Paul Raven

Taylor Miller only signed on for a year with the promise that Sally would be miles apart from Nina on AMC bit that didn't happen so Miller left at the end of her contract. I guess the idea of finding another Sally wasn't appealing and the show had new writers/producers with a new vision which didn't include the Matthews. They probably had a fair idea the Thomas Ian Griffin would leave when his contract was up so decided to cut their losses and focus on other characters.

First Ladies Diaries was directed by Ira Cirker,who directed AW.The writer was Jerome Alden a playwright who wrote a couple of things about presidents past. I assume it was on videotape.I wonder if it was like a taped play with few sets etc and no location work? Liz Hubbard was Edith Wilson in another of the series.

Thanks so much for the Dwyer article.That is the first time I've read her side of the story and it seems a fair one. I've read how Lemay wanted to have Mary turn against Steve and it's interesting to see her take on it. After 20 years on soaps she seemed to vanish from the scene.I wonder it it was her choice not to do TV again or P&G weren't interested-especially as the youth movement took hold and a lot of veteran actors couldn't land substantial roles.

Apparently,the chapel was actually a set built especially for the event.Quite impressive for the times.

FTR Joyce Van Patten played Clara Kershaw at some stage,meaning both she and brother Dick appeared on YDM.

A nice memory of Bethel

Gerald in 76- promotional photo for his return in the 90 min special

Kate Mulgrew’s autobiography, Born With Teeth — A Memoir, is set to be released on April 14 by Little, Brown and Company Watching Tovah Felshuh on Walking Dead and noticing her resemblance to Kate. Do RH fans think Tovah would have been a good choice to take over as Mary? She was on RH as Martha so posters who have seen her in that role could make a good judgement.

Yes, that looks like a real chapel.Wonder if we'll have a few extras to fill up those seats!

