Early Radio Soap Operas
Publicity shot of Nan Dorland, C. 1931. Source Animation by Deep Nostalgia.
The newly christened Nan Dorland moved back to her hometown of Chicago in 1931 to pursue a career in radio. Her interest in the new invention of radio began during her teenage years in Los Angeles in the late 1920s when, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Oct. 8, 1931), she stood before the microphone of station KFI to promote current theatre productions.
Nan was young when radio was young. The first record I could find of Nan's radio gigs is an advertisement in the Chicago Daily Herald on July 17, 1931 listing her as one of the Chicago Motor Club Players who were presenting a drama on radio station WENR (NBC).
By September of the same year, Nan had embarked on her radio career in earnest,
working on a daytime serial in the Chicago studios of the National
Broadcasting Company (NBC).
Perhaps
Nan felt the same way Mary Jane Higby felt at her first radio broadcast when she saw her first
microphone . "I had heard a great deal about
mike fright," Higby wrote in her book Tune in Tomorrow (1966),
"but I felt absolutely nothing. Perhaps it was because I could never
imagine that anyone was actually listening." In fact, millions of women
were listening.
The Daytime Radio Serial
Much
like the 1990s was a time of growth for the Internet, the 1930s was a
time of rapid growth for radio. Hundreds
of commercial radio stations popped up across the USA over the course of the decade. At the start of the decade 12
million American households owned a radio,
and by 1939 this total had exploded to more than 28 million. [Source: Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1990, p. 11.)
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A housewife at work while listening to the radio (in the corner by the window), c1940. Source
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Frank and Anne Hummert of Chicago were the founders of the daytime soap opera. In 1930, according to Jim Cox, Frank Hummert "postulated that the American housewife might appreciate daytime audio fare more amusing than cooking tips, beauty secrets and personal advice ... which dominated the airwaves during the sunlight hours." (Jim Cox, Frank and Anne Hummert's Radio Factory: The Programs and Personalities of Broadcasting's Most Prolific Producers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2003). Daytime serials, designed to accommodate the daily pattern of the homemaker, made their debut on the infant medium of radio. Advertisers quickly recognized the potential and signed on in droves. During the "golden age" of radio there were between 360 and 391 soaps on the radio air.
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Illustrator Cara Slack's depiction of a 1930s radio serial broadcast in the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1968.
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The 15-minute daily serials were sentimental, with ample doses of hardship. James Thurber once wrote, "A soap opera is a kind of sandwich. Between thick slices of advertising, spread 12 minutes of dialog, add predicament, villainy, and female suffering in equal measure, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week." [As quoted in Jim Harmon, "When Life Could be Beautiful," The Chicago Tribune, Jan 14, 1968, p. 225.]
Keeping Up with Daughter
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Nan's publicity photo by Maurice Seymour for Chicago NBC radio's daytime serial "Keeping Up with Daughter," 1931. Source
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Nan's first starring role was in 1931 on NBC Chicago's
"Keeping Up With Daughter" - one of the very first radio
serials. The new radio program, sponsored by Sherwin-Williams, cost NBC $120,000 according to the Chicago Tribune (Sept. 27, 1931). Nan played Dora
Mae, the high-school-age daughter. The story was billed as a "moving, human drama of the life of an average American family. ... Joys, pleasures, sorrows, success and ambitions - all these and other feelings of a family of three in a typical American town" were portrayed in the episodes. [Source: Minneapolis Star, September 26, 1931.] The show, which aired every Wednesday morning from 11 to 11:15 a.m., lasted only one season, from September 30, 1931 to June 22, 1932.
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| Minneapolis Star, September 26, 1931. | |
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The Problem of Sponsor Meddling
A review in Variety magazine provides some insight into why the show "Keeping Up With Daughter" was a flop. "Mid-afternoon series of sketches only mildly entertaining because of the nearly 100% commercialism," Variety pronounced on April 26, 1932. Apparently, Sherwin-Williams insisted that plugs for their company's products be inserted into the story "in an none-too-deft manner," with Nan as the daughter reading off paint colours - and their numbers - from a catalogue! This commercial angle, the magazine continues, "practically ruins whatever chance to entertain the sketch possesses."
The question of entertainment versus advertising quickly became a dilemma in the early days of radio programming. As Dr. Cynthia Meyers points out, sponsors believed that since they were paying the piper, they should call the tune. By 1929 the sponsor system was in full swing, with advertisers involved in all aspects of radio broadcasting from concept development to talent recruitment to script-writing The problem of over-commercialization due to sponsor control resulted in listener alienation. [Source: Cynthia B. Meyers, "The Problems with Sponsorship in US Broadcasting, 1930s-1950s," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 31:3, 2011.]
The Publicity Machine
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Publicity photo of Nan by Maurice Seymour. Source
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NBC's publicity machine kicked into high gear in the fall of 1931 to promote its new star Nan Dorland. Publicity photos and biographical sketches were distributed to newspapers and magazines far and wide. Obviously, physical appearance mattered little in radio, but newspapers and magazines were happy to print photos of the attractive, blue-eyed redhead. For example, on October 18, 1931 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote:
Although she admits
she feels much more at home in a bathing suit or on horseback, Nan Dorland,
radio drama actress, has proved she acts as well as she swims. She has a delightful smile that lingers on after she has passed, and a smile that, coming out of a "picture-speaker," would make all radio listeners television fans. (RCA began experimenting with television in 1931.)
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Radio Guide, April 16, 1932.
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"Incidentally she is an expert bowler." Allentown Morning Call, Feb. 17, 1932.
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The Lane Reporter
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Radio Guide, March 31, 1932.
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Nan's second starring role in a radio program was "The Lane Reporter," sponsored by Lane Cedar Chests. Launched in the spring of 1932, Nan's new show took her back to her former home in Hollywood where she guided her listeners on tours of movie stars' homes, "observing with an uncanny eye what milady's boudoir should contain by the way of eyelash curlers or what the last word is in chintz coverings," Radio Retailing magazine wrote in June 1932. It was like a 1930s radio version of Robin Leach's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Nan's Hollywood "tittle-tattle" included a visit to the home of Paramount star Miriam Hopkins where she described for her listeners "the white, bright blue and yellow decorative scheme employed in the boudoir of Miss Hopkins as an attractive setting for the silver blond loveliness of its occupant." (Tampa Times, May 5, 1932.)
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| Vancouver Province, August 10, 1932. |
Protests again arose about over-commercialization. "Miss Dorland is favorably equipped with a pleasant vocal apparatus and an easy flow of vocabulary," a review of "The Lane Reporter" in Variety magazine observes on April 26, 1932. "but what is more important to the sponsor is the subtle interjection of the plug throughout the discourse." While taking listeners through the homes of movie stars, Nan had to promote the sponsor's product - Lane cedar chests. If fans could be persuaded to believe "that all stars have big mansions with silver-brocaded bathtubs and silk-lined swimming pools," the magazine continues, " then it should be a cinch to sell 'em on the idea that no Hollywood home is complete without a cedar chest."
"Behind-the-Scenes" Video of a 1930s Radio Show
Here's a video from 1938 called "Back of the Mike" (produced by Jam Handy Organization) showing how radio shows were made in the 1930s. It begins with the images in the mind of a boy listening
to a radio western and then cuts to the broadcast studio where we see how this whole fantasy world was
created.
©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.
