Time, 12 January 1976
8 January 2025
A soap opera is a melodramatic, serial drama. The term is also used figuratively to denote real-life events of the type that would be dramatized in the genre. Soap operas got their start in radio before moving on to television and were typically broadcast in the daytime with a target audience of housewives, although their popularity often extended beyond that demographic. The name comes from the fact that early soap operas were often sponsored by soap companies.
The first soap opera is generally considered to be Ma Perkins, which was first broadcast on WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio (Cincinnati being the home of soap manufacturer Proctor & Gamble) on 14 August 1933. The NBC radio network picked up the program in December of that year. Ma Perkins ran until 1960, and for most of those years it was sponsored by Oxydol detergent, one of Proctor & Gamble’s products.
The earliest use of the term that I have been able to find is in the Buffalo Times (New York) of 27 February 1938:
Chicago is the home of the “soap opera,” an odd name which has been tacked on to those morning and afternoon serial dramas by radio actors. Soap manufacturers were the first to use these daytime serials extensively and, actors being actors, the name stuck.
A number of the early appearances of the term were by Paul Kennedy, the radio reporter for the Cincinnati Post. On 2 March 1938 Kennedy wrote,
McKay Morris who did so slick a stint in “Tovarich” here signed as a regular member of the soap opera "Ma Perkins."
And on 9 March 1938, Memphis Tennessee’s Commercial Appeal had this:
In explaining his entrance into radio via the daytime serial route rather than guest appearances on the bigger shows, Morris expresses belief that the “soap operas” are a greater test of adaptability to radio. “And being so typically ‘radio’ as contrasted to adaptations to radio from some other medium,” he says, “they can teach me more thoroughly about radio acting.”
On 20 May 1938, Kennedy would explain the origin of the term:
Some pretty drastic things are happening to the “soap operas” beginning with today’s schedule.
The “soap opera,” in the event the term puzzles, is the 15-minute dramatic serial which has become phenomenally successful in the past two years. Beginning today the flour millers, which have offered so many of these pieces, have consolidated their programs and now have a solid hour lined up from 1 to 2 p. m. Mondays through Fridays.
[…]
But that’s not all. The Cincinnati soapworks which pioneered the soap opera as a selling medium has capped this effort and has a full our in the morning on one NBC network and full hour in the afternoon on another. The morning lineup, running from 9:45 to 10:45 includes: Ma Perkins, Story of Mary Marlin, Vic and Sade and Pepper Young’s Family. Almost the same lineup will be repeated in the afternoon from 2 to 3 on another network.
This cluster of citations from various cities in the spring of 1938 shows that use of the term was fairly widespread by this point, probably primarily orally by actors and industry insiders.
The figurative use of soap opera dates to at least 1944, when Raymond Chandler used it in his novel The Lady in the Lake:
“Nothing over there,” he said. “She packed up and went down the same night. I didn’t see her again. I don’t want to see her again. I haven’t heard a word from Muriel in the whole month, not a single word. I don’t have any idea at all where she’s at. With some other guy, maybe. I hope he treats her better than I did.”
He stood up and took the keys out of his pocket and shook them. “So if you want to go across and look at Kingsley’s cabin, there isn’t a thing to stop you. And thanks for listening to the soap opera. And thanks for the liquor. Here.” He picked the bottle up and handed me what was left of the pint.
Soap opera is modeled on an older, film-industry term, horse opera, referring to a western movie. Horse opera appears to have gotten its start on the sets of Triangle Film Studio, which produced, among many other silent films, the western films of producer Thomas Ince and actor-director William S. Hart. The term made its way onto the pages of the Seattle Times as an adjective on 3 September 1916:
Enid Markey, the Triangle-Ince actress, is having an unusual experience this week. She is the only girl among more than a hundred men who are camping out in Topango Canyon, several miles from Inceville, where William S. Hart is engaged in filming scenes for the Triangle drama by J. G. Hawks, in which she is starring. Miss Markey is appearing “opposite” Hart in the play and is so profoundly revered by the Inceville “horse-opera troupe” that she had no compunctions about living in Topango indefinitely.
