Love of Life Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Oh I wasn't saying you were doubting him, I was just saying that role showed me he could playing a leading man.

It seemed like his other leading man roles on soaps besides LOL weren't successful, so perhaps Rick was offbeat and Lacy tapped into that.

[DRW50]

From the October 1955 Radio TV Mirror. Daytime Diary, a synopsis of each soap. I'm not sure how far behind this was.

Vanessa Raven knows she is taking a chance when she makes a foster-home for the unfortunate little daughter of the deranged Judith Lodge, Paul Raven's first wife. But the child's need - and Van's need for a child - override caution, and Van devotes herself to helping little Carol despite the knowledge that Judith will never allow this opportunity to pass. Can Judith reassert a claim to Carol - a child she doesn't want?

Edited February 17, 2011 by CarlD2

[dc11786]

Have you seen the clip on youtube of this story? Where Judith recalls the night her father revealed her sordid story to Paul Raven. It is a very good scene. Very engaging.

[DRW50]

I had seen that episode on archive some time back but hadn't connected it to this story until you pointed it out to me. I watched again. Thanks! This was a good episode, another example of why 15 minute soaps can pack a punch. I wish that someone would invest in them again (I'm not talking about websoaps, I mean shows with more of a profile too).

Whatever happened to Judith and Carol? You'd think the show might have brought an adult Carol back when Paul returned, to help give more story.

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[dc11786]

Judith was murdered. Ben, Paul's brother featured in the clip, was the murderer, but I'm pretty sure Van stood trial.

I don't know what happened to Carol, but your synopsis suggest a good reason why she never returned: she and Van didn't seem to get along. Granted, this relationship could still have been featured. Doesn't this clip thought confirm Carol isn't Paul's child? I think that's another reason Carol fell by the wayside.

[DRW50]

I thought it said that Judith and Van didn't get along. But you're right if it wasn't his child then that might be the reason (although Van still ended up raising other kids who weren't hers by blood).

I have some "who's who in daytime" type items from the 60's and 1980, although they don't give stories, just photos of each of the cast. Do you want to see any of those? If so let me know and I can post them.

[DRW50]

From the April 1975 Daytime TV Stars. Deborah Channel's Serial Review.

A few years ago if the cancellation of Love of Life had been announced - as had been threatened and rumored for such a long time - I would have been saddened...but only because the cancellation of a show that has been around as long as this one is tragic in itself. But as for story and character interest and all the other basic values that are intrinsic to the enjoyment of a daily soap opera, the cancellation of Love of Life wouldn't have mattered a whit to me. About the kindest word I can say about the "old" Love of Life is that it was a dreary, soporific continuation of shoddy thinking and writing. The show, form its heyday in the fifties, had deteriorated into a wooden series of pretend-emotional devices meant to "hook" viewers but only succeeding in putting them to sleep.

Originally Bill and Tess Prentiss (Gene Bua and Toni Bill) were supposed to be appealing to young people with problems; by the time their individual stories had ended - I should say, had to be ended - they were crude clowns making funny faces at the camera, doing funny bits, just to jolt the show's by then understandably poor ratings. The writers had Tess and half of Rosehill believing in an ESP charlatan that anyone else with a morsel of a brain could see through. Drugs and the unbelievable young people who took them were senselessly mainlined into the story because it was fashionable, I suppose, and because no one could think of anything better to do with Van and Bruce and Stacy and Charles and Diana than to sit them down and have them worry about something topical. Until about two years ago, there was something dead about Love of Life, a show that for its first ten years had been one of the most effective and well-conceived in all of afternoon television.

If the show were canceled now it wold be a cold-blooded murder of a living, breathing work of art. Something happened to Love of Life tow years ago. All of the old yawn-filled, hack thinking was thrown out the window. The silly stories revolving around trite villains (like Bobby Mackey), murder trials (like the two ones for Tess over the death of John Randolph and then Mackey), half-baked young people and their uninteresting problems, were no longer resorted to for lack of creativity. Producer Jean Arley, director Larry Auerbach, and writer Claire Labine have put their talented heads together and come up with a show that throbs with newness and vitality. Suddenly I love Vanessa again. She's written now the way she should be written, as an old-fashioned heroine, facing each day with glistening eyes, and an ease of manner, maternal grace. Van - now - may well be bigger-than-life, more than realism could ever allow, but of course that is the concept of the old-fashioned soap heroine, and it's still an exciting concept; to provide not just a reflection of reality, but a model for it as well. Audrey Peters couldn't be more luxurious, more expansive, more gently evocative in the role of the flawless wife who is forever ready to help her friends and relatives when they are in trouble. Miss Peters reads her lines as easily as if they had merely come to her in a vision. When she comforts Bruce, or Sarah, or Cal, it is as if she fully understood all of her parameters as Earth Mother 1975. One forgets that she is an actress.

Ron Tomme wisely plays off of Miss Peters, skillfully handling the role of a man who absorbs and reflects, in male terms, the heroine's initial understanding of life. What I like about Mr. Tomme is that he manages this difficult assignment of playing leading-male-second-fiddle without, on the one hand, making Bruce seem just that - "second fiddle" - and without, on the other, making him mannered as an easy way of coping with the fact that Bruce does not originate the show's basic emotional standards. Mr. Tomme is a total professional. He never sets himself above his character - probably a real temptation for actors who deplore the old ideal of the soap opera male who receives energy only from the woman he loves - yet never gives himself less than his full share of life and passion.

