Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[saynotoursoap]

It is a mistaken impression based on two issues of magazines. Edge was held in very high regard through most of the 60's and 70's. It was almost always consistently at the top of the reader's poll in Daytime TV magazine. If you're referring to the poll Steve Frame's partner posted recently, that was a fluke. Especially during the Stephanie Martin and Keith Whitney stories, Edge was ranked in polls as one of the top 5 soaps. All of the critical articles written about it, praised it for its crisp direction and superb acting. Edge was the best directed soap opera of the 70's, and watching broadcasts of it today, knowing they originally aired lived, makes one appreciate it more.

Also, although the series was based on the radio version of Perry Mason and shared some Mason elements, it was more like Columbo. In the early days, Edge was not a mystery soap. The villain was always known to the audience. When Henry Slesar became headwriter, the series began to exploit the mystery angle; however, Slesar moved the series away from the predictability of yearly murder trials and 11th hour confessions.

I will look through my memorabilia and add my own material when I can to show you how much Edge was appreciated.

[MontyB]

It's funny because everyone I knew watched The Edge of Night. I was in junior high when it moved to ABC. I had to give up Somerset because they came on at the same time and you couldn't move me from in front of the TV between 4 and 4:30. So many years have passed and I miss Edge like yesterday.

[soapfan770]

Thank you for clearing that up for me. While I am more of an SFT fan from what I have seen on the net, Edge is still a great show in my opinion and I'm sorry no other soaps ever came up with doing mysteries like that. I know of its popularity, it just struck me as odd especially the Time Magazine article which was actually pretty harsh towards all the P&G, Edge's criticism being the harshest.

[saynotoursoap]

I remember the article vaguely. The author raved about Days of our Lives and its daring plot lines. Along with Edge, I believe ATWT was slagged off, too. The author didn't appear to like the old fashioned soaps. Edge was a conservative soap, despite the criminal angle. The article was written in 1975, a dark time for Edge as it transitioned from CBS to ABC with a mob storyline. Mob plot lines were unpopular on Edge, and for the casual viewer/Time journalist, a random episode may not have made sense.

One had to watch Edge regularly to appreciate it, for the complexity of plot made it special. Edge's best plot lines were the psychological ones in which average people were pushed to murder. I wrote about this on another board recently. No one seemed interested. I will repost it here.

We were talking about the character of Elly Jo Jamison, played by Dorothy Lyman. Every one knows Dorothy as Opal Gardner from AMC and Naomi on Mama's Family. Well, Elly Jo was a similar southern tart but with murder on her mind. Just imagine the Opal or Naomi characters going psycho. Elly Jo arrived in Monticello to care for the filthy rich Orin Hillyer. She was the niece of his late wives Julie and Laura. Elly secretly had a chip on her shoulder. Nothing in her life had ever worked out, and she saw Orin's millions as her chance to get everything she wanted. She plotted to kill him and his pregnant daughter Liz, to become next in line as the Hillyer heir. Lenny, the Hillyer chauffeur, caught on to Elly's machinations when she talked in her sleep after they rolled in the hay. He called Elly Jo on it.

The following dialogue is verbatim from a March 1973 episode. You can just imagine Lyman saying the lines, which mixed film noir with wry humour.

Elly Jo awoke and begged for coffee. Lenny shook his head. "I don't see how you can have coffee first thing. Don't you feel like brushing your teeth?"

"Coffee's as good for cleaning gums as toothpaste. Hey bring me a cup, won't you Lenny." Elly rubbed her eyes and tried to wake up.

"You're sure used to being waited on, huh? Better get unused to it, baby. Pretty soon, you won't have any more servants."

"C'mon, Lenny. Honey, I just can't get the engine revving without my coffee..."

Lenny acquiesced. He moved to a hot plate and retrieved a steaming pot of java. "All right. But I got a news bulletin for you. This is the last cup of Joe I'm pouring for you -ever. Just like last night was the last time me and you will be together... ever.

"Honey, don't talk like that. Lenny, please!

Lenny fetched her a cup. She sipped it and then recoiled with a grimace.

"You sure this isn't the stuff you use to clean old man Hillyer's carburetor?" Elly deadpanned.

"If you don't like it, don't drink it."

"Right now I would chug from a fountain pen if it was hot."

