TFTP's Monochrome Monday: "Love of Life" from CBS (Mar. 20, 1953)

Posted on Internet Archive's Classic TV collection by user 'Classic_TV_and_Radio_Fan'
Length - 14:26

TFTP's Monochrome Monday brings you a classic black & white TV program or clip every Monday morning to kick off the week....

The soap opera (or daytime serial) was one of the earliest genres transferred from radio to television. In the early years of television, these programs were only 15 minutes in length, as they were in radio. The plots of early soap operas were typically pretty simple, with conversation scenes in simple locations dominating individual episodes (not entirely different from how soap operas have been constructed in all the years since).

This episode of the CBS soap opera "Love of Life" (which aired from 1951 through 1980) features only three scenes, all pertaining to a runaway young boy. First, we see a detective and a school headmaster arguing about the runaway in the headmaster's office, before switching to the boy's home where his mother and a couple of other women fret about the boy's disappearance. Finally, we see the boy himself and his fellow runaway as they attempt to hitchhike by the side of the road, with (implied) unfortunate results.

At the beginning and end of this 1953 episode, we also get to see several commercials. First, a short spot for Aerowax floor wax, with a handy price comparison to other leading brands. Then there is a commercial for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned pasta, at a time when the actual Chef in question was still a living, breathing person. At the end of the episode are two more commercials, one for Anacin pills and one for Heet liniment.

TFTP Drama: "The Guiding Light" (Apr. 9, 1953)

Posted to Internet Archive's Classic TV Collection

"The Guiding Light" was a very long-running and venerable TV soap opera, on the air on CBS for over 55 years between 1952 and 2009 (after 15 years on radio before that). This episode, a 15-minute one following the standard soap opera length at the time, is from April 1953, the show's first year or so on TV. Although watching old episodes of TV soap operas can have a disconcerting effect--being dropped into the middle of stories for which you have no context or understanding of what happened previously--they are nonetheless fascinating to look at (perhaps for this very same reason).

The entire episode consists of only two conversations: a young man (played, incidentally, by James Lipton of "Inside the Actors' Studio" fame) talks to a doctor about getting a divorce he doesn't really want; a pregnant woman and a little boy (who seem not to be related, or to really even know each other) have an encounter. Without any context, we have no idea what the characters' story lines are, and so we are forced to concentrate to a great extent on the form: characters sitting around, at a table or in a sitting room, having conversations in which story lines are advanced by millimeters. Soaps were shot and broadcast live at this time, so we can watch them now knowing that these were like little plays in which the actors performed in real time, at the same time that they were being watched by viewers.

Soap operas are so named because they started out with soap companies as their sponsors back in the radio days, so we are not surprised to see that soap brands Ivory soap and Duz laundry detergent are the sponsors here.