Guiding Light from Radio to TV Few sponsors realized it at the time, but a brand new era in network programing may have begun on 30 June. That was the day when P&G's perennial radio drama The Guiding Light became the first "combination radio TV show" on the major networks. It was also the date when a widely held advertising theory—that radio and TV programs, outside of simulcasts, have to be planned separately for each air medium—was exploded. One of the brightest stars in Procter & Gamble's sudsy galaxy of some dozen daytime serial dramas in both radio and video, The Guiding Light is unique in air advertising today. The program is on twice daily; once for radio, and once for TV. In both shows, the story, cast, and production staff are the same. It works like this: The 2,750,000 housewives who dial the domestic troubles of the radio Guiding Light each weekday at 1:45 p.m. on CBS Radio hear a show that continues the story of heroine Meta Roberts in the same radio format as in the past. Then, at 2:30 p.m.. another million housewives and there's little duplication between radio and TV audiences—see and hear the same script acted out by the same cast, with only minor changes in format on CBS TV. Net result for P&G: The radio version holds its regular audience (the figures above are Nielsen averages) in non- TV areas, and its big radio audience in TV areas. The T V version adds a new audience on top of the AM version. P&G thus has a continuous hedge against the day when TV will cover the nation, and will have made serious dents in daytime network radio. Guiding Light does a better-than-average job of being a good show in two media at once. The radio version is not merely the sound track for the TV show, as is the radio version of Groucho Marx's on Bet Your Life: it is done in a way consistent with the highest standards of radio dramatic production. At the same time, the video version is not just a radio show with a radio cast before a TV camera, as often occurs in simulcasts like Voice of Firestone or We the People. And. this trickv balancing act has been achieved without blowing P&G s costs sky-high. By SPONSOR'S estimate, production of the radio version of Guiding Light costs P&G about $3,000 a week, more or less. This is well in line with the cost average of the two dozen daytime serials presently on the air in network radio. The TV version is brought in for about $8,500 for production costs. Figuring in time charges, this means that the radio version of Guiding Light delivers audience at the rate of about $1.65-per-l,000- homes. The video version delivers viewing homes at the rate of about S The video version delivers viewing homes at the rate of about $8.00 per $1000 which is slightly better than average for TV. Here are highlights of how Guiding Light's production team — producer Dave Lesan. radio-TV director Ted Corday. production and business manager John Egan, and assistant producer Lucy Ferri—make one show behave like two The program's scripts are written just once, unlike the radio-TV Mr. District Attorney (see SPONSOR 22 October 1951) where two separate scripts are used for the AM and video versions. Writer Irna Phillips turns out what is essentially an "actable"' radio script, sends it in with a description of how she visualized the action when she wrote it. (This is a money saver. Miss Phillips doesn't have to spend twice as much time and be paid twice as much as she did when writing Guiding Light scripts in the radio-only days.') The scripts themselves are done in radio style, but are typed and mimeographed using the right-hand half of the page. The left-hand half is blank, as in TV scripts. Thus, the scripts do double duty; they are used in their original form for radio, then used again for TV with cuts and pencilled in action. Saving is about $125 a week in mimeo charges. Radio rehearsal is skillfully utilized to give what director Ted Corday calls "a leg up on TV rehearsals. ' The radio show is rehearsed for its regulation hour and 45 minutes the day before the live TV show. It is then taped for radio presentation the following day. While the actors are still in the studio. Corday starts to block out the TV show and gives the cuts which will bring it down to the right length for television. About $50 a week is saved in rehearsal hall charges. (That's $2,000 a year.) Also, the tape recorder saves money in radio rehearsal, gives a "fluff-free v show. . The TelePrompTer is used on the TVshow. While this gadget costs a minimum of $30 an hour for the "Class A"' battery I three reading units, plus equipment and operator), producer Lesan feels that it actually saves money in the long run. "We don't let our actors use it as a crutch.'' Lesan states, "but it does give them a sense of security and cuts down on the amount of rehearsal we need. Also, this feeling of security is transferred to the quality of the show, and gives the sponsor a better program for his money, which is itself a saving." . Special effects are held to a minimum. The TV Guiding Light is done with a bare hour and 30 minutes of camera rehearsal daily, so there's no time to fool around with trick shots or fancy tv production "A recent script called for a scene to be played in a car. Then, the car was to crash in the fog. and roll over a couple of times. This was easy to do in radio with sound effects. In the TV version, we played the identical scene on a park bench instead of in a trick car set. and saved ourselves about $300. Then, we had the car crash offstage." . All sets and props, down to the last item, are rented from CBS TV. Reason: After careful study of the relative merits of stockpiling its own properties and sets vs. renting from the network's extensive supply. Compton felt it would be cheaper to use the latter method. This way, a minimum of Compton manpower is involved in keeping track of sets and props, and the network must handle all the repairs and maintenance of permanent sets. These are just a few of the problems and solutions which Compton has dealt with in handling the two-way serial. There were many others, some large and some small. "One of the first things we learned was to respect the physical capabilities and tempers of our cast, which we brought over virtually intact from radio into TV," producer Lesan recalls, "lrna Phillips is famous for her scripts which center around the dialogue of just two people. In radio, this is easy. A week of two-character dialogue in TV would put the actors in the hospital. The strain of memorizing and acting would be tremendous, and the rehearsal would wear them out. "Compared to our old methods in handling the radio-only Guiding Light, we used more actors and we use each of them less frequently. All of our basic cast is under contract, and we guarantee them a certain number of appearances within each 13-week