John Dunning Quote

Their romance was interminable, on again and off for seven years as one thing after another disrupted their lives. The disruptions were standard serial fare—Stephen’s self-pity, jealousy, spite, and the ever-present fickle nature of soap opera males. In 1943, Stephen ran off to California with Maude Kellogg. At another point, he was partly cured of his paralysis in an amazing operation, but lost his legs again in an accident. Enough was enough. In the sixth year, listeners began clamoring for a marriage, and writers Don Becker and Carl Bixby (identified as Beckby in Time, with no distinction as to who was speaking) yielded to the crowd. Chichi and Stephen were married, and almost immediately Beckby realized this was a mistake. Alone, Chichi had been the most exciting of daytime heroines. Saddled now with a whiny husband and then a child, she was hamstrung. Beckby did the obvious: We had the baby die of pneumonia after Stephen had taken him out in the rain, and then we killed him off with a heart attack. For two weeks afterward we kept Chichi off the air in the interests of good taste, and that was that. Stephen was never mentioned again.