the principal figures of the radio soap operas were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. On occasion, those subjects might possess Jewish or Italian monikers or possibly emerge from a shameful past. Yet, according to those observers, they generally represented “the center on the American graph.” Most residents of serialdom, they insisted, were “roughly middle-class, not poverty-stricken or … of great wealth, neither ignorant nor well educated.”16 They were simply folks the listener was expected to resonate with. The announcer introducing Rosemary each day, for instance, reminded the fans: “This is your story—this is you.” And thanks to Irna Phillips, who populated her stories with people holding professional occupations because they were “more interesting,” physicians, attorneys, psychiatrists, nurses, ministers, and teachers were given high visibility in the narratives—a trend that persists to this day. Although the predilections of soap opera figures could be diverse, possibly for simplicity’s sake, a few scholars dispersed them all into three classifications—the good (chiefly females), the bad (principally affluent, foreign-born, or criminal), and the weak (largely males).17 Although this formula may apply in some cases, of course such a sweeping conjecture evokes many variations. Singularly taking the daytime serial Our Gal Sunday as an example, such a confining trio of categories is easily refuted. There is nothing particularly good about a plethora of bawdy vixens individually committed to replacing Lady Brinthrope as “the next mistress of Black Swan Hall” (the Brinthropes’ “lovely Virginia estate”) by winning the heart of Sunday’s devoted spouse, Lord Henry. (Dozens more women with similar intents toward a leading man turned up on numerous other Hummert serials.) Henry Brinthrope was “England’s richest, most handsome lord” and a man of principles, integrity, and abiding values, proving that the wealthy—as well as the foreign-born—could be considered “good people.” That male also never came across as subservient to his beloved Sunday. Although, on rare occasions, he was duped by insurmountable forces that temporarily encircled his family, his strength of character stood tall as he exhibited a resilience that soon banished the evil-mongers before they could destroy him.
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INTRODUCTION
Another authority distilled the protagonists of the daytime dramas into two types.18 There was a “romance-novel” caste in which a youthful, stunning heroine diligently sought lasting amour but habitually picked up males who did not cherish her or her values. In the second sorting, labeled “the handsome-but-aging career woman,” the lead resigned herself to a life alone but staunchly attempted to help others avoid the misfortunes that turned her world upside down. Of course, indiscriminate notions like this can easily be challenged, too. With few exceptions, the dramas that included young girls and unmarried women as heroines did not persist for long on the air. Listeners most identified with people like themselves. For the bulk of the fans, that meant ladies who were married, widowed, or (in rare cases) divorced. Multiple radio historiographers pointed out this basic ingredient of most successful narratives. If a leading lady had never been married by the start of her serial, there was a strong likelihood that she would wed before long (e.g., Big Sister, Lora Lawton, Rosemary, When a Girl Marries, et al.). On the other hand, dress designer Helen Trent might be characterized as a handsome-but-aging career woman, although she never seemed resigned to it as her ultimate fate—as if that were all there was to life. Instead, she chased, and was chased, by more eligible bachelors than listeners could tally. And she hardly spent her time wringing her hands, attempting to teach others how to avert her mistakes (whatever they might have been beyond failing to answer her suitors in the affirmative). Of course, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, The Brighter Day, Front Page Farrell, The Light of the World, Lorenzo Jones, Pepper Young’s Family, Perry Mason, The Second Mrs. Burton, Wendy Warren and the News, and scores of others defied those two narrow groupings altogether. Categorizing the serials into absolute brands simply overlooks one of their strengths—diversity. Although some dramas pursed the same premise (The Romance of Helen Trent and Young Widder Brown, for example) and even adapted one another’s scripts (One Man’s Family and The Woman in My House), the preponderance of serials went their own way. As a result they could hardly be placed in a container with hundreds of others and deemed “plain vanilla.” There were simply too many peculiarities, even for those with parallel themes.
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THE BUSINESS OF SOAP OPERAS By 1937, the firm of soapmaker Procter & Gamble was spending $4.5 million annually on radio advertising, more than 90 percent of it budgeted for daytime serials.19 A similar pattern continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Notwithstanding the news reports, which earned more money for the networks and stations than any other program format, the serials were next in line as the most profitable features on the air. Media pundit Gerald Nachman disclosed three reasons why:20 1. For the most part they were broadcast during the sunshine hours when housewives were listening. “The lady of the house was always in,” said Nachman. As a result, “they could pitch every sort of item, from Ajax to Ex-Lax, to the very person who let the sponsor get his foot in the door with the ease of a Fuller Brush man.” 2. The serials could be produced inexpensively, particularly when contrasted with primetime shows requiring celebrity names, large orchestras, and added extras. “The quarter-hour shows required only a few pages of script per day, and featured an interminable plot with only a handful of characters,” Nachman noted. 3. Most significantly, he ordered, “Soap operas enticed and hypnotized vast numbers of female listeners/buyers indefinitely who, over time, formed intense attachments to both a program and a product.” One survey he cited indicated that 61 percent of the women polled admitted to buying the items pitched on their favorite serials. The daytime dramas, according to Nachman, “made everybody rich and happy.” To advertising agencies, they were “a license to print money five days a week in perpetuity” while providing “a lifetime annuity” to seasoned actors who spent their days reading lines they could virtually recite in their sleep. Yet, not quite everybody in America judged the serials a good thing. They had their detractors, including some women’s groups, professional organizations, a few psychologists, and an occasional lampooning from the pulpits. The most intense and pervasive faction, however, were the journalists who callously used their soapboxes to lambaste the
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INTRODUCTION
soap operas. “In all history,” declared Edmondson and Rounds, “there has never been an art form, popular or pure, that has been subjected to such censorious scrutiny. Others have been more passionately denounced and dramatically vilified—modern music, for instance, or nonobjective art—but none so unremittingly and witheringly scorned.”21 A favorite denunciation of the critics was that the narratives moved entirely too slow for their tastes. Indeed, the storylines of most did piddle and dawdle eternally. But the pundits seldom analyzed who they were aired for—the homemakers—nor the restrictions imposed upon those ladies’ abilities to hear a complete tale every day. They were interrupted by babies crying and older children demanding attention, telephone callers, door-to-door salesmen and drop-in visitors, grocery shopping trips, appliance breakdowns, hanging clothes on outdoor lines, and performing other household chores (washing clothes, changing beds, scrubbing bathroom floors), where there might be no radio available. All combined to deter the lady of the house from hearing her favorite saga on some days. The producers understood and inched their yarns forward at an agonizing snail’s pace. The reviewers, it seemed, were about the only ones who did not get it. The serials were also scorned as unbelievable, simple-minded, sentimental, and failing to inform listeners about concerns that might make a difference in their lives. To their credit, several of the televised daytime dramas that built upon the radio washboard weepers instituted a practice of facing some worthy topics straight on. They advocated routine medical checkups and breast self-examination while urging greater acceptance in race relations and dealing with venereal diseases and AIDS, subjects that would have been taboo to the network censors of radio dramas.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END When television began to doggedly encroach upon radio’s turf, starting about 1948, the aural medium’s fate was sealed. Although a dozen years would pass before serialized fiction completely collapsed, there was a nagging suspicion among those in the industry that mutiny in American
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living rooms was brewing. By the early 1950s, they all knew that they were living on borrowed time. When informed that General Foods had announced the cancellation of a trio of its most potent features—The Aldrich Family, a nighttime sitcom, and two venerable daytime serials, Portia Faces Life and When a Girl Marries—the normally redoubtable Virginia Payne, who for 27 years portrayed Ma Perkins, exclaimed: “I feel as though the main pillars had been knocked out of the house.”22 She was right. According to Mary Jane Higby, the longtime leading lady of When a Girl Marries, Colbee’s Restaurant—immediately adjacent to CBS, where many of the heroes and heroines of daytime drama hung out between rehearsals and performances—was from then on “Forest Lawn without the flowers.”23 One by one, as sponsors failed to renew their options, the dramas by installment died. Sometimes, as on 2 January 1959, multiple serials departed all at once, including five on that ominous day—Backstage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Road of Life, and This Is Nora Drake (all on CBS) and Pepper Young’s Family (on NBC). Each had an air-life history of more than two decades, except Drake; it had aired continuously since 1947. Both the ABC and MBS chains had previously dropped all of their open-end (continuing storyline) soap operas. On 24 April 1959, NBC discontinued its final two ongoing serials, the perennial One Man’s Family and its mirror-image counterpart, The Woman in My House. Meanwhile, Whispering Streets, an ABC closed-end (definitive conclusion) drama shifted to CBS on 5 January 1959, filling a portion of the void created when those four serials vanished on 2 January. It was joined by another closed-end series, Best Seller, after The Romance of Helen Trent bit the dust on 24 June 1960. Trent, incidentally, was the longest running radio serial with 7,222 episodes broadcast over nearly three decades (1933–60). The only network still airing daytime serials, CBS, once sustained an arsenal saturated with nearly two-dozen such programs. That number had dwindled to just seven in 1960. They included The Couple Next Door, The Right to Happiness, Whispering Streets, Ma Perkins, Young Doctor Malone, The Second Mrs. Burton, and Best Seller. Among the quartet of national chains, CBS Radio alone bravely resisted the intrusion of TV, maintaining that daytime listeners still wanted to hear serialized yarns, which it was committed to providing for as long as possible.
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INTRODUCTION
Yet there was another factor beyond the small screen that finally knocked the pillars down that Virginia Payne had feared a few years earlier. The local affiliates had pressured network brass for years to clear the deck so that they could control more of their daily schedule themselves and thereby sell commercial time to advertisers directly. This would make the return on investment infinitely more profitable to station owners. CBS vehemently opposed any program retrenchment and had only reluctantly and painfully given some ground in an attempt to appease their long-standing partners. Some of those affiliates operated with powerful wattage that beamed their signals far and wide, generating added recognition and esteem. When it became clear that the affiliates would settle for nothing less than virtual abandonment of current program scheduling practices or they would walk—that is, become independents or join another network—CBS had little choice and finally threw in the towel. In late summer 1960, Arthur Hull Hays, president of the radio chain, announced that effective 25 November 1960, the web would no longer air any daytime dramas. In addition, several long-running nighttime features would be discontinued that same evening or during the succeeding weekend. Hull justified it by stating that radio must shift from entertainment forms “which can be presented more effectively by other media,”24 underscoring a growing trend toward the televised soap opera, by then already firmly entrenched. His proclamation was timed to give the aural serial authors several weeks to tie together the loose ends of their storylines, some of which had been dangling for decades. Listeners, of course, including many who had been tuning in to their favorite soap operas for what seemed like forever, were outraged. Many did not take it lying down. Their vitriolic anger could not be contained as they phoned and wrote the chain giving them a piece of their minds, often in unprintable terms. Some protested that they would never turn their dials to CBS again. Of course, it was CBS that had long withstood the loss of advertisers and audiences in the wake of television, plus those pesky affiliates that grew more obstinate and threatening as time passed and pressure mounted. None of it mattered to the fuming protestors; through tears of anguish they only saw that they were losing some of the best friends—albeit mythical ones—invited into their homes for years. Soap opera had ex-
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• 15
tended the promise of immortality and eternal return—on the same station, at the same time, tomorrow. Now it was reneging on its covenant pledge, and it was simply more than many could accept. Some called that fateful final broadcast day, a Friday, “the day radio drama died.” Some historiographers even cited the date as “the end of the golden age,” hardly a misnomer. The earliest vestiges of the serial phenomenon dated back at least 35 years. In the ensuing span, several hundred programs had surfaced—a small number airing for only a few weeks or months, many more persevering multiple years and four achieving an unprecedented 27 years each. It had been a durable run, entertaining millions of homemakers, other stay-at-homes and highway travelers tuning in along the road with some fairly compelling theatrics. “Ultimately,” vowed scholar Fred MacDonald, “soaps were successful because the world they created was relevant and important to their audiences. . . . They were insights into middle-class lifestyles in which the humdrum and the extraneous were removed, and the essential retained. . . . The daytime serials were ritualistic dramas wherein fictional characters met and overcame adversity, while identifying listeners learned better to comprehend themselves, their cultural standards, and the community of the nation.”25 Although attempting any one of these could have been daunting for some, to have realized them all—as a good many of the serials did—was plainly little short of astonishing.
A PROLOGUE TO THIS VOLUME A brief exposition before beginning the dictionary will surely make it infinitely more understandable to some. It pertains to the distinctions in the dual categories to which all soap operas (and, by extension, serialized drama) can be assigned. But before getting into that, to be certain that every reader is operating on the same page, let’s define soap opera. In a nutshell, for our purposes soap opera is melodramatic or humorous fiction characterized by an indispensable ingredient that positively separates it from other narrative forms: its plotting is released piecemeal, instead of all in one gulp. The tale progresses by chapters, episodes, or installments. A little yarn is meted out with each broadcast—not the whole ball of wax at once. Thus, to qualify for inclusion
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INTRODUCTION
in this volume a series’ action must be continuous, carried over to multiple broadcasts. A second dynamic separates the series included in this text from any others: all were broadcast on more than one station. Network presentations easily provided the lion’s share of those dramas, most often carried by the four national chains. In some instances, nonetheless, the programs floated across the ether from regional hookups, or by loosely tied station clusters, or via syndication. Even though there were many promising soap operas airing on local stations but limited to audiences within the hearing range of single transmitters, all of the features in this text were beamed from multiple outlets. That said, every serial could be classified as pursuing an open-end or closed-end format. While this distinction is enumerated in the dictionary, the clarifications are spelled out now in the event those entries are overlooked perchance or read some time after encountering the unfamiliar terms. Here are the distinguishing differences: An open-end soap opera gradually unfolds as a story that, theoretically, never ends. Actions are continuing in some of those dramas, similar to ongoing life experiences (e.g., the serials of creators Elaine Carrington and Irna Phillips, which impart strong examples of the form). In sequence-driven narratives, such as those developed by Frank and Anne Hummert, there is a cluster of continuing actors (usually six to eight in number) who intersect with a temporary crowd of malefactors (often no more than three to five). The two troupes mingle and the short-term pool vanishes from the plot as another transitory crew arrives. Depending on the drama, visitors will be in the dialogue for a few weeks to several months, until a specific issue is resolved. An exceedingly high percentage of all soap operas fit neatly into the category of the open-end drama. In spite of that, there is still one time when the open-end tale becomes closed-end—when the soap opera is canceled and withdrawn from the ether. Writers usually receive just enough notice to tie some—but not all—of the loose ends of their storylines together, enough to leave the listener with partial fulfillment at least. Contrastingly, a closed-end soap opera allows the narrative to persist for a brief amount of time (either for a week or a few chapters without regard to real time), then brings the tale to an ultimate conclusion. In other words, there is always a guaranteed finish to every tale spun in a
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closed-end series. A narrator is frequently used to introduce the episodes, recall what happened last time, and summarize the yarn. In this structure, when one story is completed another follows behind it, often featuring a new cast and writers but with the same interlocutor.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE DICTIONARY The heart and soul of this text is the dictionary. That colossal sector is why most readers purchase this book. It endeavors to envelop the full reaches of the American radio soap opera from its inception to its demise. The classification includes pithy, explicable slices of data, anecdotes, and trivia. From the outset, the author’s intent was to incorporate as much helpful and informative matter as possible. Research, pursued in a meticulous, conscientious fashion, sought to derive the most accurate, authoritative, and comprehensive compendium amassed to date in a single work on a pervasive topic. The American radio soap opera is not a sudden whim or a recent discovery by the author. Indeed, he has spent most of a lifetime—starting when the aural serials were actually on the air live every day—collecting, disseminating, and, possibly most of all, attempting to preserve the data and memorabilia about the genre of the radio soap opera. Although much of the material in the dictionary is based on intensive research performed over several decades, a painstaking examination of scholarly sources that have arrived in the contemporary epoch was scrupulously investigated and many facts distilled for inclusion in the current work. In some cases, data is missing because—after exhaustive pursuit—no documentation surfaced that could supply or substantiate it. The reader can rest assured, nonetheless, that a comprehensive search produced little or no noteworthy information on the few occasions in which that result does occur. The contemplative reader is practically certain to ponder how the shows were selected for inclusion in the listings. Here is the succinct answer: Features are cataloged that aired on multiple stations and can be classified by melodramatic action and/or amusing properties offered in continuing form and targeted expressly for grown-up audiences. This eliminates the tales with ongoing plots, such as the adolescent adventure Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, the family sitcom Beulah,
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INTRODUCTION
and the humorists Lum ’n’ Abner who incorporated some vestiges of serialization into their design. Nevertheless, programs like Amos ’n’ Andy and The Smith Family are included because they are direct antecedents of an art form that evolved into soap opera; and Bob and Ray are there because they spoofed the form to the delight of their fans. Frankly, the decisions on inclusiveness and exclusiveness were tedious and subjective at times. Despite the admission—a limitation inherent in the most impartial author—a conscientious try was made to be faithful to the previously detailed criteria. It is hoped that the reader will realize that the intent was noble. Most series clearly fit a black or white sorting; it is the handful in an imprecise gray area that gave this writer fits and could ruffle some purists. If so, accept an apology for no offense was meant. The dictionary contains more than 450 entries in an alphabetical arrangement. The substance could be more or less assigned to one of four classifications: (a) the serials themselves, (b) prominent individuals connected with their success, (c) topics that shed light on particular fields that surround the aura and mystique of the radio soap opera, and (d) organizations that had some specific bearing on the form. In category (a), which is comprised of the serials themselves, some programs aired in the daytime, others in primetime or early evening hours, some more on weekends, and still others in multiple installments every week but not every weekday. Someone might discover an obscure, possibly fleeting, series that was overlooked. Any omissions are regrettable. With about 300 serialized features included in the program inventory, it is purportedly the most comprehensive list published to date that focuses on the adult radio serial in the United States. Concerning the individuals whose names appear in category (b), this does not profess to be an inclusive list of those working in radio soap opera. To do that and provide sufficient detail about their lives and careers would demand thousands of pages. That is not feasible within the scope of this volume. Instead, a few score of individuals who served before or behind the microphones or who documented this story for exposition are highlighted as prime examples of talented artists. Each made a compelling contribution; the reader can feel confident that those named excelled in substantial proportions, sometimes earning distinguished recognitions for their efforts.
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Category (c) concerns a wide-ranging list of topics surrounding the radio soap opera that fills in the gaps and helps interpret it to the reader. Subjects like amnesia, repeat performances, and salaries are addressed. The final consortium (d) might be better labeled “none of the above.” It includes several major sponsors of the audio serial, as well as a few advertising agencies, ratings services, and organizations like the American Federation of Radio Artists, Radio Writers Guild, and other groups not delineated elsewhere. Their inclusion sheds light on some of the peripheral but influential bodies that strongly prejudiced the genre. One more bit of interpretation is relevant. Throughout the register, the reader will find names of soap operas set in bold italics in their initial mention of a given entry. Names repeated in the same entry appear in italics. Highlighting those monikers frequently sets them apart from, for example, long lists of other credits an actor might have earned elsewhere in radio. NOTES 1. Edmondson, Madeleine, and David Rounds. The Soaps: Daytime Serials of Radio and TV. New York: Stein and Day, 1973: 26. 2. Morton, Robert, ed. Worlds without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997: 19–20. 3. Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1985: 1. 4. Ibid.: 117. 5. Ibid.: 122. 6. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 172. 7. Thurber, James. “Onward and Upward with the Arts.” The New Yorker (15 May 1948): 34. 8. LaGuardia, Robert. From Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman: The Illustrated History of Soap Operas. New York: Ballantine, 1977: 7. 9. Ibid. 10. Morton: 20. 11. MacDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991: 234. [first published 1979] 12. Ibid.: 236–237.
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13. Poindexter, Ray. Golden Throats and Silver Tongues: The Radio Announcers. Conway, Ark.: River Road Press, 1978: 36–38; Edmondson and Rounds: 26–27. 14. Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 146–150. 15. LaGuardia: 12. 16. Edmondson and Rounds: 17. 17. Ibid.: 60. 18. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio: In Quest of The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Shadow, Mary Noble, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks, Henry Aldrich, The Quiz Kids, Mr. First Nighter, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, Arthur Godfrey, Bob and Ray, The Barbour Family, Henry Morgan, Joe Friday and Other Lost Heroes from Radio’s Heyday. New York: Pantheon, 1998: 374–375. 19. Allen: 117. 20. Nachman: 366. 21. Edmondson and Rounds: 231. 22. Cox, 1999: 130. 23. Higby, Mary Jane. Tune in Tomorrow; or, How I Found The Right to Happiness with Our Gal Sunday, Stella Dallas, John’s Other Wife, and Other Sudsy Radio Serials. New York: Cowles, 1968: 213. [first published 1966] 24. Cox, Jim. Say Goodnight, Gracie: The Last Years of Network Radio. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 147. 25. MacDonald: 239.
The Road of Life with Don MacLaughlin and Virginia Dwyer.
The Second Mrs. Burton with Dwight Weist and Patsy Campbell.
The Right to Happiness with Claudia Morgan and Irene Hubbard (L – R).
Ma Perkins with Virginia Payne.
Life Can Be Beautiful with Nellie (Ethel Owen), Butch (Jackson Beck), and Chichi (Alice Reinheart) (L – R).
The Goldbergs with Roslyn Silber as “Rosalie,” Everett Sloan as “Sammy,” James Waters as “Jake,” and Gertrude Berg as “Molly.”
The Brighter Day. Clockwise from left to right are Billy Redfield, Pat Hosley, Jay Meredith, Lorna Lynn, and Margaret Draper.
Big Sister with Marjorie Anderson and Santos Ortega.
The Dictionary
-AADA GRANT’S NEIGHBORS. A transcribed serial that featured an all-black cast, this was one of four daytime dramas produced by Negro Radio Stories. Others in the quartet included My Man, Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories, and The Romance of Julia Davis. Although black audiences were seldom given such extensive prominence earlier, by the 1950s, radio was beginning to make limited attempts to expose African American listeners to entertainment fare that had heretofore effectively ignored them. ADAMS, MASON (1919–2005). One of the legendary voices of radio soap opera, Adams embraced the namesake role in Pepper Young’s Family for 14 years (1945–59), more than half of that serial’s life. A native New Yorker, he had easy access to the stage. Community theater, college, and stock productions offered ready venues to showcase Adams’ acting talent before he joined the U.S. Army in World War II. Upon his discharge, he abandoned a Chicago stage production of Dear Ruth to accept the role of Pepper Young at NBC because it paid better. “Literature it wasn’t,” Adams noted, “but there were no demands on you and it was interesting work.” He remained in the part “probably longer than I should have” so he could appear regularly on Broadway. He acquired recurring parts in radio’s Big Sister, Big Town, Gasoline Alley, Hearthstone of the Death Squad, and Road of Life, too. In subsequent years, Adams was a spokesman for scores of radio and television commercials (and is best recalled for Smucker’s jams and jellies, persisting into the early years of the 21st century). American Tobacco, Ford, and U.S. Steel cast the gravelly voiced thespian in 21
22 •
ADOPTED DAUGHTER
early TV dramas. He acted as newspaper managing editor Charlie Hume in the 1970s CBS-TV series Lou Grant. Adams might have surprised his radio fans, nevertheless, by admitting to an interviewer that his “first love” was always the theater. ADOPTED DAUGHTER. A regional soap opera evolving from skits titled The Jangles by Jettabee Ann Hopkins. Premiering in 1937 over WOW Radio in Omaha, the series was bought by J. C. Penney, which took it to an NBC Midwest regional chain in April 1939. There it aired transcribed five times weekly for two years. With Hopkins as its star and author, the drama pursued exploits of the Jangles clan and their adoptee, Jennie Hopkins. It was billed as the tale of a “courageous young wife who fights for home and happiness.” AFFAIRS OF ANTHONY, THE. An NBC Blue entry between 29 May 1939 and 4 June 1940, it was penned by Sandra Michael, whose efforts captured a Peabody Award for her exhibitions with Against the Storm in 1942. Actor Henry Hunter portrayed the feature’s namesake figure, Anthony Marleybone Jr. Others in prominent roles were Laurette Fillbrandt and Marvin Miller. AFFAIRS OF DR. GENTRY, THE. Appearing as network radio was winding down (from 14 January 1957 to 27 March 1959), the drama spotlighted Madeleine Carroll as Dr. Anne Gentry and Paul McGrath as Dr. Philip Hamilton. She was a single physician laboring in a big city medical center. At the start of each episode, she proclaimed: “In everyone’s life there are moments of great happiness; moments of deep sorrow. There is doubt and deceit. But there is also hope, faith, and the courage to go on. I am Anne Gentry. Mine is such a story.” The serial was one of several late golden age entries that NBC inserted into its schedule after the quick collapse of a multihour radio magazine, Weekday. A time-honored pattern that preceded Weekday’s debut practiced by the nation’s housewives—listening to NBC daytime serials, which were canceled to allow many hours for Weekday—was irretrievably broken. The Affairs of Dr. Gentry and a few other new entries failed to reawaken the earlier audience, signaling a swift exit to the chain’s few surviving soap operas in the spring of 1959.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS • 23
AFFILIATE POWER. The national networks held tight reins over their local affiliates during radio’s first three decades (1920s–1940s). By the mid-1950s, a new trend saw local stations gaining the upper hand. They threatened to join other webs or compete as independents unless the chains freed up the bulk of their daily schedules. Local outlets could sell commercial time more profitably themselves. Even though TV was draining radio audiences and advertisers, the stations were pervasive in ending radio programming as Americans knew it. CBS was the last to succumb to its affiliates’ demands. No better example of CBS’s losses can be cited than the day it—the only network still airing daytime serials—wiped the slate clean: on 25 November 1960 (“the day radio drama died”), CBS returned the lion’s share of the network schedule to its local stations. AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS. In pre–Civil Rights America, the Negro frequently was not given the respect to which he or she became accustomed in the post–Civil Rights legislation era. Thus daytime serials like Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Backstage Wife, and Pepper Young’s Family boasted occasional characters that were little more than domestic helpers, none achieving professional status or equal opportunities that their Caucasian brothers and sisters enjoyed. Despite that, some perceptive radio producers—at times desiring equality, but even more importantly, recognizing a large underserved segment of the American population—developed a half-dozen daytime dramas about black figures. In some cases, they featured allblack talent. Sam ’n’ Henry and Amos ’n’ Andy, precursors of the form, may have set the pace. Although Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, who brought those characters to life, were themselves Caucasian, they so captured the dialect and style of the Southern Negro transplanted to Chicago and New York that their humorous programs resonated with both blacks and whites. In that same vein, Jimmy Scribner, another Caucasian, later wrote, also produced, accompanied, and played 22 voices in The Johnson Family, a serial featuring comical situations involving the Southern Negro. In these instances, black figures were presented as worthy individuals, and their lives depicted in traditional settings with a lighthearted approach. All-black casts took over following these innovations. By the 1950s, a single African-American production unit,
24 • AGAINST THE STORM
Negro Radio Stories, was formed to develop a quartet of transcribed serials distributed to outlets across the nation. Included were Ada Grant’s Neighbors, My Man, Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories, and The Romance of Julia Davis. The black audience (and actor) had truly come of age. Lastly, The Story of Ruby Valentine appeared on stations in the mid-1950s, a narrative with forbears in a couple of earlier daytime serials—As the Twig Is Bent and We Love and Learn. Valentine was a gifted singer and also operated a beauty salon in Harlem in that storyline. See also ETHNIC DRAMAS. AGAINST THE STORM. One of only two serials to win a coveted Peabody Award (in 1942), this intellectually highbrow narrative focused upon mythical Harper College’s professor Jason McKinley Allen, played by actor Roger DeKoven. As global war erupted, pacifist Allen alerted others to the menace of fascist totalitarianism. Originating on 16 October 1939 over NBC, the program ended on 25 December 1942 after a format dispute between writer Sandra Michael and soapmaker–sponsor Procter & Gamble. Viewing the drama in epic proportions, she insisted on a half-hour performance and was miffed as the firm branded it a mere “soap opera.” Michael’s wish for 30 minutes’ playing time was granted by MBS at 11:30 p.m. weeknights on 25 April 1949. After the show failed on 21 October 1949, Against the Storm returned in daytime quarter-hour episodes over ABC (1 October 1951–27 June 1952). Philip Morris underwrote the last two efforts but it was obvious the original premise was dispelled (the threat of Nazi global dominancy long past) and listeners were no longer enthralled. See also PEABODY AWARDS. AGGIE HORN. See IN CARE OF AGGIE HORN. AIR FEATURES INCORPORATED (AFI). Formed on 1 January 1944 by celebrated serial creatives Frank and Anne Hummert, broadcasting’s most prolific producers, AFI was widely typified by assembly-line techniques. It prepared legions of radio soap operas (more than 60) as well as hardy perennials in music, juvenile adventure, and crime detective genres. AFI employed hundreds of directors, authors, actors, announcers, musicians, and stenographers. The Hummerts outlined plots that were fleshed out by dialogue scribes.
ALLEN, ROBERT CLYDE (1950– ) • 25
Their organization filled up to four-and-a-half hours of weekday network program agendas. While AFI worked with several sponsors, two underwrote the bulk of its efforts—American Home Products and Sterling Drugs. ALEXANDER, JOAN (1916– ). Drifting into radio in 1940 from a modeling and stage career begun in her native St. Paul, Minnesota, Alexander became one of soap opera’s busiest supporting actresses with long-running roles in at least a dozen: Against the Storm, Bright Horizon, The Brighter Day, David Harum, The Light of the World, Lone Journey, Perry Mason, Rosemary, The Second Mrs. Burton, This Is Nora Drake, Young Doctor Malone, Woman of Courage. The nasal-toned actress played in radio’s The Adventures of the Falcon, Columbia Presents Corwin, Dimension X, It’s Murder, Leave It to Mike, Lefty, Major North—Army Intelligence, The Man from G-2, Mystery Theater, The Open Door, Paging Mike McNally, Philo Vance, Quick as a Flash, and The Adventures of Superman. From 1966–69, she provided voice-overs for Lois Lane in a CBS-TV cartoon reprise of Superman. She was a regular on the early TV panel shows The Name’s the Same and To Tell the Truth. ALIAS JIMMY VALENTINE. This was a serial with an unusual premise: an ex-con and reformed safecracker used his talents and enormous underworld contacts to aid the forces of law and order. This transpired while he went straight as a bank clerk and fell for the banker’s daughter. It was based on the O. Henry tale of A Retrieved Information. Bert Lytell and James Meighan played the protagonist, Jimmy Valentine. The nighttime narrative, produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, arrived on NBC Blue on Tuesday evenings on 18 January 1938 for Edgeworth Tobacco. It was interrupted there on 12 April of that year and resumed on Monday evenings on 6 June 1938. It continued through 27 February 1939 for Sterling Drug dentifrice brands Lyons toothpaste [sic] and Dr. Lyons tooth powder. ALLEN, ROBERT CLYDE (1950– ). Author of Speaking of Soap Operas, published by the University of North Carolina Press (1985). The treatise provides a scholarly perspective of the genre, from formative days through the television era, dispensed in easy-to-follow
26 • AMANDA OF HONEYMOON HILL
detail. The works of Irna Phillips are frequent examples with four of her serial scripts included. The text makes a significant contribution for the serious student of the strain. AMANDA OF HONEYMOON HILL. Produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, the tale’s curious epigraph threatened to demolish announcer Frank Gallop’s sober deportment, causing him to lose control as he bellowed, “Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, the story of a young girl laid against a tapestry of the deep South.” Amanda Dyke, a plain lass from the sticks, although “a beauty of flaming red hair,” wed Edward Leighton, the son of a wealthy aristocratic Dixie clan. The pair routinely encountered nerve-racking domestic crises, most especially continually deteriorating dealings with in-laws. The drama debuted on 5 February 1940 over NBC Blue and persisted through 31 July 1942. On 3 August 1943, it shifted to CBS where it remained through 26 April 1946. Cal Aspirin pain reliever, Haley’s MO mulsified oil emulsion laxative and Philips’ Milk of Magnesia laxative (all Sterling Drugs commodities) underwrote the full run. The cast was extensive with Joy Hathaway as Amanda and three gents at diverse times playing Edward including Boyd Crawford, George Lambert, and Staats Cotsworth. Other principals were John Connery (Colonel Leighton, Edward’s pop), Jack MacBryde (brickmaker Joe Dyke, Amanda’s dad), Cecil Roy, and Florence Edney (Aunt Maisie, “the wise old woman of the valley” who imparted practical advice while offering a shoulder for Amanda to lean on during familial catastrophes) and Muriel Starr and Irene Hubbard (Susan Leighton, Edward’s mom). Also appearing were Roger DeKoven, Rod Hendrickson, Lamont Johnson, Jackie Kelk, Florence Malone, John Raby, Helen Shields, Patricia Wheel, Ruth Yorke, and more. AMERICAN BROADCASTING COMPANY (ABC). Formed after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), parent of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), to divest itself of one of its two wholly owned divisions. The purpose was to end what the FCC perceived as a monopoly of the airwaves. The divisions, encompassing the dual chains known as the Red and Blue networks, were in disentanglement for a
AMERICAN BROADCASTING COMPANY (ABC) • 27
few months after the FCC’s landmark decision of 10 May 1943. Some stations in cities where a single licensee owned more than one outlet were sold. RCA reluctantly peddled its Blue system to prospective buyers. In July 1943, the Blue web was sold for $8 million to confectionary magnate Edward J. Noble. Noble had made a fortune in Life Savers candy and owned New York City’s WMCA, also. In October 1943, the FCC approved the sale, detaching the Blue Network from RCA. In 1945, that outfit was renamed the American Broadcasting Company. From its earliest days, the Blue Network had supported the trend of competing chains by placing soap opera as the vanguard of its daytime programming. In 1929, The Rise of the Goldbergs, which became a long-playing matinee feature on other networks, debuted on NBC Blue. Beginning in 1930 as a nighttime series over NBC Blue, 20 months later Clara, Lu ’n’ Em shifted to the sunshine hours, becoming the first network daytime serial. There were scores of others following in that legacy. The tradition ended when Blue Network officials abruptly pulled the plug on the seven open-end sagas the chain was then airing in 1942. Only one more of those dramas surfaced prior to the transition to ABC, the short-lived Sweet River premiering in the fall of 1943. Otherwise, according to analyst Harrison B. Summers, for more than nine years the Blue and successor ABC maintained zero tolerance for all soap opera that proffered continuing storylines. As swiftly as the decision to abandon the form was instituted, conversely in 1951 the ABC brass’s collective heart melted. Attempting to rebuild a faltering daytime audience, the web reinstituted nine serials that had previously aired—mostly retreads from other networks. Included were Against the Storm, Doctor Paul, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Lone Journey, Marriage for Two, The Story of Mary Marlin, The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters, Valiant Lady, and When a Girl Marries. But ABC’s optimism was shortlived: large numbers of fans no longer cared for those once-favorite series. They were wrapped up in continuing dramas on rival networks that competed for their attention at the same hours—longrunning tales that had never left the air. Too, by 1951, many radio listeners were discovering TV soap operas, including a trio of the tube’s hardiest perennials that debuted that year (Hawkins Falls,
28 • AMERICAN FEDERATION OF RADIO ARTISTS (AFRA)
Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow). ABC’s audience-building ploy simply arrived too late; of the nine narratives it reintroduced in 1951, all but When a Girl Marries disappeared in 1952. After some lengthy bouts of being off the air, that one managed to eek out enough episodes to last through summer 1957, albeit with a fraction of its earlier audience. But the glory days of soap opera at Blue-ABC effectively ended 15 years before that—even before there was an ABC, in fact. AMERICAN FEDERATION OF RADIO ARTISTS (AFRA). A union chartered on 16 August 1937 to improve compensation and working conditions of performers. A coterie of daytime serial actors and announcers placed handprints all over AFRA—Nelson Case, Staats Cotsworth, Kenneth Roberts, Anne Seymour, Richard Stark, Karl Swenson, Ned Wever, and more. Many of the guild’s most active leaders were from the ranks of soap opera including Clayton (Bud) Collyer, AFRA president (1948–50), and Virginia Payne, who in 1958 ascended to the presidency of the successor American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). AMERICAN HOME PRODUCTS CORPORATION. A major underwriter of soap operas and other radio formats, the firm never named itself in its commercial messages. Some of its leading brands were Aerowax, Anacin, Bi-So-Dol, Black Flag, Chef Boyardee, Dristan, Easy-Off, Fly-Ded, Freezone, Heet, Infrarub, Jiffy Pop, Kolynos, Kriptin, Neet, Olde English, Preparation H, Primatene, Sani-Flush, Sleep-Eze, and Wizard. For decades, it presented a surfeit of daytime serials including Easy Aces, Front Page Farrell, John’s Other Wife, Just Plain Bill, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Our Gal Sunday, Real Stories from Real Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, and more under the watchful eye of Air Features, which packaged the program and advertising copy. It also underwrote evening radio dramas for long spells including Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, another Hummert feature. AMERICAN WOMEN. One of the few daytime dramas with feminine announcer–narrators (Eloise Kummer, Charlotte Manson), it encouraged females to volunteer for service in the war effort, presenting pa-
AMOS ’N’ ANDY • 29
triotic stories about some of them. The late afternoon anthology penned by David Hannon and Frank and Doris Hursley premiered over CBS for William J. Wrigley on 2 August 1943 and persisted through 23 June 1944. AMNESIA. One of soap opera’s favorite plot devices, it was repetitiously injected into storylines in an effort to juice up the ratings. A leading character forgot who he/she was or bore sufficient memory loss to augment situations dramatically. In the 1940s, it was the serial writers’ malady of choice as denizens of multiple narratives exhibited traits of forgetfulness. The illnesses’ most discernible victim, Lorenzo Jones, overlooked his wife Belle, nearly becoming radio’s initial bigamist as he started to traipse down the aisle with another broad. Three years of aimless wandering came to a merciful cessation when NBC axed the show—leaving the protagonist with time enough to wake up, return to his beloved Belle, and say “goodbye” to longsuffering listeners. Another character with severe memory loss, Pretty Kitty Kelly, left her Irish homeland and wound up in New York City without realizing whom she was. In reality, she was a victim of identity theft and fraud: dastardly shenanigans had occurred already in her past to hide the fact she was actually the titled Countess of Glennannan back home, an effort to steal not only her position but her assets, too. Dr. John Wayne (Big Sister), Walter Manning (Portia Faces Life), Bill Roberts (Rosemary), and Joe Marlin (The Story of Mary Marlin)— among the weaker dishpan drama heroes—took one or more flings at amnesia, too. What was good for the gander was also good for the geese: Eleanor MacDonald (This Day Is Ours) and Ellen Brown (Young Widder Brown) were heroines who suffered that same fateful woe. See also BIGAMY. AMOS ’N’ ANDY. One of the earliest antecedents of American soap opera, this comedy originating in 1926 over Chicago’s WGN as Sam ’n’ Henry established a model for serialized yarns featuring ongoing characters. Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, speaking in African-American dialects, were radio pioneers. Much of the dialoguing listeners heard later—including pure soap opera in 1930— was based on their primal exchanges. This series aired from 19
30 • ANDERSONS, THE
March 1928 through 22 May 1955—and by extension—The Amos ’n’ Andy Music Hall overlapped it and continued from 13 September 1954 through 25 November 1960. See also AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS; SAM ’N’ HENRY; THE SMITH FAMILY. ANDERSONS, THE. Lasting a mere 14 weeks—one of the briefer tenures in soap opera—The Andersons never found a niche. It persisted from 6 April–10 July 1942 over NBC spotlighting Elizabeth Watts and Roger DeKoven in its leading roles. Rosemary Smith authored the heel-dragging “true to life story of a family” that few listeners connected with. An unforgiving trade paper, Variety, bitingly branded it “a first class example of a vacuum wedded to static.” ANDREWS, ROBERT HARDY (1903–1976). Born Charles Robert Douglas Hardy Andrews, the ex-journalist of The Minneapolis Journal and The Chicago Daily News held the most fertile pen among early soap opera authors in the Frank and Anne Hummert camp. Learning from mistakes with The Stolen Husband, a failed serial attempt in 1931, the trio submitted another (Just Plain Bill) in autumn 1932 that was so widely accepted it garnered a 23-year radio run. Andrews, a workaholic, was a one-man writing syndicate for the Hummerts. Critic James Thurber claimed he was eminently equipped for his tasks with “an indestructible typewriter, strong wrists, a story sense, and the knack of stringing out words.” For a full decade, until acknowledging he “got tired,” Andrews simultaneously typed from four to seven daily radio series, mostly soap operas (e.g., Betty and Bob, Easy Aces, Judy and Jane, et al.). Working in a penthouse apartment on New York’s Central Park West, he consumed 40 cups of coffee and chain-smoked 100 cigarettes between noon and midnight seven days a week as he wrote. His weekly production rate normally exceeded 100,000 words—untouchable by anybody else’s highwater mark. As a diversion, he authored scads of novels and films by himself or with others. The Hummerts never replaced him; when he left, an epoch among electronic media wordsmiths concluded. ANGEL OF MERCY. See KATE HOPKINS—ANGEL OF MERCY.
ASSEMBLY LINE TECHNIQUE • 31
ANSBRO, GEORGE (1915– ). An announcer for dozens of network radio series, Ansbro holds at least two distinctions: he was employed in broadcasting 58 years (1931–90), one of the industry’s most enduring tenures; and he announced one soap opera—Young Widder Brown—for its entire run, 18 years (1938–56), a feat none of his peers achieved. Other serials he regularly appeared on were Chaplain Jim, Ethel and Albert, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and When a Girl Marries. Ansbro introduced features like Ladies Be Seated, Lowell Thomas and the News, Sunday Serenade with Sammy Kaye, Waltz Time, and dozens of others. He routinely delivered cowcatcher and hitchhike commercials on many Hummert primetime series. Breaking into radio at age 12 on The Milton Cross Children’s Hour he became an NBC page and tour guide at 16 and a “junior” announcer at 19. In the early years of the 21st century, Ansbro still attended conventions of the Friends of Old Time Radio who assemble in Newark every October. There, he often performed in re-creations of several of the serials that he originally announced. ARNOLD GRIMM’S DAUGHTER. Launched over CBS on 5 July 1937, within 10 months (effective 30 May 1938) the serial shifted to NBC, continuing through 26 June 1942, each segment sponsored by General Mills. At first, Connie Grimm’s dad could not accept her nuptials to childhood sweetheart Dal Tremaine although he later did; but Dal’s parents never tolerated Connie. Dal was a struggling artist, glum, and carefree; after his accidental death, a son was born and the premise altered, focusing on the tot and Arnold Grimm, who also fell on hard times. Some of the cast changed frequently, yet Don Merrifield appeared as Grimm for the full run. Margarette Shanna, Betty Lou Gerson, and Luise Barclay played Connie Grimm Tremaine, with Ed Prentiss and Robert Ellis as her spouse Del. Other veterans in recurring roles included Frank Behrens, Bill Bouchey, Frank Dane, Louise Fitch, John Hodiak, Bret Morrison, and Ethel Wilson. ASSEMBLY LINE TECHNIQUE. A fruitful method of creating legions of soap operas in tandem whose greatest exponent was the shop of Frank and Anne Hummert. The approach easily surpassed any
32 • AS THE TWIG IS BENT
competitor’s attempt to match their output. From an ivory tower, they handed down plotlines to scores of minions who fleshed scenarios into finished scripts, quickly and for nominal recompense. Pundits claimed their dialogue was quite possibly the most hackneyed on the air. Emphasis was on quantity and seldom on quality. The Hummerts did not originate this inexhaustible method, however. Antecedents, in the 19th century, included the Victorian-era novels of Beadle & Adams; juvenile thriller fiction featuring The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, The Rover Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, and other figures contrived by the Statemeyer Syndicate; and applications exploited by Alexandre Dumas, who released 277 volumes by employing 60 apprentices. The Hummerts shifted wordsmiths often from one serial to another to inspire their finished products. But later one of their scribes said: “I had only slight interest in what I wrote,” an illuminating admission. AS THE TWIG IS BENT. A syndicated drama launched on 24 March 1941 over MBS-Don Lee outlets that evolved into a retitled CBS series We Love and Learn on 6 April 1942 for General Foods (Post Toasties cereal and other foodstuffs). The serial is probably best characterized by its permutations, defining the story line. It shifted to NBC on 3 April 1944 as a sustainer and was withdrawn on 29 September 1944. It returned to NBC for Manhattan Soap (Sweetheart bars and Blue-White Flakes detergent) from 28 June 1948–23 March 1951. The program’s final comeback, syndicated in 1955–56, offered yet a third moniker, The Story of Ruby Valentine, with an all-black cast. As the Twig is Bent concerned the small-minded citizens of Beechmont and their resistance to a new school marm. Barbara Terrell and George Coulouris played the leads in this version. From 1942–44, the educator went to New York and found a husband in the first of two We Love and Learn storylines. In the second, a new family was introduced, the husband’s mom trying to break up his home. Finally, in the Valentine era, the tale shifted to a Harlem beauty parlor. Cast changes were frequent. See also WE LOVE AND LEARN; THE STORY OF RUBY VALENTINE. ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. See TERRY REGAN—ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
AUNT MARY • 33
ATWELL, MARTHA (1900–1949). One of Frank and Anne Hummerts’ most reliable and profuse directors, she was their rep for a boatload of drainboard dramas including Chaplain Jim USA, David Harum, Just Plain Bill, Lora Lawton, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and Young Widder Brown. She also directed Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons and Mystery Theater for the Hummerts while supervising a trio of serials for other producers—The Editor’s Daughter, Hearts in Harmony, and Linda’s First Love. Atwell unambiguously dispatched Hummert philosophy and policy to actors, seldom bending to entertain special requests. On 28 December 1949, the spinster was found floating in a bathtub at her apartment, apparently a suicide. AUNT JENNY’S REAL LIFE STORIES (a.k.a. AUNT JENNY’S TRUE LIFE STORIES). While most soap operas were open-ended, never drawing to a conclusion until cancellation, this was one of the few of the closed-end variety, each tale beginning Monday and ending Friday. That was a treat to listeners who could not remain with narratives over long periods. Charming hostess Aunt Jenny (actresses Edith Spencer and Agnes Young) introduced the chapters. Each day before narrating another installment, she baked goods using sponsor Lever Brothers’ Spry shortening. In her kitchen, announcer Dan Seymour obligingly consumed the delicacies, urging listeners “For all you bake or fry, rely on Spry!” Stories were often romantic or family melodramas but intermittently segued into patriotic, holiday, and selfhelp themes. Writers and actors changed weekly. The series debuted on 18 January 1937 over CBS and concluded on 16 November 1956. AUNT MARY. The drama premiered over NBC West Coast’s chain in 1942 and remained there into 1951. MBS added a national audience from 21 January 1946–17 January 1947 featuring Jane Morgan (who was to become better known as the landlady on Our Miss Brooks on radio and television, Mrs. Maggie Davis) in the title role. A pundit alleged: “The heroine was a wise old lady philosopher who . . . displayed great character in the Ma Perkins mold.” Actually, Gilbert Faust, who played John Perkins, Ma’s son killed in World War II, was one of Aunt Mary’s authors. A second reviewer labeled her “another of radio’s many elderly ladies who had a talent for becoming involved— because of her generous, motherly nature—in other people’s lives.”
34 • B. T. (BENJAMIN TALBOT) BABBITT INCORPORATED
-BB. T. (BENJAMIN TALBOT) BABBITT INCORPORATED. This is one of a half-dozen prime U.S. soap makers that regularly underwrote radio soap operas, from which that sobriquet was derived. B. T. Babbitt’s chief commodity, Bab-O cleanser, was the product of choice on David Harum, Lora Lawton, and Nona from Nowhere. Babbitt’s commercial messages were repetitiously characterized by the rapid-fire staccato delivery style of announcer Ford Bond who urged housewives to “get two cans—one for the bathroom, one for the kitchen.” Bond’s pronunciation of the product’s name—“beeeee aaayyy beeeee . . . ooohhh,” complete with intentional break between the final two letters—was a classic. “Compare grease-dishwashing Bab-O with your former lazy cleanser,” he would extol. “Then see if you could ever go back to any less modern method!” If listeners disregarded his missives on one show, they heard them on another; all sounded alike. Long before radio entered its marketing scheme, Babbitt celebrated its wares in flamboyant fashion. It was the first firm to gain the confidence of ladies who—in the mid-19th century—were dubious about buying wrapped soap bars. By returning the wrappers to the company from Babbitt’s Best soap, consumers were offered a string of highly prized illustrations. This might have been the inception of premium advertising and surely so on a pervasive scale. In another ploy, thousands were drawn to New York to view mammoth cauldrons filled with precious soap components. Babbitt fixed the vessels’ value at $250,000. People gathered in crowds, then reported the marvel they had witnessed to legions of others during that prebroadcast era. In the mid-1930s when advertising executive Duane Jones resigned from the Blackett-Sample-Hummert agency to start his own outfit, he attracted the Babbitt account. With Bab-O ranking seventh in household cleanser sales, Jones vividly improved its image by sponsoring David Harum on radio, a tale with both novel and film antecedents. Babbitt regularly offered premium tie-ins on the program. With radio’s help, it perfected substantially greater visibility and marketing purchases for many years.
BACKSTAGE WIFE • 35
BACHELOR’S CHILDREN. After a successful tryout over Chicago’s WGN from 9 September 1935–25 September 1936, the serial moved to network status, maintaining a checkered existence. From 28 September 1936–21 March 1941, it was on CBS for Cudahy Packing (Old Dutch Cleanser); 24 March 1941–25 September 1942, NBC for Colgate-Palmolive-Peet (soap, detergent, and personal care goods); 28 September 1942–27 September 1946, CBS for Continental Baking (Wonder bread and Hostess cupcakes). Hugh Studebaker was Dr. Bob Graham, 35, a single who accepted a dying comrade’s 18-year-old twin daughters—one angry and hotheaded (Janet, played by Patricia Dunlap), another compassionate and easygoing (Ruth Ann, variously played by Marjorie Hannan and Laurette Fillbrandt). Affection, envy, and confusion typified the storyline involving another of Graham’s chums, Sam Ryder (actor Olan Soule). After years of a cat-and-mouse romance, the doctor wed Ruth Ann and—still later—Ryder and Janet said, “I do,” although none of it netted eternal bliss. The serial tendered a hardback volume as a premium. Bachelor’s Children: A Synopsis of the Radio Program by series author Bess Flynn was circulated in 1939 by Cudahy. The mailhook included text surrounding the storyline and photos of the principals. Other thespians in supporting roles included Frank Dane (Lawrence Mitchell), Charles Flynn (Michael Kent), Janice Gilbert (Kathleen Carney), David Gothard (Don Carpenter), John Hodiak (Davy Lane), Raymond Edward Johnson (Dr. Bruce Porter), Sunda Love (Miss Bennett), and Arthur Peterson (Wilton Comstock). BACKSTAGE WIFE. One of the hardiest Air Features perennials, it proffered a theme that Frank and Anne Hummert wallowed in ad infinitum—taking a girl from Podunk and wedding her above her social class. The daily epigraph confirmed: “Now we present once again Backstage Wife, the story of Mary Noble, a little Iowa girl who married one of America’s most handsome actors, Larry Noble, matinee idol of a million other women—the story of what it means to be the wife of a famous star.” That opened the door to a bevy of unprincipled vixens determined to get their claws into Larry Noble (variously played by Ken Griffin, James Meighan, and Guy Sorel).
36 • BACKSTAGE WIFE
His adoring Mary (Vivian Fridell and Claire Niesen) was one of the most beleaguered heroines in washboard weeperdom, earning the empathy vote cast by legions of ladies tuning in. Yet when Larry was not the object of another woman’s intents, unscrupulous gents invariably pursued Mary, who was indisputably and supremely loyal to her spouse. A jealous Larry exhibited angry outbursts of temper, never quite getting it that he was Mary’s solitary object in life (in addition to their only child, Larry Jr., of course). Backstage Wife debuted on 5 August 1935 over MBS. It transferred to NBC Blue on 30 March 1936 and in 1938 took up a nearpermanent lease on NBC’s four o’clock quarter hour for Sterling Drugs, prevailing there until the network canceled it on 1 July 1955. CBS, believing an audience craved more of Mary’s tribulations, acquired the drama and aired it until 2 January 1959, more than 23 years after the fable began. Ethel Owen appeared occasionally as Larry’s mom, Lady Clara. The Nobles’ most devout friends were aging character actress Maude Marlowe, played by Henrietta Tedro and Ethel Wilson and playwright Tom Bryson, portrayed successively by Frank Dane, Charles Webster, and Mandel Kramer. Child impresario Wilda Hinkel was the voice of Larry Jr. Alan MacAteer appeared as Pop, the stage doorman, on many broadcasts. Anne Burr suited the Hummerts so well as a dastardly rapscallion determined to permanently sink her hooks into Larry Noble that—once her character as the vile Regina Rawlings had been dispatched in the late 1940s after creating more than a year of disturbance between the Nobles—within a few weeks actress Burr returned to the cast as the equally competitive Claudia Vincent, bringing more misery to Mary. Some thespians just seemed to wear the mantle of “the other woman” very well. Others comprising a very large supporting cast included Charme Allen (Mercy), Anita Anton (Julia Dixon), Luise Barclay (Sandra Carey), Helen Claire (Virginia Lansing), Patricia Dunlap (Betty Burns), Virginia Dwyer (Doris Dee), Louise Fitch (Susan Nelson), Rod Hendrickson (Cosmo), Ginger Jones and Vicki Vola (Kitty Marshall), Carlton KaDell (Dennis Conroy), Eloise Kummer (Sandra Barclay and Marcia Mannering), John Larkin (Peter Darnell), Bess McCammon (Mrs. Dubois), Marvin Miller (at varying times Captain Amhurst, Rodney Brooks, Edward de Manfield, and Fritz Sterner),
BARNEY, MARION (1879–1968) • 37
Bartlett Robinson (Rupert Barlow), Lesley Woods (Maida), and many more. BARNEY, MARION (1879–1968). A character actress who—while appearing on fewer soap operas than some radio thespians—stood out for accomplishing what no other did: she acquired, and kept, the matriarchal roles on all three of writer Elaine Sterne Carrington’s most celebrated serials, speaking their lines concurrently every weekday. Her day began with rehearsals and performance as Mother Dawson on CBS’s Rosemary. Then she went over to NBC for midafternoon rehearsals and presentation as Mary Young on Pepper Young’s Family. That was followed by late afternoon rehearsals and recital as Mother (Anne) Davis on When a Girl Marries. The latter feature transferred to ABC as a morning entry (preceding Rosemary) in the early 1950s, offering Barney an opportunity to dish out motherly advice on three networks every day! In each, her soft-spoken words of wisdom and genteel spirit yielded the near-perfect mom and mother-in-law. She also appeared in a trio of predecessor-titled narratives assigned to the durable Pepper Young’s Family, including Red Adams, Red Davis (in which she played another Mother Davis!), and Forever Young. The San Francisco native established herself in local theater groups while attending the University of California at Berkeley. In the early years of the 20th century, she toured with stage productions and won a few supporting roles on Broadway. Between 1908–13, Barney was the leading lady of the Chestnut Street Theater’s Orpheum Players in Philadelphia, a widely respected theatrical venue. She left the stage in 1919–20 to make 10 silent films before returning to Broadway. The allure of radio beckoned in the early 1930s. In 1932, Barney earned the title role of an NBC Blue summer run airing three nights weekly called Tish. In addition to the serials already mentioned, several other important audio credits came her way including The Chase Twins, Gangbusters, Home of the Brave, Neighbors, Pages of Romance, Peables Takes Charge, Special Investigator, We the People, and Elaine Carrington’s fourth most durable serial, Marriage for Two (1949–52). Author James Thurber, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, affirmed, “Miss Barney has appeared on the first broadcast of every serial Mrs. Carrington has written. She is
38 • BARNOUW, ERIK (1908–2001)
regarded as a mascot who brings luck to the Carrington ventures.” Barney, Carrington, and others labored resolutely to form the American Federation of Radio Artists. BARNOUW, ERIK (1908–2001). A respected, authoritative media critic whose erudite three-volume A History of Broadcasting in the United States (Oxford University Press, 1966–70) imparts considerable data on radio. From 1946–73, the Holland-born Barnouw was a professor at Columbia University. In the late 1940s, as president of the Radio Writers Guild (RWG), he pressed Frank and Anne Hummert, moguls of Air Features, to substantially increase salaries of the scribes on their copious dramas. The Hummerts were notorious for paying low wages to hundreds in their employ, including countless wordsmiths. When the 1,200-member RWG called a strike for 26 October 1948, its prime target was clearly Air Features. A conference with the reclusive duo produced surprising results with the Hummerts partially relaxing their long-held tightwad stance, agreeing to some modifying compensatory reform. Commenting on their serials, radio historiographer John Dunning recalled: “The Hummerts perfected a soap formula that was best explained by Erik Barnouw. A series of narrative and dramatic hooks was woven into a three- or four-week main storyline. Before the main crisis was resolved, the next one was stirred in as a subplot, which was brought up to a full boil as the old story was resolved and dropped. It was the simplest kind of radio, ripe for satire: comics Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding had little to exaggerate in their Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife skits.” [Ed. Note: Dunning actually simplified the timeline for most of those scenarios continued well beyond a month, often lasting many months, and some running a year or longer.] BARRY CAMERON (a.k.a. THE SOLDIER WHO CAME HOME). Airing for Manhattan Soap, the fleeting daytimer appeared over NBC from 16 April 1945 to 11 October 1946. The Hummert melodrama (originally titled The Soldier Who Came Home) focused on the struggles of a returning war veteran and his young bride as the couple instituted changes. Critics lambasted it for its artificial qualities. Spencer Bentley and Florence Williams (as Anna Cameron) por-
BAUER, CHARITA (1923–1985) • 39
trayed the leads. Helen Carewe (Mrs. Mitchell), King Calder (Will Stevenson), Elsie Hitz (Josephine Whitfield), and Mary Hunter (Martha Stevenson) were among the supporting players. Richard Leonard and Peggy Blake penned the dialogue. BARTONS, THE (a.k.a. THE STORY OF BUD BARTON, BUD BARTON, THE BARTON FAMILY, THOSE BARTONS). For nearly two years, from 25 December 1939–31 October 1941, the serial appeared on NBC Blue as a sustaining humorous adventure aimed at youngsters. There it pursued the exploits of a boy with Mark Twain traits and his family in a small Midwest river hamlet. When it shifted to NBC on 3 November 1941 for Procter & Gamble, the legend scripted by Harlan Ware refocused on adults and persisted to 11 September 1942. Dick Holland played the lead in the dual incarnations while Kathryn Card was Grandma Barton. Other actors included Bill Bouchey, Fern Persons, Arthur Peterson, Ed Prentiss, Cliff Soubier, and Karl Weber. BAUER, CHARITA (1923–1985). One of the most universally loved actresses in serialdom, she made the transition effortlessly from radio to television daytime drama. Bauer gained a loyal following as matriarch Bertha (Bert) Miller Bauer on The Guiding Light (1950–56 on CBS Radio, 1952–84 on CBS-TV, leaving the show when health issues forced her retirement). The surname of the actress and character were purely coincidental. In the early years, she played a nagging, immature wife who butted into everybody else’s business. As she matured, she became the compassionate heart of the Bauer family, at the same time routinely plagued by her spouse’s alcoholism and skirtchasing bouts. As a young girl, Charita Bauer, a Newark native, was a photographer’s model. In the 1930s, she entered radio in the Let’s Pretend ensemble. Growing up, Bauer was a soap opera addict, gaining ongoing roles in David Harum, Front Page Farrell, Lora Lawton, Orphans of Divorce, Our Gal Sunday, The Right to Happiness, Rose of My Dreams, Second Husband, Stella Dallas, and Young Widder Brown. Her other radio credits were The FBI in Peace and War, Johnny Presents, Maudie’s Diary, and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. From 1941–53, she was a regular in The Aldrich Family radio sitcom and
40 • BECKER, DON (1907–1991)
from 1949–50 on a televersion of the same feature. On 24 May 1983, she appeared in a made-for-TV movie, The Cradle Will Fall, alongside members of the Guiding Light troupe. The screenplay was based on the epic serial’s storyline. BECKER, DON (1907–1991). He is best recalled for collaborating with Carl Bixby in penning the long-running Life Can Be Beautiful (continuously and concurrently at times for Procter & Gamble over CBS and NBC from 5 September 1938 to 25 June 1954). The multitalented Becker also was producer–director of that serial and composed its theme song, “Melody in C.” Furthermore, he was creator– writer of The Light of the World, creator–producer of The Parker Family sitcom and producer–writer of As the Twig is Bent/We Love and Learn. He wrote the scripts for Beyond These Valleys and The Life of Mary Sothern and composed the theme song for Valleys. He was organist for The Man I Married and This Day Is Ours and with Bixby cowrote the scripts for both. Becker launched a radio career over Cincinnati’s WLW in 1926 as a ukulele artist. He taught lessons in playing the instrument while on the air (1928–29). After writing continuity copy briefly at WSAI, Cincinnati, he returned to WLW as assistant general manager, encompassing announcing, engineer, writing, and publicity chores. For Life Can Be Beautiful, he and Bixby envisaged providing “a beam of hope in a dark world.” The series was perpetually optimistic, a kindhearted attempt to encourage listeners mired in personal struggles. The drama bore the scribes’ own philosophies. Each coauthor wrote the drama by himself for a few weeks before relinquishing it to the other. In the interim, they talked by telephone (no cell phones then) about the narrative’s direction. BECKER, SANDY (1922–1996). Although he announced many more series than he played in, Becker is celebrated for a single acting role. For 13 years, from 1947 until the serial was withdrawn on “the day radio drama died” (25 November 1960), Becker was Young Doctor Malone. He imbued the part of Jerry Malone with a subtle command while displaying compassion for those about him. He brought dignity to the part of a counselor-in-residence as the series—and he— matured.
