ALL: History Tidbits From Some New Mags I Got

[SteveFrame]

I just got a batch (9) of new soap mags from the 70's and early 80's in the mail. I bid on these at Ebay and won the bid.

Anyway I found some interesting tidbits in them and thought I would share. It is strange how soaps thrived in the 70's and 80's (even the 50's and 60's weren't that bad). But some of the things that I found in the mags was interesting in how they were so picky about trying to instill a sense of reality into things even though at times the suffering and stuff was over the top.

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One of the mags interviews Irna Phillips. She said she required all her shows to maintain a legal and medical advisor on staff and she kept a lawyer and a doctor on retainer for herself at all times. She did not want to misinform the public on any matters pertaining to the law and medicine.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the powers that be behind shows today felt the same way. Today all they care about are telling plot driven stories that fit the circumstance or push the couple they are featuring at the moment.

She goes on to say that she never felt any character was truly good - every character she ever created had some flaws. As I referred to in my editorial awhile back - she talked about how her flawed characters had to pay for the mistakes they made. She tried to instill that same thing in her proteges too.

She also said that when she worked with other writers she oversaw or examined every script for continuity problems before it was given to the actors. I am assuming she was talking about when she was headwriter and Agnes and Bill worked with her on shows.

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Another article on The Secret Storm talks about the wardrobe.

Every female character on The Secret Storm had it's own dresser. They worked to make sure that the good female characters were dressed as the casual everyday woman was dressed. If a woman was a housewife such as Susan Ames (played by Judy Lewis) then she was dressed as a normal housewife of the day was. The article said her average outfit (usually a dress at the time) cost $50.

It says once they allowed Judy Lewis to wear one of her dresses during a scene. They received 400 letters and the CBS studio was flooded with calls after the episode aired telling them that Susan's rival would have wore that but not Susan.

Doreen Ackerman was the main wardrobe person at the time. She said that the audience wanted to see the "good girls" dressed like the girl next door. She said the audience associated high fashion with vampiness or aggressiveness and female viewers at the time did not like that. So they dressed the housewives just like an average housewife in middle America would dress - in things that they could find in their average shop in middle America.

Note: I remember another article on this same subject where a makeup artist talked about those days. I no longer have the article, but when they went to color they had to start dressing down many of the actresses as far as makeup. Certain colors of eye shadow and things were not associated with the housewife or the good girl. I think green or blue was one of them. And it seemed every actress wanted to wear that color at the time.

They paid attention to detail then. And they didn't feel they had to spend a fortune on wardrobe either. It is strange that many would think things like that wouldn't matter but they did. 400 letters and numeous calls in one day over a dress.

I loved this quote in one of the letters from a fan of The Secret Storm:

"Sure the people in The Secret Storm have more problems than anyone could really live trough. But I like that.," she said. "The troubles aren't depressing, just the opposite. They make you think your own troubles are smaller."

Typical of why soaps were so popular then. Women watched them to escape, and even the women's problems on soaps made their own problems seem small.

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I thought Rick would find this interesting:

An article in a 1984 Afternoon TV talks about Joan Crawford's appearance on The Secret Storm. IT says she had two motives in doing it (according to her).

One was to keep her daughter's job safe - as she did not want the show to replace her with a young starlet while she was in the hospital.

2nd it was for the publicity.

CBS said they couldn' afford her and Joan replied that she would do it for free. AFTRA (actor's union) would not allow that so Joan had to be paid scale which at the time was $165 per episode. They cut Joan a deal that was in accordance with AFTRA policy and she was paid $585 for 4 half-hour shows in which she had five major scenes in 4 segments.

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I thought this was interesting in The Secret Storm article before. It says KPIX in San Francisco was one of the first affiliates to cancel SS. The show left the air one day without any explanation or announcement. The next day viewers tuned in to see the show to find Mike Douglas on the air introducing Soupy Sales.

A station rep said 1 minute into Mike Douglas the phone began to rang and it didn't quit as angry viewers wanted to know what was going on with Belle and Amy. The next day they had 400 letters in their mailbox from San Francisco residents and teh calls continued.

CBS cancelled the program before KPIX was convinced to bring the show back.

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This was in a Days of OUr LIves article. I thought this was very interesting and telling of why NBC gives Days a chance but at the same time has to be frustrated with advertising dollars and stuff today.

"In 1975, its daily advertising revenues exceeded the $100,000 mark, and yet it only cost around $150,000 a week to produce."

The show was well paying for itself then. Today NBC as well as the other networks are having to give advertisers commercials on other shows for free because they are not getting their money's worth on Days or the daytime soaps.

It is sad that Days had a large cast back then too and they featured that large cast in a variety of stories too and almost all of the cast was part of a story in some way.

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IN an AMC article, it mentioned that there were 59 actors on contract with the show in 1983 and listed them. I watched the show faithfully in 1983. I looked at the cast list and there was not one of those 69 that was not used in a key way somehow.

The most minor characters on contract at the time were Peg Murray who played Olga and Amanda Bearse who played Amanda. Olga was seen often as confidante to Erica and Amanda was seen often as confidante to both Greg and Liza.

That same mag continued to talk about the size of series. In 1984 Another World had 86 featured roles with all 86 actors on contract in mid 1984.

