Competitive Pathos

“Would YOU like to be QUEEN FOR A DAY?”

 Well, not really. Wrong gender.  But for many television-viewers in the 1950s and early 60s, it was an attractive fantasy.

I didn’t watch too much daytime TV, of course; I was working my way through the primary grades at the time.  But when I was home sick or during the summer, I got to be exposed to my mother’s world, a world of limited options reduced even further by progressive disease.  She had multiple sclerosis, and by the time I was ten she was effectively bedridden. The television was an unremitting presence in our household. For her, unable to work, take a walk, or even, eventually, to read, the world outside the home existed primarily through the medium of television. And that put her on the extreme end of the intended audience spectrum for daytime television.

The day belonged to women.  Not ALL women, of course, but a default subset:  middle-class, assumedly white, stay-at-home mothers. 

It was largely programming inherited from depression-era radio:  soap operas telling tales of lost romance, failed romance, found romance and romantic revenge; chatty talk and interview shows focusing on home and family life; variety programs; and some sitcoms.  White, middle-class women defined the ideal role of white, middle-class women throughout each weekday.

And the most telling of them all was the weirdest of them all, a proto-reality show:  Queen For A Day.

The ubiquitous game shows and panel shows (like What’s My Line?) featured celebrity repartee and personality.  Of course, they also rewarded arcane knowledge (or at least the illusion of such; as the quiz show scandals revealed, a number were rigged.)  But QFAD took a different tack:  it made misery a competitive sport.  Beginning on radio in 1945, it made a flawless transition to television in 1948 (locally in Los Angeles), moved to NBC in 1956,  and flourished until 1964.

The premise was simple:  the host, unctuous and relentlessly cheery Jack Bailey, would interview a series of contestants who had, in some way, fallen on hard times.  A child with a life-threatening illness, sudden widowhood, devastation from a natural disaster … Bailey, in an upbeat Southern drawl, would coax the details from each woman before a live and appreciative audience (predominantly women.)  The audience would then vote with applause, measured by an “Applause-O-Meter”, and the winner would be “coronated” with a velvet cape, a crown, and showered with prizes. The losers would receive a small consolation prize and return, presumably, to their miserable lives.

For a pre-adolescent boy at the dawn of the Mad Men era, QFAD sent a powerful message.  Other quiz shows rewarded contestants, generally men, for knowledge, wit, and skill.  Queen For A Day rewarded contestants, usually women (although experiments were tried with King For A Day) for dependence.  A man (Bailey) could solve their problems, literally with the wave of a wand and some expensive gifts—IF they were submissive and pathetic enough. Men on the big-money shows like Twenty-One and The $64,000 Question retreated into isolation booths to answer the questions; women on QFAD enlisted the emotional support of their peers.  And Jack Bailey would send them away with a final benediction:  "This is Jack Bailey, wishing we could make every woman a queen, for every single day!"

A relic of the 1950s?  Perhaps.  But occasional attempts to revive have been made throughout the years, the most recent in 2011. 

If you’re so inclined, you can watch a complete episode of Queen For A Day at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMj2lwaSnhY .