Paul Raven

When the show moved to the morning timeslot,they tried to attract gameshow fans,as that was the usual programming at that time.The result was Tall Texas Tales.

Lovely story. Thanks for sharing.

Bob and Miranda 's wedding. She was wife #4.

From SOD Feb 87.

Michael Storm,who's played Larry on OLTL for 18 years,got so bummed out by his lack of story (and never having the ear of execs)that he took his peeve to the press - in fact a very blatant, no-bones-about-it SOD article.

"I had tried everything to get my view listened to at ABC",recalls Storm. "I was at my wit's end and decided to go through the press,never realizing the disaster that would befall me ".

As it happened,shortly after the actor gave the interview,his story started sizzling again, and stayed that way until the article hit the newsstands.That's when producer Paul Rauch,who'd read it and was plenty steamed,called Storm on the carpet.

Says Michael,"I thought the matter got resolved during that one little encounter. He told me that he understood that the things i said were said at a time whenI was down and frustrated. but since the day the SOD article came out, I have not really been working on the show.Now, whether or not that's co-incidental, and I hope to God it is, I don't know. There could be another reason that I've been back-burnered. I don't know. I'm just giving the chronological facts as they occurred. if given the chance to speak out again,I most certainly wouldn't."

Yale Summers,who played Rodney Harrington, has died aged 78.

THEY SPIN THE TALES FOR SOAP OPERAS by Kathy Henderson

'It's hard to surprise a daytime audience today,'' says Douglas Marland, head writer of the CBS soap opera ''As the World Turns.'' ''They know all the formulas and are usually six feet ahead of you, but if the surprise is well thought out and justified, they love it.''

Since joining the 30-year-old series last September, Mr. Marland has created a ''boy-next-door-type'' psychotic murderer, turned a heroine into a villain and introduced a new family filled with good-looking teen-agers, one of whom is now flirting with a girl who may actually be his niece. ''You've got to be very devious to write a soap opera,'' Mr. Marland says, only half jokingly.

In addition to guile, head writers in daytime television must have enough imagination and enough discipline to fill five hours of programming every week, with no summertime reruns or hiatuses. They are a breed of writer who seem to thrive under pressure, keeping track of production requirements and supervising a staff of outline writers and dialogue writers even as they lay out plot lines six months in advance in book-length story projections. Some, like William Bell of ''The Young and the Restless'' and Wisner Washam of ''All My Children,'' stay with the same show for years; others, like Mr. Marland, who has worked on six daytime serials in 12 years, happily jump from show to show.

Recently, Mr. Marland allowed a visitor to sit in on a weekly meeting with ''As the World Turns'' executives in the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street, as well as a story conference with the show's two outline writers. Before scripts are written, the week's story outlines (called ''breakdowns'') are critiqued each Wednesday by executive producer Robert Calhoun, two production officials from the network and one from Procter & Gamble, which owns ''As the World Turns'' and three other soaps. Each day's outline runs 15 pages long and is detailed enough to list the time of day of every scene.

Discussing the episodes to be shown this week, the group praised Mr. Marland's handling of confrontations between two strong-willed women characters and his development of a romantic triangle. ''I like the way we spend a lot of time on a few stories,'' said Laurence Caso, CBS director of daytime programming.

Mr. Calhoun passed around photographs of a picturesque Connecticut pond selected for location shooting of various innocent and illicit romantic scenes, including an affair that will begin on tomorrow's episode. In typical soap-opera fashion, the lovers will be caught in the act by another character.

''We don't want him voyeuring,'' Mr. Marland said. ''He stumbles upon them, turns and goes.''

''Is there a story purpose to his seeing them?'' asked Mr. Caso.

''Oh, yes,'' Mr. Marland replied, without specifying what it might be.

Technical questions abounded: What breed would be best for an attack-dog sequence? Could a young actor whose character has run away to the rodeo be taught to use a lariat? Would there be enough room on a small porch set for four actors to play a scene?

