Soap Operas during the Golden Age of Radio

By 1930 the Networks and the Advertisers recognized the great potential of the Daytime market. It was reasoned that Men would be away from home working, and Children either at school or playing. That left the Housewife, by herself a powerful market force.

WGN-AM, Chicago, is credited with the very first soap opera, Clara, Lu, and Em, premiering Jun 16, 1930.The act began as sorority sketch by three friends Louise Starkey (Clara), Isobel Carothers (Lu), and Helen King (Em),at Northwestern University; it was popular enough that friends suggested they take it to radio.The trio approached WGN and did the first shows without pay. Interest soon grew and Colgate-Palmolive soon took sponsorship. Originally broadcast in the evening, the show was moved to daytime on Feb 15, 1932.

Clara, Lu, and Em:

The Housewife was busy taking care of the home, and would have the radio on as company. Irna Phillips, an actress and staff writer for talk shows on WGN, Chicago, was given the assignment of creating a 15 minute daily show "about a family."The result was Painted Dreams, a story of Mother Moynihan and her unmarried daughter. Although originally unsponsored, Phillips would add an engagement and wedding to the plot in order to maximize product tie-ins.

Painted Dreams enjoyed a good deal of success, but Phillips couldn't talk WGN management into taking it national. While she was suing for the ownership of the show (CBS was eventually the rights to the program) she created Today's Children (available in the Rare Soap Operas Collection) for rival station WMAQ, which was an NBC affiliate. When Phillips' mother, the inspiration for the lead character, passed away, Irna insisted the show be discontinued. By now she was ready with Woman in White, the first daytime serial to be centered on a hospital (many have speculated about Irna Phillips' hypochondria in association with her fascination with hospitals.)

Defining the Soap Opera

Many critics begin by defining the soap opera by its sponsors. Indeed the target audience was the housewife, so marketing household and cleaning products towards her seems a natural fit. What is missing is the Operatic tradition within the name. Stories of wealth and glamour appealed to the housebound wife, and the use of serialization held the interest of the audience from day to day.

The term "Soap Opera" has never been value-neutral. Especially in North America, soap opera has always been considered a "women's genre," and therefore easily devalued. The genre almost always has a reputation of tawdriness, deserved or not, which gives the term soap opera sexist and classist baggage. The radio soap is the most easily parodied of broadcast genres. There is a popular stereo type of the working class housewife allowing the dishes to stack in the sink as the kids run amuck, all the while she is lost to the world through her addiction to her Soaps.

This reputation of tawdriness ignores the fact the Soap Opera serials use some of the most complex forms of narrative in mass media, and that enjoyment of Soap Operas require a high degree of knowledge and sophistication on the part of the audience. Soap Opera is a form of escapism, but the high degree of knowledge needed on the part of the audience means that it isn't easy escapism.

Seriality is one of the keys to defining a soap opera. Other dramas have continuing characters, but usually the adventure in a single episode or series of episodes will be self contained. On the soap opera the story continues from day to day, and as a particular story line, or story arc, is worked through, another (or multiple) story line is being developed. There will be several storylines in various stages of development at any one time in a soap opera.

The Hummert Radio Factory

Anne Hummert, along with her ad executive husband Frank, is credited with developing the formula of what would become the typical soap opera. Their first success, Just Plain Bill, is the story of a humble barber who marries well above his station.Many Hummert storylines would explore the gap between the wealthy and the aspiring middleclass, a notion that brought a good deal of comfort to their depression-era and WWII audiences. The Hummert's began Air Features Inc., which would become a kind of factory for radio drama, with the emphasis on the daytime serials. Other Hummert successes included Backstage Wife, and Ma Perkins, the story of a wise young matriarch who guides her family through troubled times.