Looking at the cast at the time there were a few I don't recall but it was interesting to note that this was during the time that AW had many black actors in the cast: Reggie Rock Blythewood (R.J.); Tisha M. Ford (Mary Sue); Morgan Freeman (Roy); Jackee Harry (Lily); Joe Morton (as Abel & his brother Leo); Petrona Paley (Quinn); Michelle Shay (Henrietta); and Sheila Spencer as Thomasina. Only one of them Mary Sue was a child and not featured a lot. The rest were.

It is sad that shows back then had many characters and writers kept them interesting and used the cast too. Today they have far less characters to work with and many of them want to even make it more narrow by just writing for 5 or 6 on the show.

Looking at the cast in 1984 of AW, I can recall the following stories that standout tha were going on:

This was when Julia was writing her novel about Sally's life, and viewers were learning that Sally was the mother of Kevin Thatcher. Aunt Liz played heavily into this story with Julia and Sally.

We were learning that Elena was the real mother of Cecile.

Steve Frame had returned to town. And the quadrangle with Steve, Alice, Mac & Rachel was hot.

Quinn had just had the affair with Henrietta's husband and he had been killed in the line of duty.

Alma Rudder had come to town to terrorize the Ewing family esp. Blaine. Jeanne Ewing killed her. Great mystery story looking back on it, but in it's day it was considered weak.

I believe this was the year of the Stacey/Jamie/Mark triangle got under way.

Stacey and Cass had not been in town long.

There were others too but those are the ones that stuck out.

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Thought this was cute. If she was on another show back then she would have been condemned forever but fans back then didn't care.

Janice Lynde commenting on Y&R during it's heydey in the 1970's:

In an interview with a UPI reporter, Janice Lynde who at the time was one of Y&R's top stars - confessed that the pained expression often seen on her face and those of her fellow players are the results of their determined efforts not to laugh at theri dialogue.

And they were reciting dialogue written by William J. Bell and his great writing team of the 70's.

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Talking about the popularity of William Grey Espy as Snapper on Y&R it went on to talk about fans not wanting to accept his replacement David Hasselhoff.

One fan wrote to David Hasselhoff: "When I see you I'd either like to regurgitate or climb up a wall."

Today the powers that be would give up and fire Hasselhoff but they didn't back then. They prodded on and finally the audience accepted Hasselhoff. A year after the letter he went to a Y&R fan gathering and was one of the biggest draws and most popular actors at the gathering.

The producers were patient and it paid off. Fans gave him a chance and he succeeded in the role even though he was never as truly popular as Espy was.

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Final thing and I will wrap up for now. This showed how successful soaps were in the 70's and 80's. This was the status of soaps in 1984.

Direct quote from Afternoon TV in an article about Y&R:

In its first year Y&R hit a 7.9 in the 18-34 women's demo which equalled about 5,700,000 households at the time. IT was not even #1 in that demo at the time. By 1984 it had risen to #1 in that demo and had the following breakdown in audience members: 72% adult women; 14% adult men; 6% teenagers; and 8% children under 12.

And the final quote about the state of all soaps in 1984:

"Soaps are a networks bread and butter, a constant warfare is being waged among th three major networks to gain control over the daytime airwaves. One of the reasons for these corporate struggles is the fact that many primetime shows lose money for their networks, who need the daytime profits to finance teh more expensive nighttime series. For example, an evening showon prime time may cost a network around $250,000 to produce, but may only bring ad revenues of a platry $200,000. In sharp contrast, an average hour long soap only costs a measly $170,000 for an entire week of 5 episodes, but the daily advertising revenues will exceed $120,000 o $600,000 a week. This is a clear 250% profit, which is nothing to sneeze at."

My note: IN essence when you think about it as stars have gained prominence and demanded more money, and as unions for the writers and directors and actors have demanded more money. Add to that inflation, the producers wanting their shares, the shows productions costs have gone way up. At the same time, ratings have plunged because the writers and actors aren't doing the jobs they once did. This has caused advertising dollars to go down.

IN essence soaps have "PRICED" themselves almost out of the business. Fans have not helped by making big stars of many of the soap stars and overexaggerated the importance of some of these stars to the show - thus allowing them to ask for bigger wages.

1984 when this statement was made and these figures were produced, there were many veterans still on the shows. More in total than there are today. And more of these vets had the biggest roles on the show and more airtime. But they didn't demand the big money of some of the vets today. And the writers did want to write for them back then too.

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Soaps back then cared about detail. They cared about characters. They didn't always give in to the public's demands even though they recognized the importance of their fans.

Jillian Houghton said in one article that she read every letter written by a fan to the show personally while she was headwriter of the show especialy when she was writing the story of Priest Mark REddin falling in love with widow, Laurie Stevens. She wanted to know what the fans were thinking but she went on with the story despite some negative feedback.

Oh how I wish we had the writers who cared about the details of stories; who cared about the characters and getting stuff right.

Oh well end of that.

[Southofnowhere]

Thanks for all that great info!

[YRBB]

I love your post. It is so very true that changing times are not solely at fault for daytime's huge fall--they're actually the smaller fault. Bad writing and no interest is what's destroyed it all.

[MarkH]

This post was an incredible gift. Thank you.