Just watched the Aug 1960 ep saynotuoursoap has posted.

Don Ettlinger was the writer (the 3rd since 1951).Only 4 main characters in the show.It was surely so much easier to write the shows back then with 1 or 2 stories and a few scenes each day. Or maybe it was harder to keep up interest for the same reasons?

Anyway,wonderful to see such a rare ep.

apparently,this was the 3rd opening the show had.

The first was the shot of the fountain outside the hotel,which can be seen in episodes on the net.

Then came a short lived opening of a flower blooming in slow motion

Then came the starry sky we saw in the ep under discussion. Does anyone know how long that lasted and what replaced it.The next opening I know of is the flowers on the windowsill from the 70's. Surely there were other openings in between?

Edited June 26, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

I do wonder about what was going on at the show at this time. This is a decided move away from the 50's episodes I've seen, which are much more full of clear "good" and "bad" characters. How did viewers adapt? What did they think of people like Barbara and Rick and did they miss Meg, or Paul? How long was this after Meg and Paul were gone? 2-3 years?

Was the older woman the one who had an evil twin? I can never remember the stories.

I have to admit that I wasn't overly enthralled with Rick and Barbara here, but I know how important Rick became later on. The older characters are the ones I was most interested in in this episode.

I'd love to see the blooming flower one.

Everything I've read over the years says that opening was used from 1960 until the show's transition to color in 1967.

I really had no clue Rick was on this early. I only know him from his appearance in that 1975 episode that was on YT years ago (that I watched on dial-up because I wanted so badly to see it). It's great to finally have something from the little transitional period the show went through in the late 50s/early 60s.

I knew he was on by the mid-60's because of the books and the story and script breakdowns I posted some pages ago from that Mary Hartman Mary Noble book, but I didn't realize he was on from 1960. That's quite a run. How many Ricks were there again?

There were 4 Ricks over the years. Interesting that he outlived all other characters from 1960 except for Van and Bruce,especially in light of the many writer chamges over those years.

Edited June 26, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

August 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

on some of Jean's own aura of softness and of ease, under the sometimes brittle exterior manner of Meg Harper.

One sign that this new personality of Meg's comes through to viewers, at times, is the change in the mail that comes to Jean. "Women no longer send such critical mail to Meg. They seem to like her better, and begin to understand her better.They admire her honesty and her realistic approach to life, even while they disapprove of many things she does. I, too, thought of her as shallow and sophisticated. Only as a woman with a complex personality, trying to find happiness but going about it in the wrong way.

"As a child," Jean explains simply, "Meg had felt rejected in comparison with her sister Vanessa, who has always been good and kind and wonderful. Meg admires Vanessa, but feels herself in competition with her sister. People instinctively love Van. They reserve judgment on Meg. Meg is the one who entered into a loveless marriage to gain the power and position and money she wanted. When the marriage didn't work out, and she lost all these things, she was more embittered than ever. Meg is essentially a lonely woman, still searching for a happy relationship with a man - with Beany, the child of her unhappy marriage - with life itself. I find her a sympathetic character to play."

Of course, people still come up to Jean on the street or in restaurants, recognizing her as the glamorous Meg Harper, and ask such questions as: "How can you be so beautiful and so mean at the same time?" Or, "Don't you get tired of being that wicked woman?" Jean enjoys this, knowing that it means she has done the part well. When she meets a new man and explains her work - "I'm a wicked woman on television" - it's flattering to her as an actress to have them show their disbelief.

"Just the same," Jean adds, "it's true that there's a bit of Meg in most women. Oh, certainly, she has that hard exterior manner at times, that coldness, but don't we all get a little that way when we're hurt? And Meg hs been hurt many, many times. I have my 'Meg moments,' too, when friends are apat to say, 'Now you're acting just like that girl you do on television!' And they're right!"

Like this exciting woman she plays, Jean herself is a completely feminine woman, loving comfortable, gracious living, loving pretty clothes and flattering hats, loving to dress up stunningly for dates and parties. "I have outgrown wanting to go to big parties. Now I prefer small groups of people. I find myself getting quite 'Meggish' and aloof with strangers, anyhow. I always did."

