Aunt Mary (radio series)

Aunt Mary is a radio soap opera in the United States. Episodes were 15 minutes long, running Monday through Friday. The show began with regional broadcasts on the West Coast, but it eventually was distributed more widely.

Jane Morgan (not to be confused with singer Jane Morgan) starred as Aunt Mary. The actress is perhaps best remembered for her role as Mrs. Davis, Eve Arden's landlady on Our Miss Brooks.

Writers for the program were husband-and-wife team Leigh and Virginia Crosby. He "had been associated with the General Mills shows," and she "had been Irna Phillips's top writer." A 1949 article in Broadcasting added that Virginia Phillips' "credits include such top daytimers as The Guiding Light, Road of Life and Today's Children. Additional writers listed in another source were Gil Faust and Virginia Thacker. The program's director was George Fogle, who also directed the radio soap opera Ma Perkins for seven years.

Despite its modest beginning, Aunt Mary achieved and maintained a good level of popularity. An article in Broadcasting magazine, focusing on the program's celebration of its fifth anniversary, reported "Since it first went on the air in February 1944, Aunt Mary has been in the top 15 in the daytime Hooperratings and has usually ranked among the first five programs, national and regional." (The C.E. Hooper Company provided ratings for radio programs much like the Nielsen Company has done for television in more recent years.) The same article cited anecdotal evidence of the program's popularity, reporting "in one area where the program was discontinued, more than 400 letters were received within a week from listeners who wanted to know why it had been dropped and when it would return."