Lenny told her she could do as she pleased, only she shouldn't take all morning doing it because he had things to do - like call a rich lady friend about a job. Elly Jo begged him not to. She reminded him that he promised he wouldn't leave her. Lenny snorted. She only imagined his promise, just like she imagined that her dear friend Mrs. Fields (Orin's daughter Liz) was in a terrible car wreck. Elly denied his insinuations, but Lenny persisted. He urged her to level with him. After all, he didn't have any merit badges for good behavior either.

"You better cut it out, Lenny Small!" Elly snarled. "You better quit saying I'd do anything deliberately to hurt Mrs. Fields...even for that inheritance."

Lenny chuckled and took her by the shoulders. "Cornpone, I believe you'd slit that woman's throat for those Hillyer millions. If you really had a chance at them...which I doubt."

Elly Jo looked at him with deadly seriousness. "Well that's one thing you don't HAVE to doubt! I got a chance at them all right. I've got more than a chance. There's nobody standing between me and those C notes but that snooty-nosed little pris."

Lenny looked satisfied at her outburst. He knew her "friendship" with Liz had been an act all along. "Well, well, well. So you don't even like the woman any more..."

"Like her? I hate her! She's kicking me out. Kicking me out after I did so much for that family, for her daddy, and everyone else in that stinking house. Why shouldn't I hate her? If she had that accident yesterday, the one she was supposed to have, you think I would have cried at her funeral? You're darned right I would. I woulda bawled like a baby. and I don't mean maybe - but only because it wouldn't look right to do anything else."

"Only now there isn't going to be any funeral," Lenny reminded her.

Elly Jo glared at him grimly. "Oh, there's still gonna be a funeral all right. I don't know when or how, but people like Mrs. Elizabeth Fields...they just ask for rotten things to happen to them. And you mark my words -something WILL ."

Later in the episode Elly Jo went to see Orin to tell him she was planning to move out. Orin had gotten up out his wheelchair to demonstrate being able to walk a few steps. He fell into Angela's arms as a pretext for getting close to her. Elly sauntered into the library and caught them smooching.

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," she gaped.

Orin said that he didn't hear Elly enter the room, and Angela suggested he sit back down in his wheelchair, lest he tire himself.

"Yes, I think I've completed my calisthenics for this morning," Orin smiled weakly.

"Is that what they're calling it in Monticello," Elly replied. "Back home, we call it something else, and it's not so polite."

Elly went on to hint that she would be leaving soon, which captured Angela's attention. "Yeah, I thought you'd find that real interesting," Elly told her dryly. She went on to say that she figured Orin didn't need a paid companion any more...at least not HER kind of paid companion, she said sarcastically with an eye to Miss Morgan.

Angela commented about a surfeit of lodging in Monticello and offered to help Elly find a new apartment. "I knew I could count on you for that kind of help," Elly retorted. Angela said she would be delighted give Elly Jo a lift to Monticello. "I figured you'd want to help with that, too," Elly cracked.

The characters were on Edge were super. They were not over-the top, but Slesar colored them with enough humor that the proceedings didn't seem dry and predictable. Elly Jo sauntered around the mansion with a big goofy grin on her face and a charming southern drawl. You almost had to giggle when she was around, but at the same time, it made her even more sinister because you knew she was capable of doing anything -and probably would.

[DRW50]

Thanks for giving some of the dialogue. It's funny how at a time when soaps were so scorned some of them were so surprisingly sophisticated. Slesar's later years, 1980 or so, from what I've seen of those, he still seemed to have a whole array of wonderfully complex characters who were not all good or all bad. I know P&G eventually replaced him but I wonder if he turned out to be one of the more consistently strong headwriters a soap ever had.

So all the Fields/Hilyers were written out after this story weren't they? The stuff where Liz tricked Elly to her death is something I was fascinated by from the first time I read about it on Mark Faulkner's site.

[saynotoursoap]

The Hillyers were more or less written out after this story. Orin left in June 1973. He married Angela Morgan, who was played by the lovely English actress Valerie French. Valerie was the real life wife of Thayer David from Dark Shadows. Edge always had wonderful Shakespearean actors, so no matter how improbable the plot line, you believed it because the actors were so good. People say that contemporary soaps are so much more far-fetched, but I don't know if it is necessarily true. I believe the reason stories don't succeed as well today is because the actors are so inexperienced. After Orin left, Liz and Jim remained for another year or so but were supernumeraries. Jim's role as a psychiatrist kept him involved in plots such as Jake Berman's scheme to arrange his own murder and frame Adam, and Martha Marceau's problems with the illegal adoption of Jennifer Simms. Liz didn't fare as well. She had the baby Elly tried to eliminate and then receded into the background. Actress Alberta Grant took a leave of absence in the fall of 1974, with Liz going to Italy to visit Orin and Angela. Alan Feinstein, who played Jim, was offered a pilot for the fall 1975 primetime season. Alan didn't renew his contract with Edge, so Jim left Monticello, and Liz simply never came back either. Viewers were cheated in not knowing whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Fields reconciled, since they were on the outs when Jim moved to Canada.