Just Plain Bill:

Backstage Wife:

Ma Perkins:

The go-ahead for Ma Perkins' came when Proctor and Gamble's Oxydol account was moved to a new ad agency. Oxydol's previous vehicle, The Puddle Family, a serial domestic comedy, was dropped in favor of a 'serialized radio drama that would incorporate elements of the self-help genre. Ma Perkins, the story of a self-reliant widow whose family and friends were in constant need of her advice' went on the air over WLW, Cincinnati, during the summer of 1933.* Anxious to gauge the effectiveness of Ma Perkins as an advertising vehicle, in early 1934 P&G developed a "Mail-Hook" where listeners were offered a packet of flower seeds in exchange for ten cents and an Oxydol box top. More than a million seed requests were received.

The husband and wife team of Frank and Ann Hummert were in a unique position to capitalize on the growing popularity of day-time serials. Frank was inspired to develop a radio serial after following a serialized story in the Chicago Daily News. He hired the author of the print story to write The Stolen Husband, which aired locally in the Chicago market. The Stolen Husband appears to have been a closed narrative serial; that is the story line lead to a final single conclusion. Their next project, Betty and Bob, the story of a stenographer who marries the boss, was an open narrative with multiple story lines constantly in various stages of development. Betty and Bob first aired in Oct, 1932, and was sponsored by General Mills for 8 years before being syndicated until 1947.

Betty and Bob:

With his successful advertising background, Frank realized that success could be found by servicing multiple accounts rather than pouring all of one's energy into a single project. Ann Hummert maintained a rigourous production level, typing up to two million words a year and supervising a large staff of "Dialoguers" who would fill in the stories she developed. During the McCarthy Era, Air Features Inc. was notable in that they refused to fire blacklisted writers, if they were any good.

In the fall of 1933 another Hummert soap was released; The Romance of Helen Trent. The show would run continuously on CBS radio until 1960, a total of 7,222 episodes. The story revolved around 35 year-old dress maker Helen, whom men found fascinating as she works her way up to becoming an important Hollywood costume designer. Through the entire series (and three different actresses) Helen remained 35 and single, although she continued to carry a torch for her long-running beau, Gil Whitney. "And now ... the real life drama of Helen Trent, who... fights back bravely... to prove what so many women long to prove... that romance, can begin at 35."

Romance of Helen Trent:

Irna Phillips and The Guiding Light

Irna Phillips developed many of the conventions of the soap opera that remain with the form today: she introduced the use of organ music to transition from one scene to the next, she developed the "cliff hanger" ending which would cause the audience to remain in suspense until the next broadcast, and she developed a deliberately slow pacing to her shows, so that busy housewives could continue their housework without having to pay close attention to the radio in order to not miss anything crucial. The Hummerts contributed many conventions as well, including amnesia, blackmail, exotic diseases, murder trials, and reappearing long lost loves.

The Guiding Light, created by Irna Phillips, had its first broadcast 5 days after FDR's second inaugural. When the show was finally cancelled in Sept, 2009, it was the longest running broadcast drama, having been 15 years on the radio, and 57 years on television. The original The Guiding Light was based on Phillips' lifetime experiences. At the age of 19, unmarried, she had given birth to a still-born child. She found spiritual comfort listening to the broadcast sermons of Preston Bradley, founder of the People's Church in Chicago. The Guiding Light centered on the Rev. John Ruthledge and the people of the fictional Chicago suburb of Five Points. The Guiding Light eferred to a lamp that Rev Ruthledge kept burning in his study as a signal to residents of the community that he was available to help with their problems. Rev. Ruthledge's optimism was held up against the cynicism of townsman Ellis Smith. The Reverend's daughter, Mary, carried on a secret love affair with her foster brother, Ned Holden. The couple would eventually find happiness and the blessing of the Reverend, but not until Ned's parents return, and mother Frances would shoot her husband Paul dead after learning that he had plans to extort Ned. Ned would later marry and divorce lounge singer Torchy Reynolds who would later become embroiled in a relationship with Ellis Smith. There would also be much new and controversial ground broken in the early days of the show; for example character Rose Kransky would have radio's first out-of-wedlock baby.

