BUFFALO COURIER-EXPRESS, Friday. April 5. 1957
NEW YORK. April 4—Recently the top executives of CBS radio programs wanted to find out how their daily 3-hour daytime women's serials were going. Also they asked who was writing them. So they tiptoed into the w r I t e r s lounge to see what was what. To their astonishment they found that all the writers were men! Eight men writing women's happiness-and-heartthrob programs! Those sometimes belittled soap operas that make the loudest, most golden clunk in the CBS cash register — was it safe to leave this lucrative channel to women's emotions to the literarv devices of men? Quickly they put the statistical department to counting how many women listen to these everyday 15 - minute serials. Came the correct count: 20,548.000 listeners. Who could quarrel with such figures or question such male talent,
Why must it be men who engross that many women's minds after the kids get off to school, or while making the baby's formula, preparing the vegetables or dusting furniture and making beds? It seems women prefer the masculine point of view in their daily radio serials. Upon further research it turns out that eight men write seven of the longest-lived daytime dramas. Theirs are among CBS' best paid, most coveted and steadiest radio writing jobs. The men are not worried about writinq deathless prose. They merely want big salaries and lasting employment. Several of their serials are more than 20 years old and still very popular. Let any one of the programs be two minutes late and you can hear the listeners* squawks all along the network.
LUCKY EIGHT—Here are the lucky eight: Frank Provo and John Pickard jointly author "Wendy Warren and the News." Milton Lewis turns out "This Is Nora Drake." Orin Tovrov writes "Ma Perkins" and David Lesan signs his name to "Young Dr. Malone." "Road of Life" is the product of Charles Gussman. "Right to Happiness" is by John M. Young, and "The Second Mrs Burton" by Hector Chevigny. There are. to be sure, some women daytime serial writers, but for some reason men outnumber and outclass them. For the most part these men work at their homes and come to the office only for occasional story conferences. Probably the sardonic truth is that some of these men's wives would prefer to have their husbands off in an office instead of cluttering up the house. Yet these very husbands have the insight and the power, through their writing, to spellbound millions of other men's wives. C'est la vie!
The stock in trade of these masculine writers adds up to sympathy, joy, suffering, regret,frustration, ambition, anguish, revenge, hope, disappointment and love on every level. Their writing contracts call for a minimum pay of $300 a week for writing five 15-minute programs. None of these eight can even remember when he was being paid as little as $300 a week. Not only do they all have yearly raises, but there are "escalator clauses" in their contracts which are like the cow jumping over the moon; no calculating how high they can go,
WED STEADY WOMEN—They all lead simple lives and they seem to take care not to marry women anything like the characters in their serials—women who are prone to emotional flights that are interesting to hear but hard to live with. For a thumbnail sketch of one of the CBS radio serial writers, take Hector Chevigny, author of "The Second Mrs. Burton." He comes from the State of Washington, where he prepared for a medical career and then switched to writing. He entered the radio script field in Hollywood, mastering the mechanics of broadcasting as well. In 1940 he stepped into free lancing with instant success. But four years later misfortune struck: he became blind. That was 13 years ago. Did it defeat him? Not at all. It spurred even greater output
By
Paul Raven ·
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