The group reached a consensus quickly on casting a major new teen-age character named Emily Stewart, who, in tomorrow's episode, has already moved to town and begun flirting with one of the show's young heartthrobs. A 22-year-old actress from California, Colleen McDermott, was chosen from six screen-tested finalists. ''She's young and green, but she's going to grow into someone special,'' said Mr. Calhoun. ''I want to get her into acting school right away.''

Later, as he and Mr. Marland watched that day's installment of ''As the World Turns,'' Mr. Marland talked about the craft of plotting a soap. ''I try to gear younger stories for summer,'' he said, to attract the college-age viewers advertisers covet. ''But I don't think young stories work unless they're contrasted to the older generations.''

Interestingly, Mr. Marland, a courtly man of 51, has developed a reputation for writing believable stories about teen-agers and was hired to give ''As the World Turns'' a younger, more exciting image. He admits accepting advice from his 20-year-old niece, Tracy, whose fantasy of falling in love with an older man became a popular plot line during Mr. Marland's tenure as head writer on ''Guiding Light'' several years ago.

His ideas for ''As the World Turns'' are fleshed out with the help of breakdown writers Garin Wolf and Caroline Franz and a team of five dialogue writers, each of whom turns out one script a week. Mr. Marland himself writes two breakdowns a week and edits every script to ensure consistency in language and tone. (Many head writers delegate the latter chore to an editor.) ''It's like you're living in three time zones,'' he says of the writing process, ''because you're watching a show at 1:30 that you wrote the outline for eight weeks earlier and edited six weeks earlier.''

Every Tuesday, Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Franz discuss a week's worth of outlines with their boss, either in an all-day telephone conference or at Mr. Marland's Federal-style home in New Canaan, Conn. The house, built in 1801 and featured in the current issue of Antiques magazine, attests to the financial rewards of reaching the top in daytime television.

A recent session began with plans for handling the death at age 79 of actor Don MacLaughlin, who had portrayed the Hughes family patriarch since the first episode of ''As the World Turns'' on April 2, 1956. ''Although there will be a six-week delay [ in the audience's learning of the death ] , we felt we must play it out, not simply stick something into existing episodes,'' Mr. Marland said. The writers discussed how each character might react to the news that ''Chris Hughes'' had died in his sleep, and Mrs. Franz suggested weaving in flashbacks from earlier installments.

The three writers then moved on to a scene-by-scene summary of the first show of the week, with special emphasis on the three opening teasers designed to grab the viewers' attention. ''An audience responds to continuity and a clear sense of direction, and I just don't think you get that without one head writer,'' Mr. Marland had said earlier. ''To me, writing by committee is horrendous.''

Mr. Marland downplays the pressure of the job, even as he methodically chain-smokes his way through a pack of cigarettes. ''Doug is an amazingly creative and energetic writer,'' says Mrs. Franz, who spent six months as co-head writer of ''As the World Turns'' in 1983. She returned to dialogue and breakdown writing after developing stress-related digestive problems. ''You have to be a workaholic to survive in this business,'' she adds. ''With 258 hours a year to fill, you gobble up stories so fast, and then they're after you to produce more and more. For me, it was not worth the agony.''

''A lot of people think that any idiot can write this stuff, but I've seen wonderful playwrights who can't do it,'' says Kathy Talbert, the manager of writer development for Procter & Gamble productions. Miss Talbert receives submissions from a thousand would-be soap writers a year and conducts twice-a-year seminars for a handful of promising candidates on one of the genre's three ''branches'': scriptwriting, breakdown writing and head writing.

''Dialogue writers have to have a terrific ear,'' Miss Talbert says. ''They've got to absorb all the characters and be able to delineate those different voices. Breakdown writers must be good at dramatic structure and pay close attention to character motivation and conflict within each scene. Head writing is a different gift - someone who can spin a story that goes on and on for months. Sometimes we think of it as the novelist of the show.''

Mr. Marland learned the craft in P.& G.'s first scriptwriting seminar in 1974, after having spent the initial half of his career as an actor. Nowadays, he insists, ''you can make a soap as realistic as you want it to be. But when you pull things out of left field, it sours the audience.'' With some pride, Mr. Marland admits to having been fired from ''General Hospital,'' which went from 12th to first in the ratings during his tenure in 1979, because he refused to break up a popular couple two months after they'd been married.

