A Stepmother Who Tries: The Way It Was, 17 January

1937: A STEPMOTHER WHO TRIES---And, who is introduced thus: "Can a stepmother successfully raise another woman's children? Colgate All-Purpose Tooth Powder presents the real life story of Kay Fairchild, a stepmother who tried."

Presented as a soap opera, Kay Fairchild, Stepmother premieres on CBS, from Chicago, starring Sunda Love and, later, Janet Logan, in the title role; and, Francis X. Bushman, Bill Green, Charles Penman, and Willard Waterman playing husband and Walnut Grove mayor John Fairchild over the life of the show.

The stories will center around Kay Fairchild's effort to raise her husband's daughter, Peggy (Peggy Wall, later Barbara Fuller), while contending with husband John's struggles against a political machine almost constantly trying to compromise his mayoral administration. Thirteen episodes, from between late July 1940 and late August 1941, will be known to survive* for future radio collectors.

AIRWAVES . . .

17 JANUARY 1949: "YOO-HOO! IS ANYBODY WATCHING?"---Having enjoyed a seventeen-year radio life, and three years after it finished its radio run in favour of a Broadway adaptation (Molly and Me), The Goldbergs graduates to television, on CBS---after creator/chief writer/star Gertrude Berg has to convince network executives that the longtime favourite is workable on the small screen.

As on radio and stage, Gertrude Berg---the show’s creator, chief writer, and star---plays Molly Goldberg, whom Bud Collyer (under his given name, Clayton) had introduced on radio as having “a place in every heart, and a finger in every pie.” On television, however, she is joined by a new husband Jake, Philip Loeb. The family---Jake, Molly, and children Sammy and Rosalie---is moved back to the Bronx, after having moved to the suburbs of Connecticut at the height of the radio original’s influence and popularity. And, Sammy and Rosalie are cast once again as teenagers, despite having matured into married adults on radio---and Berg almost looking (and almost sounding) old enough to be their grandmother. Almost.

A pioneering serial comedy on radio, The Goldbergs on television will become a more conventional situation comedy as the world will come to know it. Sometimes, it will blur the line between comedy and drama; other times, it will allow the drama govern the episode with the comedy seeming almost incidental.

As one of the earliest such television offerings, however, The Goldbergs will help prove the format’s viability. But it will pay a certain price to do so: Despite the universally appealing situations depicted (as had been done in the radio years, a major factor in the show's popularity), the show’s unapologetic ethnicity, and its gently unmistakeable tension between ethnic/religious grounding and social assimilation, will make it anomalous by the end of its television run, as television inclines more toward portraying actual or alleged suburban homogeneity, an incline that endures for the better part of a decade.

The rest of the original television cast: Larry Robinson (as son Sammy), Arlene McQuade (as daughter Rosalie), and Eli Mintz (as Uncle David). Berg, McQuade, and Mintz will be the only cast members to stay with the show for its entire television life.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

MAIL CALL: DOUBLE INDEMNITY; OR, "THANK YOU, HARRY VON SO FORTH, FOR THAT SO-SO INTRODUCTION" (ARMED FORCES RADIO SERVICE, 1945)---Gloria DeHaven (singing "I'm In The Mood For Love"); a jazz trio of Gene Krupa, Charlie Ventura, and Teddy Napoleon (playing a remarkable "Stompin' at the Savoy"); and, Ida Lupino, Robert Benchley, and Groucho Marx making mischief with Double Indemnity. (This is a series designed exclusively for American troops fighting World War II, in which shows were cobbled together largely based upon their entertainment requests. The "Harry Von So Forth" crack, perhaps needless to say, refers to the show's announcer, Harry Von Zell.)

THE JUDY CANOVA SHOW: PROMISES, PROMISES (NBC, 1948)---Rrunning for President, Eddie Cantor has promised Judy (Canova) a movie career if she gets him the votes from Cactus Junction. "A radio comedian for President?" asks Geranium (Ruby Dandridge), who seems to have slept through Gracie Allen's 1940 campaign. Pedro: Mel Blanc. Additional cast: Verna Felton, Sheldon Leonard. Music: Bud Dant Orchestra, the Sports Men. Writers: Fred Fox, Henry Hoople.

PREMIERING TODAY

1875---Minetta Ellen (actress: One Man's Family), Cleveland.
1884---Noah Beery (actor: Campbell's Playhouse; Lux Radio Theater), Kansas City.
1891---Marjorie Gateson (actress: Lux Radio Theater), Brooklyn.
1903---Warren Hull (actor: The Gibson Family), Gasport, New York.
1904---Knox Manning (announcer: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Headlines on Parade), Worcester, Massachussetts; Grant Withers (actor: Calling All Cars; Screen Guild Theater), Pueblo, Colorado.
1914---Howard Marion Crawford (actor: BBC Home Theater), United Kingdom.
1919---Dallas Townsend (newscaster: The CBS World News Roundup; The World Tonight), New York City.
1921---Herb Ellis (actor: The Adventures of Nero Wolfe), Cleveland.
1922---Betty White (hostess: On Animals), Oak Park, Illinois.
1927---Eartha Kitt (as Eartha Mae Keith; singer/actress: Here's to Veterans; The Big Show), North, South Carolina.
1930---Dick Contino (musician: Horace Heidt Youth Opportunity Hour), Fresno, California.
1931---James Earl Jones (actor: We Hold These Truths), Akabutla, Mississippi.
1941---Clive Elvyn Rice (actor: Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders), Haslemere, Surrey, UK.

*---A fourteenth episode, from 1939, is known to survive as well, in the middle of a block with historical significance: Kay Fairchild, Stepmother was one of the regularly-scheduled offerings when WJSV, a Washington (D.C.) CBS affiliate, decided to record its entire broadcast day of 21 September 1939. Kay Fairchild, Stepmother will air at the end of a broadcast hour (9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. Eastern standard time) that includes, in order, Pretty Kitty Kelly, Myrt & Marge, and Hilltop House.