Yay, another episode of my favorite 50s soap! Thanks for the tag, @DRW50!!

Every time a new episode turns up, I just have to go back and watch all of them in order so that I can see the new one in its proper chronology. We’ve already seen Ellie gushing about her and Alex’s Bermuda honeymoon, and now we have a little piece of the drama leading up to their wedding. Plus, we now have a bridge between Van getting the phone call about Meg’s accident and bitchy, irritable wheelchair-bound Meg. It’s so nice to see a scene where she is loving toward her sister!

If we’re destined to keep getting stuff from this era, I hope we can finally get a glimpse of the Dale parents.

One of the great things about having access to so many episodes from one stretch of a few months is that you can really get to know the other characters besides Van and Meg. Ellie is wonderful, and her presence helps us see another side of Van. Van may be the “good” sister, but she’s not naive or driven by fickle emotions the way Ellie is.

I also wanna see more of that queen Evans.

Edited November 2, 2025Nov 2 by All My Shadows

Soap Report Jon Michael Reed April 29 1979

NEW YORK - CBS's "Love of Life" has undergone many creative changes since last fall when new producer Cathy Abbi spruced up the visual look of the show with dynamic stunning sets and costumes. But a beautiful environment does got a good soap opera make. The story, under headwriter Jean Holloway, has gone to the dogs. The prime focus centers on a ridiculous story about locating Bambi Brewster's parents. At first, since the girl was in critical condition, the search seemed logical. Now that she has recovered and not expressed the least bit of interest in her boss Ray Slater's locating her family, motivation and reason has flown out the "'Love of Life story window.

AND, HAS ANYONE out there in videoland been able to make sense out of the horde of various characters bearing the Brewster name that Ray contacted in Des Moines, where half the.town of Rosehill has journeyed to join Ray in the dismal hunt? The story's core characters have been left in limbo, meanwhile, with absolutely nothing.' Love of Life's" doldrums may be reversed, however, when yet anothér new headwriter Ann Marcus takes over the writing helm. . Marcus was in charge of Days of Our Lives story till last fall. Prior to that she had co-created "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, even earlier had scripted 'Search for Tomorrow." Her expertise hopefully will bring "'Loveof Life" out of the pits.

Can someone give us info on the way Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer turned this show around?

I am fascinated by their work and would like to get some details about it. Any similarities with their other soaps?

2 minutes ago, Sapounopera said:

Can someone give us info on the way Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer turned this show around?

I am fascinated by their work and would like to get some details about it. Any similarities with their other soaps?

The biggest identifiable thing they did was to mine the show's past, and bring back Van's sister and nephew, who had been major characters in the 1950s. Aside from that, they were generally better writers than the previous folks. When Labine came on board, LOL became compelling, and I did not want to miss an episode. Sadly, when Labine left, the show almost immediately went down-hill and became a boring predictable mess.

15 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

The biggest identifiable thing they did was to mine the show's past, and bring back Van's sister and nephew, who had been major characters in the 1950s. Aside from that, they were generally better writers than the previous folks. When Labine came on board, LOL became compelling, and I did not want to miss an episode. Sadly, when Labine left, the show almost immediately went down-hill and became a boring predictable mess.

Thank you so much for your answer. So I guess LOL was a small-town soap, right? How was Labine with that? I always think of her as a city soap writer.
Do you remember any of her stories?

15 minutes ago, Sapounopera said:

Thank you so much for your answer. So I guess LOL was a small-town soap, right? How was Labine with that? I always think of her as a city soap writer.
Do you remember any of her stories?

Well, in the mid-1970s, most soap cities were still small towns. Most didn't morph into major cities until the 1980s. And Labine seemed fine with that.

I don't remember a lot of details about her plots. There was one about the crooked Mayor of Rosehill who had married Van's sister, Meg. Another about a man married to two women (or about to marry a woman, while still married to his former wife), and another about an middle-aged married woman having an affair with a much younger man. I don't recall much similarity to what she wrote on Ryan's Hope -- other than simply good compelling characters and plots.

