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The Guiding Light
by Cynthia C. Scott
The radio soap opera The Guiding Light made its television debut on January 1953, airing fifteen
minutes, making what would become the first and only successful transition of a daytime radio
drama.
Created in 1937 by Irna Phillips, The Guiding Light ran successfully for fifteen years on the CBS
radio network, detailing the lives and loves of Reverend Rutledge and his daughter, Mary. The
show's title came from the Friendship Lamp Reverend Rutledge left in his
window as a sign to his parishioners that his doorstep was open for advice and counsel. By the late forties,
though, the reverend and his daughter gave way to the Baum family, renamed the Bauers, who would go on to
become the show's main core family for decades to come.
One of the controversial stories involving the Bauers was that of Meta, eldest daughter of Papa
Frederick Bauer, a German émigré. Meta got involved with a wealthy man, bore his child, gave it up for adoption,
then sought custody of her young son years later by marrying his father. The marriage was an unhappy one,
leading Meta to shoot and kill husband Ted White, whom she blamed for the death of their only child. Meta was
tried for murder.
In a marketing move, the show's producers asked the fans to decide Meta's fate: the
jury ruled her not guilty. Meta went on to marry Joe Roberts, the reporter who covered her case, and to
become the stepmother of Joe's children, Kathy and Joey.
By the time the show went to the television, Kathy Roberts' romantic tribulations were the source
of the show's drama. Kathy was likewise tried for the accidental death of her secret husband. Her
fiancée, then played by Inside the Actor's Studio's host James Lipton, broke off their engagement
when he learned of Kathy's duplicity.
Though the transition to television was successful, The Guiding Light continued to be broadcast on
radio for a number years. The cast had to race down the street from the CBS television studio,
where they shot the live broadcast, to the radio station where they broadcast the same program
later that day. By the mid-fifties, the radio broadcast of The Guiding Light
was canceled, but the television version continued.
The show's location was originally set in Five Points, a suburb in Chicago, but over the years that
changed to Selby Flats, a suburb in Los Angeles, then again to Springfield, a small town in Illinois. Though the show
was shot in black and white, it did broadcast one episode in the new color
technology. But creator Irna Phillips, who ruled the show with an iron thumb,
fought against this development.
Making certain that the day's episode was shot on the white hospital set and that all the actors wore white, thus blanching out
the color on the TV screen, she convinced the studio executives to nix the idea of shooting in color. By
the mid-fifties, Phillips left head writing duties at The Guiding Light to helm her other creation As the
World Turns. One of her many protégés, legendary head writer Agnes Nixon, took over in 1958.
During the sixties, when the civil rights movement was at its height, Nixon cast one of the first
African American actors in contract roles. Billy Dee Williams and Ruby Dee played Dr. Jim and
Martha Frazier. They were later replaced by James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. The show's main focus remained with the Bauer
family, though, telling the lives and loves of second generation Bauers, Mike and Ed, sons of Bill and Bert
Bauer.
By the late sixties, the show expanded to a half-hour and then expanded to an hour during the
1970s, where the "The" was dropped from the title to make the show more contemporary. Today,
Guiding Light is the longest running drama in television history.
more articles by Cynthia
C. Scott
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