Radio Soap Opera Discussion

[jam6242]

I found quite a few synopses I'm putting together.  I was more interested in those than any current soap I'm watching.  It was apparently a popular show but kept getting moved around to different time-slots and networks.  Won several fan-voted awards.  Even saw a blurb that some fans contacted the FCC to complain about the moves and they were writing to newspapers several years after it last aired to ask when it was returning.  Some things never change, lol.

Also, Paramount did a film short featuring the show to demonstrate how radio programs were made.  Was hoping to at least find that but didn't have any luck.

Edited August 22, 2022 by jam6242

[Paul Raven]

When a Girl Marries, by Elaine Sterne Carrington, an CBS at 12:15 today and every day except Saturday and Sunday, sponsored by the Prudential Insurance Company.

The average person can't understand haw a writer can turn out a daily serial script, day after day, year in and year out, with never a break. Elaine Sterne Carrington has reduced the whole job to a science. She works from Monday morning through Thursday noon, starting at seven in the morning, not doing just one script a day, but trying to do as many in one working day as she can. She keeps about three weeks ahead of the broadcasting studio at all times -that is, the episode of When a Girl Marries that you hear today was written by her three weeks ago. Besides When a Girl Marries, of course, she also writes Pepper Young's Family.

An exceedingly vigorous person, Mrs. Carrington hates to lie in bed late in the mornings, but when occasionally she gets behind in her work she forces herself to stay there, dictating to her secretary, until she has caught up. It's a form of self - discipline. All of her scripts are dictated by Mrs. Carrington to a secretary, typed out and then gone over once more by the author; then mailed from her Long Island home to the advertising agency in New York which produces the program. All summer long Mrs. Carrington stays at her country home on Lang Island, refusing flatly to come to town. In the winter she and her husband and two children, Patricia and Bobby, move to their house in Brooklyn.

Mr. Carrington is a prominent New York attorney, and the two children, 14 and 10, are editors of their own magazine, "The Jolly Roger," which has a subscription list of 300, mostly to celebrities. Other important members of the Carrington country home are the police dog Flash, the cat Red Davis, and a young goat named Alcibiades, who loves to eat cigarette butts.

In New York, when Mrs. Carrington's scripts arrive, they are interpreted by a cast that includes Noel Mills as Joan Field; Joan Tetzel as her sister, Sylvia; Irene Winston as Eve Topping, Joan's best friend; John Raby as her sweetheart, Harry Davis; Ed Jerome and Frances Woodbury as her father and mother; Marian Barney as Mrs. Davis; Bill Quinn as Tom Davis, and Michael Fitzmaurice as Phil Stanley - who is the closest thing to a villain When a Girl Marries has. There isn't much melodrama in Mrs. Carringtan's plots, because she believes in real life characters who might be the people next door. Noel Mills, Joan Tetzel and Irene Winston are three of radio's prettiest young actresses, and having them all in one program creates a field day far CBS studio attaches. At any rehearsal you'd be surprised at the number of technicians, engineers, page boys and even vice presidents who find errands to take them into Studio 3.

[Paul Raven]

Kate Hopkins:                            CBS:  Oct 7, 1940 to Apr 3, 1942.  (78 Weeks) 
(aka Angel of Mercy)                 Totals: 78 Consecutive Weeks - 390 Episodes Broadcast

Running the gamut from young love to  romance full blown and fortyish "Kate Hopkins " pretends to be no more than it is—an interesting love-story. Kate Hopkins is a widow of forty loose end when her son Torn is drafted into the Army. She meets Jessie Atwood, a retired and renowned lady of the theater, accepts her invitation to come to New Orleans as companion. There on Mrs. Atwood's plantation, the actress' son, Robert, also forty, is about to be married to eighteen year-old Diane Pers. Learning to know and admire Kate, Robert begins to wonder whether Kate rather than Diane would  be the next logical Mrs. Robert Atwood.

Through Robert's efforts, Tom is transferred to a camp near the plantation, where he visits his mother and meets Diane— which is part of Robert's plan to test Diane's love for himself. a man twice her aye. Soon Tom realizes he is falling in love with Robert's fiancee...

Kate Hopkins Margaret Macdonald

Tom Hopkins Clayton Collyer

Robert Atwood Raymond Edward Johnson

Jessie Atwood Constance Collier

Diane Pers - Delma Byron

Elise Peggy Allenby Atwood's housekeeper has designs on Robert,dislikes Kate and Dianne.

