John's Other Wife

[trof]

Back in the late 40s when my mom got her first job I was 'looked after' at a grandmotherly neighbor's house.

She had her radio on all day long, listening to the soaps. I was soon hooked too, following the suspenseful ups and downs of "life" on shows like John's Other Wife (it was his secretary and very platonic, mostly;-)), Young Widder Brown, Lorenzo Jones, Backstage Wife, and on and on.

It was interesting to run across this article today:

Faithful followers of soap operas have learned over the years that after a brief and bitter first marriage a young single mother can find love, marriage and singular professional success with a much older man, but now the question is:

Can a career woman who sacrificed her leisure to keep a nation of enthralled housewives glued to their radios for the better part of two decades survive a heart-wrenching regimen of producing as many as 90 cliff-hanging episodes a week to live a full, rich and long life?

No need to stay tuned or wait for a toothpaste commercial. It can now be revealed that when she died in bed at her Fifth Avenue apartment on July 5, Anne Hummert, the woman widely credited with creating the radio soap opera and spinning out many of the classics of the 1930's and 40's, was a 91-year-old multimillionaire who had maintained a vigorous life almost to the end.

At a time when televised soap operas have become a postfeminist cultural sideshow, it is hard to imagine the era when "Stella Dallas," "Helen Trent," "Ma Perkins" and "Lorenzo Jones" were more than household names, and when virtually every woman in America knew that Mary Noble was the "Backstage Wife" and were familiar with every detail of the anguished but inspiring lives of "John's Other Wife" and "Young Widow Brown."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E1DD1639F932A15754C0A960958260