A woman I know just turned 35. That’s still pretty young these days. She showed no signs of birthday trauma. I remember when 35 was middle age, especially for women. If a lady did not have a man and a picket fence by the time she hit the big three-five, she was on a downhill slide into spinsterhood.
I told my friend to ask her grandmother, who loved radio soap operas when she was young, if she remembered “The Romance of Helen Trent.” Nowhere in the pop culture of that era was the plight of a woman over 35 more dramatically portrayed than in radio’s longest running daytime serial. For over 7,000 episodes, from 1933 to 1960, harried housewives all over America sat at their kitchen tables with a small radio and a big bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound for “female complaint, “ as the announcer introduced the program.
“And now, 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, that because a woman is 35, or more, romance in life need not be over, that romance can begin at 35.”
The “true-life drama” of Helen Trent was grand fiction, turned out by radio’s most prolific writers, Frank and Anne Hummert. They wrote over a hundred shows, including “Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons,”, “Jack Armstrong the all American Boy” and the one we all loved, “Ma Perkins.” But there really was a
Lydia Pinkham. Nobody could make up such a perfect name for a patent medicine. It beats the fictitious “Betty Crocker” all to pieces. Lydia started out concocting home remedies that she gave away, and eventually turned her most famous elixir into a goldmine. It contained a fair amount of alcohol, so perhaps it helped in more ways than one.
The Pinkham product was not Helen’s radio sponsor, but she could have used a lifetime supply of it. In 1933 she was a 35 year old dressmaker who fought her way to the top to become a big time costume designer in Hollywood., victimized by high powered movie moguls and attracting the wrong men along the way. But there was one great love. If you ask his name from some folks who were around during radio’s great days , you will be surprised at how many will reply, “Why, it was Gil Whitney, of course!” The Hummert writing team gave Gil his own set of dramatic soap opera problems. Once a “brilliant and prominent attorney,” he was a secret government agent for a time and at one point was paralyzed in a train wreck. The cruelest blow of all for poor Helen came when Gil married someone else.
I listened to a
Helen Trent episode online. I don’t know what year it was from, but I’m guessing it was sometime in the 40’s. The commercial featured a pint of AeroWax for your floors for just 29 cents. In this one, Helen is lured to an apartment by a fake message that she thinks is from Gil Whitney. She comes upon the dead body of a movie bigshot, and of course she is accused of doing the dirty deed. I dare not say more. My heart is racing and I’m getting much too excited for an old guy, wondering how poor Helen will get out of this latest predicament.
That story line might look like something you can see any night on TV. But there is a difference. Radio made us use something that you don’t need much of when you watch television. It’s called imagination. We drew our own mental pictures of Helen and Gil and all the enemies Helen made on her climb to success. That’s why old time radio is often called Theater of the Mind.
In one of the great moments of radio drama, the final episode had Helen on a balcony, waiting for Gil to finally come to her with a declaration of love. The balcony collapses with a terrible crash, followed by silence. Then we hear Gil Whitney’s voice. The last words to be spoken on of one radio’s great daytime serials: Helen? … Helen … it’s Gil … Helen!”
Helen Trent was still 35 when she went to soap opera heaven in 1960. All over the country, the Lydia Pinkham’s was diluted with tears. It still makes me teary because radio’s golden era died with Helen Trent.