It's true that, with those she doesn't know well, she gets less and less like Jean McBride and more and more like Meg. "It's rather a shame, I suppose," she admits, "because I'm not really that way at all. I like people, and I like making new friends, but it seems to take me a while to feel entirely comfortable with them."

Not content to live only Meg's life - fascinating as that is - Jean has been filling her own life with interesting things: "When you get into a demanding profession as young as I did, right out of high school, without completing the education you want, you are always trying to fill in things you missed. I am going to study French this year , partly because I hope some day to go to France, and partly because I want to learn another language.

I am doing more reading than ever, trying to catch up on some of the books I have missed. I have been studying acting, trying to improve my work constantly, in Harold Clurman's and Sandy Meisner's classes for professionals. I had the experience of being in a Studio One drama. But, except for my voice, I don't think anyone recognized me either as Jean McBride or Meg Harper - which is good, of course." (It's difficult to disguise a voice like hers - throaty, sexy, fitting the personalities of both Jean and Meg. She has always suspected that her voice - and her height of five-foot-seven - kept her from being cast as an ingenue even when she was very young.)

Music was one of Jean's early interests - she studied clarinet, playing in the high school band, thinks she really got discouraged when they marched on the chilly, frozen football fields to play the school songs for dear old alma mater: "I just never was the outdoor, rugged type, although I love such games as tennis and wish I had more time for exercise. I'm not thinking of brushing up on the clarinet - not any more.But I do want to go on with a musical education."

Although this is a girl who dislikes routine of any kind, Jean is bound to a strict one because of the demands of playing a daily television role. She thinks about the fun there would be in traveling all over the world and having all kinds of new and different experiences. So far, however, her trips have been limited to vacations on the West Coast, a recent one in Nassau, and visits to Mexico - the latter since her sister Evelyn married and went there to live. Evelyn is only a year younger than Jean and - unlike Meg and Vanessa - these two sisters have always been close and companionable.

An average Jean McBride day is about like this: She gets up at 7:0, has a quick breakfast in her small apartment in a mid-town hotel, is off to the studio shortly after 8:30. It's only a brief walk from the hotel, but there are usually people who recognize her as she dashes along, and she waves quick greetings as she goes. There is rehearsal all morning, the broadcast at 12:15 (EDT), a break for lunch, and an early afternoon run-throat for the next day's show. Then she can shop and window-shop - if she hasn't fittings or interviews, or appointments with photographers - and get home to go over her script once more, relax a while and get dressed for dinner. She finds she must get to bed early most nights, except Fridays and Saturdays, when there is no show to prepare for next day and she can sleep a little later. As a popular bachelor girl, Jean never has lacked for invitations - although there seem to be recent signs that the field has narrowed down to one rather "special" person, with whom she feels at ease and therefore completely herself, with no trace of Meg's imperious ways.

Jean has really been a professional actress since she was sixteen, because that summer she worked at the famous, just recently closed Hedgerow Theater, near Philadelphia. After the Hedgerow, she could hardly wait to try her luck in New York, but her parents insisted - wisely, she knows how - that not only must she finish high school but wait for her sister Evelyn to finish, so they could go together. Jean was eighteen and Evelyn seventeen when they finally reached New York, filled modeling for a while, Evelyn to become a top-notch model until her marriage, Jean to go back to her first love, acting, within a short time, realizing that her dreams all centered in show business, getting opportunities to be in summer stock, touring with a Shubert musical, "My Romance."

Oddly enough, for such a glamorous girl, Jean was never very interesting in the subject of clothes in those early days in New York. Maybe it was because the glamour was always so apparent, anyhow - the vital, natural beauty. "Evelyn understood the importance of dressing and looking one's best, even from the beginning," she recalls. "She always looked stunning, wore her best outfit when she made the rounds for jobs. I mostly wore my second-best things, often a plain black coat which didn't really do a thing for me except keep me warm. After a while, my interest in clothes - good clothes - came as a natural development of growing more mature. Certain things are best for me - the sheath line, and the Empire line, for instance. I adore stunning cocktail dresses - the kind Meg wears - a little sexy, but in good taste. I like nice suits and casual things. I like tweeds, and in summer I like gay cottons. The only time I go in for bright colors is in warm-weather clothes - there's something about the sun that brings out the gypsy in most of us girls."