BEST SELLER • 41
A versatile Becker narrated Backstage Wife, The Columbia Workshop, Hilltop House, The Shadow, Stepping Out, and Take It or Leave It; he appeared in a recurring role on Life Can Be Beautiful; and performed in the casts of Now Hear This and Treasury Agent. When Young Doctor Malone folded, he provided voice-overs for a trio of TV juvenile cartoons—King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (1960–63), The Underdog Show (1966–68), and Go Go Gophers (1968–69). Becker also hosted several local daily series over New York television outlets WABD and WNEW between the mid-1950s and late 1960s. But for millions of American homemakers, his voice would never be recognized as anything less than the consoling medic of Three Oaks. There, his authoritative, empathetic dulcet tones resonated with a formidable lobby every day. BELIEVABILITY. Among eminent soap opera wordsmiths, Elaine Sterne Carrington was obsessed with making her narratives convincing. She gave salient attention to detail and authenticity, determined that her serials (Pepper Young’s Family, Rosemary, When a Girl Marries among them) would be characterized by plausibility— with conversations as if someone might really hold them, filling her characters with credibility. Carrington was concerned that listeners think of her figures as “real people,” the kind that fretted over trivialities that unraveled during the course of a day. Another soap opera—by its sheer parameters—added reality to its storyline: Wendy Warren and the News. An inspiration of gifted scribes John Picard and Frank Provo it included a character portraying a radio journalist every day. Following the news headlines from respected CBS newsman Douglas Edwards and women’s items delivered by the namesake (though invented) “celebrity,” Warren then entered the fantasy world of soap opera. Because she had to be back on the job at the radio station the following day, however, her mythical world seemed plausible—she did things in “real time,” never taking two weeks to decide if she should open a mysterious delivery package, as on numerous other dramas. Such authenticity was a refreshing oasis amid so many tales stuck in timelessness. BEST SELLER. The 10-minute anthology feature held the dubious honor as the final daytime serial introduced on network radio, appearing on 27
42 • BEST SELLERS
June 1960 over CBS. It prevailed until “the day radio drama died,” 25 November 1960. A closed-end narrative, its premise was simple: it dramatized popular novels in five installments, containing them in a given week. The series is not to be confused with a 1945 quarter-hour anthology, Best Sellers, on ABC. BEST SELLERS. Bret Morrison hosted a fleeting ABC anthology series five weekday afternoons between 4 June and 30 November 1945. It should not be confused with Best Seller that appeared on CBS in 1960. BETTY AND BOB. One of the Hummerts’ earliest entries and penned by Robert Hardy Andrews, it appeared on 10 October 1932 over NBC Blue. On 1 June 1936, it transferred to CBS and on 30 May 1938 it shifted to NBC where it persisted to 15 March 1940, always for General Mills. A popular Hummert theme was proffered—marrying a girl from nowhere to the upper crust, in this case her heir-toa-fortune employer, Bob Drake, who was promptly disenfranchised by his folks. Typically, jealousy and mistrust had a field day as man-hungry vamps chased Bob. The bulk of the audience departed once a son was born, however, apparently unable to cope with the bickering parents then headed for divorce. Even when the infant died and the parents reunited (in a ploy to salvage the faltering ratings), the audience stayed away. A pundit claimed Don Ameche, who initiated the part of Bob and was followed by seven other actors (Les Tremayne, Vinton Hayworth, Onslow Stevens, Spencer Bentley, Carl Frank, J. Anthony Hughes, Van Heflin), was radio’s “first and greatest” matinee idol. Five actresses played Betty (Elizabeth Reller, Beatrice Churchill, Alice Hill, Mercedes McCambridge, Arlene Francis), suggesting that continuity was not one of the serial’s stronger suits. Others appearing there who would soon become radio acting legends included Bill Bouchey, Donald Briggs, Francis X. Bushman, Frank Dane, Eloise Kummer, Forrest Lewis, Ethel Owen, Ned Wever, and Betty Winkler. BEYOND THESE VALLEYS. A short-lived Air Features entry, it revealed the domestic tale of Rebecca and John Lane played by Gertrude
BIGAMY • 43
Warner and Shirling Oliver. The series’ author was multitalented Don Becker who also composed original theme music. The drainboard drama arrived on CBS on 9 October 1939 and departed on 27 September 1940. General Mills underwrote its final 10 weeks on the air. BIG SISTER. Ruth Evans was the older sibling of a pair of youngsters who were little more than emotional cripples. The trio was orphaned early. Ruth took charge of Neddie, also physically handicapped, and Sue. Dr. John Wayne eventually restored Neddie to health, divorced his wife, and married Ruth. But the troubles she had previously experienced were but an overture to the hell her life would become after that. John quit his practice to pursue a bent toward wanderlust, adding spells of amnesia, depression, anger, lust, jealousy, and physical disorders. Despite that, Ruth remained patently calm, forever the compelling figure, persistently steady. The drama arrived on 14 September 1936 over CBS for Lever Brothers that carried it to 21 June 1946. Surprisingly, then it was bought by rival soapmaker Procter & Gamble, a rare occurrence in the genre. P&G continued it through 26 December 1952. Created by Lillian Lauferty, Big Sister featured five actresses in the title role (Alice Frost, Nancy Marshall, Marjorie Anderson, Mercedes McCambridge, Grace Matthews) and three actors portraying John Wayne (Martin Gabel, Paul McGrath, Staats Cotsworth). Michael O’Day was Ned Evans while Fran Carden, Peggy Conklin, Helen Lewis, Dorothy McGuire, and Haila Stoddard appeared as Sue Evans Miller. Other principals included Santos Ortega as Dr. Duncan Carvell and David Gothard, Berry Kroeger, Ian Martin, and Arnold Moss as Dr. Reed Bannister. Also in the cast were radio veterans Mason Adams, Vera Allen, Ed Begley, Ralph Bell, Anne Burr, Patsy Campbell, Eric Dressler, Helene Dumas, Elspeth Eric, Louise Fitch, Arlene Francis, Charlotte Holland, Joseph Julian, Teri Keane, Richard Kollmar, Agnes Moorehead, Zasu Pitts, Ann Shepherd, Everett Sloane, Joan Tompkins, Evelyn Varden, Charles Webster, Ned Wever, and Richard Widmark. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. BIGAMY. Although it never occurred on a radio soap opera, at least twice the storylines suggested that bigamy might happen. When
44 • BIXBY, CARL (1896–1978)
Harry Davis, the hero of When a Girl Marries, suffered amnesia in the late 1940s, he slipped into New York City and aimlessly wandered the streets of the Big Apple. Under such conditions, it was not long before he nearly made it down the aisle with Angie Jones while he was the unknowing spouse of the play’s heroine Joan Davis. Not long afterward, in the mid-1950s Lorenzo Jones did precisely the same. Turning up in Gotham, Jones totally forgot a protracted past with wife Belle. He, too, nearly wed another, Gail Maddox, but came to his senses in the nick of time. Of course, radio’s prim and proper standards—administered by heavy-handed censors—would not have allowed bigamy at any cost. But the mere contemplation of that possibility hyped the ratings as it stirred listeners to wonder: “What if?” BIXBY, CARL (1896–1978). The other half of the Don Becker–Carl Bixby duo, best remembered for their sterling contribution Life Can Be Beautiful. The pair wrote it across a 16-year run over CBS and NBC. Like his contemporary, Bixby was a prolific wordsmith who also joined Becker to script This Day Is Ours and The Man I Married. Independently, he wrote dialogue for Big Sister, Mrs. Miniver, and Radio Reader’s Digest. BLACKETT-SAMPLE-HUMMERT (BSH) AGENCY. A thriving Chicago-based advertising firm in the 1920s, then known as Blackett and Sample (for founders Hill Blackett and John G. Sample) that incalculably amplified its reputation in 1927 by hiring Edward Frank Hummert Jr. as vice president and creative director. While Hummert was never a full partner, his reputation as an inspired head copywriter at the New York ad firm of Lord & Taylor drew new clients to the Chicago business. Soon Hummert’s name was added to the masthead. There, he perceived that women who were at home all day might relish some dramatic programming on their radios as a diversion while they performed their household tasks. He and new assistant Anne S. Ashenhurst (soon to be his bride) experimented with serialized melodramas for milady. The agency was rapidly bringing to the airwaves dozens of dishpan narratives. BSH was at the forefront of radio production with a
BLINDNESS • 45
beehive of activity originating in Chicago. The Hummerts were identified with BSH for several years after they relocated in New York City in 1938. The pair inaugurated their own shop to produce radio shows as of 1 January 1944, calling it Air Features Incorporated. BSH dissolved at that point with the principals forming separate agencies—Hill Blackett Incorporated and Dancer-FitzgeraldSample. Showing impartiality, Frank Hummert offered to work equally with the new firms. BLACKLIST. When a Communist scare swept the nation in the late 1940s, stirred by reactionaries like Sen. Eugene McCarthy (R-Wis.), one of the manifestations of the Cold War was to seek out those in positions of influence who might be soft on Communism. As the concept worked its way through the entertainment industry, hundreds of performers and backstage personnel were blacklisted, sometimes judged guilty by little more than insinuation, idle gossip, or ties with known Communist sympathizers. Blacklisted, large numbers were prevented from going to work or being called to perform. In addition to the individuals so branded, agencies, advertisers, and networks became concerned about the people they employed. But there was one startling exception that took place in serialdom: Frank and Anne Hummert, honchos at Air Features, totally ignored what was transpiring. Instead, their directors, writers, actors, and musicians reported to work every day without fear of being fired. As a result, the Hummerts were revered across the industry above most other producers if for no other rationale than that. Their openmindedness brought unswerving allegiance from many during a very dark period, including many individuals who worked for rival producers. A more detailed account of the broadcasting industry’s scourge with blacklisting appears in Rita Morley Harvey’s discerning volume Those Wonderful, Terrible Years: George Heller and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. BLINDNESS. When a leading figure in a soap opera lost his or her sight, the storyline added a new dimension that often augmented listener interest, particularly until the crisis was resolved. Dr. John Wayne, husband of Ruth Evans Wayne, radio’s Big Sister, was struck
46 • BLOCK PROGRAMMING
blind for a brief while, juicing up that tale’s action. Could it have been because he seldom saw an attractive feminine frame that he didn’t lust for? Hardly. But his physical difficulty had the practical effect of curtailing that concern for a while. In the late 1940s, Young Widder Brown’s tearoom proprietress Ellen Brown temporarily lost her sight. Wringing his hands, her beau, Dr. Anthony Loring, took off for New York City to engage a leading authority in a review of her case. It did not matter that Ellen did not accompany Anthony in order to be examined by the specialist—the fans did not consider that essential (or at least, the scriptwriter did not). It seemed enough that Anthony went to “consult” with the fellow on how to restore Ellen’s sight. Often the radio audience could “see” things clearly that made little practical sense. Nevertheless, when serial scribes wanted to inject their dramas with a little excitement, as if bored with routine jealousies and amnesia, they would sometimes introduce blindness to grab sustained attention. Few washboard weepers failed to allow themselves at least one visually impaired figure. Fortunately for the characters so affected, blindness was a handicap that could be easily repaired. BLOCK PROGRAMMING. The national radio chains discovered early that grouping compatible shows in a mass scheduling approach drew more listeners interested in similar types of programs than did placing like features at scattered hours. Thus, nighttime comedies were often preceded or followed by other comedies while mysteries were usually surrounded by other mysteries. The same trend holds true of network TV today. Audience research suggested that fans would remain tuned to a network or station longer if they could select from several related programs aired back to back. The idea worked especially well among daytime audiences as homemakers stood at their ironing boards and heard not one but several quarterhour soap operas in succession. Block programming—uninterrupted by contrasting material—resulted in a win–win position for all. BOB AND VICTORIA. Debuting over CBS on 27 January 1947 this short-lived narrative focused on Bob Reagan and his uphill struggle to rear Victoria Clayton, age 11, after her dad—Reagan’s best friend—died. Lee and Virginia Crosby penned the scripts. “Radio’s
BRAVE TOMORROW • 47
beautiful story of a man who learns that to lose one’s heart is to find it” was the avowed theme. Other serials pursuing similar premises (Bachelor’s Children, for instance) appeared to offer more promise for audiences and became firmly entrenched on the ether. This one disappeared on 27 June 1947. Commercials touted Dutch Mill cheese, Sunnybank margarine, and Wakefield coffee. BOND, FORD (1904–1962). One of the foremost announcers of radio soap opera, Bond’s rapid-fire staccato delivery was readily recognizable whenever he was before the mike. He signed as exclusive commercial spokesman and narrator for a serial trio produced by Air Features for B. T. Babbitt (Bab-O, Lycons, other goods), including David Harum, Lora Lawton, and Nona from Nowhere. Frank and Anne Hummert (who owned Air Features) employed him in similar capacities on daytimers Backstage Wife, Easy Aces, Just Plain Bill, Orphans of Divorce, and Stella Dallas. The Louisville, Kentucky, native broke into radio as a singer at hometown WHAS, where he was program director at 18. At 25, he was general program executive for NBC’s New York program department. For 26 years (1930–56), Bond held broadcasting’s most durable sponsor–announcer link on several radio series as the voice of the Cities Service Oil Co. (Cities Service Band of America, et al.). He was interlocutor for the Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1932–49), another Hummert feature, while announcing Alias Jimmy Valentine (a Hummert production), Believe It or Not, College Prom, The Collier Hour, Kraft Music Hall, Monday Merry-Go-Round (a Hummert show), and Your Family and Mine. He delivered commercials on American Melody Hour, also a Hummert property. BRAVE TOMORROW. The account of Hal and Louise Lambert and their children, Jean and Marty, had a wartime theme. “From today’s defeats, we build our brave tomorrows,” the epigraph enthused. The story dramatized incidents as a young wife (Jean) pursued her spouse from one army base to another while he trained for overseas duty. A couple of pundits (Madeleine Edmondson, David Rounds) allowed that the problems she faced were “of such unassailable realism that the major one was her inability to obtain the set of dishes her heart was set on.” Those same critics added, “Before the show was taken
48 • BRENDA CURTIS
off the air, it had reduced the sponsor’s representative to such a state of frustration that he wired the producer: ‘For God’s sake, tell her there is still Sears, Roebuck!’” Written by Ruth Adams and sponsored by Procter & Gamble for Ivory soap, the narrative arrived on NBC on 11 October 1943 and departed on 30 June 1944. Raymond Edward Johnson and Roger DeKoven were featured at separate times as Hal while Jeanette Dowling portrayed Louise. Nancy Douglass and Flora Campbell played Jean; Frank Lovejoy was Jean’s husband, Brad Forbes; and Jone Allison and Andree Wallace appeared as Marty. See also WORLD WAR II. BRENDA CURTIS. This brief entry for Campbell Soup starring Vicki Vola in the title role appeared on CBS on 11 September 1939 and left on 19 January 1940. Brenda Curtis was a promising actress who relinquished her career to be a homemaker in New York City. Domestic troubles included the downturn of her husband Jim’s law practice (Jim was played by Michael Fitzmaurice and Hugh Marlowe). While it was not an Air Features drama, the story sounded as if it was as romantic triangles were introduced that included both Brenda and Jim. Available to offer her counsel was Brenda’s mom who was played by Agnes Moorehead. BRENT HOUSE. Portia Brent (portrayed by Georgia Backus, Kathleen Fitz, and—prior to a career as a real-life Hollywood gossip columnist—Hedda Hopper) attempted to manage her late spouse’s publishing interests (Brent House) while rearing a trio of offspring simultaneously. The machinations of the publishing world contributed many intriguing plot innovations. While never a daytime soap opera, the serialized 30-minute yarn initially appeared on NBC Blue from 21 January 1939 through 21 October 1939 on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET. It resumed on Tuesday at 10:30 p.m. on 28 November 1939 and persisted through 4 June 1940. BRIGHT HORIZON (a.k.a. A WOMAN’S LIFE). This CBS serial began on 25 August 1941 and left the air under its original moniker on 6 July 1945. It was extended for a few months, effective on 16 July 1945 through 30 November 1945 under the appellation A Woman’s Life. This
BRIGHTER DAY, THE • 49
was one of only a handful of spin-off soap operas, its antecedents in Big Sister. One of that venerable washboard weeper’s figures, Michael West (played by Richard Kollmar and Joseph Julian), transferred to the new serial as a bistro singer. He also had a law degree that heavily influenced the storyline later as he considered a run for governor while being exposed to scandal. Describing the new show, a critic classified West as “outwardly soft-hearted and idealistic but inwardly a man filled with hard, bitter disillusionment.” Ruth Evans Wayne, the Big Sister herself (then played by Alice Frost), appeared in the new plot for a brief while to help establish it with listeners. Noteworthy is the fact that Bright Horizon filled the quarter-hour vacated by Big Sister (11:30 a.m. ET), making it easier for fans of the progenitor series—which moved to another timeslot—to grab hold. Lever Brothers sponsored both programs. Also unusual is the fact that a woman, Marjorie Anderson, was announcer for the new drama. Stuart Hawkins, Kathleen Norris, and John M. Young, an author of three other serials (The Right to Happiness, Road of Life, The Second Mrs. Burton), were scriptwriters. Joan Alexander, Lon Clark, Will Geer, Jackie Grimes, Irene Hubbard, Ronald Liss, Frank Lovejoy, Santos Ortega, Audrey Totter, Lesley Woods, and other legendary actors comprised the company. BRIGHTER DAY, THE. This Irna Phillips creation was initiated during the waning days of the Phillips serial it replaced, Joyce Jordan, M.D. Into that setting came Elizabeth (Liz) Dennis. At 25, she was the eldest of five children of the widowed Rev. Richard Dennis. In the autumn of 1948, Dr. Jordan became better acquainted with the Dennis household while providing medical help for Liz, simultaneously introducing her clan to the radio audience. By the time Jordan said good-bye on a final broadcast, the fans were already acquainted with the family that would occupy her timeslot. On 11 October 1948, The Brighter Day surfaced on NBC. On 11 July 1949, the show shifted to CBS where its radio incarnation persisted to 29 June 1956. By then, it was already a feature on CBS-TV’s weekday lineup, appearing from 4 January 1954–28 September 1962, albeit with an altered storyline. In the radio version, set in the rural community of Three Rivers, one of the siblings, Althea, displayed a resolute aloofness. She
50 • BUCK PRIVATE AND HIS GIRL
often defied the high moral plain that Rev. Dennis set for his family and that Liz attempted to personify for the others. The challenge of meeting Althea’s needs while positively channeling her energies was compelling. Bill Smith played Rev. Dennis; Margaret Draper and Grace Matthews portrayed Liz; Jay Meredith and Joan Alexander were featured as Althea. The other siblings included Lorna Lynn (as Barbara), Billy Redfield (as Grayling), and Pat Hosley (as Patsy). Joe De Santis, John Larkin, Charlotte Manson, Paul McGrath, John Raby, and others filled support roles. In addition to Irna Phillips, the wordsmiths included Orin Tovrov, Doris Frankel, and John Haggart. Procter & Gamble (Dreft, Cheer) underwrote the program through 1 July 1955; afterward, it aired for multiple concerns. BUCK PRIVATE AND HIS GIRL. It was the tale of a young draftee, Steve Mason, his sweetheart Anne and their romantic intents, interrupted by the eruption of World War II. Myron McCormick appeared as private Mason, Anne Seymour was his love interest, and others with running roles were Joan Banks, Alexander Kirkland, Don MacLaughlin, and Tom Powers. The narrative aired on NBC Blue between 26 May–22 August 1941. BURR, ANNE (1920–2003). Born in Boston, in the 1940s she played leading roles on the Broadway stage in Detective Story, The Hasty Heart, and similar productions. Although that might have kept her name in lights, it was as a supporting actress on radio serials that she was incessantly conspicuous, most often appearing as a heavyhanded, dark, and foreboding character, possibly due to her basalreminding Tallulah Bankhead nuance. On Backstage Wife, in 1948–49 Burr acted in the longrunning part of Regina Rawlings. When Rawlings was finally dispatched (after more than a year)—one of the most destructive and unscrupulous dames to interfere between protagonists Larry and Mary Noble— within a few weeks, actress Burr was back in the new role of Claudia Vincent, an equally evil vixen also determined to separate the Nobles so she could have Larry’s undivided attention. A radio historiographer sufficiently recapped: “Claudia too had an affinity for making life hell for Mary Noble.”
CANCELLATION • 51
Burr routinely turned up in the casts of Big Sister, Wendy Warren and the News, and When a Girl Marries. For seven years (1951–58), she was featured as nurse Kate Morrow in the weekly CBS drama City Hospital, a part she reprised on the CBS-TV show of the same name (1952–53). Earlier, in 1947–48, she played many leading roles on Fletcher Markle’s dramatic radio anthology Studio One. She also sporadically appeared in the casts of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, and Scotland Yard. On TV, Burr performed in the serials The Greatest Gift and As the World Turns. BY KATHLEEN NORRIS. An anthology collection characterized as light romantic fare and based on the works of popular novelist Kathleen Norris. Implementing a ploy he successfully used on his Gangbusters program, producer Phillips H. Lord employed a stand-in narrator “by proxy” for the tales. Ethel Everett pretended to be Norris. The series arrived on 9 October 1939 over CBS and continued through 26 September 1941, although it shifted to NBC in 1940 for General Mills (Wheaties cereal).
-CCAMPBELL SOUP COMPANY. Although never considered one of the major players among the enterprises underwriting soap opera, Campbell nevertheless sponsored a few serials (notably Brenda Curtis, Charlie and Jessie, Life Begins, Meet the Dixons). In addition to many varieties of canned soup, the firm also made Franco-American spaghetti and many more main dishes, sauces, and seasonings. CANCELLATION. The inevitable conclusion of a washboard weeper frequently precipitated loud cries of anguish from the fans. Particularly was this true in situations involving long-running tales. Deeply embedded in the very nature of the serials was the implied trust that they would continue forever. When a drainboard drama was withdrawn, figures that audiences had come to regard as friends vanished, forgotten by the medium and—except in rare cases—never intersected again. It was too much for some of the faithful to comprehend; they were losing favorite, albeit fictional, companions.
52 • CAPSULED THESIS
The most vocal and visible instance, perhaps, occurred on soap opera’s final day on the air (25 November 1960) as Ma Perkins and several of her cohorts bit the dust. So outraged were the admirers that they stormed the CBS switchboard, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. Angry callers and letter writers gave the web a piece of their minds, sparing few words. Through tears of anguish, they vented hostilities toward the network, some hardly able to speak or write because of extreme emotional states. They would never be pacified with less than returning their stories to the air. Yet almost always that never happened. When Carol Kennedy’s Romance was about to fade from the air, for example, a formidable letter-writing campaign by the fans wanting to keep the show alive totally fell on blind eyes. CAPSULED THESIS. A Frank and Anne Hummert innovation, the capsuled thesis soon spread to other segments of radio soap opera, becoming an integral part of dozens of serials. It followed the title of the narrative, like the one announcing the arrival of Our Gal Sunday each midday, supplied to acquaint the new listener with the premise of the story: “Once again, we present Our Gal Sunday, the story of an orphan girl named Sunday from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado, who in young womanhood married England’s richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope. The story that asks the question: Can this girl from the little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?” These summaries became so prevalent, anticipated, and popular that doubtlessly millions in the radio audience could say them right along with the narrator. CAREER OF ALICE BLAIR, THE. The skirmishes involving a young career woman who hailed from a small town in New York were spotlighted. She was caught up in conflicts between home and professional life. Innocently, she became involved in an indignity with a prominent gentleman. She received a cool reception from former friends upon returning to her hometown. Old chums branded her as guilty of the scandal that would not go away. Despite that, Tom Harrington asked to marry her. Actresses Martha Scott and Betty Moran were featured in the title role. The syndicated serial sponsored by
CARLON, FRAN (1913–1993) • 53
Standard Oil was produced and distributed by ZIV and premiered on 3 July 1939 and departed 20 December 1940. CAREER PROFESSIONAL. Soap opera creative Irna Phillips placed strong emphasis on career professionals as protagonists in daytime drama, including attorneys, clergymen, nurses, physicians, teachers, and other figures culled from similar backgrounds. She discovered that they made appealing targets for her narratives and she capitalized on an area that some of her peers simply missed. Frank and Anne Hummert, in contrast, maintained that ordinary citizens with whom the middle class could readily identify should people their daytime radio dramas. As a result of Phillips’s instinct, nonetheless, a prevalence of professional characters that appeared in subsequent daytime televised serials (particularly during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s) was likely an outgrowth of her perceptive stance—and an affirmation of her insight. CAREER WIFE. With Ann Thomas in the lead role, the story persisted only six weeks, almost holding the record for pithiness among soap operas. It arrived over NBC Blue on 13 November 1939 and left on December 22. Its existence on the ether was so brief, in fact, that it escaped the notice of practically all of the esteemed daytime drama documentarians. CARLON, FRAN (1913–1993). The Indianapolis native trained at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. She launched an acting career in a touring production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and appeared on the silver screen in White Parade (1933), Music in the Air (1934), and several Twentieth Century Fox Ritz Brothers films. Although featured in many Broadway failures, she was in a single long-running hit, Sunrise at Campobello, in 1958. But it was as a radio and television actress that her talent was exhibited most indestructibly. In soap opera, Carlon played the lead in Joyce Jordan, M.D. and Kitty Keene Incorporated while gaining support roles in at least a dozen other serials: Backstage Wife, David Harum, Girl Alone, Judy and Jane, Lora Lawton, Ma Perkins, Our Gal Sunday, The Story of Mary Marlin, Terry Regan—Attorney at Law, Today’s Children, A Woman of America, and Young Widder Brown. She worked other
54 • CAROL KENNEDY’S ROMANCE
aural dramatic series including Barry Craig—Confidential Investigator, Blackstone the Magic Detective, The Chicago Theatre of the Air, Ford Theater, Joan and Kermit, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, and This Changing World. Her most memorable audio part may have been as Lorelei Kilbourne in Big Town. On the small screen, Carlon played the title role of Portia Blake Manning in the serialized Portia Faces Life (1954–55, CBS-TV); Julia Burke on As the World Turns (1968–75, CBS-TV); and Ada, the housekeeper, in the short-lived primetime serial The Hamptons (1983, ABC-TV). She also appeared in TV’s Big Story and Robert Montgomery Presents and in copious commercial spots. CAROL KENNEDY’S ROMANCE. This serial succeeded one called Trouble House that emanated during a CBS omnibus feature titled Heinz Magazine of the Air. The thrice-weekly half-hour included music, interviews, and the serial penned by Elaine Sterne Carrington. She was to be recognized in succeeding years as one of aural soap opera’s legends. The Heinz marathon drew few listeners, however, and a decision was made to withdraw Trouble House and later the Heinz series at that hour. In its wake, audiences were offered a fresh drama without contiguous trappings. In Carol Kennedy’s Romance, actress Gretchen Davidson portrayed the namesake. It focused on an orphan who tossed aside her imperfect past to pursue some daring quests. The quarter-hour serial debuted on 31 August 1937, airing twice weekly, and continued through 18 March 1938. It ended when sponsor H. J. Heinz (maker of the celebrated 57 food varieties) admitted that the new drama, too, had failed to attract sufficient admirers. CAROLINE’S GOLDEN STORE. Appearing from 5 June to 11 August 1939 over NBC the humorous sketch incorporating country music was rejuvenated on CBS from 9 October 1939 through 19 July 1940. General Mills underwrote both segments. The heroine was a smalltown retailer, specifically a general mercantile store proprietress, and most of the action occurred as the townsfolk gathered at her emporium. The show was produced by the Blackett-SampleHummert agency; Caroline Ellis wrote it and was spotlighted in the title role.
CARRINGTON, ELAINE STERNE (1891–1958) • 55
CARRINGTON, ELAINE STERNE (1891–1958). One of the legendary figures of radio soap opera, she was among the form’s most fertile wordsmiths, dictating every word of dialogue for multiple scripts while acting out all the parts. Earlier, she was a freelance scribe for popular women’s magazines (Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Pictorial Review, Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Home Companion). With J. C. Nugent, she coauthored a noteworthy Broadway play, Nightstick, forming the basis of a couple of movie sequels, Alibi (released in the U.S. in 1929) and The Perfect Alibi (in the United Kingdom). Carrington’s foray into serial plotting at age 40 was a fluke. Driven by a rainstorm under the marquis of the NBC building, the native New Yorker waited for a break in the weather. In a brief moment, she exchanged pleasantries with the web’s continuity director who urged her to try writing a radio play. Subsequently, she developed a sketch that became the basis for a career transformation. Early success with Red Adams resulted in her most durable serial. Over a 26-year run, its title changed three times, to Red Davis, then to Forever Young, and by 1936 to Pepper Young’s Family. Following Carrington’s death 22 years later, her son and daughter, Bob and Pat, penned her bestknown drama for another eight months. Carrington did not stop with one washboard weeper, however; she also authored Trouble House (1936–37), When a Girl Marries (1939–57), Rosemary (1944–55), Marriage for Two (1949–50, 1951–52) and—on NBC-TV—Follow Your Heart (1953–54). The latter series reprised the early plotlines of radio’s When a Girl Marries but it never found an audience in its second generation. Of the trio of leading suppliers of radio soap opera (including the Hummerts’ Air Features and Irna Phillips), critics coalesced behind Carrington for attaining an enhanced writing quality. She was “the most literate of all soap writers” espoused a pundit. When she increased the number of shows for which she was writing, yet another reviewer claimed the profusion “did not appear to dilute the quality of her product.” Her success is possibly attributed to the fact that she refused to employ intermediaries to pen her dialogue, preferring to dictate all of the words herself in order to experience the diverse nuances firsthand.
56 • CARTERS OF ELM STREET, THE
“All my scripts are written so that listeners can imagine themselves in the same situations as people in the cast,” Carrington disclosed. “The daytime serials fill a tremendous hole in lonely people’s lives. Listeners take the characters to heart and suffer, live, love, and laugh with them.” CARTERS OF ELM STREET, THE. In the little hamlet of Galesville, this was “the story of a second wife and her fight for happiness.” It was also billed as “the story of one mother’s struggle to find happiness for those she loves.” Vic Smith portrayed patriarch Henry Carter while Virginia Payne, concurrently heard as Ma Perkins elsewhere on the dial for 27 years, appeared as his spouse, Kerry. A trio of offspring—including two children at home plus a nearby married daughter and her husband—comprised the extended clan. Ginger Jones appeared in the storyline as Mildred Carter Randolph while Billy Rose was Jess Carter and Ann Russell was Bernice Carter. Herb Nelson was Sid Randolph; Harriette Widmer was Mattie Belle. Their trials and tribulations for Wander’s Ovaltine beverages began on 13 February 1939 over NBC and persisted through 23 June 1939. They resumed 25 September 1939 through 19 January 1940 and shifted to MBS from 22 January through 19 July 1940. The Blackett–Sample–Hummert advertising agency supervised the series that was written by Mona Kent. CENTRAL CITY. A blue-collar manufacturing hub of 50,000 denizens, Central City witnessed the predicaments of an allegedly classic American family. Presaging television’s Peyton Place, the BlackettSample-Hummert serial proffered a Grand Hotel style of entanglement. It arrived on NBC Blue for Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol detergent on 21 November 1938, shifting to NBC effective 2 January 1939 where it remained through 25 April 1941. Several future entertainment luminaries appeared in the cast, including Shirley Booth, Arlene Francis, and Van Heflin, for whom radio would be a steppingstone to more high-profile venues. Meanwhile, the leads were played by Elspeth Eric (Emily Olson) and Myron McCormick (Robert Shallenberger).
CHARLIE AND JESSIE • 57
CHAPLAIN JIM, U.S.A. Serialized narratives of a young enlisted clergyman’s encounters with boys on the battlefields of World War II and crises at home were the focus. Sponsored by the U.S. War Department, tales were based on true incidents. Chaplain Jim was a gracious man of the cloth who served in both theaters of war. During his times of leave, he assisted the families of fighting men in some personal dilemmas. The serial boosted patriotism as the hero invited fans to write to servicemen overseas. The feature concluded with a prayer. Appearing in the title role of the Blackett-Sample-Hummert (and subsequently, Air Features) production were John Lund and Don MacLaughlin. It premiered on 20 April 1942 and continued through 4 September 1942 over the NBC Blue chain. On 6 September 1942, it became a weekly half-hour feature on that web, persisting through 22 April 1945. At that juncture, it transferred to a weekly half-hour on MBS, airing from 29 April–9 December 1945 and 3 February–June 30 1946. CHARACTERIZATION. The leading exponent of characterization in aural soap opera was Irna Phillips, who revealed details about the figures in her stories over lengthy periods of time. In so doing, audiences connected with those subjects. Frequently, a couple of people dotting her serials would pass the quarter-hour dialoguing with each other while increasing a listener’s knowledge of themselves and their perspectives. To the contrary, a spectacle like that would seldom appear on dramas penned by other authors. Phillips’ slower action, combined with fewer individuals in a single installment, became a trademark. Those lengthy discussions not only allowed time to develop personalities but offered an added benefit, too: using fewer bodies in an episode’s cast resulted in fewer folks being paid for rehearsal and performance time, thus lining the producer’s pockets with added revenue. Whether this was the major reason for her attraction to the slower pace, Phillips—a shrewd businesswoman— profited handsomely from it. CHARLIE AND JESSIE. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings between 16 December 1940 and 17 January 1941 (a total of just five weeks), CBS and Campbell Soup presented this domestic serial.
58 • CHASE TWINS, THE
A reviewer labeled it a “scatterbrain comedy.” The series focused on the mishaps of a young married couple—a salesman and his spouse. Donald Cook and Florence Lake played the leads in exchanges scripted by Red Cooper. CHASE TWINS, THE. This was a fleeting weekday afternoon serial that endured a sheer 17 weeks. Its only confirmed actress was Marion Barney. Almost no information has been documented and no recordings discovered as yet. The feature arrived on 9 October 1939 over NBC Blue and departed on 2 February 1940. CHILDREN. As a rule, youngsters seldom filled their natural roles in soap opera. Only on serials like Hilltop House, with its focus on an orphanage and inherent reasons to involve children in plotlines, did adolescents have much to say. Otherwise, they were usually inserted within a narrative to complicate their parents’ or guardians’ lives. A very young child could be a cause for adult concern, a motive for maternal sacrifice, the object of a legal challenge, or an obstacle to marriage. Seldom were kids permitted to relate to others in commonly accepted ways. When their presence was immaterial to an evolving sequence, they actually seemed to be nonexistent. On Our Gal Sunday, for example, Sunday and Lord Henry Brinthrope had three children. Those adolescents were frequently referred to but rarely present. Fans knew that the youngsters existed because of occasional references but normally they only heard about their activities, not from them directly. The Brinthropes were wealthy enough to afford a live-in nanny who kept the offspring out of hearing range, usually in the nursery. It would seem that with Young Widder Brown’s avowed premise “with two fatherless children to support” that unfortunate heroine Ellen Brown would have considerable interaction with her progeny. But that was not the case in “the story of the age-old conflict between a mother’s duty and a woman’s heart.” Another adage appeared more applicable: “Children should be seen and not heard.” Hers almost never talked. Despite that, they were frequently cited as an “excuse” as to why their mom’s most persistent suitors were never qualified as decent marriage material. She invariably had to “check with them” to be sure. When that time arrived, listeners knew the kiddos would turn thumbs down.
CLARITY • 59
Only on rare occasions did juveniles say lines of dialogue, and then frequently through an adult child impersonator. For years, actress Wilda Hinkel fulfilled that capacity for Larry Noble Jr. on Backstage Wife. Her talents were also pressed into service on other radio serials when, on occasion, a youngster was required to speak. CLARA, LU ’N’ EM. A comic dialogue among three gossips, this antecedent of soap opera that segued into the breed appeared over Chicago’s WGN on 16 June 1930. Its scope broadened to a wider audience starting 27 January 1931 as it aired Tuesday through Saturday (Monday through Friday as of 15 February 1932) over NBC Blue for Colgate-Palmolive-Peet for Super Suds detergent. An important precedent occurred on 15 February 1932 when the show shifted into a Monday–Friday matinee timeslot—without notoriety or fanfare the drama indisputably became the first network daytime serial. The series transferred to NBC for the same sponsor on 26 March 1934, persisting through 2 October 1936. Meanwhile, from 26 June–4 September 1936, it also aired a half-hour version on NBC Blue Friday nights for Frigidaire home appliances. Pillsbury cake, flour, muffin, and biscuit mixes sponsored the drama in its final incarnation, thrice weekly between 6 August–4 December 1942 over CBS. Louise Starkey, Isabel Carothers, and Helen King originated the parts of the chatty neighbors. Fran Harris, Dorothy Day, and Harriet Allyn eventually assumed those roles. CLARITY. A hallmark of Frank and Anne Hummert dramas was that the audience must recognize at all times who was speaking to whom. According to a dictate handed down from on high, there could never be any hesitancy or indecisiveness in regard to that. On any of their programs—daytime and nighttime—there was repetitious overidentification of characters ad infinitum. If there was ever a momentary lapse about who was speaking and who was being spoken to, someone could catch hell for it. Although program directors were accountable for what went out over the ether, the heels of the Hummert wordsmiths were unequivocally held to the fire. The result was often scripting that was depicted by critics as dull and colorless—“some of the most banal dialogue on radio.”
60 • CLAUDIA AND DAVID (A.K.A. CLAUDIA)
CLAUDIA AND DAVID (a.k.a. CLAUDIA). In the Friday night halfhour CBS feature between 4 July–26 September 1941, a summer replacement for singer Kate Smith, young architect David Naughton had his hands full. His wife, Claudia, 18, was bound almost impenetrably to her mama. For their marriage to survive, those ties would have to be loosened. That was coupled with the usual frustrations of adjustment, financial ills, and turning a house into a home. The tale was introduced in the waning weeks of Smith’s spring season before she departed on seasonal hiatus. Thus, it did not surprise many listeners when the narrative gained a berth of its own. General Foods (Post cereals and other foodstuffs), Smith’s sponsor, underwrote the drama. Richard Kollmar appeared as David and Patricia Ryan played Claudia. Jane Seymour was Mrs. Brown (Claudia’s mom) while Irene Hubbard was David’s mom. Frances Starr was in a support role. The Peter Van Steeden Orchestra provided music. Stories by Rose Franken and William Brown Meloney published in Redbook magazine formed the basis of the radio serial, as well as a 1943 motion picture. In 1947, Coca-Cola sponsored a five-times-a-week quarter-hour transcribed rendering of the serial originating at Chicago’s WGN. Paul Crabtree and Katharine Bard played the leads, with Peggy Allenby as Mrs. Brown. CLOSED-END TALES. A closed-end tale occurred when the storyline encountered an anticipated conclusion. It sharply contrasted with the open-end narrative in which plotting continued uninterrupted until a program was finally canceled. The overwhelming majority of American soap operas airing on both radio and television were always of the open-end variety. In radio, especially, a handful of closed-end serials prevailed. Notable among them were Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Best Seller, By Kathleen Norris, Ever Since Eve, Five Star Matinee, Front Page Farrell, The Light of the World, and Whispering Streets, yarns that came to a deliberate end. A benefit of closed-end dramas was that listeners who could not afford to remain with a program for weeks, months, or years might hear a complete sequence. Most features of this nature persisted for no more than a week, making it easy for fans to tune in to bite-sized portions.
COLLYER, CLAYTON (BUD) (1908–1969) • 61
COLGATE-PALMOLIVE-PEET INCORPORATED. One of serialdom’s major soapmaking sponsors, it manufactured household and personal care goods under brand names like Ajax, Cashmere Bouquet, Colgate, Fab, Halo, Lustre Crème, Palmolive, Super Suds, and Vel. At varying times, the concern underwrote all of the following serials: Bachelor’s Children; Clara, Lu ’n’ Em; Ellen Randolph; The Goldbergs; The Goose Creek Parson; Hilltop House; Kay Fairchild—Stepmother; King’s Row; Lorenzo Jones; and Myrt and Marge. It was one of soap operas’ earliest sponsors but, by the 1950s, had shifted most of its electronic media advertising to primetime radio and television. COLLYER, CLAYTON (BUD) (1908–1969). One of entertainment’s most versatile celebrities of his generation, the native New Yorker was adept as an announcer, actor, emcee, and quizmaster in radio and an audience participation show host and panel moderator in television. In his lifetime, he appeared on about four-dozen series, a high achievement. Although he trained professionally to become an attorney, he discovered that radio performers were paid better than lawyers, turning his interests to a new direction. He initially earned $85 per week as a CBS vocalist. Before long, he was on 30 shows weekly, earning $7,000 annually, “big dough at that time,” he confirmed. Collyer’s association with soap opera is legion. He narrated Big Sister, The Goldbergs, The Guiding Light, House in the Country, Mary Small, Road of Life, and The Story of Mary Marlin. For years, he was a prominent spokesman for Procter & Gamble’s Duz detergent, pitching the washday suds on several of its washboard weepers and primetime series. At the same time, he sustained recurring roles in the casts of Joyce Jordan, M.D., Just Plain Bill, Life Can Be Beautiful, and Young Widder Brown. He portrayed masculine leads on Kate Hopkins—Angel of Mercy, Kitty Foyle, The Man I Married, and Pretty Kitty Kelly. Simultaneously, Collyer was either announcer, actor, host, or quizmaster of radio’s Abie’s Irish Rose, The Adventures of Superman, The Benny Goodman Show, Break the Bank, By Popular Demand, The Cavalcade of America, Chips [sic] Davis—Commando, High Places, Listening Post, On Your Mark, The Philip Morris Playhouse, The
62 • COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM (CBS)
Raleigh Room, The Sheaffer Review, Silver Theater, Stage Door Canteen, Three for the Money, Times a-Wastin’, Truth or Consequences, Quiz of Two Cities, and Winner Take All. On television, he welcomed contestants to Beat the Clock (1957–61), Break the Bank (1948–53), Feather Your Nest (1954–56), Masquerade Party (1952), Number Please (1961), This Is the Missus (1948), and To Tell the Truth (1962–68). From 1966–69, Collyer reprised an old radio role by providing voice-overs for Superman, a Saturday morning children’s cartoon on TV. COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM (CBS). A chain that would prove to be a formidable and resilient competitor against a fledgling, yet entrenched National Broadcasting Company (NBC) when CBS went on the air on 27 September 1927 as the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System. For $300,000, William S. Paley, a cigar maker, purchased controlling interest in the outfit on 28 September 1928. By 1977, when he stepped down as chairman, Paley had created an enterprise worth hundreds of times his investment, largely due to a titanic capacity to negotiate, initially with affiliates and then with stars that made CBS programming famous. Throughout radio’s golden age, Paley demonstrated a resolve that seemed to favor the daytime serials by accommodating huge numbers of the form. That they were stupendous moneymakers and drew vast audiences was a mitigating factor. Paley and company stood firm squeezing another 18 months out of a quartet of chapter plays after archrival NBC—the only other web still airing serials—dismissed the remnants of a once-proud heritage. CBS stridently resisted the slippage of advertisers and audiences to television (Paley made no pretense that he preferred radio over video into the 1950s). The network also held out against a strong-willed coalition of affiliates that demanded the release of radio time so they could sell it more profitably themselves. CBS was committed to providing the entertainment it always had—including daytime serials—until late 1960, the last of the chains to succumb to mounting pressures. COMICAL DRAMAS. Despite the fact that the preponderance of soap operas were filled with anguish, pathos, love triangles, deception, grief, and other discord—some of it occurring even in “normal” fam-
COMPANION • 63
ily patterns—there was a handful of narratives that could be classified as humorous or borderline comedies nonetheless. More than two-dozen such features fell into that category. Residing there were antecedents of the form including Amos ’n’ Andy, Happy Hollow, Sam ’n’ Henry, The Smith Family, Tena and Tim, Moonshine and Honeysuckle, and possibly others. Bob and Ray, who made it their habit to spoof serialdom and other aural breeds, contributed heavily to soap opera’s perceived comic motif. Earlier, humor was delivered daily across backyard fences on Clara, Lu ’n’ Em, Judy and Jane, and Just Neighbors. Family comedies found a niche and predominated in the field including Charlie and Jessie, The Couple Next Door, Easy Aces, Ethel and Albert, The Gumps, Joe and Ethel Turp, The Johnson Family, Keeping Up with Daughter, Raising Junior, Red Adams, Red Davis, Those Happy Gilmans, and Vic and Sade. Meanwhile, ethnic and geographic connotations filled the landscape on lighthearted Caroline’s Golden Store, The Goldbergs, Joe Powers of Oakville, Minnie and Maud, and a few others. Finally, over its 18year run, Lorenzo Jones exuded a jocular charm for 15 years. But when the ratings fell sharply in 1952, the zany character that puttered around in a home shop devising worthless inventions to the consternation of his devoted wife and townsfolk, suddenly disappeared. Literally. Acquiring amnesia, he vanished for nearly the rest of the serial’s life in a sometimes-morbid melodrama that differed from its peers hardly at all. When times were grim, even the laughter could be squeezed out of the few soap operas professing it. COMPANION. The closed-end weekday quarter-hour feature arrived on ABC on 19 December 1954 and continued through 16 December 1955. Romantic tales appearing in Woman’s Home Companion magazine formed the basis of the five-part anthology, a new yarn beginning on Mondays. The stories were purportedly “case files” of marriage counselor David R. Mace who contributed a monthly column to the periodical. Recurring actors who frequented the various narratives included Lon Clark, Martha Greenhouse, and Warren Parker. Hetta Ripley and Virginia Travers adapted Mace’s case histories into scripts.
64 • CONSISTENCY
CONSISTENCY. Soap opera figures maintained a behavioral consistency that was predictable. Confronted with a crisis, heroes and heroines reacted precisely as they had done in the past and as listeners would anticipate their doing in the future. It was comforting to acknowledge that values, traits, and conditions previously ascribed to an individual would not be altered—at least, not without motivating and plausible incentives. COSTS OF PRODUCTION. Producing a serial was relatively inexpensive when compared with other forms of aural amusement. A single episode of a typical daily quarter-hour soap opera could be aired for $3,600 in 1948. Only $600 or 16.7 percent of that went to talent. Another $540 or 15 percent was funneled to the advertising agency producing the show. The remaining $2,460 was designated for network and local affiliate airtime purchases. At that juncture, daytime serial sponsors were reaching 20 million listeners at an annual outlay of $35 million. The fees were skimpy when matched against most other programming formats (all except news, which required less in talent, rehearsal, and production fees). In 1943, the highest-rated weekday program, Kate Smith Speaks, cost $609.76 per ratings point. The second-rated When a Girl Marries, meanwhile, cost but $287.50 per ratings point. And Ma Perkins, with a number very near Smith’s, cost only $164.56 per point. Incidentally, at that time five installments of Ma Perkins could be aired for a scant $1,300 in production costs, as opposed to Smith’s weekly quarter-hour price tag of $5,000. All of this looked exceedingly superior when balanced against primetime features like The Bing Crosby Show and The Jack Benny Program. In 1950, they were budgeted at $40,000 per weekly halfhour performance. Costs were a factor that the critics of drainboard dramas were never able to satisfactorily repudiate. COTSWORTH, STAATS (1908–1979). Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Cotsworth would appear on so many shows that he was labeled “radio’s busiest actor” in 1946. By then, he had performed on 7,500 broadcasts in the last dozen years. He was also an accomplished photographer, painter, and Shakespearean and repertory actor. But it was in broadcast dramas that he left his mark, by 1948 earning more than
COUNTY SEAT • 65
$50,000 annually from radio drama. Asked then by a Newsweek reporter why he appeared in soap operas, he responded: “Giving up a daytime show is like turning in your insurance policy.” For several years, he played the lead of newspaperman David Farrell in Front Page Farrell. At the same time, he sustained running parts in Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, Big Sister, Lone Journey, Lora Lawton, Lorenzo Jones, Marriage for Two, The Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton, Stella Dallas, and When a Girl Marries. Despite that Cotsworth is probably best recalled as Jack Casey, the namesake character in primetime’s Casey, Crime Photographer on CBS, he also turned up in the evening hours on The Cavalcade of America, Five Minute Mysteries, Major North—Army Intelligence, The Man from G-2, The March of Time Quiz, Mark Trail, Mr. and Mrs. North, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, Roger Kilgore—Public Defender, and Rogue’s Gallery. In the 1970s, he returned to the microphone for The CBS Mystery Theater. COUNTRY DOCTOR. Here was a Warner-Lambert-sponsored serial for Listerine antiseptic mouthwash three afternoons a week (Monday–Wednesday) over NBC Blue starting 20 June 1932. It expanded to five times a week on 25 July 1932 and was trimmed back to thrice weekly on 12 December 1932. The soap opera featuring Phillips H. Lord, who would earn greater fame as producer of Counterspy, Gangbusters, Mr. District Attorney, Policewoman, Treasury Agent, and other crime series, ended with the broadcast of 15 March 1933. Lord, incidentally, appeared in the casts of Great Gunns, Seth Parker, The Story of Mary Marlin, and Tom Mix while producing the serialized anthology By Kathleen Norris, as well as the anthology Sky Blazers. COUNTY SEAT. Pharmacy proprietor Doc Will Hackett in the little hamlet of Northbury was the protagonist in a story about small town America and its residents. Northbury was ascribed as “just around the bend of the river” and about 60 miles from “the big city.” Ray Collins appeared as Doc. The feature began as a weeknight serial over CBS on 17 October 1938 and continued through 31 March 1939. At that point, it became a weekly Saturday night 30-minute narrative, from 8
66 • COUPLE NEXT DOOR, THE
April–26 August 1939. Directed by Norman Corwin, the tale was scripted by Milton Geiger. COUPLE NEXT DOOR, THE. Serialized banter between spouses that debuted in 1935 over Chicago’s WGN. It was confined there until MBS aired it to a wider audience for Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol detergent between 12 April–17 September 1937. Olan Soule and Elinor Harriot played Tom and Dorothy Wright. The show returned to the airwaves over CBS two decades later on 30 December 1957 and continued until “the day radio drama died,” 25 November 1960, among the last such features to depart from the ether. The latter version under multiple sponsorship spotlighted Alan Bunch and Peg Lynch as an unnamed married duo who identified each other merely as “honey bunch,” “dear,” etc. The actors had enjoyed a flourishing run in a similar humorous exchange, Ethel and Albert, on ABC between 1944–50, reprising it on three TV networks between 1953–56. See also ETHEL AND ALBERT. COURTROOM DRAMAS. A quartet of daytime serials were inspired by the legal profession, including a trio of counselors—Perry Mason, “defender of human rights”; Portia Blake Manning, feminine barrister of Portia Faces Life; and a short-lived Terry Regan, Attorney at Law. In addition, there was Her Honor, Nancy James, a jurist who dedicated herself to eradicating various forms of evil that settled in her little burg. While the hall of justice was not the focus of other dramas, some of their figures earned livelihoods by practicing there. They included Gil Whitney, longtime suitor of Helen Trent; Jack Arnold, who married Marge Minter (of Myrt and Marge) and became a crimefighting assistant district attorney; Herbert Temple, Ellen Brown’s longtime lawyer and spouse of her best friend, Norine Temple, in Young Widder Brown; attorney Miles Nelson, one of heroine Carolyn Nelson’s multiple husbands in The Right to Happiness, who also ran for governor and won; and in This Is Nora Drake lawyer–suitor Charles Dobbs, a stand-in for Nora’s original love interest, Ken Martinson. There were many more legal representatives as the daytime storylines called for them but these were some who left large prints upon the series in which they appeared.
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COWCATCHER COMMERCIALS. Concise ads for one of a sponsor’s multiple commodities were strategically inserted at the start of a program. Soap opera applied this formula extensively. These plugs were often read “cold”—without any previous words or music at the top of a new feature—or, more likely, after a pithy introduction. “Next—Backstage Wife!” an announcer would extol as NBC’s four o’clock hour got under way, followed by five seconds of nondescript organ interlude. A 20- to 30-second pitch for one of Sterling Drugs’ many healthcare goods succeeded the music. Then the studio organist revved up the program’s familiar theme, The Rose of Tralee, underplaying it while an announcer read the serial’s opening epigraph. Another longer ad commenced prior to the day’s dramatic dialogue. The cowcatcher commercial—and the hitchhike commercial that appeared shortly before a program signed off—allowed a sponsor to push more goods on a given show than possible in only two widely accepted commercial time zones during a quarter-hour (at the beginning and end). CRIME DRAMAS. With crimefighting, a popular genre during radio’s primetime hours, there was not a lot of need for a profusion of detective thrillers in matinee. Yet a miniscule handful surfaced anyway. The Mystery Man offered an anthology of such fare, each tale recounted in a few episodes. Plying his craft as a private detective was Hannibal Cobb while a married duo performed similar feats in Two on a Clue. In his latter years on the ether, newspaperman David Farrell turned into a crusading journalist pursuing cold-blooded killers as Front Page Farrell. Not to be outdone, attorney Perry Mason spent his entire dozen-year aural heritage tracking similar prey, spending far more time as a sleuth than a courtroom counselor. Elements of mayhem frequently slipped into the hall of justice where Portia Manning (Portia Faces Life) practiced law, too. At one time or other, a crime wave struck many of the daytime serials, in fact. Included was a surfeit of murders and suspicious deaths on normally melodramatic Frank and Anne Hummert-produced favorites like Backstage Wife, David Harum, Just Plain Bill, Ma Perkins, Our Gal Sunday, The Right to Happiness, Young Widder Brown, and others—subject to appearances whenever the ratings would benefit by added hype. Often, a hero or heroine stood accused
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of a dastardly crime; sometimes it took one of the principals to expose the culprit. Such sequences could be chilling and they did their job of bringing listeners back to find out what would happen next. See also COURTROOM DRAMAS. CROSSOVER EFFECT. Shortly before she sold The Guiding Light to Procter & Gamble for $50,000 in the 1940s, serial creator Irna Phillips was preoccupied in a unique phenomenon. Beginning in the 1943–1944 radio season, a trio of her dramas—The Guiding Light, Woman in White, and Today’s Children—aired in adjacent quarterhour periods on NBC. (The Guiding Light was succeeded in 1946 by Masquerade.) In an exercise that would be repeated on rare occasions in soap opera but would never work again quite as well, she employed a “crossover effect.” Phillips allowed her characters to move freely between those washboard weepers. Dr. Jonathan McNeill, for example, a prominent figure in The Guiding Light, wandered through Woman in White’s Municipal Hospital while visiting some of his patients. He then consulted with Dr. Paul Burton on Today’s Children about a case involving both medics. In addition, actor Ed Prentiss, who played major character Ned Holden in The Guiding Light, was the glue that tied the segments together. As interlocutor, he narrated all three serials while continuing as an actor, too. The trio of series, linked with the biblically oriented serial The Light of the World, completed NBC’s two o’clock broadcast hour with all four programs sponsored by General Mills. The web, in fact, labeled this intersecting effort as “The General Mills Hour.” (The “crossover effect” was unsuccessfully reprised by NBC-TV in the 1964–65 season when characters living in a California apartment complex that appeared in three adjacent half-hour dramas interconnected with one another in an overarching banner dubbed Bristol Court.) Actually, General Mills had experimented with some type of hourlong block programming as early as 1 June 1936 when “The Gold Medal Hour” premiered over CBS. The serials Betty and Bob and Modern Cinderella (a.k.a. Broadway Cinderella) were aired five weekdays during half of that period. Multiple features filled the remainder of the time, appearing on rotating days. They included Betty
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Crocker’s Cooking School, The General Mills News Program, Hymns of All Churches, and The Worry Clinic. Thus, a block of programming was already entrenched when Irna Phillips began to move her characters among the serials anchored there a few years later. CROSSROADS (a.k.a. SATURDAY’S CHILD). With Doris Kenyon as Ann Cooper, the serial involved a woman who surrendered her own contentment for that of her relatives. Gale Gordon appeared as Mr. Patterson, Ann’s boss. The brief entry aired on Sunday afternoon over NBC for 14 weeks between 28 January and 14 April 1940.
-DDAN HARDING’S WIFE. Dan Harding, a miner, died in a job-related mishap in Iraq, leaving behind a wife, Rhoda, and young adult twins, Dean and Donna, who had to manage without husband and father. Dilemmas faced by the children were often at the plot’s center. Isabel Randolph appeared as Rhoda with Merrill Fugit as Dean and Loretta Poynton as Donna. The serial arrived on NBC on 20 January 1936 and persisted through 10 February 1939. During the first nine months of 1938, National Biscuit underwrote it for Nabisco cookies, crackers, and other snack foods. Ken Robinson was the scriptwriter. DANGEROUS PARADISE. A pundit speculated that this might have been radio’s first romantic adventure. (It surfaced in 1933.) It took place in a couple of bizarre locales, initially on a deserted island, then in the wilds of northern Canada. Elsie Hitz played newspaperwoman Gail Brewster and Nick Dawson was Dan Gentry, initially a beachcomber and later a Canadian Mountie. The evening serial appeared for Andrew Jergens’ Woodbury soap on 25 October 1933 over NBC Blue. Airing twice weekly (Wednesday and Friday) through 14 September 1934, it was heard thrice weekly (Monday/Wednesday/Friday) from 17 September 1934 through 30 December 1935. Radio journalists suggested that Elsie Hitz possessed “the most beautiful speaking voice on the air.” The duo of Hitz and Dawson also teamed for a couple of other serials—Follow the Moon and The Magic Voice.
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DAVID AMITY. An obscure serial, it apparently missed the notice of all prominent vintage radio documentarians, save one. That source acknowledged that the quarter-hour drama aired five weekdays on ABC, premiering on 25 December 1950 and vanishing on 28 September 1951. Joseph Bell and Mary Patton played the leads. DAVID HARUM. The banker in the New England village of Homeville impressed the townsfolk with his helpful disposition. Confirmed bachelor David Harum, one of radio’s kindly philosophers, also exposed sinister mavericks that were determined to take advantage of local denizens. The drama’s epigraph expressed it summarily: “Once again, we present David Harum, one of the most beloved stories in American fiction, for David Harum is America. It’s the story of every one of us—of our search for love . . . for happiness . . . and the good way of life.” Produced by Frank and Anne Hummert and sponsored by B. T. Babbitt’s Bab-O household cleanser, the drama featured three actors in the title role—Wilmer Walter, Craig McDonnell, and Cameron Prud’homme. The washboard weeper bowed from 27 January–27 March 1936 on NBC Blue and subsequently made many network transitions: 30 March 1936–10 January 1947 over NBC; 13 January 1947–6 January 1950 over CBS; 9 January 1950–5 January 1951 over NBC. It aired concurrently in 1937–38 over MBS and from 2 February 1942–14 May 1943 over CBS. Charme Allen and Eve Condon were both cast as Aunt Polly Benson in the long-running series. Actor Bennett Kilpack played her husband, James. Harum resided with them. Susan Price Wells was frequently David’s compatriot in investigating mayhem and was occasionally ensnared by vile rapscallions. At varying times, Peggy Allenby, Joan Tompkins, and Gertrude Warner appeared in the role. Other veterans in the Harum cast included Donald Briggs, Joseph Curtin, Ethel Everett, Florence Lake, Arthur Maitland, Claudia Morgan, and Billy Redfield. DAVIS, STANLEY. One of the more gifted and adaptable theme artists on radio soaps, Davis is not recalled for merely playing an organ or piano to usher in a drama. Rather, he plucked a ukulele while humming the familiar “Juanita” as The Romance of Helen Trent floated
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into millions of living rooms at midday. (One source maintains he used a banjo and guitar interchangeably.) Davis was one of the medium’s most prominent hummers; accompanied by his own guitar, he cooed “Sunbonnet Sue” as David Harum wafted onto the airwaves in its earliest years. For John’s Other Wife, he played guitar and whistled that serial’s theme song, “The Sweetest Story Ever Told.” The multitalented Davis was also a CBS associate director of a trio of dishpan dramas—Road of Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, and Young Doctor Malone. Associate directors (who were earlier called “production men” by the networks employing them) sat alongside staff engineers and filled out required production forms for a given program. DEAR JOHN. The most durable of several narratives under a serialized anthology umbrella labeled the Irene Rich Dramas, this one told the tale of the Chandler clan. Irene Rich played Faith Chandler and Ray Montgomery was Noel Chandler. The weekly quarter-hour aired between 15 September 1940 and 9 January 1944 over NBC Blue and CBS (the latter chain starting on May 6 1942). Irene Rich was a 1920s silent screen star when a rupture with Warner Brothers routed her into radio. There, she hosted a group of narratives that extended more than a decade, from 4 October 1933 through 28 May 1944. Other serialized titles in the cluster included The Glorious One, The Guilty One, Irene Castle, Jewels of Enchantment, The Lady Counselor, and Woman from Nowhere. DEAREST MOTHER. Produced by ZIV for syndication, this 1940–41 radio serial included 143 quarter-hour episodes featuring leading lady Judith March. Rita Morgan, beginning a new life in the big city and the many adjustments it required, routinely penned letters to her mom, played by Melba Lee. Those missives were the catalyst for relating the plot. DOC BARCLAY’S DAUGHTERS. A small-town druggist and widower in Brookdale clashed with a trio of grown offspring. The eldest, socialite Connie, left a millionaire playboy spouse to return to their hometown. Middle daughter Mimi, flirtatious and egocentric, resented Connie’s prosperity; she was wed to Tom Clark, a modest
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hardware clerk and vulnerable to her reckless desires. The youngest, Marge, attractive, single, and demonstrating greater stability than her siblings, was her dad’s housekeeper. The serial aired for Personal Finance over CBS between 23 January 1939 and 19 January 1940. Produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, it featured Bennett Kilpack in the namesake role with progeny played by Elizabeth Reller, Mildred Robin, and Vivian Smolen. DOCTOR KATE. Appearing between 31 January and 30 September 1938 for Sperry flour, the serial was limited to NBC’s West Coast network. Cornelia Burdick played Dr. Kate Allen in the Hal Burdickscripted tale. Charles MacAllister, Helen Kleeb, and Mont Maher were other actors in the permanent cast. The drama related the impediments Dr. Kate faced in pairing her professional occupation with her personal dilemmas. DOCTOR PAUL. The drainboard drama under this title appeared in a couple of manifestations in different decades. The original was a regional series that aired for Safeway grocers between 1940–45. The program gained a larger hearing on 3 September 1951 when Standard Brands, the makers of Wesson Oil and Snow Drift shortening, sponsored it on NBC through 28 August 1953. Billed as “radio’s wonderful story of love and service to humanity,” the program related incidents through the eyes of a small-town self-effacing physician. Conflicts arose as the doctor’s spouse, an aggressive woman, repeatedly urged him to abandon his work in the hinterlands to relocate in New York City, where he could open an impressive, financially secure medical practice. Russell Thorson was heard as Dr. Paul with Peggy Webber as his wife. DOCTOR’S WIFE, THE. The Doctor’s Wife appeared over NBC in two segments: from 3 March 1952–28 August 1953 for Ex-Lax laxative and from 3 January 1955–13 April 1956 as a sustainer. In the small suburban New York town of Stanton, physician Dan Palmer established a practice on Elm Street, aided by a serene, compassionate spouse, Julie. Donald Curtis and John Baragrey played the doctor while Patricia Wheel was Julie.
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DODSWORTH. A serial whose particulars have been lost to history as no radio historiographers are known to have documented the details of its existence beyond the name. Intensive investigation over an eight-year epoch has thus far proved futile in discovering more. DOT AND WILL. With Florence Freeman and James Meighan in the leads, the soap opera debuted over NBC Blue on 22 July 1935 and persisted through 29 January 1937, airing various days of the week. It told the story of a young couple, the Hortons, and their neighbors, who were all seeking to improve their positions in the post-Depression era. Will was a real estate salesman and Dot sought to make their meager income stretch to cover their basic needs and growing aspirations. Adaptations of stories by Elizabeth Todd inspired the narrative. Several actors who eventually would be deemed radio legends were in supporting roles, including Ralph Locke, Rosemary DeCamp, and Agnes Moorehead with narration by Ralph Edwards. DREAMS COME TRUE. With Barry McKinley in the lead, the unusual soap opera appeared on NBC on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons for 15 minutes between 16 July 1934 and 11 April 1935. The musical storyline (in which the actors actually sang) focused upon McKinley, a baritone, as himself, and his novelistsweetheart. Ray Sinatra’s orchestra supplied the melody. Pedlar and Ryan advertising agency packaged it for Procter & Gamble’s Camay soap. DREFT STAR PLAYHOUSE (a.k.a. HOLLYWOOD THEATER OF THE AIR). An ambitious project that featured major cinematic luminaries like Mary Astor, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Jane Wyman. They usually appeared in one- to five-week daily serialized adaptations of popular films. Dark Victory, How Green Was My Valley, and Kitty Foyle were among the movie presentations. The show arrived on NBC for Procter & Gamble’s Dreft detergent on 28 June 1943 and continued through 30 March 1945. Through 1 October 1943, it was known as Hollywood Theater of the Air. With Frank and Anne
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Hummert producing the feature, Procter & Gamble set aside $3,000 weekly for talent costs, an appreciable sum compared to most other daytime dramatic fare. While terming it “a noble experiment,” one reviewer lamented that, alas, “the series never generated more than average soap opera ratings.” See also COSTS OF PRODUCTION.
