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Structured entries

R-1248 “1248”

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R-1249 “1249”

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R-1250 “1250”

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R-1251 “1251”

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Transcription (raw)

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REEL 1248. FIREFIGHTERS
(12) FIREFIGHTERS Episode # 1.
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REEL 1249. FIREFIGHTERS
(12) FIREFIGHTERS Episode # 29.
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SOAP OPERAS USED TO BE FUN
On radio, you could imagine all sorts of things— on TV, the series are too doggoned literal
By Leslie Raddatz
Since retiring from the staff of this magazine, I've had a chance to watch daytime serials on television, and I can't find words to express my dismay at what the medium has done to that noble genre of radio's golden days— the soap opera.
The TV serials manage to be both terribly confusing and embarrassingly literal at one and the same time. For at least a half hour, sometimes for an hour, they have as many as three or four stories going simultaneously. This would be confusing in itself, but actors and actresses are changed just often enough to compound the confusion.
In radio, it was different. The old soap operas ran for only 15 minutes every day, and they were based upon a simple, understandable premise.
For instance, "The Romance of Helen Trent" was introduced daily, for 27 years and 7222 episodes, with the identical words uttered by announcer Fielden Farrington (announcers don't have names like that any more): "Time now for 'The Romance of Helen Trent' — the real-life drama of Helen Trent, who—when life mocks her, breaks her hopes, dashes her against the rocks of despair—fights back bravely, successfully, to prove what so many women long to prove in their own lives: that because a woman is 35, and more, romance in life need not be over; that the romance of youth can extend into middle life, and even beyond."
Helen Trent managed to get into outrageous scrapes over the years, but it was she who got into them, not a bunch of strange people grouped together under some such title as Days of Our Lives or The Edge of Night. The same actors and actresses usually played the same parts year in and year out in the radio soap. If they did change occasionally, it didn't really matter. Except in our mind's eye, we did not see them.
And that brings me to my principal cavil at TV's de-scratlon of one of

radio's finest hours—or, more properly, quarter hours. The television serials are so literal. They spell everything out—or, more exactly, talk it out. Adultery, illegitimacy, incest, disease. You name it—they sure do! Short of showing it all, which they still leave to the movies, nothing is left to the imagination.
Someone—was it Norman Corwin?— once said that radio is the theater of the mind. And nowhere could the mind wander more freely than in a radio soap opera. At least, my mind.
Perhaps I was alone in imagining what really went on during those daily 15 minutes of Angst. James Thurber once wrote an exhaustive treatise on soap opera in which he spoke of "day-time morality." He said, "The good people, both men and women, cannot smoke cigarettes or touch alcoholic beverages.... Furthermore, the good women must float like maiden schoolteachers above what Evangeline Adams used to call 'the slime,' that is, the passionate expression of sexual love." Thurber saved his greatest scorn for Helen Trent: "The chill Miss Trent has had her men frustrated to a point which a mortal male would smack her little mouth, so smooth, so firm, so free of nicotine, alcohol and emotion."
That's the way James Thurber saw it. Not I. To start with, that title, "The Romance of Helen Trent," was a grossly understated misnomer. Over the years, Helen had hundreds of romances, including one with an indefatigable suitor named Gil Whitney, who kept coming back to her time after time after time. Do you suppose for a minute that Gil came back just to hold hands? Not likely, say I. These are a couple of mature people, Helen admittedly "35, and more." A little bit old for hand-holding, wouldn't you say?
Which is precisely the point. Nowadays, they would say that—and more —on TV. But they didn't talk like that

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REEL 1250. FIREFIGHTERS
(12) FIREFIGHTERS Episode # 57.
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REEL 1251. FIREFIGHTERS
(12) FIREFIGHTERS Episode # 85.
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on radio, any more than they did in movies back then. Remember those old movies? As the couple embraced, the camera panned upward into moonlight and scudding clouds, and the music rose to a crescendo. We knew what was going on!
So it was with radio. Looking back over the past year, I can honestly say that I don't remember one scene from a TV daytime serial. But I shall never forget those times at Helen Trent's... It's the end of the day, and Gil Whitney drops by. Helen's friend and companion, elderly Agatha Anthony, says: "Can I get you a glass of lemonade, Gil?" He says yes, and Helen says she'll have one, too. Elderly Agatha leaves the room. Helen and Gil talk together, intimately. Agatha returns to the sound of ice clinking in glasses. She tactfully excuses herself, leaving Helen and Gil alone together. The announcer, Fielden Farrington, reminds us, softly, to tune in tomorrow.
That is what we heard. What was going on in the theater of the mind was something else again. First of all, there is the matter of elderly Agatha Anthony. I didn't see her as she was usually portrayed in publicity stills of the day—a gray-haired, old-fashioned grandmother type. Would Helen Trent, a woman of the world, a—let's face it —swinger, have an old crone like that lurking about? Hardly. No, I'm afraid Agatha Anthony had, as we say, been around. Her hair was probably dyed, and she wore a little bit too much makeup. Elderly, sure, but she still had a gleam in her eye as she asked Gil if he wanted a drink. Lemonade indeed!
So, that's the way it was. And I, like Fielden Farrington, will draw the curtain on what went on after elderly Agatha Anthony tactfully left the room. Except, in my mind's eye, I see the camera panning upward into the moonlight and scudding clouds, and the music rises to a crescendo.