cycle. This keeps our cast happy, because a day's work on the TV show practically removes the possibility of their doing other TV work for two days. "We also work much further ahead in all phases of the show, both in the drama content and in the commercials. It used to he in radio that we could work oil changes and substitutions as tight as three days ahead and still get away with it. Now. the smallest leeway we allow ourselves is three weeks.' Since almost any major TV show has far more "delayed broadcasts ' than a major radio show, due to the clearance problem in the large number of one-station and two-station TV markets, some special difficulties had to be solved by Compton. Of these, perhaps the biggest headache was in dealing with a favorite commercial tactic of Procter & Gamble -premiums and contests. These are fairly simple in radio. The commercials start plugging the offer or contest when it starts, and they stop plugging it when the promotion is over. In TV, with some kinescope stations running three weeks behind the radio schedule (although they are day-and-date in all the interconnected TV' areas where the show is seen live) the problem was different. Some TV stations, Compton realized, would be starting a premium offer in the kinescope commercials long after it bad started on radio. Later, they would still be making the offer while the radio version was concluded. How Compton got around the problem : A traffic system was set up to route film commercials to the kinescope stations for local insertion. Commercials containing a P&G offer are sent to these stations so that they can be spliced in for a simultaneous start with radio. This is continued until the kines catch up with the offer. Then, when the kinescopes start to run past the closing date of the offer, film commercials minus the offer are sent to TV stations so that the out-of-date commercials can be removed locally. (This problem is not peculiar to TV in Guiding Light's air operation. Several radio outlets air Guiding Light from transcriptions. Here, the agency sends out special e.t.'s with revised commercials similar to the revised TV kinescopes.) In many ways, the radio-TV Guiding Lights are designed around the commercials. just as their production and rehearsal schedules are geared around the physical capabilities of the production staff and actors. For one thing, Compton discarded the idea of doing a simulcast of the two shows (apart from artistic problems) in order to get the maximum value from the two types of commercials. In radio, P&G feels it does its best selling job on Guiding Light with alternate sponsorship each day, using a format that calls for a billboard opening and a teaser dramatic scene. The commercials are written in odd lengths of about a minute and 20 seconds. Generally speaking, the show's radio commercials are designed to be used only on network radio. The TV commercials are something else again. Compton deliberately revamped the TV format so that it contains essentially the same amount of drama as the radio show, but has an open-middle-close commercial format. Each commercial is a minute in length, and is on film. Result: The film commercials, being a standard length, can be put to double and triple use. In the case of the P&G film commercials on Guiding Light, a good deal of money is saved all around by doubling the films on a traffic schedule as commercials in the P&G-sponsored Fireside Theatre. Then, they are put to even further use as minute film commercials in P&G TV spot campaigns, since thev are designed to stand on their own feet. out of program context. As far as actual P&G product selling goes,"' states Constance Reid, assistant to the head of Compton's Radio &TVCommercial Department, '"both radio and TV commercials use the same basic tliPines when products are being sold in both media. The difference is in the commercial technique. Generally, radio commercials for a product like Duz will cover more product points with more copy than TV. A television commercial will cover fewer points with fewer words, and put much more emphasis on the visual aspects."' P&G had thought of trying a combination radio-and-TY arrangement on a daytime serial long before it actually happened with Guiding Light. About a year ago, the first major step was taken by making up pilot kines of two Guiding Light scripts chosen at random, bringing them in for a total of $5,000. "We made these pilot films to answer just one question." Compton's V. P. Lewis H. Titterton. agency radio-TV director, told SI'ONSOR. "We wanted to know if sight could be added to a simple radio script to give you a good TV show." Agency and client ran the kinescopes off again and again, and finally decided that writer Irna Phillips wrote with such a visual touch that remaking her show for TV would he feasible. Also, the cast members looked and acted their parts, particularly since lrna Phillips had long been writing the show to fit the actors. But only when Compton reported last May that the show was ready to be produced, did P&G commit itself to the deal. "Many problems outside of production had to be worked out." Compton V.P. George Chat field, who supervises the Ivory and Crisco accounts, told SPONSOR. "The show is a kind of common property, in varying degrees, of several P&G brands the agency represents. A lot of meetings had to be held to work out the details of what brands would be featured on the show, to what extent they would be featured, how the whole thing would interlock with other media campaigns of these brands, and from which brand ad budgets the money would come.' As SPONSOR went to press, this was the lineup of products on the two shows. Costs of the operation are distributed among the brands in accordance with the extent to which they are featured. The AM version of the soaper now sells Ivory Flakes, and Duz. There are two main commercials in the show, of odd lengths. Ivory Flakes has full sponsorship one day, Duz has it the next, then Ivory Flakes again, etc. The TV version of the program sells three products: Ivory Soap, Duz, and Crisco. Three one-minute film commercials are scanned in each show. Two of them always feature various uses of Ivory Soap. The other minute slot is alternated between Duz and Crisco. As a brand, Duz is the only one which is on both radio and TV shows. Has P&G's operation with the two Guiding Lights set a pattern for a new brand of combined radio and TV programing? Within P&G's own tremendous broadcast campaigns, there is talk now of making similar conversions of Big Sister and Ma Perkins. Other serial sponsors, like Lever Brothers, General Foods, Sterling Drug, have followed the operation closely. Says Producer Dave besan: "With careful planning, any radio sponsor with a good radio show can do the same thing, getting the same potential results."