-EEASY ACES. Goodman and Jane Ace was a married couple portrayed in a gentle tone of light humor with continuing plotlines. She was a scatterbrained housewife and he bore the brunt of her erratic behavior. A New York Times reviewer pegged the two as “a couple of ordinary people set against an average background, except that something screwy is always happening to them.” The serialized feature, dubbed “radio’s distinctive laugh novelty,” was written by Goodman (a newspaper reporter) and premiered over Kansas City’s KMBC in 1930, continuing into late 1931. CBS auditioned it for 13 weeks starting in late 1931. On 1 March 1932, it was picked up by Lavoris mouthwash on CBS and persisted on a rotating basis (three or four installments weekly) through 31 January 1935, part of that time for Jad salts. American Home Products underwrote the remainder of the show’s paid run for Anacin pain reliever. The feature moved to NBC thrice weekly from 4 February–29 May 1935; to NBC Blue from 4 June 1935–22 October 1942; and back to CBS from 28 October 1942–26 November 1943, all three times a week; and a half-hour show on CBS Wednesday nights from 1 December 1943–17 January 1945. In a subsequent permutation, the series appeared in five weekly quarter-hour syndicated episodes during the 1945–46 radio season. After a break, it concluded as Mr. Ace & Jane on Friday or Saturday nights over CBS for General Foods and the U.S. Army between 14 February–31 December 1948. Frank and Anne Hummert took over packaging for the networks. EDITH ADAMS’ FUTURE. A woman married for 35 years struggled to cope with her daily dilemmas, invariably hoping to advance beyond the mundane of pure housework. Her time on the air was so brief that Edith Adams had little of it (her future) to contemplate very
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seriously. The MBS serial aired six days weekly between 3 March–27 June 1941. Della Louise Orton played Edith with Joseph Harding as her spouse and Mary Louise Lantz as their daughter. EDITOR’S DAUGHTER, THE. See MARY FOSTER, THE EDITOR’S DAUGHTER. EDWARDS, DOUGLAS (1917–1990). Appearing as himself, Edwards reported the day’s news headlines at noon as an integral part of CBS’s Wendy Warren and the News (1947–58). In the soap narrative, the heroine was a career newswoman who followed Edwards’ bulletins with actual “news reports from the women’s world” before pursuing a dose of domestic distress. A highly respected journalist who anchored his chain’s first televised evening newscast, Edwards trained for his role at radio stations in Troy, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia (WAGA, 1937; WSB, 1940); and Detroit, Michigan (WXYZ, 1939), before landing at CBS in 1942. He joined Edward R. Murrow’s impressive London staff near the end of World War II. CBS listeners heard his newscasts daily until his 1988 retirement. ELLEN RANDOLPH (a.k.a. THE STORY OF ELLEN RANDOLPH). Elsie Hitz and Gertrude Warner were featured in the namesake role on this soap for Colgate-Palmolive-Peet’s Super Suds and Cashmere Bouquet. It arrived on 9 October 1939 over NBC and departed on 12 September 1941. On a journey to China, Ellen met and wed missionary George Randolph. Seeking a new life together, the couple returned to America and lived in the home of George’s wealthy brother, Robert. The plot centered on Ellen’s efforts to preserve marital content after George convicted himself of being a failure. Adding to that anxiety, a sister-in-law spread rumors that Ellen was having an affair with a local man. Vera Oldham and Margaret E. Sangster penned the series and John McGovern and Ted Jewett played George with Jack Jordan as Robert. ELLIOTT, BOB (1923– ). Half of the comedic duo Bob and Ray formed after he and longtime partner Ray Goulding worked in serious assignments at Boston’s WHDH in the mid to late 1940s. Their humorous exchanges gained such notoriety that, by the 1950s, the
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duo aired from New York on all four national chains. Of particular interest were their sidesplitting parodies of soap operas. Some of their most requested vignettes included—with actual shows in parentheses—Aunt Penny’s Sunlit Kitchen (Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories), Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife (Backstage Wife), One Fella’s Family (One Man’s Family), and Our Fella Thursday (Our Gal Sunday). The two spoofed several primetime dramatic series, too, the best recalled possibly Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons (Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons). The comedy act persisted on local New York radio and in commercials until Goulding’s death in 1990 ended their enduring relationship. A Boston native, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Elliott staffed Radio City Music Hall as an usher and a page. His initial on-air responsibility, in fact, was to provide “a page boy’s impression of radio” over New York’s WINS. Returning home after serving in the European theater, he joined hometown station WHDH as an announcer, rapidly developing a friendship with Ray Goulding. The surviving member of the humorous duo acknowledged, “We really appreciated each other, as opposed to some comedy teams. We had no rivalry, just great mutual respect. We always got along well.” The pair earned a couple of Peabody Awards—as radio’s prime satirists in 1951 and for radio entertainment in 1957. ELSTNER, ANNE (1899–1981). She missed but one performance (due to a late arriving train) of her long-playing Stella Dallas, this queen of matinee miseries. Elstner played that starring role for 18 years (beginning over New York’s WEAF on 25 October 1937 and on NBC from 6 June 1938–30 December 1955). Earlier the Lake Charles, Louisiana, native acted on Broadway. By 1930, she landed in radio as a permanent figure in the debuting Moonshine and Honeysuckle. Other parts followed, several of them in soap operas including Brenda Curtis, The Fat Man, The Gibson Family, Great Plays, Heartthrobs of the Hills, The Heinz Magazine of the Air, Just Plain Bill, Maverick Jim, The March of Time, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, Pages of Romance, Tish, Wilderness Road. At one point, she claimed to have appeared on 10 shows daily! It is as Stella Dallas, however, that she is best remembered. A peer commented that she was so involved with that part that at times she
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actually believed she was Stella! When that serial faded, Elstner turned up often on celebrity talk shows and—in 1970—fooled the panel of TV’s To Tell the Truth when it failed to pick her for her legendary role. For years, she and her husband operated a ritzy bistro at Lambertville, New Jersey, overlooking the Delaware River. They labeled it, appropriately, Stella Dallas’ Rivers Edge Restaurant. ETHEL AND ALBERT (a.k.a. THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ETHEL AND ALBERT). This was the humorous tale of a young couple living in Sandy Harbor. The dialogue (which frequently involved only the principals) centered on unending familial calamities. A narrator introduced it with this epigraph: “The big events in one’s life occur only now and then but there are smaller events that are familiar to every family. It’s these daily incidents that make up the private lives of Ethel and Albert.” Created by Peg Lynch, who played Ethel and penned the scripts, the series emanated to the ABC network after premiering over KATE in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in the early 1940s. It was carried nationally as a quarter-hour feature from 29 May 1944–24 June 1949. In addition, a half-hour drama was aired on Monday nights from 17 January 1949–28 August 1950. The show moved to all three TV networks between 1953–56. Alan Bunce was Albert. Paradoxically, the series bore some resemblance to The Couple Next Door that preceded it in 1935 over a Chicago station and was picked up by MBS in 1937. After Ethel and Albert ran its course, Lynch and Bunce moved to CBS—where, from 1957–60, they reprised The Couple Next Door. That time, it sounded like Ethel and Albert all over again. ETHNIC DRAMAS. The first genuinely identified soap opera, Painted Dreams, was also the breed’s first ethnic drama, focusing upon an Irish-American family living in Chicago. When, in a dispute, author Irna Phillips left the station airing her original series, she merely shifted to another Chicago outlet and adapted the same tale— featuring another Irish-American family—and aired it there. This second ethnic narrative was titled Today’s Children. Somewhat surprisingly, it left the ether after four years and returned six years later spotlighting a German-American family, also residents of the Windy City. Phillips, of Jewish heritage, never developed a Jewish-oriented
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drama, even with her demonstrated interest in ethnic settings. That did not prevent others from doing so, however, and ultimately soap opera boasted three tales about Jewish families living in New York City. They included Foxes of Flatbush, The Goldbergs, and Little Italy. Critics maintained that Gertrude Berg’s The Goldbergs was easily “the best crafted ethnic soap opera.” Meanwhile, a couple of yarns featured European noblewomen who married commoners in America—Marie, the Little French Princess and Pretty Kitty Kelly. The latter was an Irish lass who, because of amnesia and contrived deception, did not remember her heritage for at least a year after arriving in her new homeland. There were other tales in which foreign subjects became American citizens, of course. The most distinguished was Lord Henry Brinthrope, “England’s richest, most handsome lord” and husband of Our Gal Sunday. Although Dangerous Paradise might not have been characterized as an ethnic drama in its purest sense, its dual locales included a far-flung deserted island and the wilds of northern Canada. In the meantime, Central America provided the backdrop for the inhabitants of Thunder Over Paradise. And the spouse of the heroine (Martha Bishop) of This Changing World, soldier Neil Bishop, spent all his time stationed in France. In addition, there were a half-dozen serials that featured African Americans at their core, including Ada Grant’s Neighbors, The Johnson Family, My Man, Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories, The Romance of Julia Davis, and The Story of Ruby Valentine. See also AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS. EVELYN WINTERS. See THE STRANGE ROMANCE OF EVELYN WINTERS. EVER SINCE EVE. An ABC entry appearing between 5 April–17 December 1954, the serialized anthology focused on romantic pursuits by women. Keith Morgan (at times listed as Keith Morrison) narrated. Each tale was dramatized in five parts.
-FFAMILY SKELETON. Created by Carlton E. Morse and featuring Mercedes McCambridge, this multiple-sponsor CBS entry debuted
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on 22 June 1953 and was withdrawn on 5 March 1954. The storyline concerned Sarah Ann Spencer, a young woman who pursued personal ambition and contentment. With a dark past, the promise of a happy future seemed uncertain. Unlike author Morse’s better-known One Man’s Family, the serial was grouped by “episodes” and “phases” instead of “chapters” and “books.” Actor Orson Welles, incidentally, pegged McCambridge as “the world’s greatest actress.” Manhattan Soap (Sweetheart) and Prom home permanents underwrote the series. FAMOUS NAMES. Soap opera creators maintained no bias against naming their characters after celebrated personalities. The male lead in Big Sister was John Wayne, the same moniker as that of a renowned movie actor. (Coincidentally, when John divorced his wife Norma to marry Ruth Evans—the big sister herself—she became John’s other wife, the title of yet another soap opera then on the air!) Joan Davis, meanwhile, a legendary Hollywood actress, was immortalized as the heroine of When a Girl Marries. Another figure on that same serial was ascribed the appellation Sammy Davis, the same as a celebrated comic. Naming characters for real people simply did not appear to be a thorny issue in radio serials. FANZINES. A sizable number of pulp publications went on the market after radio became a mainstay in American households. Some carried schedules and surveyed programming content. Many competitive periodicals focused on the talent featured on the assorted series as well as the people (family, associates, fan clubs) and stories behind them, providing insightful anecdotal and factual fodder for a growing public curiosity about the individuals. Not only were artists that radio transformed into superstars sensationalized, it became evident that readers were also interested in the lives of lesser-known personalities, including soap opera actors and actresses. Among the more popular fanzines covering such topics were Radio Album, Radio Daily, Radio Digest, Radio Guide (which altered its handle at varying times to Radio and Amusement Guide and Movie and Radio Guide), Radioland, Radio Life, Radio Mirror (which went through several permutations progressively including Radio and Television Mirror, Radio-TV Mirror, and TV-Radio Mirror), Radio Stars, Radio Today, Radio Varieties, Radio World, Tower Radio, and
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Tune In. In addition, the industry was served by several publications that routinely provided news about individuals, programming, scheduling, and advertising that also gave exposure to soap operas including Advertising Age, Billboard, Broadcasting, Journal of Broadcasting, Radio Annual, Radio Tele-News, Sponsor, Variety, and Variety Radio Directory. FEATURED ARTIST SERVICE INCORPORATED. A talent unit formed by Frank and Anne Hummert under their Air Features banner to supply artists for a plethora of radio programming, principally their own serials. It was an expansion of their services as production packagers and significantly increased their wealth. FILLBRANDT, LAURETTE (1915–2000). A prominent character actress in radio serials, she performed regularly in more than a dozen, mostly in supporting roles. They included The Affairs of Anthony, Bachelor’s Children, Dan Harding’s Wife, Girl Alone, The Guiding Light, Lone Journey, Ma Perkins, Midstream, One Man’s Family, A Tale of Today, Thunder Over Paradise, Today’s Children, and Woman in White. In addition, Fillbrandt, a Zanesville, Ohio, native, turned up in the casts of a surfeit of primetime and early evening dramatic fare, often in recurring parts on shows like The Adventures of Philip Marlow, Author’s Playhouse, The Chicago Theater of the Air, Escape, The Green Lama, Jeff Regan—Investigator, Li’l Abner, Silver Eagle—Mountie, and Way Down Home. FITZMAURICE, MICHAEL (1908–1967). Versatile radio veteran Fitzmaurice was adroit both as a thespian and announcer. Although he narrated only one of the 11 soap operas on which he appeared (The Right to Happiness), he acted in the remaining 10. They were Brenda Curtis (in which he played the masculine lead), Her Honor—Nancy James, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Lora Lawton, Myrt and Marge, Pepper Young’s Family, Rosemary, Stella Dallas, This Life Is Mine, and When a Girl Marries. Fitzmaurice did not earn all of his radio livelihood in serials, however. He also announced for The Abe Burrows Show, The Land of the Lost, Nick Carter—Master Detective, and Tales of Fatima. He played the leads in The Adventures of Superman, Highway Patrol, and The
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Sparrow and the Hawk while appearing in Five Minute Mysteries and emceeing The Quiz of Two Cities. The Chicago-born artist performed in a half-dozen movies, too: The Plough and the Stars and The House of a Thousand Candles (both released in 1936); A Girl with Ideas, Reported Missing, and Night Key (all 1937); and Fourteen Hours (1951). FIVE STAR JONES. In a serial about a young newspaper reporter, John Kane portrayed Tom Jones. The storyline was a mix of domestic and professional crises. The drama began on CBS for Mohawk carpets on 4 February 1935 and continued through 26 June 1936. On 6 July 1936, it resumed for Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol detergent over NBC Blue and lasted through 5 February 1937. Jones’s mythical newspaper was The Register. Coincidentally, his wife’s name was Sally, the moniker of newspaperman David Farrell’s spouse in Front Page Farrell, a more durable journalistic pursuit in the 1940s and 1950s. Frank and Anne Hummert, not so coincidentally, produced both series. Elizabeth Day appeared as this feature’s Sally; Bill Johnstone was the paper’s city editor; Effie Palmer was heard as Ma Moran. FIVE STAR MATINEE. Another effort by NBC to plug the holes in its daytime schedule after the omnibus magazine Weekday collapsed, this feature included serialized stories that changed frequently. It debuted on 31 December 1956 and left the air in December 1958 (actual date undocumented). FLYNN, BESS (1884–1976). A contemporary reviewer cited her as “a skillful writer and versatile radio actress, whose behavior can be contrasted with those of modern broadcasters.” Flynn responded in her own handwriting to letters she received from inquiring listeners, something most modern entertainers would be loathe to do, the critic observed. When Irna Phillips hastily departed Chicago’s WGN following a dispute with management over ownership rights to her initial daytime serial Painted Dreams, Flynn stepped in and carried forward, doing everything Phillips was doing. That included writing, directing, producing, and starring in the hallowed drama that was christened by radio historians as the first authentic soap opera.
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Flynn was soon doing more of the same for some other serials including Bachelor’s Children, Life Begins (a.k.a. Martha Webster), We Are Four, and We, the Abbotts. Several of those originated at WGN. She also appeared in the cast of The Gumps. She was the mother of radio actor Charles Flynn whose most memorable role was as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, a part he acquired at 17 in 1939. FOLLOW THE MOON. Appearing in two six-month segments on as many webs, the serial was launched over NBC on 4 January 1937 for Andrew Jergens’ lotions and was withdrawn on 2 July 1937. It returned over CBS for Pebeco toothpaste on 4 October 1937, ending on 1 April 1938. Nick Dawson and Elsie Hitz were in the leading roles as Clay Bannister and his wife Jean Page. Variety labeled the narrative “a routine daytime serial”; despite that, a concerted attempt to place mystery and adventure on the matinee agenda met with little positive reaction from 1930s-era listeners. John Tucker Battle wrote the scripts. A pundit dubbed Dawson and Hitz, who played in some other dramatic features—notably Dangerous Paradise and The Magic Voice—“radio’s best known romantic serial adventure duo.” FOREVER YOUNG. See PEPPER YOUNG’S FAMILY. FOXES OF FLATBUSH. Mignon Schreiber (as Jennie Fox) and Murray Forbes (as Benny, her son) appeared in a serial that Variety termed “an absorbing true-to-life story of a Jewish family in Brooklyn.” There was no reference to the drama’s quality expressed, however, and obviously the parallel to the long-established Jewish family serial The Goldbergs was lacking in listeners’ estimation. It arrived and departed in one summer on NBC Blue six days weekly, 1 June–11 September 1936. FREEMAN, FLORENCE (1911–2000). Florence Freeman was the heroine of four soap operas (and maybe five)—including a couple of durable runs—making her contributions to the genre sizeable. She was the leading lady of Dot and Will (1935–37, NBC Blue), Young Widder Brown (1938–54, MBS, NBC), Wendy Warren and the News (1947–58, CBS), and Valiant Lady (1951–52, ABC). Several old-
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time radio historiographers allege that she also played the lead in a fifth serial, A Woman of America between 1943–46 on NBC. This could be doubtful as she herself was unable to substantiate it when recalling her career to this author in 1997. In 1948, readers of Radio Mirror voted her their favorite daytime serial actress. The native New Yorker earned a master’s degree and taught English before entering radio in 1933 at WMCA. For $50 weekly, she was on call every day but thought she was “very fortunate” during the depths of the Depression to have work when so many had no jobs. Her radio credits included performances in Abie’s Irish Rose, Alias Jimmy Valentine, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Jane Arden, John’s Other Wife, Madame Sylvia of Hollywood, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, The Open Door, The Paul Whiteman Show, Pepper Young’s Family, and Show Boat. FRIENDSHIP TOWN. One of the primitive strains of early soap opera, this 30-minute Friday (later Tuesday, then Wednesday) night feature on NBC Blue highlighted country living. Radio Digest termed it one of the “foremost characterizations of small town life on the air today.” With a cast including Don Carney, Virginia Gardiner, Pick Malone, and Pat Padgett, improvisations of rural America were presented in dramatic sketches. The show arrived on 1 January 1932 and departed on 21 December 1932. FRONT PAGE FARRELL. An announcer set the stage when he introduced this serial with the premise: “We now present the exciting, unforgettable radio drama Front Page Farrell, the story of a crack newspaperman and his wife—the story of David and Sally Farrell.” During the 1940s, the show often focused on domestic issues surrounding the young couple—with frequent references to David’s professional career. But the series adopted a burning stance by the 1950s, turning to hard-hitting tales of murder investigations as Farrell tracked cold-blooded killers. Crimes were committed on Mondays and Farrell pursued leads the rest of the week until he identified and cornered his prey on Friday. Sally went along for the ride and sometimes the hunted turned on her. The Frank and Anne Hummert feature starred Richard Widmark, Carleton Young and Staats Cotsworth as David, and Virginia Dwyer
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and Florence Williams as Sally. American Home Products underwrote the washboard weeper for a plethora of healthcare remedies. The serial was first heard on MBS from 23 June 1941–13 March 1942. It switched to NBC, resuming on 14 September 1942–26 March 1954.
-GGALLANT HEART, THE. A serial featuring Janet Logan as Grace Kingsley and Howard Culver as Stephen Biggs, it appeared briefly during 1944 on the NBC West Coast network. Radio Life classified it as “the story of today’s young people, who grew to adulthood after World War I and had just achieved a fine adjustment to life when they were catapulted into the chaos of another universal conflict.” Scripted by Virginia Cooke, the feature was purportedly an initial attempt by NBC to air soap operas that originated in Hollywood. By the spring of 1944, some 39 daytime serials were emanating from Chicago and New York. The chimes chain set aside $15,000 to launch its West Coast dramatic endeavor, signing a substantial entourage of Hollywood radio thespians for the venture. GALLOP, FRANK (1910–1988). This memorable radio announcer’s voice introduced a half-dozen serials including Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, Her Honor—Nancy James, Hilltop House, Stella Dallas, When a Girl Marries, and A Woman of America. Gallop was frequently mistaken for an Englishman by virtue of his princely inflection. The native Bostonian’s interlocutory credits applied to several other genres, too, including these entertaining— and sometimes highbrow—vistas: The Adventures of the Abbotts, Cresta Blanca Carnival, The Doctor Fights, Gangbusters, The Helen Hayes Theater, The Hour of Charm, The Jack Pearl Show, The Milton Berle Show, Monitor, The New York Philharmonic Symphony, The Prudential Family Hour, Quick as a Flash, Romance, So This Is Radio, The Summer Family Hour, and Texaco Star Theater. On TV, Gallop announced The Perry Como Show, providing the bass voice booming out of nowhere to the star: “Oh, Mr. C . . .”
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GASOLINE ALLEY. Here was a serial so identified with a similarly named tabloid comic strip that readers and listeners received a comparable adventure on the same day. Nothing existed previously just like that. Arriving 22 years after the one in print, the on-air rendering was launched on NBC from 17 February–11 April 1941. It continued on NBC Blue from 28 April–9 May 1941. During the 1948–49 radio season, the show was resumed over MBS with a Friday night halfhour. Frank King drew the comic strip and Kane Campbell wrote the radio plot. Jimmy McCallion, Bill Idelson, and Bill Lipton portrayed Skeezix Wallet with Janice Gilbert and Jean Gillespie as Nina Clock. Interestingly, soap opera creator Irna Phillips was heard in the character of Auntie Blossom. Skeezix, a gas station mechanic, and his friends resided in a deprived neighborhood. Their story was at times touching; it had them helping one another out of jams, often resulting from unfortunate situations not of their own making. GENERAL FOODS CORPORATION. One of soap operas’ biggest underwriters and one that did not manufacture detergents or personal care commodities, General Foods fully or partially sponsored no fewer than 18 daytime serials, a few of them with very long runs. Included in its repertoire were As the Twig Is Bent, Claudia and David, Easy Aces, The Goldbergs, Home of the Brave, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Kate Hopkins—Angel of Mercy, My Son and I, Portia Faces Life, The Second Mrs. Burton, Second Wife, Those We Love, Today’s Children, Two on a Clue, We Love and Learn, Wendy Warren and the News, When a Girl Marries, and Young Doctor Malone. Some of the firm’s memorable name brands included Baker’s, Calumet, Gaines, Jell-O, LaFrance, Maxwell House, Post, Postum, Sanka, Satina, Sur-Jell, and Swans Down. “GENERAL MILLS HOUR, THE.” See CROSSOVER EFFECT; GENERAL MILLS INCORPORATED. GENERAL MILLS INCORPORATED. The food processor and distributor thought so much of radio soap opera that it purchased 60 adjacent minutes of NBC’s schedule (popularly known at its inception as “The Gold Medal Hour” and later as “The General Mills Hour”)
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every weekday afternoon. In its 1940s two o’clock Eastern time period, the company brought The Guiding Light, Woman in White, Today’s Children, and The Light of the World to waiting fans’ ears. Additionally, at different times, the conglomerate sponsored all of the following in part or in total, bringing its aggregate in daytime serials to no fewer than two dozen: Arnold Grimm’s Daughter, Betty and Bob, Beyond These Valleys, By Kathleen Norris, Caroline’s Golden Store, Harvey and Dell, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Kitty Foyle, Lonely Women, Love Song, Masquerade, Modern Cinderella, The Mystery Man, Stories America Loves, The Story of Holly Sloan, This Life Is Mine, Those Happy Gilmans, Today’s Children, Valiant Lady, and Whispering Streets. General Mills was the manufacturer of edibles under brand names like Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Cheerios, Gold Medal, Kix, Softasilk, Wheaties, and more. GIBBS AND FINNEY, GENERAL DELIVERY. Radio historiographer Luther F. Sies aptly described the series like this: “Raymond Knight wrote the warm, dramatic serial in which Parker Fennelly and Arthur Allen played their familiar roles of cantankerous old-timers with hearts of gold beating beneath grim exteriors.” Those actors appeared in multiple yarns in which they were crusty characters residing in quaint New England hamlets including Four Corners U.S.A., The Simpson Boys of Sprucehead Bay, Smalltown Boys, The Stebbins Boys, and Uncle Abe and David. In the present series—much of it played for laughs—they portrayed the owners of their town’s general store, Gideon Gibbs and Asa Finney. Actress Patsy Campbell was also cast in the sustained show. The Sunday evening quarter-hour serial on NBC Blue aired between 26 July–18 October 1942. GIBSON FAMILY, THE (a.k.a. THE GIBSONS). Broadway musical composers Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz wrote original music and lyrics for a giant Procter & Gamble serialized musical comedy that failed to draw large audiences or live up to promising expectations. A reviewer put its price tag at $500,000, quite possibly serialdom’s most costly venture. The feature recounted the story of a couple of stagestruck youngsters, played by Jack and Loretta Clemens, seeking careers in show business. It arrived on NBC as a half-hour Saturday night dramatic theater on 15 September 1934. After a dis-
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appointing reception, it terminated on 23 February 1935 and became an hour-long Sunday night force between 31 March–23 June 1935. Still, it persisted a few more weeks from 30 June–8 September 1935 under the altered title of Uncle Charlie’s Tent Show. Charles Winninger played Uncle Charlie, who coordinated an entourage of nomadic artists. Yet with little appreciable audience interest, P&G—who touted Ivory Flakes and soap and had once held high hopes for the undertaking—acknowledged it was pouring money down the drain and canceled the program. Several radio stalwarts were in the cast, including Bill Adams, Anne Elstner, and Warren Hull. With an orchestra conducted by Donald Voorhees (of Bell Telephone Hour fame), harmonizing portions featured the singing voices of Lois Bennett and Conrad Thibault. Courtney Riley Cooper and Owen Davis penned the scripts. GIRL ALONE. With Betty Winkler in the lead as Patricia Rogers, the dishpan drama aired over NBC starting 8 July 1935–10 July 1936 as a sustainer; for H. K. Kellogg’s cereals from 13 July 1936–22 April 1938; again as a sustainer from 30 May–23 September 1938; and finally for Quaker Oats cereals from 26 September 1938–2 June 1939 and from 25 September 1939–25 April 1941. Written by Fayette Krum, in the storyline, Rogers faced the bewildering reality that her ex-fiancé was wedding someone else. Rogers was a society matron who hoped to find a man who would love her for herself and not for her affluence. A large cast included veteran actors Donald Briggs, Herbert Butterfield, Laurette Fillbrandt, John Hodiak, Raymond Edward Johnson, Willard Waterman, and many more. GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE. There were two serials by this title airing at about the same time. This one, featuring baritone Barry McKinley, integrated music in its storyline, a reviewer suggesting that the series “was little more than a vehicle for Mr. McKinley’s singing.” McKinley portrayed a young vocalist who met and fell in love with a novelist. Following typical lovers’ trials and spats, the pair reached their professional goals in Hollywood. Ray Sinatra conducted the orchestra for this NBC serial appearing during the 1934–35 season.
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GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE. With Mary Smith and J. Anthony Hughes in the leading roles, the thrice-weekly serial made its debut on 1 January 1935 but lasted only through 30 April 1935. It aired on NBC for Procter & Gamble. GIRL REPORTER. Newspaper reporter/author Alma Sioux Scatberry and her spouse Ted Klein penned a dramatic serial growing out of her journalistic occupation as a “sob sister.” It began on WENR in Chicago before proceeding to NBC in 1931 on Tuesday and Thursday nights for a quarter-hour. GIRL WHO LIVES NEXT DOOR, THE. Ruth Russell and Curtis Arnall played the chief figures in this brief outing. Airing Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays over an unidentified (undocumented) web, the soap opera premiered on 4 October 1932 and was discontinued on 4 April 1933. No further data has been discovered following an intensive search. GLORIOUS ONE, THE. One of several serialized anthologies featuring former Hollywood silent screen star Irene Rich, this one persisted between 7 January–8 September 1940 for a quarter-hour over NBC on Sunday evenings. It starred Rich in the part of Judith Bradley. Among others in the cast were John Lake, Florence Baker, Jane Morgan, and Gale Gordon. Welch’s juices sponsored the series of dramatic narratives. “GOLD MEDAL HOUR, THE.” See CROSSOVER EFFECT; GENERAL MILLS INCORPORATED. GOLDBERGS, THE (a.k.a. THE RISE OF THE GOLDBERGS). At its start a folksy cultural evening drama, this was both an antecedent and—eventually—a recognized member of daytime soap opera. Beginning as The Rise of the Goldbergs on 20 November, 1929 for a quarter-hour one night weekly, it appeared on the NBC Blue chain. The program continued in that slot through 23 May 1931. Subsequently it aired as follows: from 13 July 1931–6 July 1934 on NBC six evenings a week until 1932, then five evenings weekly, for Pepsodent toothpaste; from 13 January–10 July 1936 on CBS week-
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days for Colgate-Palmolive-Peet (when it truly became a daytime drama); from 13 September–31 December 1937 on NBC for Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol detergent; from 3 January 1938–30 March 1945 on CBS for Oxydol, during which there was a brief concurrent run over NBC starting in June 1941; from 2 September 1949–24 June 1950 on CBS as a half-hour sitcom, initially on Friday nights until February 1950, then on Saturday nights, all for General Foods. The latter, and final, incarnation of the long-running series adapted the plotline of a CBS-TV series by the same name premiering on 10 January 1949. The woman behind this show, Gertrude Berg, not only created it but also wrote it and played its lead (Molly Goldberg). James R. Walters portrayed her spouse, Jake Goldberg, except in the 1949–50 extension when Philip Loeb—who was in the same part on the tube— was Jake. Van Heflin, Raymond Edward Johnson, Marjorie Main, Minerva Pious, Arnold Stang, and other soon-to-be legendary entertainers were also in the radio cast. Radio historiographer John Dunning suggested: “Gertrude Berg created an image of herself on paper, then found it nationally accepted as a true reflection of an entire ethnic group. Her Molly Goldberg (whom another pundit labeled ‘the quintessential Jewish mama’) possessed to millions the breath of the Jewish ghetto. It was a world Berg knew well, though she never lived there.” Before the launch she practiced writing skits about a middle-aged Jewish woman in the Bronx whose spouse was contemptible. The program differed from its contemporary dramas in that family members were often involved in traditional situations and not impossible-to-fathom circumstances proffered by some other narratives. By 1932, the show acquired a rating of 25 points, exceedingly high, as listeners became familiar with the figures and their surroundings. The radio play and television sequel eventually developed into a Broadway production and a full-length motion picture, Molly. Critics suggested that the aural series was the best-crafted ethnic soap opera on the air. GOOSE CREEK PARSON, THE (a.k.a. THE COUNTRY CHURCH OF HOLLYWOOD). This soap opera depicted, as one observer put it, “an inspirational, if not outright religious emphasis.” It centered on Josiah Hopkins, an ordained clergyman and U.S. Army
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chaplain who dispatched philosophical bromides to his parishioners. He often related to the townsfolk while being pulled in a buckboard by a horse he called Old Dan. Rev. W. B. Hogg and his wife portrayed the Hopkinses, abetted by a cast of dramatic actors plus a male quartet and a ladies’ choir. The series initially aired as a sustaining feature on CBS’s West Coast hookup in quarter-hour installments on Mondays and Thursdays between 9 March–4 June 1936. On 31 August 1936, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet underwrote it for Super Suds detergent on the full CBS network on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings through 1 January 1937. GOTHARD, DAVID (1911–1977). Born at Beardstown, Illinois, Gothard became an early announcer on several Chicago radio series. That led him into many parts in dramatic series emanating from Chicago and New York. Unquestionably, he is best recalled for one singularly durable acting role, that of Gil Whitney, the beleaguered swain of the irresistible—and untouchable—queen of daytime drama, Helen Trent. Gothard appeared as Whitney in the Frank and Anne Hummert production of The Romance of Helen Trent for much of that serial’s 27-year run (1933–60). Elsewhere, he turned up in recurring daytime roles in Bachelor’s Children, Big Sister, Hilltop House, The Light of the World, Modern Cinderella, The O’Neills, The Right to Happiness, The Story of Joan and Kermit, and Woman in White. He and others played the lead in The Adventures of the Thin Man. He was also in the cast of the anthology Words at War. GOULDING, RAY (1922–1990). Half of the comedic duo Bob and Ray formed after he and longtime partner Bob Elliott worked in serious assignments at Boston’s WHDH in the mid-to-late 1940s. Their humorous exchanges gained such notoriety that by the 1950s the duo aired from New York on all four national chains. Of particular interest were their sidesplitting parodies of soap operas. Some of their most requested vignettes included—with actual shows in parentheses—Aunt Penny’s Sunlit Kitchen (Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories), Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife (Backstage Wife), One Fella’s Family (One Man’s Family), and Our Fella Thursday (Our Gal Sunday). The two spoofed several primetime dramatic series, too, the best re-
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called possibly Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons (Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons). The comedy act persisted on local New York radio and in commercials until Goulding’s death. Born at Lowell, Massachusetts, Goulding was a newscaster before entering radio comedy. He joined the medium in 1939 as an announcer right out of high school. In those days, he worked at Boston’s WEEI, leaving it for Uncle Sam in World War II. Shortly after his return, Goulding found work at WHDH and the rest is history. When he and Elliott formed a team to audition their zany antics on Matinee with Bob and Ray, they found an immediate and enthusiastic audience in legions of New Englanders that tuned in weekday afternoons. GOVERNMENT GIRL. See HELEN HOLDEN, GOVERNMENT GIRL. GRANDMA TRAVELS. A brief syndicated 1944 serial drama for Sears, Roebuck & Company in which Hazel Dopheide played the protagonist. GREAT DEPRESSION, THE. A factor intertwined within the plots of most soap operas of the 1930s that infused the storylines with practical doses of reality. This calamity rivaled World War II in impacting daytime sagas, acknowledging outside forces that strongly impinged on dialogue and action. An assessment of Ma Perkins, for instance, described the backdrop as well as the central figure for those reading it many years beyond the feature’s airing: “In the Depression era from which she stemmed, people found a role model of strength and determination that inspired her listeners. Through her philosophy and successes as an arbitrator and problem-solver, Ma gave encouragement to the ‘little people’ of Rushville Center, becoming the town’s conscience. In addition to laundry soap, her sponsor Oxydol gently urged a logic of patience, benevolence, and determination upon the nation—not wealth, image, and prestige.” As soap opera characters coped with personal struggles of survival, fans that were living through similar economic hardships identified with them, tuning in to hear the advice of respected—while unseen—friends in their own time of peril.
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GREEN VALLEY LINE. It was a transcribed syndicated series of 52 quarter-hour episodes released originally in 1934 and reissued in the 1940s. A radio authority speculated that the same WXYZ, Detroit, staff that was responsible for dramatic adventures like The Green Hornet and The Lone Ranger also produced this serial although that has not been confirmed. The narrative focused on the denizens of Morristown, situated on the Green Valley Railroad. A large Eastern rail corporation sought to acquire the small line and the townsfolk fought to save it. GREEN VALLEY, U.S.A. A patriotic serialized wartime drama, it brought to life incidents occurring among the residents of a rural hamlet named Green Valley. Included in the cast of the Himan Brown production were radio actors Ed Begley, Elspeth Eric, Gertrude Lawrence, Richard Widmark, and others. Henry M. Neeley and Santos Ortega narrated. Emery Deutsch conducted an orchestra and Millard Lampell was scriptwriter. The show debuted as a half-hour Sunday afternoon feature, shifting after four weeks to Wednesday evenings, on CBS between 5 July–21 October 1942. In early 1943, it played on CBS as a quarter-hour five-day-a-week narrative. All CBS performances were sustaining. In its final permutation, the drama aired for 30 minutes on Sunday afternoons over MBS for Emerson Radio between 27 February–20 August 1944. GUIDING LIGHT, THE. It is the longest narrative ever told. Beginning on radio on 25 January 1937, this soap opera—televised by CBS-TV since 30 June 1952, and still being shown five days weekly at this writing—persists in a seventh decade. No fictional drama has ever come close to its enduring record. Appearing under the title Good Samaritan for a few episodes, it was presented over NBC on behalf of Procter & Gamble’s White Naptha soap through 26 December 1941. Canceled, when the network received 75,000 letters of protest from fans, it was picked up on 17 March 1942 by General Mills for Wheaties and continued over NBC through 29 November 1946. After another break, it resumed in a final radio timeslot over CBS for Procter & Gamble’s Duz detergent from 2 June 1947–29 June 1956. Episodes for radio and television were aired independently between 1952–56, the TV episodes performed live while the
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radio features were recorded at a previous time, although both followed the same storyline. The serial originally focused on the cleric of rural Five Points, Dr. John Ruthledge, his family, and an interdenominational flock. Creator Irna Phillips expanded the tale to include the Bauer family, which for decades literally became the heart and soul of the drama. Principals in the radio days included Arthur Peterson as Ruthledge, Mercedes McCambridge and Sarajane Wells as Mary Ruthledge, Theodore Goetz as Papa Bauer, Charita Bauer as Bertha Bauer, Lyle Sudrow as Bill Bauer, Jone Allison as Meta Bauer, and Laurette Fillbrandt as Trudy Bauer. Many other radio veterans were in the cast including Frank Behrens, Bill Bouchey, Frank Dane, Margaret Fuller, Betty Lou Gerson, Ken Griffin, Gladys Heen, Raymond Edward Johnson, Eloise Kummer, Phillips H. Lord, Sunda Love, Marvin Miller, Bret Morrison, Hugh Studebaker, Henrietta Tedro, Willard Waterman, and Lesley Woods. Phillips sold the rights to her most famous legacy, The Guiding Light, to Procter & Gamble in the 1940s for a reported $50,000. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. GUILTY ONE, THE. One of multiple continuing narratives spotlighting former silent screen star Irene Rich. Appearing under the umbrella Irene Rich Dramas, each one aired over NBC Blue between 4 October 1933 and 31 May 1942 or CBS between 5 June 1942 and 28 May 1944. See also IRENE RICH DRAMAS. GUMPS, THE. A serialized comedy that preceded its network debut with a local run in 1931 over Chicago’s WGN. It achieved national recognition by moving to CBS for Korn Products’ Karo syrup on 5 November 1934, initially as a five-day-a-week feature. It reduced to a Monday–Wednesday–Friday airing on 5 August 1935 and departed the ether on 1 November 1935. It returned from 5 October 1936–2 July 1937 each weekday on CBS underwritten by Pebeco toothpaste. Wilmer Walter played Andy Gump, Agnes Moorehead (in her first radio role) was Min Gump, and Jackie Kelk was their son Chester. Bess Flynn appeared as the maid, Tilda. With Ralph Edwards announcing, the show was based on the comic strip drawn by Sidney Smith and was penned for radio by Irwin Shaw who had also written
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Dick Tracy for radio. Shaw’s biographer classified Andy and Min Gump as “a cranky couple, the Archie and Edith Bunker of their day.”
-HHALFWAY TO HEAVEN. A syndicated feature, c1950, the serial’s epigraph signified its intent: “Now, Halfway to Heaven, Martha Alexander’s story of a modern woman—wife and mother—the story of Angeline Carter, told in her own words.” At this point, an unidentified actress playing Carter began to relate incidents that recently transpired in her life, narrating the tale for the audience. She lived with her husband Timothy and daughter Debbie in a Park Avenue duplex in New York City. The couple had earlier lost a son and Debbie was by then headed to college, leaving Angeline and Tim alone for the first time in 17 years. The complexities of their shared isolationism formed the milieu for the storyline. HAMBURGER KATIE. Its fleeting existence is documented by multiple authoritative sources (including actress heroine Mary Jane Higby of When a Girl Marries). In a 1947 spin-off drama, Katie’s Daughter, listeners learned that Katie Harris’s lunch stand operated along the waterfront. Interesting revelations concerning Harris and her Stella Dallas–Lolly Baby relationship with her offspring appeared in the sequel. Apparently and regrettably, further details have not been preserved. HANNA, ARTHUR (1906–1981). One of the more prolific directors of radio soap opera, Art Hanna supervised no less than 11 serials, more than half of them produced by Frank and Anne Hummert including: The Brighter Day, David Harum, Front Page Farrell, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Just Plain Bill, Lora Lawton, Our Gal Sunday, Perry Mason, The Right to Happiness, Stella Dallas, and This Is Nora Drake. He was the only freelance director during radio’s golden age to have three daily serials running concurrently on two different networks. This was in addition to several nighttime features. While some sources contend that Hanna also announced a couple of radio’s
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fading golden age adventures, Twenty-First Precinct and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, son Colin Hanna maintains that his father never pursued any announcing assignments. Educated at Harvard, France’s University of Besancon and West Chester (Pennsylvania) University, the elder Hanna produced five Broadway plays before moving to radio. His stage protégés included future notables, such as Peter Falk, Hal Holbrook, Jack Klugman, Jack Lemmon, Christopher Plummer, and James Stewart. He turned to radio, he allowed, “Because I got married and had to have a regular income.” The live stage was never far from his mind, however, and he directed and managed at summer stock theaters in Locust Valley, New York; Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Westport, Connecticut; and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He remained active in a Philadelphia Shakespearean guild throughout life. When radio faded, Hanna turned an avocation as a teacher through American Theatre Wing into a second career. For two decades, he instructed aspiring thespians at Valley Forge Military Academy and Junior College. “There’s really no difference between actors and kids,” he insisted. “All I try to do is bring out the best performance a person has within him.” It was something he had done on CBS and NBC every weekday for 25 years. HANNIBAL COBB. A weekday afternoon sustained crime thriller, it sometimes came in 15-minute segments and sometimes for 30 minutes. The narrative aired over ABC from 9 January 1950 to 11 May 1951. Santos Ortega played the namesake private detective who took a personal interest in his clients. Bernard Dougall, Ira Marion and Lillian Schoen penned the scripts. Cobb was introduced as a figure the listeners could find in the photocrime pages of Look magazine. “Here is a dramatic story of human conflict vividly told from the point of view of someone closely involved,” prompted an announcer. HAPPY HOLLOW. Launched over Kansas City’s KMBC on 1 July 1929, the serial produced and written by Everett Kemp moved to CBS weekdays between 13 May 1935 and 9 October 1936. Music, narrative, and commercials were integrated into it. Some principal figures had unusual names like Grandpa Beasley, Little Douglas Butternut,
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Uncle Ezra Butternut, Charity Grubb, Jennie Oaksberry, Aaron and Sarah Peppertag, and Aunt Lucinda Skinflint. An earthy-sounding soap opera with humorous inflections may have amused listeners during radio’s pioneering era but most audiences would not have been drawn to fare like this as time advanced and infinitely more choices proliferated. HARVEY AND DELL. This unusual soap opera spotlighted members of an actual family who portrayed people bearing their surname. It related incidents in the lives of the three-member Meade clan—Harvey, the father, played by Dwight Meade; Dell, the mother, played by Doris Meade; and their daughter, Dorothy, played by Dorothy Meade. The serial began on 1 August 1939 as a weekday feature on NBC Blue, adding a sixth broadcast every week on 18 March 1940. On 18 October 1940, the show was reduced to a quarter-hour on Saturday mornings only, a run that extended through 3 May 1941. It was off the air for nearly a year, returning on CBS Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings for a quarter-hour from 8 April–6 May 1942. At that juncture, it aired five weekday mornings, from 1 June–24 July 1942. General Mills partially underwrote what had been a sustaining feature starting 30 June 1942. HASTEN THE DAY. A weekly motivational quarter-hour serial, it was developed by the U.S. Office of War Information. Beginning in mid1943, the drama continued until the end of the international conflict two years hence. Its purpose was to stimulate homefront listeners to respond empathetically and generously to the nation’s collective effort by helping the troops through a variety of methods. The narrative centered on the Tucker family, a clan that had moved from a rural community to an urban one so the patriarch could offer his services at a munitions plant. Radio scholar J. Fred MacDonald summarized the possibilities like this: “The entire Tucker family was a testimonial to citizen cooperation with the government. Mother canned food, the children saved scrap metal and were hospitable to soldiers on leave, and when not laboring at the factory, father was looking for ways to stop waste and promote economy. Even the Tucker house, an abandoned gas station which the family had converted into a comfortable home, pro-
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vided a model for listeners adversely affected by the national housing shortage. As if these characteristics were not enough, each broadcast . . . explored pressing problems, such as rent control, the nature of rationing, national patterns of food distribution, and the efforts of American farmers to produce crops for the war effort.” See also WORLD WAR II. HAWTHORNE HOUSE. The narrative told the story of a wealthy family left destitute by the Great Depression. While the NBC serial aired from San Francisco, it was unlike the more prosperous Barbour clan of the Bay area (in One Man’s Family), having fallen on hard times. Widowed Mother Sherwood, played by Pearl King Tanner, had the task of providing for several offspring. Turning her estate into a rental guesthouse, she also adopted a young lad and raised him as one of her own. The home became characterized for anxiety, conflict, and bliss as the family rubbed shoulders with its clients, developing longterm relationships with some. Monty Mohn and Jack Moyles were heard as Mel Sherwood, Bobbie Dean and Florida Edwards as Marietta Sherwood, and Eddie Firestone Jr. and Sam Edwards as Billy Sherwood. David Drummond, Ray Buffum, and Cameron Prud’homme penned the washboard weeper, Prud’homme also playing the persevering run as hero of the serial David Harum. The weekly program arrived on NBC’s West Coast hookup for Standard Brands’ Wesson Oil on 28 October 1935 and continued into the 1940s. HEART OF GOLD, THE. No documentation of this 1937 series appears to exist beyond title and year. Because several authoritative radio historiographers that normally record such details have missed the serial altogether suggests that it may have aired only briefly. Or it might have been syndicated or limited to a regional group of radio outlets, contributing to its obscurity. HEARTS IN HARMONY. A regional Midwest favorite for the Kroger bakery and grocery chain, it told the story of volunteer entertainer Penny (no surname) in a USO club. Her adventures precipitated patriotic efforts. Action prevailed within the club setting as well as outside it. Jone Allison played the lead and when the script called for her
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to sing, Anne Marlowe did the honors. Bob Hanna was another vocalist in the serialized storyline. Alice Yourman played Mrs. Gibbs. Bill Lipton and Billy Redfield were actors playing Penny’s GI friends. The transcribed series persisted from 1941 into 1944. See also WORLD WAR II. HEINZ MAGAZINE OF THE AIR, THE. An early aural magazine combining musical variety with soap opera, it persisted on CBS between 2 September 1936–10 April 1938 often on multiple but altering days. Two narratives were presented during that time—initially Trouble House, replaced on 31 August 1937 by Carol Kennedy’s Romance. On 26 November 1937, the Heinz program was withdrawn and the serial continued. A new segment of Heinz magazines was attempted between 2 December 1937 and 10 April 1938, initially on Thursday afternoons, then on Sunday afternoons starting 2 January 1938. HELEN HOLDEN, GOVERNMENT GIRL. “The never-married heroine was simply a poor risk as a daytime-serial protagonist,” wrote Raymond William Stedman in his treatise chronicling the serials. Every soap opera attempting that principle infused its storyline with a different twist. This one focused on a G-woman in Washington, D.C., who sought bad guys along with keeping a presumably good guy for herself. The serial was preoccupied with wartime themes. Holden was sworn to protect the homeland against enemy infiltration and aggression. Her boyfriend, David, and an aunt, print newswoman Mary Holden, were nearby to add domesticity to the international intrigue. With Nancy Ordway in the title role, Robert Pollard played David, while Nell Fleming was Mary. The series persisted on MBS from 3 March 1941–20 March 1942, airing Monday through Saturday. HELEN TRENT. See THE ROMANCE OF HELEN TRENT. HELLO, PEGGY. Patterned after the novel Grand Hotel this daytime drama followed the stories of the guests and employees of a great urban inn. Eunice Howard played the hotel’s switchboard operator, Peggy Hopkins, the serial’s title character. Alan Bunce was in the role
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of her spouse, Ted Hopkins, a newspaper reporter. There were also a couple of bellhops in the recurring cast featuring actors Jackie Kelk and Arthur Donnelly. The quarter-hour program appeared on NBC on Wednesday and Friday mornings between 4 August 1937 and 29 July 1938 for Drackett’s Drano plumbing line cleaner. HELPING-HAND CHARACTERS. Soap opera creators learned an important concept near the beginning of their craft: as a device for making a continuing story possible, a central helping-hand character was an invaluable aid in connecting several subplots. Suspense could ebb and flow without resolution while continuity was sustained. (Just Plain) Bill Davidson, The Brighter Day’s Rev. Richard Dennis, David Harum, The Guiding Light’s Dr. John Ruthledge, Ma Perkins, Life Can Be Beautiful’s Papa David Solomon and Ruth Evans Wayne (the Big Sister) personified this idea and they might have earned fortunes had they hung out shingles and professionally dispensed their empathetic outlooks. Elevated to a saintly perch by family, friends, and townsfolk, the counselors-in-residence were imbued with disproportionate amounts of common sense that were particularly conspicuous after those about them lost their heads. Small-town barber Bill Davidson, for one, was branded “a good-natured, soft-spoken, homespun country philosopher, sensitive to the needs of friends and relatives, [who] offered level-headed advice to help them straighten out their tangled lives.” Variety suggested what could undoubtedly be applied to all of daytime drama’s stalwart helping-hands: “Calm and quiet and gentle and sympathetic and tolerant and understanding and kind, but still firm and strong and wise.” Here were people that folks could go to in a time of need, assured that—without pretense—that friend would give them sound guidance and the personal assistance within their power. Although not every serial had such a helping-hand figure, most included one or more levelheaded individuals who witnessed life realistically and who could be called upon to mete out sage assistance in times of angst. HELPMATE. Cudahy Packing promoted its Old Dutch Cleanser on this NBC serial that ran from 22 September 1941 through 30 June 1944. A Frank and Anne Hummert production, the interconnected
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lives of a trio of neighboring couples—Holly and George Emerson, Linda and Steve Harper, Grace and Clyde Marshall—formed the narrative’s storyline. The cast included Beryl Vaughn (Holly), Sidney Ellstrom (George), Arlene Francis and Fern Persons (Linda), Myron McCormick and John Larkin (Steve), Judith Evelyn and Ruth Perrott (Grace), and Karl Weber (Clyde). Margaret Lewerth penned the scripts. HER HONOR, NANCY JAMES. Nancy James was a judge in the newly formed Court of Common Problems in Metropolis City. Together with mayor Richard Wharton (who had been in love with her since law school days) and district attorney Tony Hale, she joined a reform movement that purposed to eliminate the local racketeers while assisting the disadvantaged. Barbara Weeks portrayed Nancy while Joseph Curtin was the mayor and Ned Wever was the D.A. Kay Strozzi was heard as Evelyn Wharton, the mayor’s wife, an utterly affluent, self-centered, egotistical social butterfly. A number of other veteran radio voices were included in the cast, among them Joan Banks, Michael Fitzmaurice, Claire Niesen, and Alice Reinheart. The serial ran on CBS between 3 October 1938 and 28 July 1939 for Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex tissues. HIGBY, MARY JANE (1909–1986). One of the true queens of daytime drama, the St. Louis-bred Higby appeared in silent films in girlhood and by her early twenties was playing on radio shows staged on the West Coast. They included Hollywood Hotel, Lux Radio Theater, Parties at Pickfair, and Shell Chateau. After a few years she went to New York City, quickly setting her sights on becoming a soap opera heroine. She acquired serial roles that often ran for years, playing on a dozen daytime dramas. Her repertoire included David Harum, John’s Other Wife, Joyce Jordan—Girl Interne, Linda’s First Love, Perry Mason, The Romance of Helen Trent, Rosemary, Stella Dallas, The Story of Mary Marlin, Thanks for Tomorrow, and This Is Nora Drake. Her indisputable crowning glory was in gaining the lead of the long-running When a Girl Marries. From 1939 until it left the air in 1957, Higby played the oppressed wife Joan Davis who faced each trial with an incredible amount of aplomb. Higby also turned up in the casts of sev-
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eral other radio series, appearing regularly in Five Star Matinee, Grand Central Station, Joe Palooka, Listening Post, Mr. Keen— Tracer of Lost Persons, The Mysterious Traveler, Nick Carter— Master Detective, and Silver Theater. After network radio drama faded, Higby went back to the silver screen to perform in a 1970 film, Honeymoon Killers. That same decade, she returned to the microphone to act in The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. She also wrote her memoirs, initially released by Cowles in 1966, giving readers an intimate glimpse into life behind the microphones at the soap operas. Her tell-all treatise was appropriately titled Tune in Tomorrow: or, How I Found The Right to Happiness with Our Gal Sunday, Stella Dallas, John’s Other Wife, and Other Sudsy Radio Serials. HIGH PLACES. With Joan Tetzel and Clayton (Bud) Collyer playing the leads, the narrative began over CBS weekdays on 10 July 1944. It left the air for the last time on 19 January 1945. HILDA HOPE, M.D. A Saturday morning quarter-hour over NBC for Wheatena cereal, the washboard weeper lasted about seven months. It arrived on 2 September 1939 and was canceled on 30 March 1940. Selena Royle portrayed the feminine medic who attempted to balance a professional career and private life, including romance. Supporting players were Vera Allen, Richard Gordon, House Jameson, and Ann Shepherd. HILLTOP HOUSE. In this narrative unlike most others, without any kids, there would not have been a plot. The discord was often predicated on the interaction of adults with juveniles placed in an orphanage and on attempts to diminish the conditions that had put the youngsters there. Such a premise would not have had staying power by itself—the love life of the home’s superintendent, Julie Erickson, offered a steady, ongoing diversion. There was also conflict between staff and board members in running the home. Occasionally dire financial straights jeopardized the ability of the operation to endure. Ultimately, it was the tale of one woman’s perplexing dilemma in offering herself to the emotional care of sometimes unwanted—at times unruly—adolescents while being concerned with matters of her own heart.
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In an early version, actress Bess Johnson played the superintendent, using her own name. In the longer run, with Julie Erickson at the forefront, Grace Matthews and Jan Miner were featured in that role. Numerous other radio veterans floated in and out of a very large cast that was frequently turning over as the sequences changed. Among them were Vera Allen, Donald Briggs, Joseph Curtin, David Gothard, Leon Janney, Jackie Kelk, and Estelle Levy. Adelaide Marston, the pen name for Addy Richton, and Lynn Stone wrote the show. Hilltop House premiered over dual networks on the same day, a rarity in any type of programming—on MBS from 1 November 1937–12 August 1938 and on CBS from 1 November 1937–28 March 1941, both segments for Colgate-Palmolive-Peet’s Palmolive soap and other personal care products. The serial returned with new characters on CBS from 17 May 1948–1 July 1955 sponsored by Miles Laboratories for Alka-Seltzer stomach distress reliever and other healthcare goods, to 1954; and afterward by Pharmaco for Feen-AMint laxative chewing gum. A final permutation over NBC aired from 3 September 1956–30 July 1957 for participating sponsors. HITCHHIKE COMMERCIALS. Concise ads for one of a sponsor’s multiple commodities were inserted just before a program signed off the air with the network ID. Soap opera applied this formula extensively. The hitchhike commercial—and the cowcatcher commercial that often appeared immediately as a program signed on—allowed a sponsor to pitch more commodities on a given show than possible in only two widely accepted commercial time zones in a quarter-hour. HOLLY SLOAN. See THE STORY OF HOLLY SLOAN. HOLLYWOOD THEATER OF THE AIR. See DREFT STAR PLAYHOUSE. HOME OF THE BRAVE. This daytime drama was set in New Chance, Colorado. It related the narrative of telephone lineman Joe and the girl he loved in vain, Casino, who refused to respond to his advances. Tom Tully and Ed Latimer played Joe; Jeanette Nolan and Sammie Hill were heard as Casino. Their story arrived over CBS on
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6 January 1941 and persisted until 19 September 1941 for General Foods’ Swans Down cake mixes. Others featured in the cast were Jone Allison, Joan Banks, Alan Bunce, Ted de Corsia, and Richard Widmark. HOME SWEET HOME. Here was “The dramatic struggle of Fred and Lucy Kent and their son for a home sweet home of their own.” It was fraught with economic woes in addition to a myriad of other domestic aggravations. The serial bowed on 30 July 1934 over NBC Blue, remaining through 26 April 1935. At that point, it transferred to NBC for Procter & Gamble’s Chipso soap flakes, airing between 29 April 1935–22 May 1936. It returned to NBC Blue on 25 May 1936 for Chipso, lost its sponsor on 3 July 1936, but persisted through 19 November 1937. Cecil Secrest and Harriet MacGibbon played the leads as Fred and Lucy Kent while Billy Halop appeared as their son, Dick. A pundit sized up the series like this: “The father . . . was a salesman in a haberdashery shop, who didn’t seem too bright. Perhaps this was the beginning of the portrayal of the bumbling husband on radio, before Blondie’s Dagwood made his appearance.” HOOPER, C. E., INCORPORATED. An early radio program ratings firm helping to pinpoint a program’s popularity and profoundly affecting sales of advertising time. Hooper applied a method called “coincidental ratings” in which staffers randomly telephoned denizens in 36 metropolitan areas. Respondents were asked to name a program they were hearing at the time. This disenfranchised the people in rural areas and small- and medium-sized towns. A “Hooperating” of 6.2 for a serial meant that, out of every 100 calls, 6.2 people said they were listening to a given program. Dividing a rating by all sets then in use netted a “share” of the total audience. A daytime drama with a respectable rating of at least 5.0 (usually enough to keep it on the air) might earn an audience “share” of 22 percent or more. A. C. Nielsen Company, a late competitor, subsequently purchased Hooper. HOPE ADAMS’ ROMANCE. A 1936 entry apparently with no other details preserved concerning it. As is frequently the case when trusted radio chroniclers overlook a serial altogether, three explanations
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seem worthy: the program aired only briefly; the program might have been syndicated; or it might have aired in a minuscule geographical territory. Either of these—or any combination—suggests the likelihood of obscurity. HOTEL FOR PETS. With Charlotte Manson in the lead, the atypical serialized feature appeared on NBC for Quaker Oats between 13 September 1954 and 30 March 1956. A veterinarian’s office was the setting for the drama. Assisting were actors Abby Lewis, Frank McHugh, and Lloyd Richards. McHugh played a former mail carrier that—with the vet—ran the animal shelter. In between scenes, pet owners were offered helpful hints in caring for their animals. HOUSE BESIDE THE ROAD (a.k.a. THE WAYSIDE COTTAGE). “The poignant, homey little tales of the simple kindness of Ma and Pa” was enough to entice early radio listeners to this dramatic serial. It surfaced in two formats: the first was a half-hour mix of light comedy and drama on Sunday afternoons between 2 September 1934 and 30 June 1935 sponsored by S. C. Johnson & Sons for Johnson’s Wax and similar products; the second was a quarter-hour twice weekly (Tuesday and Thursday) over CBS between 10 July and 13 September 1934 under the moniker The Wayside Cottage. Created by Ethel Park Richardson, during the latter term the narrative supplied as partial summer replacement for the soap opera Just Plain Bill, an unusual feat that few drainboard dramas were ever privileged to enjoy. Vivian Ogden played Ma, Bill Adams was Pa, and other actors included Anne Elstner, Jackie Kelk, Ruth Russell, and Walter Tetley. HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY. This sustained serial appeared on NBC Blue between 6 October 1941 and 30 October 1942. It featured John Raby and Lyle Sudrow as the husband, Bruce, and Frances Chaney, Joan Banks, and Patsy Campbell as his wife, Joan. It was billed as “the story of a city couple’s amusing problems when they moved to the country.” Having resided in a small city apartment for a year, the duo rented a rural dwelling for $30 monthly. The storyline highlighted cheerful domestic situations rather than infidelity or crime. Raymond Knight wrote, directed, and acted in the series, claiming it
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was based on his familiar incidents in country home ownership. Parker Fennelly, Ed Latimer, and Abby Lewis were also in the cast. HOUSE UNDIVIDED, THE. Variety depicted this 1937 Mondaythrough-Friday morning Don Lee serial as “an imitation of One Man’s Family.” Herb Conner scripted the feature about a family that included an elderly patriarch, his wife, and offspring of varying ages. An aged housekeeper and several neighbors were also in the storyline. The 14-station Don Lee network served broadcast outlets along the West Coast and in a few adjacent Western states and, by 1937, had embraced the Mutual chain’s programming, beaming shows to its affiliates. HOUSEBOAT HANNAH. After Dan O’Leary lost an arm in a cannery accident, his financially strapped family moved to a Shanty Fish Row houseboat on San Francisco Bay. His wife Hannah, a woman of resolute strength and integrity, determined not to allow the circumstances life had handed them to completely beset them. Originating in Chicago, the transcribed serial appeared as a regional feature on MBS between its inception on 26 October 1936 and 23 September 1938. From 26 September 1938 to 25 April 1941, the dishpan drama reached the nation’s ears variously via NBC Blue and NBC while sponsored by Procter & Gamble’s Lava soap. The Frank and Anne Hummert production starred Henrietta Tedro and Doris Rich in its namesake role. Norman Gottschalk played Dan. Les Damon, Virginia Dwyer, John Larkin, and other radio thespians completed the cast. HUGHES, ARTHUR (1893–1982). They labeled him “an actor’s actor” during his heyday in radio. Unlike his peers, Hughes took his script, marked his lines in red pencil, and went off to a corner by himself to memorize those lines before airtime. He wanted to be as professional as he could be. He is so identified with the character of Bill Davidson—the attentive, supportive, and courageous grandfather, and barber of Hartville in Just Plain Bill—that he aged along with the figure. Hughes was 39 when the serial went on the air in 1932. He was 62 when it departed in 1955 after nearly 6,000 performances. He seemed evenly matched in age and demeanor with his pivotal namesake character.
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A native of Bloomington, Illinois, Hughes graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts. He drifted into radio in his midthirties as host–editor and playing lead character Fu Manchu on radio’s Collier Hour. In time, he was turning up in parts on all sorts of dramatic fare, including East of Cairo, I Love Linda Dale, Jungle Jim, Mr. Keen— Tracer of Lost Persons, The Orange Lantern, Stella Dallas, X-Minus One. He also appeared in several long-running Broadway productions like Elizabeth the Queen, Golden Boy, Idiot’s Delight, Mourning Becomes Elektra, and as an eccentric millionaire in the 1968 hit musical How Now Dow Jones? Although never publicly expressing a preference for any performer in their employ, there was widespread gossip that producers Frank and Anne Hummert considered Arthur Hughes their pet among hundreds of minions. With their radio careers behind them, Hughes and his wife, ex-Broadway actress Geneva Harrison, and the Hummerts—who shared the same Park Avenue neighborhood in later years—met socially from time to time. Because industry insiders universally perceived the Hummerts as standoffish, occasions like those added credence to the speculation about favoritism. HUMMERT, ANNE (1905–1996). The distaff side of the most prominent name in American radio soap opera, at one point Anne Hummert was believed to be the highest-paid woman in advertising in the world. As the wife of Frank Hummert, the other half of a duo that became radio’s most dynamic and prolific producers, she was exceedingly powerful. By 1938, the couple purchased an eighth of all commercial radio time, then valued at $12 million annually, and filled the network schedules with programming between 25 and 30 hours weekly. Scores of actors, writers, directors, musicians, lawyers, and clerical staffers depended on them for weekly paychecks. Riding the crest of at least 125 program innovations in more than a halfdozen genres, the pair occupied the catbird seat without peers. Born in Baltimore, Anne Schumacher was educated at Goucher College and pursued a newspaper career immediately after graduation. Wed young, she soon became a mother and was then divorced. She found work as an assistant to Chicago advertising executive Frank Hummert. Together they got in on the ground floor of radio as the networks were considering their programming agendas. She and
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Hummert married in 1935 and subsequently built a radio empire. They developed more than three score soap operas that Anne closely controlled. While both names were associated with their features, she outlined extensive plots for each serial for several weeks in advance and handed them to wordsmiths to flesh out scripts with dialogue and action. Anne was so familiar with each series that she could recount the details of any character in scores of dramatic programs. The Hummerts became renowned tightwads, too, holding expenses to a minimum while paying their people minimal compensation. They hired, fired, and communicated with employees through go-betweens. They avoided most social contacts and handed down inviolable edicts to their underlings from on high. Simultaneously, they themselves lived extravagantly in a Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion of sizable proportions while riding to work in chauffeurdriven limousines and taking extended vacations to Europe. All of this occurred while the couple remained aloof, no less. If either cared what anybody thought they never acknowledged it nor altered their habits. HUMMERT, FRANK (1884–1966). Born in St. Louis, he was educated in England and in St. Louis. Young Frank pursued a newspaper career early in life and married his childhood sweetheart who died in the early 1930s. He transitioned into advertising much sooner, however, gaining notoriety in the industry for several innovative lines (Bonds or Bondage, For the Skin You Love to Touch, and—during his radio days—Breakfast of Champions). From 1920–27, he was chief copywriter of one of New York’s most prestigious ad agencies, Lord & Thomas. He became the highest paid scribe in advertising, in fact. Moving to Chicago, he joined the Blackett & Sample outfit (which soon added his name to its masthead) as vice president and creative director. While he was there radio emerged as a formidable marketing tool. Hummert had a notion that women at home all day might enjoy dramatic narratives as diversionary amusement as they performed their household chores. Together with his new assistant Anne S. Ashenhurst (whom he soon married), he created some of the earliest soap operas and began offering the networks shows in other genres—music, juvenile adventure, and detective mysteries among them.
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The Hummerts moved from Chicago to New York in 1938 and by 1944 separated themselves from Blackett-Sample-Hummert to form their own agency, Air Features Incorporated. Working with advertisers, they represented products and services on the air by providing the networks with complete packages including programming content, and commercials. The operation persisted until the Hummerts’ final program left the air in mid-1960. At one time, the pair sold 18 daytime dramas while simultaneously providing 10 or 12 more series to the national chains. No one in their business ever came close to turning out as many productions as did the Hummerts. Frank Hummert once remarked: “We write successful stories about unsuccessful people. This means our characters are simply unsuccessful in the material things of life, but highly successful spiritually. Our characters are everyday people and our stories can be understood on Park Avenue and on the prairies.” The tale of this peculiar couple is chronicled in Jim Cox’s biography, Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers (McFarland, 2003). See also ANNE HUMMERT.
-II LOVE LINDA DALE. With Helen Shields in the namesake role, the drama appeared on NBC Blue on 29 April 1940 and continued through 7 February 1941. Others in the cast were Raymond Edward Johnson and James Meighan as Eric Dale, the lead’s spouse; Claire Howard as Penny; Raymond Edward Johnson also playing Dr. Bruce Porter; Arthur Hughes as the judge; and Kay Strozzi as Sheila Blade. I’LL FIND MY WAY. With Phyllis Jeannie in the lead, the washboard weeper ran on MBS six times weekly from 3 March–13 September 1941 and was reduced to five times weekly between 15 September–5 December 1941. It returned to air on five weekdays from 16 March–1 May 1942. This was the tale of a girl in a small hamlet that digressed from longtime aspirations of becoming an actress in order to try to save her dad’s newspaper. Actor Jack Preston portrayed her father.
