Vine Street, considered the first American TV soap opera, was first broadcast on 15 April 1938 by W6XAO as a daily 15-minute serial and was listed as a comedy/drama. The storyline involved Hollywood life on the lowest rungs of the ‘ladder’ to success. The light humor drama shows the struggles to make it big in Tinsel Town. The stars were John Barkeley and Shirley Thomas, two Broadway and radio character actors, neither of whom appeared on TV again. The writers, Maurice Ashley and Wilfred Pettit, were brought in from the radio networks to experiment in this new medium.
Firsts
While Germany, England and the United States were all attempting to produce television programing in 1935, America did not create any type of regularly scheduled programing until 1939 and offered the public such pioneers as the children’s show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Betty White and programs featuring Eddie Albert, who became one of the first TV actors in 1935. Vine Street apparently lasted for less than a year. The birthplace of TV was in Schenectady, New York; however, as fast as it was maturing in New York, it was also becoming a powerhouse in California.
Audiences were already accustomed to continuing story serials from the radio, but this was the first attempt on television. The term soap opera came about since many soap and cleaning product companies started trying to reach the many housewives who were home to listen these programs normally aired in the afternoons. The Oxford English Dictionary's citation for the phrase dates its first appearance in print to 1938.