Labine had watched Love of Life in the late 1950s/early 1960s when she was nursing her babies so she had a working knowledge of the show. I cannot remember if she specifially watched the period where Meg was present, but based on the available dates of birth for Eleanor and Matthew, I think that it's unlikely unless Labine had been watching longer than she claimed. She would have been watching in the early Rosehill period.

Prior to Labine and Mayer's arrival at Love of Life there had been some creative upheaval. The show had spent several years on two or three storylines that had either come to a close or never completely sparked the audiences interest. Vanessa Sterling, the show's central mature female lead, learned that her first husband, Paul Raven, was alive and living his life as attorney Matt Corby, which led to a series of complications involving both of their new spouses (Bruce Sterling and nasty Southern anatognist Evelyn Corby). If I remember correctly, the story ended when Matt/Paul was revealled to be Evelyn's murderer.

In the other really big story, singer Bill Prentiss (the son of the Sterlings neighbor) and his love Tess Krakauer overcame a series of obstacles to be together (including being accused of murdering Tess' husband, John Randolph). Bill got sick with a blood disease and died leaving Tess to raise their son on her own. Tess ended up being duped by a phony psychic who claimed he could communicate with Bill and there was something about a song that Bill wrote that was being published. The fan reaction wasn't great from what I've read.

There was also a story involving Kate Swanson, a singer, in love with an uppercrust doctor, Dr. Dan Phillips, and was pursued by Rick Latimer, Brue Sterling's son-in-law. A Who's the Daddy occured with Nurse Candy Love, who liked Dan, changing the baby's blood type so it looked like Rick was the father of the baby and that Candy could have Dan for herself. Dan's elitist mother Lavinia Phillips also didn't approve of the lounge singer as a potential daughter-in-law. Eventually, the truth came out and Dan and Kate were together.

When Labine and Mayer came on, they did seem to explore some less conventional soap opera stories than what had been playing out previously. Meg returned with her family in tow, ski bum Ben who had been practically raised by Vanessa in tandem with Meg, Meg's innocent daughter Cal, and yet another ex-husband of Meg's, Eduardo Aleata. Meg became involved with the newly introduced Jeff Hart, a businessman with criminal ties runnning for mayor of Rosehill. Meg marries Jeff and Jeff wins the mayoral election making Meg the First Lady fo Rosehill. Meanwhile, Vanessa, now a reporter, began investigating the school cafeteria because her niece, Cal, said the meat tasted funny. It turns out, Jeff's cronies had been skimming money by providing the cafeteria with horse meat. Vanessa and Cal ended up locked in a freezer to keep the corruption from being exposed. In the interlude, stepsiblings David Hart and Cal Aleata were becoming romantically involved. David was a more sensitive young man than his ruthless father. As Jeff's world was crumbling, he attempted to sexually attack Cal leading David to shoot his own father dead.

Ben's story is the one that you most likely already now. Meg promised Ben his inheritance once he had been married to a proper young woman like Betsy Crawford. Ben seduced and married Betsy despite already having a wife, vampy piano player Arlene Lovett. Arlene and Ben schemed together to get Ben's inheritance while keeping quiet about Arlene and Ben's marriage. Jamie Rollins, a district attorney, started to put the pieces together so they set up Jamie to look like he slept with Arlene, to blackmail Jamie. Jamie didn't crumble to their blackmail scheme and the pictures were sent to Jamie's live in-lover Diana Lamont, an older woman had been married when they began their affair. Diana lost the baby she was carrying as a result. Jamie and Diana's situation was a bit of a the talk of the town as gossipy society matron Vivian Carlson clucked about the two living in sin at Ben and Betsy's wedding.

The Ben bigamy story is the broad outline for the Lois / Ned / Katherine story nearly 20 years later on General Hospital.

If you look at the @saynotoursoap posts early in the thread you might get a better idea than what I provided.