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Others in the ongoing cast included Billy Kenton, Arch Schmidt, and Leonard Sherer. Serials that featured a never-married woman seldom performed well on radio. Most feminine listeners were married, widowed, separated, or divorced and identified with people like themselves. This might explain why soap operas like this one frequently encountered inconsistent timelines. IN CARE OF AGGIE HORN. With Harriet Allyn in the title role, the sustained feature appeared on NBC Blue between 17 November 1941 and 24 April 1942. The cast included Muriel Bremner as Monica Lee, Nelson Olmsted as Edgar Lee, Danny Lupton as Martin Lee, and Marilou Neumayer as Gwyn Jennings. INTO THE LIGHT. A beautiful young woman named Tanya directed healing influence toward a couple of squabbling siblings. Movie actress Margo (sans surname) played Tanya (again without surname); Peter Donald and Martin Wolfson played the siblings; and others in the cast included Chassie Allen, Peter Capell, Morris Carnovsky, Margaret Foster, and Mitzi Gould. The serial broadcast over NBC Blue between 18 August 1941 and 20 March 1942. Larry Bearson scripted the show. INTRODUCING SUCCESSOR SERIALS. To transfer an audience from a serial that was leaving the air to a successor serial that was debuting, soap opera became very inventive when it needed to maintain those homegrown fans. Probably no one did this better than serial creator Irna Phillips whose ingenious plotting devices helped audiences become accustomed to successor stories and characters even before they were fully on the air. In the case of The Brighter Day, which premiered in 1948, one of the leading characters in the drama—Elizabeth (Liz) Susan Dennis—turned up a few weeks before in the storyline of Joyce Jordan, M.D., the drama leaving the air and relinquishing its quarter-hour timeslot to Day. By the time Dr. Jordan bade farewell to her fans, the Dennis clan was already firmly entrenched in their minds and the transition from one story to the next took place seamlessly. This was not the first time that Irna Phillips attempted the trick. At the end of 1937, her popular serial Today’s Children left the air. But
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in a stroke of brilliancy Phillips brought the cast back to the microphone on the initial broadcast of her debuting Woman in White for a single quarter-hour visit. On that day, protagonist Mother Moran of Today’s Children pulled her clan around her to reminisce and—not by accident—to turn on the radio and tune in a new story that was beginning that day, Woman in White. The audience, as they say, was hooked. Phillips was the greatest exponent of the transitioning plotline between serials and employed it to fullest advantage when it suited her purposes. IRENE CASTLE (a.k.a. THE LIFE OF IRENE CASTLE). One of a number of Irene Rich Dramas, this 15-minute serial aired briefly in 1934. Irene Rich was a prominent movie actress in silent pictures of the 1920s that entered radio in the early 1930s, creating a series of dramas-by-installment,which carried the overarching venue bearing her name. The narratives continued into the mid-1940s and Rich starred in each feature. Unfortunately, the specifics of this soap opera have not been documented. IRENE RICH DRAMAS. A series of more than a half-dozen continuing stories that spotlighted former silent film star Irene Rich. Rich left filmdom for radio in a huff after contract negotiations with Warner Brothers broke down. On the air, she hosted and starred in a group of narratives that extended for more than a decade, from 4 October 1933 through 28 May 1944. Titles of the aggregate were Dear John, The Glorious One, The Guilty One, Irene Castle, Jewels of Enchantment, The Lady Counselor, and Woman from Nowhere. Continuing announcers were Ed Herlihy, Frank Goss, and Marvin Miller.
-JJAMES, HUGH (1915–2001). One of the premier announcers of radio soap opera, James acknowledged that for 15 years he narrated a quartet of serials airing concurrently for five days a week—about 15,000 broadcasts. Over his career the Bronx, New York, native was available for House in the Country, The Right to Happiness, The Second
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Mrs. Burton, Wendy Warren and the News (where he employed the pseudonym Bill Flood), and When a Girl Marries. While in high school, James decided to make radio his career. From an NBC page during his teen years, he advanced to tour guide and delivering on-air station breaks. At age 20, he was an NBC staff announcer at Philadelphia and then Washington, D.C. He broadcast the second-term inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, returning to New York to introduce Lowell Thomas and the News every weeknight starting that year. His other radio credits included announcing programs like Big Town, Famous Jury Trials, The Parker Family, Star for a Night, Three Star Extra, True Detective Mysteries, and—perhaps his most celebrated duty—as interlocutor for the durably prestigious Voice of Firestone, initially on radio, later simulcast on radio and television. “Sincerity is the most important quality an announcer can possess,” he maintained of his profession. JANE ARDEN. Developed from the newspaper comic strip by Monte Barrett, the serial was adapted for radio by William Hodapp. Jane Arden, played by Ruth Yorke, was a dazzling lady journalist for a major metropolitan daily. She was billed as a “fearless girl reporter, the most beautiful woman in the newspaper world,” although how that was judged was not revealed. The merger of two newspapers, another feminine scribe who undermined those who got in her way and a persevering romance in political chaos stirred the plot mix. Others in the cast included Spencer Bentley, Helene Dumas, Florence Freeman, Betty Garde, Frank Provo, and more. Radio historiographer Raymond William Stedman commented: “The girl reporter with the trim and frequently displayed figure was also the subject of a motion picture in 1939. The microphone, however, was insensitive to trim figures. Jane Arden’s soap-opera career was fleeting.” The show, for Ward Baking, lasted from 26 September 1938 to 23 June 1939 over NBC Blue. It appeared on New York’s WJZ in a 14-week trial (20 June–23 September 1938) before gaining national exposure. JANE ENDICOTT, REPORTER. Only modest details survive regarding the serial about a feminine journalist for a daily newspaper. Sponsored by Rancho soups, it was introduced daily as “another
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dramatic episode in the life of an American girl in the world of today—stories of adventure, romance, and humor.” Each day over the clacking of typewriter keys, the first words listeners heard from the heroine’s mouth were: “Can’t forget my byline: Jane Endicott, Reporter.” The program began on CBS on 5 January 1942; a departure date is not recorded although—as most reliable radio historians missed the series altogether—it might have aired only briefly. JANE EYRE. One of several limited-run classic book series carried by MBS five weekday afternoons between 29 September 1941–6 March 1942, this one appeared from 14 November–19 December 1941. See also LITTLE WOMEN; LOVE AFFAIR; MY MAN GODFREY; THE RAINS CAME. JENNY PEABODY. A reviewer termed this serial heroine “versatility personified.” She was the proprietress of a small hotel, ran a general store, and was postmistress of the hamlet of Hillsdale, an unmitigated workaholic. The drama premiered for F & F Laboratories three times a week over CBS on 18 October 1937 and was withdrawn at the end of its 13-week contract on 14 January 1938. Virginia Jones and Olan Soule were heard in the leading roles. JEWELS OF ENCHANTMENT. One of multiple continuing narratives spotlighting former silent screen star Irene Rich. Appearing under the umbrella Irene Rich Dramas, each one aired over NBC Blue between 4 October 1933 and 31 May 1942 or CBS between 5 June 1942 and 28 May 1944. JOAN AND KERMIT. Milton Geiger penned a weekly romantic serial featuring Fran Carlon as Joan Martell and Olan Soule as Dr. Kermit Hubbard. Other actors in the ongoing cast were David Gothard and Butler Mandeville. The half-hour soap opera played on CBS on Sunday nights. Jon Swartz and Robert Reinehr, assessing it in their book, tendered: “Each episode was introduced by a rather long summary of the action that had taken place to that point. It was followed by a similar narrative speculating about the meaning of events that had transpired and hinting at things to come.” The series aired for 12 weeks, between 24 April–10 July 1938.
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JOE AND ETHEL TURP. Growing out of tales by Damon Runyon, the humorous serial appeared on CBS between 4 January–24 September 1943, having already been offered to stations via syndication in 1941. The CBS matinee aired for three days weekly through 21 February while another five-day-a-week series began at a different hour on 15 February and persisted for the remainder of the show’s life. Jackson Beck and Patsy Campbell played the leads while Art Carney appeared as Billy Oldham and Jack Smart was Uncle Ben. JOE POWERS OF OAKVILLE. This CBS Monday-through-Friday morning entry that broadcast from 26 August–13 December 1946 was reminiscent of the same chain’s Heinz Magazine of the Air a decade earlier. In both series, several elements appeared alongside an ongoing drama. Situated with music and comedy there was a continuing daily “boy meets girl” sketch penned by Jacques Fink and Draper Lewis. Given the brevity of time there was not a whole lot that could be done with the yarn. The ongoing actors in it included David Anderson, Elizabeth Keller, Richard Leone, and Julian Noa. The fleeting feature was sustained and, unlike Heinz’s Trouble House, the narrative never developed into a separate series of its own. JOHN’S OTHER WIFE. An insecure wife whose suspicions about her spouse’s clerical helper (possibly with good reason), plus his knockout assistant, kept the pot boiling in a seething romantic triangle-quartet. John Perry owned Perry’s Department Store. Married to Elizabeth, he was accused of carrying a torch for his gal Friday, Annette Rogers, while dallying on the sidelines with Martha Curtis. He was so besieged by domestic problems, in fact, that he could barely prevail against a sumptuous retail competitor. Listeners could be certain of a generous helping of marital quandaries at all times. The dishpan drama arrived on NBC on 30 March 1936 and remained through 22 March 1940. Switching to NBC Blue, it continued from 25 March 1940 through 20 March 1942. American Home Products underwrote both segments for its numerous household and healthcare commodity lines. Frank and Anne Hummert produced the feature. It took a halfdozen actors to play John Perry over the series’ six-year run including
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Hanley Stafford, Matt Crowley, Luis Van Rooten, William Post Jr., Joseph Curtin, and Richard Kollmar. Appearing as Elizabeth were Adele Ronson and Erin O’Brien-Moore. Others in the cast were Franc Hale (Annette Rogers), Rita Johnson (Martha Curtis), and soap opera veterans Joan Banks, Mary Jane Higby, and Alice Reinheart in recurring roles. Versatile musician Stanley Davis strummed a guitar while singing the theme song, “The Sweetest Story Ever Told,” as the serial arrived and left the air each day. JOHNSON FAMILY, THE. A prewar tale that did not attract a huge following but remained durable, it was undoubtedly the most innovative narrative in a category of familial stories (including The Andersons, The Bartons, The Carters of Elm Street, The Goldbergs, One Man’s Family, The O’Neills, Pepper Young’s Family, Those Happy Gilmans, Your Family and Mine). In The Johnson Family, a single actor, Jimmy Scribner, played all 22 recurring figures. In 1947, Radio Life observed: “Scribner guides his characters in and out of rapid conversations in almost unbelievable fashion.” While Scribner was Caucasian, the series focused on a Negro family, their friends, relatives, and neighbors in a mythical Southern community called Chickazola. An adaptable Scribner not only acted all the parts but wrote the scripts, provided the sound effects, produced the show, and plunked the banjo for it. Scribner said he based the plotting on blacks he had observed while growing up. He expressed great affection for Negroes; a pundit labeled his series “a poor-man’s Amos ’n’ Andy.” Originating over Cincinatti’s WLW between 1934–36 as a local and regional feature (also carried by Baltimore’s WBAL and Norfolk’s WTAR), the ethnic comedy-drama was offered to a wider audience between 1936–50 over the MBS and Don Lee chains. From 18 February–12 September 1952, CBS carried it. Subsequently, in the 1950s and 1960s—well after most network radio programming ceased—a syndicated version was produced and distributed to local outlets. See also AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS. JOURNALISM DRAMAS. Many of serialdom’s authors had ties to the publishing industry, often as reporters for metropolitan dailies or county weeklies. That factor might have influenced a fairly large
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number of journal-oriented yarns that appeared on the ether during radio’s golden age. In addition to multiple primetime series (The Big Story, Big Town, Casey—Crime Photographer, and others), daytime proffered a considerable number of tales with a similar setting or at least a major character pursuing a writing occupation. Bill Summers was the editor of a little Iowa newspaper in Masquerade. Newspaper reporters were the most common members of the category. They included heroes or heroines in Dangerous Paradise, Five Star Jones, Front Page Farrell, Girl Reporter, Hello, Peggy, Mary Foster—The Editor’s Daughter, Jane Arden, Jane Endicott— Reporter, Meet the Dixons, Rosemary, The Story of Sandra Martin, Wendy Warren and the News, and A Woman of America. Of those, Wendy Warren was the most distinctive: not only did she play a scribe for the mythical Manhattan Gazette, for real she reported tips to women during a live CBS newscast as a portion of her daily serial. Others approached their journalistic missions in inimitable behavior, too. The protagonist in I’ll Find My Way returned home to shore up her dad’s encumbered newspaper. PR man John Abbott, on the other hand, patriarch of We, the Abbotts, got into trouble more than once for what he wrote in the company’s house organ. Widowed Portia Brent attempted to carry on by operating her late husband’s publishing concern, Brent House, following his untimely demise. Print journalist Mary Holden, an aunt of Helen Holden—Government Girl, was a mentor to the heroine. Larry Noble’s best friend on Backstage Wife, Tom Bryson, was a playwright. Then there were several heroines who suffered the “misfortune” of marrying a reporter. Joyce Jordan, Girl Interne passed up the promising suitors that came her way to settle for a lowly newspaperman. She married him but their nuptials delivered bad news. Not until he was permanently dispatched from the storyline did she find any relief. Unfortunately, Portia Blake succumbed to similar persuasion, picking wanderlustful journalist Walter Manning for a spouse in Portia Faces Life when she had several other—and more attractive— choices. While Walter never permanently disappeared, he was gone so much that meeting deadlines would have been a virtual impossibility for him. Just as shiftless was newspaperman Bill Roberts, husband of Rosemary, who also seemed to prefer extended absences to the rumble of the presses. Face it: wedding a man who worked for a
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newspaper in radio serialdom appeared to be asking for domestic turmoil—far more than the average scribe would be assigned to cover in a normal lifetime. JOYCE JORDAN, M.D. (a.k.a. JOYCE JORDAN, GIRL INTERNE). It might seem odd that “Interne” was spelled with an “e” at the end of the word in this application. Did adding the final letter qualify the show’s moniker as the feminine expression of a possibly masculine Intern? The matter was never addressed but the “Girl Interne” preceded the “M.D.” and matured into it. Listeners experienced the advancement of a young professional woman’s career along with her. It took a quadrennial in real time (1938–42) for Jordan to pass her medical exams and qualify as a surgeon at Hotchkiss Memorial Hospital in mythical Preston. By then, she was opening every episode with this aphorism: “The sick in body, I try to heal; the sick in soul, I try to comfort; for to everyone—rich or poor, young or old—a doctor’s hand is a helping hand.” By 1948, however, a decade after her inception as an “interne,” Jordan was doing more telling about her achievements than performing them. She was then relegated to mere duties as hostess of her long-running series, narrating the tales of her make-believe patients. Her airtime at that point was short-lived. Calox tooth powder introduced her to listeners on CBS between 30 May 1938–26 May 1939. From 3 July 1939 into 1942, General Foods presented her for its La France, Satina, and Minute Tapioca brands. At that juncture, General Mills picked the show up for and carried it through 23 March 1945. On 26 March 1945, the series left CBS for NBC through 8 October 1948, when Procter & Gamble underwrote it for Dreft dishwashing detergent. There were a couple of reincarnations, too. Lever Brothers sponsored it from 10 December 1951–11 April 1952 on ABC and NBC sustained it between 3 January–1 July 1955. It took seven actresses to portray the namesake medic across a decade including (in sequence) Elspeth Eric, Helen Claire, Ann Shepherd, Betty Winkler, Rita Johnson, Gertrude Warner, and Fran Carlon. The cast was studded with radio thespians Vera Allen, Clayton (Bud) Collyer, Virginia Dwyer, Michael Fitzmaurice, Mary Jane Higby, Raymond Edward Johnson, Bill Johnstone, Frank Lovejoy, Myron McCormick, Claudia Morgan, Santos Ortega, Ethel
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Owen, John Raby, Les Tremayne, Richard Widmark, Lesley Woods, and numerous others. Produced by Himan Brown, the show was scripted by Ralph Berkey, David Driscoll, Julian Funt, and Henry Selinger. In the early years, Jordan was pursued by several suitors and encountered “the necessity of choosing between a brilliant career as a physician or becoming the wife of a wealthy man.” In the end she chose neither, becoming the spouse of a newspaperman whose family brought her little joy. She appeared to finally reach fulfillment— professional and otherwise—after he was deleted from the storyline. JUDY AND JANE. Between 8 February–17 June 1932 over CBS and 10 October 1932–26 April 1935 over NBC, the humorous soap opera persisted. It achieved subsequent success in Midwest regional transcriptions following the network run. Folger Coffee underwrote all the incarnations; it aired them through 1947 in areas where the beverage was stocked on supermarket shelves. The serial was heavy into comedy, with much of its laughter generated by a couple of funloving chums who bore the title roles. Had it not been for the jesting, both young women might have been beset by the realities in finding romance and bliss during a Depression-era existence. Margie Calvert and Joan Kay played Judy; Donna Reade, Betty Ruth Smith, Ireene [sic] Wicker and Margaret Evans were heard as the wisecracking Jane. Marvin Miller was a regular in the cast. Penned in its earliest days by Robert Hardy Andrews, an industriously fair-haired wordsmith of producers Frank and Anne Hummert, the writing task was subsequently assumed by Jim Whipple who also directed the drama at that time. JUST NEIGHBORS (a.k.a. THE THREE FLATS). A half-hour daily humorous serial scripted by William Hodapp and Cy Charles Ludlow. Betty Caine, Helen Behmiller, and Kathryn Card appeared as Carrie, Sue, and Bess, a trio of women with adjacent back porches. Mirthful reactions to everyday situations formed the apex of the show’s storyline. The series aired over NBC Blue between 30 May–23 September 1938 and was highly reminiscent of a more successful gossipy group, Clara, Lu ’n’ Em, which persisted on the air between 1930–42.
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JUST PLAIN BILL. The success of this serial cannot be underestimated for it was absolutely the very first of the daytime drama breed to demonstrate any staying power. It would, in fact, become a model of many similar features that followed in a long train of successors. A product of Frank and Anne Hummert (although at its inception she was still Anne S. Ashenhurst), it was written by an indefatigable Robert Hardy Andrews. That scribe would be turning out scripts very quickly for as many as seven concurrent Hummert audio features. Just Plain Bill arrived in the evening over CBS on 19 September 1932, following several previous attempts by the HummertAshenhurst-Andrews trio to meet with soap opera success. It soon moved to the sunshine hours. For 23 years, the homespun barber of Hartville trimmed hair and doled out philosophical bromides to townsfolk while seeking to improve their lot in life. The series acquired a long-running sponsor in a very short while. American Home Products (AHP) bought it for its Kolynos toothpaste, Anacin pain reliever, and Bi-So-Dol stomach distress reliever effective 16 January 1933. The narrative remained at CBS through 12 June 1936. Meanwhile, a daytime version was added on 16 October 1933 over CBS and nighttime performances ended in 1935. The serial subsequently transferred to NBC from 14 September 1936–15 March 1940 when it shifted to NBC Blue between 25 March 1940–31 July 1942. It returned to NBC and remained there until it was withdrawn from the air, from 14 September 1942–30 September 1955. AHP underwrote it through 25 March 1954 for an expanded list of healthcare and household goods. Miles Laboratories bought the feature effective 25 September 1954 for Alka-Seltzer stomach distress reliever and other drug brands (Bactine, Miles Nervine, One-A-Day, Tabcin, etc.), carrying it through 1 July 1955. Bill Davidson was Hartville’s good-natured tonsorial artist who was nearly everybody’s friend. Quick to champion principal over deception, unhesitatingly he took whatever action was required. Flanking the widowed Davidson were his little clan that included daughter Nancy Donovan, grandson Wiki Donovan, and son-in-law Kerry Donovan. The washboard weeper’s epigraph summarized what was to follow: “Now, to the many friends who wait for him. . .we present Just Plain Bill, barber of Hartville, the story of a man who might be living right next door to you—the real-life story of people just like people we all know.”
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Arthur Hughes played Bill Davidson for all 23 years the serial was broadcast. Ruth Russell and Toni Darnay were heard as Nancy, child impersonators Sarah Fussell and Madeleine Pierce were the voice of Wiki, and James Meighan was Kerry. Others appearing in the cast over the long run were MacDonald Carey, Clayton (Bud) Collyer, Charles Egleston, Anne Elstner, Teri Keane, Bill Lytel, Guy Sorel, Helen Walpole, and many more.
-KKATE HOPKINS, ANGEL OF MERCY. A serial that debuted in syndication in 1939, it went to CBS for General Foods’ Maxwell House coffee between 7 October 1940 and 3 April 1942. Set in mythical Forest Hills and starring Margaret MacDonald in the title role, it was billed as “the exciting story of a visiting nurse.” The tale centered on widowed nurse Hopkins and her son Tom, played by Ned Wever and Clayton (Bud) Collyer. Others in the cast were actors Peggy Allenby, Constance Collier, Raymond Edward Johnson, and Helen Lewis. Future TV star Ralph Edwards announced. Gertrude Berg and Chester McCracken penned the drainboard drama. KATIE’S DAUGHTER. Plans of protagonist Nana Harris to open in a Broadway show were interrupted by a quarrel with her beau. For a while, her story teetered on whether she could overcome personal conflicts to be a triumphant thespian. Variety countered that she departed the airwaves before that dilemma could be resolved. Hindering Nana’s intents were a Stella Dallas–Lolly Baby relationship between her and an overbearing mom. “How far should a mother sacrifice to give her daughter advantages in life she herself never had?” seemed a logical question to proffer. Nana’s mom, incidentally, was Katie Harris, central figure of the fleeting Hamburger Katie serial that preceded this one. The Frank and Anne Hummert entry arrived on NBC on 31 March 1947 for Manhattan Soap’s Sweetheart bar and Blue-White Flakes detergent. By 26 September of the same year, the serial was history. Anne Marie Gayer played Nana and Grace Cooper was Katie, cited as a “hardworking, if somewhat common, mother.” Actor Martin Blaine played Katie’s love interest.
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KAY FAIRCHILD, STEPMOTHER. “Can a stepmother successfully raise another woman’s children?” the announcer posed as this serial broke onto the ether every day. If Bud and Peggy, the stepchildren, did not present Kay Fairchild with enough obstacles, her life was further confused by divorcee Adella Winston who rivaled her own affections for her spouse John. He was terminated at the bank where he worked as a result of their affair and—seeking to avoid destitution— Kay went to work. And as if that was not enough to keep the plot boiling, the dishpan drama stirred in heaping helpings of politics, corruption, and murder to make things even more enticing and complex. Sunda Love, Janet Logan, and Charlotte Manson (in that order) played the namesake role in scripts penned by Aline Ballard, Roy Maypole, and Charles Penman. Francis X. Bushman, Bill Green, Charles Penman, and Willard Waterman appeared as John. Cornelius Peeples portrayed Bud while Peggy Wall and Barbara Fuller were heard as Peggy. The narrative arrived on CBS for ColgatePalmolive-Peet’s Colgate tooth powder and Cashmere Bouquet soap on 17 January 1938 and lasted through 10 July 1942. KEANE, TERI (1925– ). The native New Yorker seemed destined to fill soap opera roles, both as a supporting player and similarly in leading roles. Her most celebrated parts in the medium were as Carol (Chichi) Conrad in Life Can Be Beautiful (1946–54) and as Terry Burton in the fading years of The Second Mrs. Burton. In the latter drama, she was the final heroine of an open-end storyline to leave the air on “the day radio drama died” on 25 November 1960 as the daytime serials ended their long runs. Keane played the feminine lead in yet a third daytime serial, Marriage for Two, albeit for a shorter run. She enjoyed many recurring radio roles, picking them up in Big Sister, Just Plain Bill, and Road of Life. Elsewhere, she appeared in the cast ensembles of Adventure Theater, The Cavalcade of America, Gangbusters, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, Mr. Mercury, Mystery Without Murder, Show Boat, Somerset Maugham Theater, X-Minus-One and—in the 1970s and 1980s— The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Having played in Broadway productions of The Vagabond King and What a Life she easily transferred her acting skills to television serials after radio offered her little or no steady work.
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Keane appeared in recurring roles in a quartet of daytime dramas on the small screen including The Guiding Light (1957), The Edge of Night (1964–75), One Life to Live (1976–77), and Loving (1983–84). In recent years, she has been an active participant in dramatic recreations and panel presentations during the annual fall gatherings of the Friends of Old Time Radio convention held in Newark. KEEPING UP WITH DAUGHTER. Nan Dorland and Janet Kling played the lead in a humorous daytime story about “daily events in the life of a modern girl.” The series, for Sherwin-Williams paints, arrived on 30 September 1931 and departed on 22 June 1932. It was presented over NBC weekly on Wednesday mornings. KEEPING UP WITH ROSEMARY. Fay Wray appeared as a magazine reporter in the serial that aired as a summer replacement on Saturday nights between 4 July–5 September 1942 over NBC. Playing other roles were Raymond Ives, Joseph Julian, Ben Lockwood, Ruth McDevitt, Henry M. Neeley, Billy Norman, and Sydney Smith. KILMER FAMILY, THE. It might have been impractical to think that listeners would work up a lot of enthusiasm for a drama that related incidents in the life of “another average American family.” The feature appeared on NBC Blue for a 13-week run between 9 July–4 October 1935. KING’S ROW. With Francis DeSales as Dr. Parris Mitchell, chief of psychiatry at State Hospital, the serial arrived on 26 February 1951 and ended its run on 29 February 1952. It began on CBS and transferred to NBC effective 22 October 1951, both segments for ColgatePalmolive-Peet. King’s Row was the town in which Mitchell practiced and the tale was based on Henry Bellamann’s novel by that name plus a sequel, Parris Mitchell of King’s Row. Welbourne Kelley adapted the radio play. Included in the cast were actors Jim Boles, Doris Dalton, Charlotte Holland, and Charlotte Manson. KITTY FOYLE. A best-selling novel by Christopher Morley and an award-winning 1940 motion picture release, Kitty Foyle became a daytime feature not long after the film appeared. Julie Stevens portrayed
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Kitty, daughter of a working-class pop. Most episodes were consumed by anxiety resulting from a love affair she sustained with an affluent Wynn Strafford of the Philadelphia elite. His mom professed nothing but contempt for Kitty and sought to disperse her son’s infatuation. With a strong work ethic, Kitty overcame her dilemma by rejecting the wealthy society, preferring her occupation to marriage. Using the first-person narrative format the drama frequently employed flashback sequences in recalling incidents. Despite this, the radio rendering was not as successful as the story was in print and celluloid renderings. The tale was adapted to radio by Al Barker and Doris Halman. Some famous names were associated with the feature including actor Phillips H. Lord, a major audio crime series producer (Counterspy, Gangbusters, Mr. District Attorney, et al.). Mel Allen, an eminent sportscaster in succeeding years, did the announcing. Others in the cast were Clayton (Bud) Collyer, Amanda Randolph, Mark Smith, and Victor Thorley. General Mills underwrote the dishpan drama. It developed from a serialized anthology series titled Stories America Loves, which aired over CBS between 6 October 1941–2 October 1942. Modern romance classics were presented there. Kitty Foyle, launched in June 1942, proved to be the largest draw and—effective with the 5 October 1942 broadcast—replaced the omnibus stories permanently. It departed the airwaves on 9 June 1944. KITTY KEENE INCORPORATED. Married to Bob Jones and the mother of Jill, private eye Kitty Keene discovered that her professional pursuits often had to take a backseat to domestic crises. An exFollies showgirl, Keene’s past was shrouded in obscurity, remaining so even to her daughter as few particulars were revealed. The Frank and Anne Hummert production arrived on CBS on 13 September 1937, completing that sector on 31 December 1937. Shifting to MBS, it aired in a couple of fragments, from 30 May 1938 to 31 May 1940 and again from 28 October 1940 through 25 April 1941. Procter & Gamble underwrote all of the serial’s air life for its Dreft dishwashing detergent. Playing Kitty were Beverly Younger, Gail Henshaw, and Fran Carlon; Bob Bailey and Dick Wells were Jones; and their daughter, Jill, was the voice of Dorothy Gregory and Janet Logan. Others in the
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series included Cheer Brentson, Herb Butterfield, Louise Fitch, Ken Griffin, Carlton KaDell, Phillips H. Lord, and several more. Lester Huntley, Day Keen, and Wally Norman wrote the scripts. KOREAN CONFLICT. Ravages of the conflagration entered the storylines of several soap operas and sometimes left a strong impression. In Life Can Be Beautiful, a notable character in the plotting in 1952, Toby Nelson—who had long hoped to win Chichi Conrad’s hand in marriage but finally settled for friendship—departed when the U.S. Army shipped him overseas to Korea. In One Man’s Family, Jack Barbour was drafted into the service and was gone from the narrative for three years. Paul Barbour’s foster daughter, Teddy, in the meantime, pursued a fling at marriage to Elwood Giddings while she was an army nurse. But she discovered ultimate fulfillment by caring for American servicemen hurt in Korea while she was based at a U.S. Army hospital in Japan. The daytime dramas experienced two prominent brushes with reality previously including the Great Depression and World War II. When the Korean Conflict erupted in the early 1950s, a goodly number of serials acknowledged it in regular references and with some figures becoming more directly involved. There were not many doses of real-time action in most of the sudsy sagas but—in a case of overarching, far-reaching, long-lasting impact—a circumstance might come to the forefront as did these.
-LLADY COUNSELOR, THE. One of multiple continuing narratives spotlighting former silent screen star Irene Rich. Appearing under the umbrella Irene Rich Dramas, each one aired over NBC Blue between 4 October 1933 and 31 May 1942 or CBS between 5 June 1942 and 28 May 1944. See also IRENE RICH DRAMAS. LaGUARDIA, ROBERT ROCCO (1905–1995). LaGuardia authored one of the earliest texts pertaining to the genre. In 1977, Ballantine released LaGuardia’s From Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman: The Illustrated History of Soap Operas. The paperback provides a concise
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photolog of the serials, beginning with radio and continuing to TV. A single chapter on radio documents the history of its daytime dramas with a lengthy narrative followed by pictures of cast members by year of series debuts. Though published many years ago, the anecdotes and perceptive commentary still make valuable contributions. LARKIN, JOHN (1912–1965). One of the sterling masculine base voices of radio soap opera, the Oakland, California, native graduated from the University of Missouri before a career in radio took off. He played the leads in Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, Mark Trail, and Mr. Mercury. Larkin appeared on many other programs like Candid Microphone, The Chicago Theater of the Air, Dimension X, The Ford Theater, Gentleman Adventurer, High Adventure, John Steele—Adventurer, Mr. I.A. Moto, Radio City Playhouse, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and X-Minus One. But it was in serialized drama that he found his fertile sanctuary. His most important role in radio incontrovertibly was as Perry Mason, a part he carried from 1947 until the lawyer–sleuth left the airwaves at the close of 1955. Recurring roles, meanwhile, cropped up in Backstage Wife, The Brighter Day, Ever Since Eve, Helpmate, Houseboat Hannah, Kay Fairchild—Stepmother, Lone Journey, Ma Perkins, Portia Faces Life, The Right to Happiness, Road of Life, and The Romance of Helen Trent. After his radio series passed, Larkin’s crowning achievement was as Mike Karr, leading figure in one of television’s dual initial 30-minute serials, The Edge of Night, in which he starred from 1956–61. LAST OF THE LOCKWOODS, THE. Written by Bill Meredith, the 1938 NBC Blue soap opera recounted the tale of a famous family of theatrical footlights, the Lockwoods. Macdonald Carey, Betty Lou Gerson, and Judith Lowry were in the leading roles. Inspiring annotations on life as well as Shakespearean quotations were incorporated into the weekday matinee narrative. LEONARD, RICHARD ANTHONY (c1900–1979). Producers Frank and Anne Hummert obviously found Richard Leonard to their liking and that cannot be unequivocally affirmed of all their subordinates. He was employed so pervasively that he could be classi-
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fied as a top director of Air Features programming. Leonard was an effective communicator of Hummert policy: he usually played by company rules, clearly understood when he was at liberty to bend a policy and when to be rigid in applying it. As a result, he apparently gained the friendship and respect of a host of performers and behindthe-mike minions who labored in the Hummert trenches. Leonard habitually approved actors’ replacements for the rehearsals he supervised when there was a scheduling “conflict” preventing an individual from arriving at a studio on time. Not all Hummert directors were as willing to make those modifications. Born in San Francisco and a graduate of the University of California, he moved to New York City in 1922, earning a living in advertising for The New York World daily newspaper. Transferring to radio, for a dozen years—from 1943–55—Leonard not only had the responsibility of directing the Hummerts’ durable weekly crime series Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons but he was given the additional duties of editing most of the scripts for that venerable feature during much of the run. He also directed the crime drama Mr. Chameleon emanating from the Hummert factory. Yet it was in soap opera that his ability flourished. For many years, he rode herd for his employers over Backstage Wife, Chaplain Jim U.S.A., Front Page Farrell, Ma Perkins, The Romance of Helen Trent, Stella Dallas, and Young Widder Brown. In the mid-1940s a multitalented Leonard penned the dialogue and action of another producer’s soap opera, Barry Cameron, The Soldier Who Came Home. In the period that famed conductor Arturo Toscanini mounted the rostrum of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Leonard was that show’s producer, offering yet another dimension of his versatile ability. He authored a history of Russian melody, The Stream of Music, and held membership in the Society of American Historians. LEVER BROTHERS COMPANY. During 1940, it purchased $3,392,672 in radio time from CBS, putting it in first place as a schedule underwriter for that chain during that season. A large percentage of its expenditures were on soap operas. While invariably outranked in what it budgeted for serials, Lever Brothers often came in close behind the leader, Procter & Gamble, in its allocations for
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drainboard dramas in the 1930s and 1940s. Its programs espoused such brand names as Lifebuoy, Lux, Rinso, Spry, and Swan. At varying times, the firm underwrote all of these sudsy sagas: Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Big Sister, Bright Horizon, Joyce Jordan, M.D., The Life and Love of Doctor Susan, Lone Journey, and A Woman’s Life. LIFE AND LOVE OF DOCTOR SUSAN, THE. With Eleanor Phelps in the title role of Susan Chandler, this short-winded drama appeared on CBS between 13 February–29 December 1939 for Lifebuoy and Lux Flakes, products of Lever Brothers. In an atypical exhibition, announcer Frank Lewis sang many of the commercials. When her spouse disappeared on a South American jungle expedition, Chandler returned to Valleydale to assist her father-in-law at his medical practice. It was failing fast due to his inability to accept new ideas such as pressing patients to pay for services rendered and on time. Edith Meisner wrote the storyline, which included these ongoing characters: Dr. Howard Chandler, the father-in-law (played by Fred Barron), Miranda Chandler, the mother-in-law (Mary Cecil), Marilyn Chandler, Susan’s twin daughter (Gloria Mann), and Dickie Chandler, her twin son (Tommy Hughes). LIFE BEGINS (a.k.a. MARTHA WEBSTER). Campbell Soup presented the daily CBS entry between 22 January 1940 and 18 July 1941. In mid-July 1940, it was retitled Martha Webster after its protagonist. Scriptwriter–actress Bess Flynn appeared as Martha, the affluent Craig family’s housekeeper, while Ray Collins was Alvin Craig, the clan’s patriarch. Portraying sons Dick and Winfield were Jimmy Donnelly and Carleton Young; Betty Philson was Lucy Craig; and Toni Gilman was Virginia Craig. Helene Dumas, Agnes Moorehead, Jeanette Nolan, Ethel Owen, and Everett Sloane were other radio thespians in the cast. The storyline concerned Webster’s efforts to overcome severe financial hardships by finding employment in a large metropolitan city. LIFE CAN BE BEAUTIFUL. It was sometimes a heart-wrenching tale about the philosophical proprietor of the Slightly Read Book Shop, Papa David Solomon, and a couple of young wards who grew
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up under his tutelage, Carol (Chichi) Conrad and Stephen Hamilton. Destined from the start to wed one another, the two charges took radical departures from their pasts following the birth of a child. For a while, in fact, the serial made a near 180-degree turn, entering a dark period that no one might have predicted. Despite it, writers Don Becker and Carl Bixby overwhelmingly conveyed positive images and messages in the storyline, augmented with snippets from great thinkers who manifest similar outlooks, presented at the start of each episode. In the end, Chichi—inspired by her greatly admired patriarch Papa David and his teachings—kept the faith, practicing most of what the old man had espoused for many years. The serial arrived over CBS on 5 September 1938 and continued there through 21 June 1946. In the meantime, NBC picked up a simultaneous run between 1939–41. From 5 August 1946–25 June 1954, the daytime drama was aired solely by NBC. Procter & Gamble underwrote it throughout for a variety of commodities including Camay and Ivory soaps, Crisco shortening, Ivory Flakes and Ivory Snow detergents, Spic ’n’ Span household cleanser, and Tide detergent. Ralph Locke singularly played the role of Papa David. From 1938–46, Alice Reinheart was Chichi followed by Teri Keane from 1946–54. John Holbrook and Earl Larrimore appeared at varying times as Stephen. The cast was loaded with veteran radio actors including Ed Begley, Clayton (Bud) Collyer, Roger DeKoven, Elsie Hitz, Joe Julian, Richard Kollmar, Agnes Moorehead, Ethel Owen, Minerva Pious, and Ruth Yorke. LIFE OF IRENE CASTLE, THE. See IRENE CASTLE. LIFE OF MARY SOTHERN, THE. Another shiftless philanderer was on the loose in “the fast-paced story of a young mother who finds it difficult to keep her well-meaning husband’s two feet on the ground.” (It must have seemed so familiar to anybody tuning in to Valiant Lady who was at the same time attempting to keep her own spouse’s feet “planted firmly upon the pathway to success.”) While two men vied for Mary’s affection, the audience was left wondering if the victor was her best common-sense choice, given his predilection for incurable tastes.
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Historians have touted this as the first serial to be aired over the Mutual network. It sprang up on Cincinnati’s WLW in 1934–35 before being beamed to the nation from 4 November 1935–30 April 1937 over MBS and from 4 October 1937–22 April 1938 over CBS. Hinds Honey and Almond Cream and Pebeco toothpaste sponsored both national segments. Syndicated repeats by transcription were delivered to outlets between 1939–43. Progressively playing Mary Sothern were Linda Carlon, Minabelle Abbott, and Betty Caine. Among the drama’s actors were Leon Janney, Jay Jostyn, Joseph Julian, and Frank Lovejoy. Frank and Anne Hummert produced the drainboard drama and Don Becker penned the dialogue. LIGHT OF THE WORLD, THE. In a unique serial, action was based on narratives of the Old Testament, most recounted in multipart dramatizations. Pains were taken to assure listeners that the program faithfully interpreted the scriptural context by employing theologians and doctrinal readers to review the scripts before broadcasts. Because so much of the audience was already familiar with the plots, listener identification was boosted to an optimum level. General Mills underwrote the series principally for Gold Medal and Softasilk flours on two webs and included the feature as part of its “General Mills Hour” on NBC. When a flour scarcity emerged in 1946 immediately following the close of World War II, the program abruptly left the air. The outcry from fans was so great, however, that when the flour shortage abated a few months later, General Mills returned the program to the air and quickly picked up 50 percent more listeners than the serial previously had! The production, created by Don Becker, was under the auspices of Frank and Anne Hummert. Several writers contributed to the adaptations including Becker, Noel B. Gerson, Margaret E. Sangster, Adele and Katharine Seymour. A narrator, identified as The Speaker, was included in daily broadcasts. David Gothard, Bret Morrison, and Arnold Moss filled the role at varying times. Casts changed as stories altered with many actors and actresses from other daytime dramas appearing in scores of speaking parts. The serial aired on NBC between 18 March 1940–2 June 1944; it was on CBS between 12 June 1944–March 1946 (date uncertain); and it returned to NBC between 2 December 1946–2 June 1950.
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LINDA’S FIRST LOVE. It might have sounded as if this serial’s title should have read “Loves” in the plural form instead of the singular. A detailed, lengthy epigraph explicitly informed listeners what to anticipate: “This is the true-to-life story of a girl in love with the world around us, and in love with wealthy, young Kenneth Woodruff. She is a shop girl and he, a wealthy young man. The romance is frowned upon by Linda’s family and Linda faces the world with her dreams of happiness—alone! Should Linda go on fighting for Kenneth despite the opposition of his dictatorial mother, or should she return to faithful, steady Danny Grogan?” A critic ascribed Grogan as “a faithful and steady boy of her own class.” Although numerous radio historiographers documented the washboard weeper, none supplied a surname for Linda (who was played by Arline Blackburn) and none identified the actor appearing as her purportedly overpowering romantic infatuation, Kenneth Woodruff. Actor Karl Swenson, on the other hand, was the voice of Danny Grogan, her erstwhile “first love.” Mary Jane Higby portrayed the mother. Surprisingly, an appeal was made to listeners requesting plot obstacles, which one pundit branded “the lowest common denominator factor in action.” Kroger’s Spotlight Coffee sponsored it. The transcribed serial was ushered onto the airwaves to violin strings between 1939–50 in Midwest regional markets where Kroger brands were available to numerous consumers. LITTLE ITALY. With New York City’s lower East Side as a backdrop, the drama depicted life in an American ghetto. An Italian-American clan living there, the Morenos, included a dad (Papa), played by Himan Brown; mom (Mama), played by Ruth Yorke; and three offspring, played by Alfred Corn (Tony), Rose Keane (Beatrice), and Ned Wever (Nicholas). Brown also produced, wrote, and directed the show. The quarter-hour feature aired for Del L&W Coal over NBC Blue mostly on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 3 February–21 December 1933. One reviewer compared it favorably with The Goldbergs serial that focused on a Jewish family in a somewhat similar environment. LITTLE WOMEN. One of several limited-run classic book series carried by MBS five weekday afternoons between 29 September 1941–6
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March 1942, this one appeared from 9 February–6 March 1942. It starred Elaine Kent and Pat Ryan in a serialized adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel. Others in the cast included Sammie Hill, Joyce Howard, and Irene Hubbard. See also JANE EYRE; LOVE AFFAIR; MY MAN GODFREY; THE RAINS CAME. LONE JOURNEY. In this Frank and Anne Hummert production, architect Wolfe Bennett and his wife Nita had their fill of life in Chicago and retreated to Montana’s Judith Mountain where they purchased the Spear-T Ranch. The narrative trailed their attempts to start a new existence in a far-flung locale. Peabody Award winner Sandra Michael and her brother Peter penned the serial—she lived in Montana and knew the environment of Big Sky Country. Pundits indicated the pair increased the quality of daytime dramas, capitalizing on mood and ordinary conversation. At one point, the siblings assigned the scripts to someone else (Martin Magner) for a brief while; Variety said the yarn noticeably improved when the duo returned for it became far more realistic. Indeed, the serial billed itself as “the distinguished American radio novel,” even hinting at its widespread acclaim. The program arrived in broken segments, initially from 27 May 1940–25 June 1943 on NBC for Dreft dishwashing detergent and Lava soap, Procter & Gamble commodities; from 1 April–27 September 1946 on NBC for Carnation evaporated milk; from 30 September 1946–26 September 1947 on CBS also for Carnation; and finally from 2 July 1951–27 June 1952 on ABC for Lever Brothers. Claudia Morgan, Betty Ruth Smith, Eloise Kummer, and Betty Winkler were featured as Nita Bennett; Les Damon, Henry Hunter, Reese Taylor, and Staats Cotsworth were heard as Wolfe Bennett. Joan Alexander, Laurette Fillbrandt, John Hodiak, John Larkin, Dorothy Lowell, Bess McCammon, James Meighan, and other wellknown radio voices were also featured in the drama. LONELY WOMEN. Yearning secretary Judith Clark and stunning model Marilyn Larimore were central figures in a drama about gals whose men defended the nation on the battlefields of World War II. Residing at the Towers Hotel for Women, the pair’s encounters with isolation and depression contributed mightily to their ordeal in an ad-
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verse state of affairs. As might be anticipated, a couple of guys were contributed to the storyline to mix things up. The series traveled the ether via NBC between 29 June 1942 and 10 December 1943, courtesy of General Mills. Barbara Luddy appeared as Judith Clark; Betty Lou Gerson as Marilyn Larimore. At least a quartet of long-running thespians in Ma Perkins, America’s beloved “mother of the airwaves,” gained recurring parts here including Virginia Payne (Ma herself) as Mrs. Schultz, Murray Forbes (Ma’s son-in-law Willie Fitz) as Mr. Schultz, Patricia Dunlap (Perkins family friend Gladys Pendleton) as Bertha Schultz, Marilyn’s sibling, while Kay Campbell (Ma’s daughter Evey Perkins Fitz, wife of Willie) was Laura Richardson. Suitor George Bartlett was in real life Reese Taylor while both Karl Weber and Les Tremayne played Jack Crandall, another romantic interest. Herb Butterfield and Willard Waterman applied their acting skills, too. As the drainboard drama drew to a conclusion, plotting—developed by creator Irna Phillips—dovetailed into a revival of her popular earlier serial Today’s Children. Several of the characters transferred flawlessly from Lonely Women into the new version of the succeeding narrative. In an unusual twist, Frank and Anne Hummert supervised the Phillips drama (Lonely Women) for the Blackett-Sample-Hummert ad agency. It was only the second recorded instance of professional fraternization between the Hummert and Phillips camps, which were commonly perceived as rivals (though possibly relatively friendly ones) within the industry. The earlier encounter occurred when Hummert produced Painted Dreams for Phillips in 1930 on Chicago’s WGN. Most scholars consider that narrative to have been the first genuine weekday daytime soap opera. LORA LAWTON. A provocative and prolific Hummert theme was employed here: take a simple lass from the sticks (in this case, a widow) and marry her to a man of great wealth. Do you think she experienced a life of ease from then on? Hardly. She spent the rest of her days (as did so many Hummert heroines) fending off legions of vixens that tempted her spouse with their charms. Handsome shipping magnate Peter Carver, easily one of the East Coast’s most eligible bachelors, wed Lawton, his housekeeper, who launched her own
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career as a fashion designer. No stay-at-home fighting stepmom here. Operating a boutique, she consistently rose above the tramps that focused upon her hubby as the object of their affections. The serial aired for Bab-O cleanser, a leading product of B. T. Babbitt, plus its Lycons home soapmaking kit. Joan Tompkins (1943–46) and Jan Miner (1946–50) performed the honors in the namesake role while James Meighan and Ned Wever were heard as Carver. Other actors in the cast included Charita Bauer, Fran Carlon, Paul McGrath, Lawson Zerbe, and more. The dishpan drama arrived on NBC on 31 May 1943 and persisted there until it was withdrawn on 6 January 1950. LORENZO JONES. With this one, the Hummerts interrupted the pathos of matinee misery to focus on a tale that dwelled on humorous absurdities. The protagonist (a daytime version of primetime’s zany Fibber McGee, whose stability was firmly rooted in his spouse, Molly), concocted all sorts of idiotic devices. The epigraph advised listeners what to expect: “We all know couples like lovable, impractical Lorenzo Jones and his devoted wife, Belle. Lorenzo’s inventions have made him a character to the town—but not to Belle, who loves him. Their struggle for security is anybody’s story. But somehow with Lorenzo, it has more smiles than tears.” That was—until the final three years of the run when the ratings plunged. The Hummerts took immediate steps to reverse the flagging status, turning Lorenzo into an amnesiac who wandered away from home to New York City for three years, nearly becoming a bigamist while there. When the network announced plans to cancel the show anyway, Jones suddenly recalled who he was. He rapidly made his way to Belle’s waiting arms and together the couple waved farewell to a host of faithful followers. NBC aired the washboard weeper from 26 April 1937 through 9 December 1949 for Sterling Drugs and from 12 December 1949 to 1952 for Procter & Gamble’s Dreft dishwashing detergent and other goods. Beginning in 1952 Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, a P&G rival, took over the series for Colgate dental cream, Palmolive soap, and Fab laundry detergent. Near the end of the run Hazel Bishop lipsticks participated in multiple commercial sales that continued until the serial’s permanent withdrawal on 30 September 1955.
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Karl Swenson always played the part of Lorenzo Jones while Betty Garde (1937–40) and Lucille Wall (1940–55) were heard as Belle. Other familiar names in the recurring company were Art Carney, Irene Hubbard, Joe Julian, Ethel Owen, Ann Shepherd, and Helen Walpole. LOVE AFFAIR. One of several limited-run classic book series carried by MBS five weekday afternoons between 29 September 1941–6 March 1942, this one appeared from 22 December 1941–23 January 1942. See also JANE EYRE; LITTLE WOMEN; MY MAN GODFREY; THE RAINS CAME. LOVE SONG. Apparently no details of the storyline of this Hummert melodrama were registered by the medium’s permanent recordkeepers. Inaugurated as a dual-station feature over Cincinnati’s WLW and Chicago’s WGN in 1936, the serial wafted onto the MBS airwaves between 31 August 1936 and 5 March 1937 for General Mills’ Gold Medal flour. Brief runs like this one, especially when they were not aired over one of the major chains, were frequently—although regrettably—overlooked by the medium’s major chroniclers.
-MMA PERKINS. Only one other serial aired more episodes than Ma Perkins’ 7,065 chapters (it was topped by 7,222 installments of The Romance of Helen Trent). The “mother of the airwaves” persisted, with intermittent interruptions, a substantial 27 years, covering a span greater than any other soap opera on the aural-only ether. Scholars studying radio drama coined phrases for Ma Perkins, more than adequately conveying the feature’s and the heroine’s unique standing in the genre’s history. Based on its early arrival and lasting influence, one referred to it as “the mother of all soap opera,” hardly a misnomer, while another labeled the pivotal figure “the den mom of our dreams.” It was a permeating, heart-warming drama against which all other comers were almost certain to be measured. Widowed Ma Perkins lived a simple existence in the town of Rushville Center where she ran her late husband’s lumberyard. She
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demonstrated the earthy, unpretentious values characterizing rural America during the early decades of the 20th century. Considered the wisest sage in her parts, she dispensed sound counsel and reflection in times of emotional upheaval that entered the lives of those about her. Her clan included three children that she raised to adulthood single-handedly—Evey, Fay, and John. When the latter died on a European battlefield during World War II (the only fatality among the major daytime drama figures), thousands upon thousands of fans could not contain their dismay, spewing unrestrained venom upon the network, sponsor, producer, and anyone they could reach connected with the show. Their reaction was a moving testimony of their devout allegiance to the genuinely admired washboard weeper. Others within Ma’s circle of relationships included Shuffle Shober, her longtime partner in operating the Perkins Lumberyard and her closest confidant; Willie Fitz, Fay’s spouse; Junior Fitz, Ma’s grandson; several husbands of Evey who died young; and the denizens of Rushville Center and assorted distant relatives. Their lives, while common, were intertwined; the opportunity for character development over three decades was extenuating, enthralling audiences as the slow-moving story gently unfolded. Ma Perkins appeared for a trial run over Cincinnati’s WLW on 14 August 1933 when Procter & Gamble wanted to see the effect a family yarn had on sales of its Oxydol detergent. Results were so phenomenal that the program was sent to a wider audience, the cast moved to Chicago and the serial was placed in the hands of Frank and Anne Hummert (where it remained for several years). The nationwide rollout occurred on 4 December 1933 on NBC and the series persisted there to 8 July 1949. In the meantime, some concurrent runs of the popular feature aired on other networks, eventually superseding the NBC broadcasts: beginning in 1936 through 5 February 1937 on MBS; from 8 February–31 December 1937 on NBC Blue; from 3 January–27 May 1938 on CBS; from 30 May–18 November 1938 on NBC Blue; from 28 September 1942–29 June 1956 on CBS; and finally from 8 October 1956–25 November 1960, the latter “the day radio drama died.” The outcry from loyal fans that day rivaled the outpouring of protests when John Perkins died many years before.
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Deeply embedded in the very nature of the serials was the implied trust that they would go on forever. On 25 November 1960, that trust eroded, resulting in pure myth. Rushville Center and its inhabitants were swept away without a vestige that they had ever existed in Radioland. The characters that audiences had come to know so well disappeared, forgotten by the medium, never to be intersected again. It was too much for some of the faithful to comprehend; they had lost some of their very best and most dependable—albeit fictional— friends. P&G underwrote the venerable series for Oxydol (“Oxydol’s own Ma Perkins”) through 30 November 1956, a link some cited as “soap opera’s best established product identification” thanks to its durability. In the drama’s fading years, it was sold to participating sponsors like Staley for Sta-Puf laundry products, Kellogg for its cereals, CBS Records and the Columbia Broadcasting System, which sustained it. The part of Ma Perkins was always played by Virginia Payne who never missed a performance across 7,065 episodes, many of those airing two or more times daily. Other regulars were Charles Egleston (1933–58) and Edwin Wolfe (1958–60) as Shuffle Shober; Murray Forbes as Willie Fitz; Laurette Fillbrandt, Dora Johnson, and Kay Campbell (1945–60) as Evey Perkins Fitz; Rita Ascot, Cher Brentson, Margaret Draper, Laurette Fillbrandt, and Marjorie Hannan as Fay Perkins Henderson; and Gilbert Faust as John Perkins. Numerous radio veterans played in the drama penned by Robert Hardy Andrews, Lee Gebhart, Lester Huntley, Natalie Johnson, and Orin Tovrov (1939–60). Among their number were Herb Butterfield, Fran Carlon, John Larkin, Forrest Lewis, Helen Lewis, Les Tremayne, and Beverly Younger. MACDONALD, J. FRED (1941– ). An educator for 27 years at Northeastern Illinois University, today MacDonald operates a Chicagobased historical film archive for the professional creative community. The Library of Congress has signified his repository as “the most important private film collection in the United States.” MacDonald launched his teaching career with an emphasis in European history. Shifting instructional directions after developing a fascination for American pop culture, he concentrated in the social and cultural history of radio and television. He authored six books including Don’t
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Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920 to 1960. A chapter titled “Soap Operas as a Social Force” appeals to those making a serious study of that topic and is probably better researched than similar inquisitions for mass distribution. In light of what occurred to radio, MacDonald’s 1990 text One Nation Under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV will interest those who believe video’s glory days have also passed. MADAME COURAGEOUS. A short-lived serial about a divorcee, Betty Crain, played by Sarah Brayden, who was left with a family to rear. The narrative may not have lasted for a combination of reasons—most listeners were not divorced women and could not directly resonate with her (and therefore, showed little interest in her story). The idea of raising a family in hard times dominated numerous well-established soap operas (Ma Perkins had been doing it admirably for five years for one), too. The drama arrived over NBC Blue for Durkee foods (e.g., mayonnaise, salad dressings, etc.) on 26 September 1938 and departed three months hence on 23 December. MAGAZINE OF THE AIR. See HEINZ MAGAZINE OF THE AIR. MAGIC VOICE, THE. Premiering as a quarter-hour Tuesday and Saturday evening serial over CBS for Ex-Lax laxative between 15 November 1932–27 June 1933, it returned as a five-afternoon-a-week washboard weeper over NBC Blue for Procter & Gamble’s Chipso soap flakes from 30 March–28 August 1936. Elsie Hitz (possessing, according to Radio Guide, “the most beautiful voice on radio”) and Nick Dawson were featured. A source indicated she frequently read romantic verse and short stories aloud even though the series was labeled a “romantic adventure” soap opera. The principals appeared together in the medium’s Dangerous Paradise and Follow the Moon. MAILHOOKS. Promotional efforts in which a sponsor encouraged listeners to request a premium offered on a program in exchange for a label, box top, or other proof of purchase of the sponsor’s product and often accompanied by a small amount of cash. Occasionally these efforts were integrated into a narrative’s storyline as well as in commercial pitches. See also PREMIUMS.
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MAN I MARRIED, THE. A millionaire’s dispossessed son, Adam Waring, appeared in a Hummert storyline: he and his wife Evelyn attempted a fresh start in a tiny burg. But they were saddled with his addiction to alcohol, plus his lack of discipline and persistence. Combined, his foibles provided his spouse with plenty to fret over as she attempted to uphold fidelity in their home. The dishpan drama appeared between 3 July 1939–2 May 1941 on NBC for Procter & Gamble’s Oxydol washday cleanser and from 21 July 1941–3 April 1942 on CBS for Campbell’s soups. Van Heflin and Clayton (Bud) Collyer played Adam Waring while five actresses—Vicki Vola, Gertrude Warner, Dorothy Lowell, Betty Winkler, Barbara Lee—appeared as Evelyn. Actors Spencer Bentley, Jack Grimes, Raymond Edward Johnson, Arnold Moss, Santos Ortega, and Ethel Owen were among the regulars. The prolific scriptwriting team of Don Becker and Carl Bixby provided the dialogue. MANHATTAN MOTHER. Debuting in 1938 over Chicago’s WBBM and later also carried by New York’s WABC, the drainboard drama was picked up by Procter & Gamble’s Chipso soap flakes for a CBS audience between 6 March 1939–5 April 1940. The heroine, separated from her husband and with a daughter to rear, was at the apex of the narrative. Margaret Hillas and Kaye Brinker were the protagonist, Patricia Locke, while Louise Fitch and Vicki Vola appeared as her daughter Dale. Ned Wever and John Seymour were the voices of Patricia’s oft-absent spouse, Lawrence Locke. Orin Tovrov was the serial’s scribe. MANHATTAN SOAP COMPANY. An also-ran soap manufacturer that was never a serious threat to competitors (Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet) and which frequently sponsored also-ran soap operas—serials that seldom achieved large followings or that persisted for strikingly lengthy runs. Typical of the firm’s airwaves’ attempts were Barry Cameron—The Soldier Who Came Home, Family Skeleton, Katie’s Daughter, The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters, and We Love and Learn. Manhattan’s leading brands were Sweetheart soap and Blue-White Flakes detergent. It effectively used an organ rendition of “Sweetheart, Sweetheart,
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Sweetheart” to open and close what may have been its most durable narrative, The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters, a memorable and easy transition to and from its commercials. MARGO OF CASTLEWOOD. Indisputably the eldest heroine of soap opera, Margo Carver (played by Barbara Luddy) was the 79-year-old matriarch of the Carver clan. Her goals for herself remained in conflict with those of her family. Francis X. Bushman made a radio comeback to appear as her spouse. Charles Carroll and Ethel Owen were also cast as regulars. Not many homemakers identified with those aged figures, however (a pundit acknowledged that “Margo never made eighty”). The serial for Quaker Oats cereals arrived and departed on NBC Blue in a span of 20 weeks from 3 January–20 May 1938. MARIE, THE LITTLE FRENCH PRINCESS. Wedding Richard Collins, a young woman of noble birth discovered romance and contentment as a commoner in America. Scarcely recalled today, the serial aired briefly during the Great Depression when a riches-to-rags yarn would not have realized as much acclaim as a rags-to-riches tale. (Think Our Gal Sunday a short while hence, which persisted for 22 years.) Ruth York appeared as Marie while James Meighan was Richard in the Hummert-packaged washboard weeper directed by Himan Brown. Helen Choate and Allyn Joslyn were among the recurring cast. The program played twice on CBS, from 7 March 1933–27 April 1934 and again from 15 October 1934–18 October 1935 and was purportedly (according to author Vincent Terrace) CBS’s first daytime serial. During the initial run, the narrative aired only four times weekly, Tuesday through Friday; the story was increased to five weekdays on 15 October 1934. Louis Phillipe-Angelus cosmetics underwrote the feature. MARRIAGE FOR TWO. One of creator Elaine Sterne Carrington’s daytime dramas that never lived up to the prominence enjoyed by some of her other features (Pepper Young’s Family, Rosemary, When a Girl Marries, for example), it nevertheless gained footholds thrice in the midst of matinee milieu. From 11 July–23 September 1949,
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NBC presented it as a sustained feature. The Kraft Foods Company returned it to the air on NBC between 3 October 1949–31 March 1950. Finally, the serial made a comeback on ABC as a sustainer, from 8 October 1951–18 January 1952. In all, it aired a combined 52 weeks, a paltry sum when compared with Carrington’s Pepper Young’s Family, which (with multiple antecedents) hung around beyond 26 years! Also penned by Winifred Wolfe, Marriage for Two spotlighted Staats Cotsworth (as Roger Hoyt) and Teri Keane and Fran Lafferty (as Vikki Adams). Apparently not until after the principals were wed did the levelheaded Vikki discover that her affectionate spouse was also a careless chap. Coping with the hurdles that were created by his stupidity (regrettably a frequent trait in soap opera males) was the core of the storyline. Several prominent actresses appeared habitually including Marion Barney, Evelyn Varden, and Gertrude Warner. MARTHA WEBSTER. See LIFE BEGINS. MARY FOSTER, THE EDITOR’S DAUGHTER. The transcribed Midwest regional serial sponsored by the (Cincinnati-based) Kroger grocery and bakery chain appeared in the geographical territory it served. It began on 14 February 1938 and endured through 30 June 1950 and even possibly beyond in some markets. As radio historian Raymond William Stedman astutely observed, “Transcribed dramas could be popular in some areas and completely unknown in others. Rarely did they receive publicity on a national level.” Parker Fennelly was Henry Foster, editor of a small hamlet’s newspaper, The Sentinel; Joan Banks played his daughter, a reporter; and Effie Palmer was Amelia Foster, Henry’s wife and Mary’s mom. Leon Janney and Hugh Studebaker were also regulars in the cast. At the end of each episode, Henry Foster offered a “shrewd comment”— a philosophical bromide on life as he viewed it, often giving a startling figure or fact that listeners could ruminate over for a while. MARY MARLIN. See THE STORY OF MARY MARLIN. MARY NOBLE. See BACKSTAGE WIFE.
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MASQUERADE. In November 1946, when Irna Phillips’ long-running drama The Guiding Light was embroiled in a drawn-out imbroglio over Phillips’ claim as sole legal creator, General Mills bowed out as sponsor and the series left the air. A fairly new Phillips narrative, Masquerade, replaced it for the same sponsor and was the first “General Mills Hour” tale to shift origination to a new broadcast center that NBC had just opened in Hollywood. Today’s Children and Woman in White transferred to Hollywood next from their Chicagobased studios. Masquerade premiered on NBC more than a decade earlier when a couple of segments aired fleetingly from Chicago. The first was from 8 April–28 June 1935; the second was from 9 September–27 September 1935. (A letter-writing campaign by fans clamoring for the show’s return produced the second three-week run.) The longer run persisted between 14 January 1946–29 August 1947, with broadcasts emanating from Hollywood effective in July 1946. In the little town of Fairview, Iowa, Bill Summers (played by Art Seltzer) edited The Clarion newspaper. Actress Beryl Vaughn appeared as his wife Alice. Other notables included Marguerite Anderson, Francis X. Bushman, Sondra Gair, Carlton KaDell, Ned LeFevre, Gale Page, and Jack Petruzzi. Characters floated between the multiple serials within “The General Mills Hour.” See also CROSSOVER EFFECT. MEDICAL DRAMAS. Doctor shows were popular among daytime devotees. Early in her legendary career serials author Irna Phillips discovered that claiming those who peopled the professions offered much more interesting subjects than store clerks, bus drivers, and salesmen. Phillips obviously hit the nail on the head for audiences grew and stories featuring physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, therapists, and like ilk burgeoned. They included no fewer than 17 dramas, among them The Affairs of Doctor Gentry, Big Sister, Country Doctor, Doctor Kate, Doctor Paul, The Doctor’s Wife, Joyce Jordan, M.D. (preceded for several years by Joyce Jordan, Girl Interne), Kate Hopkins—Angel of Mercy, King’s Row, The Life and Love of Doctor Susan, Michael Flagg, M.D., Old Doctor Jim, Peggy’s Doctor, Road of Life, This Is Nora Drake, Woman in White, and Young Doctor Malone.
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Then, on the sidelines were figures like Dr. Anthony Loring plying his trade on Young Widder Brown, an important element of that durable serial’s storyline. Dr. Bob Graham inherited a dying comrade’s 18-year-old twin daughters on Bachelor’s Children—and eventually wed one of them. During the Korean conflict Paul Barbour’s foster daughter Teddy Giddings was an army nurse on One Man’s Family. Numerous other instances were recorded in which a medic appeared in uniform as a principal character in daytime dramas, as well as all those times when “regular folks” became ill and a doctor was summoned. In those days, physicians made house calls— just like radio did. MEET MISS JULIA. Josephine Hall played a housekeeper in a serial premiering over MBS on 10 July 1939 and lasting to 4 October 1940. A critic typified Miss Julia as “a 70-years-young, all-wise motherly” caretaker employed by a boarding house in New York City’s Gramercy Park. Other details might have been lost to history. MEET THE DIXONS. Campbell Soup sponsored a 10-week serialized yarn on CBS for its Franco-American spaghetti and sauce between 31 July–6 October 1939. The drainboard drama focused on newspaper journalist Wesley Dixon’s life at work and at home with his wife Joan. The couple struggled on a meager income and many of their ills revolved around the lack of money, even in a postDepression recovery era. Richard Widmark was Wesley and Barbara Weeks was Joan. MEIGHAN, JAMES (1906–1970). One of the true leading men of the Hummert entourage as well as one of its most active support players, Meighan possessed a distinctive voice that for decades was instantly recognizable by listeners to many soap operas and other dramatic fare. The native New Yorker, nephew of silent film star Thomas Meighan, initially appeared in several Eugene O’Neill dramas presented by the Yonkers Stock Company. On Broadway, he performed in Hamlet in Modern Dress and My Maryland. He played opposite Helen Hayes on radio in 1936 and portrayed General Dwight D. Eisenhower in a World War II vintage airing of These Are Our Men.
