June 1971 Afternoon TV.

Liked Ron Tomme's'absurd' comment-makes a nice change from 'lovely'!

DC Your cast list is correct.Peter Gatto played Tony Alphonso.

Did the pics change to reflect cast comings and goings?

Edited August 28, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

Yeah I loved it. He seems like such a cool and modern guy in all I've read about him. I can't help wondering how many viewers at the time felt the same way he did.

It's nice to see this. All those early 1970s characters who I've heard about, but never really seen (Kate Swanson, Dr. Dan Phillips, Jamie's wife Sally). It was nice to see them. Joanna Roos looks so matronly I thought she was the actress who played Vivian Carlson. I think I'm confusing Roos with Jane Rose

It does seem a bit much given the show's storyline, but I miss this sort of pageantry that soaps have given up on. I wish soaps would financially manage themselves better so they could occassionaly do a story climax justice.

I always get the older women on the show confused.

Sally looks a little like Serena from Bewitched.

From the July 24, 1979 Digest.

November 1965 TV Radio Mirror

summers off, so she could spend the dog days with her family at the beach.

Then she decided to try television and began appearing all over the screen. "Every job I ever went for, I got," she says.

Audrey had been living home in Maplewood all this time. "Finally," she says, "my folks got sick and tired of me griping and I got to move to New York. So what happens? A few weeks later, I tore a cartilage in my knee. It was very painful; I couldn't even stand up. So I had to call home and ask if I could come back.

The torn cartilage ended Audrey's dancing career forever. Was she upset? Not particularly. Not being the career type, she just went back to sunning on the beach. Then, one day, she ran into an actor friend who'd heard about the accident. Would she like to try acting? said the friend. Nope, replied Audrey, she's rather develop her tan.

"Oh, this play is going to be performed near Princeton (also in New Jersey) and that's near a beach," said the friend - and Audrey's acting career was launched.

What Audrey likes best about playing in CBS-TV's daytime drama is that it gives her plenty of time with her young son. In 1957, her little boy Jay was born, but unhappily, two years later, Audrey and her husband separated. They are now divorced, but Jay's father lives only two blocks from Audrey's two-bedroom Manhattan apartment, and father and son see each other all the time. This summer, they spent a month in Jamaica, vacationing.

Audrey's face is almost transformed when she talks about her child. "My son is a doll," she says about her handsome blond little boy.

Jay is in the third grade in New York's United Nations school. He's not terribly involved about his mother being an actress, but every once in a while he'll announce proudly in public, "My Mommy's in television!" He occasionally watches the show and gets terribly upset if the script calls for Audrey and Lee to have a fight. "Once, I was bawling Lee out as my stepdaughter Barbara," says Audrey. "When I got home, Jay was very hurt. He'd heard me yelling on TV - and I guess he recognized the tone of my voice!"

Lee Lawson also has a little boy - but he's less than a year old, so is certainly not watching any television. His name s Christopher Boal and his father, Bill Boal, is a producer of industrial movies. The Boals live in a lovely old house in New York's Greenwich Village, though Lee hasn't seen as much of it, or her husband and baby, as shes would like. The villain has been work.

Before she left Love Of Life for Broadway's Hot September, Lee was juggling her TV series with nightly appearances in off-Broadway's The Knack. "No, my husband doesn't mind my schedule," she answers the inevitable question. "Though it was really a grind doing both the play and the TV show.

"I met my husband at a party giving by a cousin of my roommate," Lee adds. "Bless roommates, they're a girl's best friend in New York. Actually, I was with my fiance when I met my husband. I thought Bill was terribly snobby. I guess because he didn't pay any attention to me. Then I found out he hadn't slept for three days before the party. He'd been producing an off-Broadway play and hadn't had a moment to relax."

At this time, Lee was already in Love of Life (she joined the show in 1961) and though Bill Boal was too sleepy to notice her, things were different with the populace at large. "I've been getting recognized all the time since I started the show," says Lee. "I guess I'm flattered when people know me, but I don't think I really like it. Macy's is the biggest hazard. People come up to me, give me a shake and say, 'You're a bad, bad girl,' referring to the role I played on the serial."

