Drama & Anthology · Syndicated (transcription)
Love Story Magazine
March 26, 1937 – September 17, 1937 · 26 broadcasts
Twenty-six weeks of romance, cut to a quarter of an hour apiece, straight off the pages of Street & Smith's pulp weekly Love Story Magazine. The publisher produced and paid for the series itself and shipped it out on transcription discs in 1937, two episodes to a side -- the magazine sponsoring the show that adapted the magazine.
Each week is a self-contained story with a new set of characters, and the settings roam further than the genre suggests: a circus, a newspaper city room, a college fraternity party, a beauty shop, a rich woman's household. At the centre of every one of them is the same leading actress, introduced only as The Love Story Girl and never once named on the air. Nobody has identified her since. The rest of the company goes uncredited too; the announcer is attributed to Frank Knight, and that is as close as the record comes to a cast list.
Romance was one of the biggest popular genres of the 1930s and one of the least preserved on radio, which makes this small run unusual: all 26 broadcasts survive, certified and complete, a whole season of a kind of programming that mostly did not last.
Collection status:
26 of 26 held (100% complete)
◆ ◆ ◆
Episode Spine
1937
March 26, 1937
Love on the Sun Deck
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April 2, 1937
Two Diamond Bracelets
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April 9, 1937
Love at Midnight
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(MP3)
April 16, 1937
Gay Red Cape
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(MP3)
April 23, 1937
Bitter Triumph
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(MP3)
April 30, 1937
Tiny Pink Elephant
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(MP3)
May 7, 1937
Such a Charming Young Man
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(MP3)
Eleanor Page takes a post as private secretary to a wealthy woman, and grows suspicious of the talk surrounding the man who is forever a guest in the house.
May 14, 1937
Streak of Moonlight
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(MP3)
May 21, 1937
Hostage of Love
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(MP3)
May 28, 1937
Unexciting
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(MP3)
June 4, 1937
Trapeze Girl
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(MP3)
Paula deHaven comes back to the circus she once flew for, needing to know the truth about the night her partner fell -- and whether it was a broken heart that killed her.
June 11, 1937
Just Another Blond
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(MP3)
Driving out of state, Jean Moore ends up having to hitchhike -- and the young man she meets and helps discovers she is nothing like the type he had assumed.
June 18, 1937
Flash Girl
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(MP3)
June 25, 1937
The Last Dance
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(MP3)
July 2, 1937
Army Kisses
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(MP3)
At an air corps post where nobody means anything by a kiss, a small-town girl marries a captain on a night's impulse and finds out within the hour what his promises are worth -- so she leaves on the mail plane and comes back six months later with a reputation to match his. (Plot of the magazine story the episode is named for.)
July 9, 1937
Untamed
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(MP3)
July 16, 1937
A Prince Arrives
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(MP3)
A beauty-shop girl whose own skin has turned against her endures the cruelty of the customers she serves -- until the affliction opens a door she never expected.
July 23, 1937
A Toast to Cinderella
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(MP3)
Engaged to a man who is saving for the wedding and shames her in public over a richer man's attention, Gail runs from a party onto a docked liner, falls asleep, and wakes at sea with no money and no ticket -- in the company of a stranger she takes for a working man bound out to a jungle railroad. (Plot of the magazine story the episode is named for.)
July 30, 1937
The Difference Between
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(MP3)
August 6, 1937
The June House Party
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(MP3)
Taken to the fraternity weekend on Randy's arm and dropped there for somebody else, Myrna Parrish gets a little help and a new escort, and sets out to find whether that changes his mind.
August 13, 1937
Devil Wind
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(MP3)
August 20, 1937
Forgotten Girl
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(MP3)
One month into loving a fellow reporter, Anne Hampton is sure she has him figured out -- then a story sends her somewhere she can watch him with another woman.
August 27, 1937
Weekend Party
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(MP3)
September 3, 1937
Accent on Youth
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(MP3)
September 10, 1937
Nola Says "I Do"
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(MP3)
September 17, 1937
Some Men Are Different
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(MP3)
The Story
Twenty-six weeks of romance, cut to a quarter of an hour apiece, straight off the pages of Street & Smith's pulp weekly Love Story Magazine. The publisher produced and paid for the series itself and shipped it out on transcription discs in 1937, two episodes to a side -- the magazine sponsoring the show that adapted the magazine.
Each week is a self-contained story with a new set of characters, and the settings roam further than the genre suggests: a circus, a newspaper city room, a college fraternity party, a beauty shop, a rich woman's household. At the centre of every one of them is the same leading actress, introduced only as The Love Story Girl and never once named on the air. Nobody has identified her since. The rest of the company goes uncredited too; the announcer is attributed to Frank Knight, and that is as close as the record comes to a cast list.
Romance was one of the biggest popular genres of the 1930s and one of the least preserved on radio, which makes this small run unusual: all 26 broadcasts survive, certified and complete, a whole season of a kind of programming that mostly did not last.
Full story — coming soon while it's being curated.
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