[Paul Raven]

The Strange Romance  
of Evelyn Winters:                     CBS: Nov 20, 1944 to Nov 12, 1948. (208 Weeks)

Can a woman be happily married to a man seventeen years her senior? Has a guardian any right to fall in love with his ward? These are some of the questions which perplex Gary Bennett- leading male character in The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters." And the answers that the bewildered playwright- producer finds to these inquiries will determine the future action of the daytime drama. '

For, despite the title of the serial, it seems to be Bennett (played by Martin Blaine) rather than Evelyn Winters (Toni Darnay) around whom the plot revolves. Gary is a former Lieutenant, honorably discharged from the Army as the result of wounds received in Europe. He's 37, handsome. witty and debonair, would find his return to civilian life both pleasant and uncomplicated were it not for the accident of fate which places him in full charge of 20 year old Evelyn. (Her father, who has been killed in action, was so impressed with the noble character of the Lieutenant that he named Bennett his daughter's guardian -)

Any reader of romances could guess the inevitable outcome of this situation. Evelyn and Gary fall in love practically at once, but Gary is almost afraid to admit the fact to himself, particularly since Colonel Winters specifically instructed him to pass upon any man Evelyn chooses to marry. The conscience struggles of the enamored guardian are also intensifed by the fact that Evelyn is wealthy, and that one of his duties is to protect her inheritance.

The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters' is something of a novelty in daytime dramas in that it depends on emotional problems alone to lure its listeners. Fast-action scenes are conspicuous by their absence, and there's nary a gruesome accident, kidnapping or amnesia victim to stir up excitement. Financial struggles do not enter the picture, for all the characters are pleasantly secure, well able to indulge in an occasional fur coat or jeweled bauble. Even the discharged veteran angle is distinctly played down, as Gar seldom refers to his war experiences, is free of psychoses, has slipped back into the life of a Broadway producer as simply as he left it.

Perhaps it is just this everyday life quality which lends the serial its greatest charm for followers. There are no dyed in the wool villains. G. Ted Blades (played by Stacey Harris) is Gary's rival but he's also a gentleman and dependable friend. Glamour girl Janice King (Flora Campbell), though doing her best to ensnare Gary, uses only amateurish and ladylike tactics when compared with other aggressive females heard on the air. Like a twentieth- century Jane Austen novel, the drama presents a picture of how ordinary people behave when they have "nothing to do but behave."

[jam6242]

From 1938, "Bachelor's Children."

 

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[Paul Raven]

Bachelor’s Children:                 CBS:  Sep 28, 1936 to Mar 21, 1941. (235 Weeks) 
                                                    NBC: Mar 24, 1941 to Sep 25, 1942. (79 Weeks) 
                                                    CBS:  Sep 28, 1942 to Sep 27, 1946. (209 Weeks)  
                                                     Totals: 523 Consecutive Weeks - 2,615 Episodes Broadcast    

[Paul Raven]

 Radio In Review Soapland Discovers Homicide Commodity By JOHN CROSBY

Arizona Republic Phoenix, Arizona09 Feb 1951,

Edna Ferber once attributed the success of her novels at least partly to the fact that they dealt in the fundamentals of life birth, marriage, disease, death. Soap opera deals pretty much in the same primary commodities except that the emphasis lies on their frustration or perversion. Soapland is full of women who can't have children, of marriages that have broken up or are breaking and of deaths that are anything but ordinary. Murder, which intruded only occasionally in soap opera years ago, has become overwhelmingly fashionable. That old sleuth, Perry Mason, has Walter Bott on trial for his life for murder. My old friend Larry Noble of "Backstage Wife" just beat a murder rap for backstage killing. It was Claudia Vincent, as you and I knew all along, who was the killer. Claudia's mind snapped under the strain ana she s been put away. But not before she threw acid into the face of Mary Noble, "Backstage Wife,' possibly disfiguring her forever. www SOME INSTINCT tells me she'll recover her beauty. She s done it before after even worse tnbula tions. As a matter of fact, poor Mary has a rather nasty habit of falling victim to the mentally de ranged. Last time I listened in February. 1946, she was recovering njcely, after having been drugged, locked in a room and left to die by someone described as "mentally not well."

Backstage and theatrical murders are rather fashionable among current soap opera. Front Page Farrell, the demon reporter, is currently trying to solve a double murder of stage folk. And Portia, the demon ladv lawyer of "Portia Faces Life," also has a twin killing involving nightclub people. The freshest corpse anywhere around is that of Ralph Kirkland who was done in by Rupert Gorham on "The Second Mrs. .Burton." Rupert then proceeded to elope with his victim's mother-in-law, Grace Burton, a nice touch. Ralph is so freshly dead that his wife, Marsha, doesn't know it yet. She thinks her husband is off again with that Elizabeth Miller girl who has again escaped from the hospital. A good many of the murders have been committed by women. The "Backstage Wife" and the 'Young Widder Brown" killings were both done by women and I strongly suspect the Front Page Farrell murders had a woman be hind them, too. That pretty well winds up the homicide in soapland, except that Stella Dallas just escaped a couple of attempted assassinations and there has been a good deal of bloodshed in "Lorenzo Jones" which was once primarily a comedy show.

