They do make a striking couple. I wish more were out there.

I guess you've seen this. It's a fun little clip and seems very different for that time.

Edited September 8, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Thanks Carl - love that clip. Something about Toni (maybe her voice?) reminds me of Sharon Tate. Considering how Y&R was heralded as starting the youth movement in soaps, I think both LOL with Tess, Bill, Sally, Jamie and Kate were prominent in the late 60's and LIAMST with Mia, iris, Mark, Laura etc. were great early 20's characters in soaps.

This has a few photos I hadn't seen before. October 1976 TV Mirror salutes LOL on 25 years.

I grew up. I gained more confidence just by having lived a certain number of years, and having gone through a number of different life changes.

"Not," Ron added quickly, "that I think I've reached some sort of plateau now from which I'll never move. There is still a lot of more growth that I hope to accomplish.

"I still, for example, get irritated easily by circumstances. And, if I dislike someone, and that happens from time to time on the show as the cast changes, I find it very difficult to hide my dislike. And I do always get very impatient at rehearsals. I like to run a scene without stopping. It seems to me that a lot of actors go over and over lines because they're postponing the moment of being judged. Well, I'm ready to be judged - I have no qualms or fears about my acting, or apprehensions about learning my lines. All the other actors hate my guts because I'm such a quick study and learn the script so quickly. One of the reasons for that is that I get it away right after rehearsal."

"Oh, no," I mockingly moaned, "were you the sort of kid who got all his homework done on Friday afternoon, right after school was over?"

The actor chuckled. "Exactly," he answered, "I'd practically run home from school to get it over with and have the weekend to play. I suppose I'm still like that now. When I have something to do I want to do it quickly and get it over with. Right now, I'm painting some terrace furniture, and it's turning into a really unpleasant task because I tried to do something in one day that should have taken much longer. I find that I get caught up in whatever it is that I happen to be doing. I'm even trying to pace down my jogging. I was going out every single day and running for long periods of time, and it was becoming too much o f a good thing."

When the telephone momentarily interrupted our conversation, I asked Ron if he'd mind if I took a look at the terrace he had mentioned before. My gracious host nodded assent, and I peeked out onto one of the most magnificent views in Manhattan. Ron's bachelor, one-bedroom apartment faces the sweeping East River. The apartment itself is furnished in quietly exquisite good taste. some fine antique pieces add an air of unpretentious prosperity.

"I don't aspire to great wealth," Ron said earnestly as he returned to the living room and I confided my admiration of his way of life. "I've never looked at wealthy people and envied them," he continued. "When I first tried out for the role of Bruce Sterling," Ron reminisced drily, "the producers promised me, 'You'll get fat and rich playing this part.' Well, I've gotten neither," the decidedly thin actor smiled, "and that's fine with me."

What Ron has gotten from his long-running starring role on Love is the feeling that he is "tremendously fortunate. Short of superstardom of some sort, I can't imagine a better life. I can't think of anything else I want.

"Where else in this industry can an actor have the sense of security a daytime actor has?" Ron asks rhetorically. "Such a small percentage of actors are employed at one given time. And film and Broadway performers don't have the free time soap people do; after all, we don't work nights or weekends, or even every day. I think daytime television is a unique, interesting way to make a living. You can't get bored, because the scripts change, and so do the actors. And we can always do other things.

"My role has given me security. I was never one to pay the price on speculation; to pick up and move to Hollywood or whatever; so this is perfect for me. I'm not turning down any other offers, but I'm not about to abandon Bruce Sterling, either."

Ron's feelings about his career weren't always as sanguine as they are today. Born and bred in a tough neighborhood in Chicago, it's only recently that Ron has begun to respect his own choice of profession.

"I can't put my finger on why," he says reflectively, "but I went through a long period of almost being ashamed of being an actor. I wished I were a nuclear physicist or something, I suppose. The fact that I am an actor took a long time to dawn on me. Even though I've been doing it since after high school, the realization that this was going to be my life work took a long time to work its way into my consciousness. I'm finally feeling good about it after all that denial."

