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He's Mama's Boy on TV, but, Boy! What a Mama!
Caption: She's his stepmother, so Diana Walker and Gregory Abels have things to worry about in CBS-TV's soap opera, "Where the Heart Is."
By Wade H. Mosby of The Journal Staff

Diana Walker is a cool, fragile looking blond who, at first glance, would appear to be no match for those laundry enzymes that eat blood in TV commercials.

Her hair is cut short, and her eyes, shielded by lashes that keep colliding with her band, are startling seel gray. She speaks clearly and directly and there's no nonsense about her.

Gregory Abels, once with Milwaukee's Repertory Theatre, has the blue eyes, sincere look of an Eagle Scout in a Norman Rockwell portrait. You'd buy a used car from Gregory Abels. He also is a competent actor, healthy, lean and reverent.

The two of them are key performers in "Where the Heart Is," and you can be sure it's all over the place. Miss Walker plays Mary Hathaway in this CBS soaper, and Abels plays Michael Hathaway.

Theirs is a strange relationship. They're in love. But there's this hangup, see? She's his stepmother, and if Julian Hathaway- her husband, his father- ever finds out, there goes the old ball game.

As part of our continuing service in updating daytime worker with what's going on, TV-wise, at home, we offer the following insights into "Where the Heart Is" as provided by the insiders.

How did you two ever get into this jam, anyway?
Diana: Well, you see, I was an orphan. Not me, but me as Mary. OK? And I grew up in a number of foster homes, but I had great talent, played the piano brilliantly, won a scholarship and came east to study at a college where Julian Hathaway was a professor.

Julian was a widower, eh?
Greg: Yes. You see, his first wife- my mother- committed suicide because Julian really was a bore and left her alone a lot.
Diana: Anyway, I thought Julian was really groovy and fell in love with him. We were married, and I began to find out that Julian was bookish and not so groovy.

So you started hanky pankying around with son?
Diana: Not exactly. Not right away.
Greg: You see, I- meaning Michael- had been very studious, graduated from M.I.T. I hadn't been interested in girls- my mother's suicide had created a sort of mental block. So I sat around all summer, listening to Mary play the piano.

Sounds innocent enough.
Greg: Chopin and Mozart. I started to get this feeling of love.

You mean you're sneaking around behind doors now and kissing and all?
Diana: Not quite that. We have embraced a few times, and we're always saying "I love you," but we have this great guilt feeling.

You can't be all that bad. What happened next?
Greg: Well my father tossed me out of the house- he has this big place in Northcross- becasue I had just been sitting around on my backside all summer and I found a job and moved into an apartment in Manhattan.

Bachelor pad, eh?
Greg: Well not exactly. You see, there's this girl Vicky Lucas, a teenybop type from from Northcross, who moved in with me.

You can't mean...
Greg: Yes. I don't really want her there, but she knows I'm in love with Mary and threatens to tell Julian.

But surely, you're not messing around with Vicky?
Greg: Well, yes. She keeps making herself so available and all.

But does Mary know about this?
Greg: Oh she knows all about it. I don't keep anything from MAry.

You still see Mary, though?
Diana: Oh, sure. It's ironic, but Julian, as a birthday present, gave me a series of concert tickets, and so I go into Manhattan one day every week.

And you don't go straight to the concert?
Diana: That's the idea.

And that's all there is?
Diana: Oh, no. We're only half of the story line. In the other half, there's a thing going on between Kate and Steve. You see, Julian has two sisters. One is Allison. She married a bum nam Roy. Stole Roy away from her sister, Kate.

Who's Steve?
Diana:That's Steve Prescott. He's a land developer and wanted to buy Julian's property. That's how he got to know everybody- they were all at home because Julian's father died.

I didn't know he was sick.
Greg: Grandpa had been sick for some time. Vicky was his nurse.
Diana: Anyway, Steve wants to have an affair with Kate, but she lets him know she's only interested in a serious invovlement.

Heavens to Betsy! What will happen next?
Diana: We don't know. They never tell us in advance.

And that's "Where the Heart Is," for the moment, anyway. Greg Abels enjoys his work, wants to do some Shakespeare, and will, this summer. He's married to the former Janet Kapral, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alex Kapral, who now live in Oshkosh. Janet came along on the Milwaukee junket, and she and Greg spent some time with her parents.

Miss Walker, divorced from agent Stephen Carbone ("he lives across the street now- we're good friends") reports that the soaps "are practically the only employment for an actor- I'm grateful to them."

"I did comedy before, and wanted to try drama. Now that I've tried drama, I want to try comedy again. I have been crying nonstop since August. But I enjoy my crying- all the way up to the bank.

Will Julian's Sister Kate Ever Save Steve from Alison?
By Wade H. Mosby
of the Journal Staff

There's a nicely muddled situation going on in "Where the Heart Is," a CBS-TV daytime drama, and you really should have a kindly friend to help you needle your way through the plot's complexity.