Murder has been popular a long time in the evening hours but this afternoon murder is a rather different dish of tea In the first place there is almost no element of mystery. The listeners almost always know whodunit when  murder is committed, not so much to remove the victim from this planet he is better off dead than living in soapland as a means of causing suffering to the quick. Almost always an innocent person is indicted and the trial goes on for weeks or months, keeping the housewife in a wonderful state of sustained anxiety. Some times murders are committed for no other reason than to implicate Nora or Caroline or whoever, the victim having been unfortunate to be around when a corpse was needed. Jealousy is the principal motive but the girls, curiously enough, don't kill the other woman; they are much more likely to kill the man they both love. While good women are nobler than anything in your or my experience in soap opera, the bad women are more venomous than anything you'd care to encounter. In either case, the women are strong, just as men, whether good or bad, are weak at the best rather simpleminded and easily bam boozled by women. Also, while women are committing a good many of these soapland murders, these lapses from feminine grace are offset by the fact that women solve the crimes, too. It was Mary who put the finger on Claudia in Backstage Wife"; Portia is running down the nightclub murders and even Front Page Farrell is getting a lot of help from his wife. The man's job in soapland murder is just to stand around. Or better yet, to fall down gracefully when the bullets strike

[Paul Raven]

Some summaries from Feb 1959, radio soaps dying days

Romance of Helen Trent

 Gil Whitney makes a scene in Helen Trent’s presence by asking Paul Brockton his rival for her affection about a past disastrous love affair Embarrassed by Paul's violent outburst Helen makes confidential inquiries about Gil’s question.

Whispering Streets

To while away long evening hours a lonely young business girl takes baby-sitting jobs and runs into adventure that changes her dreary life.

Ma Perkins

After Ma Perkins and her two daughters agree to help plan a wedding reception for Abbie Danforth and Mike Mallory the bride-to-be procrastinates on setting a specific date.

Young Dr Malone

Dr Jerry Malone's alibii that worry over his wife’s illness prevents him from making managerial decisions at the clinic is challenged by two doctors whose careers are being placed in jeopardy.

Second Mrs Burton

Lovable but bibulous Uncle George Deever,aging brother of dignified Mother Burton, makes a surprise visit to Dickston He gives her a logical reason but confides to his niece and nephew that he is fleeing a December romance.

Right to Happiness

Nursing regret over his broken romance with Grace Driscoll 17-year-oid Skip Nelson learns that she needs his help in a matter involving her ne’er-do-well father, Carolyn Skip’s widowed mother fears a renewal of the youngsters’ determination to get married. 

[Paul Raven]

Dec 2 1937

The script of NBC's Today's Children called for a scene in a day nursery. Being a stickler for realism. Author Irna Phillips had microphones set up in a real nursery in Chicago. She's shown talking over the situation with her stars for a day. Children from 1 to 6 years old were stars for a day during a recent broadcast of the NBC serial, Today's Children. The script called for a visit to a day nursery by Irna (Kay Crane) Phillips, who is also author of the show. So, in the interest of realism, NBC microphones were placed in various spots in the North Avenue Day Nursery here so that authentic recitations and songs could be picked up during the broadcast. The broadcast was in line with Miss Phillips' policy of keeping the popular NBC serial realistic and true to life by occasionally taking the show from its regular NBC Chicago studios. Not long ago, when the 'script called for two of the show's principals to go sailing, a Today's Children broadcast was shortwaved from a sail boat in Lake Michigan. Today's Children is heard Mondays through Fridays at 10.45 a. m. over the WEAF Network.

[jam6242]

A few articles from 1947 re radio soap called, "Here Comes Tomorrow." First soap with a Black cast, writer, producers, and sponsor.

 

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[Paul Raven]

Fascinating find. Thanks for sharing.

 

[robbwolff]

Synopses of radio soaps from September 1951 issue of Radio Television Mirror:

 

 

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[slick jones]

@Paul Raven @jam6242  @dc11786 @DRW50 @Vee @vetsoapfan @danfling @Bright Eyes @victoria foxton

    fantastic interview with Toni Gilman about being a child radio actress and more.  Learn where the Moynihans in Irna Phillips' first soap opera PAINTED DREAMS were really created.

Toni Gilman interview

[vetsoapfan]

I love rare/obscure finds like this. Thanks, @slick jones!

[jam6242]

Wow, thanks @slick jones!