Paul Raven

Martha Scott Dreft Star Playhouse 'All this and Heaven Too Henriette Deluzy Ruth Warrick Dreft Star Playhouse 'If I Were Free' Sarah Cazenove Les Tremayne Dreft Star Playhouse 'Of Human Bondage' Philip Carey Rosemary De Camp Dreft Star Playhouse 'Of Human Bondage' Mildred Rogers George Colouris Dreft Star Playhouse 'Intermezzo' Holger Brandt

Soap Opera Expert Tells How to Put Over a New Series BY CAROL KRAMER NEW. YORK At 52, Charles W. Fisher Is already responsible for producing more suffering and emotional pain for more women than the worst possible cad could cause in a lifetime. Fisher is s soap opera producer. . And he's been at it since those blissful radio days of Portia Faces Life and When a Girl Marries. His current assignment is to turn out the latest NBC-TV sudser, Hidden Faces, seen Monday thru Friday at 12:30 p. m. Chicago time. When a soap opera debuts or any other show, for that matter network press agents try to make it sound like the latest thing, and Hidden Faces was touted last December as "a daytime drama featuring a new element adventure-mystery." What, exactly does that mean? The star, Conrad Fowkes, plays "Arthur Adams, a rugged lawyer in his midthirties who, because of his action-filled military background, is called upon to assist international police organizations," said the publicity. Does that mean midnight chases, exciting adventures with beautiful lady spies, intrigue? "No," producer Fisher told me In a recent interview. "Not at first, anyway. There's not that much difference, really, from other soap operas. We have to establish the Identity of the characters, so people can understand what makes them tick and so they can care what happens to them." To be successful, a soaper must involve an audience in the lives of its characters, says Fisher, who should know. He produced Edge of Night for five years and As The World Turns for four. The latter, which is the No. 1 TV soap opera, is in the opposite time slot on CBS. Over on ABC is Monty Hall, who along with his Let's Make A Deal deserted NBC recently. But despite this powerful competition, Fisher is sure "Faces" can catch up. "It will take at least a year, but we can do it," he says. To help, Fisher hired Conrad Fowkes, a handsome, blond Charles Usher way and In several other soap operas, to be the hero. Writing "Faces" is Irving Vendig, who created Edge of Night. Vendig, who lives in Sarasota, Fla., mails in his scripts, and confers with Fisher by phone for any last minute changes. Vendig watches , the show "religiously," Fisher says, and writes to the characters' strong points. "Just this morning, I suggested to him on the phone that one of the characters should be used more," Fisher told me. Audience reaction to a particular character can mean a bigger or smaller role for him. It all depends on whether he draws sympathy.' "That's why soap opera heroes are so often placed In Jeopardy," Fisher says. Does that mean Conrad Fowkes will be involved in some dangerous situation, perhaps a trial for his life? Fisher won't say. Even though Vendig has written an entire basic plot-line for the first year's shows. "There won't be Just one villain," Fisher promises, "but a villain behind the villain." So far. "Adams" has been hired by state Sen. Robert Jaffee to find out who is blackmailing him. That undercover Investigation has gotten him as far as a set made up to look like a typical hotel room. But it's conceivable that "Faces," to live up to its theme of high adventure, will go on location. Fowkes says, "as long as we have a sign painted to say Rome or Paris, we can go anywhere." Tho he won't say what's going to happen in Hidden Faces-he won't even tell his mother-in-law, who is a regular viewer- he will admit that, as to character Adams' romance with Katherine Logan played by Gretchen Walther, "something will come in to hinder their relationship." But then, doesn't that always happen on the morning agony hours?

