April 17, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: 1930s Origins

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On five pioneeringwomen who together helped create the genre on 1930s radio.

1)     Irna Phillips: Theprogram generally accepted as the first daytime serial, WGN’sPainted Dreams, which debuted inOctober 1930, was the brainchild of Jewish American actress and screenwriterIrna Phillips. Phillips also frequently voiced the show’s main character, IrishAmerican widow Mother Moynihan, but writing and showrunning in this nascentgenre were really her passions—she would go on to create five more radio soapsover the next decade, including the first to transition to television (The Guiding Light). Phillipslikewise transitioned to TV, writing for many TV soaps, including some of the mostpopular and enduring (As the World Turns andDays of Our Lives, for example), andconsulting for one of the first primetime soaps, 1964’s Peyton Place. But it was her radio origins that truly embodiedwhere this genre likewise got its start.

2)     Bess Flynn: Noradio or TV program is the product of only one artist of course, and anotherkey player (in every sense) in PaintedDreams was contributing writer BessFlynn, who also sometimes voiced Mother Moynihan. Like Phillips, Flynnwould go on to create a number of other radio soap operas as well, includingone of the longest-running and most successful daytime serials, Bachelor’s Children(1935-1946). That show became closely associated with its two male stars, HughStudebaker and Olan Soule;but while their performances as the pair of titular bachelors (who, in aplotline that wouldn’t really fly in 2023, fell in love with two young womenfor whom they served as guardians after their father’s death) were what audiencesheard, it was the words and work of Flynn that undoubtedly lay behind this show’sstriking success.

3)     Clara, Lu, ‘n Em: There’s never just one “first”in a genre, and at the same time that PaintedDreams was on the air, so too was another very early and successful WGN soapopera. Clara,Lu, ‘n Em first premiered at night in June 1930, and when it was pickedup by NBC’s radio network in January 1931 it became the first nationallybroadcast soap era (a year later it moved to a daytime slot and so likewise becamethe first networked daytime soap). This show was the brainchild of a trio of talentedyoung artists: LouiseStarkey, Isobel Carothers, and Helen King created the concept whilestudents at Northwestern University, wrote all the scripts, and performed asthe title characters. While these various shows and artists gradually wenttheir separate ways, they were all writing and performing at WGN in 1930-31,and I like to think that these five groundbreaking women got the chance to chatoccasionally about the compelling new genre they were together creating.

Nextsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?