Life with Ma

"Well," said the announcer, his tone lush and breathless, "Esther just doesn't know what to do! She feels that she owes her husband Jack nothing; he hurt her in every way one person can. But now he's in need; he's alone and sick! What would you advise Esther if you were Ma? Well, Esther went over to see Ma, and now at about half past 5 in the late afternoon we find them on Ma's front porch. Listen!"

To the 18 million housewives tuned in to Ma Perkins this week, there was little doubt that bighearted Ma would help caddish Jack. For listeners know Ma better than they know Nora Drake, Our Gal Sunday, Young Doctor Malone, Mary Noble and eleven other serial sobbers. Ma, like Ivory soap, has been floating around longer than any of them.* Last week, saintly, sorghum-sweet Ma Perkins celebrated her 25th year on the air as the grey, bespectacled widow who operates a lumberyard in Rushville Center, U.S.A. For 15 tear-stained minutes a day, five days a week, Ma has solved more than 100 real-life problems involving alcoholism, civic intrigue and second marriages. This week the problem was divorce. Ma's indomitable spirit and homely wisdom have glowed through 6,207 treacly episodes, totaling 93,105 minutes, establishing Ma as the undisputed queen of soap opera.

Family Friends. At one time, Ma could be heard the same day on the full NBC and CBS networks, in Hawaii, Canada, and across Europe via Radio Luxembourg. Since 1933 she has brought in about $11 million in network time charges, helped Procter & Gamble sell 3 billion boxes of Oxydol (to get clothes "whiter than sun-white''). Last year Ma was leased to other sponsors, e.g., Lever Bros. (Spry for "nongreasy donuts") and Lipton ("new Flo-Thru Tea Bags"), but P.&G. refused to sell her outright.

A shrewd combination of Dr. Christian. David Harum and Tugboat Annie, Ma is "the conscience of her community" and trusts folks "till that trust is violated." Soap operaddicts feel that her show is a pleasant extension of the ancient art of storytelling, and offers helpful hints to daily living. Her detractors find it tired bilge, intensifying human frustration in its calculated attempts to bring temporary relief by dredging emotional sewers.

As Ma, blonde, blue-eyed Actress Virginia Payne has never missed a performance, stands loyally by the washboard weepers. "Radio is a companion and these characters are friends to millions of lonely people," she says in a soft, nasal voice. "It is not supposed to be a pretentious art form. It is not Aristotelian with beginnings, middles and endings, but a series of situations and characters that must extend and develop over great periods of time. Our critics are people who do not stay with us." Although key telegrams are still delivered on the Friday program and opened on Monday, Actress Payne insists that cliffhanging is not "the appeal of our story." "Our characters are lovable, often funny human beings--family friends." But in accordance with the canons of daytime serials, Ma is carefully constructed to flatter the female ego. Says Actress Payne: "Everyone knows more than Ma does."

Maternal Figure. Like other daytime heroines, Ma neither drinks, smokes, takes snuff or has affairs with men. Unlike Ma. Cincinnati-born Virginia Payne, 47, has never been married, downs an occasional whisky sour and makes up to $50,000 a year--more than any other actress in daytime broadcasting. Her present writer (she has had ten) lived on the Riviera for two years, now counts his money on Cape Cod. A devout Roman Catholic with an M.A. in literature (University of Cincinnati), Virginia sheds Ma's vocabulary of "ain'ts," "folks" and "Land o' Goshens" with ease, but insists on making personal appearances in wig, makeup, frumpy clothes and spectacles, "though I often feel like a great imposter."

She is an accomplished pianist, lives alone in a posh East Side Manhattan apartment decorated with Duveen-collected oil paintings, accumulates antiques, and grows roses (two varieties have been named for her). She is currently touring the straw-hat circuit in Anniversary Waltz. "My aim," says Virginia, "is to be a good actress and some day do a Broadway musical. Meantime, there is a tremendous challenge in Ma. trying to keep the role new and interesting; she is a great maternal figure, and I have never played her short."

*Though The Romance of Helen Trent went on the air three weeks earlier, Ma has chalked up more performances.

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