August 1987 Writer Doesn't Miss Creating Heartbreak Looking over a desk stacked high with files, Montgomery author and magazine editor Wayne Greenhaw laughs about his secret life a life spent creating bitter divorces, scandals and even engineering the occasional killing. "You mean my life in the soaps," the former Nieman Fellow says, a grin emerging from under a pepper-gray mustache. "That was a lot of fun. It was a lot of heartache, but it was a funny kind of heartache." His life in the soaps began in 1969, when Greenhaw, then a young reporter for The Alabama Journal, began talking at a party with Irving Vendig. Vendig had written scripts for radio shows like "Perry Mason" during the 1940s, but he did not find his true niche until he wrote the scripts for a television serial called "As the World Turns." At the party, Vendig and Greenhaw talked about Greenhaw's first book, "The Golfer," which had just been published and about a new television serial Vendig was working on called "The Hidden Faces." "Vendig called me the next morning and asked me to come over," said Greenhaw, who now edits Alabama Magazine and freelances for newspapers ranging from The New York Times to The Atlanta Journal. "He had bought a copy of my novel and read it that morning. He said he liked it, and after questioning me at length about things like character development and motivation, he asked me if I would like to help him develop the story line for the new serial." After sending ideas to Vendig from Montgomery, Greenhaw was hired to move to Sarasota and be junior writer on the soap opera, even though he had never written a dramatic script. The plan was for the two senior writers, one of whom was Vendig, to turn out two scripts a week, while Greenhaw turned out one, but those plans changed drastically when both senior writers became ill. "Both were too sick to work," Greenhaw remembered. "They just said, 'OK, kid, it's up to you.' " For more than two months Greenhaw wrote about a 30-page script a day, only taking an occasional Sunday off. Scripts were written by Greenhaw, edited by Vendig, who "was still very ill," rewritten by Greenhaw, reedited by Vendig and then rewritten again by Greenhaw before finally being mailed to New York, where they were performed. The performances weren't live, but they weren't far from it. "I would go over to Irving's house everyday to watch the show on television," he said. "Back then if they made mistakes, they didn't go back to correct them. "You would watch the show, and sometimes you'd just want to cry. They'd perform it just as you'd written it, every period and every comma and that made it worse because if it was bad, you knew it was because you had written it bad. Sometimes, you'd watch and just feel sick." Greenhaw said "Hidden Faces" was up against a powerhouse soap opera and because of that never developed much of an audience. "I think most of the people watching us were people who couldn't get the other channel on their TV sets," he said smiling. "Still you realized that even that small percentage of the audience probably amounted to millions of people. "When there was a bad show, you'd think about those millions of people and you'd think 'How could I have done this to myself.' " Greenhaw says he was not proud of most of his work because he was having to turn it out so fast. "Out of all those scripts, I was happy with maybe two of them," he said. One thing Greenhaw was proud of was his creation of a black family as one of the major groups of characters on the show. "As far as I know, that was the first black family featured in a daytime drama," he said. After a few months, NBC gave up "Hidden Faces," replacing the soap opera with the game show "Let's Make a Deal." Greenhaw left the world of soap operas and returned to the less hectic and less lucrative world of journalism. Although there were times when Greenhaw cringed when he thought about how viewers were reacting to his bad scripts, his last memory of the soap opera is a happy one. ' "Right after I left the show, I was in the Eastern Airlines lounge at the Atlanta Airport and the television was tuned to 'Hidden Faces,' " he said. "We wrote the scripts two weeks in advance so even though I'd already left the show, the episode the people were watching was still one I'd written. "I looked around, and there was a little old lady who was watching it and crying. As I watched her shedding tears about my show, I remember thinking 'Well, at least we got to one of the millions of people out there.' When the credits rolled, and my name was there as the writer, I wanted to go tell everyone who was watching it that it was me." New Daytime Serial Will ' Be born On Dec. 30 'Hidden Faces' By CYNTHIA LOWRY NEW YORK. A new daytime serial will be born Dec 30 on NBC, and its creator will be hurt and a little angry if "Hidden Faces" is kissed off as just another soap opera. "It is an adventure-mystery serial in which we develop characters," insisted author Irving Vendig. "We'll show the action our characters won't sit around drinking coffee and talking; about something that happened off-camera." The serial has been planned deliberately for a long life. Vendig created "Edge of Night" as an adventure-mystery serial and wrote its scripts for nine years before he moved along to other things, and the serial is still on the air. He turned out more than 2,200 scripts for "Perry Mason" in its radio days and recalls it went on for 15 years and was followed by the Raymond Burr TV series for an other nine. " Vendig made a master plan for "Hidden Faces" that carefully puts his principal characters in positions surrounded by drama. His male lead, for example, is a state senator victimized by a blackmail plot Vendig does not expect the series will receive immediate acceptance. "Getting these daytime things going takes time," he said. "It usually takes a year, and even longer, because daytime viewers are more creatures of habit than nighttime viewers, even if they are the same people. I do, however, think it is wrong to treat the daytime audience as if it consisted only of housewives. I believe that about one quarter ; of that potential audience is men men who work at home, night workers, garage men, doctors and others. Vendig started turning out broadcast material in Chicago during its golden radio days. While he has been associated with some big, long-running shows, he also has experienced disaster, most recently with a short-lived daytime serial called "Paradise Bay" a few seasons back. "It was one of the worst concepts for a serial," he admitted frankly. "I knew it couldn't work the minute I saw the first show and I wanted to kill it then j and there. But the network was committed to 26 weeks, so we staggered on to the end." It takes time and patience to get a new serial on the air. NBC received Vendig's original concept in March 1966, and four months later was given five sample scripts. .. "They liked it, had no room, and let a year go by without anything happening," Vendig said.