Before she became Barbara on Life, Lee had roles in untold TV shows, plus a leading part in the radio serial, The Right to Happiness. And before that, also during, she had acting classes, dancing classes, singing classes. Also dramatic fellowships all over the place: in 1961, an ANTA fellowship to study classical acting and appear in Greek tragedies like Electra. Also a scholarship to the American Theater Wing.

Lee has been acting since she was nine years old and her pet hate would seem to be child actors. "Seventy-five percent of child actors can't act," says Lee. "They're cute and precious and that's it. I know, I've been there.

"It's very hard for a child actor to adjust to adult roles. Because then you do have to know what you're doing and you've become accustomed to just being cute. I also feel child actors seldom come from healthy family backgrounds. A mother has a full-time job with an acting son or daughter. It's almost impossible for her to spend any time with the rest of the family."

Lee herself comes from a broken home. And although what happened between her parents had nothing to do with Lee's being in show business, it is understandable that she feels pain. "My parents were divorced when I was six," she says. "My father was an electrical engineer whom I hadn't seen since he and my mother broke up. My mother had been a dancer before she married, so I guess there was always some show business in the family.

"My first acting job was in Tom Sawyer and for a while I was going to Professional Children's School. Then I got very ugly at 12, and I pretty much stopped working and started going to public schools."

Picturing red-headed, ivory-skinned, pretty little Lee as "ugly" is hard, but that's what she says and that's the way she probably saw herself. And her classmates, or, for that matter, teachers, in the Forest Hills, N.Y., school she attended, didn't make things easier.

"I appeared in some shows," she remembers, "like Gabby Hayes' TV program, so every once in a while I had to be absent from school. They were pretty mean about me being out. And, surprisingly, it was the teachers who gave me the harder time, not the kids."

Lee and her sister were both born in Forest Hills and her mother, who now works as a secretary, still lives there. As a child actress, Lee was known as "Lee Graham" ("Graham" is her mother's maiden name). Then along came another actress called "Lee Graham" and Lee switched to "Lawson."

Would she let her son be an actor? "Absolutely not," says Lee and her voice brooks no opposition. Would Audrey let hers? "Right now," Audrey smiles, "he's determined to be James Bond."

- AGNES BIRNBAUM

Edited September 5, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Bad call from Lee Lawson.Hot September never made it to Broadway-it closed after Boston tryouts.

Zina Bethune took over as Barbara and stayed till 71.Some sources say Lee returned in 70.

Does anyone know how this played out? Did Lee fill in for Zina?

Reading through a 1971 Daytime TV, they said that Lee Lawson temporarily replaced Zina Bethune as Barbara on LOL, in 1970, when Zina was ill.

I wonder if, during Bea's year or so return to GL, if Lee shared any scenes with Audrey as Sarah Shayne. It's tough to think of them in any mother/daughter relationship (even if they weren't supposed to be the same age as mother and daughter on LOL).

September 1959 TV Radio Mirror

her professional career as a dancer and, when Holiday Hotel left the air, she got a chance to dance with a group of American girls in Cannes, on the French Riviera. Johnny's work took him out to the Pacific Coast. They both got back to New York at about the same time.

From out of nowhere, he suddenly phoned. "I have to catch Bea Lillie's show tonight. Would you like to go with me" he asked. She was surprised into saying, "But why are you asking me?" And he was surprised into answering, "Frankly, because I just got back from California and couldn't think of anyone else who might like to go."

His honesty made her say yes. They began to go out together, became good friends, with no thought of anything more serious developing. At least, not on her part. He was sent to England to cover the Coronation of Elizabeth, for NBC. When he got back, he proposed to her. But why me? she thought. He never seemed to be that interested. Because I had to go that many miles away to realize I was in love with you," he answered the question almost before she could ask it. Even then, she didn't say yest to him for a while. Marriage was important, and she had to be sure.

