Myrtle Vail
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Myrtle Vail (January 7, 1888—September 18, 1978), sometimes credited as Myrtle Damerel, was an American actress and writer who was a radio fixture from 1932-1946 thanks to the popular soap opera Myrt and Marge, playing the elder half of the title as well as having created and written the show.
Vail thought of the idea while living in the Chicago area, after having spent several years as a vaudeville performer (often with her husband, George Damerel), basing it almost entirely on her own vaudeville experiences. She took the idea to the Wrigley chewing gum makers, who had yet to sponsor a radio show, naming her lead characters Myrtle Spear and Marge Minter (playing on the company's best-known gum), while casting herself as Myrtle and her real-life daughter Donna Damerel as Marge, with Myrt the elder, experienced chorus girl taking young, inexperienced, and innocent Marge under her wing. Wrigley liked the idea and Myrt & Marge debuted in 1932.
The soap tracked the doings and undoings of the two close friends with some of the usual soap opera twists (kidnappings, organised crime, murder) and injected a degree of comedy into a genre not usually known at the time for wit. In later years the show was sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, who promoted its Super Suds laundry detergent among other products on the show.
Tragedy twice affected Myrt & Marge directly. In 1933, Vail was injured seriously in an automobile accident, forcing her to turn the show's writing over to a colleague named Charles Thomas, who wrote a storyline having Myrt kidnapped by gangsters, allowing Vail to recuperate completely.
But in 1941, Damerel died while giving birth to her third son. Quoted (by Movie-Radio Guide) as saying she believed her daughter wanted it that way (Damerel had done a Myrt & Marge show hours before going into labour), Vail wrote Marge out of the script for the time being, depicting her as hiding in the hills until a murder could be resolved, and set about casting a new Marge. The role finally went to Helen Mack, who'd been seen as a streetwalker in His Girl Friday.
Myrt & Marge continued until 1946.
After the show ended, Vail became a low-keyed supporting actress in films, best known for roles in the low-budget cult films A Bucket of Blood and The Little Shop of Horrors, written by her grandson Charles Griffith, and directed by Roger Corman, for whom Griffith has written and/or directed several films.
The grandmother of two more grandsons, Vail was never known to have remarried after her husband's death in 1936. She appeared on television's This Is Your Life in 1960. She can be heard in her radio heyday today thanks to the survival of approximately fifty episodes of Myrt & Marge.
