Don’t Tune in Tomorrow

As the calendars changed during the 1950s, one by one, the big-time radio network programmes disappeared as the audience—and advertisers—moved to television. By 1960, about all the networks were supplying was news and information, not entertainment.

CBS valiantly hung on. Its afternoon schedule had become the final home of that most ridiculed of formats—the soap opera. That changed on November 25, 1960. After 7,065 episodes Ma Perkins closed her lumber yard and put away the Oxydol. Young Dr. Malone gave up his practice. The Second Mrs. Burton no longer had to cope with the first Mrs. Burton. Listeners lost The Right to Happiness. They were the final four soaps on network radio. In addition, The Couple Next Door moved off the daytime schedule to oblivion, Whispering Streets became silent and Best Seller rung up a “No Sale” sign.

Ah, but there was a time the soaps had seen a Brighter Day. Through the 1930s and 1940s, they filled radio airtime. In 1940, CBS aired 25 of them while NBC broadcast 20. At their end, newspaper syndicated editorial researcher Richard Spong called them “steeped in misery, saccharine, and virtually inert.” Their dialogue, acting and plots were tailor-made for spoofing by Fred Allen, Henry Morgan and other comedians/satirists (on one of Allen’s shows, all the characters died but, regardless, listeners were told everything would somehow turn out all right, and to be with them again tomorrow, same time, same station).

New York Herald Tribune critic John Crosby was known for his caustic observations, but soap operas would have been too easy a target for him. Instead, he related what is really a sad story about a listener caught up in the world of one programme. This was his column in the Herald Tribune for Monday, December 30, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Soap Opera Fan From Brooklyn
The dim twilight of soap opera is not everyone's world. It is a special world, it would appear, built purposely for those persons whose credulity has no apparent limits. To the skeptical listener with a ready fund of humor the agonies of soap opera offer neither escape nor amusement. For that sort of listener, of whom there are a great many, a far more rewarding study than soap opera is that of the people who listen to the darn things, or, as someone put it so well, the proper study of man is man.
Soap opera is not so much a taste as an addiction. Even broadcasters will admit that the soap opera fan listens not to just one but to several, sometimes five or six in a day, deriving from the later ones even more comfort than from the early ones as they sink further and further into the nebulous world of fancy and farther and farther from the prosaic world of the dishes. Just how virulent this soap opera drug can become was well illustrated by a recent occurrence in New Jersey.
* * *
A Mrs. Davis of Hillsborough Township near Somerville, N. J. recently received a note on which was scrawled: "Steve killed Betty MacDonald. Irma has him on her farm. I hope you will come out of this with flying colors." Mrs. Davis turned the letter over police who traced it without difficulty to a woman in Brooklyn, from whom they wrung this remarkable confession.
The writer told police that listened every day to a soap opera called "When a Girl Marries." On this program recently a Betty MacDonald was killed and Harry Davis of "Somerville" was arrested. The Brooklyn letter writer went on to explain that Harry Davis was really innocent. The real murderer, she told the startled cops, was a man named Steve, Betty's lover, who was now hiding out on Irma's farm. (Irma loved him, too.) She had written the letter to Mrs. Davis to reassure her that everything would come out all right and to assure her that her faith in Mrs. Davis and Harry remained unshaken.
* * *
That's all there is to the story. The police presumably told the Brooklyn lady not to write any more letters and may even have advised her against taking soap opera so seriously. The reaction of the Brooklyn addict to a visitation from the cops remains unknown. Does she still listen to "When a Girl Marries?” What went through her mind when she discovered that Harry and Irma and Steve were people of fancy, not fact? Was she outraged this betrayal of her implicit trust and, if so, has she found anything to take its place? Or, to put it more plainly, are there any other anodynes so satisfying and undemanding as soap opera for credulous ladies from Brooklyn?
The spy psychiatrists will have to take it up from there. This column is out of its depth.

This post is one of a series transcribing one week’s worth of columns by Crosby, a suggestion made some time ago by radio/film researcher and scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley. We’re going to deviate to give you a post-script. The same day CBS killed its radio soaps, its night-time schedule bade farewell to its last entertainment show: The Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall. The stars had gone through several different formats; perhaps the best-known was a weekly half-hour sitcom. The Music Hall was their last gasp, as the title characters were little more than disc jockeys with comic dialogue in between records.

When Monday, November 28, rolled around, CBS’s morning entertainment block of Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter (House Party), Garry Moore and the transcribed Bing Crosby/Rosemary Clooney show (where they, more or less, introduced themselves on record) was still standing. So were three network dramatic shows: Gunsmoke, Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. They eventually dropped away. Bill Conrad’s Marshall Dillon hung up his badge on CBS radio on June 18, 1961, while Johnny Dollar cashed out on September 30, 1962, immediately followed by the last time radio listeners could listen to a tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense.

As critics noted, it was cheaper for affiliates to hire a disc jockey to play records than to pay CBS for programming.

If you’re wondering how the soaps wrapped up their plots, Bud Sprunger of the Associated Press told newspaper readers the next day:

Dr. Malone, the hero of “Young Doctor Malone,” decided in the last chapter to return to his job as director of the clinic at Three Oaks. Dr. Malone polished things off by convincing Scotty’s mother that the young man’s love must be shared. The mother said she would attend the wedding of Scotty and Jill.
Ma Perkins...ended with Charley Lindstrom accepting a job in the East. As the family gathered at Ma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, the philosophical heroine saw happiness ahead. Anushka, an immigrant girl, and Ma’s grandson, Junior, at to be married next month.
Claudia Nelson...was the heroine in “The Right to Happiness,” which was the story of an attractive widow with a teen-age son named Skip...As things ended, Grace assured Skip he was the only boy in her life. Dick Braden was paroled from prison. Lee’s court case came to a satisfactory close and Lee and Carolyn faced the future with assurance.
“The Second Mrs. Burton” [involved] a social dowager who lives in Bickston, a Hudson River community near New York...the Second Mrs. Burton [was] the dowager’s daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law, in the final chapter, stops the dowager from making a fool of herself over an artist and everybody concentrates on getting ready for a Christmas bazaar.



Now for Crosby’s other columns to finish out 1946 (and start 1947).

Tuesday, December 31: When the winner didn’t take all on Winner Take All.
Wednesday, January 1: Year-end honours.
Thursday, January 2: Detective dialogue.
Friday, January 3: Maisie, starring Ann Sothern.

The artwork above comes from the Los Angeles Daily News, which skipped the column of the 31st.