This is the original theme (B&W).According to the notes Clarke Morgan wrote the theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvjF-nvC4Zs According to AWHP it ran 64-66

Glad to see others agree with me about Patrick.As for being good looking...can't see it myself. Don't know if its my personal distaste for the character or inherent in the writing,but thee were so many moments when Patrick did or said something to bring the attention back to himself. The very fact that he was there at all annoyed me.Maybe because Groff is the'star' he has to be in the thick of it. If Dom has any self respect he should take Doris' money as a loan only. Some good writing tonight.I think the show is so variable depending on the scripts.

Leonard Nimoy,who passed away a few days ago, had a soap connection.In 1963 he played Benny on GH. Benny was' a pill pusher who was getting Roy Lansing hooked.'

Re the twin story that played out with Marlena/Samantha. Indulge me in a bit of fan fic to work it into the Deidre Hall as Sandy idea. Kitty Horton,Sandy's mother discovers she is pregnant with twins (as has already occurred in the Horton genes with Addie/Mickey).Alone, vulnerable and somewhat selfish,not close to her own family or the Hortons,Kitty feels two children to bring up will be a burden. She confides to a nurse at the hospital who says she knows of a couple who want to adopt and are willing to pay $5,000. Kitty accepts,justifying in her mind that what she is doing is best for everyone. Sandt's twin,is named Samantha by her adoptive parents Frank and Martha Evans.The adoption was seen as away of saving their marriage as demanding Frank saw children as a neccesity to be seen as asuccessful husband. But that is not enough and Frank divorces Martha and leaves. Samantha is puzzled as to why her father has cut off all contact and an upset Martha reveals she was adopted and Frank feels no link to her. Samantha is devastated.Martha and Samantha struggle on but their fortunes change when Martha snags a wealthy new husband Lionel.Lionel and Martha have a daughter of their own who is lavished with love and attention. Samantha acts out ,causing much distress. When Martha suddenly dies,Samantha is cut adrift and leaves the family behind,moving on and getting into various scrapes. Flashforward to present day [1977] Samantha's old boyfriend Clint is in Salem and spots Sandy.He does some digging around and then reconnects with Samantha with news of her double,. Samantha makes contact with her aunt Ruth,Martha's sister who reveals that Martha told her that her bio mom was having twins. Samantha realizes that purely through chance she was given away and Sandy had the life she was denied.She vows to take everything Sandy has...

June 16 1975 Jo's 3rd husband Tiny Vincente dies of a heart attack.

Sept 74 - June 75 1. Match game 11.4 2. ATWT 10.7 3. AW 9.7 4 SFT 9.5 5. AMC 9.0 6 TPIR 9.0 7. TD 8.8 8. Y&R 8.5 9. Hollywood Squares 8.4 10. GH 8.3

David Bailey,who left the role of Russ on AW in June 78 filled in for Chris Bernau as Alan Spaulding in Nov 78 for a few weeks.

Ben looks like he's sharing Linda Dano's hairdo from her Gretel stint on OLTL.

He had a girlfriend who became a nun! Were people really that dumb back then? So many 60's & 70's soap heartthrobs were gay Reinholt/Crothers/DuFour etc

Hope looked so much younger than she did a few short months later.

Did Cindy Pickett always have that short haircut.I'm surprised if so as we usually have our young women with long flowing locks.Jackie was looking a little butch. Tom O'Rourke was towering over Jerry.How tall was he? Nice to see Bert,Peggy and Adam.Viewers want to see familiar faces.A lesson TPTB ignored. Both Peggy and Holly looked so plain...