The Guiding Light:

Irna Phillips' last great radio soap would be The Brighter Day, which would later become the first network television soap with an overtly religious theme (most of the religious elements were dropped from The Guiding Light by the time the show transitioned to television.) The Brighter Day centered on Rev Richard Dennis and his family, Althea, Patsy, Babby and Grayling. The show ran on radio from 1948 through 1956. It survived the transition into television, but continually suffered from low ratings.

The Brighter Day:

The Day the Radio Soap Opera Died

The transition of the soap opera from a radio to a television form wasn't as direct as might be supposed.In a 1948 letter to Proctor and Gamble executive William Ramsey, soap opera pioneer Irna Phillips expressed both excitement of the advertising potential of the new medium, and doubts as to its appeal to home-makers. Phillips envisioned sponsors' products not only endorsed by her characters, but actually shown in use by them. However she feared that the housewife, who was able to enjoy radio drama without ignoring her household duties, would not have the same opportunity with the visual medium.

The networks and sponsors were also slow to begin risking capital on daytime programming as the age of Television dawned, concentrating at first on Prime-time programming. When the networks began to experiment with daytime programming, they at first concentrated on news and variety-talk shows. The first television Soap would be The First Hundred Years, premiering in Dec, 1950, produced and sponsored by Proctor and Gamble. It was considered a risk at the time; much of the success of radio soap opera as an advertising vehicle was the high profitability compared with production costs. A radio serial, exclusive of the actors and writers, only required a sound man, a musical staff (usually a single organ player), and one or two technical personnel. The visual medium of television required sets, make-up and costuming staff, and a great number of technicians to operate the television broadcasting apparatus. In addition greater rehearsal time was required- a radio cast didn't need to memorize their dialog,it would be read from a script and the pages casually dropped on the carpeted floor of the studio.Television actors in the pre-teleprompter days did not have this luxury.

Nonetheless, Television was a force that could not be ignored. During the 1959-60 season CBS dropped three of its ten remaining daytime radio serials. NBC dropped its one remaining Soap, and ABC had cancelled all if its radio soaps the previous year. Most of the big sponsors had shifted their attention to television, feeling it was a better investment, and left their radio time to be sold as 'spot' advertising, much of which went unsold. In addition, as the national radio networks began to fade, local programming flourished. Station managers saw greater profits in spinning records and selling local advertising than providing air time for serials that weren't listened to. Many soap operas were played for a while on both radio and television, but the small screen eventually won the day. Shows that made the transition to television included Young Doctor Malone, The Guiding Light, The Road of Life, and The Brighter Day.

*Additional Reading:

Speaking of Soaps by Robert Clyde Allen

The Great Radio Soap Operas by Jim Cox

Historical Dictionary of American Radio Soap Operas by Jim Cox

On November 25, 1960, CBS cancelled Young Doctor Malone, Ma Perkins, The Second Mrs. Burton, and The Right to Happiness.Young Doctor Maloneby now was a presence on NBC Television. Many of the conventions of the radio soap opera made the move to the small screen, including the unseen announcer at the beginning and end of the broadcast, organ music providing theme and to punctuate the most dramatic of moments in the plot, the Friday cliffhanger endings, and at first, the 15 minute episodes. The power of the daytime television market peaked in 1976, when Time magazine reported that daytime television was "TV's richest market." The magazine noted the loyalty of the fan base. At a time when many primetime dramas lost money, soaps earned profits many times their production costs.

Ratings fell dramatically from the 90s through the first decade of this century. When As the World Turns was cancelled in 2010 after a 54 year run, it was the last daytime serial to be associated with Proctor and Gamble, the sponsor that had given the soap opera its name so many years before.

Favorite Collections

Just for laughs, see the compilation: The Soapler: Soap Opera Spoofs, Satire and Silliness!
Rare Soap Opera Collection	Hummert Radio Factory	Vic and Sade
Guiding Light	One Mans Family	Easy Aces

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