Radio: Death of Marge

Nine years ago in Chicago a vaudeville trouper named Myrtle Vail, who with her husband the late George Damerel was once a headliner in the big-time two-a-day, conceived the notion that her worries and woes would make good radio fare. At the, time, Myrtle was finding billings hard to come by, and she didn’t quite know how to support herself and her 19-year-old daughter Donna, who had done a bit of hoofing before things got tough. So she whipped together a script called Myrt &amp Marge, recounting the adventures of a mother & daughter intent upon making a theatrical splash. It was promptly sponsored by William Wrigley Jr., later taken over by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet. One of the most popular and durable of the day time serials, its estimated audience was 2,750,000 five times a week, twice a day, over CBS.

The show involved more theatrical hokum than Belasco cooked up in a life time; jiltings, blackmailings, fake marriages, et al. Last week reality caught up with it. Heavy with her third child by her third husband, Swimmer Peter Pick, Daughter Donna ran through her lines as Marge one day, died 14 and a half hours later in Englewood, N. J. delivering a son.

To prepare for Donna’s convalescence, she had been written out of the script for the next three weeks. Device used was to have Marge’s radio husband, a low-lifer, foully murdered, have her suspect Mother Myrt of the crime and run away to think things over. Last week as Donna lay in a Manhattan funeral parlor, a wake of Myrt & Marge fans like Valentino’s seemed in the making. Meanwhile oldtime Trouper Myrtle Vail was determined that the show would go on. Just how was a problem that baffled not only her but the collective brains of Colgate-Palmolive-Peet.