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Unequivocally, however, Meighan left his mark on the aural medium as a perennial daytime lead. Possibly his most visible role, from 1945–51, was as Larry Noble, “one of America’s most handsome actors . . . matinee idol of a million other women” and possessive spouse of Mary, the put-upon, selfless Backstage Wife, who invariably waited for him in the wings. For many years, when that drama left the air Meighan slipped out a side door and raced over to another NBC studio where Just Plain Bill was rehearsing. While not that story’s protagonist, he was still heard almost daily in the supporting part of Bill Davidson’s son-in-law, Kerry Donovan. Meanwhile Meighan played masculine leads in several other serials including Alias Jimmy Valentine, Dot and Will, I Love Linda Dale, Lora Lawton, Marie, the Little French Princess, Orphans of Divorce, and Peggy’s Doctor. In addition, he was featured in recurring roles in Against the Storm, By Kathleen Norris, Lone Journey, The Romance of Helen Trent, and Second Husband—for an aggregate of no fewer than 14 soap operas. He was not quite done yet, however. Meighan was the leading man in still more radio dramas including City Desk, The Falcon, Flash Gordon, Gentleman Adventurer, and Special Agent. He also appeared frequently in the casts of Death Valley Days, Hearthstone of the Death Squad, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, Mohawk Treasure Chest, and The Singing Story Lady. It exposed him to at least twodozen radio audiences. For his broadcasts, Meighan utilized a system common among a few radio actors. He took his script, removed the staple, and laid the pages on a music stand about chest high. He quietly turned the pages without the rustle of paper distracting the listeners by doing so. But, according to his daughter Ingrid, he suffered a “periodic nightmare” as he obsessed over the perchance reality that the pages might get out of order. That never happened, although Meighan fretted continually over how he would find his place as his cue arrived if that did occur. Actors had more on their minds than mere characterizations, it seems. MELODRAMAS. Indisputably the largest single subcategory of serialized narratives, melodramas focused on plotting and physical action rather than characterization. The adventure of the storyline was more compelling in melodramatic exploits than of the figures speak-
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ing the dialogue. In tales where characterization predominated (e.g., The Brighter Day, The Guiding Light, Pepper Young’s Family, Today’s Children, and, especially in their formative years, The Right to Happiness and Road of Life), choice morsels—little bits and pieces revealing more about individuals’ lives—were dropped into conversations across lengthy timeframes. Listeners were never given the whole ball of wax within a short span. In melodramas, on the other hand, such minutiae were practically ignored. Of the three leading creative camps out of which most soap opera emerged, Irna Phillips was easily the foremost exponent of characterization. Elaine Carrington ran her a distant second. It was Frank and Anne Hummert who led the way in offering their audiences a surfeit of melodramatic yarns. They practically ignored characterization altogether, in fact. The bulk of their serials dwelled on a deteriorating state of affairs into which a heroine’s circumstances was spiraling. At the same time, her resolute strength in fighting against what often appeared to be insuperable probabilities was emphasized, and sooner or later her mettle proved equal to the task. Prime examples of several durable melodramas (most of them, but not all, produced by the Hummerts) included Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, David Harum, Front Page Farrell, Hilltop House, Just Plain Bill, Lora Lawton, Our Gal Sunday, Perry Mason, Portia Faces Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, Stella Dallas, Wendy Warren and the News, Young Doctor Malone, and Young Widder Brown. MICHAEL FLAGG, M.D. One recording of this “series” is known to exist for 5 October 1954. Despite that, the program is undocumented by almost a dozen venerated radio historiographers that normally offer details on serials airing from a few weeks to several decades. Without more citations, the status hints at the possibility of an audition tape of a single episode and, perhaps, that the program never actually aired—or at least did not do so beyond the trial effort. MIDSTREAM. With Pauline Hopkins fleshing out the dialogue, this soap opera focused upon a married couple that had reached middle age and faced the realities of personal midlife crises. A good deal of the fallout adversely affected their offspring. The Procter & Gamble
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serial for Teel toothpaste began over Cincinnati’s WLW in 1938, moving to dual NBC chains on 1 May 1939. It persisted on the Blue web through 29 March 1940 and on the Red through 27 September 1940. The drainboard drama made a comeback on NBC Blue between 24 March–14 November 1941. Hugh Studebaker, Russell Thorson, and Sidney Ellstrom (as Charles Meredith) and Betty Lou Gerson and Fern Persons (as his wife Julia) had—as an announcer reminded fans with every installment—“reached the halfway mark between the distant shores of birth and death.” Mercedes McCambridge played their agitatedly wed daughter Midge. Willard Farnum appeared as their son David. Others in the cast included Stanley Bartlett, Bill Bouchey, Laurette Fillbrandt, Sharon Granger, Marvin Miller, Olan Soule, Lesley Woods, and more. MILES LABORATORIES INCORPORATED. An Elkhart, Indiana, drug manufacturer that stepped into radio and especially soap opera in a big way in the 1950s as other longtime sponsors were withdrawing, many of the departing advertisers shifting the bulk of their budgets to television. Miles was sole underwriter of several daily serials during the period including Hilltop House, Just Plain Bill, One Man’s Family, The Woman in My House, and others. Its most popular brand names included Alka-Seltzer, Bactine, One-a-Day, Miles Nervine, and Tabcin. MILLER, MARVIN (1913–1985). Few individuals, if any, would appear on as many shows of sundry types as Marvin Miller. He possessed a remarkable and uncanny ability to add more and more series to an already burgeoning portfolio of audio programs, a feat he would flawlessly transfer to movies and television before quitting. Over his lifetime Miller’s voice resonated on no fewer than 96 discrete continuing broadcast features. It was a record that others might only dream about and almost certainly envy. Born in St. Louis, Miller developed an interest in radio while a student at Washington University. At hometown station KMOX, he launched a career on the ether and soon became a freelance announcer. In his late twenties, he was appearing on 40 Chicago-based radio programs weekly, also adding acting to his professional inventory. He transferred to Los Angeles in
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the 1940s, gaining parts in a diverse lot of dramatic fare while continuing to announce many more sequences. In soap opera, Miller’s velvet-toned narration introduced fans to episodes of Aunt Mary, Dreft Star Playhouse, Irene Rich Dramas, Lonely Women, Ma Perkins (on which he employed the pseudonym Dan Donaldson to avoid a conflict with another sponsor), and Woman from Nowhere. He gained ongoing roles in the storylines of several washboard weepers, too, including The Affairs of Anthony, Backstage Wife, Family Skeleton, The Guiding Light, Judy and Jane, Kay Fairchild—Stepmother, Midstream, One Man’s Family (where he played 20 different parts), The Right to Happiness, Road of Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, Scattergood Baines, Today’s Children, and Woman in White. That gave him constant exposure to the audiences of 20 daytime dramas, believed to be a record among males. Only Ethel Owen appears to have superseded him with documented evidence of her participation in no fewer than 22 serials. His other radio acting/announcing/hosting credits include these series: The Andrews Sisters Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch, Armchair Adventures, Aunt Jemima, Author’s Playhouse, Beat the Band, Behind the Story, Beulah, The Bickersons, The Billie Burke Show, Bold Venture, The Buster Brown Gang, Captain Midnight, The Chicago Theater of the Air, The Cisco Kid, Confession, Coronet Storyteller, Cousin Willie, The Danny Thomas Show, A Date with Judy, Dear Mom, The Don Ameche Show, Dragnet, Duffy’s Tavern, The Family Theater, Father Knows Best, The Gay Mrs. Featherstone, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Great Gunns, Harold Teen, Heartbeat Theater, The Hotpoint Holiday Hour, Jack Armstrong—the All-American Boy, Jeff Regan—Investigator, The Jo Stafford Show, Knickerbocker Playhouse, Lassie, Louella Parsons, Maisie, The Martin and Lewis Show, Marvin Miller and the News, Marvin Miller—Storyteller, Me and Janie, Mr. First Nighter, Moon Dreams, Name the Movie, The NBC University Theater, The Old Gold Show, Peter Quill, Play Broadcast, Press Club, The Railroad Hour, The Red Skelton Show, Roy Rogers, The Rudy Vallee Show, The Sears Radio Theater, Songs by Sinatra, Space Patrol, Stars Over Hollywood, Stop That Villain, Strange Wills, Tell It Again, That Brewster Boy, The Theater of Famous Radio Players, This Is Life, Treat Time, Uncle Walter’s Dog House, The Whistler, and Wings of Destiny.
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On CBS-TV, Miller played Michael Anthony in The Millionaire (1955–60), delivering million-dollar cashier’s checks from imaginary John Beresford Tipton to surprised recipients. He provided voiceovers for television’s The F.B.I. and a trio of cartoons—Aquaman, The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, and Fantastic Voyage. He appeared as numerous oriental figures in film and TV shows, starring as infamous sleuth Dr. Yat Fu on ABC-TV’s Mysteries of Chinatown crime drama in 1949–50. Conversely, Miller was the evil Mr. Proteus in ABC-TV’s Space Patrol juvenile adventure (1951–52). At age 71, he recorded a five-minute syndicated series called Almanac that was distributed to local stations as a lead-in to area weather reports. No other individual comes to mind in possessing an ability to top Miller’s wealth of on-air contributions to broadcast history. MINER, JAN (1917–2004). Soft-spoken actress Jan Miner, more than anyone else, is recognized in serialdom for a peerless portrayal of the heroine of CBS’s Hilltop House, Julie Erickson Paterno Nixon (including both of her married monikers). “Miss Julie” was superintendent of the orphanage and projected a deep affection for each member of the community’s residents and staff. Her voice empathized with the concerns of sometimes unwanted adolescents. Miner’s most memorable series was, as the epigraph stated, “the story of a woman who must choose between love and the career of raising other women’s children.” Although she did not originate the part, Miner carried it during the show’s halcyon days in the late 1940s and throughout most of the 1950s. The Boston-born actress was destined to become a veteran star of stage, film, radio, and television, entering New York radio in the mid1940s after a stint on a local Hartford, Connecticut, station. In 1946, she won the title role on the NBC soap opera Lora Lawton, a Hummert property, which she played until it left the air four years hence. She also became the heroine of yet a third daytime drama, The Second Mrs. Burton, albeit fleetingly. Meanwhile, she appeared in more radio dramas with recurring roles in Boston Blackie, Casey—Crime Photographer, I Love Linda Dale, and Perry Mason. She was in supporting roles on Barry Craig—Confidential Investigator, The Chase, Cloak and Dagger, Dimension X, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, The Mysterious Traveler, My Secret Story, Radio City Playhouse, and X-Minus One.
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Beyond radio, Miner appeared in a couple of motion picture releases, The Swimmer (1968) and Lenny (1974). On Broadway, she was in Watch on the Rhine. Her TV credits included Crime Photographer (1951–52) and Robert Montgomery Presents (1954–56). In 1997, she appeared on the AMC cable channel in Remember WENN. She is also recalled as Madge the Manicurist, the product spokeswoman on long-running TV commercials aired internationally for Palmolive dishwashing liquid. There is a twist of irony in that: Palmolive was the first sponsor of Hilltop House—before Miner emigrated there. MINNIE AND MAUD. An unusual serial in every way, this one aired for 10 minutes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings over NBC Blue between 18 December 1935 and 5 February 1936. Billed as a tale of “human appeal and native comedy,” it was listed as the first—and irrefutably only—soap opera to focus on the lives, customs, and idioms of the Pennsylvania Dutch community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The names of the actors have, unfortunately, been lost to history. MIRACLES OF MAGNOLIA. In an early soap opera scenario that seldom worked very well, Fanny Mae Baldridge assumed all the speaking roles. Southern lifestyle was the theme of the dramatic serial. It appeared over NBC Blue between 1931–33 although specific dates appear to have been lost. MISS HATTIE. Famed actress Ethel Barrymore starred as “Miss Hattie” Thompson while Eric Dressler played her husband and Dick Van Patten and Lois Wilson were their offspring. Described as “a typical American family,” the Thompsons were at the center of a storyline that encountered “normal, everyday problems.” John Gibson, Warren Parker, and Andree Wallace were in the recurring cast. The 30-minute Sunday afternoon serialized drama arrived on ABC for Alcoa tin foil aluminum on 17 September 1944 and persisted to 17 June 1945. MODERN CINDERELLA (a.k.a. BROADWAY CINDERELLA). This was a child’s fairy tale brought to life. Hope Carter, Larry Burton, and Jimmy Gale were principals in a romantic tease in which Carter
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tried to improve her social lot through discovering the man of her dreams. Rosemary Dillon and Laine Barklie played Carter, Eddie Dean was Burton, and Ben Gage was Gale. David Gothard also performed here. The Hummert-backed drama auditioned on Chicago’s WGN before claiming a CBS berth from 1 June 1936–2 July 1937 for General Mills’ Gold Medal flour. MODERN ROMANCES. If the sometimes unique narrative treatments rendered by Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, The Light of the World, and Whispering Streets can be discounted, this feature probably maintained a better track record for longevity among serialized anthology dramas than the rest of a limited breed. It first appeared on NBC Blue on 7 October 1936 on Wednesday afternoons only through 31 March 1937 sponsored by its namesake Modern Romances magazine. While the show was off the air for the next dozen years, it returned variously for six and then five weekdays on ABC on 11 April 1949 through 2 February 1951. Multiple advertisers underwrote it through 5 August 1950 after which Norwich Pharmacal purchased it for Pepto-Bismol stomach distress reliever and Unguentine medicated ointment. The program persisted as a sustainer on ABC between 13 August–12 October 1951; it shifted to NBC on Saturday mornings only from 14 March–29 August 1953; it returned to ABC for Ex-Lax laxative weekdays from 5 October 1953–2 July 1954; and ended its run there under multiple sponsorship between 26 July 1954–25 February 1955. Other than a narrator, Gertrude Warner (at times augmented by Eloise McElhone or Kathi Norris) appeared as the only ongoing voice in a compilation of quixotic tales. She appeared as Helen Gregory, purportedly the editor of Modern Romances magazine, from which the narratives were drawn. Even though the publication actually sponsored very little of the serial, it was a splendid reinforcement that constantly reminded listeners of its literary ties. A pundit assessed the aural adaptations as “confession stories in a third-person style which exchanged secret sharing for keyhole peeping.” Casts changed with every story. Scriptwriters included Ira Marion, Margaret E. Sangster, Lillian Schoen, and Don Witty. As the anthology’s radio days ebbed, it made it to NBC-TV under the same title on 4 October 1954 where the series persisted to 19 Sep-
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tember 1958. Producers figured if it agreed with hearing audiences it might work even better with those able to see the plays, still based on the same periodical’s fiction. A new five-part yarn was introduced every week and was presented in quarter-hour installments. Martha Scott was the original TV hostess followed by Mel Brandt as host and, still later, by various guest celebrities. MOLLY OF THE MOVIES. In this Hummert drama, a young girl attempted to launch a career in the motion picture industry. Her frustrations, disappointments, and accomplishments formed the basis of the plot. With Gene Byron in the lead as Molly, other recurring players included Betty Caine and Ray Jones. Thompson Buchanan created the dialogue and the series was underwritten by Wander for Ovaltine beverages. It persisted on MBS between 4 November 1935 and 23 April 1937. MOMMIE AND THE MEN. As tantalizing as the title sounded, listeners were probably disappointed when they discovered that the plots surrounded a lady and the four men in her life—who turned out to be her spouse and three sons. So frustrated was the audience, in fact, that the serial lasted only two five-day weeks—a total of 10 broadcast episodes—on CBS. It very probably holds the record in daytime narrative “shortjevity.” The feature aired between 27 August–7 September 1945. Elspeth Eric and Lon Clark were the mom and pop to offspring played by Dolores Gillen, Jackie Grimes, and Charles Mullen. Gillen, incidentally, was a child impersonator on several soap operas. Others in the ill-fated Procter & Gamble dishpan drama were Richard Keith and Sid Ward. MOONSHINE AND HONEYSUCKLE. A direct precursor to the daytime soap opera, the serialized tale espoused the earthy colloquialisms of Southern mountaineers. Premiering in 1930, it was a sustained Sunday afternoon half-hour feature on NBC. It persisted through 23 April 1933. The program was set in the rural community of Lonesome Hollow and was characterized by homespun country humor. The feature was favorably compared with the radio series Lum ’n’ Abner. Principals in the storyline were Louis Mason as Clem Betts, Ann Sutherland as Ma Betts, Clyde Cooper as Pegleg Gaddis, and Anne Elstner as
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Cracker Gaddis. Lula (sometimes expressed “Lulu”) Volmer was the series scribe. MORGAN, CLAUDIA (1911–1974). Hailing from a family of celebrated thespians—including Ralph Morgan (father) and Frank Morgan (uncle), both theatrical professionals—Claudia Morgan followed in their footsteps. Not only was she successful on Broadway but also in touring companies as Maggie Cutler in The Man Who Came to Dinner. The Brooklynite appeared in her first stage play at 17. She studied drama at Yale. In 1939, she landed a continuing part in the debuting radio serial Against the Storm. It was the first of several roles she would acquire on features including David Harum, Joyce Jordan, M.D., and Lone Journey. But to daytime audiences she would be singularly and forever recalled as the protagonist of The Right to Happiness. There, for 18 years (1942–60) when it left the air with the last of the remaining washboard weepers, she played the oft-wedded, composed, resolute Carolyn Allen Walker Kramer Nelson MacDonald (“the most married heroine in radio”). Morgan was also a steady presence in the casts of other radio shows like The Adventures of the Abbotts, Dimension X, The Falcon, The Ford Theater, Glamour Manor, Hildegarde’s Radio Room, Quiet Please, Radio City Playhouse, and X-Minus One. Her most distinguished primetime character was as Nora Charles in The Adventures of the Thin Man (1941–50). When that role delayed the start of a production of Ten Little Indians every Friday night, she lost her part in the stage play to honor her broadcast contract. In early 1955, Morgan enjoyed a brief stint on Way of the World, an NBC-TV dramatic anthology. She returned to the microphone in the early 1970s to appear in The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. MORSE, CARLTON E. (1901–1993). One of radio’s most prolific and literary authors, Morse achieved acclaim with nearly every product his typewriter produced, though never surpassing his Peabody Award-winning 27-year familial tale of the Barbours, One Man’s Family. The Jennings, Louisiana native, with two years of formal education at the University of California behind him, gained a reportorial spot with The Sacramento Union. He subsequently moved to The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, and back to the Chronicle. At 28, he left print journalism to enter the exciting new world of
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radio. Morse pioneered there by scripting drama, action, and adventure programs. He penned the little recalled Mystery Serial for a West Coast audience as early as May 1930. “There is no medium that will ever attract the same kind of attention as radio,” he declared. “Nothing will be as equal to the imagination.” An inspired genius, he developed One Man’s Family in 1932 and a couple of other soap operas afterward—Family Skeleton and The Woman in My House. These stories were characterized by Morse’s strong reverence for paternalism and family life. Each depicted a conservative image of domestic connections. Indeed, when his beloved One Man’s Family finally bit the dust in 1959, he told a Los Angeles newspaper: “My own sorrow is not so much in the cessation of the show as such as in the thought that one more happy, sober beacon to light the way has been put out. One more marker has been torn down. . . . The signposts for sound family life are now few, and I feel the loss of One Man’s Family is just another abandoned lighthouse.” Some of his more popular evening radio creations included Adventures by Morse, His Honor—the Barber, I Love a Mystery, and I Love Adventure. Morse prepared his scripts with individual actors in mind, separating him from the pack of prominent serial and dramatic writers. He did this, he said, even before he added new characters to his narratives. After his radio series folded, Morse penned a trio of well-received novels, A Lavish of Sin, Killer at the Wheel, and Stuff the Lady’s Hatbox. MOTHER-IN-LAW. Whether it was the subject matter or something else, this sudsy saga was not around long enough to register a lot of notice. Its duration on NBC Blue lasted from 21 March–13 May 1938, a meager eight weeks. A single reviewer who did recall it credited “the source of nuptial discord” as the series’ titled figure. “The mother-in-law—not surprisingly in a program intended for women— was treated sympathetically,” the critic observed. A mother-in-law was prominent at one time or another in legions of daytime serials. Actress Marion Barney portrayed the role in three narratives simultaneously—Pepper Young’s Family, Rosemary, and When a Girl Marries. The first of that trio offered listeners dual examples of the relative, a favorable and a not-so-favorable in-law. Both a noble and an evil mom turned up in Stella Dallas. One earned a bad rap for underhanded shenanigans while the other—heroine
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Stella—was blessed with a son-in-law who openly preferred her to his own ma! Stella may have been the best-remembered mother-inlaw in serialdom. In The Second Mrs. Burton, the character was caught up in her own whims—with her son resenting that fact and his wife passing it off humorously. In daytime drama, each mom put her own brand on the role of the fabled mother-in-law figure and in doing so applied certain enchanting dimensions. MOTHER O’ MINE. With Agnes Young as Mother Morrison—who frequently addressed the listening audience directly—the drama for Clapp’s baby foods aired on NBC Blue between 30 September 1940 and 4 July 1941. Following the death of her spouse, who left her virtually penniless, Mother Morrison sold her house and moved to a farm occupied by her married son John, his wife Helen, and kids, Anne and Pete. Interpersonal frictions abounded as the generations attempted to make living adjustments. Included in the cast were Donald Cook as John, Ruth Yorke as Helen, Pattee Chapman as Anne, Jackie Kelk as Pete, Arthur Allen as Pop Whitehouse, and Paul Nugent as Paul Strong. MOVING STORIES OF LIFE. A 1930s syndicated quarter-hour serial overlooked by every major soap opera documentarian. The reason is possibly because the drama was not aired on a network, or might have had a brief lifespan, or was perhaps heard by listeners in a very small geographical territory—or a combination of those speculative rationalizations. MR. GOOD. A quarter-hour soap opera aired for Lydia Pinkham pharmaceutical products. No descriptive details about the series have been found. MR. MEADE’S CHILDREN. From 9 February–15 May 1942, this five-day-a-week soap opera lingered on MBS. Margaret Ryan was featured in the lead. MRS. MINIVER. Based on Jan Struther’s novel, the half-hour dramaby-installment initially aired on Friday nights beginning 7 January 1944. In mid-June, it moved to Saturday nights and continued through 7 October 1944, always on CBS. The aural tale continued from the
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point that the book and a motion picture sequel ended in which a heroic British family during wartime came to America and had to adjust to life in a new land. Judith Evelyn and Karl Swenson portrayed the matriarch and patriarch at the start, replaced by Gertrude Warner and John Moore on 1 July. Nila Mack, of Let’s Pretend fame, produced and directed the series adapted for radio by Carl Bixby and Margaret Lerwerth. Arnold Moss narrated; Nathan Van Cleve’s orchestra supplied the music for the epic serial. MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH. Frank and Anne Hummert adapted Alice Caldwell Rice’s novel to radio for a feature that originated on CBS for Jad effervescent salts from 4 February 1935–11 September 1936. It shifted to NBC from 14 September 1936–30 December 1938 with American Home Products picking up the latter segment for its Olde English wax and Hills cold tablets. It was purportedly the first web drainboard drama to be based on a novel, a variation of the mythical tale about life in an urban ghetto in Louisville, Kentucky. The Cabbage Patch was a respectful term for a shantytown outside a bustling city in the early 20th century. The Wiggs family, including Elvira and Hiram and their son Billy, was on poverty row. The drama focused on their lives, given the background of struggles to improve unfortunate circumstances. Despite it Mrs. Wiggs—who ran a bakeshop with Miss Hazy—was introduced as “a friend of every neighbor, always first to forget herself and lend a helping hand.” Betty Garde and Eva Condon portrayed the title role with Robert Strauss as Hiram and Andy Donnelly as Billy. Others in the recurring cast were Joe Latham (Mr. Stebbins), Agnes Young and Alice Frost (Tabitha Hazy), Marjorie Anderson (Lucy Alcott), and Frank Provo and Bill Johnstone (Bob Redding). MULTIPLE AIRINGS. On rare occasions, usually after a serial became incredibly popular with listeners although infrequently in introducing a new drama just going on the air, advertisers purchased time on two separate networks to air the same feature—and same storyline—on the same day. It was not as uncommon in daytime radio then as it might seem so today. Although some of the dual broadcasts ran for periods of only a few months, others persisted for several
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years. Several of the better recalled (and more firmly entrenched) soap operas benefited from this pervasive treatment, among them Hilltop House, Ma Perkins (which maintained concurrent runs at varying times on all four major networks, two at a time), Midstream, Myrt and Marge, The O’Neills, Pepper Young’s Family (which, in 1937–38, achieved the unthinkable by airing every weekday on three national chains), Road of Life, This Is Nora Drake, and a few more. Broadcasting the same drama twice helped draw in larger audiences for if homemakers were not available for one airing, they might be able to tune in at a more convenient hour. As the same actors appeared on all the networks in different narratives all day long, there was no legal consideration in their appearing on a serial for, say, CBS in the morning and performing it again on NBC in the afternoon. Such multiple opportunities often doubled their take-home pay. From 1952–56, CBS Radio listeners could, at their option, see what they had been hearing as The Guiding Light was carried on CBS-TV, a practice several serials followed, although most of them for briefer runs. MUSICAL DRAMAS. While music was integrated into virtually every soap opera in some form—if only as each serialized tale wafted onto and off the airwaves, or in commercials—fewer than a dozen narratives made it the central theme of their existence. A few features combined several elements such as interviews, comedy, music, and drama in a mixed bag tilted toward amusing antics, occasionally with a territorial or ethnic bent. Included were Caroline’s Golden Store, Happy Hollow, Joe Powers of Oakville, Seth Parker, and the omnibus Heinz Magazine of the Air. Over its brief airtime the latter series offered listeners two different sketches, Trouble House and Carol Kennedy’s Romance combined with added expositions. There were a couple of soap operas, at least, in which the actors (or voices substituting for them) sang during the dramatic sketches. Both Dreams Come True and The Girl Next Door thrived on that inimitable departure, the second appearing to be little more than a conduit for signifying the vocal range of baritone Barry McKinley. In the meantime, We Are Always Young presented an aspiring composer who paid the bills as an apprentice by driving a cab. And soap opera’s most costly venture, budgeted at a half-million dollars annually, was
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a musical extravaganza—The Gibson Family—and a dismal flop. Soapmaker Procter & Gamble lost its proverbial dirty shirt as large numbers balked over that production’s gamble (no pun intended) for a large evening audience despite proffering original music and lyrics. It can be safely said, in fact, that none of the serials in which music was a key element persisted for long when compared with their counterparts that left melody to an organ, piano, harmonica, or strings and concentrated solely on dialogue and action. MUTUAL BROADCASTING SYSTEM (MBS). Debuting in the summer of 1934, it initially consisted of a quartet of radio stations in the Midwest and East that created dynamic programming for sharing with its members. Interconnecting operations by wire lines resulted in services to prospective advertisers at group rates. The foursome included Chicago’s WGN, Cincinnati’s WLW, Newark’s WOR, and Detroit’s WXYZ. Originating as the Quality Network, their name was altered to Mutual Broadcasting System on 29 September 1934. Unlike its competition, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Mutual had no central ownership, no owned-and-operated stations or contractual affiliates. Within a decade, MBS was comprised of 245 stations; by 1952, it boasted 560 outlets, nearly three times as many as either of the most listened to networks. By 1979, it reached a peak of 950 member stations. Soap opera arrived late at MBS and never generated the audiences that it did at CBS and at the Blue and Red networks of NBC. The fact that most MBS affiliates maintained low power and therefore reached fewer listeners, despite many outlets, explains that circumstance. Advertisers could buy time on MBS far more cheaply than on the rival webs for that reason. As a result, they often tried out new dramas on Mutual to see if an audience could be found. Those that caught on were often quickly transferred to a more prestigious network with greater capacity to reach millions more listeners. MY MAN. A transcribed serial that featured an all-black cast, this was one of four daytime dramas produced by Negro Radio Stories. Others in the quartet included Ada Grant’s Neighbors, Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories, and The Romance of Julia Davis.
156 • MY MAN GODFREY
Although black audiences were seldom given such extensive prominence earlier, by the 1950s radio was beginning to make limited attempts to expose African-American listeners to entertainment fare that had heretofore effectively ignored them. MY MAN GODFREY. One of several limited-run classic book series carried by MBS five weekday afternoons between 29 September 1941–6 March 1942, this one appeared from 10 November–21 November 1941. See also JANE EYRE; LITTLE WOMEN; LOVE AFFAIR; THE RAINS CAME. MY SON AND I. Originating as a couple of one-act plays on singer Kate Smith’s daytime talk-variety show, the feature was transferred into its own serialized narrative by sponsoring General Foods for Calumet baking powder and Swans Down cake mixes. The dishpan drama gained its berth on CBS on 9 October 1939 and occupied it until 3 January 1941. The spouse of protagonist Connie Watson (played by Betty Garde), an ex-vaudevillian with stage name Connie Vance, died. It left Watson with a 10-year-old boy, Buddy Watson (played by Kingsley Colton), to rear. Other principals in the plot were Aunt Minta Owens (Agnes Young), Aunt Addie (Gladys Thornton), Kent Davis (Alan Hewitt), and Bruce Barrett (John Pickard). Frank Provo wrote the scripts. MYRT AND MARGE. One of serialdom’s earliest influential dramas, it arrived on 2 November 1931 over CBS for William J. Wrigley, continued through 27 May 1932, and returned to the same web for the same sponsor between 29 August 1932–1 January 1937. From 4 January 1937 through 27 March 1942, it appeared on CBS for ColgatePalmolive-Peet’s Super Suds detergent. It also aired concurrently over MBS from 27 March–6 October 1939. Four years after the final network run a five-day weekly syndicated rendering was distributed to local outlets; it originated over New York’s WOR between 1 April–30 August 1946. Myrt Spear was a hard-boiled veteran stage actress–chorus girl while the younger Marge Minter was a novice thespian. Although Myrt tried to protect the pretty fresh face from intimidating pressures, consternation between the two arose and lingered sometimes when
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the pair vied for the same parts and for the same men. Marge had several suitors; the one she eventually wed, lawyer Jack Arnold, became a crimefighting assistant district attorney. Myrtle Vail, who played Myrt, also wrote the scripts. In real life, she was the mother of Donna Dammerel Fick, the initial Marge, who died giving childbirth in real life on 15 February 1941. Helen Mack, Alice Goodwin, and Lucy Gilman subsequently acquired her role. Vinton Hayworth played Marge’s husband Jack. Other notable actors performing there included Cliff Arquette, Jackson Beck, Ed Begley, Matt Crowley, Joseph Curtin, Roger DeKoven, Michael Fitzmaurice, Vivian Fridell, Raymond Edward Johnson, Santos Ortega, Olan Soule, Henrietta Tedrow, and Alice Yourman. MYSTERY MAN, THE. An anthology of detective yarns told in a few episodes, it arrived on NBC on 24 March 1941 and departed on 6 March 1942 for General Mills’ Wheaties cereal. Radio historian Raymond William Stedman aptly summarized it: “General Mills tried dramatizations of popular suspense novels on The Mystery Man. First was Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Window at the White Cat. Using a surprisingly effective theme from Swan Lake and an impressive narrator, Jay Jostyn (Mr. District Attorney), The Mystery Man was a good escapist series, inserted in a favorable position within The Gold Medal Hour. It failed, nevertheless. Respectable but not spectacular ratings were not enough for a prime broadcasting spot when Irna Phillips stood ready with a new, and open-end, drama needing a home.” MYSTERY SERIAL. An unassuming title for an NBC West Coast network feature that ran between 2 May 1930–20 June 1932, overlapping author Carlton E. Morse’s debuting premier drama One Man’s Family by a couple of months. The narrative originated on Friday evening, switched to Wednesday effective 21 October 1931, and to Monday on 18 April 1932.
-NNATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY (NBC). When it was created on 9 September, 1926, NBC’s ownership was divided three
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ways—Radio Corporation of America (50 percent), General Electric Corporation (30 percent), and Westinghouse Corporation (20 percent). NBC inaugurated the era of major radiocasting networks on 15 November, 1926. The outfit was soon widely recognized for programming dual competitive operations designated as the Red and Blue networks. In larger markets, the chain sustained two affiliates to carry its separate schedules. The arrangement continued into the 1940s when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced NBC to sell one of its webs to avoid a perceived monopoly of the airwaves. In midOctober 1943, it released the Blue chain. The Red network simply was known as NBC while the other was called the Blue Network until it became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1945. From the genre’s inception in the early 1930s, soap opera was a bastion of NBC’s daytime programming on its dual chains. Dozens of serials destined for the ears of millions of American homemakers aired throughout weekdays for nearly three decades on the Red system and for a dozen years on NBC Blue. In 1942, the latter web withdrew its open-end daytime dramas, virtually ignoring the breed until 1951. As the Blue chain moved to a new owner, only one such serial (Sweet River) aired, lasting less than a year. On the other hand, NBC (Red) continued to program daytime serials to April 1959. NBC schedulers made a colossal blunder in 1955 when the daytime slate was nearly wiped clean to provide a half-dozen hours daily for an omnibus feature dubbed Weekday. That magazine arrived on the heels of an impressive weekend reception by the network’s newly instituted Monitor series. The brass believed housewives could be attracted to a similar concept Monday through Friday. It polished off several soap operas and audience participation features that had drawn crowds to NBC for decades. When Weekday flopped, NBC had little to offer the homemakers to bring them back after longstanding listening habits had been irretrievably broken. Though it rushed to replace the scheduling holes with several new dramas, things were never the same. The network’s ability to compete for soap opera listeners effectively ended in 1955, although it persisted in the quest for another four years. NIELSEN COMPANY, A. C. When Nielsen started producing radio audience estimates in the 1940s, it embarked on a different method
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from one already in place by the firm of C. E. Hooper Incorporated. Nielsen outfitted thousands of households with audiometers, an electronic device intended to offer a more reliable picture of what Americans were hearing on their radios than common telephone surveys provided. Using paper tape, the audiometer continuously printed out records of every moment a radio was turned on, graphically depicting the station to which the radio was tuned. The numbers obtained often turned out to be similar to those the Hooper organization gained with its method. In later years, Nielsen purchased Hooper and the two companies’ efforts were combined to compute the nation’s TVviewing habits. These measures had a strong effect on how advertising time was billed, derived by how many people and—eventually— who were/was in the audience. This data was of great interest to networks, advertising agencies, and producers as well as those who underwrote daytime and nighttime series. NIESEN, CLAIRE (1920–1963). For the lion’s share of its 24-year run, Backstage Wife and Claire Niesen were inseparable. She personified that durable washboard weeper’s focused heroine every time out. The matchless, faithful, nonplussed spouse of matinee idol Larry Noble—who was one of the most hounded and still jealous men in serialdom—Mary Noble’s alter ego Niesen consistently projected the appealing inflections required by the role: invariably soft-spoken, tenderhearted, and forgiving. Her empathetic expressions contributed to winning the part and helping her keep it for the final 14 years the serial was on the air (1945–59). When tested under colossal duress in the narrative, her even-tempered disposition was reflected in controllable recitations of often-banal dialogue that were torn from the typewriters of Hummert hacks. Niesen, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, was practiced when she became Mary Noble at age 25. Nine years earlier, she captured the part of Peggy O’Neill Kayden in the daytime drama The O’Neills. At 26, she acquired the role of yet another debuting daytime heroine, Terry Burton, better known as The Second Mrs. Burton (1946–c1948). In the interim, she was turning up around the dial in ongoing roles on Her Honor—Nancy James, Life Can Be Beautiful, The Light of the World, and The Right to Happiness. After dark, listeners could hear her on The March of Time Quiz and Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost
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Persons. In 1944, Niesen was the voice of the Dream Girl on CBS’s anthology series We Who Dream. Unfortunately, she died at 43, much too young, while the credits she earned in the years she performed were rarely equaled. NONA FROM NOWHERE. After Lora Lawton had run its course for B. T. Babbitt’s Bab-O household cleanser, the Hummerts’ successor serial for the same commodity arrived on CBS on 9 January 1950 and departed on 5 January 1951. A critic exclaimed, somewhat caustically, that Nona “came from nowhere and went back there pretty fast.” Nona Dutell, adopted as a young maiden, believed she possessed no true history or identity. Played by Toni Darnay and set against the trappings of Hollywood, the 23-year-old fictional actress launched a personal mission to find herself by ferreting out her biological folks. In the storyline, Karl Weber appeared as Vernon Dutell (her adoptive pop), James Kelly as Patrick Brady (film producer who “fell” for Nona), Florence Robinson as Gwen Parker, and Mitzi Gould as Thelma Powell. Helen Walpole tapped out the scripts. NOW AND FOREVER. Radio historians have preserved few details about this quarter-hour soap opera. It premiered over CBS five afternoons weekly on 11 October 1943 and ended on 7 July 1944.
-OOCCUPATIONAL CONTEXT. In many soap opera stories, the fact that characters were employed frequently appeared as a matter of little consequence, providing a kind of scaffolding surrounding them for action occurring beyond the workplace. The fact that people had jobs insulated some against the harsh realities linked to producing an income. For the most part, serial figures could roam freely, returning to worksites when it was not necessary for them to be elsewhere—or when they needed to produce action that would enhance the tale’s progression. The mere mention of an occupation was often enough to allow an individual to live on borrowed time; to go about the aberrations that intruded into his or her existence without a great deal of thought about how a salary was sustained. Of course, some folks
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worked regularly and hard while others did not do so very often. It really depended on whether a drama spent most of its time on domestic/personal/family issues or if the occupation (teacher, journalist, actor, banker, tearoom proprietor, barber, lumberyard operator, etc.) was crucial to a plot. The same concept about work is applied in contemporary TV serials. Note how few times most characters (other than medics and lawyers) “go to the office” on any kind of habitual basis. OLD DOCTOR JIM. Brevity of recorded details on this serial suggests it appeared fleetingly in 1936 and was produced by Frank and Anne Hummert. OLD HOMESTEAD, THE. Lasting just 17 weeks, this one aired three afternoons weekly over NBC Blue between 11 January–7 May 1937. Based on Denman Thompson’s stage play, the yarn featured Edith Spencer as Aunt Tildy and Thomas Coffin Cook as Joshua. ONE MAN’S FAMILY. Categorically among the best literary series that radio produced (earning a Peabody for excellence and “winner of 47 national awards” by the time it left the air), the drama was a profound statement of life as it unfolded in an upper middle-class American family. Debuting during the depths of the Great Depression, it became a listening ritual in millions of households. Although the Barbours of San Francisco had few financial concerns, they were not without cares. Their worries were universal—love, adolescence, and a ceaseless amazement over the succeeding generations they nurtured. Unlike most other serials of the time, theirs celebrated the positive aspects of living, abhorring stock formulas, and devices like amnesia so prevalent elsewhere. More of a novel than a soap opera, the epic drama’s structure was built on “books” and “chapters” instead of installments. It was the crowning achievement of Carlton E. Morse, an adroit creative who wrote, directed, and produced the program for most of its 27-year run. The series championed Morse’s own philosophical disposition that the family was unparalleled in offering moral fiber to the nation. It was, to Morse, absolutely imperative that the family be honored and preserved for generations yet unborn. For this narrative, Morse and his associates won not only a coveted
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Peabody but also nearly every other prestigious honor dispensed for radio drama. Beginning as a half-hour weekly series the program originated over San Francisco’s KGO on 29 April 1932, airing concurrently on NBC Red stations in Los Angeles and Seattle through 29 July 1932. The full chain of NBC West Coast outlets picked it up from 3 August 1932–10 May 1933. On 17 May 1933, the series joined a coast-tocoast NBC hookup. The continuing saga meandered gently along on NBC one night a week or on Sunday afternoon for the next 17 years. Beginning 5 June 1950 it transferred to a weeknight quarter-hour format that persisted to 1 July 1955 after which it shifted to weekday afternoons. It continued there until it was withdrawn on 24 April 1959. One Man’s Family drew several advertisers over its long course. It was sustained until 3 August 1932 when Standard Brands bought it for Wesson Oil. On 17 May 1933, Penn Tobacco became its first national sponsor for Kentucky Winners cigarettes. Standard Brands signed on again with the 3 April 1935 broadcast for Tender Leaf tea, Royal gelatin and pudding, Fleischmann’s yeast, Chase & Sanborn coffee, Wesson Oil, and Snow Drift shortening, carrying it through 25 September 1949, when the feature was once again sustained. Miles Laboratories underwrote it for One-A-Day vitamin supplements, Tabcin heartburn antidote, Bactine antiseptic, Alka-Seltzer stomach distress reliever and other drugs from 5 June 1950 into 1954. During its remainder on the air the program was sold to multiple sponsors (e.g., Gillette, Radio Corporation of America, et al.). J. Anthony Smythe was cast in the pivotal role of Father Henry Barbour for the narrative’s entire run. Two actresses played his wife, Mother Fanny Barbour, including Minetta Ellen (1932–55) and Mary Adams (1956–59). Appearing as their five “bewildering offspring” were Michael Raffetto and Russell Thorson as Paul; Bernice Berwin as Hazel; Kathleen Wilson, Floy Margaret Hughes, Barbara Fuller and Laurette Fillbrandt as Claudia; Barton Yarborough as Clifford; and Page Gilman as Jack. Scores of added radio veterans were in the cast, among them Francis X. Bushman, Herb Butterfield, Hans Conreid, Dick Crenna, Mary Jane Croft, Rosemary De Camp, Ted de Corsia, Betty Lou Gerson, Elliott Lewis, Forrest Lewis, Howard McNear, Tyler McVey, Marvin Miller, Jeanette Nolan, Hal Peary, Vic Perrin, Cameron Prud’homme, Isabel Randolph, Alice Reinheart,
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Les Tremayne, Lurene Tuttle, Luis Van Rooten, Theodore von Eltz, Janet Waldo, and many more. Morse, Raffetto, and Harlan Ware wrote the scripts. Neither of dual attempts to bring the long-running aural series to the small screen was particularly effective. It appeared on NBC-TV from 4 November 1949 to 21 June 1952 in primetime and may have persisted so long because there was not a lot of competition for viewers. The serial returned on NBC-TV’s weekday schedule from 1 March 1954 to 1 April 1955. At that juncture, a perception was understood that most people would rather hear the Barbour tale instead of seeing it. No more attempts to televise it were made. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. O’NEILLS, THE. For nine years, this important story unfolded at a variety of places on the dial extending to the four major chains and occasionally twice daily. It arrived on 11 June 1934 over MBS, airing three times weekly through 7 December 1934. It shifted to CBS for Gold Dust, again three times weekly, between 10 December 1934 and 7 June 1935. A seven-year association with Procter & Gamble’s flagship product Ivory soap began on 30 September 1935, then on NBC five weekdays, through 26 December 1941. Included were its Ivory Flakes and Silver Dust detergents. Meanwhile, P&G underwrote a concurrent series carried by NBC Blue between 16 November 1936–31 December 1937; on CBS between 3 January–27 May 1938; a second airing on NBC between 3 July 1939–18 October 1940; and again on CBS from 21 October 1940–27 March 1942. NBC aired the show for Standard Brands (Chase & Sanborn coffee, Wesson Oil, Snow Drift shortening, Royal gelatin and pudding, Tender Leaf tea, Fleischmann’s yeast, etc.) in its final manifestation between 5 October 1942 and 18 June 1943. The durable drama included Kate McComb as a sixties widowed Mother O’Neill of Royalton with two grown married offspring, Danny and Peggy, and a couple of adopted youngsters, Janice and Eddie Collins, whom she cared for after their folks died. Mrs. O’Neill’s best friend, Morris Levy, married the O’Neills’ upstairs boarder, Trudy Bailey. Plots often resembled storylines in the better-known One Man’s Family. Tragedy struck when Danny’s wife died in childbirth, leaving him in depression. Eventually romance blossomed among
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non-blood-related siblings. There were serious issues with children (of the third generation). Yet Radio Guide assessed the washboard weeper’s principals as “neither rich nor poor, neither devils nor angels, neither utterly unfortunate nor completely happy—just an average family.” Jimmy Tansey played Danny; Betty Caine, Violet Dunn, Claire Niesen and Betty Winkler were all Peggy at differing times; Janice was played by Janice Gilbert (who was a child impresario and capable of playing the voices of Mother O’Neill’s trio of grandchildren); Jimmy Donnelly and Nick Dawson were both Eddie; Jack Rubin appeared as Morris; and Trudy was Jane West. Rubin (who directed the series) and West collaborated on the scripts. Other venerable radio actors appearing there included Arline Blackburn, Helen Claire, Roger DeKoven, Betty Garde, David Gothard, Joe Julian, Santos Ortega, James Van Dyk, and Lawson Zerbe. OPEN DOOR, THE. Sandra Michael, an award-winning playwright, created and scripted the serial (with the writing help of Doria Folliott) that Variety branded as a replication of One Man’s Family minus that soap opera’s slow-moving tempo. While a university dean of students, Erik Hansen, was the drama’s protagonist, an aspect of the yarn focused on his widowed daughter Liza who had obviously wed the wrong guy. Hansen’s grandson (Liza’s child), moved in with grandpa, adding a new set of impediments to the potboiler. Hansen counseled students and townsfolk who sought his advice—his office remained an open door to any who would enter. A real Brooklyn minister whom Sandra Michael had known in adolescence, Dr. Alfred T. Dorf, portrayed Hansen. It was more than coincidental that Dorf was similarly a riveting character named Pastor Hansen (note the name) in Michael’s provocative narrative Against the Storm, by that time off the air. Dean Hansen had lived in Nazi-occupied Denmark and was on a mission to underscore for youth the imperative to fight oppression. Barbara Weeks and Florence Freeman were featured as Liza Arnold and Edwin Bruce was Tommy. Charlotte Holland appeared as Corey Lehman, Hansen’s secretary. Other actors in the cast were Joan Alexander, Martin Blaine, and Alexander Scourby. Sponsored by Standard Brands for Chase & Sanborn coffee, Tender Leaf tea, and Royal gelatin and pudding, the serial aired on NBC between 21
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June–31 December 1943 and on CBS between 3 January–30 June 1944. Michael again fell out with a sponsor (as she had on Against the Storm previously), this time on the direction the storyline would take. The sponsor insisted on a more melodramatic tale than she simply could abide; once again she quit and another stimulating account left the air. See also THIS CHANGING WORLD. OPEN-END TALES. An open-end tale occurred when the plotting in the storyline continued uninterrupted until a program was at last canceled. That contrasted sharply with a closed-end narrative in which action and dialogue drew to an inevitable conclusion, usually within a short time frame (e.g., normally a week or until an adaptation of a play, book, or magazine article played out). Of hundreds of soap operas on radio during the medium’s golden age, only a handful could be cited as closed-end (e.g., Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Best Seller, By Kathleen Norris, Ever Since Eve, Five Star Matinee, Front Page Farrell, The Light of the World, Whispering Streets, et al.). Stories that ran on interminably without a perceptible finality, pause, or interruption as they jumped from sequence to sequence predominated the form. Listeners to open-end tales might remain with a story for years. Some authors used those opportunities to purposefully and slowly unveil details about their characters over lengthy periods of time. This often had the net effect of drawing audiences more deeply into a soap opera; indeed, some fans claimed those figures were their friends. Only when a show was canceled did a flurry of activity ignite as loose ends that might have dangled for years were rapidly tied together to create a satisfying conclusion for a long storyline. On a few rare occasions, a network or advertiser implemented such swift decisions that there was no time to bring a story to an acceptable climax and it left the air with listeners essentially remaining in midplot. But that was definitely uncommon. See also CLOSEDEND TALES. ORGAN CADENCES AND STINGS. Although not every soap opera employed a studio organ for its opening and closing theme, bridges between scenes, background for dialogue, stressing significant actions, plus commercial jingles, most serials relied heavily on this
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adaptable, resourceful instrument. Freelance organists were in great demand on the serials; several made a good living floating between multiple studios at four networks all day long, just as did actors, announcers, and directors. Organist Bernice Yanocek of The Guiding Light absolutely labored over the keyboard for a thunderous rendition of Goetzl’s Aphrodite (discarded earlier by Today’s Children) near the opening of every chapter. When dramatic action or a remark required special emphasis, a good organist often supplied it. Yanocek sat before the console awaiting such cues, then delivered. “No program in heaven or earth could match The Guiding Light in ominous chords, stings, and cadences,” one reviewer professed. By actual count in the broadcast of 10 January 1950, the organ’s intrusion into that storyline jarred fans 23 times, possibly overdone for a quarterhour narrative. Despite that this remarkable apparatus—and the men and women who played it—were some of the workhorses of soap opera, making crucial contributions where silence would have been anything but golden in a climactic moment. Irving Vendig, the inimitable author of radio’s Perry Mason, called for sharp, disquieting chords at the most tactical times in that suspenseful saga. Organist William Meeder introduced them with a flourish. Convincingly, the unexpected stings held listeners at rapt attention as they awaited the next piece of defining monologue issued by announcer Richard Stark. Following Stark’s final sales pitch for Tide detergent, his gripping abstract—punctuated by shifting cadences—struck fear in the hearts of listeners, adding to the intrigue that was sure to bring them back “tomorrow.” It was part of the act, and when it was done right as it habitually was there, it worked really well. ORPHANS OF DIVORCE. In a convoluted plot that was typical of the Hummert factory, middle-aged Nora Worthington divorced and her ex, Cyril, married a younger lady. Because she could not care for her children adequately, Nora gave them up to a wealthy home and opened a small shop to support herself. When her daughter later experienced marital discord, whom did she turn to for advice? Why, Nora, of course. The serial began with a Monday evening half-hour over NBC Blue between 6 March–26 June 1939 and shifted to daylight timeslots as a quarter-hour weekday serial between 25 Septem-
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ber 1939 and 17 April 1942. Sterling Drugs purchased both segments for Lyons [sic] toothpaste and Dr. Lyons tooth powder and other healthcare commodities. Writing of the rarity of divorce in the 1930s and 1940s, Ron Lackmann assessed: “Divorce was an unusual occurrence, and all children of divorced parents were considered victims at the time. They were called ‘orphans’ because, like real orphans, they were without at least one parent.” Margaret Anglin and Effie Palmer appeared in the role of Nora Kelly Worthington while James Meighan and Richard Gordon were Cyril Worthington. Warren Bryan (Dick), Patricia Peardon (Joan), and Claire Wilson (Juliet) played their kids. In supporting roles were Charita Bauer, Joseph Julian, Joan Tompkins, and more. Doris Halman penned many of the scripts. ORTEGA, SANTOS (1899–1976). While anyone playing a single role for 20 years would undoubtedly be recalled for that part—and that is the case of Santos Ortega, who was Grandpa Hughes on CBS-TV’s As the World Turns from its debut in 1956 to 1976—an actor with that kind of longevity must have established credentials somewhere. Ortega did that as numerous characters in radio drama. And a hefty amount of his training was in soap opera. Over the years he played in no less than 14 serials (exceeded by few males) as follows: Big Sister, Bright Horizon, By Kathleen Norris, Green Valley U.S.A., Joyce Jordan, M.D., The Light of the World, The Man I Married, Myrt and Marge, The O’Neills, Our Gal Sunday, Perry Mason, Portia Faces Life, This Day Is Ours, Valiant Lady. Other radio credits of this remarkable native New Yorker included at least 41 more documented series. Unless noted otherwise Ortega was a support player in each one of the following: The Adventures of Charlie Chan, The Adventures of Ellery Queen, The Adventures of Nero Wolfe, The Affairs of Peter Salem, The Amazing Mr. Smith, Arch Oboler’s Plays, Barry Craig—Confidential Investigator, Blackstone Plantation, Boston Blackie, Broadway Matinee (announcer), Bulldog Drummond (lead), Casey—Crime Photographer, The CBS Radio Mystery Theater (lead), City Hospital (lead), Criminal Casebook, Crooked Square, Dimension X, Don Ameche’s Real Life Stories, The Ethel Merman Show, The Ford Theater, Gangbusters, Hannibal Cobb (lead), The Mysterious Traveler, Mystery Theater, The Newlyweds
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(lead), Quick as a Flash, The Radio Hall of Fame, The Robert Burns Panatela Show (announcer), Roger Kilgore—Public Defender (lead), Romance, The Scorpion, The Shadow, Special Investigator, Stroke of Fate, This Is Your FBI, Treasury Agent, Who Dun It? (lead), The White Owl Program (announcer), Words at War, Yours Truly—Johnny Dollar, X-Minus One. OUR GAL SUNDAY. One of the great recurring themes of producers Frank and Anne Hummert was exhibited here in perpetuity: that of marrying a young feminine castaway into a male-ordered society of prominence and wealth. Despite its timeworn hypothesis the show may have done this better than any of perhaps a dozen that pursued a similar premise. Orphaned, raised by a couple of elderly prospectors in a Western mining encampment, a lass could hardly be expected to go far in life without the advantages that almost everybody else was exposed to. But out of such modest roots came Lady Brinthrope of Fairbrook, Virginia’s Black Swan Hall, spouse of one of the most affluent, aristocratic Englishmen on the East Coast. Lord Henry and Sunday’s story—based on a turn-of-the century play titled Sunday—was not largely one of marital discord, although there was an element of that present. Instead, it popularized another of Hummert washboard weepers’ favorite precepts: introducing fiendish hussies who were bent on destroying the tranquility of a heroine’s blissful existence by vying for her mate’s affection. On rare occasions, the principle worked in reverse, the wife becoming the object of an overheated male’s infatuation. Yet more often than not it was a couple’s husband who was the lusty prize. Some of the vixens were wealthy snobs; others were basic common vamps, the kind easily imported from other Hummert serials (Backstage Wife, Lora Lawton, The Romance of Helen Trent, Young Widder Brown, et al.). Despite such, it was obvious that Sunday and Henry genuinely loved one another and their union ultimately provided a bulwark against all evil. Listeners were comforted by knowing—no matter what was hurled against them—their marriage would survive. The dishpan drama was slotted into a midday quarter-hour period on the East Coast and it had the good fortune to remain there for the next 22 years—occupying a single timeslot for its entire run, a feat unequaled by any other soap opera. (Its closest rivals in staying put in-
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cluded Stella Dallas with 17.5 years in a single quarter-hour and Wendy Warren and the News with 11+ years in its assigned quarter-hour.) Our Gal Sunday arrived on 29 March 1937 and departed on 2 January 1959. American Home Products underwrote the serial from 1937–42 for healthcare and packaged-goods commodities like Anacin pain reliever, Kolynos toothpaste and tooth powder, Bi-SoDol analgesic, Black Flag and Fly-Ded insect repellents, Aerowax and Olde English floor polishes, Wizard deodorizers, and many more. Standard Brands carried the show in 1942–43 for Snow Drift shortening, Chase & Sanborn coffee, Royal gelatin and pudding, Tender Leaf tea, Wesson Oil, Fleischmann’s yeast, etc. American Home Products resumed sponsorship from 1943–50. Procter & Gamble underwrote the narrative in 1950–51 for several personal care and household packaged goods. American Home Products returned from 1951–55. Beginning 29 August 1955 the drama was sold to participating sponsors and largely carried by CBS as a sustaining feature near the end of the run. Two actresses played Sunday—Dorothy Lowell (1937–46) and Vivian Smolen (1946–59) after Lowell died in childbirth. Two actors played Lord Henry Brinthrope—Karl Swenson (who carried the role most of the way) and Alistair Duncan. Fran Carlon was Sunday’s best friend Irene Galway and Joseph Curtin was her spouse, Peter. Over the years all of the following appeared in the cast: Charita Bauer, Van Heflin, Irene Hubbard, Jay Jostyn, Elaine Kent, Santos Ortega, John Raby, Ruth Russell, Anne Seymour, Ann Shepherd, Joan Tompkins, Vicki Vola, Carleton Young, and many more. Helen Walpole contributed many of the early scripts; Jean Carroll was assigned the dialogue from 1945–59, a rather formidable run for a Hummert scribe. The opening epigraph for the program became so familiar to listeners that it was frequently quoted by fans, who often repeated it along with the announcer: “Once again, we present Our Gal Sunday, the story of an orphan girl named Sunday from the little mining town of Silver Creek, Colorado, who in young womanhood married England’s richest, most handsome lord, Lord Henry Brinthrope. The story that asks the question: can this girl from the little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?”
170 • OWEN, ETHEL (1892–1990)
OWEN, ETHEL (1892–1990). A native of Racine, Wisconsin, Owen attended Northwestern University, launching a radio career in dramatic and musical fare at Milwaukee’s WTMJ. Moving to Chicago and eventually to New York City she appeared on comedies and dramatic presentations including The Busy Mr. Bingle, The Callahans, City Desk, The Creightons, Crooked Square, Fibber McGee and Molly, Gangbusters, Gibbs and Finney—General Delivery, Jones and I, The Listening Post, Mr. First Nighter, Smile Parade, and That’s My Pop. In the 1940s, she played on Broadway in Showboat and Three’s a Family. But it was radio soap opera in which she found her niche—and where she thrived. Owen gained supporting roles on 22 serials, believed to be a documented record for the genre, outpacing Marvin Miller’s superior effort by two. Her list embraced Against the Storm, As the Twig Is Bent, Backstage Wife, Betty and Bob, Ellen Randolph, Helpmate, Houseboat Hannah, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Kay Fairchild—Stepmother, Life Begins, Life Can Be Beautiful, Lorenzo Jones, The Man I Married, Margo of Castlewood, The Right to Happiness, The Romance of Helen Trent, The Second Mrs. Burton, The Story of Ellen Randolph, A Tale of Today, Today’s Children, Valiant Lady, When a Girl Marries. In all, Owen regularly appeared on at least 35 radio series, a near record.
-PPACE OF ACTION. A perceived vulnerability of soap operas which critics seized upon unmercifully was the incredibly slow pace at which most of their storylines moved. A few extreme examples magnify the point. (1) Alice Reinheart, playing Chichi Conrad in Life Can Be Beautiful, disappeared into her bath one day and did not resurface for a fortnight—deliberately coinciding with the actress’s two-week vacation. (2) Fifteen episodes (three weeks) elapsed before the elevator in which Pretty Kitty Kelly was riding reached the floor of her destination. (3) The barber of Hartville in Just Plain Bill dispensed the royal treatment to one customer. He started giving the man a trim one week; nine days later he was still working on the same customer. (4) The heroine of Ma Perkins gained at least one detractor who anonymously sent her an eerie-shaped parcel. Unaware
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that the bundle contained a deadly viper, Ma eyed it on her kitchen table for 11 episodes, debating whether she should examine its contents. Audience research informed serial producers and sponsors that the typical homemaker listened to a favorite soap opera twice or thrice weekly. Household duties away from the radio (like hanging freshlywashed clothes on an outdoor line), interruptions by drop-in visitors and door-to-door salesmen (common in that day), phone calls, errands, grocery marketing, family illnesses, and children’s needs took priority. The leisurely pace of the serials was still acceptable to most in the audience. Only the professionals (media critics, researchers, etc.) who actually could tune in to every absorbing chapter found it an abomination and a waste of time, failing to understand the listener for whom it was intended and the demands on her time. It was this leisurely gait at which the daytime dramas meandered that was truthfully one of their most redeeming byproducts. Of all the forms of entertainment, only the soap opera granted opportunity to include the minutiae of life. The three hours a theatrical playwright had to develop character and plot was no match for the privileges afforded a serial scribe. The latter often had more than 10 minutes to fill five times a week for decades. Numerous little details, totally absent in other dramatic structures, could offer ongoing character revelations. Working without preconceived limits, the serial wordsmith amplified a figure’s peculiarities without many constraints, a pure gem of the slow narrative. PAGES OF ROMANCE. Airing for Fletcher’s Castoria on Sunday afternoons over NBC, the early serial appeared on 2 October 1932 and left the ether on 19 March 1933. Performers were Peggy Allenby, Teddy Bergman, Eunice Howard, Allyn Joslyn, Alma Kruger, John McGovern, Hugh Rennie, and Ned Wever. Even at this early stage in the life of the genre a critic assessed this group as “an exceptionally talented cast of radio actors.” PAINTED DREAMS. Considered by most scholars of the breed as radio’s first daytime serial, it appeared on Chicago’s WGN in October 1930. Created by Irna Phillips, an inimitable, indefatigable schoolmarm-turned-dramatist, the feature followed on the heels of her Sue
172 • PAYNE, VIRGINIA (1910–1977)
and Irene series, WGN’s initial (and weak) attempt at drama by installment. Two women, Phillips and Ireene [sic] Wicker, simply conversed with one another in that precursor. Although it was scripted, the humble start was a far cry from the narratives with complete casts, music, and sound effects that would soon be beamed from radio towers. Sensing potential, a perceptive Phillips shared her thoughts with station management and was soon drafting a fortnight’s worth of scripts for a serial about an Irish-American family. She titled it Painted Dreams. The clan initially included a matriarch, a daughter, and a friend of the daughter; their number was later expanded. Although no sponsor stepped up to underwrite the untried form for a year, management put the show on the air anyway in quarter-hour installments Monday through Saturday. It premiered on 20 October 1930 and—with several interruptions and cast changes—it moved to CBS four days weekly on 10 October 1933, persisting to 2 February 1934 for H. K. Kellogg’s cereals. Long before that Phillips and WGN officials fell out over ownership of the scripts, each asserting legal rights followed by a court case that dragged on to 1941. Ultimately WGN was declared the victor but Phillips had picked up her marbles a decade earlier, left the station, and moved to rival Chicago broadcaster WMAQ. There she wrote a serial with the same premise as that of Painted Dreams but with slight variations in characters’ names, titling it Today’s Children. It gained national audio exposure from 1933–37 and 1943–50. Painted Dreams resumed for Cal-Aspirin three times weekly on an MBS Midwest hookup from 30 December 1935–28 September 1936. It returned to the air once more, sustained between 29 April–20 November 1940 on five weekdays over NBC Blue. At its inception, Phillips played the protagonist, Mother Moynihan (Mother Monahan in Today’s Children), and Ireene Wicker was her daughter. Both women played several parts, in fact. Also in the cast were Kay Chase, Lucy Gilman, Alice Hill, and Olan Soule. When the series continued without Phillips, Bess Flynn wrote the scripts and played the lead as well as produced and directed the show. PAYNE, VIRGINIA (1910–1977). “America’s mother of the airwaves” became a legend in her time. Across 27 years as the vener-
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ated matriarch of her little clan and—by extension—the entire rural hamlet of Rushville Center, Payne never missed a broadcast, an endurance record for such longevity never equaled in that genre. She endowed the character of Ma Perkins with an abundance of humility, empathy, and foresight that her fans quickly recognized. Although in real life she was three decades younger than the pivotal figure she played at the start, she possessed a tremolo in inflection that made her sound as if she was older. It was no accident that the unassuming, never-married, poised actress with such ability was admired by millions who tuned in daily, plus many of the peers with whom she worked. The latter group boosted her to the presidency of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 1958—the first woman so honored—after years of service as head of local unions in Chicago and New York. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of a local physician, Payne was cultured and educated, earning two master’s degrees from the University of Cincinnati. At 23, she subsisted on the income she derived playing a Southern diva in a WLW dramatic series titled Honey Adams. When the script called for singing, Jane Froman—who became one of the nation’s most popular vocalists a few years hence— supplied the melody. Hometown soapmaker Procter & Gamble, meanwhile, chose Payne for a tryout of a dramatic serial it was introducing to WLW listeners. Ma Perkins debuted there on 14 August 1933. When area sales of P&G’s Oxydol detergent rose spectacularly, the firm decided to move its fledgling serial and cast to Chicago, putting them in the hands of tested producers Frank and Anne Hummert. Ma Perkins premiered over NBC before a nationwide audience on 4 December 1933. With brief exceptions, it persisted until “the day radio drama died,” 25 November 1960, departing from CBS with Payne still in her long-running role. Across the years, the peerless thespian turned up elsewhere in several daytime dramas including The Brighter Day, The Carters of Elm Street, The Light of the World, Lonely Women, and Today’s Children, often playing a leading role. By 1957, she earned an annual income of $50,000, surpassing every other actress in daytime radio. Payne’s voice could also be heard from radios playing The Cavalcade of America, Cloak and Dagger, Mr. First Nighter, and other dramatic fare. Only 50 years of age when Ma Perkins left the air, she recorded
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radio commercials and performed on stage for years. In the 1970s, she returned to the microphone to star in The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Earlier, in 1964, she appeared with comedienne Carol Burnett in the Broadway musical comedy Fade Out, Fade In. Payne toured the nation in the 1960s and 1970s in stage productions of Becket, Carousel, Life with Father, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and Oklahoma! PEABLES TAKES CHARGE (a.k.a. NORA, NED, AND PEABLES). An NBC Blue entry airing three afternoons weekly from 24 October 1938–10 March 1939 and five times thereafter between 13 March–22 September 1939. Most authoritative radio scholars missed the serial altogether. A fanzine article published then, however, observed that actress Marion Barney was one of the feature’s key players. PEABODY AWARDS. Of hundreds of radio serials only a couple earned a coveted Peabody Award for their literary excellence including Sandra Michael’s Against the Storm and Carlton E. Morse’s One Man’s Family. There were other soap operas that perhaps qualified for the honors but the parameters were so tightly drawn that most were never considered. The Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia in Athens began giving the annual prize—the most prestigious in electronic media—in 1941, initially only to radio series. George Foster Peabody was a Georgia industrialist, financier, and university benefactor. Recipients over the years have been individuals whose contributions and impact upon radio, television, and cable were enveloping, including Walter Cronkite, Bob Elliott, Ray Goulding, Charles Kuralt, Pauline Frederick, Norman Lear, Edward R. Murrow, Ed Sullivan, Orson Welles, and Oprah Winfrey. The fact that two radio serial writers joined such a distinguished list makes their contributions— and those of their genre—even more remarkable. PEGGY’S DOCTOR. A Yankee physician who moved South to a Kentucky hamlet, Dr. John McKeever loved Peggy Dale, daughter of a horse breeder. James Meighan played McKeever and Rosaline Greene was Peggy. The serialized yarn for Blue Coal persisted on
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NBC for a quarter-hour Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 1 October 1934 and 29 March 1935. PEPPER YOUNG’S FAMILY. It took a trio of name changes for this compelling drama to get up to speed before turning into the extraordinary tale of life in a typical post-Depression home. When it at last emerged it turned into one of the most-loved tales of American fiction. And it brought to the forefront one of the most inventive talents serialdom was to discover. Elaine Sterne Carrington’s attention to authenticity and detail and her obsession with making her narratives believable met with widespread favorable response. Of the three major creators of soap operas, she alone claimed to have dictated every word of every script bearing her name (she had several other dramas airing simultaneously). Pepper Young’s Family and its predecessor titles aired for 26-plus years, nudging a few more washboard weepers for similar honors. Starting as a weekly nighttime frolic similar to The Aldrich Family, the lighthearted tale of a teenage youth and his kin evolved into a serious melodrama over time. With less pathos and heartache than its contemporaries, the serial had darker moments, too. As the years rolled on, the central character grew to manhood and became a responsible member of society. Curtis Arnall (1934–37), Lawson Zerbe (1937–45), and Mason Adams (1945–59) appeared as Larry (Pepper) Young. Elizabeth Wragge was his sister, Peggy. His mother, Mary Young, was Marion Barney. Bill Adams, Thomas Chalmers, and Jack Roseleigh played his dad, Sam Young. Among others in an impressive cast of radio veterans were Alan Bunce, Michael Fitzmaurice, Larry Haines, Eunice Howard, Irene Hubbard, Leon Janney, Ron Lackmann, Burgess Meredith, Madeleine Pierce, Arthur Vinton, and Edwin R. Wolfe. The drama aired on all four networks, including three (NBC Blue, MBS, and NBC during the 1937–38 season, the only soap opera— and likely, the only dramatic series of any type—to achieve that feat). It debuted as Red Adams, a nighttime feature, on NBC Blue on 2 October 1932. Its name changed to Red Davis on 2 October 1933 (when a chewing gum sponsor couldn’t abide the name Adams, a competitor’s brand), to Forever Young on 13 January 1936 and finally to Pepper Young’s Family on 29 June 1936. It continued under that moniker
176 • PERFECT HUSBAND
until it left the air on 2 January 1959. Sponsors included Procter & Gamble from 1936–57, in the early years for Duz detergent and P&G White Naptha soap, during most of the run for Camay soap and in the mid-1950s for Fluffo shortening, Joy dishwashing liquid, and Tide detergent; and afterward to several participating underwriters. PERFECT HUSBAND. From 9 July–21 September 1951, the ABC entry aired five afternoons weekly. Perhaps its brevity on the ether is due to the fact it was poorly titled as hordes of women could intimate there is no such animal. PERRY MASON. While preceded by attorney–novelist Erle Stanley Gardner’s popular hero classic pulp fiction and superseded by a televersion, for pure intrigue a case for the lawyer-turned-sleuth Perry Mason—“defender of human rights”—was no more faithfully portrayed than in the theater of the mind. The serial was intense, for weeks holding fans spellbound as Mason sought to trap a deranged demon before the scoundrel caught up with an intended victim. Eavesdropping audiences almost always knew a cold-blooded killer’s identity from the beginning, unlike on later TV. Innocent lives were put in harm’s way. The craftiness of a pursuer, hell-bent on destroying his prey, would in time be besieged by the mental dexterity of the brilliant, relentless attorney. The series supplied a radical departure from the typical fare of most drainboard dramas. For a dozen years, it imparted mayhem aplenty as housewives conjured up images of unspeakable horrors provoked by some of radio’s most dastardly rapscallions. Mason impressionists included Donald Briggs, Santos Ortega, and Bartlett Robinson. In 1947, unparalleled actor John Larkin won the role. His authoritative enunciation coupled with the masterful inventive skills of head writer Irving Vendig turned the series into an indispensably chilling quarter-hour in the matinees of millions of listeners. Joan Alexander, Jan Miner, and Gertrude Warner portrayed the lawyer’s able secretary-assistant Della Street. Matt Crowley and Charles Webster were heard as private investigator Paul Drake while Frank Dane and Mandel Kramer appeared as police lieutenant Tragg. Assisting Vendig with the scripting were Ruth Borden, Dan Shuffman, and Eugene Wang.