Sponsor Magazine March 1963 Two disparate segments of American society -the hard- headed businessman and the soft -boiled egghead -appear to see eye to eye on at least one subject, namely the daytime television serial. Both are reportedly viewing with considerable reverence the latter -day soapers. Probers seeking a motive for the enduring affection lavished on daytime serials by national advertisers, soon learn that the latter derive Serials are adult and provocative quantity Plus circulation and as tounding viewer- loyalty from sponsoring serials. Moreover, daytime serials on television today are garnering high Nielsens. Should the trend continue, the networks will before long, offer nighttime serials. Negotiations are piesently under way. Says a top -ranking CBS TV sales executive, speaking of the enormous popularity of The Secret Storm, a Roy \\'insor product seen Mon. -Fri. (4 to 4:30 p.m. EST) , "When the advertiser hitches on to a dramatic serial such as this he's buying the most homes for his advertising dollar and at the same time getting a story that is holding audiences with missionary fervor day in and day out, a story surprisingly well written." Anti -intellectuals as well as intellectuals seen to agree that throughout today's crop of television serials runs a sleep vein of professional and more meaningful writing, acting and production values. In the case of The Secret Storm, there is sheen and polish akin to that of the Broadway theatre; in fact, all the performers in the ten -year -old stein from the Broadway stage. Notably principal players Haila Stoddard as Pauline Fuller. Marjorie Gateson as Grace Tyrell and James Vickery as Alan Dunbar. The Misses Gateson, Stoddard and Jada Rowland, who plays Amy, are members of the original cast. The Secret Storm made its television debut I February 1954 as a 15- minute serial. It was expanded to a half - hour in the summer of 1962. Carl Bixby is the present head writer. The strength of the dramatic serial is in its form, \Vinsor contends. "It is a continued story about characters whose hopes, fears, confusions, and ambitions stimulate an identifying emotional response in the viewer," he observes. "Some characters are basically good. The viewer sees such characters as an idealization of himself. In the immoral or amoral character, the viewer sees personal enemies who should be chastised. 'This very fact -good versus evil- produces conflict. Conflict- physical and emotional -is the stuff of which drama is made." \Vinsor and his colleagues maintain that The Secret Storer, for one, reflects the world in which we live, "a world recognized, we believe, by everyone who can be attracted as viewers only if there is some growth in the characters we present for their entertainment. These characters reflect this world by their present and future behavior. They are not presented as stereotyped personifications of goodness -a woman exposed periodically to evil in the person of the wicked carpetbagger. Nor do they stagnate- a Pollyanna beset with one larger- than -life problem after another yet never growing into a richer. wiser, or more productive human being." No tumors on the brain. Gone, for the most part, from today's serials are the interminable maladies and sicknesses, the endless surgical operations, the use of crutches, canes, plaster casts and surgical dressings. "There are no crutches in The Secret Storm," emphasizes William Francisco, associate producer in the \Winsor office. "There are no incurable diseases among the characters portrayed, he says triumphantly. Once in a while, a character will have a slight headache or come home exhausted. Always, there is a sense of reality about the characters." What influence, if any, do advertisers play in the story line of The Secret Storm? "None," Francisco declares, adding "they are marvelous about it." American Home Products has been a sponsor since its inception. The other- Cheseborough- Ponds, Colgate, French's Mustard, Johnson &- Johnson, Lever Brothers, Nestle, General Mills -have been associated with the program front one to fine years. The Secret Storm has been a consistent, top -rated series. The latest National Nielsens make it No. 9 among the daytime programs. Both \Vinsor and CBS TV sales point out that as a group, daytime serials reach an audience of more than four million homes per minute year -round. The daytime serial group plays to an average of 99 adult women per 1011 sets; the weekday 10 a.m. -5 p.m. program average in this respect is 85 adults per 1011 sets. In addition to The Secret Storm, (CBS TV's roster daytime serials includes As the World Turns, The Edge of Night, The Guiding Light, Love of Life and Search for Tomorrow. On NBC TV, Young Dr. Malone, after a long life fades away April, to be replaced by two new serials, Ben .Jerrod and The Doctor. ABC TV will introduce a new daytime serial, General Hospital. starting in April. What goes into the making of a 30 -minute daytime serial such as The Secret Storm? As many as 12 hours of preparation and rehearsal, not counting the actual writing and editing of scripts. Each day's activities begin in the \Vinsor office. Gloria Monty, director since its