Book: On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
Quotes of Book: On the Air: The Encyclopedia
There was one endless plot at the core of Backstage Wife: sweet Mary Noble stood in the wings as scores of Broadway glamor girls took dead aim at her sometimes fickle man. With Stella Dallas and Helen Trent, Mary was one of the most tortured creatures of the afternoon. The word "suffer" does no justice to Mary's life with Larry Noble. Mary endured. She faced the most startling array of hussies, jezebels, and schemers ever devised in a subgenre that made an art form of such shenanigans. Add to this the common soap opera ingredients-arrogant foes in high places, misunderstandings that real people would correct in a moment, and festering resentment fueled by the refusal to communicate-then move on to the real meat of this agony of agonies: avarice, backbiting, hatred, amnesia, insanity, murder. Larry Noble may have been a "matinee idol of a million other women," but Mary too had her admirers. Most of them were psychotics, and this led Backstage Wife to a frantic level of melodrama touched by few other soaps in radio history. book-quote