Not everyone in Ron's early life predicted such success for him. "My grandfather," Tomme confesses, "said that I'd wind up in the penitentiary." I asked Ron why anyone would forecast such a dire fate for him.

"There was that terrible temper of mine," Ron responded with the candor I was slowly becoming adjusted to. "And there was the fact that we lived in a really rough part of Chicago. I have three brothers, and I think it's a great credit to my mother that we all turned out relatively well.

"I remember lots of difficult times in my childhood - not just from the tough neighborhood, but also from separations we had to make from our parents. My father, who was a machinist, was in the Navy when I was young. Several times, when I was nine, and then about eleven or twelve, my mother went down South to join him, and my brothers and I were left with our grandparents in Alabama. It was miserable for me. I was very unhappy."

After graduating from Chicago's Senn High School, he accepted a scholarship to the School of Theatre Actors' Company. For the next couple of years, he learned the craft of acting. But the spectre of the Korean War heckled him, and his name was finally called up. Luckily, he says, it was Fairbanks, Alaska, and not Seoul, Korea, that he was posted to.

Although he hated the regimentation of the Service, one positive experience did come out of Ron's two-year hitch - he ended up as a very special sort of teacher. "I found myself - don't ask how - teaching multiplication to uneducated old sergeants! It was a program for enlisted men who had little formal learning, and, believe me, they learned!"

When the war ended, Ron returned to Chicago, where he acted in anything that would have him - stock, radio, commercials. He went on the road in several shows, and even though "the road was already dying by the time I got out there, I really enjoyed it. I started to feel like a real actor for the first time. Sometimes it even seemed impossible that I was earning money by doing something that was so enjoyable."

Tomme came to New York in 1956, wife in tow. His marriage lasted for eight years, but he claims that he "fought it from the first day. I was immature and unready to be married. I was twenty when we got married; I was insecure and didn't want to to be alone. That's not exactly the soundest reason for a relationship."

Ron isn't dating anyone in particular now but doesn't find the prospect of a second marriage "inconceivable." He's recognized by fans all around town, and concedes that at times that can be a pleasant way to begin a conversation with a woman. He meets women the same way other men in New York do - at parties, in stores, through introductions. But he doesn't feel driven to establish a deeply intimate relationship - "unless, of course, I find the ideal, whatever that may be."

Ron won the Bruce Sterling role in 1959. He was initially under the impression that the part was a one-day shooting - but, eighteen years later, there's still a Tomme on the Love of Life set.

"I like Bruce very much, but I had more fun playing him at the beginning. Then he was a widower with with two children, and he had just met Vanessa. The script was really a sort of steal from Rebecca, with all this beclouded mystery about the woman who was supposed to have been Bruce's former wife.

"Bruce has always been the classical soap opera male, amiable and well-meaning, but weak. He loved Vanessa, but in the beginning he could be tempted into having affairs with other women because his head could be turned so easily. Vanessa, like most soap opera females, was the stronger of the two.

"Now Bruce has become sort of a stock figure, sitting around in his mayoral responsibility. I liked it better the other way, when I'd be walking down a street after a show, and cab drivers would lean out of their taxis, shouting 'Go back to Vanessa, you fool!' Bruce hasn't been involved in that kind of story line for a long time."

But Bruce Sterling, in the person of Ronald Tomme, has become an integral part of life on Love - and that's something that makes both Tomme and all his fans extremely happy. As Love of Life celebrates its anniversary, we suggest a special slice of cake be reserved for one of its longest-lasting and most popular characters. Happy Anniversary, Ron!

If anyone wants any more specific dates - the October 1967 TV Picture Life mentions Bob Shaw (Robert J. Shaw) becoming headwriter. So that's a month or two before the publication date I guess.

Love this photo of Tess and Bill.

She looks very exotic there.

Marie Masters and Eileen Letchworth played mother and daughter Sharon and Hester.

Edited October 1, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

That's a great photo. Marie - so beautiful!