inception, meets at 9:30 a.m. with associate producer Francisco and other staffers. Miss Monty', on this occasion, might learn the program schedule for two days hence has been preempted. Emergency measures must be taken immediately. Drastic cuts and revisions in the scripts must be made plus cast calls to alert performers to the new schedules. Major problem: six sets have been built for the two day's episodes but now only three can be used. Which best represent key scenes? Ten minutes later, with the aid of a floor plan in general manager Everett Bradley's office, script changes are made and transkited into stage positions and movements for the actors involved. At 9:45 a.m. the changes are approved by \Vinsor. Thirty minutes later, Miss Monty and cast members are starting the day's rehearsal in one of the rehearsal rooms at CBS T\"s Liederkranz Hall studios. The rehearsal continues until 12:30 when there is a 30- minute break for lunch, usually a hasty sandwich and container of coffee. The intense business of the afternoon starts at 1 p.m. with "fax on camera" or "fax rehearsal" (rehearsal with facilities) in Liederkranz Hall's Studio 54. The set for the previous show has been broken and replaced with that of The Secret Storm. Miss Monty, with the aplomb and certainty of a general commanding a garrison at Kyber Pass, issues instructions (always accompanied with "please" and "thank you ") from the darkened control room. Her commands go into the headphones of cameramen, floor manager, boom man, etc. The important business of blocking on camera continues until 2:45 p.m. when there is a five- minute break followed by dress rehearsal. Overall excellence. At 4 pm. a flashing red light in front of Studio 54 signals that The Secret Storm is on the air live. And again, the vast daytime audience, from coast to coast, sits entranced. A network executive steeped in the folklore of daytime serial asked this question: "What motivates such inordinate loyalty to a program like The Secret Storm? Larya Mantles, a discerning critic writing in The Reporter summed it up succinctly when she said: "I was held ... by the over -all excellence of the acting, the ingenuity of the plotting, and a casting little short of inspired: the performers had become the people." When 4:30 p.m. rolls around, Miss Monty sings out over the intercom, "hit the filet" and "lap the credits." Ordinarily, when a job is done, workers immediately pack their kits and make their way into subways and busses. Not so with the performers in The Secret Storm. After a 15- minute break, the cast of tomorrow's episode sits clown in a drafty rehearsal hall to read through the upcoming episode. It is indeed a "new clay'' starting at 4:45 p.m., a day that ultimately ends at 6.45. In doing daytime television serials one should avoid condescension, Francisco told Sponsor. Remember, he said, "we have to take more care in keeping the people and situations real because they exist on a day -by -day basis." "In nighttime television, most of the heroes are people who travel and therefore can move from new adventure to new adventure," he continued. "Or, they are people whose occupations bring them a new situation and a new set of characters each week. Because in nighttime programs you are only seeing them once a week and because, in almost every' case, the story is more important than the characters, you don't have to deal with character background or motivation in the detail that the daily viewer expects and should be given." The consensus is that the daytime television serial is here to stay and that it has indeed "made a frontal assault on Mrs. America's imagination." But, above all, the daytime serial has proven one of the advertiser's most effective means of reaching his best customers, ac- cording to both Winsor and CBS TV executives. The next move they predict, will be the evening hour serial clone with the same rare adult skill. And sponsored, naturally

Sponsor magazine April 1958 Kitty Foyle, the only other half-hour soaper with a rating history, is far from being an audience success and there's been a recent shakeup in the stall producing the strip. The current script doctoring will modernize the story and background since it is now felt that by sticking too closely to the book, the serial had a dated quality. Despite talk to the contrary NBC says it is far from giving up on the show.It is generally felt that the half hour soapers require a lot of script revisions and molding before the successful story line is finally achieved.

First 2 weeks of March 1962 1. ATWT 12.1 2. Concentration 11.9 3. House Party 10.9 4. Password 10.3 5. The Guiding Light 10.2 6. The Price Is Right 9.7 7. Search for Tomorrow 9.5 8. Make Room for Daddy 9.5 9. Millionaire 9.5 10. NBC Daytime News (5 minute update) 8.5

AMC was first optioned by P&G and was close to airing on CBS in 65 at 10.00am.So with Bill and Agnes both working for P&G at that time ,maybe he had some input. Well anyway he got hold of the proposal somehow. Yes I'm sure you have to make arrangements to view items and have credentials eg researching for a thesis etc. Not sure anyone off the street would be given permission to view.