One Man's Family

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One Man's Family

One Man's Family (1932-1959) was the granddaddy of a radio broadcasting genre that decades later would be dubbed the "prime time soap." It was also arguably its era's most realistic portrayal of American family life. True, the fictional Barbour family saw its share of psychotic maniacs, international intrigue, even a case of amnesia as the years passed, but even the silliest plots were enacted with a sense of depth and history that eluded most of the series' contemporaries. Writer-director Carlton E. Morse remained the series' guiding hand for its entire 27-year run; the same actors essayed the key roles for years, even decades. And the stories they enacted faced head-on the realities of the day: war, death, the changing roles of gender and generations. The result was a series whose integrity, consistency, and sense of reality left it unparalleled in the history of broadcasting.

Patriarch Henry Barbour was, even at middle age, a curmudgeon: conservative, bullheaded, frequently wrong but never in doubt. Wife Fanny suffered Henry's tirades and flights of fancy, frequently with an exasperated cry of "That man!" Henry had no shortage of complaints; his own children seemed determined—if not destined—to make his life miserable. Eldest son Paul, a pilot, had been crippled in action in World War One; his ambivalence bordered on a bitterness that his father would not abide. Hazel was the oldest Barbour daughter, cut straight from her mother's mold: a sensible, straitlaced girl who seemed particularly stodgy in comparison with the other Barbour daughter—Claudia, who along with twin brother Cliff made up the least well-adjusted segment of the Barbour household. Cliff was a free spirit whose lack of ambition drove his father to distraction; Claudia was a spitfire, an uninhibited rebel whose antics led to trouble even in the series' opening episode on April 19, 1932. The youngest Barbour was Jack, a high-spirited teen as the series began.

The series was first broadcast to a limited network of NBC's West Coast affiliates, originating each week from San Francisco. It struck an immediate chord, proving so popular the series soon attracted a sponsor and was picked up for the full NBC network. Production moved to Los Angeles at mid-decade, and by 1940, One Man's Family stood near the top of the weekly ratings chart, its audience share approaching that of Jack Benny or Bob Hope. The series' fans, meanwhile, were unusually loyal—and outspoken. OneMan's Family won several "Favorite Drama" awards in the late 1930s; a 1935 sponsorship deal with a cigarette company was quickly nixed when listeners protested their wholesome family drama being bankrolled by such a nasty product as a cigarette!

The serial proceeded in top form as the Great Depression gave way to World War II, its huge audience following every Barbour trial and tribulation: romances, marriages, pregnancies, and the sudden deaths of many of the Barbour children's spouses. The family also was known for its fertility—Hazel gave birth to twins in 1933; some years later, Jack's wife Betty bore a set of triplets. The series suffered its share of wartime loss. When actress Kathleen Wilson (Claudia) got married and left the series in 1943, Morse shocked his audience by making the character a casualty of war; Claudia and two of her children were sent to the bottom of the ocean, the Nazis torpedoing their ocean liner. Claudia's husband was also killed in action. Actress Winifred Wolfe (who played Paul's adopted daughter Teddy) left in 1945, also to get married; her character was written out and eventually became an army nurse. When actor Page Gilman entered the service, his character Jack followed suit. For much of the war, Jack appeared periodically whenever actor Gilman was on leave; actor and character disappeared completely when Gilman shipped out for the Pacific in May 1945. Jack's goodbye to his family stands arguably as not only the finest episode of this series, but possibly the most wrenching, true-to-life radio dramatic presentation of the entire war.

The series was by this time an institution. Gilman's Jack returned from the service, and the Claudia character returned, too—from the dead, now portrayed by actress Barbara Fuller, with the explanation that Claudia had survived her ocean ordeal and spent the past two years in a Nazi concentration camp. When longtime sponsor Standard Brands abruptly dropped the series in early 1949, 75,000 angry fans flooded NBC with letters begging the network to keep the Barbours on the air. The show ran sponsorless for nearly a year; Miles Laboratories picked it up in February 1950. That June, in a risky but successful move, the series ended its 18-year weekly run and shifted into a nightly 15-minute format that within a year was dominating its time period—even beating the nightly broadcast of legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow.

With the aging of the original children—and the unexpected death of actor Barton Yarborough (Cliff) in December 1951—the second generation of Barbours moved to the forefront of the narrative: the trials of Joan, Pinky, Hank, Penelope, and Teddy carried the series through much of its final decade. The show moved to an afternoon time slot in July 1955. NBC unexpectedly canceled the series in 1959, so abruptly the cast had already recorded what would turn out to be the final episodes. The show simply ended in mid-story on April 27, 1959.

—Chris Chandler