Hidden Faces Tom Tammi John Gerstad Model...Sylvia Jones Davis

From the latest SOD Wally Kurth tested for Tad AMC and Danny Wolek OLTL Melissa Claire Egan Colleen Y&R Lucy ATWT Emily O'Brien Sarah DOOL Samira GH Brytni Sarpy Jordan GH Martha Madison Marah GL twice , 8 years apart,2nd time just before cancellation Riley AMC Bethany Y&R

Goodbye LaLa. A pity. but her looks were always a little ordinary. Eliot stepped up with the flapper look and the lipsync but it was really only a stay of execution. I know a lot of it is editing but Symone has gone under the radar. Her runway was fabulous and she should have won. The improv eps are always unwatchable and then the judges have to lie through the teeth about how he-lar-ious they were.

First thing I've ever come across about Stephen Schenkel. i remember when he was appointed EP and had never heard of him. He went on to EP AMC. SOAP SCOOP By Connie Passalacqua Syndicated Columnist For the most part, dictators of South American banana republics enjoy better reputations than executive producers of daytime soap operas. Total authority is vested in these producers, who can kill off a character (thus firing an actor) with a stroke of a pen, or completely change life in his or her soap opera dominion (both in its fictional locale and backstage at the studio) on any kind of whim. Most rule despotically, inspiring fear in their actors and writers, which inevitably surfaces on the screen and subtracts from a show's quality. Then there's Stephen Schenkel, who became executive producer of "Another World" last fall. He's been described by one of his actresses as a "teddy bear." He has noticeably improved the show, mostly because his natural warmth encourages backstage cohesiveness, and he believes in personalty nurturing his staff and cast. "I like to be supportive," he says. "I like to generate a certain amount of enthusiasm. I love actors and writers and technical people. And I like to laugh." Schenkel says that most of the factors that have led to the show's improved ratings existed before he took over. "There were well-defined characters, outstanding writers and excellent production values," he explains. "These things were in place but needed to be stimulated. There wasn't a lot of excitement. What really was missing was an adequate story. We added Gillian Spencer as a writer (she also plays Daisy on "All My Children"), who's wonderful, and it just coalesced. The writers' energy and commitment to the show began to give it an emotional intensity and some real passion within the characters." Schenkel, a former ABC programming executive who helped develop "Ryan's Hope," is a strong believer in stressing romantic and comedy elements in soap operas. "AW" is also one of the only soaps with an established group of comic characters, including Wallingford (Brent Collins) and Lily Mason (Jackee Harry). Schenkel raves about the talents of all his actors, and even has something good to say about the Brooklyn location of the show's studio, which most of his Manhattan-oriented staff loathe. "I like the people here. I like to walk down the street and feel their energies," he says. He also violated a soap opera no-no, inviting actors and writers to the same party. "Everyone got to know one another," he says. "And I didn't get any complaints about actors begging for story lines,' he says.