And that's the way things should be with a lively soap opera. The soaps long have been dealing with subjects that primetime dramas were only pussyfooting with- a suggestion of incest her, a dash of demonology there, with divorces, unwed mothers and the like quite commonplace.

"Where the Heart Is" revolves around the "affections, conflicts and tension found in the close knit relationships of the Hathaway family," according to the information sheet.

Close knit indeed. As we found earlier in this series, widowed Julian Hathaway, the patriarch of the clan, married a much younger woman who is now carrying on with Julian's son, Michael. Today we turn our atteniton to Julian's sister, Kate, and her suitor, Steve Prescott.

Let's examine Steve, a relatively clean cut swinger portrayed for the last month or so by Ron Harper. Somebody else played Steve for a time, but he found honest work and left the series. So let's examine Ron Harper, the reigning Steve.

Harper is decent fellow, Princeton type (which he was) who wears dark glasses (his presciption is ground into them, I guess).. Producers of prime time television haven't been actively pursuing him lately, for somewhat the same reasons that Dad hestitates to give Junior the car keys after Junior's fourth collision.

Harper has been in four prime time shows, and for one reason or another, all have bombed. First there was "87th Precint," which lasted a season. Then came "Wendy and Me," in which Connie Stevens was Wendy and Ron was me. Unfortunately, George Burns produced it, and he tended to occupy much of the time with comic asides, and the show didn't survive.

Next was "The Jean Arthur Show," the demise of which Harper attributes to the writers and producers. It bombed after 13 weeks. And then there was "Garrison's Gorillas," a hokey World War II adventure yarn (Harper was Lt. Garrison, the chap in charge of a merry bunch of GI hoodlums), and it lasted a year.

For a moment, let's examine Diana van der Vlis, who plays Kate. Canadian born, acted in repertory, trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Played in a number of Broadway shows, including "Happiest Millionaire." Has done parts in some nighttime TV shows and in movies. In her first soaper. Married to a book editor, two kids 9 and 7. Lovely to look at, on the ripe side of 30.

All right folks. WHo is going to tell us what's going on between you in "Where the Heart Is?"
Diana: Well, as Kate, I'm Julian's sister. I also have a sister, Alison. I was engaged to Roy Archer, but Alison grabbed him away from me. She hated him and only married him because I wanted him. Alison now has divorced Roy, and he and I rediscovered each other.

Really? And you're going to be married?
Diana: Well, we were, but I discovered Alison and Roy were planning the marriage so I would sell the house and they would profit.

The cad! Can't he find a job?
Diana: Right now, he's assistant manager of the Northcross Arms Hotel. Alison calls him a "small time, drunken desk clerk."

Really fond of him, right?
Diana: No Alison. Roy isn't really evil, though. He's weak rather than evil.

What's to become of him?
Diana: Well I think he's going to be mugged in a park and killed.

A severe penalty for wekaness. But where does Steve come in?
Ron: I'm a real estate developer. I wanted to buy Kate's house (she seems to own it, along with Julian and Alison), but she doens't want to sell.

And this is enough to build a meaningful relationship?
Ron: How should I know? I've just been in the show for a month. Another guy was playing Steve up to then.

But how does the audience accept a different face with the same name?
Diana: That's the way things go. In the show, I have this close friend, Christine Cameron. For a long time, she was a short blond. Then one day she was tall, dark and Grecian. Nobody explained.
Ron: If somebody's sick, they just call in another actor to play the part.
Diana: But if its just for a day or so, they announce the switch. They don't mention anything if its a permanent switch.

But what about you and Steve?
Ron: Steve and Kate are attracted to each other, but Steve's not about to get invovled in the sincere type of love that Kate wants. Who's going to give in?
DIana: Steve is. Kate is very proper.

But don't count on it. The way things are going, Kate could mug Steve, Julian and Alison on the front lawn and quit the show.

So Loving was basically about the going ons at a university when it started, am I right? When did the show first start to veer away from this premise? From what I've read about the show, it seemed to focus on the Aldens and a revolving cast of young people. Perhaps, having a soap set in a college was just asking to fail. Think about it, people go to college, graduate, then move away. It is a constant revolving door.

I remember one scene (I may have it on tape somewhere) in the fall of 2002 when India was in town for the First Wive's Club of Phillip's meeting. And at some point at the Beacon hotel lobby, India was introduced to Ben. She told him how his mother Maeve was a very dear friend of hers. She then offered help if he ever needed any... too bad he didn't remember that offer when he started being a male escort to raise money. Oh, wow, now that I think of it, 2003 was so full of hits and misses for GL. 2002 was their last period of great storytelling.

Love of Life never had an opportunity to go into syndication. This idea is one of a myriad of mistakes in Christopher Schemring's book. The truth is Love of Life was canceled so quickly, syndication was out of the question. When CBS announced the cancellation, the series literally had a couple of weeks to tape the final episodes. There simply wasn't time to work out a syndication deal, and considering the low viewing figures, I doubt it would have been successful. The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm were the two daytime soaps with the best likelihood of going in first-run syndication, though sadly, those deals also never reached fruition.