Under Hummert Productions, creating the basic plots and assigning an assembly line of writers to complete the scripts, they produced more than 40 radio shows, including the soap operas Stella Dallas (1938–55) and Young Widder Brown (1938–56); the mystery shows Mr.
[1][7] According to a majority of sources and public records including the Draft Registration Card he completed and signed in September 1918, Edward Frank Hummer was born on June 2, 1884.
The latter was a mercantilist in lace manufacturing and importing who traveled extensively for Rice, Stix & Co.[1] As a result, Hummert and his family were accustomed to moving around.
[10] Hummert, hoping to take over his father's business, began preparatory studies at the Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, England.
[10] Hummert turned to public media and soon landed a reporting assignment with the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and after that assignment ended, Hummert landed reporting jobs for the news journal of the Catholic Archdiocese in Chicago, New World and the International News Syndicate of The New York Times.
[11] One of Hummert's first big breaks in advertising came when he coined the slogan "For the skin you love to touch" for soap manufacturer Procter & Gamble's Camay.
[12] While at Lord & Thomas, Hummert created ads and slogans for such name-brand companies as Ovaltine, Quaker Quick Macaroni, Gold Medal Flour and Palmolive soap.
Ma Perkins centered around "Ma," who owned and operated a lumber yard in the fictional small Southern town of Rushville Center (population 4000),[18] where the plotlines pivoted around her interactions with the local townsfolk and the ongoing dilemmas of her three children, Evey, Fay and John.
The program revolved around the personal romantic life of Helen Trent and the continuing question: Can a woman of 35 find love?
Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, The American Album of Familiar Music, Manhattan Merry-Go-Round and Mary Noble, Backstage Wife between 1931 and 1937, Blackett-Sample-Hummert were producing 46% of shows on the daytime radio schedule.
To oversee the musical programs, Frank Hummert turned to Gus Haenschen, the St. Louis bandleader who had performed at Hummert's first wedding and was now nationally known on radio as an arranger, conductor, producer, and co-founder of the World Broadcasting System, which supplied high-quality recordings of vocal and instrumental music to smaller radio stations which could not afford a "live" orchestra.
Haenschen was entrusted to assign orchestra leaders, vocalists, choral conductors, arrangers, and announcers to each of the musical programs produced by Air Features, for all of which Frank Hummert selected the sponsors, and in some cases the networks, as he did for the soap operas, mystery shows, and crime dramas.
Other Hummert programs included Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, Judy and Jane, Little Orphan Annie, Frontpage Farrell, Inspector Thorne, and Hearthstone of the Death Squad.
[12] Walter Gustave "Gus" Haenschen, a popular St. Louis bandleader whom Hummert had publicized as a newspaper reporter, was the pianist at their wedding.