Jean has been in show business now about ten years, long enough to have learned that, while its rewards can be great, so can its sacrifices. Once she almost gave it up, when her father advised her to come back home and take a course in shorthand and typing as a second profession to fall back on. She did go back. But, before the course was finished, she got a chance to try for a scholarship in the Irvine Studio for the Theater, in New York. There was never again any question of remaining an actress.

"Of course, I am more realistic now about the acting profession," she says. "I know it means giving up many things, at least while you are getting established. I know it is hard work, constant studying, demanding of time and energy. Certainly television is all these things. But, on Love of Life, everything is made easier by our wonderful little group - our producer, Dick Dunn, our director, Larry Auerbach, a really great cats and crew. The two men I play opposite most often - Steve Gethers as Hal Craig, and Carl Betz as Collie and, for some time, Frank Milan as Alden Miller - an of course, Dick Coogan as Paul Raven, who is married to my sister Vanessa on the show - couldn't be finer.

"The mail that came in when the Hal Craig - Meg Harper romance was at its height (that's Steve and I) was sensational. Viewers seemed to recognize that this feeling Meg had for Hal was the first real emotion that had entered her life for a long time. The fact that her family could not approve their relationship, and that her involvement with this man brought great danger both to her and to them, seemed to bring out all their sympathies, probably because she went on trying to protect Hal even after she realized that this man was seriously ill - mentally ill."

Playing this complicated but always fascinating Meg Harper is a constant challenge and delight to Jean. But she wants to make sure that the other things in life don't get side-tracked too long: "Meg would be the first to say that every girl should have a satisfying, happy life of her own. I didn't feel quite so strongly about this, perhaps, the last time TV Radio Mirror interviewed me, two years ago - but I know now that this is what every girl really wants. Marriage, home life, children. Meg longs for the security and happiness that real love brings to a woman. I am hoping she will find it. That would be wonderful for Jean McBride, too!"

Whatever happened to Jean McBride??

Did her choosing to leave cause the writers to decide to shift the tone of the show,or was that decision made and Jean dismissed?

I remember the writers plans that Carl posted earlier in the thread had Meg returning in the early 60's which,of course,didn't come to pass.

I'd love to know this too. I also wonder if they considered her for returning when they brought Tudi Wiggins instead. It's odd that she has no credits after LOL, although some may just be forgotten (for instance she says she did a Studio One, which isn't in her IMDB profile).

Meg was in many ways one of the first anti-heroines on daytime. I wish we could see more of Jean's work and know what happened to her.

MMeg and Van battle over a gun!

Edited June 29, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

That gun photo is shocking for the day.

They look like Helen Hayes and Joan Crawford.

Edited June 29, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Whatever happened to Jean McBride??

Did her choosing to leave cause the writers to decide to shift the tone of the show,or was that decision made and Jean dismissed?

I remember the writers plans that Carl posted earlier in the thread had Meg returning in the early 60's which,of course,didn't come to pass.

Jean chose not to renew her contract in 1958. According to Roy Winsor, she was so identified with the role, he felt he had no choice but to write Meg out until enough time had passed for viewers to forget about Jean. Jean retired from acting to marry NY Supreme Court judge Saul Streit and raise their child. Many years later she saw Audrey Peters in a Manhattan restaurant and introduced herself to Audrey as "your sister". They had lunch together, and apparently Jean continued to have fond memories of Love of Life, even though she did not regret retiring from show business. Saul Streit died in the late 70's/early 80's. He was much older than Jean. The last I heard, she was still alive and living in Manhattan.

I'm glad Jean left on her terms, and had a happy life. I would have felt bad if she'd been written out because the show wanted to move on from Meg. In the long run she probably did them a favor, as resting the character of Meg meant she had a dynamic return in the early 70's.

Do you know if they tried to ask her back when they thought of bringing Meg back in the early 60's, or why they chose not to bring Meg back?

August 1977 Digest.

1969 pic of Ron and Audrey