‘Guiding Light’ Still Beams Across Airwaves After 60 Years

When the Rev. Dr. Ruthledge first put his friendship lamp in the window on Jan. 25, 1937, could he have known his “Guiding Light” would still be aglow six decades later?

Or that tales of the good reverend and his neighbors, the original characters on the radio serial, eventually would lead to the saga of the Bauer family and, ultimately, six decades of family drama peppered with hot-button topics - cancer, substance abuse, AIDS that were not discussed or even heard of in his day?

Or, even more preposterous than a current plot in which twin babies have separate fathers, that “Guiding Light” would have racked up 15,600 episodes and 105 marriages (and more than a few divorces)? Rev. Dr. Ruthledge, have a seat.

Your little friendship lamp is now a lighthouse in the fictitious Midwestern city of Springfield. The 15-minute, sermon-laced radio serial, which grew into a full-hour, full-color TV soap opera, turns 60 on Saturday.

“Guiding Light,” created and still produced by soap maker Procter & Gamble, is the longest-running program in broadcasting and the second-oldest show on television, trailing only “Meet the Press.”

The CBS show is celebrating the milestone symbolically this week, through the 60th anniversary of Springfield’s Cedars Hospital and the relighting of the show’s emblem, the lighthouse, which has been rebuilt after burning down.

The cast commemorated the anniversary last week, gathering in period costume at the Museum of Television & Radio to perform a “Guiding Light” script from February 1937 - complete with a commercial for P&G’s white naphtha soap - for both a traditional radio audience and a new following on the Internet.

Over time, the 15-minute serial expanded to a half-hour and then an hour, shifted from black and white to color and from live performances to tape. It has given career boosts to many actors, including Cicely Tyson, Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, Kevin Bacon, Sherry Stringfield and Ian Ziering.

Even among soap-opera siblings, which enjoy long life expectancies by TV standards, the “Guiding Light” anniversary is special. Only “Search for Tomorrow,” which found its last tomorrow in 1986, was on TV before “Guiding Light” hit the small screen in June 1952. The show closest in age, “As the World Turns,” is nearly 20 years younger.