Ben,Betsy and Mia

Edited October 4, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

Betsy looks very mousy.

I still wonder if Chandler would have been best in another role, maybe a long lost son of Rick's or something.

Who were Sharon and Hester Ferris ? Didn't know Marie Masters and Eileen Letchworth were on SFT.

June 1975 TV Radio Mirror

hearts. It is with a bit of sadness for us all that Sally has left the show, but because she's got an anxious husband living in California, she had no choice. When Sally married Ron Harper (ex-Bill Prescott - Where The Heart Is) it was assumed that since he was to star in Planet of the Apes, she would then be joining him in Hollywood. But her contract had not yet expired and producers kept hoping that Ron would return to New York if the show was not a success. Well, Planet of the Apes was cancelled but Ron still did not want to return to New York.

Talking with Sally days before she headed out to her new life, she said, "I feel that the time is right for me to be out in California. In a sense, I will have to start all over again out there because no one knows me, but it won't be so bad. At least I have Ron, and we have a home, and I've got some friends."

Discussing her experiences on the soap opera, Sally said, "It's all been positive. I've grown so much on that show...and they've allowed me to discover my own acting talents. Prior to joining the soap opera I had been a musical comedy performer and I wasn't quite sure of my acting range, but doing Love of Life changed all that for me. I never really considered myself an actress before; now iI do. In some ways it's as if I've been at school.

"The show has changed somewhat since my first days. So many people have come and gone. The atmosphere has become much looser and we're all very friendly...though we don't socialize all that much after hours. Larry Auerbach, our director, has remained the constant force on our show.

"Keith Charles, Jane Hoffman and I were known as "The Three Musketeers" because we were the show's rebels, always clowning around and having a good time.

"I don't think it should be too difficult to do nighttime TV. I used to watch when Ron was doing Planet of the Apes and they had so much more time to do their work. On a soap opera there is always so much pressure to get the job done, whereas, with prime time, they seem to waste so much time."

Thinking back on it, Sally remembers her first day before the cameras on Love of Life. "I was really nervous," she explained, "but I didn't show it. Jonathan Moore said he had never seen anyone as calm. Of course, the next day I broke out in a herpes sore from all of the tension which has left a scar on me till this day."

Sally had come to Love of Live having just come back from a two week vacation in Europe. She had been starring for several years in the off-Broadway hit, Dames at Sea, and when that show closed she set off for the Continent. She wasn't back two weeks when the producers called her in on Love of Life, "so I really don't know what it's like not to be working. This will be a whole new experience for me - quite an adjustment.

"I remember when I was out in California, Ron would leave at six in the morning and I would be left in the apartment not knowing what to do with myself.

"Ron has gotten himself very involved with a trucking company and seems to be investing a lot of his time in that business. He hasn't by any means given up acting, it's just that he sort of has this business on the side."

Foremost on Sally's mind before leaving was getting her teeth in order (after all she is going to Hollywood), and selling her car. She said she really wasn't feeling anything except that a chapter of her life was indeed over and she looked forward to seeing what the new chapter would be like. If anything, she was more numb than emotional.

Of course, by her leaving, she has also led the way for Keith Charles and Jane Hoffman, her co-stars, to be written off the show. There was a farewell party for the three of them on one of their last days on the show. Jane was given a lovely necklace as a gift; Keith was given a a golf club, and Sally was given a box which jokingly contained the ashes of Dan Phillips. The party was capped with champagne and cake.

For Sally, several years of her life are over, but producers, knowing her talents and popularity, have left her character's role open, and she may reappear at any time. Perhaps, she will return, or perhaps, she'll stay in Hollywood. Whatever the outcome, one thing is for sure: three thousand miles away, in Hollywood, at 11:30 in the morning, the former daytime actress can just flick on a switch and be transported back to another time and another place. And so can we all.

Good luck Sally. We'll miss you very much.

M.J. BEVANS

She got that short lived DOOL gig in 77,but not much else. Did she and Ron divorce?