Tom Tammi Hidden Faces

Gerald Gordon The Verdict Is Yours

May 1968 Soap opera queen Mil-lette Alexander makes housewives feel better when she plays Julie Jamison on TV's "Edge of Night." No matter what a woman's problems, she can tell herself, "At least my life's not as bad as Julie Jamison's. No one's blackmailing me. I'm not a murderess. I'm not going to jail." Julie Jamison's soap bubble troubles runneth over on screen. Offscreen, the most striking quality of the actress who portrays her is her happiness. That's the way it is with the real life of Millette Alexander. With a husband she calls the doll of the world, four children, a 19-room house, a job she loves and the world's most adoring audience, her woes won't match Julie's. But Millette would never call her life placid. Nine Children In House "With four children of our own and five children who belong to the couple who live with us and work for us? Then there are seven dogs, and four cats, one pregnant. It's not placid but there aren't any murders." In contrast, TV Julie's life is nothing but toil and trouble. Divorced from a guitar-playing no-goodnik, she comes to "Edge of Night" as the new nightclub singer at the Riverboat, a gambling den. Good-guy Orrin Hillyer sees her and falls in instant love because she looks just like his dead wife. Former husband shows up to make trouble. Julie passes out from one drink (she's allergic to alcohol). While she's unconscious, former husband is killed in a fight. When she wakes up, real killer persuades Julie she did it, then blackmails her. Orirn lends her money, marries her secretly, and the plot thickens. Back In Script That's one plot. There are at least four more that make up TV's cops and robbers soap, "The Edge of Night." Only the daily watcher can keep track of all the problems. Even the writers get confused sometimes and add things that can't happen yet. But the most, amazing thing that's ever happened during this soap opera's 13 years is an act of reincarnation that wrote Millette back into the script after killing her off. Audiences liked her so well as Laura Hillyer, first wife of Orrin, that she's been revived as Julie, Orrin's second wife. Millette first became Orrin's wife, Laura Hillyer, two years ago. Laura had troubles too. She was a faithless wife who chased a disc jockey who loved her money but not her. So she killed him, then died, herself, in a car crash. The TV ratings hit an all time high. Wedding Gifts Too Nine months later, Millette was back in town as Julie with a Southern accent and long yellow hair. The dialogue ran, "Have you seen that new nightclub singer? She's a dead ringer for Laura Hillyer." Indeed. Trying on a new, ash blonde wig for the secret wedding last week, (Julie tones down her yellow hair for love), actress Millette said she was not bride-nervous. She'd done it all before. At Laura's wedding, Millettte received pot holders and hankies from believing fans. ' "It's weird in a kind of wonderful way." The world's most devoted audience, soap opera fans are all kinds of people. Tallulah Bankhead watches. So do teenagers and retired men. They love soap operas. So do the actors, who adopt each other as family and sometimes act together for years. Days Never Done For Millette, her working life in "Edge of Night" is strenuous. She commutes from her Piermont home to a CBS studio two, three or four days a week, depending on the script. She's in her dressing room by 8 a.m., rehearses all morning, dons makeup and costume, does the show from 3:30 to 4. then has a pre-rehearsal from 4 to 5:30 if she's acting next day. Evenings, she memorizes 20 or 30 pages of dialogue. An actor with a poor memory doesn't do soaps. It's gruelling, but actors love it. Millette has never really had a vacation from her career since she graduated from drama school at Northerwestern University. She admits her four children slowed her down a bit. But she did head and shoulders TV commercials and radio commercials throughout each of her pregnancies. Time Out For Baby The day that Will, her third child, was born, she taped a radio commerical. "I kept teasing them to hurry up, that I was in labor. When we finished the taping, I said, 'Now can I go home and have my baby?' and I did!" As with any woman, all days are not all smiles. Millette copes by crying, woman's first right. And she relies heavily on ' husband James Hammerstein. "When I'm most upset, that's when he's most calm," she says. Hammerstein is director of off Broadway's "The Indian Wants the Bronx." Because he understands that the show must go on, he understood why Millette went on with a temperature of 105 recently. The last stronghold of live acting, soap opera doesn't allow for sickness. "They were wonderful to' me though," Millette says. "They got a doctor and set up a cot next to the set so I could rest." Needlepoint Hobby Millette Alexander is a pretty woman with a girl-next-door look. What keeps her from being the girl next door is her whole life style and a high energy level. To relax, she gardens and translates modern paintings into needlepoint canvases. "I woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning one night and thought, 'Wow, wouldn't Picasso look great in petit point?' " What girl next door would do a thing like that?

The Pittsburgh Press, Sunday, April 7, 1963 IF YOU have been lying awake nights plagued with concern over what ever happened to Polly Childs, Miss Colorado of 1957, be at ease. Here Is your answer. She is now Mrs. Stuart Rogers of Belvidere Street, Crafton. She also is Kate Ames, nee Kate Lodge, of the daytime serial, The Secret Storm. (Channels 2, 9 and 10, weekdays at 4). In private life Polly has been married one year to Stuart Rogers, now on active duty with the U. S. Army in the recruiting station in the Old Post Office Building in Smithfleld Street. He will be discharged in September and expects to follow a career in personnel psychology. An occasional actor prior to his Army service, he appeared once on Secret Storm, met Polly and married her. In the fictional life, so real to its viewers, which she leads in the daytime drama, she was married only a few weeks ago to actor Wayne Tippltt, who plays Jerry Ames. Real life husband Rogers was an Interested spectator at the nuptials. What with getting married on the show, Polly has been appearing almost daily. Presently her appearances will dwindle, in the In-and-out tradition of soap opera, and her commuting schedule from Pittsburgh to New York will not be so hectic. She has been spending week ends in Pittsburgh and week days in New York. "But pretty soon things will settle down and I'll be on Just once or twice a week to discuss someone else's problem," says Polly. If you wonder where else you've seen Polly, she's been featured In commercials for clgarettes and hair spray. The daughter of an Army colonel (West Point '36) Polly is used to travel She has lived in Washington, the Philippines, Germany, Puerto Rico and numerous states including Colorado. While a resident of that state she was chosen Miss Colorado of 1957. Being a Miss Colorado at that time was traveling in fast company. Both her immediate predecessor, Sharon Kay Ritchie, and her immediate successor, Marilyn Van Derbur, were named Miss America. Polly was not Instead of touring the land as Miss America, she enrolled in Stephens Junior College at Columbia, Mo,, as a freshman. Her education completed, she worked at the Pentagon long enough to accumulate enough money for a fling at acting in New York. She moved from summer stock, to off-Broadway, and finally to network TV. Whatever happened to Kate? Did she and Jerry leave town happy and then he returned recast and single?