''As the World Turns'' hasn't shown a similarly dramatic ratings rise (it's currently sixth among 13 shows), but wins its second half-hour and, according to Mr. Calhoun, has been steadily increasing its share of teen-age and college viewers this year.

The relative ease of writing for a once-a-week prime-time serial holds no allure for Mr. Marland. ''I love the freedom we get in daytime, based on the fact that we have to produce it so quickly. We don't have people breathing down our backs to rewrite or tearing our work apart - because there simply isn't time.''

Mr. Marland hopes to stay with ''As the World Turns'' for another year or two, then launch a new soap. ''If you really want to tell stories that lead you to other stories, this is the only place you can do that,'' he says. ''Daytime gives you that sweeping, never-ending canvas. The people who really love it stay with it.''

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Phil MacGregor was the first Rick.He later played Linc on Loving.French Fan's thread 30 years ago details what stories were happening under Smith,Brown and then Pam Long.

I associate Priscilla Pointer with Dallas where she played Rebecca Wentworth,Pam & Katherine's mother.She is also the mother of actress Amy Irving,ho was married to Steven Spielberg.

Variety Feb 68

Joan Copeland joins as Andrea.

Variety

June 72 Yale Summers ( ex-" Daktari") has replaced Lawrence Casey in the role of Rodney Harrington in NBC's "Return To Peyton Place"

Sept 72 Susan Brown, who starred on NBC-TV's "Bright Promise" for two years, has joined that we b's "Return to Peyton Place," replacing Bettye Ackerman as Allison MaoKenzie's mother

March 73 Frank Maxwell has been signed to temporarily replace the late Stacy Harris in NBC-TV's "Return to Peyton Place," debuting in the Leslie Harrington part on March 28...

Katherine Glass, who for the past year has played the role of Allison Mackenzie in NBC-TV's daytime strip, "Return To Peyton Place," has asked for and received a release from her contract.

One of the best stories Tom Phillips remembers about his mother concerned her answer to the question of why she never got married.

Irna Phillips adopted Tom in 1941 and his sister a year later.

"Why the hell should I get married?" Irna said. "If I want to get in a fight, I will call those buffoons in Cincinnati."

The buffoons in question were the sponsors for the radio and television soap operas she created and wrote.

One of those soaps, "Guiding Light," is going off the air today after 72 years and 15,762 televised episodes. Phillips created it for radio in 1937 and shepherded its move to television in 1952. She is largely credited with inventing the soap opera genre and by all accounts you did not want to mess with her.

"She was made up 100 percent of the things that make cookies tough," Tom was saying Thursday.

"Guiding Light" going dark today has sparked renewed interest in Phillips, and as it happens, an abundance of her papers are stored at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. There are scripts from "Guiding Light" and other shows she wrote, as well as correspondence with colleagues, listeners, viewers and advertisers.

Not in Madison yet, but coming soon, is Phillips' unpublished autobiography. Tom discovered it earlier this year in a box after his sister died in Los Angeles. He's read it, and after his wife and kids read it, he plans to send it here. Irna Phillips attended graduate school in speech at UW-Madison in the 1920s, as did Tom - in American history - in the 1960s.

According to Tom, the autobiography reveals his mother's thought process when creating "Guiding Light" more than seven decades ago.

Earlier she had created the first soap, "Painted Dreams," a feel-good drama about an Irish-American mom imparting homespun wisdom to her daughter.

In her autobiography, Phillips wrote, "I cannot pinpoint when the transition occurred, but somehow along the way I had made up my mind that any writing I did in the future would be based on reality and not fantasy."

She started developing "Guiding Light." Writing earlier this month in the New York Times, Barbara Kantrowitz noted of Phillips: "Her decision to create central characters who were often professionals - doctors, lawyers, ministers - became a convention that most soaps have followed, with emotional scenes often taking place in hospitals and courtrooms."

Kantrowitz continued: "'Guiding Light' brandished a social conscious streak from the start; its name comes from the reading lamp in the window of the show's original main character, the Rev. John Ruthledge, who preached racial tolerance and spoke out against war and the injustice of poverty."

