Same with "Death Valley Days." Ruth Goodman wrote all of the radio show scripts from 1930 to 1945. When the show was re-worked for television, she continued to write all scripts for the first five years of production (1952-1957), at which time she became the show's story editor. The series required historical accuracy for its stories, breaking out of the standard Western genre plotlines, instead focusing on actual pioneer events.
She was an amazing woman! Her obit in the NYT, April 5, 1970:
Mrs. Ruth Cornwall Woodman, who created the “Death Valley Days” radio series 40 years ago and wrote more than 700 of its scripts, died in a hospital here on Thursday after a brief illness. She was 75 years old.Mrs. Woodman, a New York born graduate of Vassar, gambled with prospectors, “packed in” to Death Valley on horseback and visited rough saloons to gather material for the shows. “Death Valley Days” began on radio in 1930 and is still syndicated on television [written in 1970], making it the longest‐running broadcast Western. Its successive hosts have been Ronald Reagan, the late Robert Taylor and now Dale Robertson.
Mrs. Woodman, story editor and chief writer for the series until she retired 11 years ago, based her scripts on stories gleaned from old newspaper files, historical data and first‐hand research. She recalled several years ago that she had started the show as a copy writer for a New York advertising agency.
“The client's product came from the desert [U.S. Borax], so we suggested the program should have something to do with that area. “Then my boss told me, ‘there's one little hitch — the client wants you to go out there to the desert; he doesn't want anyone sitting back in New York writing it off the top of his imagination.’” The highlight of her first trip West, Mrs. Woodman said, was a meeting in mid‐desert with Death Valley Scotty, who built a castle in the forbidding valley and used to ride around in a car with a machine gun mounted on the front.
Mrs. Woodman, a descendant of Gov. John Winthrop of Massachusetts, became known as one of the foremost authorities on Death Valley history and folklore. She was married to the late William E. Woodman of New York, an investment broker.
Look at some of the directors of those old western series, there are some heavy hitters among them.
Like so much back then, people had lived a lot of life and they brought that to their art, their writing, their newspaper reporting, their acting, there was more depth, breadth, and knowledge throughout our entire culture.
That’s interesting. It’s especially interesting that the product came first and the show was created to support the product. The opposite of today when the shows are created and then they go find products to sponsor them.
I remember so well the Borax-o commercials during Death Valley Days.