Love Stories and Romantic Comedy in Old Time Radio

Boy meets Girl. Boy wins Girl. Boy loses Girl. Boy wins Girl back.

If you can follow that basic formula, or, even better, come up with an interesting variation of it, then you can write romantic comedy. Romantic fiction has been around in one form or another for as long as there have been men, women, and fiction writers. 

Ancient Greece had romance novels, in fact, the Greek pantheon was a lusty bunch and many stories from Greek mythology are love stories. Romance genre fiction traces its roots to Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters in the 1800s, although Shakespeare certainly gave us his share of saucy tales earlier than that.

From a literary standpoint, it is important to separate Romantic Comedy from Romanticism. The Romantic Movement sprung from the European Enlightenment period between about 1770 and 1850. Romantic novels associated with this movement emphasize emotion and individualism as well as glorifying nature. Romance novels or Romantic Comedies focus on the relationship between two people, usually a man and a woman, and an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending" is usually expected.

For decades, publishers have recognized that Romance Novels can be an incredibly profitable form of fiction. Their literary merit may be questionable, but the "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending" and the sheer fun of the "Boy meets Girl, etc." format sells a lot of books. The real appeal of love stories is the relationship between the hero and heroine.

• Author's Playhouse, April 23, 1945, NBC, "Forever Walking Free". An America AAF navigator is on his way back to the airfield after a dance in London when the air raid sirens sound. When the 'all clear' sounds, he discovers that he has been sharing the shelter with a lovely blonde, Joan. They arrange to meet at his next leave. On his last mission before the leave, his flight is sent after the robot bomber bases and takes an antiaircraft round in the stomach. The wound is fatal, but he is still able to make his date because Joan does not survive the next air raid.
• Backstage Wife, June 16, 1950, NBC. Mary Noble is frustrated about her house guest, Claudia Vincent, but she doesn't want to upset her husband Larry by complaining, so she shares with her friend Tom Bryson at dinner in the city. Later, Claudia tells Larry that Rupert Barlow is in love with Mary.
• Blondie, June 21, 1944, Blue Network and AFRS, "Blondie Calls the Plumber". When a pipe bursts in the basement, Blondie decides that they can't afford to let Dagwood fix it himself, so she calls a plumber. They send over a lady plumber named Vivian Oblivion, suddenly Dagwood and Mr. Dithers both want to help.
• The Campbell Playhouse, October 3, 1939, CBS, "Algiers". Suave jewel thief Pepe le Moko escapes from France after his biggest heist and is hiding in the Casbah, or native quarter, of exotic Algiers. The French gendarmes have followed him to Africa but are finding difficulty penetrating the local protection. The near imprisonment which Moko is forced to adopt is driving him to madness, and the feelings of madness are not helped by meeting the pretty Gaby, who is visiting from France, or the jealousy of Moko's local woman, Ines. This adaptation stars Orson Welles and Paulette Goddard in roles originated by Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr and was broadcast almost a year after Welles' notorious broadcast of "The War of the Worlds".
• Favorite Story, 1947, ZIV Syndications, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". Ms. Austen's beloved story, which was originally published anonymously because the scandal attached to the work of a lady author, became one of the most popular romance stories of all time. It is also a very telling send-up of the gentry class in Regency Era England.
• The Great Gildersleeve, March 31, 1948, NBC. The Great Man's world is thrown on its ear when his niece Marjorie has fallen in love with her French teacher, Andre Marcel. Gildy tries to set her up with Ben, the boy who works at the filling station. 
• Hallmark Playhouse, March 3, 1949, CBS, "Berkeley Square". American Peter Standish is living in London in a house which belonged to his ancestors. Standish is obsessed with the past and the adventures of his forebear who was obsessed with the future. Reading an old letter, Peter is suddenly transported to the eighteenth century and discovers a love which transcends the ages.
• The Lux Radio Theatre, June 1, 1936, CBS, "The Legionnaire and the Lady". This is the first Lux program from Hollywood and introduces DeMille as its producer. Tonight's story stars Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich and is an adaptation of Ms. Dietrich's first American film, Morocco (1930), which she starred with Gary Cooper (who is in the audience tonight). She plays Amy Jolly, a nightclub singer with a one-way ticket to Morocco where a French Foreign Legionnaire falls for her.