Sunday, December 2, 2007

Rare Script "Those We Love"

"Those We Love" was a serial drama/soap opera somewhat similar to Carlton E Morse's "One Man's Family". It ran from January of 1938 to April of 1945 - that's seven years, and there's only a SINGLE episode out there for us to hear (anyone out there have it? I don't.)! So it's not a well-known series, by any means.

I have a short stack of original scripts from this show, and thought that it might be nice to share some. Click on the pictures for some LARGE scans of the pages. I made them SO BIG so you can see the actual notes made in pencil - my guess is that since the added lines are for several different charaters, they were probably written by the author, Agnes Ridgeway, rather than by a single actor in the show.

Evidently good enough to have a seven-year run (albeit somewhat sporadic), the melodramatic stories of the John Marshall family of Connecticut proved unable to overcome the unfortunate pitfalls of numerous day, time, and network changes. One of the actresses on the show, Jean Rogers, you may know: she played the beautiful Dale Arden in the Flash Gordon movies.

So, please, check these out. Still eight more pages to this script to go (I'll have them up soon). I'd love to hear some comments on the script - would you like to see more of these? I'd especially like to hear what you think the pencilled-in stuff is...some of it is awfully hard for me to make out. And this script is marked in dark blue ballpoint pen "1943" at the top of page one, but it also says "Episode 16" typed in the script...the 16th episode would have been some time in 1938. These pages were the oldest looking of all the scripts, I lightened them up considerably to see the pencil notes...the original paper was much tanner, almost brown (!). I think the "1943" was written by someone long after the scripts were done - hey, when did ballpoint pens come into general use? The late 1950's maybe? I thin that this is a VERY old script from 1938, not at all from 1943...

I LOVE A MYSTERY, DON'T YOU?

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3 comments:

john said...

Thanks for sharing. As a writer I love reading scripts. I was wondering if this isn't the writer's first draft since I don't see the usual script set-up from ad agency and list of characters/actors needed. Also the shorthanded character ID of just K: would, I think, be confusing for an actor.

Anyway, keep them coming, please.

John Leasure
leasurej@roadrunner.com

Jaimie said...

I found your page through a quick Google for Those We Love - it was my grandmother's favourite show when she was expecting my mom, and she named my mom Kathy for one of the characters.

I'm wondering - did you ever find a copy of the existing audio?

Cheers,

Jaimie Cowles
jaimie dot cowles at gmail dot com

Scott Stevens lstoutlw1@aol.com said...

I have a copy of the premiere episode, which introduces the characters and mentions that the show would be on at the same time each week. The closing gives the cast and what shows (theater) and / or films they'd been seen in.

Richard Cromwell is one of the cast.

The quality is fair. 30 minutes.