The Guiding Light:
Radio Soap Opera to Television Legacy
This article is an excerpt
from RUSC Member's Area
The Midwestern town of Springfield was the fictional setting during the past 72 years for the Soap Opera, The Guiding Light. The actual maze of sets for the series was located at CBS Broadcast Center’s Stage 42, where the clans of Spaulding, Lewis and Cooper lived complex lives that most of us could never imagine.
The Guiding Light began its illustrious career on the radio, on January 25, 1937, broadcast by NBC and sponsored by White Naphtha Soap. Later, the show was taken over by Proctor & Gamble’s Duz Detergent and CBS television.
From 1937 until the mid-forties, Arthur Peterson was the voice of the Reverend John Rutledge, and Mercedes McCambridge played the part of Mary, his daughter. Other radio actors included Ed Prentiss as Ned Holden, Ruth Bailey as Rose Kransky, Muriel Bremner as Fredrika Lang, and Frank Behrens as the Reverend Tom Bannion, Reverend Rutledge’s assistant.
Irna Phillips was the creator-writer of The Guiding Light, which went on in broadcast history to become the longest-running series. It was among the first of radio’s soap operas and became as successful on television as it was on the radio. From a 15-minute show, The Guiding Light’s intense drama became an hour-long television serial in 1952 and ran concurrently on radio and TV until 1956, when the radio show was dropped.
The influential and creative Irna Phillips was sometimes called the queen of soaps. She was said to have written two million words per year for the six or so soap operas she was responsible for. She was also responsible for the plotting and for interchanging the characters. Cliffhanger's endings were her trademark and left fans on Fridays holding their collective breaths until Monday to find out what happened.
Irna was incredible in building her actors into believable characters. When Arthur Peterson, who played Reverend Rutledge, joined the army in 1944, Phillips also sent her character into the Army on the show—making him a chaplain. For a long period of time, the Rutledges and Kranskys were religiously followed on the show, but gradually the character of Dr. Charles Matthews became the focus of attention.
Soap operas have replicated the American life for decades, and The Guiding Light has been a beacon for its fans since World War II. For a few minutes every day, Americans could forget about war and their own problems to immerse themselves in the trials and tribulations of a fictional family that seemed like real family to them.
Women were mostly stay-at-home moms and wives during the days of radio, so they were the main focus for the soap opera sponsors. Makers of soaps and products that women would shop for specifically directed their pitches to those wives and moms, therefore originating the term, soaps.
Unfortunately, there are less than 200 episodes extant, of which we have 100. I will try and get hold of some more. During the 72-year run on radio and television, over 15,000 episodes were aired!
The episodes available on RUSC are from 1950 and concentrate primarily on the Bauer family. On 22nd September 1950, in episode 866, Meta Bauer White killed her loveless husband Ted as she held him responsible for the death of their only child, Chuckie. We have 22 episodes after this but are far from the conclusion. Intrigued to learn more, I found a great website with the whole history of Meta's life on Guiding Light from 1950 through 2002.
Even coming to the end of the available shows from the golden age of radio was like losing some old friends. Irna Phillips died on 22nd December 1972, and The Guiding Light lived on until its final cliffhanger on 18th September 2009. It will be sadly missed by many.
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