Ma Perkins

Show Information bases on John Dunning's book "On The Air"

Soap opera (1933-1960).

Ma Perkins, "America's mother of the air," was an audio milestone that spanned almost the entire lifetime of network radio drama. Typical of Hummert serials, Ma had tears, maniacs, and melodrama in her arsenal of cliffhangers. But she overcame this with long quiet spells, with deep conversations about the meaning of life against an enfolding panorama of family and personality conflicts.

She was an ageless widow, probably in her 60s, who owned and managed a lumberyard in Rushville Center (pop. about 4,000). She was described by Time just before her 25th anniversary as "a shrewd combination of Dr. Christian, David Harum, and Tugboat Annie"; the woman's answer to Just Plain Bill. Ma was the salt of the earth, a sage whose life was never too busy for the problems of others. She lived staunchly by the Golden Rule, but didn't hesitate to go to war if she saw the forces of evil thriving unopposed. She was the town's conscience, its best-loved sounding board, its guide in matters of the head and the heart.

Supporting players came and went, but the main cast remained consistent. The characters were Ma, her partner Shuffle Shober, her three children, their children, and the people who married into her family. In chronological order, Ma's three children were Evey, John, and Fay. All were grown as the serial got under way in 1933. The earliest known episode, the eighth broadcast (Dec. 13, 1933), reveals Ma as a combative old hen, determined to persuade daughter Evey to leave her naive husband, Willy Fitz. In this very early show, Ma was in a primitive stage of development, and it took all the common sense of John and Fay to convince her of her mistakes