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The soap opera premiered on CBS for Procter & Gamble—initially for Camay soap, later for Tide detergent—on 18 October 1943. It never skipped an episode, never changed sponsors and never left that chain until it was canceled on 30 December 1955. By then, CBS had decided to bring Mason to daytime television with John Larkin as a crusading detective-turned-attorney, albeit under the appellation of Mike Karr. The series was titled The Edge of Night and none other than Irving Vendig penned the scripts. For 29 years, that gripping afternoon half-hour serial gave the viewers stimulating plotting that radio listeners had been accustomed to long before. A subsequent primetime CBS-TV rendering of Perry Mason was launched in 1957 starring Raymond Burr as the impeccable attorney. But those lastminute witness stand revelations at the close of each show did not begin to deliver the passionate emotions that listeners and viewers experienced over such long periods when Vendig and Larkin worked in tandem. PHILLIPS, IRNA (1901–1973). Radio’s original drama mama, a normal schoolteacher from Dayton, Ohio—yet born in Chicago—she envisioned the possibilities of soap opera and was credited with incorporating the form into daytime radio. Still in her twenties in the summer of 1930, she found seasonal work as an actress at hometown station WGN. Before long she was also writing conversational dialogue. Giving up teaching, Phillips introduced listeners to the first matinee serial, Painted Dreams, on 20 October 1930. A legal melee over rights to that drama which she lost to WGN a decade later taught her to establish ownership of her material as she created it. It made her a very shrewd and wealthy businesswoman in the remainder of her career. The spinster, who eventually adopted a couple of children but never married, created nine radio serials including Painted Dreams, Today’s Children, The Guiding Light, Road of Life, Woman in White, The Right to Happiness, Lonely Women, Masquerade, and The Brighter Day. In addition, for several years she oversaw the scripting of a 10th aural series, Young Doctor Malone. Of a trio of major suppliers of washboard weepers (including Elaine Sterne Carrington and Air Features, the assembly line of Frank and Anne Hummert), only Phillips succeeded in television, doing so in
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a powerful way. She authored or coauthored eight TV incarnations including These Are My Children, The Guiding Light, The Brighter Day, As the World Turns, Another World, Days of Our Lives, Our Private World, and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. In addition, through protégés her ideas appeared in no fewer than five other television serials including One Life to Live, All My Children, Loving, The Young and the Restless, and The Bold and the Beautiful. Phillips placed strong emphasis on characterization. “The important factor” said she, “is that the story grow out of characters rather than [the] story [be] superimposed upon characters. This I have found to be most successful, realistic and believable. We do what we do because we are what we are.” Over time, little by little, Phillips revealed innate details about the people in her stories, allowing audiences to be drawn to those individuals. Phillips was also the first serial writer to focus on the career professional as a protagonist. Figures like clergymen, physicians, nurses, teachers, attorneys, and others of similar persuasions dotted the landscape of her washboard weepers. She insisted that the professional crowd made far more interesting subjects than plain, simple, ordinary citizens. She possessed a strong grasp of who comprised her audience and what was important to them. The primary craving of women, she protested, was to create a warm and protected family—“to build securely for herself a haven, which means a husband, a family, friends, and a mode of living all wrapped up neatly and compactly into a tight little ball with the woman as the busy center of the complete, secure little world.” More than anyone else, Phillips lobbied to get the networks to increase the televised serials from original quarter-hour doses to half-hours and to eventually expand them to hour-long stories. Her influence was sweeping and her legacy has far outlived her. PORTIA FACES LIFE. The most successful feminine attorney on radio, Portia Blake Manning possessed the knack of dazzling the prosecution, defending her clients with masterful strokes of legal maneuvers. She was a woman whom men desired outside the hall of justice and feared inside it. Her serial might have been a purely captivating tale of courtroom drama had it not been for the mail. Listeners preferred melodrama, they said in overwhelming numbers. Left with a
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small son to rear after the death of her spouse, the lady barrister was soon preoccupied by domesticity. A lot of turned-on males, meanwhile, including journalist Walter Manning, found her charms irresistible. From his arrival, it appeared that his single duty was to create overwhelming difficulty for Portia. Despite frequent, lengthy, and unexplained lapses in which he was gone for weeks and months—once for more than a year—Portia, a woman of brains and ability, still married him. Walter suffered constant physical, mental, and emotional setbacks, including prolonged amnesia, and even called on his wife to defend him in court at least twice. Their union produced a daughter and Portia’s son also grew up in their home. The men with the roving eyes never quit and in the end Portia, also, faced life—or part of it—behind bars for a crime she did not commit. Lucille Wall was Portia except for part of 1948 when Anne Seymour played her due to Wall’s extended illness. Myron McCormick and Bart Robinson were heard as Walter Manning. In scripts by Hector Chevigny and Mona Kent, recurring actors included Joan Banks, Donald Briggs, Peter Capell, Les Damon, Bill Johnstone, John Larkin, Santos Ortega, Lyle Sudrow, Karl Swenson, Henrietta Tedro, James Van Dyk, Carleton Young, and more. The serial maintained only one sponsor, General Foods, for its Post Raisin Bran and Post 40% Bran Flakes cereals, Gaines dog food, Jell-O desserts, Maxwell House coffee, and similar commodities. It arrived on CBS on 7 October 1940, transferred to NBC effective 28 April 1941, returned to CBS with the broadcast of 3 April 1944, and again shifted to NBC on 2 October 1944, remaining until it was withdrawn on 29 June 1951. There was no off-air interruption in the 11-year period. PREMIUMS. Soap opera advertisers capitalized on the premium (also called mailhook) as a method of involving listeners more intensely in their dramas while giving them feedback on the depth of commitment by those tuning in. In the early days, it also hinted at how many fans a program was reaching. When Fred, the mailman, arrived in Aunt Jenny’s kitchen on 21 September 1939, he was burdened with a bulky load of letters from thousands of her admirers. It gave Aunt Jenny and Danny (Dan Seymour, her announcer) another opportunity to talk about a premium offer soon set to expire. For one, Lever
180 • PREMIUMS
Brothers’ Spry shortening disc off the can label and 10 cents in coin, Aunt Jenny would mail her latest recipe book coupled with six flavors of frosting tints. Danny proclaimed that the volume included two-crust pies, one-crust pies, deep-dish pies, apple fritters, baked apple dumplings, Dutch apple cake, and other culinary delights that listeners simply must not miss. But it took the marketing savvy of serial packager Duane Jones, formerly of the Blackett–Sample–Hummert agency, to carry the premium to its definitive extreme. Jones shamelessly integrated trinkets of all types into the storylines of several programs that he supervised, notably those of B. T. Babbitt including David Harum, Lora Lawton, and Nona from Nowhere. If Lawton wore a new locket around her neck, several characters in the narrative made reference to it on successive days. So stunning, so provocative was this little keepsake that fans soon developed an unquenchable desire to possess a similar piece for themselves. After a few days of whetting the appetites via this dialoguing chitchat, during one of the commercials thoughtful announcer Ford Bond explained how—for a label from a can of Bab-O and “one thin dime”—one of those lockets “just like the one around Lora Lawton’s neck” could be around milady’s neck, too. The mail pouches and the coffers suddenly swelled as thousands in the audience responded. For years, Babbitt announced a new offer on each of its shows every three or four months. Producers of other washboard weepers closely monitored Jones’s exploits with premium offers. Few permitted the dramas within their trusts to become conduits serving little more than sponsors’ prize promotions. Serials like Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Bachelor’s Children, Ellen Randolph, Ma Perkins, Myrt and Marge, One Man’s Family, The Guiding Light, The Romance of Helen Trent, Today’s Children, and Woman in White dangled flower seeds, photo albums, history books, costume jewelry, recipes, cookbooks, sheet music, Libby glasses, Christmas cards, scrapbooks, and more to their fans. Yet none took those efforts to the extremes that Jones and Babbitt did—either in frequency or in causing their heroes and heroines to ooohhh and aaahhh over a “genuine simulated” bauble. That was better held in check for the juvenile adventure series with their surfeit of masks, silver bullets, detective rings, secret mirrors, membership cards, and spy thriller storybooks.
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PRETTY KITTY KELLY. Experiences in the life of an Irish lass residing in New York City were at the core of the daytime drama. Aiding and abetting the plot was the fact that she had amnesia. In reality, she was the Countess of Glennannan and a lot of deception preceded her departure from her homeland in an effort to defraud her of property and title. She became friendly with a police inspector and an American girl. A distant cousin of the playboy variety to whom she had been engaged before losing her memory also arrived in the U.S. when he learned where she was. It was not your ordinary domestic soap opera by any means for before it was done the heroine was framed for murder, a Florida kidnapping occurred, and enough other shenanigans to keep most listeners on edge. It took a year for the drama to reveal who she actually was; by then she was in love with a character beneath her status in life. At all times, it offered complex and absorbing circumstances. Arline Blackburn appeared in the namesake role along with Clayton (Bud) Collyer as inspector Michael Conway, Helen Choate as Bunny Wilson (Kitty’s new best friend), Bartlett Robinson as Kyron Welby (Kitty’s playboy cousin), Ethel Intropidi as Phyllis Welby (Kyron’s aunt), and Dennis Hoey as Edward Welby (Kyron’s uncle). Other actors included Charme Allen, Fran Carlon, Richard Kollmar, John Pickard, Tess Sheehan, James Van Dyk, Luis Van Rooten, and Lucille Wall. Frank Dahm was the scriptwriter. The serial arrived on CBS for Continental Baking’s Wonder bread and Hostess cupcakes on 8 March 1937 and lingered through 27 September 1940. PROCTER & GAMBLE COMPANY (P&G). The foremost underwriter of radio soap opera, the Cincinnati-based soap, food, and personal packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1837 practiced marketing support long before radio’s inception. The firm entered radio in 1927 as an advertising conduit for its pastel-colored perfumed toilet soap, Camay, underwriting a Friday morning NBC series called Radio Beauty School. In the early 1930s the company advanced a theory, backed by research, that women doing household chores during the daylight hours would prefer to be entertained by their radios instead of being instructed as most programming was then doing (e.g., Crisco Cooking Talks, etiquette chats featuring Emily Post, Helen Chase’s Beauty Forum, Sisters
182 • RABY, JOHN (1916–1957)
of the Skillet, and Washing Talks). Recognizing vast opportunities proffered by daytime serials, P&G tested its notion on a hometown crowd in 1932 by offering WLW listeners The Puddle Family, a domestic comedy similar to an audio comic strip. Although less than an instant success, the trial encouraged an advertising agency then taking over P&G’s languishing Oxydol brand to try something else—a serious narrative revolving around a “helping-hand” character. Account executive Larry Milligan proposed that the tale of a self-reliant widow whose family and friends leaned upon her heavily be titled Ma Perkins—Oxydol’s own Ma Perkins, to be sure. From those humble beginnings came a mighty roar as the firm underwrote the serial from 1933–56 and scores more when that one caught on with listeners coast-to-coast. At one point, P&G purchased at least a dozen quarter-hours on competing chains every weekday to air its commercials with serialized dramas. Few U.S. marketing success stories equaled P&G’s phenomenal rise during those years, largely at the hands of washboard weepers. When the public transferred its amusement preferences from radio to television, P&G was among the first to commit large segments of its advertising budget there, a major percentage of it in daytime serials. The magnitude of the imprint of P&G on the genre of soap opera can hardly be overstated. More than any other organization it paid the bills in developing and sustaining a form of entertainment that ultimately influenced billions of global inhabitants across multiple generations. Some of P&G’s most prominent brand names in the network radio epoch included Camay, Cheer, Chipso, Crisco, Dash, Duz, Dreft, Fluffo, Ivory, Ivory Flakes, Ivory Snow, Joy, Lava, Oxydol, P&G White Naptha, Pamper, Prell, Spic ’n’ Span, Teel, Tide.
-RRABY, JOHN (1916–1957). John Raby interrupted his career as a soap opera lead and character actor to honor a commitment to Uncle Sam. As a consequence, he portrayed the role of Harry Davis, the hero of When a Girl Marries, twice—before and after his service to the nation. Nonetheless, Raby made a good living in serials. He was the leading man in House in the Country, also, and a support player in
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Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, The Brighter Day, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Our Gal Sunday, and Wendy Warren and the News. He appeared in one of Dumont television’s first serials, A Woman to Remember, in 1949, and on NBC-TV’s Concerning Miss Marlowe in 1954–55. Elsewhere on the radio dial Raby was a regular in Nick Carter—Master Detective and Tales of Tomorrow. A native of New York City, Raby launched a career on the stage before radio beckoned. He played summer stock at several Connecticut venues and from 1937–39, while living in suburban Mamaroneck, New York, was a prominent actor in various theatrical productions. His Broadway credits include roles in Brother Rat, Don’t Throw Glass Houses, London Assurance, O Evening Star, and Triumph. RADIO WRITERS GUILD (RWG). A professional organization that attracted hundreds of authors of broadcast material of myriad persuasions, from its inception it included all Air Features scribes. One of the panel’s objectives was to maintain decent pay scales, benefits, and working conditions for members. Indeed, when the 1,200member body, representing nearly every wordsmith in the business, called a strike for 26 October 1948, its aim was to negotiate a sweeping industry-wide contract that was fair to its skilled artisans. The group did not try to hide the fact its prime target was the Hummert assembly line, with a notorious reputation for paying its hires the barest minimums permitted under existing arrangements. Faced, in that instance, with the possibility of temporary loss of dozens of dialoguers for their numerous soap operas and other dramatic fare, the Hummerts yielded to pressure, agreeing to a modest increase in compensatory rates. At the time, they were offering $35 per finished script for a quarter-hour soap opera. Some other producers were then paying writers $200 and allegedly more for similar scripts. The RWG was a persistent watchdog for its creatives, fighting tenaciously to improve workers’ rights. See also SALARIES. RAINS CAME, THE. One of several limited-run classic book series carried by MBS five weekday afternoons between 29 September 1941–6 March 1942, this one appeared from 29 September–7 November 1941. See also JANE EYRE; LITTLE WOMEN; LOVE AFFAIR; MY MAN GODFREY.
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RAISING JUNIOR. Creator Peter Dixon was better known for his work as principal writer of the Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B juvenile adventure series. Nonetheless, Raising Junior, a humorous domestic serial, placed him in the pubescent camp as he portrayed the difficulties faced by parents of youngsters. He explained that his writing style was to surround his fictional family with some good luck followed by ill-fated measures. “When things look best, something unfortunate happens,” commented Dixon, “and when things look bleak, something very pleasant happens just in the nick of time.” Dixon and Aline Berry appeared as Mr. and Mrs. Ken Lee and Walter Tetley portrayed their offspring Bobby (who was “Junior”). There is a fable told that when the child hired to play Bobby did not arrive on time, cowriter Raymond Knight coaxed nine-year-old Tetley from an elevator into the studio and before a microphone. There one of the most celebrated youngsters of radio made his debut on the air. Tetley went on to reportedly play in 150 series for an estimated 2,300 performances. He frequently won long-term adolescent parts in programs like Easy Aces, The Fred Allen Show, The Great Gildersleeve, and The Phil Harris–Alice Faye Show. Raising Junior, for Wheatena cereal, appeared in quarter-hour installments six evenings weekly (sometimes daily but Monday, sometimes daily but Wednesday) from 1930 through 21 April 1932. RATINGS. See HOOPER, C. E., INCORPORATED; A. C. NIELSEN COMPANY. RAWSON, RON (1917–1994). A favorite pitchman of Procter & Gamble, for many years he introduced a handful of P&G serials. His portfolio included narration for The Brighter Day, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Life Can Be Beautiful, Mommie and the Men, The Right to Happiness, Road of Life, and Young Doctor Malone, most of those durably entrenched. Rawson also announced Portia Faces Life for General Foods. His other network interlocutory assignments included The Adventures of the Thin Man, The Adventures of Topper, The Hour of Charm, Mystery of the Week, and Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police, certifying him as one of the most widely recognized interlocutory voices in radio.
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REAL FOLKS (a.k.a. REAL FOLKS FROM THOMPKINS CORNER). The significance of this series may be greater than the casual observer suspects. Soap opera scholar Raymond William Stedman researched profoundly and documented authentically the history of the serials in multiple mediums. In a fact-filled volume, Stedman tended to downplay series that could not be genuinely credited as daytime dramas (e.g., stories that did not air weekdays during the sunshine hours). Yet he accommodated this pivotal program, acknowledging, “When Amos ’n Andy reached NBC, there was only one other network serial: Real Folks, a half-hour weekly sketch that the chain had introduced on August 6, 1928.” (Amos ’n’ Andy, under the title Sam ’n’ Henry, actually preceded Real Folks on the ether, airing on a Chicago station in 1926.) Assuming the accuracy of Stedman’s work, Real Folks was among the leaders of the pack—one of the earliest network antecedents of a lengthy strain to follow. (Do not overlook The Smith Family that appeared still earlier.) Real Folks aired before the first daytime soap opera—Painted Dreams—by more than two years, and before Clara, Lu ’n’ Em—the first network daytime soap opera—by more than three-and-a-half years. Thus a littlerecalled series gains colossal prominence in the historical progression of the soap opera, possibly more than some authorities afforded it. The 30-minute serial set in Thompkins Corner bowed on Monday nights on 6 August 1928 over NBC Blue for Chesebrough Manufacturing’s Vaseline petroleum jelly. It continued through 4 January 1932, subsequently shifting to CBS on Sunday afternoon for Log Cabin syrup between 10 January–3 April 1932. Author George Frame Brown purportedly tried to show life as it was in “any upstate city.” Brown also played the drama’s leading character, Matt Thompkins, whose family surname was ascribed to the little community of Thompkins Corner in which the narrative was set. Others in the recurring cast included Phoebe Mackaye, playing Dorothy Thompkins and Mrs. Watts (a common practice in early radio serials was for one actor to play multiple roles); Tommy Brown as Elmer Thompkins; and Edwin H. Whitney as Judge Whipple. Supporting players included Joyce Benner, Virginia Farmer, G. Underhill Macy, Roger Marsh, and Geofrey Warwick. Their voices apparently were the first in a radio serial beamed beyond the confines of a local
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audience. A group identified as the Thompkins Corner Fireman’s Band provided the program’s music. The originating sponsor, Vaseline, subsequently put the bulk of its radio-advertising budget into another earthy drama, Dr. Christian (1937–54), albeit one that offered a complete story in each weekly episode. REAL LIFE STORIES. A closed-end serial presented over NBC on weekdays in the 1958–59 season with changing stories and multiple sponsors. Appearing as daytime drama was winding down, by then the once proud network was filling its sunshine schedule with obscure, little remembered features, attempting to pacify the remnants of a once robust audience. In the spring of 1959, NBC’s last soap operas bit the dust, 18 months before competitor CBS’s remaining narratives vanished from the ether. REAL STORIES FROM REAL LIFE. Applying flashback techniques, each of these yarns in a composite of closed-end tales focused on a central figure. The individual related his story in his own words. A new cast and story arrived every week although several veteran actors appeared frequently in the various roles including Robert Dryden, Elspeth Eric, Mary Jane Higby, James Meighan, John Raby, Alice Reinheart, Anne Seymour, Julie Stevens, Les Tremayne, and Gertrude Warner. Produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, the series arrived on MBS on 28 August 1944 for Anacin pain reliever and other commodities of American Home Products. It departed the airwaves on 31 December 1947. REBECCAH TURNER’S FRONT PORCH STORIES. A transcribed serial that featured an all-black cast, this was one of four daytime dramas produced by Negro Radio Stories. Others in the quartet included Ada Grant’s Neighbors, My Man, and The Romance of Julia Davis. Although black audiences were seldom given such extensive prominence earlier, by the 1950s radio was beginning to make limited attempts to expose African-American listeners to entertainment fare that had heretofore effectively ignored them. RED ADAMS. It was the earliest precursor in a quartet of dramas evolving into the formidable daytime soap opera Pepper Young’s
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Family (1936–59). Penned by Elaine Sterne Carrington, the sustained comedy serial debuted over NBC Blue as a Sunday night entry between 2 October 1932–22 January 1933. RED DAVIS. It was the second of a quartet of precursor dramas evolving into the formidable daytime soap opera Pepper Young’s Family (1936–59). Penned by Elaine Sterne Carrington, the sustained comedy serial, which premiered as Red Adams, appeared on NBC Blue thrice weekly between 2 October 1933–6 April 1934 and again from 1 October 1934–24 May 1935, both times for Beech-Nut chewing gum. It was the sponsor, in fact, that necessitated the program’s name change; Adams chewing gum was a major rival of Beech-Nut and Beech-Nut said it could not abide having listeners reminded several times in each show of its competitor’s moniker. REINHEART, ALICE (1910–1993). A native San Franciscan, Reinheart starred in a media quartet—stage, screen, television, and radio. At ages 12 and 14, she appeared in Broadway productions of Parapet and The Mask and the Face respectively. She returned there in 1940 for Journey to Jerusalem and 1944 for Leaf and Bough. Reinheart’s film credits included The Lieutenant Wore Skirts in 1956 and A House Is Not a Home in 1957. She was featured in guest shots on TV’s Make Room for Daddy between 1955–60, The Donna Reed Show from 1958–66, and I Dream of Jeannie in 1965. For a few months, in 1965–66, she appeared in the short-lived TV serial Paradise Bay. But it was in radio that she labored most frequently in the 1930s and 1940s. She was on the air at 18 at San Francisco’s KYA. Her most prominent role in the medium was probably as the heroine, Carol (Chichi) Conrad, in the debuting Life Can Be Beautiful, a role she carried from 1938 to 1946. She often turned up in the casts of other daytime serials, too, including Her Honor—Nancy James, John’s Other Wife, One Man’s Family, Real Stories from Real Life, and The Woman in My House. Reinheart played the leading lady in The Adventures of the Abbotts, Casey—Crime Photographer, and Romance Incorporated while adding credits in supporting parts on Call the Police, The Court of Human Relations, Gangbusters, Heartbeat Theater, Treasury Agent, True Detective Mysteries, Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, and Your Unseen Friend. For several years, start-
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ing in 1949, she and her husband Les Tremayne, a busy soap opera actor also, aired a six-day-a-week breakfast talk-interview show, The Tremaynes, over New York’s WOR. RELIGIOUS DRAMAS. Although most characters in serialdom were considered God-fearing, Bible-believing folks, the fact remains that—aside from christenings, weddings, funerals, holidays, and other occasions of special significance—most were absent from the Sunday pews. Nonetheless, several dramas professed religion at the core of their existences. The most unusual was The Light of the World whose storylines were actually rooted in the narratives of the Old Testament. It was so popular in fact that the program continued for a decade. Meanwhile, ministers were either protagonists or prominent characters otherwise in a handful of daytime serials including Against the Storm, The Brighter Day, The Goose Creek Parson, The Guiding Light, and Sweet River. Two of those yarns later transferred to daytime television. Both Ellen Randolph and Eleanor MacDonald, heroine of This Day Is Ours, met and married missionaries in their respective series. And extending yet another religious dimension, Seth Parker originated as a hymn-sing. Indeed, soap opera was inspired on multiple fronts. REPEAT PERFORMANCES. Until the major national chains relaxed an inviolable policy in the late 1940s that forbade recorded material from airing (claiming, for one thing, spontaneity would vanish if a show was not broadcast live), soap opera actors and other artists had to be available to perform each serial twice. (MBS had no such rule against recordings.) Thus, for example, a serial might be performed for the Eastern and Central time zones at, say 2:15 p.m., with a second reading of the same script no earlier than 4:15 p.m. and possibly 5:15 p.m. for the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Actors, announcers, organists, etc., scheduling themselves for other dramas had to keep in mind those second live appearances. It sometimes meant that seasoned thespians—with a director’s OK—could hire a stand-in actor for rehearsals if there was a “conflict” in getting to a studio on time. All sorts of horror stories were shared within the industry as a result of the repeat performances. Virginia Payne, the heroine of Ma
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Perkins, had a recurring nightmare that she would show up for the second performance and be the only actor who did! It never happened in 27 years but that did not diminish her unfounded worries. When a rising Burgess Meredith played the lead in Red Davis in 1934, he once forgot the second show. As he was earning $350 weekly in that post-Depression era for two performances of one script once a week, both on a single night, the sponsor thought he needed a lesson in economics (and maybe responsibility). It terminated him at once. By the start of the 1950s, the chains had canceled their bans against recordings and many if not most soap operas were then performed in advance on tape, eliminating a need for live repeats. RICH MAN’S DARLING. The predecessor drama leading to Our Gal Sunday, it followed a similar premise of taking a waif and making her the wife of a fabulously wealthy gent—and watching her squirm as hordes of unbridled vixens vied for his charms and prosperity. In some respects, it was a dress rehearsal for the eminently more popular and far more durable narrative that succeeded it. Appearing for Affiliated Products’ Kolynos toothpaste, the “practice run” arrived on CBS on 17 February 1936 and departed on 26 March 1937. Three days hence, on 29 March, Our Gal Sunday premiered at its “same time, same station” address, a spot it would occupy for 22 years. Frank and Anne Hummert, the masters of melodrama, produced both series. Rich Man’s Darling featured Karl Swenson as Packy O’Farrell and Peggy Allenby as Peggy O’Farrell. Swenson would be Lord Henry Brinthrope in Our Gal Sunday, the corresponding role. RIGHT TO HAPPINESS, THE. Rooted in The Guiding Light the serial gained a separate berth within a couple of years. Creator Irna Phillips transplanted the character of Rose Kransky into her own narrative. A short while later the focus shifted to the more appealing Carolyn Allen, whose destiny seemed preordained by an unsavory past. Single, Allen gave new meaning to the term woman’s suffrage while her endurance was tested with a quartet of spouses—at least three of who were inflexible, contentious, and headstrong—and a recalcitrant teenager whose unruly behavior could make her life a living hell. The melodrama was so absorbing to millions that it acquired a lock on its favored NBC quarter-hour for 13 years. Procter & Gamble retained
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sole sponsorship for 17 years (to 1956), primarily for Ivory soap (“Now . . . Ivory soap’s own story, The Right to Happiness”), plus Cheer detergent, Crisco shortening, and Spic ’n’ Span household cleanser during P&G’s latter days of ownership. After that, participating underwriters stepped in, including Columbia phonographs and records and CBS Radio. Outliving all but three of its contemporary open-end serials, the washboard weeper was among a final four canceled by the network on “the day radio drama died.” Arriving on NBC Blue on 16 October 1939, The Right to Happiness remained through 19 January 1940. Shifting to CBS on 22 January 1940, it continued through 16 December 1941. The series opened a 14-year run on NBC on 29 December 1941 lasting to 29 June 1956. It returned to CBS on 2 July 1956 and was withdrawn on 25 November 1960, some 21 years after its inception. Irna Phillips wrote the soap opera to 1942 and was followed by John M. Young, who continued at the typewriter until it left the air. Eloise Kummer was featured as the heroine to 1942, replaced by Claudia Morgan, who carried the part to the end. By then, she had wed four times and her name changes resulted in Carolyn Allen Walker Kramer Nelson MacDonald, “the most married heroine in soap opera.” Reese Taylor played first husband Bill Walker; Frank Behrens, David Gothard, Ed Prentiss, and Dick Wells were all second husband Dwight Kramer. John Larkin and Gary Merrill both appeared as third husband Miles Nelson, who eventually became the governor of an unidentified state. The actor playing the fourth spouse has never been definitively identified by radio historiographers, although there is evidence he may have been the voice of Les Damon. Also in the cast were Charita Bauer, Joseph Bell, Peter Capell, Staats Cotsworth, Robert Dryden, Helene Dumas, Walter Greaza, Larry Haines, Irene Hubbard, Bill Lipton, Ian Martin, Marvin Miller, Ethel Owen, Bill Quinn, Billy Redfield, Rosemary Rice, Alexander Scourby, Hugh Studebaker, Gertrude Warner, Alice Yourman, and a multitude of additional dramatic radio veterans. Near the start of each episode The Right to Happiness’s narrator frequently read epithets that defined and espoused happiness. A common one repeated often there was: “Considering only oneself is not the way to true contentment. We should think carefully in seeking our own happiness, lest we endanger the happiness of others.” On the se-
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rial’s ending day, Carolyn and Lee MacDonald used those final moments to muse over some of the definitions that she had been purportedly collecting for decades. In the study of their rambling home, the lovebirds philosophized: “We are all born with a right to happiness, yet happiness depends on the thoughts we think . . . on the things we do…on how generously we live.” If there was a simple answer to happiness, Carolyn surmised, in her opinion this description came closest: “Happiness depends upon our relationship with those we love.” Having endured endless gloom at the hands of her partners and a troubled son, she had had more than two decades to practice living that one. RISE OF THE GOLDBERGS, THE. See THE GOLDBERGS. ROAD OF LIFE, THE. “A most important soap opera,” a radio historian labeled it. For two-fifths of its existence, this one aired on dual networks, widening its audience appreciably. The drainboard drama became a longstanding tradition in many homes, showing up at numerous points on the radio dial at several diverse hours. With more than 100 performers in its cast, the narrative focused on a small town physician, Dr. Jim Brent, and the foibles impinging on his life and those he loved. While most of it avoided the eccentricities of some other serials, it encountered a few tragic moments, too. The show was rooted in creator Irna Phillips’ strong bent toward characterization. Across double decades there was ample opportunity for fans to examine the gifts and drawbacks in the lives of its major figures. While Brent’s career provided substance, his interaction with a couple of wives—one good, one not so good—contributed heavily to the plot. Carried out in the imitable Phillips tradition in which realism played a dynamic, the yarn became a daytime staple, the first of a long string of serials in which medics came to the forefront and around whom much of the action transpired. Matt Crowley, David Ellis, Ken Griffin, Don MacLaughlin, and Howard Teichmann were featured as Jim Brent at one time or other. Louise Fitch, Marion Shockley, and Lesley Woods played Carol Evans Brent, the first and sometimes unprincipled wife. The second wife, the one a kindhearted Jim Brent seemed to deserve, Jocelyn McLeod Brent, was played by Barbara Becker and Virginia Dwyer.
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Adopted son John (Butch) Brent was played by Roland Butterfield, David Ellis, Donald Kraatz, Bill Lipton, and Lawson Zerbe. And Elizabeth Lawrence was Francie Brent, Butch’s wife. Others in the large cast of thespians included Peggy Allenby, Frank Behrens, Vivian Fridell, Barbara Fuller, Betty Lou Gerson, Carlton KaDell, Eloise Kummer, John Larkin, Helen Lewis, Charlotte Manson, Marvin Miller, Bret Morrison, Jack Roseleigh, Guy Sorel, Julie Stevens, Hugh Studebaker, Lyle Sudrow, Russell Thorson, Vicki Vola, Willard Waterman, Sarajane Wells, and many more. The dishpan drama arrived on CBS on 13 September 1937, continuing through 17 May 1938. It moved to NBC on 13 September 1937, remaining through 25 June 1954. A second airing occurred each day on CBS between 30 May 1938 and 1942 (date unsubstantiated), from 2 April 1945 through 30 May 1947 and from 29 December 1952 (becoming the only run effective on 28 June 1954), persisting to 2 January 1959 when it was withdrawn. Procter & Gamble initially purchased it for Chipso detergent. In the early 1940s, it became a conduit for Duz detergent, acquiring the sobriquet “The Duz Program.” Other P&G goods were added in 1953, notably Ivory soap. When P&G bowed out two years later the serial was sold to participating sponsors including Hazel Bishop lipsticks and other wares. An attempt to televise Road of Life produced dismal returns. The serial languished perilously on CBS-TV between 13 December 1954 and 1 July 1955. Regrettably, not many affiliates cleared the quarterhour timeslot to make it available to their local viewers, significantly diminishing the potential audience. Don MacLaughlin and Virginia Dwyer, then featured in the radio serial, played the TV roles of Jim and Jocelyn Brent. Bill Lipton and Elizabeth Lawrence reprised their roles as Butch and Francie Brent for the small screen. The experiment was not a total loss, however; it showcased the acting talents of MacLaughlin before the cameras. He won the masculine lead of Chris Hughes in one of two 30-minute CBS-TV serials debuting on 2 April 1956, As the World Turns, which he carried until his death at 79 three decades later on 28 May 1986. Dwyer also turned up in an important TV serial, The Guiding Light, from 1961–63. ROMANCE OF DAN AND SYLVIA, THE. A short-winded saga that purportedly was carried by NBC Blue between 1 June–21 August
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1936, a scant 12 weeks, even under the usual 13-week airtime guarantee for a developing serial to secure an audience. One authority’s summary is troubling: Luther F. Sies suggests that the serial appeared on Pittsburgh’s KDKA some time during the year 1935 and offers nothing beyond that. While the narrative may have originated on a local station, as many soap operas did, it could easily have transferred to a network. Its brevity on the ether indicates that not many radio historiographers were aware of its existence or that they did not put a lot of faith in it, ignoring it in discourses that might have shed more light on the perceived KDKA impasse. ROMANCE OF HELEN TRENT, THE. She may have been the most guarded, most virtuous heroine of all the serials, this durable temptress among legions of weaker males. Helen Trent was a tease and could wait forever if need be for true love to prove itself beyond her slightest anxiety. Better, it seemed, to be utterly certain about a man’s devotion than learn decades later that he had not quite meant it when he vowed, “till death do us part.” While middle-aged, poor Helen rebuffed suitor after suitor on her way to a hoped-for commitment that would transcend time. As it turned out, the noblest swain of them all, Gil Whitney, stood by for over two decades while Helen dillydallied without making a choice. Meanwhile, some of the most repulsive sweet-talkers in radio theatrics attempted to lure her into their lairs. It was all in a day’s work for the unblemished Helen, who never had a decadent thought—and who never lived in a real world. Listeners loved her anyway, keeping her at the top of the weekday ratings pile for several years (even beating Arthur Godfrey Time for first place). Her struggles lasted 27 years and 7,222 installments, more episodes than any other soap opera. When it ended, the ageless beauty was still unwed, still searching for the man who could turn her dreams into reality. By then, of course, she was well past three-score years in age. If she did not quit dreaming and start doing, all she would have left to fantasize about was what she had missed. Virginia Clark (1933–46), Betty Ruth Smith (a temporary fill-in) and Julie Stevens (1946–60) played the role that—according to one scholar—“interfered with more housework than any other serial queen on the air.” Marvin Miller, William Green, and David
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Gothard played Gil Whitney, the guy who never gave up (except in a very weak moment, and then only momentarily). Gothard is best identified with the part, playing it from 1936–37 and from 1944–60, mostly paralleling Julie Stevens’ appearance. Ken Daigneau was Helen’s boss Jeff Brady at a Hollywood movie studio where she designed fashions. And then there was Mary Jane Higby as Cynthia Carter Swanson Whitney, a hussy whom Whitney wed in an unguarded moment, who brought angst to Helen and anxiety to the plot. Also in the cast were Bill Bouchey, Cathleen Cordell, Helen Dumas, Patricia Dunlap, Marilyn Erskine, Vivian Fridell, John Hodiak, Leon Janney, Carlton KaDell, John Larkin, Don MacLaughlin, Charlotte Manson, Bess McCammon, James Meighan, Bret Morrison, Ed Prentiss, Bartlett Robinson, Olan Soule, Les Tremayne, Karl Weber, Lesley Woods, and many more. The Romance of Helen Trent appeared on CBS on 30 October 1933 and continued through 24 June 1960. Produced by Frank and Anne Hummert, it was their very last to leave the air and virtually paralleled their years as soap opera’s dominant moguls. The feature’s first sponsor was Edna W. Hopper for Hopper’s White Clay Pack facial mask. In 1955–56, it was bought by Parmaco for FeenA-Mint laxative chewing gum and other healthcare goods, and afterward by participating sponsors. For 16 seasons, the daytime drama was the property of American Home Products for Black Flag and Fly-Ded insect repellents, Aerowax and Olde English floor polishes, Wizard Wick room deodorizer, Sani-Flush toilet bowl cleaner, Easy-Off oven cleaner, Kolynos toothpaste and tooth powder, Anacin pain reliever, Kriptin antihistamine, Bi-So-Dol analgesic, Freezone corn remover, Heet sore muscle liniment, Dristan and Primatene cold remedies, Preparation H hemorrhoid medication, Neet hair remover, Infrarub soothing balm, Sleep-Eze calmative, and more. The show’s daily opening epigraph was a classic: “And now, The Romance of Helen Trent, the real-life drama of Helen Trent who, when life mocks her, breaks her hopes, dashes her against the rocks of despair, fights back bravely, successfully, to prove what so many women long to prove in their own lives: that because a woman is 35 or more romance in life need not be over; that the romance of youth can extend into middle life, and even beyond.”
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ROMANCE OF JULIA DAVIS, THE. A transcribed serial that featured an all-black cast, this was one of four daytime dramas produced by Negro Radio Stories. Others in the quartet included Ada Grant’s Neighbors, My Man, and Rebeccah Turner’s Front Porch Stories. Although black audiences were seldom given such extensive prominence earlier, by the 1950s radio was beginning to make limited attempts to expose African-American listeners to entertainment fare that had heretofore effectively ignored them. ROMANTIC TRIANGLES. A popular theme in soap operas and while it surfaced in most of them, it predominated in the serials produced by Frank and Anne Hummert. If a perceptibly happily married couple was at the focus of a drama aired by that factory, it would not be long before one or the other partner was being chased by a member of the opposite gender or was tempted to give in to lustful desire (even though the censors and the prudish Hummerts would never have allowed anything to occur that could be genuinely labeled as titillating). The Stolen Husband, their initial daytime entry on the ether in 1931, was also the first to pursue the triangle thesis. It involved a handsome young businessman, his voluptuous secretary, and a dense but attractive wife who did not consider what was happening on those nights her hubby worked late until it was too late. While the yarn could not be classified as an extraordinary success (considering one actor altered his voice for every speaking role), it refined the concept for Hummert, Anne Ashenhurst (Frank’s soon-to-be spouse), and writer Robert Hardy Andrews. The trio saw tremendous potential for the future. Similar themes subsequently surfaced in many of their “success stories” including Backstage Wife, Betty and Bob, John’s Other Wife, The Life of Mary Sothern, Lora Lawton, Our Gal Sunday, The Romance of Helen Trent, Valiant Lady, Wife Versus Secretary, Young Widder Brown, and eventually even “lovable, impractical” Lorenzo Jones in a tale that allegedly proffered “more smiles than tears.” Really? ROSE OF MY DREAMS. Centered on sibling rivalry, it was a Hummert-produced serial. A sweet and kind sister, Rose, and a scheming and devious sister, Sarah, were involved in ongoing
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clashes. Among other things, they sparred for the love of the same Englishman, who found them both intriguing as he toyed with their emotions. For Manhattan’s Sweetheart soap and Blue-White Flakes detergent, the sudsy saga arrived on CBS on 25 November 1946 and departed on 14 May 1948. Mary Rolfe played Rose while Charita Bauer was Sarah. Joseph Curtin portrayed the Englishman. ROSEMARY. Rosemary and Bill Roberts spent so much of their time journeying back and forth between tiny Springdale and New York City that—without following the story on a frequent basis—one could not be sure where they were at any given moment. While Rosemary stayed put much of the time, Bill did a lot of traveling. He was a journalist and had good intentions but—as with some more daytime newspapermen—was shiftless, unable to put down roots anywhere. He had a roving eye that kept him in touch with pretty skirts, too. Rosemary, on the other hand, was the stabilizing force. Her feet were planted securely on terra firma. Her goals, ideals, and virtues were intact and she deserved better than she got. Her fans empathized with her, some probably hoping she would “wash dat man right outta” her hair. She never did—he brought her pain and sorrow and she sustained an abiding faith in him. In the end, Bill Roberts finally proved his mettle, choosing Rosemary over all other women. The principals here did something that most other heroes and heroines never did: they married each other. Thus, after meeting at the studio, Betty Winkler (Rosemary Dawson Roberts) became the bride of George Keane (Bill Roberts). When illness forced George to relinquish his role Betty gave up her part, too, and the couple moved to seclusion in Europe. Robert Readick and Virginia Kaye were the successors in the drama. Marion Barney was Mother Dawson. Others in the recurring cast included Bill Adams, Joan Alexander, Jone Allison, Patsy Campbell, Elspeth Eric, Michael Fitzmaurice, Larry Haines, Mary Jane Higby, Jackie Kelk, Ed Latimer, James Van Dyk, Lesley Woods, and more. The series’ only sponsor was Procter & Gamble, primarily for Ivory Snow dishwashing formula but also for Camay soap, Dash and Tide detergents, and Prell shampoo. The program arrived on NBC on 2 October 1944 and left on 23 March 1945. Continuing on 26 March 1945 on CBS, it remained through 1 July 1955. It was the third most
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important yarn penned by Elaine Sterne Carrington, author of Pepper Young’s Family and When a Girl Marries that were broadcast concurrently.
-SSALARIES. The compensation scale for those working in soap opera covered the spectrum between a pauper’s digs and millionaires’ mansions. If one labored in the notoriously pitiable Hummert camp he was more likely to be at the low end of the scale. But if he were Frank or Anne Hummert, he would be at the top. The pair who lived exorbitant lifestyles in an imposing Greenwich manor staffed with Japanese servants, commanding multiple chauffeured limousines and who took annual extended trips to Europe, were believed to be carrying as much as $300,000 out of radio every year in the 1940s, the bulk of it from soap opera. There were wide disparities throughout the industry to be sure. A serial writer for Irna Phillips in 1938 typically received $100 per quarter-hour script or $500 for a week’s work. Paradoxically, scribes toiling that same year in the Hummert factory customarily took home $25 per installment or $125 a week. Meanwhile, the actors on Hummert serials were commonly paid $15 per show in 1938 and from $5–$6 per hour of rehearsal. More than an hour’s practice was absolutely forbidden by Hummert edict; directors were urged to call seasoned thespians for most parts as opposed to novices to hold rehearsal time to a minimum. As a result, the same practiced artists were tapped over and over, making it tough for neophytes to become established. A decade later, in 1948, union scale (the lowest amount the American Federation of Radio Artists allowed its performers to be paid) had advanced to just $18.15 plus $7.26 for each hour of rehearsal for a quarter-hour program. Hummert wordsmiths, with few exceptions, were still receiving only $25 per script. A strike called by the Radio Writers Guild in 1948—which would have put every Air Features (their organization) dramatic show in jeopardy—was averted when the Hummerts relaxed their stance in paying scale only and granted modest increases to their dialoguers.
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In 1942 Irna Phillips sold three of her serials to Procter & Gamble: The Guiding Light and Road of Life for $50,000 each and The Right to Happiness for $75,000. By then, she was reportedly clearing in excess of $5,000 weekly after paying casts, production crews, writers, and advisors (including attorneys and physicians on retainer). Phillips continued to pen scripts for The Guiding Light even after she no longer owned it. P&G paid her $200 per episode in 1948 for each quarter-hour of dialogue. Installments still opened with the reminder “The Guiding Light, created by Irna Phillips.” When that serial went to television, she was hired to oversee the casting of all new characters. Not only did it help her maintain control over “her” show, it guaranteed that no radical departures could occur in the narrative’s storyline without her approval. Some specifics about salaries might prove enlightening. Washboard weeper actor/announcer Clayton (Bud) Collyer confessed that, by the late 1930s, he was making $7,000 annually for as many as 30 shows weekly, “big dough at the time,” he allowed. In the early 1940s, Bess Johnson, heroine of Hilltop House, was cited as the highest-paid radio actress. She was featured on a handful of serials and became the designated spokeswoman for Lady Esther skin care products, placing her in commercials on a couple of major primetime music and dramatic series. In 1957, Virginia Payne (Ma Perkins) earned $50,000 a year, surpassing every other actress in daytime radio, a hefty sum for five quarterhour shows taped one day a week. J. Anthony Smythe admitted that his part as Father Henry Barbour in the durable One Man’s Family (1932–59) provided financial security for the rest of his life. By the late 1940s, the income of serial creator–writer Elaine Sterne Carrington, then writing four soap operas, was estimated at $250,000 annually. Her affluence translated into several homes—a New York penthouse apartment, a waterfront estate on Long Island, and a third residence in Florida. Her high yield, mostly derived while laboring on Procter & Gamble serials, allowed her to refer to her Bridgehampton waterfront retreat as “the house that Camay built” (sponsor of her most durable yarn, Pepper Young’s Family). Actor Burgess Meredith, who played the title role in Red Davis, a precursor to Pepper Young’s Family, earned $350 for two half-hour performances weekly (including a repeat of
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the same script three hours after its first reading). Once he missed the second show and was promptly fired. In 1948, actor Staats Cotsworth, hero of Front Page Farrell while playing in several other sudsy sagas, whose weekly income was then estimated at $1,000, told a Newsweek reporter, “Giving up a daytime show is like turning in your insurance policy.” SALLY OF THE TALKIES. In a contemporary melodrama of the times penned by Darrell Ware, Marjorie Hannon portrayed attractive blonde Sally Madison. Sally was a little Iowa girl who traveled to the West Coast seeking fame and fortune as a Hollywood starlet. Basil Loughrane, Henry Saxe, and Bob White were in supporting roles. The half-hour Sunday afternoon serial appeared for Luxor over NBC between 15 October 1933 and 7 July 1935. SAM ’N’ HENRY. The second earliest precursor of American soap opera, this comedy debuted on 12 January 1926 over Chicago’s WGN, creating a model for serialized yarns featuring ongoing characters. While that humorous exchange persisted only through 18 December 1927, it was recreated over Chicago’s WMAQ on 19 March 1928 under the moniker Amos ’n’ Andy. Permutations of the serial continued under that title on a network from 19 August 1929 through 25 November 1960. Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, speaking in African-American dialects, played the leads. Much of the dialoguing that listeners heard later—including pure soap opera in 1930—could be attributed to their early primal conversations. See also AMOS ’N’ ANDY; THE SMITH FAMILY. SCATTERGOOD BAINES. The central character of this drama, while well intentioned, often created tribulations while trying to assist his fellow man. Arriving on CBS’s West Coast hookup five days weekly on 22 February 1937 for William J. Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum, the series persisted through 28 October 1938. From 7 November 1938–29 August 1941 and from 1 December 1941–12 June 1942, it appeared on the coast-to-coast CBS net for Wrigley. The program returned to the ether for three brief sustained MBS half-hour weekly segments in 1949 including 10 February–28 April, 2 July–17 September, 20 September–26 October.
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The opening epigraph of the latter trio described the protagonist as “the best-loved, most cussed-at by all and the fattest man in the bustling town of Cold River.” Such epithets, no longer politically correct, were fine with radio’s censors in 1949. Based on magazine fiction by Clarence Budington Kelland with Jess Pugh in the title role, the CBS narrative focused on a hardware proprietor, homespun philosopher, and benefactor who used mental powers to motivate denizens to do what was best in their best interests. Others prominent in the early cast were John Hearne (Hippocrates or ‘Hipp’ Brown, Baines’ helper), Francis Trout (Pliny Pickett, a rail branch employee), Catherine McCune (Clara Potts, an activist), Arnold Robertson (garage mechanic Ed Potts, Clara’s spouse), Charles Grant (Jimmy Baines, Baines’ adopted son), and Eileen Palmer (Dodie Black, Jimmy’s biological mom). Others were Boris Aplon and Forrest Lewis. In the 1949 reprise, Wendell Holmes appeared in the namesake role. The cast included Robert Dryden, Parker Fennelly, Louise Fitch, Barbara Fuller, Roger Krupp, Marvin Miller, Eleanor Phelps, Bryna Raeburn, Lyle Sudrow, and more. SECOND HUSBAND. When widowed mom Brenda with two kids married wealthy Grant Cummings, plenty of conflict erupted. Her hands were full attempting to persuade her son and daughter to accept their new dad. She ran headlong into marital discord when she succeeded as an acting neophyte and sought a permanent career in pictures, something Grant bitterly opposed. A similar situation occurred in the life of Mary Noble, heroine of Backstage Wife (both soap operas were produced by the Hummerts), when Mary was thrust into the limelight as her husband, Larry, “matinee idol of a million other women,” was sidestepped, profusely showing his resentment. Second Husband arrived on NBC Blue on 26 April 1936, initially as a weekly Sunday feature through 4 April 1937. It shifted to Wednesday, airing between 21 April–26 May 1937 on NBC Blue; it persisted on NBC on Wednesday from 2 June–28 July 1937. From 3 August 1937 through 14 April 1942, the drama aired on Tuesday nights on CBS. It then became a five-day-a-week quarter-hour serial, from 20 April–31 July 1942 as a sustained entry on NBC Blue, and from 3 August 1942–26 April 1946 on CBS. Except for one already noted segment Sterling Drugs underwrote the narrative, primarily
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for Bayer aspirin pain reliever, Dr. Lyons tooth powder and Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia laxative. Helen Menken and Kathleen Cordell portrayed Brenda Cummings while Joseph Curtin and Richard Waring were featured as Grant Cummings. In addition to the principals there was Ralph Locke as Milton Brownspun, Carleton Young as Bill Cummings, Jay Jostyn as Ben Porter, Arlene Francis as Marion Jennings, and William Podmore as Edwards, the butler. Additional players were Charita Bauer, Peter Donald, Virginia Dwyer, Janice Gilbert, Jackie Grimes, Joy Hathaway, John Larkin, and Ethel Wilson. Bill Bixby, David Davidson, Nancy Moore, Elizabeth Todd, and Helen Walpole tapped out the dialogue. SECOND MRS. BURTON, THE. A casual listener to this daytime drama might have missed the irony in the title for the second Mrs. Burton (and true heroine) was the first one’s daughter-in-law! The protagonist, Terry Burton, wed Stan, who actually had been married earlier. His first wife, Marian, was quite prominent in the storyline at the series’ inception. But over time she was virtually written out and memories of her faded. Stan’s mom (“Mother Burton”), however, took a more active role, becoming the stereotypical, overbearing boor that gives mothers-in-law a questionable name. This Mrs. Burton was prying, affluent, and missing reticence when it came to her good deeds, yet amiable in an awkward way. To her credit, easygoing Terry rolled with the punches, humoring the aged widow and turning what could have been trying situations into cheerful exercises. Stan, on the other hand, was habitually agitated by his mom. The serial had the peculiar aspect of occupying multiple authors who—when it was their turn to write—took the show in contrasting directions, at least three placing their indelible stamps upon it. Listeners who missed some episodes during scripting transitions may have wondered what happened to the drama they had been hearing. The washboard weeper also had the arguable triumph of being the very last open-end daytime drama to be broadcast on network radio—for certain the very worst of times. The writers included Martha Alexander, Hector Chevigny, Johanna Johnston, Priscella Kent, Nancy Moore, and John M. Young (Alexander, Young, and Chevigny, in that sequence, provided contrasting
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plots). Sharon Douglas, Claire Niesen, Patsy Campbell, and Teri Keane appeared in the role of Terry Burton while Dwight Weist singularly played Stan. Charme Allen, Ethel Owen, and Evelyn Varden were heard as Mother Burton; Arline Blackburn and Alice Frost were Marcia Burton Archer, Stan’s sister; while Larry Haines was Lew Archer, Marcia’s spouse. Included in the cast were Joan Alexander, Kathleen Cordell, Staats Coitsworth, Elspeth Eric, Gale Gordon, Robert Readick, Bartlett Robinson, Alexander Scourby, Les Tremayne, Karl Weber, and others. Initially launched under the moniker Second Wife, the story began on CBS’s West Coast web between 4 May–25 December 1942 for General Foods’ Postum beverage. The dishpan drama arrived on CBS on 7 January 1946 and remained until “the day radio drama died,” 25 November 1960. Through 17 September 1954 General Foods underwrote it for Jell-O puddings and pie fillings, LaFrance bleach, Maxwell House coffee, Post cereals, Postum instant beverage, Satina laundry starch, and Swans Down cake flour. Armour Packing bought it for its meat products from 20 September 1954–17 June 1955; afterward the drama was sold to multiple sponsors including Dial for its soap and shampoo, Standard Brands for Chase & Sanborn coffee, and Columbia phonographs and records. See also SECOND WIFE. SECOND SPRING. As the serial crossed the ether, an announcer deftly inquired in a provocative, perhaps titillating approach: “Second Spring, the true-life radio story that asks the question, ‘Can a woman who was once loved completely ever find true love again? Can she find a second spring?’” While more than 200 quarter-hour installments of the syndicated soap opera were produced and distributed, not one of the authoritative chroniclers of radio drama documented details of the 1949 series. The storyline of one episode, however, includes intrigue, blackmail, and murder. It suggests that weightier matters could eclipse the usual fanciful domestic scrapes that a young woman searching for the love of her life (albeit twice) might encounter. SECOND WIFE. The original version of The Second Mrs. Burton, it aired under this moniker for General Foods’ Postum beverage over
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CBS’s West Coast hookup between 4 May–25 December 1942. Three years later the daytime drama made a comeback on the full network under the new appellation. SENTIMENTAL BACHELOR. An audition tape for this quarter-hour serial exists but most radio historians have not acknowledged it, leading to speculation that the feature possibly ended with the tryout, never making it to the air. If no sponsor picked it up, indubitably that could be the result. However, there is nothing to confirm or deny such a theory without more details. SETH PARKER. An eclectic compilation of homespun philosophy and melody set in the little coastal community of Jonesport, Maine, it began as a weekly hymn-sing and exhibited elements of a serialized narrative. Creator–producer–director–writer–actor Phillips H. Lord, who is much better recalled for aural crime series like Gangbusters, insisted that his boyhood memories and the tales his grandpa told were his inspiration for the character of Seth Parker which Lord portrayed. Other major figures in variety-like dramas included Sophia M. Lord (Phillips’ wife) as Lizzie Peters, Effie Palmer, and Barbara Bruce as Ma Parker (Seth’s mom), Joy Hathaway and Erva Giles as Jane, Raymond Hunter as Captain Bang, and Bennett Kilpack as both Cefus Peters and Laith Pettingal. Included in the cast were William Jordan, Richard Maxwell, Agnes Moorehead, Edward Wolters, and more. The series opened on 3 March 1929 as a sustained Sunday feature on NBC and continued through 3 December 1933. Under the revised moniker Cruise of the Seth Parker, in which cast and crew set out on a voyage by sea that resulted in shortwave transmissions, the show continued under the auspices of Frigidaire for its home appliances. This occurred over NBC on Tuesday nights between 5 December 1933 and 27 March 1934, after the ship sank and everybody returned to shore. NBC Blue picked the show up for awhile sans sponsor on Sundays from 30 June 1935–22 March 1936. Vick Chemical was its final underwriter, from 25 September 1938–19 March 1939 on NBC Blue on Sundays. In its original permutation several distinguished individuals, including Rev. S. Parkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Dr.
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Daniel Poling, endorsed the series. Vowed Cadman: “There could be no more persuasive evidence of the powerful influence for good, which the ‘Seth Parker’ broadcasts are exerting than the fact that, while they are religious in character, four million people tune-in regularly to listen to them.” It was an approbation—except for the numbers—that not many soap operas could ever expect to claim. SIMILITUDE. Some soap operas resembled others so closely that true addicts could swear they were written and produced by the same people. A number of them were. The premise of the attractive, virtuous heroine with dozens of suitors—including a most special one—was exploited to the max on both The Romance of Helen Trent and Young Widder Brown. In neither case could the leading lady experience matrimony a second time (both were widowed) for if they did so the hypothesis of years of storyline would instantly evaporate and there would be little need for the drama to continue. If such farces that broadcast daily for decades did not sound as if they came from the same conspirators, somebody was not listening closely. Both were produced on the assembly line operated by Frank and Anne Hummert and, as their writers were used interchangeably on many dramas—freely moving back and forth between series—the concept was shared with more than one scribe. Creator–writer Irna Phillips was not above such adaptations. In fact, she was the first to use it. When she got into trouble with Chicago’s WGN over copyright issues concerning Painted Dreams, then airing that yarn, she left the station and moved to nearby WMAQ. There she wrote a “new” saga using her old theme and setting and employing characters’ names that closely resembled the figures in Painted Dreams. She called it Today’s Children and it became a huge success for her. Later, one of radio drama’s most literate authors, Carlton E. Morse, adapted his clannish tale of the Barbour tribe, One Man’s Family, to a new serial, The Woman in My House, focused on the Carters. Based on storylines that had already run on One Man’s Family, the new feature’s distinction appeared to be that it was set on the East Coast while its predecessor was set on the West. Not to be outdone, creator–writer Elaine Sterne Carrington recounted the opening action of When a Girl Marries in her only tele-
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vised serial, Follow Your Heart. There was plenty of familiarity being bred in soap opera—that is for sure. SMITH FAMILY, THE. In 1925 (some scholars claim 1924) Chicago’s WENR premiered the comedic serial presented one night weekly featuring Jim and Marian Jordan. Their names would be widely recognized a decade later as Fibber McGee & Molly. Radio historian Francis Chase Jr. labeled the duo’s initial effort “the great-granddaddy of soap operas.” Sam ’n’ Henry followed it in 1926, evolving into the enormously popular Amos ’n’ Andy in 1928. Yet the conversational exchanges of The Smith Family were indicative of what would soon be coming down the pike as genuine soap opera, making the serial—even on a local station—a progenitor of the strain. Most historiographers regard it as the foremost one to audition for the developing breed. Serial scholar Raymond William Stedman assessed: “In this open-end drama of family life, Marion [sic] Jordan became the first of the serial mothers, her sources of both delight and anxiety being two marriageable daughters, one of whom was courted by a jaunty prizefighter (Jordan). The other daughter dated a Jewish boy.” He further illuminated: “In the brief time it was on the air, The Smith Family introduced audiences to continued drama that was more like the first daytime serials than most people realize. The action, though slapstick, concerned home and family. And most of the characters appeared regularly, affording the audience ample opportunity to get to know both them and their habits. In a way, the listener was eavesdropping upon something happening in someone else’s home at that very moment—listening to people he could expect to meet again and again. . . . The Smith Family had its place in the soap opera’s family tree, if only as a stunted root.” SMOLEN, VIVIAN (c1920– ). A native New Yorker who attended Brooklyn College, Smolen was introduced to radio early by way of the Children’s Hour on Sunday afternoons (launched on New York’s WJZ in 1924 and NBC Blue in 1927). Host Milton Cross dubbed her “the girl with the sympathetic voice.” Others in the medium detected that too. She was featured as Veronica Lodge, the love interest of the namesake figure in the adolescent comedy
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Archie Andrews. She regularly turned up in Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons. But, like many of her counterparts, it was in the daytime serials that she excelled. Smolen was an active participant in soap operas, playing support roles in Doc Barclay’s Daughters and Front Page Farrell. For many years, her most prominent role as an also-ran was as the inimitable Lolly-Baby (Laurel Dallas Grovesnor), guarded daughter of Stella Dallas. While a married woman, poor Lolly seemed incapable of making an informed decision without her “mummy” to guide her through the mysteries of life, and to protect her from evil-mongers of many persuasions. Even this part was not Smolen’s best-remembered role, however. For 13 years (1946–59), she was the beleaguered heroine of Our Gal Sunday, Lady Brinthrope, spouse of Lord Henry, who habitually suffered at the hands of legions of wily females out to capture her place as “mistress of Black Swan Hall.” Serials historian Robert LaGuardia branded Smolen’s portrayal of the girl from the little mining camp who wed England’s richest, most handsome lord absolutely “unforgettable.” According to him, she played Sunday with “a plaintive coolness and a dignity that made you feel that no man . . . was really worthy of her.” Smolen stepped into the part in mid-1946 when Dorothy Lowell, who had been Sunday since the serial’s inception in 1937, was away on maternity leave. When Lowell died in childbirth Smolen was permanently awarded the coveted role. In the late 1990s Smolen recalled an occasion in which she nearly lost that part, which—she claimed—left her totally “devastated.” Our Gal Sunday producers Frank and Anne Hummert surreptitiously held auditions for replacements of their lead serial actors in an effort to find the most pleasing voices, hopefully translating into boosted ratings for a drama. After Smolen had been in the part of Sunday for several years, the show’s director tipped her off that he had been ordered to conduct tryouts behind her back for the leading role. “Nothing ever came of it,” she allowed, “but I was nervous for awhile.” Ultimately, the director let her know that the storm had passed; Anne Hummert (who rode herd on their daytime serials) had not found a voice that satisfied her more and she let it go. Smolen confirmed that she never heard directly from the Hummerts about it at any time. She continued as the central figure until the network canceled the durable series several years later.
