The Radio Years (1937-1956) continued: Introducing the Bauers

The Guiding Light's revamped storyline, now centered in Selby Flats, concerned itself with the troubled marriage of Ray and Charlotte Brandon and their desire to adopt a child.  They eventually did so -- a boy named Chuckie.  It was within this storyline that the Bauer family was slowly introduced.

In July 1948, Meta was the first Bauer introduced.  Papa Bauer followed on August 31, 1948.  Papa Bauer's wife, cleverly named Mama Bauer, had taken ill and Papa visited the aforementioned Reverand Dr. Charles Matthews seeking medical, spiritual, and emotional help for her.  Aside from Meta, Papa Bauer had two other children, Trudy and Bill.  It would be Bill Bauer's branch of the family tree that the series would follow most closely over the ensuing decades.  As for Meta, it was eventually revealed that the boy that the Brandons had adopted, Chuckie, was in fact, Meta's biological son.  Years of angsty drama ensued.

In 1949, Reverand Matthews left Selby Flats, and the series, but before he did, he made a generous donation toward the building of a new hospital.  This facility, Cedars Hospital, opened its doors in the fall of 1949 and has remained a central part of the show ever since.  Also introduced in 1949 was the woman who would eventually become the heart and soul of the show, Bertha Miller -- nicknamed Bert.  She and Papa Bauer's son, Bill, were married on December 9, 1949 by Reverand Paul Keeler who took over as pastor of The Church of the Good Samaritan after the departure of Reverand Matthews.

Although Bert eventually became the town matriarch, she was originally quite unsympathetic as she was preoccupied with material possessions and seeing Bill advance in his career.  Meta's story, however, hit the jackpot with listeners as she eventually got custody of her son Chuckie, divorced her then-current husband Ted White, and married Chuckie's biological father.  After putting up with Ted White's abuse of both her and her son, Meta shocked audiences by shooting and killing her ex.  The resultant publicity surrounding the trial, coupled with the gimmick that Irna Phillips would let the audience decide whether or not Meta would be found guilty, sent the ratings skyward.  After more than 75,000 "votes" were received from around the country, Meta was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity by a margin of 100 to 1.

Although The Guiding Light had begun its television run on Monday, June 30, 1952, it was still broadcast on radio until August 1956.  The television broadcast was done live as a 15 minute show from 12:45 to 1:00 PM Eastern, while the radio broadcast was eventually taped the day prior to airing.  Still, the same actors were on both versions of the series and had to rush from the television studio down to the radio studio where they would spend from about 2:00 to 4:00 PM rehearsing and taping the next day's radio show.  This continued each day for years until it was decided to end the radio version. 

As more and more American households purchased television sets for their living rooms, radio soaps -- and radio shows in general -- gradually fell out of favor with the audience.  However, unlike the recent television cancellation where Guiding Light was dead last in the household ratings and in all the demos, when The Guiding Light left the radio airwaves, it did so as the number one soap out of the nineteen that were still on the air.  By the end of 1960, all the remaining radio soaps were gone.

As this tribute continues, we'll finish up our look at the radio series, and begin our in-depth coverage of the television years, era-by-era.  First up, the Lucy Ferri Rittenberg era of the TV series as Executive Producer.  Irna Phillips continued to write for both the television and radio series simultaneously until, after the discontinuation of the radio version, Phillips left the TV series to concentrate on her new hit, As the World Turns.  The very first head writer that was selected to take over from the departing Irna Phillips?  A woman by the name of Agnes Nixon, who would become a soap superstar in her own right with an influence on the genre that would rival Irna Phillips herself.

In the meantime, here's another complete radio broadcast found on YouTube.  This one's from 1950.  Thanks again to the original uploaders.  This episode heavily feautures the Bauer clan including Bert, Bill, Meta, and Ted White.

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To be continued…

Also, if you are interested in Guiding Light fan-fiction, you can check out a project by author Lucien Black that continues the Guiding Light story from where the finale left off.  "Edmund's Revenge" can be found at http://glfanfiction.wordpress.com/

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