The wedding was on February 10, 1955. Jay was born on August 12, 1957. Blond like his mother, with mischievous eyes and with dimples like his daddy's.

"The day Jay was born," says Audrey, "happened to be the same day that John quit a good agency job to go into business for himself. That took real courage. But I was with him completely. Our work jibes well. He works with actors and show-business people, is sympathetic to the demands an actress has to meet. I understand many of the problems connected with his business."

Her own family background was as one of five children brought up in the quiet town of Maplewood, New Jersey. Her father is a dentist. ";I am the only black sheep who went into show business. My older sister is married and lives in Lima, Peru. I'm the next oldest. My brother is married. And I have younger twin sisters."

Along with her older sister, Audrey was sent to dancing school at four, as so many little girls are sent to learn the social graces, with no thought of anything more far-reaching in mind. Sister didn't like dancing class. Audrey took to it right away. But when they put her in ballet class, and her unaccustomed little feet rebelled at toe practice, she clung to the bar, crying her heart out. "Get down if it's hurting you," her mother urged. "You don't have to get on your toes - you don't have to dance at all," she pointed out. "It does hurt, but I love it," the child kept insisting, the tears still flowing, persisting until she grew used to it.

During high school, when the other kids wore congregating at the local soda fountain, Audrey was over at the dancing school, working with any class that happened to be in session, helping to teach in some of them. Dancing was more fun than anything else, she had decided. So much so that, when her classmates began to talk about clothes and what they would major in, she suddenly realized she didn't ant to go.

Her parents were taken aback. All sensible girls went to college, got married, had children, and lived in the small towns where they had grown up. Their daughter wanted to go to New York and become a professional dancer.

"My father is really a sweet person," Audrey says. "He told me I could have a year of study, provided I would live at home and commute. None of this living by myself in a hotel in the big city, or even sharing an apartment with other girls. He wanted me home when I wasn't working. There was one other stipulation: If, after a year, I had no job, I was to make plans for college, like the rest of the girls my age."

At the time, all she wanted was classical ballet. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina - until she reminded herself that a ballet troupe spends most of the time on tour. Her parents would never agree to that. By late summer, the year was almost up, so she started to think about a job.

The gates just opened for her, as they have seemed to ever since. She was lucky at her first audition, a musical stage revue. "A flop show on Broadway, but I Thought it was the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most fascinating production I had ever seen. Every time I walked through the stage door, I would think And they pay me for this!

Before the show was brought into New York, there was the usual road tour. Her parents came to the train to see her off. "I was supposed to be a pro, trying so hard to act grown up - and my father was asking the stage manager to look after me! I was teased plenty, after that. But everyone was really nice and said they did look out for me."

There always seemed to be a job when she wanted it. When her friends came home from Christmas holidays, she might be glad to have time off - but, when they went back, she could always return to work. When her family went to the shore for summer for summer vacations, she could go along - but there was always a job for her in the fall. "I got spoiled by it, didn't realize how hard it could be for me if I weren't so lucky."

She has danced in six Broadway shows, including "High Button Shoes" and "Barefoot Boy With Cheek." She had offers for screen tests and turned them down because she thought of herself as a dancer, not an actress. Until one day she tore some cartilage in her knee, and it suddenly dawned on her that she wasn't equipped to do anything but dance. Doctors had said she needed an operation and might have a permanent limp. She worked with the knee and overcame any tendency to limp, but firmly resolved to study acting and combine it with dancing. She began to take instruction from drama coach Alice B. Young, decided this, too, was fun. After that, she studied with Sanford Meisner for four years and alternated between dance and drama.

She was one of the Toastettes while Ed Sullivan was still featuring them to open and close his show. Just before the group broke up, she left to be standby for Gena Rowlands, who played the part of the young girl in the Broadway play, "The Middle of the Night." Gena never missed a performance - until two weeks after Audrey had left the show, because she was pregnant with Jay.

