Queen's Plaything

Novice radio scripters heard one of their best opportunities knock again last week. The Carrington Playhouse, a Mutual (Thurs., 8 p.m., E.D.S.T.) sustainer, which presents the script winning its weekly contest, finished its season--and was renewed for another.

Although the $500 best-of-season award went to a dreamy, lovey-dovey piece called Portrait of a Girl, the Playhouse had actually done some better work. It was one of the few shows to tell writers: "Write about anything you like." And it paid one of radio's prettiest pennies ($200) for winning scripts.

The woman behind this non-commercial venture was almost a symbol of radio commercialism: Elaine Carrington, "Queen of the Soapers," who makes $200,000 a year by writing three soap operas.

It was only after twelve years of marriage (to Lawyer George Carrington, who died last year) and three of depression that Elaine turned to radio. In 1932, NBC saw one of her scripts, asked her to do a series. The result: Pepper Young's Family, one of radio's most popular soapers. "It was all based," she says, "on the troubles I had raising Patricia (21) and Robert (17). It was my first radio baby, and you always have a special feeling about the first one, you know."

Writing Business. In 1939, she started When a Girl Marries; in 1942, Rosemary. She writes all three herself, and makes it a full-time job. "And you know," she says, blinking rapidly, "I'm famous for the way I work--lying down." Eight hours a day, five days a week, Elaine sprawls or sits on a seven-foot-square bed and addresses a dictaphone. "I just love the sound of my own voice," she says. "I pour myself into it. I give everything. I change voices. I laugh. I cry. I suffer. Dear me, I can't stop writing. You know, I think I'm just a frustrated actress."

With equal enthusiasm, Queen Elaine states the case for her craft: "Soap opera fills a tremendous need of people who have no life of their own. And my, there are so many lonely people in this world! I try to create situations that everybody can identify themselves with. And then, when everything turns out happily, everybody's happy.

"I think the critics of soap opera are the people who don't listen all the time. You can't get anything out of one broadcast. Why heavens, it takes me six months to build up a character. But when she's built, my listeners will go through thick and thin with her.

"The one thing I will admit is wrong with most soap opera is cliffhanging. I never, never, cliff-hang." *

*When told what Frederic Wakeman had said in The Hucksters about the industry's ad-madness, she gasped: "Oh, it just isn't true! Procter & Gamble have always been lovely to me."

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