When Did Humor Enter The Soaps?

Some of the radio soap operas in the 1930's to the 1950's were conceived as humorous shows: Lum 'n' Abner, The Couple Next Door; in the 1950's The Second Mrs. Burton which originated as a torrid melodrama turned comedic for the last several years it aired whereas Lorenzo Jones which had always been humorous turned deadly serious when Lorenzo developed amnesia and his wife spent a year looking for him, then a year clearing him of a murder charge, then being kidnapped by an insane mystery writer who wanted her for himself. Most soaps from the Hummert factory were very serious indeed as, according to When A Girl Marries star Mary Jane Higby, the Hummerts were very serious people. Even Irna Phillips who created The Guiding Light and many other compelling dramas focused on unhappy people with grave psychological problems. When I was a child, I thought these soaps were a fascinating peek into the "secret" world of adults. (Perhaps I wasn't dealing with a full deck! LOL)

Most television soaps have always been deadly serious but in the 1970's a few shows started to inject humorous characters to relieve the doom and gloom surrounding the protagonists and by the 1980's a show such as Santa Barbara was quite refreshing demonstrating a delicious sense of wry humor.

Now the soap palette can be wider as, if you remember, the original concept on radio of continued drama was in 15-minute segments as were the early TV soaps. You can obtain quite long runs (consecutive episodes) of shows like Backstage Wife, Pepper Young's Family, Ma Perkins and The Guiding Light from eBay and may be surprised at how captivating these dramas are if you listen to a few episodes. (Some of the Ma Perkins characters are amusing if not outright funny.) Most characters in those vintage soaps were so conflicted by their personal relationships or surrounded by unscrupulous users that they had no time to enjoy themselves. ROF

One Life to Live which aired its last episode after a 43-year run on Fri., Jan. 12, had some terrific humorous and nutty characters. It would seem that since television is a business and the grim faced programmers in the industry are only interested in profit by producing and airing dull non-creative pap hoping the masses will watch will not only eliminate humor from daytime drama but in fact eliminate daytime dramas for broadcast as they are costly to produce. Time will tell. Will television continue to be enjoyable or become a succession of Judge Judy and Larry Springer? It's really up to the audience and advertising revenue.

I know during all the Lovers On The Run storylines, All My children finally threw it out the window with Tad, Dottie, Jenny and Greg all running from the bad guy and being pursued round and round a statue with 'funny' chase music, then other characters, such as a woman pushing a baby carriage, wound up in the chase, with the bad guy after them falling in the carriage and being pushed along as he made a funny frowny face. The police, various other characters, street vendor, all wound up running around this statue-monument.

Finally the cast regulars all got out of the loop and took off, end of story.

That may have been very close to the start of Santa Barbara. I never liked Santa Barbara.

I thought Dennis Parlato was the crime boss after the ones on All My Chldren, he who would later play Clay Alden #3 on Loving, but he isn't credited for AMC.

To me, ALL MY CHILDREN in the 1970s started it. AMC had all these untapped "relevant" political stories thrown in via headwriter Agnes Nixon.
But Erica and Phoebe were so over-the-top villainesses and schemers. Phoebe running her mouth, steamrolling over everyone, and literally looking down her nose at folk. Erica, pouty, spoiled, throwing tantrums, acting all indignant and offended. It was hard for me as a soap fan to take these Pine Valley characters seriously as opposed to the main-line Procter & Gamble or Bill Bell characters.

Some of the snobbier people in the industry, whether quietly or openly critical, found that Erica, Phoebe, Billy Clyde, Langley, Myrtle, Edna, and Opal were all cartoon quality fodder. Or even comparable to funny paper comic strips.

I was a fan none the less, off an on for years. The FUNNIEST scenes to me involved Phoebe, pretending to be crippled to keep her husband Charles from leaving her for Erica's mother Mona Kane. Charles left the house, remembered he "left something", came back up the walkway, peeked in before he reached the door.
There was Ruth Warrick (Phoebe) all smiles and dancing around in the foyer in her long lingerie, the sleeves flowing in the air, so happy that she was wooing him back to their marriage. Charles looked at the camera in disgust and horror.
Loyal chauffer Benny already knew what the "Duchess" was up to, but kept his mouth shut.

Charles came back later in the week to "catch" Phoebe in the act of "walking", faking her paralysis. She was down by the swimming pool in her JOGGING SUIT doing deep knee bends next to her wheelchair in case any visitors came down there. She did NOT hear Charles approaching. He stood behind her staring at her exercising. "PHOEBE!" he bellowed angrily. "Oh, Charles!" Phoebe turned and fell back into her wheelchair. "IT's a miracle!" she lied and tried to fake a religious healing of her legs ! Charles called her on her lies and stormed off. She was so heart broken and angry that she had gotten caught. Brooke and Benny were back in the main house cracking up at the shenanigans.

I remember seeing her in a wheelchair (and no, not toward the end of her appearances on the show) but didnt watch then and didn't know what was going on.

I kind of started watching about when she was having an affair with Langley and someone, I think it was Donna and perhaps LInc and Kelly, showed up and she had to make sure they didn't see Langley and she came out of the bedroom and it had to be a mistake, she closed her housecoat in the door and it tugged and she had to open the door real quick. If it was a mistake, they left it in, cuz Ruth Warrick never cracked a smile or got out of character. It was rich.