I agree re half hour. That would have allowed for more flexibility in the schedules and meant soaps weren't competing with one another as much. But economics have always ruled daytime so when it was established 60 min was cheaper than 30 ... We can point the finger at Lin Bolen/Paul Rauch for that.

Well the format for daytime TV came from radio where pretty much everything was 5 days a week so it would take a lot to move away from that mindset. How would it work in practice? One soap on 3 days a week - would it be MTW or MWF ? What would it alternate with? Another soap? Or a gameshow? If one format consistently outrated the other, wouldn't it make sense to take that 5 days a week? And it would be more costly to have 2 different shows in that timeslot. When daytime experimented with TV movies and one off specials in the 70's, the ratings and expense put paid to continuing/expanding on that practice, no matter how worthy it may have been from other standpoints.

Regarding Loring and the TV movies I'm not sure her getting the role had anything to do with the Days contract. If it did, then maybe the contract stated that she would be put up for roles in two TV movies i.e. rather than having to submit and then audition she would go to the head of the queue (but not necessarily be guaranteed the role) Does that make sense? Re Texas Whatever union soap actors belonged to (AFTRA in NY I think) there might have been a general provision for repeat payments that previously did not apply to soap actors but was there for other formats where repeats were more likely. As the 80's dawned and cable and VCRs took off the unions had to fight for performers to benefit from exposure in those formats. As for Texas coming back, that seems like hype but the show could have been revived with a new production team and writers. I'm sure they could have got a few actors back, some recasts and reformatted it around them.

Joan Banks Amanda of Honeymoon Hill - Amanda Leighton (one day replacement for Joy Hathaway due to NY rail mishap) By Kathleen Norris - 'Mystery House' Page Hazeltyne One of the Finest Fran Carlon Life of Mary Sothern - Mary Sothern John's Other Wife 1941 Eric Dressler Lighted Windows 1943 Central City - Fred Winston Pepper Young's Family - Charlie Hurd Manhattan Mother - Jack Thompson Heart of Julia Blake - Rush Gates Light of the World - King Joram Whispering Streets 1955 Second Husband 1942 Martha Webster - Franklin Webster

Y&R The infamous mini story where Patty was mentioned suddenly and a mysterious person phoned the William's home...

Those scenarios are great and work a heck of a lot better than what happened onscreen.

Looking at imdb Gloria had a co starring role (with Ann Jillian) in an NBC TV Movie 'Convicted-A Mother's Story' in 87 , after her Days stint, but nothing else that indicates any of those contract provisions were put into practice. Maybe they were pay or play deals...

Read in an old (1981) Daytimers mag that Victoria Wyndham had in her contract that there were certain days of the week she would not be required to work (maybe Mon or Fri, so she would have along weekend?) Because of that they had to structure the story to cater for that.

Carolyn Conwell I believe her welfare mother role on Y&R was Jane Hayes Sharon (Forsmoe) Farrell True Story 9/24/60 'Miss Beauty Cream' 'brassy gum chewing contestant with ambitions'.

Roberta Leighton General Hospital ....nurse (pre Y&R)

Patricia Wheel As The World Turns 1960

Jack Betts Love of Life .... Hugh Cabot 1975

Back in the 70'sI think Joann on Y&R attempted suicide at some point over her crumbling marriage to Jack/Johnny. On DOOL Marie Horton tried to take her life in 66(?)

As The World Turns Ed Townsand - Whit McColl's lawyer 1983 ????