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SNOW VILLAGE SKETCHES (a.k.a. SOCONYLAND SKETCHES). Debuting for Socony Oil as Soconyland Sketches on 29 February 1928 over NBC on Tuesday, then Monday and again later on Tuesday nights, the series persisted to 26 September 1934. It continued on CBS also for Socony on Tuesdays from 16 October 1934–21 May 1935. At that juncture, it was retitled Snow Village Sketches. The drama appeared for Loose Wiles Biscuit on Saturday nights over NBC between 3 October 1936–26 June 1937. Procter & Gamble purchased it for a serialized five-day-a-week quarter-hour on NBC between 28 December 1942–12 November 1943. It returned to the air on MBS on a sustained basis on Sunday mornings between 13 January–16 June 1946. In the effort penned by William Ford Manley, Arthur Allen and Parker Fennelly appeared as rural villagers in the New Hampshire hamlet of Snow Village. By the time Snow Village Sketches arrived, Allen was playing game warden Dan’l Dickey and Fennelly was truant officer Hiram Neville. Both were farmers, too. Agnes Young and later Kate McComb played Hattie Dickey, wife of Dan’l. Radio historiographer John Dunning characterized Dickey as “the more sympathetic of the two” while Neville was “a punitive gentleman of oldfashioned values.” Set in a bucolic environment, the serial portrayed a way of life that no longer exists. “SOAP OPERA” ORIGIN. The idiom soap opera was probably instigated in the entertainment trade press of the late 1930s. Variety, a bible of the industry, may have coined the term. By 1939, Newsweek and other national periodicals were referring to the “daytime dramatic serial” with easier-to-understand handles. Journalists preferred simpler names like soap opera and washboard weeper. Soap in the phrase soap opera was derived by the fact that manufacturers of household and personal cleansing commodities took great interest in sponsoring serialized dramas. The leaders of the pack were Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, B. T. Babbitt, Manhattan Soap, and Cudahy Packing, the latter a distant sixth. SOCIETY GIRL. With Charlotte Manson in the lead as Bryn Clark Barrington and Corn Products Refining (for Kre-mel and Linit) as
208 • SONG OF THE CITY (A.K.A. RAINBOW COURT)
sponsor, the drainboard drama persisted on CBS from 9 October 1939 to 4 October 1940. Philip Reed played Bryn’s spouse, Russ Barrington, while Jim Backus was Dexter Hayes and Carleton Young was Bryn’s brother. The setting was New York City. David Davidson and Jerome Ross were the wordsmiths and Frank and Anne Hummert may have produced the serial although that is not confirmed. Davidson and Ross routinely penned scripts for their factory, however. SONG OF THE CITY (a.k.a. RAINBOW COURT). An urban setting provided the backdrop as a couple of young ladies encountered adventure and romance. One was crippled; her physician was crucial to the storyline. Flanking author Walter Wicker, who was also in the cast, were John C. Daly, Lucy Gilman, Irna Phillips, an eight-yearold Melvin (Mel) Torme, and Ireene [sic] Wicker (Walter’s spouse). It was typical of many of the serials of that era in which the writer was in the play and some of the players appeared in multiple parts. Irna Phillips and Ireene Wicker had had lots of experience in doing that by the time this dishpan drama arrived for Procter & Gamble’s Dreft dishwashing detergent on 13 August 1934 on an NBC Midwest regional hookup. The quarter-hour narrative was reduced to thrice weekly (Tuesday–Thursday) on 30 April 1935 and pulled from the air on 4 July 1935. SONG OF THE STRANGER. Pharmaco bought this quarter-hour adventure serial for Feen-A-Mint laxative chewing gum on MBS between 29 September 1947 and 26 March 1948. It starred Bret Morrison as Pierre de Varney, a French undercover patriot who was identified as “the Stranger.” Doris Halman wrote the scripts. Because she was a prolific Hummert author and no producer has been recognized thus far, with her as the scribe there is certainly room for conjecture that the series might have emanated from the Hummert factory. But that is not a sure bet. Much of Halman’s verified contributions were there in the early 1940s and this was the late 1940s. SOULE, OLAN (1909–1994). In an illustrious career that embraced dual broadcasting mediums plus film and stage productions, Soule
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amassed an aggregate of 7,000 credits in radio shows and commercials alone. Born at La Harpe, Illinois, he toured with a stock company in the 1920s, performing in diverse roles. By the early 1930s, he was the first male actor to appear in the first daytime soap opera, Painted Dreams, over Chicago’s WGN. A succession of aural parts came rapidly from a trio of sources—soap operas, juvenile adventure serials, and premier primetime dramas. He was a leading man, support actor, and announcer in more than a dozen serials, appearing in the following: Bachelor’s Children, Backstage Wife, The Couple Next Door, Houseboat Hannah, Jenny Peabody, Joan and Kermit, Midstream, Myrt and Marge, Painted Dreams, The Romance of Helen Trent, A Tale of Today, Today’s Children, The Trouble with Marriage, and We Are Four. Soule’s other radio credits included The Adventures of Philip Marlow, Amos ’n’ Andy, Author’s Playhouse, Captain Midnight, Chandu the Magician, The Chicago Theater of the Air, Curtin Time, Davey Adams—Son of the Sea, Dragnet, Grand Hotel, Grand Marquee, Grandstand Thrills, Have Gun—Will Travel, Heartbeat Theater, It Can Be Done, Jack Armstrong—the All-American Boy, Junior Nurse Corps, Let George Do It, Little Orphan Annie, Mr. First Nighter, and Science in the News. He played several character actor roles in motion pictures, appearing in North by Northwest (1959), The Days of Wine and Roses (1962), and The Towering Inferno (1974). His television credits included The Twilight Zone (1959), The Andy Griffith Show (1960), Dallas (1975), Fantasy Island, and Love Boat (both 1979). Soule often provided voice-overs of cartoon characters in feature-length and TV animated series. SPECIAL DELIVERY. With Marian Randolph in the lead role of Tiny Woodward, the brief serial narrative appeared on NBC on Saturday nights between 4 September 1937 and 22 January 1938. The setting was a small college town. Irene Hubbard played Aunt Mary. SPIN-OFFS. From the very first decade of radio soap opera a tendency surfaced among a few of its most inventive creators to take one or more characters from a successful serial and feature him/her/them in a new narrative of his/her/their own. A precedent
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was probably established by the genre that evolved into other strains and is still witnessed today. Irna Phillips was the first of the breed to instigate such makeovers. After The Guiding Light, which debuted in 1937, was firmly entrenched with a loyal following, Phillips transferred one of its figures, Rose Kransky, into her own separate drama. Premiering in 1939, the spin-off, The Right to Happiness, promptly caught on with listeners and survived until daytime drama’s final radio day 21 years later. In 1941 the character of Michael West was lifted from a favorably received Big Sister, created by Lillian Lauferty in 1936. West was transported to his own drama, Bright Horizon. To assist in establishing it the producers had Ruth Wayne Evans (heroine of the mother drama) appear in the new one a few times as a sort of steadying device. The premiering feature, under its original moniker and eventually retitled A Woman’s Life, persisted into 1946. By then Irna Phillips had reinvented the first daytime soap opera, Painted Dreams, a second time. She did it in 1933 when a legal quagmire forced her to relinquish Painted Dreams; she put Today’s Children on the air and adapted the figures and setting of Painted Dreams while doing so. Today’s Children left the air in 1937. In 1942, Phillips ushered in Lonely Women, bearing an incredible resemblance to Today’s Children. In fact, when it ceased the following year, she moved those characters back into Today’s Children, making a comeback. Who said serial producers would not enjoy a little convoluted plotting, too? STEDMAN, RAYMOND WILLIAM (1930– ). One of soap opera’s most authoritative scholars who, in 1971, published a documentary that possibly shed more light on actions impinging on the genre than any previous work. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment (revised in 1977) released by the University of Oklahoma Press provides an objective, comprehensive, and generally authentic introspective into printed, broadcast, and filmed versions of serialized narratives. It is a valuable reference tool for all who claim to be serious students of the form. A broadcaster and educator, Stedman combined those dual vocations in stints at several prestigious universities from California to Florida, in New York and Pennsylvania, for a Los Angeles TV station, and for CBS Radio. He is the author of two other
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volumes, A Guide to Public Speaking (Prentice-Hall, 1971, 1981) and Shadows of the Indian: Stereotypes in American Culture (University of Oklahoma Press, 1982). STELLA DALLAS. Its origins embedded in a popular turn-of-thecentury novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, Stella Dallas was an NBC staple at 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time for 17 years. This tale of “mother love and sacrifice” saw seamstress Stella, a divorcee lacking in decent dialect and social graces, temporarily relinquish her relationship with her beloved daughter, Laurel (branded “Lolly-Baby” by Stella), when the girl wed above her station. Re-entering Laurel’s life in spite of a lack of schooling and culture, Stella proved her mettle in lots of ways: she stood firmly on precepts of justice, becoming the champion of many an underdog; she tracked and subdued evildoers of many sorts; she exhibited an uncanny ability to suspect those with debauchery on their minds before it became obvious to everybody else. In a long-running feud with Mrs. Grosvenor, Laurel’s widowed mother-in-law, Stella was a thorn in the flesh of the granddame of Boston’s elite. But Dick Grosvenor, Laurel’s spouse, an admirer of his in-law, was often in the crossfire separating the matriarchs. Though the action was grossly exaggerated, Stella became a dramatic heroine to millions of late-afternoon listeners who followed her relentless pursuit of decency in the homeland and overseas. As an organ pounded out the suitably themed “How Can I Leave Thee?” every weekday afternoon, an announcer read the epigraph so familiar to the faithful: “We give you now—Stella Dallas!—a continuation on the air of the true-to-life story of mother love and sacrifice in which Stella Dallas saw her beloved daughter Laurel marry into wealth and society and, realizing the difference in their tastes and worlds, went out of Laurel’s life. These episodes in the later life of Stella Dallas are based on the famous novel of that name by Olive Higgins Prouty and are written by Anne Hummert.” Except that Prouty was aghast over the liberties that the Hummerts had taken with her narrative and refused to endorse their work—and, Anne Hummert did not any more pen those scripts than she did any of the other serials she plotted. They were left to Lawrence Klee, Helen Walpole, and other scribes in the cadre of Air Features dialoguers to flesh out.
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Heroine Anne Elstner proudly observed that she missed only one performance of Stella Dallas over its long run, that due to a late arriving train carrying her from her home in New Jersey to the studio. Joy Hathaway initially played “Lolly-Baby” but for most of the run Vivian Smolen won those honors. It took seven actors to portray her spouse, Dick Grosvenor, over the long run including Jim Backus, Spencer Bentley, MacDonald Carey, Bert Cowlan, Michael Fitzmaurice, George Lambert, and Carleton Young. Jane Houston was Mrs. Grosvenor; Grace Valentine was Stella’s landlady, Minnie Grady; and Helen Claire was “Mad” Ada Dexter, a totally deranged woman who could readily incite a riot. Four actors entered the storyline at its start and close as Stephen Dallas, Stella’s divorced spouse (in a day when divorce was not in vogue). They were Arthur Hughes, Neil Malley, Leo McCabe, and Frederick Tozere. Others in a large cast of veteran radio players included Ed Begley, Kenneth Daigneau, Peter Donald, Mary Jane Higby, Raymond Edward Johnson, Elaine Kent, Walter Kinsella, Mandel Kramer, Joan Lorring, Frank Lovejoy, Bill Quinn, Luis Van Rooten, Arthur Vinton, and many more. The soapy saga aired over New York’s WEAF from 25 October 1937 through 3 June 1938. At that juncture, it was slotted into NBC’s matinee agenda, persisting from 6 June 1938–30 December 1955. To 1954, it was sponsored on the chain by Sterling Drugs for a variety of commodities like Astring-O-Sol mouthwash, Bayer aspirin, Campho-Phenique canker sore medication, Double Danderine shampoo, Energine cleaning fluid and Energine Shoe-White polish, Fletcher’s Castoria laxative, Haley’s M-O mineral oil emulsion laxative, Ironized Yeast vitamin supplements, Lyons [sic] toothpaste and Dr. Lyons’ tooth powder, Mulsified Coconut Oil shampoo, Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia laxative, antacid tablets, toothpaste, tooth powder, and face creams, ZBT baby powder and other remedies, household and personal care goods. The drama was sold to participating sponsors in 1954 and in 1955 was presented sustained. STEPMOTHER. See KAY FAIRCHILD—STEPMOTHER. STERLING DRUGS INCORPORATED. One of soap operas’ largest time-buyers, this packaged goods outfit underwrote numerous radio
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features produced by Frank and Anne Hummert. Many of those were offered in primetime like The American Album of Familiar Music, American Melody Hour, Hearthstone of the Death Squad, Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, Mark Sabre, Mr. Chameleon, Waltz Time, and more. In the 1930s, the firm sponsored several isolated serials (e.g., Alias Jimmy Valentine, Second Husband). But its most impressive daytime “buy” was the four o’clock Eastern hour it purchased in the 1940s and the early years of the 1950s on NBC for some of that chain’s long-playing washboard weepers. They included a quartet of hardy staples—Backstage Wife, Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones, and Young Widder Brown. Sterling Drugs produced goods under many well-recognized brand names in that era including AstringO-Sol, Bayer, Campho-Phenique, Double Danderine, Energine, Fletcher’s Castoria, Haley’s M-O, Ironized Yeast, Lyons and Dr. Lyons, Mulsified Coconut Oil, Phillips, and ZBT. STEVENS, JULIE (1916–1984). The native St. Louisian launched her professional acting career in a 1939 Broadway production of The Male Animal. She got into radio in the 1940s, appearing regularly in features like The Adventures of the Abbotts (where she played the feminine lead), Abie’s Irish Rose, Gangbusters, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, and Quick as a Flash. It was in soap opera, however, where she found her niche. There she carried running roles in all of these narratives: Ethel and Albert, Kitty Foyle (in which she played the namesake role), The Light of the World, Road of Life, and Stella Dallas. Incontrovertibly, her most imposing lifetime role was as the virtuous heroine of The Romance of Helen Trent that she portrayed with flawless dignity for 16 years (1944–1960). Many fans of the series that knew Julie Stevens’ name could never think of the show without linking the two. Years later Stevens admitted that she was unprepared for the menial salary figure that appeared on her contract when she signed for the part of Helen Trent. The Hummerts’ legal representative assured her on that occasion that she would work on all of their daytime dramas. That would translate into a banner income, she was assured. She, and others, found it to be true. Critic Gerald Nachman allowed that when the Hummerts liked an actor “there were no more loyal employers.” Added Nachman: “The couple slid their favorite actors from serial to serial like floating bars of Ivory soap.”
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Some time after The Romance of Helen Trent was off the air, Stevens recalled that the cast used to take potshots at Helen’s straitlaced ways. Ernest Ricca, the show’s director for many years, allowed the cast members to clown around and scream with amusement during rehearsals. By airtime, it was out of their systems and they were deadly serious about the scripted dialogue. Stevens acknowledged that she was also urged to be “salaciously breathy” when delivering her lines. After network radio ended she appeared in television commercials and in Big Story on the small screen. Retiring to her New England home for more family time, for several years she cohosted a radio show, Ted and Julie, with Ted Bell over WVLC in Orleans, Massachusetts. She also made a comeback on the stage, winning occasional parts in the Cape Cod community theater. STOLEN HUSBAND, THE. Frank Hummert said it was merely a lucky guess when it occurred to him in the late 1920s or early 1930s that radio drama might be as appealing to housewives as serialized fiction. Such narratives had become popular in magazines and newspapers in the 1920s. To implement his notion Hummert employed Charles Robert Douglas Hardy Andrews (one man but a soon-tobe-proven workhorse!) who had penned some serialized features for The Chicago Daily News. Andrews’ initial task for the ad agency Blackett-Sample-Hummert was to script a radio serial called The Stolen Husband (a title that totally exposed its premise). The plot was to be about (a) a handsome young businessman, (b) a drop-dead gorgeous secretary who was eager to advance her boss’s career, and (c) a slow but pretty wife who would learn too late that a man spending nights at the office with a voluptuous assistant might be preoccupied beyond his occupation. All of the parts in the fleeting 1931 dramatic sketch—the first produced by Hummert and his then-assistant (and future bride) Anne S. Ashenhurst—were read into the microphone by one individual whose name, regrettably, has been lost to history. While The Stolen Husband could never be cited as an extraordinary achievement, it gave Hummert, Ashenhurst, and Andrews valuable insights into the new form. Within a short while, it led them to develop a trio of well-received serials against which almost all others in the strain could be measured,
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each one persisting for more than two decades—Just Plain Bill (1932–55), The Romance of Helen Trent, and Ma Perkins (both 1933–60). STORIES AMERICA LOVES. An anthology of popular yarns like So Big and The Virginian, it arrived over CBS on 6 October 1941 for General Mills’ Wheaties cereal. It persisted there through 16 October 1942. One of the novels was Christopher Morley’s Kitty Foyle, beginning in June 1942. It earned such high ratings that the rotating story concept was abandoned. Kitty Foyle, the serial, replaced the series. Julie Stevens and Clayton (Bud) Collyer appeared as Kitty Foyle and Wynn Strafford, principals in the storyline. STORY OF BESS JOHNSON, THE. The origins of this soap opera are deeply rooted in another, Hilltop House, where Bess Johnson (a well-known actress by that same name) played Bess Johnson, social caseworker for an orphanage. Hilltop House in those days (1937–41) was readily recognized by some industry insiders and outside critics for its superior literary triumphs, thanks to inspired scripting by Addy Richton and Lynn Stone (who combined their monikers to form the pseudonym “Adelaide Marston”). When the sponsor shifted to a new advertising agency, however, officials there decided to sacrifice the more literate prose if favor of reducing the drama’s production expenses. Producer Edwin Wolfe was extremely displeased by that decision; rather than forsake their exalted achievements altogether, he withdrew the series from the air. The new agency, nonplussed, was eager to perpetuate a strong listener following already generated by Bess Johnson. It decided to create a new daytime vehicle for her. The Story of Bess Johnson was the result. It was likely the most shameless character sycophancy ever contrived for a daytime serial star. On 28 March 1941, a Friday, Bess Johnson served her final day as the social caseworker at Hilltop House and the show left the air. Three days later, on 31 March 1941, she was open for business as superintendent of a boarding school in the same quarter-hour timeslot that Hilltop House had occupied on CBS. Her washboard weeper—sponsor Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex tissues) believed—would be so popular that the same scripts by author
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William Sweets also could be aired concurrently on NBC at another weekday hour. But 13 weeks into the “experiment” the show was withdrawn from CBS. It persisted on NBC through 25 September 1942. (Parenthetically, CBS returned Hilltop House to the air six years later with another leading lady as protagonist.) Others in the Bess Johnson cast included Joseph Curtin (Mr. Jordan), Irene Winston (Mrs. Jordan), Agnes Moorehead (Mrs. Townsend), Nancy Marshall (Natalie Holt), Mitzi Gould (Barbara Bartlett), Donald Briggs (Wally Scudder), Eric Dressler (Dr. Franklin), Walter Vaughn (Arthur Bartlett), Adrienne Marden (Patricia Jordan), and Bill Johnstone (Whitney Lewis). See also HILLTOP HOUSE. STORY OF HOLLY SLOAN, THE. With Gale Page in the namesake role and General Mills as the sponsor, the feature aired over NBC between 1 September 1947–28 May 1948. Adapted from Rupert Hughes’ novel Static, the hypothesis offered a young woman torn between two lovers. One was the boyfriend she thought she left behind in her hometown, Clay Brown, though he followed her to New York City where her career as an aspiring vocalist blossomed. Her first job, singing at a local radio station in the Big Apple, constantly placed her within the clutches of a second suitor, Johnny Starr, the station’s president. In practice, Gale Page was actually a singer in real life and sang for real on the soap opera. Vic Perrin played Brown and Bob Bailey was Starr. Georgia Backus appeared as Sloan’s blind Aunt Keturah who raised the girl in a rural hamlet. Bob Griffin played network chief Wilbur Ramage while Louise Arthur was a waitress (Sally) who was quick to console Brown with her charms when he felt rejection by Sloan. Charles Seel as Henry Sloan and Marlene Ames as Lauralee McWilliams completed the continuing cast. STORY OF MARY MARLIN, THE. The spouses (heroes?) of heroines in dramas like Big Sister, Rosemary, and Portia Faces Life appeared to relish long absences from their mates. Whether by design or due to unavoidable circumstances, Joe Marlin, the husband of Mary, did the same. In his case, things were a little different: he was a U.S. Senator who vanished for a long time in the Asian
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wilds. Gone so long was he, in fact, and finally presumed dead, that—to accomplish the people’s business for the underrepresented denizens of his state, Iowa—Mary was appointed to fill his seat in the nation’s capitol. Convoluted circumstances were plentiful in this tale, including surprise reappearances by Joe. Serials historian Raymond William Johnson summarized: “Not even when Joe was at home did things go easily for Mary Marlin. At these times, she had to contend with the designing Bunny Mitchell, a socialite who desired her mate. And then there was Joe’s amnesia. . . . Mary might have found it all too much had not the faithful David Post been there to lean upon…. Post never stopped loving Mary. . . . Listeners began to think that it would be better for Mary if her senator husband didn’t come back for once. Then Mary could marry David. Or, if not David, perhaps Rufus Kane. He too loved Mary.” As it turned out—right in the midst of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration—Kane was elected the nation’s chief executive. In a peculiar equivalent to reality, the housewife from Iowa became the confidante of the president. None of serialdom’s other heroines ever commanded that kind of patronage. Introduced over Chicago’s WMAQ on 1 October 1934 and lasting through 28 December 1934, the dishpan drama appeared for Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex tissues on NBC starting 31 December 1934. For a while in the 1937–38 season, NBC Blue also concurrently carried it for Procter & Gamble’s Ivory Snow detergent. Written by Jane Cruisinberry, it persisted there through 24 September 1943. At that juncture, it leaped across the airwaves via CBS, from 27 September 1943 to 13 April 1945 for Standard Brands’ Tenderleaf tea. The drama made a comeback on ABC as a sustainer between 24 September 1951 and 11 April 1952 as that web sought to reinvent its daytime agenda, filling its afternoons with serials after a decade-long absence. But the chain had waited too long; old habits were tough to recapture and homemakers were turning on their new TV sets by then. The move to get listeners to tune in once more to reincarnated serials of long ago was a dismal failure and ABC quickly realized it could not recapture the past. Joan Blaine, Anne Seymour, Betty Lou Gerson, Muriel Kirkland, Eloise Kummer, and Linda Carlton played the title role. Robert Griffin was Joe Marlin. Fran Carlon appeared as Bunny Mitchell, Carlton
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Brickert as David Post, Rupert LaBelle as Rufus Kane, and Frank Dane as a sympathetic character simply known as Never Fail Hendricks. A large cast of seasoned radio thespians included Charme Allen, Francis X. Bushman, Louise Fitch, Murray Forbes, Dolores Gillen, Marjorie Hannan, Mary Jane Higby, Bess Johnson, Raymond Edward Johnson, Bill Lipton, Phillip Lord, Bret Morrison, Isabel Randolph, and lots more. Played on piano, somewhat unusual for a sudsy saga, the theme song “Clair de Lune” undoubtedly reminded millions of women, both then and years beyond—confined by the drudgery of menial, incessant household chores—of the glamorous existence of the senator from Iowa. STORY OF RUBY VALENTINE, THE. With its antecedents in a couple of earlier serials—As the Twig Is Bent and We Love and Learn— it adapted a quantity of the same scripts. The setting was altered, however, to a beauty salon in Harlem with Ruby Valentine as proprietor. Earlier she had been a celebrated singer and was now a wealthy middle-aged businesswoman. There was at least one other noticeable change this time around: the narrative employed an all-black cast. It may not have been the first soap opera to do so but it was surely among a tiny handful. Vocalist Juanita Hall acted and sang in the namesake role accompanied by pianist Luther Henderson. Also in the dramatic cast were Ruby Dee, Viola Dean, and Earl Hyman. The quarter-hour weekday feature debuted over CBS in 1955 and departed in 1956 (specific dates undocumented). Pet (evaporated) Milk and Philip Morris (cigarettes) jointly purchased commercial time. See also AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMAS. STORY OF SANDRA MARTIN, THE (a.k.a. LADY OF THE PRESS— SANDRA MARTIN). The drama appeared five days weekly and in a 30-minute Sunday primetime version on CBS’s West Coast network during the 1944–45 radio season. Journalist Sandra Martin reported for The Los Angeles Daily Courier. Her investigative exploits led her into some nearby cesspools of moral and ethical depravity. She sought to expose the mayhem, concentrating on real estate scams, a baby black market and a plethora of con games. When she did not have crusades on her mind she turned to romance—infatuated by detective Hack Taggart was she.
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Mary Jane Croft played the heroine weekdays with Janet Waldo doing so weekly. The series aired on the CBS West Coast web weekdays from 1 May 1944 to 1945 (date unknown). The program was retitled Lady of the Press—Sandra Martin when it aired for the same audience beginning 11 June 1944 as a 30-minute Sunday night feature, also into 1945. No sponsor data is available on the weekday rendering but Miles Laboratories underwrote the evening show for Alka-Seltzer stomach distress reliever “and other dependable pharmaceutical products.” The supporting cast was composed of Griff Barnett (as editor Wilson), Ivan Green (as police detective Taggart), Bob Latting (as cub reporter Eddie Dalton), and Howard McNear (as racketeer Steve Heywood). STRANGE ROMANCE OF EVELYN WINTERS, THE. “The story of Gary Bennett, playwright, who suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself the guardian of lovely Evelyn Winters” set the stage for a daily romantic yarn produced by the Hummerts. Bennett, 38, did not know of his obligation concerning the daughter of his former colonel, killed in battle, until his medical discharge from World War II. At 23, she was just out of finishing school. Although considerably older than his ward, Bennett and the girl eventually fell in love, tried to deny it for a while, and its ultimate public revelation prompted an outburst of reaction, both positive and negative. How they handled it made for a provocative storyline. The Hummert scribes took full advantage of the many possibilities within such a plot-filled framework. The serial arrived on CBS on 20 November 1944 and persisted to 12 November 1948 for Manhattan Soap’s Sweetheart beauty bar (and appropriately entered and left the air with the studio organ imparting the familiar theme “Sweetheart, Sweetheart, Sweetheart” in consumers’ ears). The drama was reprised over ABC for Philip Morris cigarettes between 2 July 1951 and 27 June 1952. Toni Darnay played the namesake role while Karl Weber and Martin Blaine appeared as Gary Bennett. Others included Flora Campbell (Janice King), Ralph Bell (Charles Gleason), Kate McComb (Maggie), Helen Claire (Edith Winters), Mary Mason (Ginny Roberts), and Stacy Harris (Ted Blades). SUE BLAKE. A brief sustaining weekday entry on NBC Blue in 1938 that focused on life in a small town. The feature was so transitory that it escaped the notice of most historiographers of the genre.
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SWEET RIVER. While there was an earlier regional version, the drama premiered on 4 October 1943 on NBC Blue and continued through 21 July 1944 for Staley cornstarch. With Ed Prentiss as the minister and Betty Arnold as his spouse, the drama by Charles Jackson was one of a small handful with a religious connotation. The original yarn focused on wartime fallout on a small community as replacement factory workers arrived and disturbed the social fabric. The plot changed on 3 January 1944 when the narrative pursued “the story of Willa McCay, who strives and endures against the heartbreaks and trials that test our lives daily throughout America in towns like Sweet River.” SWENSON, KARL (1908–1978). A thespian of enveloping dialectical skill, for many years Swenson was a leading man in two simultaneous daytime dramas while capturing the part of an ingenious inventive detective in primetime. As Mr. Chameleon, a role that some industry insiders said the Hummerts shaped for him, Swenson (as Chameleon) altered his figure—and, most especially, disguised an awesome voice—to penetrate the milieu of a clueless murderer and coax him or her into his lair. While he played the tenacious investigator a mere five years (1948–53), Swenson was widely acclaimed for the capacity he brought to the part of “the man of many faces.” Not only was he able to modify his voice on that single feature, he did so frequently elsewhere in radio as well. Sound technician Bob Mott said he once asked the resourceful actor why he performed on just about every aural show requiring a Scandinavian accent. “He told me it wasn’t because he was that extraordinarily good (he lied; he was), it was because of his reputation: Directors were notoriously insecure about taking a chance with someone new. Besides, Swenson added, North Country voices were probably the trickiest to do. And if the directors put an ad in Daily Variety asking for auditions, there would be 10,000 actors knocking down the door, while probably only 50 would be acceptable. Here he paused and smiled, ‘What director has the time or inclination to find that fifty out of ten thousand?’” In spite of his celebrated success as Mr. Chameleon, Swenson is even better recalled for the dual soap opera leads he played for about two decades. For most of the run (1937–59), at midday he was a
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veddy veddy British Lord Henry Brinthrope—“England’s richest, most handsome lord”—and husband of Our Gal Sunday. And for an 18-year airlife (1937–55), in late afternoon he portrayed the innocuous inventor Lorenzo Jones, “a character to the town—but not to Belle, who loves him.” He imbued each role with just the right sum of inflection to allow the fans to believe he really was an Englishman of noble birth or a harmless old coot puttering around in his home shop with little malicious intent as he experimented in silly ideas. A native of Brooklyn, Swenson was headed for a career in medicine when acting got in the way. In 1930, he ventured into summer stock with the Berkshire Players. He appeared on Broadway in musical revues by Leonard Stillman and in Arthur Miller’s first stage play, The Man Who Had All the Luck. By 1935, Swenson was on radio, initially performing on The March of Time. In that medium, the full range of his versatile endowments flourished, making him indispensable to many shows. Over a long career, his radio repertoire included numerous title roles or masculine leads. He performed regularly on The Adventures of Father Brown, As the Twig Is Bent, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Betty and Bob, The Cavalcade of America, The Chase, City Desk, Columbia Presents Corwin, The Columbia Workshop, The Court of Missing Heirs, Ford Theater, Grand Central Station, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Joe Palooka, Lawyer Q, Linda’s First Love, Mercury Theater, The Mighty Show, Mrs. Miniver, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, Portia Faces Life, Radio Reader’s Digest, Rich Man’s Darling, So This Is Radio, Spy Secrets, There Was a Woman, This Is Your FBI, The Whisper Men, and World’s Great Novels. Moving to the tube, Swenson costarred as Walter Manning in the televised rendering of Portia Faces Life (1954–55). He was Mr. Hansen on Little House on the Prairie and turned up in support roles on several other TV series, bringing his aggregate for broadcast features to more than three dozen. By adding 31 motion pictures to his repertoire, Swenson netted a quartet of entertainment mediums in which he was actively involved (stage, radio, television, and film). His most notable cinematic exposures probably included Kings Go Forth (1958), The Hanging Tree (1959), North to Alaska (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), How the West was Won (1962), The Birds
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(1963), Major Dundee (1965), and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). A genuinely remarkable career!
-TTALE OF TODAY, A. An extension of the earlier Princess Pat Players (31 July 1933–15 June 1936), the series was renamed and shifted from Mondays to Sunday evenings on NBC Blue. It had originated as a 10-minute segment on the previous program and received such widespread acclaim that it was developed into its own weekly halfhour serial. It aired from 21 June 1936–9 April 1939. The show was billed as “an interesting story of the Houston family, filled with poignant drama and typical American appeal.” While it was a Sunday evening feature, “It followed the same format as other soap operas in all other respects,” according to radio historians Frank Buxton and Bill Owen. Scripted by Gordon St. Clair, the narrative featured actresses Joan Blaine, Betty Caine, and Luise Barclay as heroine Joan Houston. Isabel Randolph and Ethel Owen appeared as Harriet Brooks. Others in the show were Laurette Fillbrandt (as Dot Houston), Willard Farnum (Dick Martin), Robert Griffen (Dr. Frank Gardner), Harvey Hays and Carlton Brickert (Robert Houston), Frank Pacelli (Billy Houston), and Hariette Widmer (Beulah). Filling supporting roles were Bob Jellison, Raymond Edward Johnson, Sunda Love, Mercedes McCambridge, June Meredith, Norma Peterson, and Ed Prentiss. TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. When a single episode of Big Sister was shown in 1946, albeit with actors nonchalantly standing around a microphone in a studio and reading from a script, it was a harbinger of things to come. While that experiment was of little consequence in itself, it initiated a notion of what might be possible that many had not realized before. Within three years, two ill-fated serials appeared on the tube, the next logical step after Big Sister’s pioneering exhibition. These Are My Children, the first for TV created by Irna Phillips, lasted just four weeks on NBC-TV while A Woman to Remember persisted for 10 weeks as Dumont’s only daytime soap
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opera. Both were primitive with actors moving stiffly on low-budget makeshift cardboard sets, often with little room to maneuver, traits of all the televised soaps into the mid-to-late 1950s. During those years the serials were performed live under hot lights and in front of blackand-white cameras. It was an uncomfortable prospect for legions of radio’s dramatic corps who found memorizing lines they had previously read from a script and other working conditions both intimidating and debilitating. Still others embraced the new medium, leaping into it with anticipation and abandonment. A handful of radio serials attempted to replicate their aural successes in the innovative form. Some were disappointed. Among those that tried and received less than satisfying matinee returns were One Man’s Family (1954–55, NBC-TV), Portia Faces Life (1954–55, CBS-TV), and The Road of Life (1954–55, CBS-TV). Although When a Girl Marries did not make it to the small screen under that moniker, its scripts formed the basis of Follow Your Heart that lasted five months in 1953–54 on NBC-TV. Conversely, another radio quartet sustained audiences for multiple seasons including The Guiding Light (easily the most successful, debuting on CBS-TV in 1952 and persisting to this writing), Valiant Lady (1953–57, CBS-TV), The Brighter Day (1954–62, CBS-TV), and Young Doctor Malone (1958–63, NBC-TV). Most followed the radio storylines but the latter drama selected a different locale and characters from that of its radio embodiment. None of the narratives performed in dual mediums were aired jointly. In the case of The Guiding Light, for instance, actors blocked their TV shots during morning rehearsals, performed that show live in early afternoon, then went into a sound studio to record the script for the next day’s radio installment—the same one they would block and rehearse for TV the following morning. This went on for four years (1952–56) until the radio series was withdrawn. For those in the business, it could be the best of times or the worst of times, depending on how one approached it. TENA AND TIM. Premiering on Minneapolis’s WCCO in the late 1920s, the feature attracted a national audience when it arrived on CBS five weekday afternoons between 7 August 1944–2 August 1946. Sponsored by Cudahy Packing for Old Dutch Cleanser, it was
224 • TERRY REGAN, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
a humorous serial featuring Peggy Beckmark as a Swedish maid and George Cisar, James Gardner, and Frank Dane as an Irish janitor. Tim was Tena’s boyfriend. A couple of some means named the Hutchinsons, played by John Goldsworthy and Gladys Heen, employed the pair. Beckmark, who wrote the scripts, had also been responsible for the earlier incarnation in Minneapolis, spelled Teena and Tim on that occasion. TERRY REGAN, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. In 1938, a youthful, single, charming criminal lawyer, Terry Regan, became the forerunner of a line of audio courtroom counselors. In uncommon but formulaic soap opera fashion, he interrupted the homemakers’ day with mystery, mayhem, and murder for S. C. Johnson and Sons, the makers of Johnson’s wax and a line of household, automotive, and industrial cleaning agents. When that firm’s ballyhooed Fibber McGee & Molly took a two-month summer hiatus that year from its venerated evening timeslot, Johnson plugged the hole with Terry Regan, its new matinee defender. Expanding his daily 15 minutes of fame into a weekly half-hour, Regan saw his audience significantly increase. Thirty minutes let him tidy up each case in single installments. But when Fibber McGee & Molly returned from vacation, Terry Regan had nowhere to go. Johnson was pleased with the McGees and Regan had bowed out as a ladies man already. In less than nine months since his inception, the crusading counselor was history. The legacy he left was to outshine his sojourn by many years, however. Other daytime courtroom counselors followed in the Regan train including Her Honor—Nancy James (1938–39), Portia Faces Life (1940–51), and the most imposing of all, Perry Mason (1943–55). Drama mama Irna Phillips recognized the possibilities of populating soap opera with professionals quite early. In the late 1930s, several of her washboard weepers included major figures that earned their livelihoods as lawyers, ministers, teachers, nurses, and physicians, a trait that pervaded virtually all subsequent dramas she created, including many that flourished later on television. Phillips was convinced that such backgrounds made her characters far more interesting to the average listener than if their careers were in trades, as waitresses or shopkeepers.
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Terry Regan, Attorney-at-Law persevered on NBC Blue five days per week between 3 January–29 June 1938. It transferred to NBC from 5 July–30 August 1938 for a Tuesday night half-hour. Jim Ameche played the title role in the daytime version while Henry Hunter (pseudonym for actor Arthur Jacobson) did the same in the evening incarnation. Fran Carlon was the daytime Sally Dunlap (Regan’s secretary) while Betty Winkler performed night duty in that capacity. Lucy Gilman, Grace Lockwood, June Meredith, and Fred Sullivan were in the support cast. Scripts were by Milton Geiger and Billy Mills’ orchestra accompanied at night. THANKS FOR TOMORROW. In a 1949 NBC entry for Procter & Gamble, actress Mary Jane Higby played a young blind pianist seeking a career as a great concert artist. Falling in love with a World War II vet, played by Peter Capell, whose face had been disfigured in battle, she sought to achieve her goal while helping both of them deal with their misfortunes. Vera Allen appeared as Aunt Agatha. Other ongoing actors in the scripts penned by LeRoy Bailey included Wayne Gibson, Ed Jerome, Edgar Stehli, and Charles Webster. When Higby was supposed to play the piano in the plot Paul Taubman performed that duty. He also played the theme song on the piano as the soap opera arrived and left the air, a departure from the customary organ. THIS CHANGING WORLD. As The Open Door hastily closed at CBS when author Sandra Michael once again (for the second time) picked up her marbles and angrily trudged home, the web and sponsor Standard Brands were left holding the bag. This Changing World plugged the hole starting on 3 July 1944 through 29 December 1944. Fran Carlon played heroine Martha Bishop in scripts by Ted and Matilda Ferro. Neil Bishop (played by Lawson Zerbe) was one of only a handful of daytime figures that effectively began and ended a mythical career as a run-of-the-mill soldier; Bishop was stationed in France. Despite intermittent updates from his locale, Martha was the drainboard drama’s chief focus, giving attention to how she dealt with his absence and its impinging on her everyday environment. It was a common theme of the epoch that was exploited by the heroines of several other sudsy
226 • THIS DAY IS OURS
sagas including Backstage Wife, Brave Tomorrow, The Guiding Light, Helpmate, Lonely Women, The Right to Happiness, and some others. THIS DAY IS OURS. In the earliest days of World War II, Eleanor MacDonald, a missionary’s daughter, and disciple Curt Curtis attempted to relieve the sad plight of unfortunates in war-ravaged China. The serial arrived on CBS for Procter & Gamble’s Crisco shortening on 7 November 1938 and continued there through 19 January 1940. At that juncture, it switched to NBC Blue, airing from 22 January–29 March 1940. In scripts by Don Becker and Carl Bixby, actor Jay Jostyn played Curtis while Joan Banks and Templeton Fox were featured as MacDonald. Patricia Dunlap appeared as Pat Curtis, Alan Devitt as Wong, and Santos Ortega as General Ming. Confirmed one reviewer: “The number of tear-rending events that Eleanor and her friends and family experienced on this series was staggering.” In the course of history her offspring was kidnapped, she suffered amnesia and the death of a parent, nursed her spouse back to health following a tragic mishap, assisted a comrade in tracking a murderer, and handled everybody’s everyday dilemmas— typical fare for a daytime heroine. Others in the cast included House Jameson, Elaine Kent, Frank Lovejoy, Agnes Moorhead, Tess Sheehan, and more. Mel Allen, who later became a major sportscaster, was the series’ announcer. Frank and Anne Hummert supervised the production. THIS IS NORA DRAKE. There never seemed to be enough eligible and unencumbered males to go around in serialdom. The heroines who were single, virginal, and seeking to mate were unremittingly drawn to practiced swains who had already wed at least once. Some of those gents were still attached. If that condition did not exist as a story began, in due time it occurred. That was the case of poor Nora Drake, a career-oriented medic who could have had her pick of the available bachelors. Instead, she had the bad misfortune of falling in love with Dr. Ken Martinson who—in a moment of weakness—put her aside and married nurse Peggy King. King was every husband’s nightmare. Nora pined for Ken to obtain the divorce that his spouse assured him would come only over
THIS LIFE IS MINE • 227
her dead body. It was a promise that fans waited for five years to materialize. In the meantime, she gave new meaning to the maxim “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Peggy Martinson believed her lot was to bestow incredible tyranny on “the other woman.” Only when Nora exhibited a developing interest in other men did she gain momentary relief. But as she fell out with those suitors, the pressure mounted. Ultimately, Peggy fell victim to an assassin’s scourge. The wait for the inevitable had made it all compelling. Charlotte Holland played Nora Drake from 1947–49. Joan Tompkins carried the role from 1949–57 and was followed by Mary Jane Higby from 1957–59. Alan Hewitt, nevertheless, was Ken Martinson for the full run. Joan Alexander, Mercedes McCambridge, and Lesley Woods played Peggy Martinson at varying intervals. Ralph Bell and Everett Sloan portrayed Arthur Drake, Nora’s dad, while Grant Richards was attorney Charles Dobbs, an alternate love interest for Nora. Also in the cast were Les Damon, Roger DeKoven, Elspeth Eric, Larry Haines, Irene Hubbard, Leon Janney, Joan Lorring, Charlotte Manson, Robert Readick, Lucille Wall, and others. Two experienced wordsmiths, familiar with medical dramas, wrote the show— Julian Funt and Milton Lewis. The yarn surfaced from 27 October 1947–18 November 1949 over NBC. Starting in 1948 (specific date undocumented) a concurrent series aired over CBS. When the NBC run ended CBS carried it solely through 2 January 1959. Gillette underwrote the debuting drainboard drama for its Toni hair care products division (including home permanents, shampoo, rinse, and other commodities). In 1952, the show was sold to multiple sponsors. Bristol-Myers purchased it a year later for its Ipana toothpaste, Sal-Hepatica stomach distress reliever, and other healthcare goods. Gillette took it over again in 1954, still for Toni, and Bristol-Myers returned in 1955. For the remainder of the run, the program was sold on a participating basis. THIS LIFE IS MINE. Betty Winkler played schoolmarm Eden Channing, who hailed from a family with two contrasting notions—to live for self or others. While her husband was off fighting for his country, Bob Hastings tried to maneuver into his replacement at home. Michael Fitzmaurice appeared as Hastings; Raymond Ives was Joe Channing (Eden’s son); Ruth McDevitt was Jane Channing (Eden’s
228 • THIS SMALL TOWN
sibling); Paul McGrath was Edwin (Eden’s spouse); and Henry M. Neely was David Channing (yet another son). Addy Richton and Lynn Stone, who had already penned the literary quality Hilltop House, temporarily withdrawn, wrote the drama. The series aired on CBS between 22 March 1943–24 August 1945 for General Mills. THIS SMALL TOWN. With Joan Banks in the lead, it appeared on NBC for Duz, washday product of Procter & Gamble, from 30 September 1940–25 April 1941. The small town was in New England and the principal subjects were Carrie (Banks) and Russ Willard (Jay Jostyn), young marrieds. Eleanor Audley and Carl Eastman were also actors in the narrative written by Leston Huntley and purportedly based on fact. If true, as the series lasted only seven months, one might deduce that fiction holds even greater promise. THOMPKINS CORNER. See REAL FOLKS (a.k.a. REAL FOLKS FROM THOMPKINS CORNER). THOSE HAPPY GILMANS. A lighthearted and all-too-few Hummert respite from customary pathos and spousal worship (of someone else’s spouse), it reflected the lives of typical Americans trying to exist while maintaining traditional values. Ethel Gilman was wise; her husband, Gordon, was a dedicated provider, though he disliked his job. The older kids echoed the joys and struggles of late teens while the youngest stayed in trouble with everybody. “A refreshing departure for the Hummerts,” claimed one reviewer. Radio Guide said it personified “the ordinary problems of a $2,000-a-year family.” The sudsy saga arrived on NBC Blue on 22 August 1938. Two months hence it transferred to NBC where it aired to 19 May 1939 for General Mills’ Kix cereal and other foodstuffs. Bill Bouchey was Gordon Gilman, Edith Adams was Ethel, John Hench (Stanley) and Joan Kay (Phyllis) were the young adult offspring, while Cornelius Peeples (Wheezy) was the youngest. Henrietta Tedro played a fussy Aunty Bessie, yet adored by all. THOSE WE LOVE. A weekly 30-minute serial drama that made it to daytime only on Sunday though it often played in weeknight primetime. It aired in many slots for the sponsors indicated: 4 January–29
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March 1938, Tuesday, and 4 April 1938–27 March 1939, Monday, both segments on NBC Blue for Ponds facial products; 5 October 1939–28 March 1940, Thursday, NBC, Standard Brands (Royal gelatin desserts); 16 September 1940–23 June 1941, Monday, CBS, Procter & Gamble (Teel dentifrice); 1 July–23 September 1942, Wednesday, NBC, Bristol-Myers (Sal-Hepatica stomach distress reliever); 11 October 1942–30 May 1943, Sunday, CBS, General Foods; 6 June 1943–25 June 1944, Sunday, NBC, General Foods; 29 June–24 August 1944, Thursday, NBC, General Foods (Maxwell House coffee); 8 October 1944–1 April 1945, Sunday, NBC, sustained. Critics noted that the frequent shifting of days and times was detrimental to the show in building and maintaining an audience—it was easier for some fans to give up rather than continue searching for their show. Penned by Ruth Adams Knight and Agnes Ridgway, it recounted the story of the Marshalls of Westbridge, Connecticut. Widower John Marshall, having raised two offspring (Kathy and Kit), was an attorney. Aunt Emily Mayfield helped him with domestic issues. It was Marshall’s hope that his son Kit would follow him by joining his law firm. But Kit maintained an interest in aviation instead. One beau after another pursued Kathy; her most persistent was Dr. Leslie Foster. Hugh Sothern, Oscar O’Shea, and Francis X. Bushman portrayed the protagonist, John Marshall. Nan Grey was Kathy and Richard Cromwell and Bill Henry were heard as Kit. Alma Kruger appeared as Aunt Emily, Donald Woods was Leslie Foster, and Virginia Sale portrayed Martha Newbury, a much-loved housekeeper. Bob Cummings, Gale Gordon, and Lurene Tuttle were in the supporting cast. THUNDER OVER PARADISE. An adventurous serial drama featuring Laurette Fillbrandt and Elizabeth Day as the heroine, it arrived on NBC Blue on 24 July 1939 and departed on 28 February 1941. It focused on dramatic events in the life of a female rancher in Central America, starting with a revolution. Sid Ellstrom and Luis Van Rooten played General Durango, Mike Romano was a ranch hand, Dennis Hoey was a padre, and Bill Crawford an aviator. The drama was sponsored by C. F. Mueller macaroni. TODAY’S CHILDREN. Listeners must have experienced déjà vu while hearing this drama the second and third time around. The premise, the
230 • TODAY’S CHILDREN
characters, and the locale were more than vaguely familiar. What was going on? Irna Phillips, who created the narrative in 1932, was also the author of Painted Dreams, the first daytime serial, introduced to a Chicago audience in 1930. When Phillips and the radio station airing that celebrated feature encountered a difference of opinion, she went to a competing station and put an almost identical series on the air. NBC Blue shipped the new one to a nationwide audience under the moniker Today’s Children. Set in a Chicago ethnic district, the plot initially revolved around a tightly knit Irish-American family headed by a resilient widowed matriarch who instilled timeless bromides into her offspring. Later it evolved into a German-oriented family epic in the same neighborhood. When her own mother died in 1937—the original inspiration for the serial, according to Phillips—the enterprising innovator abruptly withdrew the popular serial from the air. A half-dozen years hence Phillips returned it to the ether. The story was one of the first to exploit the mailhook for a memento, a model for many shows that followed. Irna Phillips, who cowrote the narrative with Virginia Cooke, appeared as the leading figure of Mother Moran. Fran Carlon and Ireene [sic] Wicker played Eileen Moran; Bess Johnson and Sunda Love were Frances Moran Matthews; Virginia Payne was Mama Schultz; and Murray Forbes was Papa Schultz. Others in a very large cast included Herb Butterfield, Patricia Dunlap, Laurette Fillbrandt, Margaret Fuller, Betty Lou Gerson, Raymond Edward Johnson, Forrest Lewis, Frank Lovejoy, Jean McGregor, Marvin Miller, Ethel Owen, Ed Prentiss, Everett Sloane, Olan Soule, Fred Von Ammon, Willard Waterman, Walter Wicker, and many more. The series arrived on WMAQ on 16 June 1932 and was launched on NBC Blue on 11 September 1933, persisting there through 29 May 1936. At that juncture, it transferred to NBC, where it continued from 1 June 1936–31 December 1937. The washboard weeper made a comeback on NBC from 13 December 1943–2 June 1950. General Foods (coffee, desserts, other edibles) sponsored the program on Chicago’s WMAQ from October 1932 until it reached the network. Pillsbury (flour, cake mixes, etc.) purchased the show from 11 September 1933–31 December 1937. When the yarn returned to the air it was picked up by a third food processor, General Mills (flour, cake mixes, cereals, biscuits, etc.) that carried it from 1943–50.
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TOMPKINS, JOAN (1914–1985). An actress who won several coveted roles in radio soap operas, she is best recalled as the debuting heroine in Lora Lawton (1943–46) and—perhaps even more importantly—as the enduring heroine in This Is Nora Drake (1949–57). For many years, she was also Ellen Brown’s best friend, Norine Temple, in the longrunning Young Widder Brown. In addition, the prolific radio actress acquired continuing roles on several other daytime serials including Against the Storm, Big Sister, David Harum, Our Gal Sunday, and Your Family and Mine. Tompkins appeared in a few more dramatic series like Call the Police and Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons. As radio’s fortunes faded, she set off in the sun to pursue radio jobs in Hollywood with her husband, legendary soap star Karl Swenson. TOVROV, ORIN (1911–1980). Acclaimed as one of the most prolific writers of radio soap opera, the gifted wordsmith—an ex-newspaperman—was one of the form’s best. His most widely recognized contribution was to author scripts for Ma Perkins for more than 20 years (c1939–60). Over that period he used his opportunity to develop the drama’s recurring characters. He added small details as time evolved so longstanding fans knew each individual better, yet never departed from the core personalities confirmed years before. Few writers in radio (possibly only Elaine Sterne Carrington and Carlton E. Morse and maybe Irna Phillips) had as much time to magnify such miniscule elements in the lives of their figures as did Tovrov. His product signified his ability as a master dialogue craftsman. His scripts genuinely sparkled with earthy metaphors and conversational exchanges that were reminiscent of people living in a slower epoch and in an idyllic hamlet. Oscar Schisgall, a biographer of Procter & Gamble, observed that Tovrov possessed an “inexhaustible” gift for stretching out drama. Soap opera historians Madeleine Edmondson and David Rounds asserted that his serials were “as well written as any serious drama on television.” Indeed, he quite possibly might have been the best of his trade. In addition to Ma Perkins Tovrov wrote the dialogue for a trio of other serials—CBS Radio’s Manhattan Mother, The Brighter Day for both CBS Radio and Television incarnations, and The Doctors, a daily NBC-TV narrative. He organized broadcasting’s first strike in
232 • TREMAYNE, LES (1913–2003)
the 1930s. Recognized by peers for his achievements, Tovrov was elected first president of the Radio Writers Guild, an industry alliance encompassing almost every scribe in the medium. TREMAYNE, LES (1913–2003). An inexhaustible thespian that invested much of his professional career in daytime serials, he is recalled for roles in a dozen washboard weepers. They included Betty and Bob, The Dreft Star Playhouse, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Lonely Women, Ma Perkins, One Man’s Family, Real Stories from Real Life, The Romance of Helen Trent, The Second Mrs. Burton, Wendy Warren and the News, The Woman in My House, and Woman in White. For years, he played the leading man in Betty and Bob and Wendy Warren and the News. Other radio credits he picked up included leads or hosting roles in The Abbott Mysteries, The Adventures of the Falcon, The Adventures of the Thin Man, Grand Hotel, The Jackie Gleason–Les Tremayne Show, Mr. First Nighter, Movietown Radio Theater, Radio Reader’s Digest, and Romance in Rhythm. Tremayne was in supporting casts of Author’s Playhouse, The Bob Crosby Show, The Chicago Theater of the Air, Cloak and Dagger, Cousin Willie, The Edward Everett Horton Show, The Fog Lifts, Ford Theater, Heartbeat Theater, Hildegarde’s Radio Room, I Love a Mystery, Jack Armstrong—the AllAmerican Boy, The MGM Theater of the Air, Night Court, The Old Gold Show, That’s Rich, and The Six Shooter. Born in Balham, London, Tremayne’s initial professional exposure arrived at age three when he appeared with actress Dolly Tremayne, his mother, in a silent film in England. He entered Chicago radio in 1930 after community theater, vaudeville, and amusement park experience. His first nationwide program was in a bit part on The Shadow of Fu Manchu. After he became a busy radio actor, he played in the 18-month Broadway run of Detective Story. He turned up in 33 Hollywood films including The Blue Veil (1951), Francis Goes to West Point (1952), The War of the Worlds (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), A Man Called Peter (1955), The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), North by Northwest (1959), Goldfinger (1964), Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985), and Attack of the B-Movie Monster (2002). His television credits included parts in Ellery Queen, General Hospital, Mission Impossible, One Life to Live, One Man’s Family,
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Perry Mason, Peter Gunn, and voice-overs for the cartoon series Shazam. He and his wife, radio soap opera heroine Alice Reinheart, enjoyed an extended run hosting The Tremaynes, a breakfast talk-show six mornings a week over New York City’s WOR. He returned to the microphone in the 1970s for appearances on The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, increasing to no fewer than 48 the aggregate number of network broadcast series on which he performed. Not many actors surpassed that sterling record. Tremayne was a lifelong champion of radio as an essential dramatic medium. It weighed on him heavily when audio’s fortunes ebbed in the 1950s. The unfortunate part, he declared, was that the end did not have to come. He observed that radio drama in other nations continued airing after the advent of TV. Vast audiences, including convalescents, the aged, the blind, and all who get starry-eyes when they talk about “those days” were simply left mired in an abysmal swamp, he averred. TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WARE, THE. A novel serial idea that featured local casts acting out the dramatic narrative in multiple cities via local stations. The program premiered on KLRA in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1931–32. Penned by Kenneth M. Ellis, the originating recital was directed by his brother, KLRA announcer George Ellis. Plots focused on a mock trial in which Vivienne (sometimes spelled Vivian) Ware stood accused of murder. Distinguished Arkansas jurist Marvin Harris portrayed the on-the-air judge in the KLRA performance. The audience comprised the jury. After the evidence was presented, listeners registered their opinions, the majority favoring a “not guilty” verdict. The series earned such high acclaim that several NBC outlets in major metropolitan areas (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco) subsequently produced it with local thespians filling the roles. So popular was the Little Rock rendering that shortly after it ended the program was repeated (live, of course), with only the defendant’s name altered to Dolores Divine. Again the fans returned a “not guilty” verdict. In 1932, Twentieth Century Fox released a full length theatrical film starring Joan Bennett titled The Trial of Vivienne Ware and based on the audio series. Donald Cook, Richard
234 • TROUBLE HOUSE
(Skeets) Gallagher and Zasu Pitts were cast in the motion picture. Barry Connors and Ken Ellis wrote the screenplay and Ellis also wrote his story in a third format as a novel. TROUBLE HOUSE. It prevailed during a CBS omnibus titled Heinz Magazine of the Air. The thrice-weekly half-hour included music, interviews, and the serial penned by Elaine Sterne Carrington. She would be recognized in succeeding years as one of aural soap opera’s legendary writers. The Heinz marathon drew few listeners, however, and a decision was made to withdraw Trouble House and later the Heinz feature at that hour. In its wake, audiences were offered a fresh drama without contiguous trappings, Carol Kennedy’s Romance. Trouble House arrived on 2 September 1936 and departed on 4 August 1937. It aired only Monday–Wednesday–Friday mornings. Featuring Anne Elstner in the lead as Martha Booth. It included Carleton Young as Bill Mears, Elliott Reid as Ted Booth, Joan Madison as Ann Lowery, Elsie Mae Gordon as Phoebe, Jerry Macy as Harvey, Ray Collins as John, Gene Leonard as Dr. Clem Allison, and Dorothy Lowell as Nancy Booth. H. J. Heinz, a maker of condiments and other foodstuffs, underwrote the series. TROUBLE WITH MARRIAGE, THE. It was a Procter & Gamble entry (for Oxydol detergent) on NBC Blue that lasted six months between 3 July–29 December 1939. The drama’s theme song, “Jealousy,” possibly answered the doubtful suggestion raised in the title. Appearing as the couple in question were actors Mary Patton as Pat and Stanley Harris as Barry. Frank and Anne Hummert produced the sudsy saga. TRUE CONFESSIONS. With True Confessions magazine as sponsor and also providing fiction for the narratives, the NBC five-day-aweek serialized feature appeared at varying times between 1944–58. Bess Johnson was the hostess–narrator, presiding over installments of pulp publication adaptations. Segments were frequently sensational and invariably directed at women. Created and written by William Sweets, the series featured recurring cast members Janice Gilbert, Charlotte Manson, Lucille Wall, Ned Wever, Richard Widmark, and other seasoned aural thespians.
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TWO ON A CLUE. The crime drama bowed on 2 October 1944 over CBS for General Foods (LaFrance bleach and Satina laundry starch) and was withdrawn on 4 January 1946. The plots focused on a husband–wife detective team, Jeff and Debby Spencer. Their close confidant was police sergeant Cornelius Trumbull. Authentic case histories were the basis of the narrative. Ned Wever portrayed Jeff and Louise Fitch was Debby while John Gibson was heard as Cornelius. Jim Boles, Ronald Liss, Athena Lorde, and Kate McComb filled supporting roles. The sponsor replaced the serial with The Second Mrs. Burton; it acquired the dubious privilege of being the final open-end soap opera to air on “the day radio drama died,” 25 November 60, when all the daytime serials were withdrawn.
-VVALIANT LADY. When actress Joan Barrett surrendered her vocation to marry plastic surgeon Truman (Tubby) Scott, her childhood sweetheart in Pine River, her vows to him must have left her fans wondering. Tubby was insanely jealous. If that was not enough for her to bear, he became quite unstable when a blood clot entered his brain. She acquired empathy from her father, Jim Barrett, and—not surprisingly—from a single, attractive artist, Paul Morrison. Nevertheless, she was mired in misery, fighting bravely (as so many soap opera heroines did) against relentless and ostensibly insuperable odds. It was “the story of her struggle to keep his feet planted firmly upon the pathway to success,” certainly not an uncommon premise in daytime serials. It must have seemed like Tubby would never get there, however, making her one of the most harassed—while valiant—ladies of the genre. For most of its life General Mills underwrote the serial for Bisquick and Gold Medal flour. The story surfaced on CBS on 7 March 1938 but aired there only briefly, through 27 May 1938. From 30 May 1938–13 March 1942, NBC carried it. The drama returned to CBS on 16 March 1942 and persisted through 23 August 1946. ABC broadcast the serial when it made a fleeting comeback, from 8 October 1951–29 February 1952, without benefit of sponsor.
236 • VIC AND SADE
Joan Blaine, Joan Banks, and Florence Freeman appeared as Joan Barrett, the valiant lady. Richard Gordon, Bill Johnstone, and Gene Leonard played her father, Jim. Charles Carroll, Bartlett Robinson, and Martin Blaine were heard as Tubby. Judith Lowry played Joan’s good friend Emma (Stevie) Stevens while Elspeth Eric portrayed Eleanor Richards, Joan’s “closest friend.” Others in the cast included Bill Adams, Charme Allen, Ralph Bell, Eric Dressler, Parker Fennelly, Raymond Edward Johnson, Jackie Kelk, Elaine Kent, Kate McComb, Santos Ortega, Ethel Owen, Everett Sloane, Luis Van Rooten, Charles Webster, Dwight Weist, Ned Wever, Lawson Zerbe, and more. Writers were Addy Richton and Lynn Stone, Ruth Borden, Lawrence M. Klee, and Howard Teichmann. Frank and Anne Hummert were the producers. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. VIC AND SADE. Radio historiographer John Dunning asserts that this homespun yarn could never be properly designated as a serial in its purest form. He gets no support from the preponderance of chroniclers of daytime drama who classify it in the same camp with the comical exchanges of Ethel and Albert, however. A humorous feature that focused on the peculiar Gook family, “radio’s home folks”—denizens of Crooper, Illinois—the central figures resided “in the little house halfway up the next block.” Vic, the patriarch, was an accountant at a kitchenware plant; Sade, his spouse, a homebody; and their adopted son Russell (Rush) Meadows was, in reality, the offspring of Sade’s sibling, who could not afford to rear him. Others in the recurring cast were Uncle Fletcher and Chuck and Dottie Brainfeeble, the Gooks’ good friends. Art Van Harvey appeared as Vic while Bernardine Flynn was Sade. Billy Idelson, Johnny Coons, and Sid Koss were heard as Rush at different intervals. Clarence Hartzell played Uncle Fletcher, Carl Kroenke was Chuck, and Ruth Perrott and Dorothy Day were Dottie. Series creator Paul Rhymer and others penned the scripts. The program arrived as a sustaining nighttime feature on NBC on 29 June 1932 and continued there through 2 November 1934. Procter & Gamble picked it up for Crisco shortening and Ivory Flakes detergent on the NBC Blue network at that point, airing it daily from 5 November–29 December 1934, 13 April 1936–13 October 1939
WALL, LUCILLE (1899–1986) • 237
and 1 April 1940–28 March 1941. Concurrent series aired on NBC daily from 5 November 1934–27 May 1938, 6 April–21 September 1937 (a Tuesday night sustained half-hour) and daily 7 November 1938–29 September 1944. In addition, a simultaneous quarter-hour run aired on CBS five weekdays from 30 May–4 November 1938 and on MBS between 31 March–26 September 1941. CBS carried the show daily from 29 December 1941–17 September 1943 and again from 21 August–7 December 1945 on Tuesday–Friday, changing to Monday–Friday starting 10 September. With that, Procter & Gamble’s run ceased. The series made a brief comeback for Fitch shampoo over MBS in a half-hour Thursday night outing from 27 June–19 September 1946. When the tale was reprised for a video audience it met a dismal reception. The Gook Family premiered and departed on NBC-TV on 25 July 1949. Frank Dane played Vic, Bernardine Flynn was Sade (her radio role), and Dick Conan was Rush. Apparently audiences and sponsors preferred hearing the Gooks to having their eccentric lives interpreted in pictures.
