Radio: Ageless Heroine

Weekending at the palatial estate of suave, cynical Kurt Bonine, lovely Helen Trent had a shocking experience. How could she ever forget that hour when she was trapped alone with Kurt in the tower?

Kurt: I've controlled my feelings a long time, Helen, but I can't any longer. From the moment I first saw you—I was drawn to you—as you were drawn to me . . .

Helen: Kurt—let me go . . . (pause)

Kurt: / shall forget this kiss, Helen—as I forgot—every woman—but it will haunt you the rest of your life!

Announcer: A wave that stays—on hot and humid days? This summer have a wave that really holds up, a wave with more natural body than any other permanent . . .

So, to the counterpoint of jangling commercials and top audience ratings, Helen Trent has threaded her perilous way toward true love for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year for the past 23 years. In those 23 years The Romance of Helen Trent (Mon.-Fri. 12:30 p.m., CBS Radio) has glowed during 5,900 chapters lasting 88,508 roseate minutes, to demonstrate "what so many women long to prove—that because a woman is 35 or more, romance in life need not be over." Bringing this inspiring message of hope to almost 4,000,000 listeners over the facilities of 203 nation-spanning stations, Helen has developed into 1) the queen of soap operas; and 2) the ideal of the romantically minded U.S. housewife of a certain age.

Helen is a beautiful, poised, glamorous costume designer, aged 35 (no change in 23 years). She is a widow, but not even her scriptwriters know who her husband was, or what ever became of him. Helen never tells. She is invincibly pure, relentlessly humorless (because her fans want heartthrobs, not laughs). Once, seven years ago, she walked uninvited into the stateroom of a man she had just met on shipboard. Faithful listeners were scandalized. Helen is now allowed to wear tight skirts and low-cut gowns, but she neither smokes nor drinks. Helen's enemy, Gossip Columnist Daisy Parker, drinks a "martini on the rocks," always specifying, "and no olive"—thus conclusively demonstrating her low moral stature.

Over the years Helen has materialized in the voices of only two women, the current one belonging to pert, blonde Actress Julie Stevens, 39-year-old wife of a TV executive, who has suffered through Helen's daily tribulations for the past twelve years. Just now Actress Stevens is pregnant. Helen would never get herself in such an unromantic predicament. She has been engaged for 23 years to honest Gil Whitney (David Gothard), but fate keeps her from the altar. In this, fate has been aided by a series of villains of whom Kurt Bonine is merely the latest. Almost all of them are millionaires, and the effect Helen has on them is generally deadly. She drove Brett Chapman, millionaire ' rancher, to exile in South America. Dwight Swanson, oilman, piloted his plane into a crash and died. Kelcey Spencer, motion-picture tycoon, went off a cliff to his death. But Dick Waring, a madman, was sane only with Helen.

At week's end Kurt was doing much better than his predecessors. Helen had told Gil about the kiss in the tower.

Gil: Are you falling in love with Kurt Bonine?

Helen: (shock) Gil—no! You don't think . . . ?