The Elly Jo plot line was super. Certain plot points like the hypnosis and so forth were out in the ether, but the performances of Lester Rawlins, Dorothy Lyman, and Hugh Reilly were so good you could easily overlook how improbable it was. Edge also had an advantage in that P&G gave them enough money to do expensive location shoots which were extremely rare in those days. The sequence with Elly Jo jumping out of Liz's car would have been off screen or done in the studio on another soap, but on Edge you saw the real deal. I would always beg off school when I knew an Edge storyline was climaxing because it was a given that the finale wouldn't be a letdown from the buildup. Elly's jump in slow motion was very exciting even though it was obviously a male stuntman in drag. Her death scene was grisly too. She lay dead on the side of the road, her face caked with blood and smear marks from contact with the pavement. Her eyes were open and blood oozed from her nose and mouth. Kids today can't appreciate how shocking this was in 1973!

Edited July 2, 2010 by saynotoursoap

[DRW50]

That's true about the difference in soap acting back then.

I didn't know Thayer David's wife was on a soap.

Do you think Alan Feinstein would have been better off staying on the show?

[edgeofnik]

Thanks for all that dialogue and detail from that S/L. It's such a tragedy that those episodes are gone forever. I wish P&G would post what's available again.

[OldSchoolSoapFan]

Can a hardcore EDGE fan explain to me what was THE motive and reasoning behind Molly Sherwood's killing of Eliot Dorn, stabbing of Cliff Nelson, faked attack by Kelly McGrath and poisoning of Nadine Scott?

[DRW50]

Molly meant to poison Raven but Nadine unknowingly took the poison instead. Molly killed Elliot and tried to kill Cliff because she thought they were close to finding out the truth. I think she made it look like Kelly attacked her to put more suspicion on him as the prime suspect.

[MontyB]

That Draper/Emily and Molly is one of my all time favorite storylines from The Edge of Night. I loved Mansion of the Damned too. I quickly fell in love with Margret Colin. Terry Davis who played April will always be one of my favorite all time soap actresses.

Edited July 22, 2010 by MontyB

[MontyB]

Molly did it all so Emily could have Draper. You see, April was supposed to visit Raven where Molly was going to poison her, but Nadine (Raven's mother) showed up and drank the poisoned tea instead and she crashed her car and died. Molly told Eliot that she saw Raven give Nadine the tea, but Eliot was onto Molly so she killed him . She also stabbed Cliff because he was starting to put two and two together. She faked the attack by Kelly to cast the blame on him.

The Edge of Night used to come on here in NYC at 4pm and I remember it like yesterday when Molly confessed to Raven about all she did. It was on a Friday and I had to be back at my high school for something. I did not move from in front of that television until the closing credits at 4:28 pm.

IMHO, no soap has come close to Edge as far as good mystery and the intertwining and segueing of stories.It just makes me so sad, the state of the soaps today. What happened to good storytelling? BTW Chris Goutman (EP of ATWT) played Sharkey who got Emily pregnant.

Edited July 22, 2010 by MontyB

[OldSchoolSoapFan]

Thank you Montyb. From what I've watched from that time frame (AOL Video up to Nov. 6, 1980 and nonsequential poor quality episodes via disc trades from Dec. 1980-Jan. 1981), there were gaps that I missed. Thanks for clarifying what Molly's motives were.

Edited July 22, 2010 by OldSchoolSoapFan

[OldSchoolSoapFan]

I loved the Mansion Of The Damned storyline and the subsequent Nola/Martha Cory storyline. Kim Hunter was pure magic in that role! Even though he was only on for a few episodes during the MOTD story, Paul Falzone, who played actor Chris Rafferty (Margaret's love interest in the movie), was hot!

Edited July 22, 2010 by OldSchoolSoapFan

[Vanguardian]

YES INDEED! I often wonder why this show hasn't been revived as a primetime show given the popularity of cop/crime shows which continue to bombard the airwaves. A new version of TEON would prove to be quite popular today IMO. A new hour-long weekly version of the show would get good ratings I think.