And the noun appears in Variety on 28 December 1917:
Cliff Smith is known around the Triangle plant as the “director of horse opera.” He is the chap who tells Roy Stewart, the western drama, [sic] star, how it should be done before the camera.
A later coinage in a different genre modeled on horse opera and soap opera is space opera, which was apparently coined by science fiction writer Bob Wilson in the pages of his fanzine Le Zombie in January 1941:
SUGGESTION DEPT: In these hectic days of phrase-coining, we offer one. Westerns are called “horse operas”, the morning housewife hear-jerkers are called “soap operas”. For the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn, or world-saving for that matter, we offer "space opera[.]”
There are a couple of older uses of the phrase soap opera which do not appear to be related to the term as we know it today. Stephen Goranson found an earlier use of soap drama, referring to a theatrical production, in the Oregonian newspaper of 12 April 1903, but this appears to be a one-off use:
This week just passing has been the dullest of the season in New York. (On Monday night there was not a solitary opening of importance. “Spotless Town,” called here the “the soap drama,” on account of its being based upon advertisements of Sapolio, came into the Fourteenth-Street Theater for a single week, but the piece is not of a caliber to attract the regular patronage, although it has made money on the road.
Sapolio is a soap brand founded in the nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century, famed advertising executive Artemas Ward launched a major ad campaign for the product. No longer used in North America, the Sapolio brand is now owned by Proctor & Gamble and used to sell products in South America.
And Bill Mullins found a use of soap opera in the 8 April 1918 issue of Billboard. It appears in a column consisting of short quips about pitchmen, or itinerant salesmen, many involving a salesman named Doc W. H. Hazlett. It reads as if it is a theatrical genre, but given the context it more likely refers to a salesman who had used excessive flattery, or soft soap:
Doc L. A. Leonard advancing to an open house manager in a small town: “When did have the last show?” Manager: “A Soap Opera was here last week.” Let’s hear from you, Frank Hazlett.
But if other early examples turn up, the radio term may have an older lineage.
Sources:
Baker, Gasoline Bill. “Pipes for Pitchmen,” The Billboard, 8 April 1918, 33/2. Archive.org.
Chandler, Raymond. The Lady in the Lake (1944). London: Heinemann/Octopus, 1977, 287 (final paragraphs of chapter 5). Archive.org.
Cook, Alton. “Bushman Still Star in Radio.” Buffalo Times (New York), 27 February 1938, 8-D/2. Newspapers.com.
“Enid Markey Camping Out.” Seattle Sunday Times (Washington), 3 September 1916, Section 3, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Goranson, Stephen. “‘Soap Opera’ 1871; ‘the soap drama’ 1903.’” ADS-L, 10 December 2024.
Gray, Robert. “‘Tovarich’ Road Show Star Joins Cast of Radio Drama.” Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), 9 March 1938, 22/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, 2022, s.v. space opera, n.
Kennedy, Paul. “From Off the Cuff.” Cincinnati Post (Ohio), 2 March 1938, 20/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———, “‘Soap Operas’ Concentrated into Hourly Slots on Schedule.” Cincinnati Post (Ohio), 30 May 1938, 6/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. soap opera, n., horse opera, n.; third edition, December 2008, space opera, n.
Price, Guy. “Coast Picture News.” Variety, 28 December 1917, 251. ProQuest Magazines.
Tucker, Arthur Wilson “Bob.” “Depts of the Interior.” Le Zombie, 36, January 1941, 9. e-Zombie & Le Zombie.
“Weber and Fields Begin Their Annual Tour” (6 April 1903). Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 12 April 1903, 27/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Julian Wasser, 1976. Copyright WarnerMedia, 1976. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of a copyrighted photo used to illustrate the topic under discussion.