Wednesday, August 22: Tune It Or Die!
THE EDGE OF NIGHT
When I was a wee laddie I would come home after school most days, grab a snack (usually a slice or two of bread guaranteed to build my strong body twelve ways), and mosey over to my grandmother’s room. She was well into her eighties and arthritis had landed her in a wheelchair, which in those long-before-ADA days meant she was virtually confined to the house.
She spent most afternoons watching what women of her generation all seemed to call “my stories,†AKA the soaps. I would sit beside her and watch them too. And while it was always a pleasure to be with Gram I couldn’t help noticing that I only enjoyed one of the soap operas. Why was one show fun and the others were, to me, dull?
Out on the Edge
Jump back a decade or so. The Adventures of Perry Mason was a very successful radio drama, in fifteen-minutes-a-day format. But TV was taking over and the network wanted to move the show to the new media. Erle Stanley Gardner, who created Perry Mason and had insisted on some control of the show, decided it would be silly to let the timeslot slip away.
And so in 1957 a new radio soap debuted, titled The Edge of Night. The actor who had played Mason starred as district attorney Mike Karr. Eventually this show also moved over to TV, which is where I caught up with it.
And of course, that’s why I enjoyed it. All the other soap operas were romances, focused on obstacles to love. The Edge of Night was a mystery, concerned with crime. The others climaxed with a wedding, but my favorite climaxed with a murder trial (always of the wrong person, of course).
I remember some of those trial scenes. The camera always panned lovingly over the full courtroom, getting every dollar’s worth of the extras’ pay. And best of all, the people in the front rows were not really extras. They were actors who used to be on the show. Their characters had vanished out of the storylines, but were presumably still living in beautiful, crime-filled Monticello. (One memorable day the camera panned a little too far and landed on a casually dressed man with headphones and a clipboard. He saw the camera, did a double-take and leapt back out of sight. Your crew at work.)
Oh, here’s a trivia question for you. We were never told the name of the state in which Monticello resided but Mike Carr often rushed off the the state capital. What was that city’s name?
Capital City. Even as a kid I rolled my eyes at that one.
Some time soon I’ll tell you about what I learned from that show as a writer. But meanwhile…
Another Thread From The Web
The web is full of free services that can wind up costing you a bundle. One of them is Rhapsody.com They have gazillions of songs ready to play for you. Just for fun I typed in the keyword “Mystery†and it pulled up more than 3,000 songs.
By registering (free) you can select 25 songs each month to hear for free. Or you can buy the rights to hear more songs, or an unlimited number. You can also pay to download individual tunes.
And, oh yes, one of those songs is “The Weight of Gold,†which tells the story of my grandmother. Oddly enough, it doesn’t mention soap operas.
Rob, I remember eating wonderbread with our Gram, too. I loved THE EDGE OF NIGHT, but I never really noticed it was a mystery. The scene I remember best was when Sarah died in Mike’s arms. Sniff.
That’s the difference between guys and gals, I guess.
For those who may be marvelling at the coincidence between Diane’s life and my own I should explain that the noted novelist Diane Chamberlain is my sister. Hey, sis.
I’m afraid I don’t remember Sarah. I remember Mike, Nancy, Cookie, Adam, Barrington, Phil, Nicole, and uh, what was the name of the millionaire whose wives were always getting killed or killing? I can see him plain as day. It will come to me…Ah, Hillier!
I remember that show, too. The lead actor’s name was John Larkin. Are you sure it was on radio first? I thought it was a TV original, and it’s not in John Dunning’s ON THE AIR: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OLD-TIME RADIO.
Jon, my information comes from the book “Perry Mason : the authorship and reproduction of a popular hero” by J. Dennis Bounds. I may have misinterpreted it; I’ll check it tomorrow. Thanks for keeping me honest.
My apologies. Jon is right (and I will mention this in a future column, since I doubt anyone will read week-old comments). The book on which I was depending says, approximately, that the developers of “The Edge of Night” transferred it to tv. I assumed that meant it started on radio. Turns out I was wrong.
Thanks, Jon.
The soap Dark Shadows was “filmed live” meaning anything filmed would be shown. Including one day when an actor casually walked through the empty set being shot to run the credits over, in his street clothes, costume slung over his shoulders! (I’ve never seen the clip, if it exists!)