Saturday Snapshot: Clara, Lu and Em

With all the drum beating about how moving the soaps to the Internet will spell certain death for the genre (and really the jury IS still out) I think it is time to take a look back at when soaps ruled the radio airways. Clara, Lu, and Em was radio's first soap opera, beginning June 16, 1930 over WGN Chicago. The show followed the lives of three women who lived in the same small town duplex. Starting as a Northwestern University sorority sketch., this soap opera also had the first sponsor in the form of Colgate-Palmolive. It continued through the 1930s and early 1940s on the Blue Network, NBC and CBS, finally airing as a syndicated series in 1945. This photo originates from the archives of the Chicago Sun Times and Daily News, Detroit News, and Sports Magazine.