The stories that Jean Arley and her writers have chosen to encircle Van and Bruce with have of late been top rate, even if all of the old methods and devices haven't been totally rubbed out of the scenario. Kate Swanson finally became interesting - not because of the plotting involving the character, which was emmeshed in the ol' who-made-her-pregnant-and-who-will-she-finally-marry soap storywheel, but because of Kate Swanson herself. The combination of Sally Stark's video appeal and the writing, especially in the last year or so, exhibiting Kate's very believable courage in the face of desperate heartache and happenstance, was the real turn on. (Compare the deft handling of Kate's courage with the poor handling of Tess's before the latter character was written off...despite Toni Bull's beautiful acting job right after Bill's death: an example of how writing can make or break a show.) And Meg Harper's return to the program was a stroke of genius on management's part. It is a delight to see a twenty-year-old concept still working as well today as when it was introduced: the interesting, somewhat immoral, somewhat pathetic, and always fascinating sister alter-ego, vs. good, wise, and love-giving Van. Not all stories have to be complicated, and the old simple idea that Love of Life had of two sisters in moral combat, striving rivalrously for the possession of the souls of the younger relatives (all Meg's children, by the way), still works today. Meg is now written with a bit more wisdom and self-deprecation than seventeen years ago, when the character left the show, which is right on target, for the old Meg certainly would have developed along those lines. Tudi Wiggins does a heck of a job in interpreting Meg's intricate dialogue-pattern and ever-elaborate reactions to the hurlyburly that she helps create around her. Miss Wiggins plows through all the words (well-written ones, to be sure) and all of the seemingly congested characteristics, and goes right to the heart of Meg's true simplicity.

There are a number of talented young actors who have been introduced into a whole pattern of "young" story liens that really do work this time around (again, the writing makes the difference). I won't attempt to deal with them individually here, except to say that they are all, at the very least, competent, and obviously inspired by the show's new values. The sexual problems that are being introduced into the story, partly via these young characters, are delicately and tastefully handled.

Diane Rousseau acts her heart out as Diana Lamont - a woman forever torn by loyalties - and gives, on Love of Life, some of the finest individual performances involving tears and high-strung emotions that I have ever witnessed on a daytime serial. (Her only equals, in this genre of acting on serials at the moment, are Kathryn Hays of As the World Turns, Millette Alexander on The Guiding Light, and Ann Williams on Search for Tomorrow). Jonathan Moore, her co-star as Charles Lamont, has a provocative manner. His Errol Flynn looks and John Barrymore line-delivery are one of the show's staples that I hope never changes.

This recent successful renovation of Love of Life is the result of a felicitous combination of, finally, the right people in managerial positions, including head writers (it always takes a good producer to know what to do with a good writer), and talented actors (who have really, always been around on this show). This miraculous transformation of a once worn-out daytime serial into something as meaningful and provocative as today's headlines is the comeuppance for all of those people who claimed that there was absolutely no way to salvage once-brilliant shows like The Secret Storm and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. Such shows, too, might have been restored, for it usually takes not an ax to revitalize an afternoon television dramatic timespot, but new fingers wielding new pens, and new and less cynical network minds.

[Paul Raven]

Great article and insight into long ago soap times-although the writer might need a new creative team as well.Did people really write like that in the 70's?

The underlying truths in this article still apply today-dynamic producing and writing teams who understand soaps.

[DRW50]

This one does seem a bit more florid in writing style than a few of the other reviews in the magazine.

I loved that she said this proved canceled soaps could have been saved. That's how I often feel - that people just write these shows off instead of working hard to save them. Some might say that LOL was ultimately doomed anyway, but it got 5-6 more years, and might have had even more if not for the writing changes and the timeslot issues.

A lot of what is said is here reminds me of the whole idea that a show is better off without supercouples - I wonder if that was true when the Buas left LOL.

I'd love to see this Felicia character.

[DRW50]

From the December 1954 and January 1955 issues of TV Radio Mirror.

Never was a wedding more clouded over by ominous thoughts than that of Vanessa to Paul Raven. Even Van found it hard to forget the unknown secret of Paul's past, though she had determined not to let it come between them. Will the day come when she must forget that decision? Will the curiosity of her sister Meg make that day come even sooner than it had to?

Can a bride ever forgive her husband for allowing business to break up their honeymoon? Vanessa might be able to if she did not suspect that Paul's sudden return to his home town had something to do with his first wife. What will she do when she discovers what Judith really intends to do - and how much power can she put behind the effort? Will the vicious Judith get unexpected help from Van's sister Meg?

[DRW50]

saynotoursoap made this video a few years ago. I don't know how I missed it. It's just beautifully put together, very moving. I wish I could see those last opening credits - they look incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxIP8MRAyA&feature=related

[Sapounopera]

And the music theme is one of the best soap themes ever

[Paul Raven]

Edited May 16, 2011 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

You can see a few seconds of Love of Life at the end of this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3mCMOIY1PU

[Paul Raven]

Charles and Diana Lamont