-WWALL, LUCILLE (1899–1986). Although a native Chicagoan, the prolific radio actress broke into the big time on New York’s WJZ via The Collier Hour (1927–32). She was designated the “Collier Love Story” girl, acting under the assumed name of Polly Preston while appearing opposite Frederic March. After that auspicious beginning the dramatic parts started coming her way. She also performed under her own appellation from then on. Assignments included series like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Chase, The Court of Human Relations, Diane and Her Lifesaver, Island Boat Club, The March of Time, Mr. First Nighter, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, and Nine to Five. Eventually Wall found a niche in daytime drama. There she played the feminine lead in Your Family and Mine (1938–40) while winning recurring roles in Pretty Kitty Kelly, A Tale of Today, This Is Nora Drake, and True Confessions. But for years she pulled off a rather startling feat that other radio actresses could only dream about. In the
238 • WARNER, GERTRUDE (1917–1986)
interval of a single hour, five days a week for more than a decade, Wall was the heroine on two NBC soap operas. During most of that epoch both programs were also broadcast live, requiring her to shuffle back and forth between studios to accommodate rehearsals prior to each day’s performances. At 4:30 Eastern Time every weekday afternoon between 1940–55, she appeared as Belle, the faithful spouse of Lorenzo Jones. At 5:15, only 30 minutes after that show left the air, Wall portrayed the namesake in Portia Faces Life, the only permanent actress in that part for the run of the series (1940–51). While not tapped for the same role in the televersion of Portia Faces Life, she acquired a far more durable one as nurse Lucille March on ABC-TV’s General Hospital. For 14 years (1963–76 and again in 1982), she appeared, approaching the longevity she was awarded for playing Belle Jones on radio. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. WARNER, GERTRUDE (1917–1986). In 1935, she broke into radio over hometown station WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut. By 1939, she had launched a career in daytime serials in New York City, beginning with a bit part in Valiant Lady and a major recurring role in the debuting Against the Storm. From there, Warner branched into numerous other soap operas, playing supporting or leading characters in Beyond These Valleys, David Harum, Ellen Randolph, Ethel and Albert, Joyce Jordan, M.D., The Man I Married, Marriage for Two, Modern Romances, Mrs. Miniver, The Mystery Man, Perry Mason, The Right to Happiness, When a Girl Marries, Whispering Streets, and Young Doctor Malone. This gave her regular appearances on 17 washboard weepers, a near record among actresses. Warner was the voice of Margot Lane in The Shadow for a time. She turned up often in the casts of Brownstone Theater, Chandu the Magician, City Desk, Dangerously Yours, Destiny’s Trails, Don Winslow of the Navy, Ellery Queen, Matinee Theater, Mr. Keen— Tracer of Lost Persons, The MGM Theater of the Air, Tom Mix, True Detective Mysteries, and Yours Truly—Johnny Dollar. As radio faded, she became an instructor at Weist-Barton School of Television and Commercial Acting and at Oberlin College. In 1960, she appeared fleetingly as Claire Lowell in CBS-TV’s As the World Turns. Her network broadcast series numbered no fewer than 32 features.
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WAY DOWN EAST. In grandiose Hummert flourish, it was “the sequel, as written by us, to the great stage and screen melodrama” that preceded it and upon which it was fixated—Lottie Blair Parker’s 1889 stage play and a subsequent 1935 film by the same title. It was the tale of Anna and David Barlett and their lives together along Maine’s Atlantic coast. The serial appeared on MBS on 23 November 1936 and departed on 16 April 1937. Agnes Moorehead and Van Heflin, two who were destined for much greater professional triumphs, played the leads. WE ARE ALWAYS YOUNG. With William Janney in the lead, the narrative aired six days a week over MBS between 3 March–22 November 1941. Janney’s character played a serious composer who labored as a taxi driver in the meantime until his music became successful. Margalo Gilmore, Jessie Royce Landis, and Linda Watkins were also in the serial scripted by Ashley Buck and Nicholas Cosentino. WE ARE FOUR. A tale that began over Chicago’s WGN on 9 September 1935, it gained a national audience on 1 March 1937 on MBS for Libby, McNeil and Libby food processors. But it lasted only until 3 December 1937. Charles Flynn and Marjorie Hannan were the featured principals, Tony and Nancy Webster, who had two daughters, Lydia and Priscilla. Other actors included Alice Hill (Lydia Webster), Sally Smith (Priscilla Webster), Carl Boyer (Pat), Reuben Lawson (Carl Maritz), Olan Soule (Arthur Blaine), Ireene [sic], and Walter Wicker. Bess Flynn scripted the serial. In real life, Charles Flynn was Bess Flynn’s son. He was to become the most enduring actor to play Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy (1939–43, 1944–51). WE LOVE AND LEARN. With antecedents in As the Twig Is Bent, it was the “middle” drama of a trilogy that also included The Story of Ruby Valentine. Even under the “middle” title there were two permutations. In the first, schoolmarm Andrea Reynolds, who had been run off from her previous locale (in As the Twig Is Bent) by “smallminded citizens,” wound up in New York City. Her big achievement there was to meet and marry handsome Bill Peters. From 1942–44,
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the narrative focused on how the young couple dealt not only with married life but the fallout from World War II as it impinged on their environment. Following an absence of nearly four years the show returned under the same moniker but with yet another premise. Jim and Thelma Carlton were the focus by then—he was a mama’s boy and his mom became Thelma’s worst nightmare. Invariably, she was a thorn in her daughter-in-law’s side and a wedge between the couple. (See MOTHER-IN-LAW.) In fact, she hoped divorce would be the result. We Love and Learn arrived on CBS for General Foods on 6 April 1942 and stayed put through 31 March 1944. Then it jumped across the ether to NBC and was sustained from 3 April–29 September 1944. It was off the air for several years, returning to NBC on 28 June 1948 for Manhattan Soap (Sweetheart beauty bar and Blue-White Flakes detergent). It continued through 23 March 1951. Joan Banks, Louise Fitch, and Betty Worth played Andrea Reynolds while Frank Lovejoy was Bill Peters. Others in the first incarnation included Mitzi Gould (as Andrea’s friend Taffy Grahame), William Podmore (as the butler, Harrington), Grace Keddy (Mrs. Van Cleve), and Juano Hernandez (Mr. Bones). When the show returned to the air following the break, Cliff Carpenter appeared as Jim Carlton, Sybil Trent as Thelma Carlton, and Charme Allen as Mother Carlton. Ann Thomas was the Carltons’ friend, Dixie. Many other radio veterans appeared throughout the run including Carlo De Angelo, Robert Dryden, Don MacLaughlin, Charles Webster, Lesley Woods, and more. Producer Don Becker also scripted the series along with John Clark and Martin Stern. WE, THE ABBOTTS. There were five Abbotts—John (John McIntire), Emily (Betty Garde, Ethel Everett), Jack (Cliff Carpenter), Linda (Betty Jane Tyler, Betty Philson), and Barbara (Audrey Egan). There were others in the cast including Arthur Anderson (David Harens), the maid Hilda (Adelaide Klein), Isabel Kenyon (Kay Brinker), Madelyn (Esther Ralston), and Willie Tompkins (Ralph Dumke). Bess Flynn wrote the dialogue. The serial concerned an average American family living in Middledale and their struggle to remain financially solvent while processing typical domestic issues and crises that encroached on life.
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The patriarch was something of an independent thinker; he produced a company newsletter, but when he lobbied for the rights of workers the firm’s officials came down on him. His spouse was a school cafeteria manager until she set it aside to be a defense volunteer. Of their offspring, twin Barbara was betrothed to Arthur Anderson, twin Jack was a radio actor and Linda, 10, was the one all the others doted on. The narrative premiered on CBS on 7 October 1940 for brands of Best Foods (Hellman’s mayonnaise and Nucoa margarine), continuing through 30 May 1941. It moved to NBC on 2 June 1941 for the same sponsor and was withdrawn on 3 April 1942. WENDY WARREN AND THE NEWS. Pundits discovered less to fault in this soap opera than most others because it projected a pragmatism that many of its counterparts ignored. A daily newscast within its parameters added legitimacy to plots. With the protagonist’s journalistic career embracing electronic and print media, it was necessary for the action to reflect the day on which it aired, unlike events on most peer dramas. Twenty-four hours elapsed between one broadcast and another. On Fridays, the heroine told of her plans for Saturday and Sunday; on Mondays she recalled exchanges she had and places she was over the weekend. Occasionally, there was a flashback so listeners could hear a critical development that occurred in the interval since the program aired last. Not only that, the drama pursued issues not just of the heart but also of intrigue and suspense. Wendy and her cronies were normally in crusade mode, literally fighting against subversive interests that intended to bring down our government. (Note that this was more than a half-century prior to 9/11.) All of it set the serial apart from the pack. In addition, authors John Picard and Frank Provo offered superior quality scripting—some of the best among all daytime dramas. Their uncanny ability to hold audiences with suspenseful dialogue contributed immeasurably to the popularity of the midday thriller that earned some of the highest ratings among weekday programming. Peerless actress Florence Freeman played Wendy throughout the run and was flanked by Douglas Edwards, respected CBS newsman, who reported the current day’s headlines at the top of the hour. In the narrative itself, Les Tremayne was Gil Kendal and Lamont Johnson was Mark Douglas, both romantic interests for Wendy. Peter Capell
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played Anton Kamp, an important figure trying to halt the revolutionaries infiltrating our government. John Raby was Don Smith, Wendy’s editor on The Manhattan Gazette, a mythical paper for which she bylined. Rod Hendrickson was Sam Warren, her dad, while Tess Sheehan played Aunt Dorrie, Sam’s sister. Other performers included Vera Allen, Horace Braham, Anne Burr, Jane Lauren, Guy Spaull, Lotte Stavisky, Meg Wylie, and more. No role was cast more than once across 11 years, believed to be the only soap opera that could claim such a feat for that enduring run. The drainboard drama arrived on 23 June 1947 over CBS for General Foods (primarily for Maxwell House coffee but also for Baker’s coconut, Gaines pet foods, Post cereals, and other brands). Procter & Gamble took over the show on 30 September 1954. A year later the program was sold to participating sponsors, lasting to the end of the run on 12 November 1958. “My Home Town,” the soap opera’s theme song composed by music director Clarke Morgan, may have been the only serial theme published and distributed in sheet music form as a direct result of listener acclaim. Few, if any, themes especially created for a daytime drama received that kind of approbation. WEVER, NED (1902–1984). A native New Yorker, he attended Princeton University and took an interest in music and theater, penning songs and skits as a student. He was elected president of the institution’s Triangle Club, noted for producing original musical comedies, and he acted in several roles. Following graduation he was cast in a major Broadway part in The Fan. Later he appeared in The Great Gatsby and Lady, Be Good. Wever performed alongside several legendary thespians of the epoch including Melvyn Douglas, Grace George, and Paul Kelly. Meanwhile, he composed show tunes for Broadway productions starring Billy Rose and Ed Wynn. A multitalented Wever wrote the lyrics for several popular songs including “I Can’t Resist You,” “Spellbound,” “Trouble in Paradise,” and “Trust in Me.” Joining CBS in 1930 he acquired the leads in radio’s True Detective and The True Story Hour series. It helped project him into leads or masculine leads in Bulldog Drummond, Dick Tracy, and Under Arrest. As a supporting actor, his radio credits included The Adventures of Superman, The Cavalcade of America, The Court of Human Rela-
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tions, Grand Central Station, Little Italy, Mr. Keen—Tracer of Lost Persons, My True Story, Mystery Theater, The Shadow, Show Boat, Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, The Wonder Show, and Words at War. Yet it was soap opera where Wever devoted most of his time, appearing in more than a dozen serials. He won recurring parts in Betty and Bob, Big Sister, Her Honor—Nancy James, Irene Rich Dramas, Pages of Romance, Perry Mason, True Confessions, and Valiant Lady. He played masculine leads in Kate Hopkins—Angel of Mercy, Lora Lawton, Manhattan Mother, and Two on a Clue. Without reservation, he is best remembered for a single role, nonetheless, as the long-suffering Dr. Anthony Loring, hassled swain of Ellen Brown—Young Widder Brown—whom he faithfully pursued for 16 years (1940–1956) without winning her hand in marriage. Perhaps only Helen Trent’s Gil Whitney endured more of “the waiting game” with so little to show for his efforts among daytime heroes. In 1949, readers of the fanzine Radio and Television Mirror voted Wever their “Favorite Daytime Serial Actor.” Wever used whatever opportunities came his way to defend the preponderance of time he devoted to soap operas. Pundits who wrote about radio drama, and particularly the daytime serials, used their platforms to mercilessly ridicule the form. Wever branded their actions as shallow thinking and bristled under it. To him, appearing in washboard weepers was a privilege. In a published statement, he declared: “I maintain that, by and large, Young Widder Brown is as wellwritten as any drama on the air. As Doctor Loring, I’ve had scenes in it that I’d be pleased to play on Broadway. Let’s be discriminating. Let’s judge radio programs on their merits.” When his East Coast acting opportunities began to wane Wever moved to California where he appeared in 10 motion picture releases, among them Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), The Joker Is Wild (1957), Ride a Crooked Trail (1958), Some Came Running (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Tammy Tell Me True (1961), and The Prize (1963). He performed in 70 television productions including Bonanza and Get Smart. WHEN A GIRL MARRIES. Creator–author Elaine Sterne Carrington’s tribute to “everyone who has ever been in love” was fraught
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with amnesia, infidelity, murder, suicide, separation, and the normal foibles that impacted most soap opera heroes and heroines. Yet for much of the serial’s air life Joan and Harry Davis, the central figures, were true to their common values and to one another. For a dozen years, their story became one of the most popular in serialdom, at times drawing more fans than any other daytime radio feature. It began as Harry, a young, broke law school grad, interrupted the wedding plans of Joan Field, a debutante not firmly swayed by her intended. Joan and Harry fell in love at first sight and soon wed. In time, they became parents of two children, gained practical advice from Harry’s mom, and suffered alongside friends with disturbing crises. Carrington tried to place actors in situations that could really occur to people the audience already knew. In truth, more drama took place in the lives of the Davises than anybody could expect in a lifetime. Few would have tuned in, of course, had there been less of it. The serial maintained a checkered existence on the air. Initially on CBS, it was broadcast from 29 May 1939–22 August 1941. It was continued on NBC from 29 September 1941–29 June 1951. Moving to ABC, it aired from 24 September 1951–28 March 1952, from 17 November 1952–29 May 1953 and from 4 January 1954–30 August 1957. Prudential Life Insurance underwrote it from its inception through 22 August 1941 followed by General Foods (for Baker’s chocolate and coconut, Calumet baking powder, Maxwell House coffee, Sur-Jell jelling powder, Swans Down cake flour, etc.) to 29 June 1951. The show was sustained for a dozen weeks, then General Foods returned from 24 September 1951–28 March 1952. Durkee Foods (mayonnaise, salad dressings, and other foodstuffs) underwrote it from 17 November 1952–29 May 1953 after which Carnation (evaporated milk) picked it up from 4 January 1954–1 April 1955. The series was sold to participating sponsors after Durkee left. Noel Mills played the leading lady during the narrative’s first six months followed by Mary Jane Higby who carried it to the end of the run. Whitfield Connor, Robert Haag, John Raby, and Lyle Sudrow appeared at different times as Harry. Georgia Burke was Lily, child impresario Dolores Gillen was Sammy Davis, Marion Barney was Mother Davis, and Frances Woodbury was Mother Field. Others in a huge cast included radio dramatic stalwarts Jone Allison, Peter Capell, Staats Cotsworth, Toni Darnay, Helene Dumas, Michael
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Fitzmaurice, Richard Kollmar, Paul McGrath, Ethel Owen, Bill Quinn, Rosemary Rice, Gertrude Warner, and Karl Weber. LeRoy Bailey assisted Ms. Carrington in later years in writing the show. An early epigraph read: “This is the story of Joan Field, a young girl who came to know that love can be stronger and finer than anything else in the world. Perhaps you yourself can remember the thrilling, heartbreaking days that now are hers—and the hopes and dreams and struggles that every young couple experiences before that day of all days—When a Girl Marries.” Unfortunately, much of the adulating promise of the prose failed to materialize. WHISPERING STREETS. One of the last daytime narratives still airing on “the day radio drama died,” comparatively speaking it was one of only a handful of closed-end stories. Initially, its romantic tales were completed in 20-minute broadcasts. By 1954, when the series became a quarter-hour feature, the stories were serialized, traditionally opening on Monday and winding up on Friday of the same week. Gertrude Warner, Cathy Lewis, Bette Davis, Anne Seymour, and again Gertrude Warner—all speaking under the assumed name of Hope Winslow—presided as hostess–narrator. The program debuted over ABC for General Mills for 20 minutes each weekday beginning on 3 March 1952. Two years later it was altered to a quarter-hour with multiple sponsors. The saga shifted to CBS on 5 January 1959 and continued through 25 November 1960. Margaret E. Sangster wrote the show. Robert Dryden, Sam Edwards, Barbara Fuller, Robert Readick, and Janet Waldo were frequently in the cast. WIFE VERSUS SECRETARY. A daytime drama whose title projected friction aplenty, but little else has surfaced. Apparently few details about the Frank and Anne Hummert-produced feature were preserved beyond the fact it aired briefly about 1937. The serial is referenced in treatises by a couple of respected observers of the genre, Mary Jane Higby and Gerald Nachman, yet complete data is lacking. WINKLER, BETTY (1914– ). Born at Berwick, Pennsylvania, she studied acting at Cleveland Playhouse and became an NBC radio
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actress in Chicago, appearing on many of the dramatic series originating there. Her radio repertoire included Abie’s Irish Rose, The Callahans, The Chicago Theater of the Air, Curtain Time, Don Winslow of the Navy, Edgar A. Guest, The Escorts and Betty, Fibber McGee & Molly, Grand Hotel, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Knickerbocker Playhouse, Lights Out, Mr. First Nighter, Romance, and Welcome Valley. Soap opera claimed most of Winkler’s time and talent, however. Her most prized role was as Rosemary (Dawson Roberts) for the lion’s share of that serial’s 1944–55 run. Behind the microphone she met actor George Keane, who played her opposite, an often shiftless—and at times, worthless—spouse, Bill Roberts. In character, he caused her to meditate many times on what she had done to bring about so much persecution from the man she loved deeply. In the meantime, a real-life romance played out in the studio between Winkler and Keane. Eventually, the duo wed. They continued to appear as imaginary husband and wife on the air for a while until Keane became seriously ill and was forced to quit. Winkler decided to abandon her role, too, and the couple went into seclusion in Europe for a while. While their nuptials were not the first between dishpan drama leads, only a miniscule handful occurred while a pair was on the ether. Winkler was also the heroine of Girl Alone, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Lone Journey, The Man I Married, and This Life Is Mine. Including Rosemary, this gave her a total of six daytime dramas in which she played the lead, possibly an unequalled record. In addition, she won running roles on Betty and Bob, Just Plain Bill, Masquerade, The O’Neills, and Terry Regan—Attorney at Law. In retirement, she authored Sensing: Letting Yourself Live. Returning to Manhattan, in subsequent years, she taught sensory awareness at that island’s New School of Social Research. WOLFE, EDWIN R. (1893–1983). One of radio soap operas’ unstinted directors and producers, he recognized excellence when he found it and assiduously aspired to preserve it for as long as he could. To wit, in 1941 when Colgate-Palmolive-Peet transferred Hilltop House to an advertising agency with little regard for superior literary achievement, the new agency proclaimed it would trim production
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costs by diminishing the serial’s foremost emphasis on quality via the scripts of Addy Richton and Lynn Stone. Producer Wolfe would have none of it, however. Instead of allowing a high-class effort to be watered down, he informed the sponsor that he would remove the narrative from the ether. His action probably raised the esteem some colleagues carried for him. For many years, Wolfe had the high privilege of directing Ma Perkins, another literary masterpiece, penned by Orin Tovrov. Quality prevailed everywhere in that production while millions of fans tuned in across the decades for a daily visit with familiar figures. When actor Charles Egleston, who for 25 years played Ma’s closest confidant and business partner Shuffle Shober, died in 1958, Wolfe— who had been with the Perkins gang for many years—stepped into Shober’s part. He was still there when the washboard weeper left the air two years later, a demonstration of his ability and versatility. At other times Wolfe directed The Brighter Day, Pepper Young’s Family (where he also maintained an acting role), and Road of Life. He produced an exceedingly popular Break the Bank for several years and wrote scripts for The Parker Family, an evening sitcom. He appeared in the 1963 motion picture All the Way Home. Daytime heroine Florence Freeman (Dot and Will, Wendy Warren and the News, Young Widder Brown, Valiant Lady) recalled that when she went looking for work as a radio actress in 1933, it was Edwin Wolfe, then an NBC director, who hired her. He must have done that for numerous aspiring, talented applicants. If Freeman’s track record is a clue, he knew what he was doing. WOMAN FROM NOWHERE. One of multiple continuing narratives spotlighting former silent screen star Irene Rich. Appearing under the umbrella Irene Rich Dramas, each one aired over NBC Blue between 4 October 1933 and 31 May 1942 or CBS between 5 June 1942 and 28 May 1944. See also IRENE RICH DRAMAS. WOMAN IN MY HOUSE, THE. Some who knew it well claimed this was One Man’s Family—East. Indeed, much of its storyline consisted of recycled scripts based on the predicaments of the more famous Barbour clan of San Francisco. The newer serial was set in Miami, still a coastal setting that obviously appealed to creator–writer
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Carlton E. Morse. It dealt with the domestic issues impinging on the Carters of Dade County. James (Forrest Lewis) and Jessie (Janet Scott) were the patriarch and matriarch in this little familial narrative. Their offspring included Jeff (Les Tremayne), Virginia (Alice Reinheart), Clay (Bill Idelson), Sandy (Peggy Webber and Anne Whitfield), and Peter (Jeff Silver). Gil Faust penned most of the scripts. The dishpan drama arrived on NBC on 26 March 1951 and persisted through 24 April 1959. In its first three years, Manhattan Soap underwrote it for its Sweetheart beauty bar and Blue-White Flakes detergent. Miles Laboratories carried it from 1955–57 for Alka-Seltzer, “first aid for acid indigestion,” and “many other fine dependable pharmaceutical products.” The remainder of the run was sold to participating sponsors or sustained. At the top of each installment a pensive announcer inquired: “Imperious man, look in you heart and dwell on this: without the woman in my house, what would I be?” Historian John Dunning provided a marvelous contrast between the drama and its older sibling. “The parents . . . had come of age before World War I. James was tight-laced and conservative, disapproving of the freedoms accorded modern youth. Jessie was more tolerant, frequently taking the kids’ side in family disputes. And the kids were no kids at all. Jeff was a 30-yearold writer, usually at odds with his father. Virginia was 25 as the serial opened: ‘unmarried and unresourceful,’ she too failed to please her father, who fretted over her spinsterhood.” If you knew the background of One Man’s Family, it was déjà vu. WOMAN IN WHITE. Like a handful of other serials this one had a couple of dissimilar segments separated by an interval of time. It aired for Pillsbury (flour, cake mixes, and other foodstuffs) from 3 January 1938–27 September 1940 over NBC. Shifting to CBS for Procter & Gamble’s Camay soap and (in 1941) Oxydol detergent, it ran from 30 September 1940–25 September 1942. At that juncture, the first run ended; the second extended for General Mills (flour, cake mixes, cereals and other foodstuffs) on NBC from 5 June 1944–28 May 1948. In the initial incarnation, 30-year-old nursing school grad Karen Adams dedicated herself to the benefit of others, “a modern day Florence Nightingale,” fans were reminded. A familiar aphorism was the
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theme of her life: “If there is any kindness I can show, or any good that I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.” After the earlier death of their parents Karen took charge of a couple of siblings, Betty and John. (Ruth Evans Wayne, the heroine of Big Sister, had pursued the same hypothesis since 1936 and Woman in White creator Irna Phillips must have decided the listeners could not get too much of a good thing.) Karen had a good friend from school days, Alice Day. All of them lived under the roof of Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen Spalding. The protagonist spent a lot of time counseling (and often disagreeing with) her siblings. In between, she pursued multiple love interests; forced to forego life with a dying swain, she wed another who later had an affair with her brother’s young wife. Irna Phillips never was one to let prudishness stand in her way. After the lapse of a couple of years off the air the series returned as the tale of nurse Eileen Holmes and her romance with Dr. Paul Burton. A few of the earlier characters were held over but in most aspects it was a new yarn. It was also a period in which Phillips and the sponsor tested an omnibus format referred to as “The General Mills Hour.” During the two o’clock Eastern Time period the firm underwrote four serials including The Guiding Light, Today’s Children, Woman in White, and The Light of the World (the latter a biblicallybased drama produced by Frank and Anne Hummert). For 45 minutes, Phillips experimented with moving various figures back and forth from their “main” narratives to the others to interact with individuals. Ed Prentiss of The Guiding Light appeared as interlocutoranchor, roaming throughout the Phillips serials. Luise [sic] Barclay, Betty Ruth Smith, Betty Lou Gerson, and Peggy Knudsen portrayed Karen Adams. Toni Gilman and Louise Fitch played her sister Betty while Willard Farnum and Harry Elders appeared as her brother John. David Gothard was her first serious beau, Bryant Chandler, who in time developed a fatal illness. Karl Weber and Arthur Jacobson appeared as Dr. Kirk Harding, her faithless spouse. Ruth Bailey was Karen’s good friend Alice Day while Finney Briggs was Uncle Bill and Henrietta Tedro was Aunt Helen. In the second rendering under the same appellation Sarajane Wells played Eileen Holmes and Ken Griffin was Dr. Paul Burton. Many other seasoned radio performers appeared in the dual casts, among
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them Fred Behrens, Cheer Brentson, Herb Butterfield, Macdonald Carey, Les Damon, Phillip Lord, Marvin Miller, Bret Morrison, Hugh Studebaker, Les Tremayne, and Lesley Woods. Assisting Phillips with the writing were Herbert and Robert Futran. WOMAN OF AMERICA, A. Two separate tales were told under this title. In an unusual supposition, the great-granddaughter of lady pioneer Prudence Dane recounted her ancestor’s ordeals in journeying by wagon train after the Civil War. Beginning in 1865 the entourage followed the Oregon Trail, a trek that carried them from Pennsylvania to Kansas. Accompanying Prudence were her three young children, Linda, Tommy, and Johnny. Margaret, the great-granddaughter, added a new chapter to the story each day about her homesteading forebear. Anne Seymour was heard both as Prudence Dane and as her great-granddaughter while Coletta McMahon (Linda), Richard Leone (Tommy), and Ogden Miles (Johnny) played her children. James Monks appeared as wagon master Wade Douglas. Their story ended on 24 September 1943. When the trip was over, action transferred to a contemporary setting that pursued the life of another great-granddaughter also named Prudence after her late predecessor. The modern woman was a newspaper journalist. Declared one reviewer: “In both versions, the intent was to dramatize the struggles of the American woman.” That time Florence Freeman was Prudence Dane. Jackson Beck, Fran Carlon, Helene Dumas, Irene Hubbard, Ed Jerome, and Bartlett Robinson were among those filling the continuing roles. Della West Decker and Doria Folliott were the drama’s wordsmiths. The NBC narrative for Ivory soap, flagship commodity of Procter & Gamble, arrived on 25 January 1943 and departed on 21 June 1946. WOMAN OF COURAGE. Appearing for Octagon and Crystal White soap, it aired on CBS between 17 July 1939 and 10 July 1942. Set in Farmington, in a laboring epigraph the narrative was billed as “the moving story of a wife and mother who is unafraid because she knows that if you believe you can win, nothing in life can defeat you, and that what is right will be.” With a physically handicapped spouse also lacking in good judgment, an irrational and resentful sibling, and
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two children to rear in the midst of dysfunctional culture, heroine Martha Jackson had her hands full. Yet she always maintained that nothing was impossible when one possessed faith, sending a positive undertone in the midst of human frailty. Three actresses played the protagonist—Selena Royle, Alice Frost, and Esther Ralston. Albert Hecht was her husband Jim. Larry Robinson (Tommy) and Joan Tetzel (Lucy) were their offspring. Enid Markey appeared as Lillian Burke, Martha’s sister, and John Brewster was Joseph Benedict, Lillian’s boyfriend. Others in the cast were actors Joan Alexander, Horace Braham, Carl Eastman, Claire Howard, and Tess Sheehan. Carl Alfred Buss penned the scripts. WOMAN’S LIFE, A. A pundit labeled the serialized yarn “Bright Horizon in a new dress.” It was characterized as “the story of a young couple trying to understand each other.” Presented for Swan soap by Lever Brothers, the 20-week entry appeared on CBS between 16 July–30 November 1945. WORLD WAR II. Of a handful of outside forces that intruded upon soap opera, breaking down walls that insulated it from the realities of normal existences, World War II and the Great Depression had greater impact than anything else. While there was fallout from the global conflagration in the postwar period as domestic industrialization leaped ahead and Americans had more money in their pockets to purchase more products, during a span of just four years (1941–45) the nation’s attention was riveted to the battle. Many soap operas acknowledged that fact and dwelled on the response to it of those still at home. It was like bringing the genuine world into the traditional sphere of fantasy. In the battle’s early days the U.S. War and Treasury Departments invited daytime serials producer Anne Hummert to be a special consultant on dramatic broadcast programming. As a result, many homefront themes appeared in a plethora of Hummert serials. Our Gal Sunday was among a handful of soap operas cooperating with the Office of War Information (OWI) in the fall of 1942. The washboard weeper helped explain the war to listeners by inserting characters that dramatized certain ideas within the plots. The form proved an engaging, persuasive method of communicating messages.
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During a week in October 1942 the cast highlighted the distress experienced by America’s allies. Other daytime dramas devoting a week to like emphases included Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, Big Sister, Life Can Be Beautiful, Ma Perkins, Portia Faces Life, Stella Dallas, We Love and Learn, and Young Widder Brown. In May 1945 Irna Phillips and the OWI collaborated on a halfhour promoting national relief efforts during “The General Mills Hour.” Through a combined storyline on Today’s Children and Woman in White the one-time endeavor sought the empathy of listeners toward rehabilitating wounded war veterans. On an installment of Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories the wife of the president, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, turned up in Aunt Jenny’s kitchen. She appealed to American women to unite behind the troops. WAVES commander Mildred H. McAyer did the same on her visit with Aunt Jenny another day. In the meantime, several servicemen in those stories died in combat, helping to keep the series in touch with current events, according to critics. Larry Noble, “matinee idol of a million other women” and spouse to Mary, the heroine of Backstage Wife, was a second lieutenant in the Coast Guard during the epoch. For a while during the time he was away, the announcer introduced the venerable series as Mary Noble, War Wife. It highlighted Larry’s absence from the yarn and confirmed the producing Hummerts’ personal commitment to patriotic themes. The fictitious actor Noble was not the only leading man in a serial who was absent from home for long periods during the war. There was a prolonged separation on Big Sister when John Wayne (that was his name) was held captive in a Japanese prison camp, leaving his beloved Ruth to worry about ever seeing him again. With all the heartache he would eventually bring to her, she might have been better off if he never returned. But that is another story. One Man Family’s Nicky and Claudia (Barbour) Lacey were rescued from a ship that was torpedoed during the war and then—for a couple of years—were sequestered in a German concentration camp. Shot down over Germany and presumed dead, Jerry Malone— Young Doctor Malone—was unable to communicate with his wife Ann and daughter Jill for a very long while. Walter Manning, fiancée of Portia Blake, heroine of Portia Faces Life, was falsely accused of spying for the Germans while working
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as a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. Resigning his commission and becoming a foreign correspondent, he was captured and tortured by the Nazis who were seeking to obtain his military secrets. He was eventually rescued and flown home but there he faced accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer, sharing proprietary data with the German high command. Portia successfully defended him in court against the charges, but intense psychiatric rehabilitation followed that long ordeal. John Perkins, only son of Ma Perkins, was the single principal figure in serialdom to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country. He died on an unmarked battlefield somewhere in Europe. The vitriolic rebuke that distraught listeners uttered to anyone who would listen to them following that action was more vehement and prolonged than producers anticipated. Their justification regarding “real life” fell on deaf ears for the fans were outraged that their beloved Ma should suffer such a terrible loss. John (Butch) Brent, adopted son of Road of Life hero Dr. Jim Brent, saw service time in the Pacific theater. Lieutenant Bill Roberts, future spouse of Rosemary Dawson, heroine of Rosemary, returned from the war a shell-shocked vet who soon developed a prolonged case of amnesia. That would be only the beginning of his problems, and Rosemary’s, essentially tied to psychological defects that the war impacted. In the war’s earliest days a missionary’s daughter, Eleanor MacDonald, attempted to relieve the plight of unfortunates in a ravaged China on This Day Is Ours. There were also some in the sudsy sagas who were not transported to far away lands but—in their own ways—made worthy contributions at homeside tasks. Producers were mindful that their voluntary efforts would be examples for possibly many individuals within hearing range who could be inspired to take up similar causes. Thus, banker David Harum relinquished his ledger sheets to serve his nation as manager of an arms production facility. The genteel financier was not alone among soap opera figures following like quests. The patriarch of Pepper Young’s Family, Sam, served a similar capacity at about the same time. Merely working in a war plant instead of running it was where one could find Lolly-Baby’s mama, Stella Dallas, anxious to do her part. The heroines of Front Page Farrell and Kitty
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Foyle also surrendered themselves to work in war plants, while a character in The O’Neills performed an unnamed wartime occupation. In the summer of 1945 Papa David Solomon urged Life Can Be Beautiful listeners to pray to the Almighty for the success of the D-Day invasion in Europe. When Ma Perkins asked homemakers to save used tinfoil or fat for the war effort, millions cooperated. When a nationwide flour shortage disrupted the ability of General Mills to produce quantities to meet consumer demands after the war, the firm withdrew its sponsorship of The Light of the World and the drama ended abruptly. When the audience raised a loud protest, as the sponsor regained sufficient supplies it returned the show to the air after an eight-month absence. In 1942 Irna Phillips introduced Lonely Women, set in a New York hotel catering to women who were waiting for their spouses and fiancées to return from the war. “The universal cry of womanhood— loneliness” was its theme, irritated by the elements of battle. The plots followed women who felt exiled by their separation while attempting to find companionship and meaning in an environment robbed of its young men by the ravages of global disaster. A mythical religious chaplain played the central figure in Chaplain Jim, U.S.A., a compassionate young man assigned to European and Pacific theaters. It was his duty to counsel not only service personnel but also their families at home regarding the war’s impact. The tales were based on true incidents and were sponsored by the U.S. War Department. The serial boosted patriotism by urging listeners to write to servicemen abroad. The war, in numerous ways, intersected with the storylines of daytime dramas—for a little while, at least, and introducing some powerful, believable incidents that every listener could identify with.
-YYOUNG DOCTOR MALONE. It was one of the better-written, better-acted, and better-directed medical dramas, especially in its latter years, and lasted until the final day of radio soap operas on the ether. Set in the mythical burg of Three Oaks, the narrative concerned
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Dr. Jerry Malone and his trials with a couple of wives. (One woman simply could not satisfy the serial heroes who chose medicine as a line of work. Road of Life’s Dr. Jim Brent and Big Sister’s Dr. John Wayne had two spouses each; This Is Nora Drake’s Dr. Ken Martinson was miserable with his one and sought Nora from the day of his nuptials; and Dr. Anthony Loring, Ellen’s longtime suitor in Young Widder Brown, married twice and pursued Ellen for nearly two decades as a third prey.) Like the others, Jerry Malone made a poor choice on his first trip to the altar but repaired it the second time around. His new wife grew fond of his grown daughter on whom he doted. In addition to the domestic tale, there was a strong tie with healthcare in which the young intern-turned-doctor-turned-administrator grew into a highly respected professional. Alan Bunce appeared as Jerry Malone for four years; then he handed the part over to Carl Frank and Charles Irving. Most listeners recall Sandy Becker (1947–60) for the role, nonetheless. Elizabeth Reller and Barbara Weeks played Jerry’s first wife, Ann Richards Malone. Jone Allison, Joan Alexander, and Gertrude Warner appeared as the second spouse, Tracy Adams Malone. Joan Lazer, Madeleine Pierce, and Rosemary Rice were featured as daughter Jill. Others in a large cast included Vera Allen, Joan Banks, Richard Coogan, Les Damon, Helene Dumas, Elspeth Eric, Robert Haag, Larry Haines, Bill Lipton, Ian Martin, Paul McGrath, William Podmore, Amanda Randolph, Billy Redfield, Bartlett Robinson, Tess Sheehan, James Van Dyk, Evelyn Varden, and more. David Driscoll, Julian Funt, Charles Gussman, David Lesan, and Irna Phillips contributed to the scripting. The program was sustained for an NBC Blue audience from 20 November 1939–26 April 1940. General Foods purchased it on CBS for its Post cereals and other foodstuffs between 29 April 1940–5 January 1945. Procter & Gamble added a second daily airing on NBC from 31 August 1942–1 January 1943. The same firm continued it on CBS from 2 April 1945–15 July 1955, primarily for Crisco shortening and—late in the run—for Joy dishwashing liquid. Starting 18 July 1955 the program was sold to Gillette for Toni home permanents and other hair care commodities. In its final years, the show aired for multiple participants including Staley (Sta-Puf laundry starch, fabric softener, etc.), Campana skin cream, Scott paper towels, Dr. Caldwell’s senna laxative, and 4-Way cold medication. When the saga ended on
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25 November 1960, it was the next–to-last open-end soap opera to leave the air on “the day radio drama died,” followed by The Second Mrs. Burton. See also TELEVISING RADIO SERIALS. YOUNG WIDDER BROWN. How could a widowed mom allow her “two fatherless children” to spend decades deciding her marital fate, placing a hex on beaus they felt unworthy of her hand? Such a supposition coupled with amnesia, blindness, murder, and multiplied forms of mayhem detained Ellen Brown from wedded bliss and destined her to spend years of unfulfilled desire. Pursued by several handsome, brilliant, and eligible bachelors, she was careful to choose swains displaying potential. Unlike the deranged chaps that plagued several other daytime heroines, Ellen’s entourage was usually made up of professionals—physicians and attorneys. But producers Frank and Anne Hummert had a flair for imposing barriers that would squelch any long-term entanglements from ever reaching the altar. Even when every imaginable obstruction to marriage appeared to have dissipated, this enterprising young woman—who operated a tearoom for a livelihood—encountered still more immovable objects that kept her from reaching any wedding chapels. After Helen Trent, Ellen could be considered radio’s mostsought-after-widow. Trent’s date with destiny continued 27 years although most of her admirers were literal lunatics. In a series titled Young Widder Brown, however, it should have been clear that matrimony would never occur. If it had, the premise on which the dishpan drama was founded would lapse and the title would be of no value. The serial was classic matinee misery and circumstances dictated that it simply could never be otherwise. Florence Freeman played the heroine from the tale’s inception in 1938 to 1954. Millicent Brower followed her for a few months; Wendy Drew superseded her. Ned Wever was the only actor cast as Dr. Anthony Loring and played the role from 1940–56. Eric Dressler, House Jameson, and Alexander Scourby portrayed Ellen’s good friend Herbert Temple while Joan Tompkins was Norine Temple, Ellen’s dearest friend. Lorene Scott, Agnes Young, and Alice Yourman appeared as yet another good friend, Maria Hawkins. Riza Joyce, Ethel Remey, and Kay Strozzi were heard as Victoria Loring, Anthony’s second wife, who tricked him into marriage.
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Clayton (Bud) Collyer was Peter Turner, a longtime swain whom Anthony replaced. Marilyn Erskine (Janey) and Tommy Donnelly (Mark) were Ellen’s seldom-heard children. Other acting veterans included Charita Bauer, Arline Blackburn, Horace Braham, Alan Bunce, Toni Gilman, Robert Haag, Joy Hathaway, Irene Hubbard, Bennett Kilpack, Frank Lovejoy, Florence Malone, Bess McCammon, and Dick Van Patten. Jean Carroll, Lawrence Hammond, and Elizabeth Todd wrote the dialogue. Interestingly, one man—George Ansbro—persisted as the serial’s announcer for its full 18-year run, a feat believed to be unsurpassed in the annals of radio soap opera. Ansbro achieved another unparalleled record when he retired from active duty in 1990 after 59 years as an NBC/ABC announcer. The serial’s familiar epigraph at one point allowed: “Again we present the moving human drama of a woman’s heart and a mother’s love, Young Widder Brown. In the little town of Simpsonville, attractive Ellen Brown, with two children to support, faces the question of what she owes to them and what she owes to herself. Here’s the story of life and love as we all know it.” The program arrived as Young Widder Jones on 6 June 1938 over MBS and remained through 23 September 1938. When it transferred to NBC on 26 September 1938 it was slotted into a quarter-hour adjacent to an already-established Lorenzo Jones. The Hummerts simply changed the name of the newcomer and went forward. The two programs ran back-to-back for the next 13 years, thus by making the change a lot of confusion was eliminated. The series prevailed on NBC until it was canceled 18 years after it began, on 22 June 1956. Sterling Drugs underwrote it on NBC from 1938–54 (it had been a sustainer on MBS). There it pitched Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia (laxatives, dentifrices, face creams, etc.) and other products from Sterling’s vast clinical arsenal (e.g., Double Danderine shampoo, Haley’s M-O mineral emulsion oil laxative, Bayer aspirin, Astring-OSol mouthwash, and a plethora of added healthcare and household goods). Gillette followed Sterling for Prom home permanents, White Rain shampoo, and other hair-care preparations, relying on the widely recognized voice of radio actress Ruth Warrick as spokesperson for Prom. Near the end of the run the series was once again aired as a sustaining feature.
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YOUR FAMILY AND MINE. The serial for Sealtest (milk, ice cream, and other dairy products) appeared on NBC from 25 April 1938–28 April 1939 and on CBS from 1 May 1939–26 April 1940. Its basic concept appealed to fantasy, sounding an awful lot like two other radio shows then airing, Lorenzo Jones and Fibber McGee & Molly. The plots swirled around Matthew Wilbur’s inability to make a fortune with the gadgets he invented. His wife Winfred was the practical one, helping to keep their heads above water by baking goods for sale during the lean times. The couple had two children. Judy, 17, “the redheaded angel,” resented the fact she was a “nobody” in their town of High Falls, Montana, due largely to their low-rung status in the social order. An enterprising Ken, 12, on the other hand, saw his family’s ills in another light and became a newsboy to add to their subsistence. Miserly shopkeeper Lem Stacy was Matthew Wilbur’s superior for a while. These factors impacted the inability of the protagonist to dislodge himself from his flagging lifestyle and raise the image of his clan, as well as their own perceptions of themselves. Bill Adams played Matthew while Lucille Wall was Winifred. Joan Tompkins and Bill Lipton appeared as their offspring. Parker Fennelly was Matthew’s boss. Included in the cast were Peter Donald, Raymond Edward Johnson, Frank Lovejoy, Arthur Maitland, Bill Quinn, Ruth Yorke, and others. Lillian Lauferty and Clyde North penned the dialogue. When the series left the air the actress who played the stable heroine, Lucille Wall, became another wayward inventor’s wife, Belle on Lorenzo Jones.
Bibliography
OVERVIEW The Bibliography is divided into several subsections to be enumerated presently. Although an attempt was made to include more recent sources in researching this volume and in offering a list of references to assist even the most practiced veterans with the topic, by the subject’s very nature a significant share of material was disseminated many years ago—some of it dating to the golden age of radio itself, when the programs under study were aired live. The novice in the field of soap operas may read for pleasure as much as for information. Some enjoyable volumes that will amuse as well as inform are those by Edmondson and Rounds (The Soaps), Higby (Tune in Tomorrow), LaGuardia (From Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman), Morton (Worlds Without End), and Nachman (Raised on Radio). The more serious student, who prefers facts to entertainment, will find tomes by Buxton and Owen (The Big Broadcast), DeLong (Radio Stars), Dunning (On the Air), Hickerson (The Second Revised Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming), Sies (Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960), Summers (A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks), Swartz and Reinehr (Handbook of Old-Time Radio), and Terrace (Radio Programs, 1924–1984) fulfilling. The scholarly—anyone who likes to wade more deeply into the subject matter—may explore texts by Allen (Speaking of Soap Operas), Barnouw (A History of Broadcasting in the United States, three volumes), MacDonald (Don’t Touch That Dial!), and Stedman (The Serials) for still greater clarification. Be assured that none is so deep it will bore anybody, nevertheless. Despite the fact that numerous added authoritative, readable works focused on specific topics are included in the listings, which can be 259
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recommended without reservation, this author considers the 19 books previously named—of a generalized nature—to be indispensables in conducting serious research. The resolute collector–investigator will not go wrong in acquiring these titles for personal libraries. Again, this does not preclude other works but simply spotlights a wider scope of information. The author has purposely omitted any recommendation of his own published material, leaving it to the judgment of others to provide the readers with a balanced analysis. Be aware—whatever the level of one’s exposure to the subject—that looking into works that do not have a soap opera–sounding title often produce surprising revelations that can be engaging and enriching. Periodical and website references normally transcend serialized drama but may interest the curious examiner for the copious detail frequently offered by those sources dealing in multiple genres. There is a final sector that pertains to a few of the repositories around the nation that house soap operas, both aural (on tape, disks, recordings, etc.) and visual (usually limited to scripts). Of particular interest to readers are the sites at which the collections of the Frank Hummerts and Irna Phillips are maintained in Wyoming and Wisconsin, respectively. The contents of the Bibliography include these subsections: Reference Works 260 Radio in General 262 Soap Operas 263 Major Soap Opera Figures 264 Periodicals 286 Websites 287 Email Forum 287 Archives 288
REFERENCE WORKS Barnouw, Erik. The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume II—1933 to 1953. New York: Oxford, 1968. ———. The Image Empire: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume III—from 1953. New York: Oxford, 1970.
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———. A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933. New York: Oxford, 1966. Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946–Present. Fourth Edition. New York: Ballantine, 1988. [first published 1979] Buxton, Frank, and Bill Owen. The Big Broadcast, 1920–1950: A New, Revised, and Greatly Expanded Edition of Radio’s Golden Age—The Complete Reference Work. New York: Viking, 1972. ———. The Big Broadcast, 1920–1950. Second Edition. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1997. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996. Duncan, Jacci, ed. Making Waves: The 50 Greatest Women in Radio and Television as Selected by American Women in Radio and Television, Inc. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel, 2001. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ———. Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925–1976. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1976. Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands. Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James, 1994. Hickerson, Jay. Necrology of Radio Personalities. Hamden, Conn.: Jay Hickerson, 1996, plus supplements 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002. ———. The Second Revised Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide to All Circulating Shows. Hamden, Conn.: Jay Hickerson, 2001. [first published 1992] Hyatt, Wesley. The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television. New York: Billboard, 1997. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996. McNeil, Alex. Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. Fourth Edition. New York: Penguin, 1996. [first published 1980] Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. ———. The Encyclopedia of Women in Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kittross. Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting. Second Edition. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990. (first published 1978)
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Summers, Harrison B., ed. A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926–1956. New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1971. Swartz, Jon D., and Robert C. Reinehr. Handbook of Old-Time Radio: A Comprehensive Guide to Golden Age Radio Listening and Collecting. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1993. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999.
RADIO IN GENERAL Ansbro, George. I Have a Lady in the Balcony: Memoirs of a Broadcaster. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. Bresee, Frank, and Bobb [sic] Lynes. Radio’s Golden Years: A Visual Guide to the Shows & the Stars. Hollywood, Calif.: Frank Bresee Productions, 1999. Chase Jr., Francis. Sound and Fury: An Informal History of Broadcasting. New York: Harper, 1942. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Audience Participation Shows: Seventeen Programs from the 1940s and 1950s. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. ———. Music Radio: The Great Performers and Programs of the 1920s through Early 1960s. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002. ———. Say Goodnight, Gracie: The Last Years of Network Radio. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002. Editors of Advertising Age. Procter & Gamble: The House That Ivory Built. Lincolnwood, Ill.: NTC Business Books, 1988. Finkelstein, Norman H. Sounds in the Air: The Golden Age of Radio. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. French, Jack. Private Eyelashes: Radio’s Lady Detectives. Boalsburg, Pa.: BearManor Media, 2004. Grams Jr., Martin. Radio Drama: A Comprehensive Chronicle of American Network Programs, 1932–1962. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. Harmon, Jim. The Great Radio Comedians. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. ———. The Great Radio Heroes. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. ———. The Great Radio Heroes. Revised Edition. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001.
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Harvey, Rita Morley. Those Wonderful, Terrible Years: George Heller and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. MacDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991. [first published 1979] Maltin, Leonard. The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio’s Golden Age. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1997. Mott, Robert L. Radio Sound Effects: Who Did It, and How, in the Era of Live Broadcasting. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1993. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio: In Quest of The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Shadow, Mary Noble, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks, Henry Aldrich, The Quiz Kids, Mr. First Nighter, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, Arthur Godfrey, Bob and Ray, The Barbour Family, Henry Morgan, Joe Friday and Other Lost Heroes from Radio’s Heyday. New York: Pantheon, 1998. Poindexter, Ray. Golden Throats and Silver Tongues: The Radio Announcers. Conway, Ark.: River Road Press, 1978. Schaden, Chuck. Speaking of Radio: Chuck Schaden’s Conversations with the Stars of the Golden Age of Radio. Morton Grove, Ill.: Nostalgia Digest, 2003. Schisgall, Oscar. Eyes on Tomorrow: The Evolution of Procter & Gamble. Chicago: Doubleday-Ferguson, 1981. Smulyan, Susan. Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Swasy, Alecia: Soap Opera: The Inside Story of Procter & Gamble. New York: Random House, 1993. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Program Openings and Closings, 1931–1972. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003. Wolfe, Charles Hull. Modern Radio Advertising. New York: Printers’ Ink, 1949. Wylie, Max, ed. Best Broadcasts of 1939–40. New York: Whittlessey House, 1940.
SOAP OPERAS Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Arnheim, Rudolph. “The World of the Daytime Serial.” Radio Research 1942–43. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944. Barnouw, Erik. “Frank and Ann [sic] Hummert.” Media Marathon. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.
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Bounds, J. Dennis. Perry Mason: The Authorship and Reproduction of a Popular Hero. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996. Copeland, Mary Ann. Soap Opera History. Lincolnwood, Ill.: Publications International, 1991. Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999. Edmondson, Madeleine, and David Rounds. The Soaps: Daytime Serials of Radio and TV. New York: Stein and Day, 1973. Groves, Seli. The Ultimate Soap Opera Guide. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1995. Higby, Mary Jane. Tune in Tomorrow; or, How I Found The Right to Happiness with Our Gal Sunday, Stella Dallas, John’s Other Wife, and Other Sudsy Radio Serials. New York: Cowles, 1968. [first published 1966] LaGuardia, Robert. From Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman: The Illustrated History of Soap Operas. New York: Ballantine, 1977. Matelski, Marilyn. The Soap Opera Evolution: America’s Enduring Romance with Daytime Drama. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988. Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1982. Morse, Carlton E. The One Man’s Family Album: An Inside Look at Radio’s Longest Running Show. Woodside, Calif.: Seven Stones, 1988. Morton, Robert, ed. Worlds Without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Soares, Manuela. The Soap Opera Book. New York: Harmony, 1978. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. Stumpf, Charles K. Ma Perkins, Little Orphan Annie and Heigh Ho, Silver! New York: Carlton, 1971. Waggett, Gerald J. The Soap Opera Book of Lists. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. ———. The Soap Opera Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
MAJOR SOAP OPERA FIGURES Mason Adams Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 168. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 5–6.
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Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio: In Quest of The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Shadow, Mary Noble, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks, Henry Aldrich, The Quiz Kids, Mr. First Nighter, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, Arthur Godfrey, Bob and Ray, The Barbour Family, Henry Morgan, Joe Friday and Other Lost Heroes from Radio’s Heyday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998: 378.
Joan Alexander Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 177–178. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 32, 142, 192. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 7–8. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 120. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971: 206. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 195, 214, 264, 299.
Robert Clyde Allen Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 311.
Robert Hardy Andrews Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 99–101. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 18, 81. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio: In Quest of The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Shadow, Mary Noble, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks, Henry Aldrich, The Quiz Kids, Mr. First Nighter, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, The Cisco Kid, Jack
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Armstrong, Arthur Godfrey, Bob and Ray, The Barbour Family, Henry Morgan, Joe Friday and Other Lost Heroes from Radio’s Heyday. New York: Pantheon, 1998: 381–382. Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971: 235–236. Stumpf, Charles K. Ma Perkins, Little Orphan Annie and Heigh Ho, Silver! New York: Carlton, 1971: 14.
George Ansbro Ansbro, George. I Have a Lady in the Balcony: Memoirs of a Broadcaster. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 228. Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 115–116. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 296–297. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 70. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 13.
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Ethel Owen Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 228. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 208. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 620, 640, 659. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 12, 332, 354. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 29, 56, 88, 108, 131, 180.
Virginia Payne Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 110, 161. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 176. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 81. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 211–212.
Irna Phillips Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1985: 110–112. Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 99, 127–130, 133, 136–139, 142, 143, 144, 150, 155, 173. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 38–40, 253–254, 254–255. Edmondson, Madeleine, and David Rounds. The Soaps: Daytime Serials of Radio and TV. New York: Stein and Day, 1973: 43–46. Groves, Seli. The Ultimate Soap Opera Guide. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1995: xii–xiii.
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Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts-On-File, 1996: 222. MacDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991: 250–252. Morton, Robert, ed. Worlds without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997: 16–18, 45–46, 121–123. Nachman, Gerald. Raised on Radio: In Quest of The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Shadow, Mary Noble, The Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Stern, Our Miss Brooks, Henry Aldrich, The Quiz Kids, Mr. First Nighter, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, Arthur Godfrey, Bob and Ray, The Barbour Family, Henry Morgan, Joe Friday and Other Lost Heroes from Radio’s Heyday. New York: Pantheon, 1998: 378–379. Stumpf, Charles K. Ma Perkins, Little Orphan Annie and Heigh Ho, Silver! New York: Carlton, 1971: 13–14. Waggett, Gerard J. The Soap Opera Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins, 1997: 481–482.
John Raby Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 271. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 653. McNeil, Alex. Total Television: The Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. Fourth Edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1996: 176. [first published 1980] Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 157.
Ron Rawson Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 93. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 240. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 180–181, 198, 238.
Alice Reinheart Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 93. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 7, 65, 72, 262, 264, 266.
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Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 182, 724, 741. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 258, 467, 483, 595.
Vivian Smolen Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 114. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 152–153. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 253–254.
Olan Soule Buxton, Frank, and Bill Owen. The Big Broadcast, 1920–1950. Second Edition. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1997: 62, 95. Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 202, 251, 253. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 21, 70, 76, 103, 127, 141, 156. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 248. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 51, 187, 290. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 255. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 241, 258, 336, 526, 625. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 26, 74, 118, 135, 158.
Raymond William Stedman Correspondence to the author from Claire Connelly, 10, 12 August 2004. Used by permission. Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 46, 101–102, 109–110, 135–136, 139, 140.
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Nostalgia League, The. http://thenostalgialeague.com/ [accessed 13 August 2004] Nostalgia League, The. Library. http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/ index_olm.htm [accessed 13 August 2004] Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
Julie Stevens Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 116–117. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 208–209. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 69. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 252–253. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 277. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 262.
Karl Swenson Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 33, 77–78, 104. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 109–110. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 363. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 180–181. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 257. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 164, 169, 622. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 58, 111, 117, 237, 373, 459.
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Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 29.
Joan Tompkins Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 248. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 251. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 65.
Orin Tovrov Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 125–126.
Les Tremayne Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 93, 112, 134, 202, 222, 258. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 7, 32, 34, 81, 136, 143, 234. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 266–267. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 51, 143, 183, 211, 257, 367, 458. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 277. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 204, 258, 265, 459, 483, 578, 644. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 108, 239.
Lucille Wall Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 183–184. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 69.
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DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 273–274. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 182. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 288. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 111, 163, 353, 410.
Gertrude Warner Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 282. ———. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004: 69. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 191, 258, 264, 279. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 276. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 442, 458. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 107, 355. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 98, 102.
Ned Wever Cox, Jim. Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003: 113–114, 115. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 296. ———. Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002: 27, 222, 266, 268. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 281. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 182, 349, 613, 726. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 292.
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Betty Winkler Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 219. DeLong, Thomas A. Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996: 225, 584. Lackmann, Ron. Same Time . . . Same Station: An A–Z Guide to Radio from Jack Benny to Howard Stern. New York: Facts On File, 1996: 296. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 188, 359. Terrace, Vincent. Radio Programs, 1924–1984: A Catalog of Over 1800 Shows. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 59, 204, 333.
Edwin R. Wolfe Cox, Jim. The Great Radio Audience Participation Shows: Seventeen Programs from the 1940s and 1950s. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001: 2, 33, 35, 36, 38–39, 42, 43, 152. ———. The Great Radio Soap Operas. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1999: 37, 71, 72–73, 111, 113, 157, 158, 260. Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 579. Sies, Luther F. Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000: 432.
PERIODICALS Abelson, Joan S. “Mother of the Soaps.” Goucher Quarterly (Spring 1985). Best, Katherine. “’Literature’ of the Air: Radio’s Perpetual Emotion.” The Saturday Review of Literature (20 April 1940). Clark, Rocky. “They Started Radio Serials—Can You Blame Them?” The Bridgeport Sunday Post (8 October 1939). Gould, Jack. “Soap Factory: Something about the Hummerts, Frank and Anne, and 6,000,000 Words a Year.” The New York Times (14 February 1943). Horwell, Veronica. “Empress of the Radio Soaps.” The Guardian (27 July 1996). Landry, Robert J. “Pioneer Soaper Frank Hummert, Ever the Hermit, Almost ‘Sneaks’ His Obit.” Variety (27 April 1966). Newsweek, multiple issues. Radio Album, multiple issues.
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Radio Digest, multiple issues. Radio Guide, multiple issues. Radio Mirror (and subsequently Radio and Television Mirror, TV–Radio Mirror), December 1941, January 1943, February 1943, March 1943, October 1943, December 1943, January 1944, April 1944, August 1944, February 1947, December 1947, January 1948, February 1948, March 1948, January 1949, March 1949, April 1949, June 1949, August 1949, January 1950, March 1950, June 1950, September 1950, November 1950, December 1950, August 1951, August 1952, January 1954, February 1954, April 1954, May 1954, June 1959, January 1960, February 1960. Thomas, Robert M. Jr. “Anne Hummert, 91, Dies; Creator of Soap Operas.” The New York Times (21 July 1996). Thurber, James. “Onward and Upward with the Arts.” The New Yorker (15 May 1948): 34. Variety, 30 December 1936, 11 May 1938, 18 August 1943. Whiteside, Thomas. “Life Can Be Terrible.” New Republic (14 July 1947).
WEBSITES Davenport, Ted. Radio Memories. www.radiomemories.com [accessed 27 August 2004] Genco, Lou. The OldRadio.Network Mailing Lists. http://lists.oldradio.net/ [accessed 5 June 2004] Haendiges, Jerry. Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs. http://www.otrsite.com/ radiolog/index.html [accessed 22 July 2004] Petit, Christophe. Soap Opera. http://perso.club-internet.fr/twinpeak/articleSoap2 .htm [accessed 15 May 2004] Radio Hall of Fame. Ma Perkins. http://www.radiohof.org/adventuredrama/ virginiapayne.html [accessed 18 April 2004] Samuels, Rich. Origin Point of Nearly Fifty Programs is Transferred to Chicago. http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/prgms37.html [accessed 27 August 2004] Shields, David Jackson. Old-Time Radio—Music Theme List. http://www. classicthemes.com/oldTimeRadioThemes/radioThemeList.html [accessed 14 July 2004]
EMAIL FORUM Summers, Charlie. Old Time Radio Digest.
[email protected] [accessed daily 1995– ]
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ARCHIVES American Heritage Center. University of Wyoming, Dept. 3924, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, Wyo. 82071, (307) 766-4114, http://ahc.uwyo.edu/ about/default.htm [accessed 6 September 2004]. Numerous archival collections of radio, TV, film, and music performers and industry leaders are accessible. Of particular interest are those of prolific soap opera producers Frank and Anne Hummert and Lawrence M. Klee, who wrote many of their radio dramas. Thousands of scripts, personal papers, correspondence, and memorabilia are included in vast holdings. Materials must be used on site but may be photocopied. Browne Popular Culture Library. Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, (419) 372-2450. The Procter & Gamble Collection includes scripts for long consecutive runs of several daytime TV serials between 1954–90 including The Guiding Light. That drama began on radio in 1937 and persisted there to 1956. The library refers to P&G as “the company that virtually created the soap opera as a popular entertainment genre.” Contact http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/pc1/pc122.html [accessed 30 August 2004]. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. Of particular interest is the online information in the Recorded Sound Section—see Daytime Programming at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awrs9/daytime.html [accessed 2 September 2004] in which soap operas and the contributions of Frank and Anne Hummert, Irna Phillips, and Elaine Carrington are cited. In the same section is a CBS Radio Collection at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ awhhtml/awrs9/cbs.html [accessed 2 September 2004] and an NBC Radio Collection at www.loc.gov/about/faqs/index.html [accessed 2 September 2004]. Questions about use of the Library of Congress are answered at www.loc.gov/about/faqs/index.html [accessed 2 September 2004]. Museum of Broadcast Communications. State Street at Kinzie, Chicago, Ill. Currently closed—scheduled for reopening in a new 70,000 square foot home in Spring 2006. Archives consist of A. C. Nielsen Jr. Online Research Center with 4,000 radio programs and more. Contact www.museum.tv/archives/ index.shtml [accessed 2 September 2004]. The Radio Hall of Fame includes 11 inductees with soap opera ties, including Goodman and Jane Ace, Don Ameche, Gertrude Berg, Himan Brown, Charles Correll, Ralph Edwards, Gale Gordon, Freeman Gosden, Virginia Payne, Les Tremayne. Five serials bestowed with Hall of Fame honors are Easy Aces, The Goldbergs, Ma Perkins, One Man’s Family, The Romance of Helen Trent. Address: MBC, 400 N. State St., Suite 240, Chicago, Ill. 60610, (312) 245-8200, www.museum .tv/contact_us.shtml [accessed 2 September 2004].
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Museum of Television & Radio in Los Angeles. 465 N. Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills, Calif. 90210. Visitors can search through more than 100,000 radio and TV series and ads via a computerized catalog. They hear their selections through individual headphones. Contact http://www.mtr.org/tour/la.htm [accessed 2 September 2004]. Museum of Television & Radio in New York. 25 West 52 St., New York, N.Y. 10019. Related to the Los Angeles museum (above) with in excess of 50,000 broadcast series and similar operations. Contact http://www.mtr.org/tour/ ny.htm (accessed 6 September 2004]. Wisconsin Historical Society. Madison, Wis. The Archives Division includes personal papers and scripts of Irna Phillips, plot outlines, ad copy, and correspondence. Although there are files for numerous daytime serials, the preponderance of these materials cover The Brighter Day, The Guiding Light, The Right to Happiness, Road of Life, Today’s Children, and Woman in White. Contact http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wcftr/tv.asp [accessed 31 August 2004]. Materials must be used on site but may be photocopied if not for commercial purposes.
About the Author
Jim Cox, a Dixie native, has spent his life in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Born in the era in which live radio was America’s paramount source of entertainment and information, he regularly tuned in to many of the series he writes about today. In the 1960s, he began a collection of old time radio (OTR) recordings, printed materials, and memorabilia. Today, his library contains a few thousand programs on tape and manifold OTR volumes. Together with extensive contacts to scores of hobbyists, this has allowed Cox to author a dozen books, including eight on radio: The Great Radio Soap Operas (1999), The Great Radio Audience Participation Shows: Seventeen Programs from the 1940s and 1950s (2001), Say Goodnight, Gracie: The Last Years of Network Radio (2002), Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age (2002), Frank and Anne Hummert’s Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting’s Most Prolific Producers (2003), Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: A Complete History and Episode Log of Radio’s Most Durable Detective (2004), Music Radio: The Great Performers and Programs of the 1920s through Early 1960s (2005), and the present volume. Cox holds membership in a half-dozen vintage radio clubs, writes for journals, attends multiple radio conventions every year, and works unstintingly to preserve OTR for future students of radio history. In 2002, he received the Ray Stanich Award at the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention in Newark, New Jersey, for “outstanding written contributions to the field.” Cox’s formal education includes a B.A. from George Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and two M.A. degrees from Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri. His professional career embraced multiple varieties of communications— advertising, competitive analysis, copywriting, editing, marketing, 291
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public relations, and teaching. In his final responsibility, he was on a university faculty facilitating undergraduate courses in business, finance, management, and marketing. An active churchman and volunteer to the reading impaired, Cox’s interests include animal preservation, baseball, books, grandchildren, history, politics, religion, research, swimming, trains, and travel.