To date, her most frightening experience was on filmed television, in her first TV part of any importance. She was supposed to be a nurse in a hospital, busy, capable, sure of herself. "At rehearsal, I worked with a doll wrapped in a blanket to look like a real infant. Nobody told me that, on camera, a live baby would be substituted. We got read to film - and in walks a real nurse, terribly efficient and sure of herself, and hands me a two-weeks-old baby. I wasn't used to young babies then, had never held one so tiny. I was afraid to breathe. The laws to protect babies and small children in show business are necessarily strict, so a stop watch would click every few seconds and the bright, hot lights would go out. I stood there, afraid to take a step for fear of tripping over a cable or some other object in the dimness.

Audrey now admits, "I felt a little the same way when I first held my own small son." When Jay was born, Audrey dropped out of everything for a while, except to fill some previous commitments to do filmed commercials. She had already played parts on many nighttime dramas and, after a while, she began to do some again. Her credits include The Verdict Is Yours, The U.S. Steel Hour, Studio One, The Jackie Gleason Show, Schlitz Playhouse.

One morning, she was down on the front walk with Jay, planning to take him to the park later. "I kept saying to myself that I was in a slump and I missed working at least part of the time. When I went upstairs, I called my agent to inquire if there was any job activity. He said there was nothing much, but later he called and told me about a change in the cast of Love of Life. I phoned personally, said I was Audrey Peters and I would like to meet them. The woman on the phone must have confused me at first with an agent by the same name, whose mail and messages often get mixed with mine. She thought I wanted to send girls over to read. But they evidently looked me up and found I was an actress blonde like Vanessa, and invited me to come over that afternoon.

"I read that day, I went back, the next day, to read again. The director of the show, Larry Auerbach, was on vacation. When he returned, I met him and he asked me to be at a camera audition. I expected to find at least five or six other girls. Instead, there was just one other actress. To be so close! I thought. But I didn't dare hope too much. By this time, I wanted it very much."

They thanked her for coming, they thanked the other girl. The audition was over. She went home, wondering. At five-thirty the next morning, she woke up, still wondering. Why am I so nervous? she thought. I didn't get the part, so forget it. It happens every day in this business. Johnny left for the office after breakfast. The telephone rang at nine-thirty. She ran to answer. It was her mother-in-law, usually a welcome call - but, this morning, Audrey cut the conversation short to keep the line open. Finally, she got under the shower - and the phone rang again. She raced out, dripping, to answer it. "You have the part," a voice rang in her ear. "You're Vanessa. Could you come over later and discuss a few things?"

"Do you mind if I bring my baby?" she had to ask. "I planned to take care of him myself today." So Jay went along, captivating everyone with a quick smile, thrilled to be taken "visiting" - but not as thrilled as his mother was!

The little boy provided unexpected excitement on the morning of Audrey's first broadcast of Love of Life. She had to leave the apartment early, for rehearsal. She had laid out the clothes she would wear, putting them in the living room so Johnny's early-morning rest wouldn't be disturbed by drawers being opened and shut, and the closet door wouldn't squeak even a tiny bit. She wasn't going to let her professional life interfere one iota with her home life and the comfort of her menfolk. Suddenly there was a loud scream from the baby's room. For the first time in his little life, he had fallen out of bed.

"My poor husband was wakened suddenly. We looked over and found he was unhurt. But I left him still pacifying a frightened little boy. I was too worried about Jay to be nervous about the show. When I got off the air, the director said, 'Now you can run home to your baby.' I didn't relax a minute until we had guards put on Jay's crib"

Since then, the two roles Audrey plays - actress and home-keeping mother - have run into no conflicts. Jay is happy with the woman who cares for him during the day. The studio is less than ten minutes by cab from the comfortable apartment where they live.

"Johnny wants me to do the thing I love to do" says Audrey. "Being in a daytime show is wonderful. Especially this one, which seems to me to be so truthful, so interesting. With a fine professional cast and crew, and excellent production and direction. "The way I feel about it now, I would like to be Vanessa until she's a grandmother!"

Edited September 8, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Wow, that AT cover yesterday with the beautiful Donna Mills/David Birney, and now this feature with the Buas. They are stunning together.