Phillips' papers at the historical society include several letters from attorneys explaining the significance of opening statements, closing arguments and other legal nuances Phillips wanted to include in her scripts.

"She cared greatly about the authenticity of her stories," Tom said.

She was incredibly prolific. In a 2005 article about Phillips in The Common Review, Les White noted it has been claimed that Phillips "wrote more words per year than Shakespeare had written in his entire life."

Born in Chicago, where she spent most of her life, Phillips used pluck and talent to rise to the top of a male-dominated profession. Her other successes included creating "As the World Turns." Some said she was tough to work with, but proteges like Bill Bell and Agnes Nixon used her inspiration to become soap opera legends themselves, Bell with "The Young and the Restless" and Nixon with "All My Children."

Phillips died in 1973. White wrote that today she's "largely forgotten," while noting there's a historical marker near her home on Chicago's Gold Coast calling Phillips "the mother of the soap opera."

She was a real mother, too, not easy to know, even for her son, but endlessly interesting. It was clear Tom enjoyed talking about her Thursday.

"I thought she was pretty cool," he said.

Yes,Lisa got involved with Wally Matthews (Charles Siebert) who was a minister and doctor of some sort and the father of Peter Burton,a friend of Tom and Carol.Peter had found out he was adopted and didn't hit it off with Wally,unaware they were father and son.

Paul Roberts replaced the Dobsons. and was in turn replaced by the mysterious KC Collier. I wonder if that was a pseudonym for another writer.

Irna returned in Jan 72 as ATWT was being threatened as the #1 soap after 14 years as GH and Days had taken that slot on occasion. She immediately began making changes and ratings rose but by 73 her plotlines were proving unpopular and she was fired.

Colleen joined in 78 but Barbara had originally been seen in 71/72 played by Wandrey.

From Variety

June 74 Sylvia O'Brien, Armand Assante, Lauren White and F. Murray Abraham have joined the regular cast of NBC-TV's "How to Survive a Marriage" soaper

August 74 Ken Kercheval, James Shannon, Albert Ottenheimer, Tucker Smallwood and Elissa Leeds join the cast of NBC-TV's "How to Survive a Marriage

From Variety

April 68 CBS-TV's "Secret Storm" soap is reviving the Amy and Paul Britton characters with original players Jada Rowland and Nicolas Coster in an effort to hypo the strip's numbers.

November 68 The Secret Storm" daytimer gets Tony Converse as its new producer and an additional writer, Lou Scofield, to team with John Hess.

November 71 A featured player in the upcoming film, "Going Home," Audrey Landers, has joined the CBS soaper "The Secret Storm."

Variety reports that Paul Roberts,previously a story consultant for Days has been named headwriter,effective late April 1981.

January 1969

1.30 - 2.00 pm timeslot

ATWT CBS 14.4

Lets Make a Deal ABC 10.5

Hidden Faces NBC 4.4

May 67

Password" inherits a 44.2 share from the powerful soaper, "As the World Turns," yet sinks to a 32.1 share.

Prompting CBS to introduce LIAMST into that timeslot.

For reruns and syndication,it was Andy of Mayberry. A lot of other shows had title changes.I'm not sure why.

Variety November 65 Gloria DeHaven joins the cast.

October 63 Ruth Warrick, who starred for many years on the daytime soaper, "As The World Turns," rejoins the pivgram next Tuesday for four days to celebrate the 70th birthday of the grandpa character.

Our Private World,the ATWT prime time spin off debuted in May 65 with a rating of 11.9/25,compared to 11.1 for ATWT in the daytime.

Variety October 73

Moreover, in daytime, where the financial payoff is greatest, ABC came through the summer No. 1 with an 8.6 average for the same eight-week Nielsen period against a 7.0 for CBS and a 6.8 for NBC.

Variety January 1971

The husband and wife team of Dick and Suzanne Holland, late of ABC* "All My Children," have been signed as the new headwriters of "Apart."

So,Irna and her daughter Katherine lasted a year. I wonder whether they chose to leave or ABC had the power to push them out?