The First Villain and Villainess on every soapopera.....

[Andrew]

Anyone who knows who the first Villain and Villainess/Bitches on every soapopera Past and Present where.

My Guesses

Days, Julie must have been the first Villainess on Days.

Edge Of The Night, Teresa Vetter i have heard was more or less the first female villainess on any soap, Played By Rebecca Sand.

Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins, Burke Devlin.

ATWT, Susan is the only one i can think of back then.

Theresa Vetter from The Edge Of The Night

http://lavender.fortunecity.com//casino/403/teresa.html

Here is a list of the Top Ten Female Villainesses from The Edge of The Night

http://lavender.fortunecity.com//casino/403/female.html

Anyone knows the first real Villains and Villainesses/Bitches on every soap?......

[Cheap21]

Port Charles: First villian was Greg Cooper. First villianess was probably Courtney

[Sean]

Burke Devlin wasn't a villain. He was just trying to prove that Roger Collins had framed him for vehicular manslaughter. The first villains on DS were Matthew Morgan (who was the first murderous villain, anyhow, as he murdered Bill Malloy and tried to kill Victoria Winters) and Roger (to a certain extent). The first villainess was Laura Collins, a phoenix who was bent on consuming her son David in flames, put Elizabeth in a coma, and killed Dr. Peter Guthrie.

Ryan's Hope: Delia Reid Ryan was the first villainess. Mobster Nick Szabo was the first villain.

[DavidEvanSmith]

Beyond the Horizon...

First Villain

Heinrich "Henry" Von Stadt

Sebastian Roché

First Villainess

Hatteras "Hattie" Wilson

Kate Collins

[dm.]

On SuBe... Annie Douglas... followed by Virginia Harrison. Ummm, those good old days...

[sheilaforever]

On B&B Stephanie and Bill.

Not as classic villains but strong-willed manipulative parents. Some might argue this is the norm. LOL

[SteveFrame]

I believe the first long term villian on any soap debuted in 1951 - 5 years before EON ever debuted. That was Meg Dale Harper on Love of Life. She was a real bad girl

Also Irene Barron would have been sort of a villianess. She made life a living hell for Joanne Barron in the first few years of Search For Tommorrow.

The first real villians would have been the mobsters that got involved with Meg on Love of Life in 1951 and 1952.

Then there would have been Harry Lane who was a big time villian on The Edge of Night in 1956.

The first really popular villianess was Claire Bannister Steele portrayed by Lesley Woods on Young Doctor Malone in 1958.

But no villianess was more popular than the debut of Lisa Miller on ATWT in 1960. Eileen Fulton became a superstar played the villianess. She is the one who made villians and villianesses popular.

As far as first ones on the 8 current shows and some other big shows:

AMC: Erica Kane and Phoebe Tyler were the first two villians/villianesses of the show

AW: Liz Matthews - a real lady to be reckoned with

ATWT: Lisa Miller Hughes was the first. The first real villian was most likely Michael Shea in the late 60's.

B&B: Stephanie of course

Days: Julie Olson and Kitty Horton

The Doctors: Kurt Van Allen

GH: Phil Brewer

GL: probably the guy that tried to steal Sara McIntyre's money in the late 60's or early 70's. Sorry I forgot his name.

OLTL: Dorian Cramer Lord, Victor Lord

Y&R: Katherine Chancellor & Jill Foster

[Dr. Jay S.W.]

I was waiting for you Steve. I knew you'd hold it down with a detailed list that kicks everyone elses ass.

[Khan]

IA. It's a good list, SteveFrame, but I hesitate labelling Erica and Lisa "villainesses". Anti-heroines? Definitely. Villainesses? I don't know.

Lee Gantry. But I think the argument could be made that Charlotte Waring Bauer, who came before Lee, was GL's first villainess.

[SteveFrame]

They were villianesses in every sense of the word that Rachel or Julie were. They were conniving, ruthless, etc. just like any other villian or villianess of the day. Lisa was so hated by fans that they walk up on her in the streets and spit on her. One lady walked up on her and began hitting her with her purse. She eventually had to hire a body guard to travel with her for a few years.

As to the GL thing, I could not remember when Charlotte Waring came on. For some reason I was thinking in my mind she came after the Gantry guy (thanks for supplying his name).

[Khan]

Most fans rooted for them, though, in spite of themselves (same goes for Julie, although I'm a bit on-the-fence about Rachel). IMO, that's what separates the anti-heroines like Erica and Lisa from the more...garden-variety, arch villainesses, like GL's Annie Dutton, or AMC's Janet Green (the Kate Collins version of her, that is).

[juniorz1]

SANTA BARBARA

First Villainess- Gina Capwell

First Villain- Kirk Cranston

[SteveFrame]

If you use that as a guideline then most of the villians today you would have to categorize as anti-heroes and heroines.

Fans today root for Stefano DiMera, Todd Manning, and so many others that are out and out villians.

As I said in my commentary Lisa was the first villianess to make villians popular. After that many of the villians/villianesses became popular with fans, but it didn't change the fact they were villians or villianesses.

And Julie was not all that popular until she began to change in finding love with Doug - that was around 1970. Susan Martin and Laura Spencer Horton were the 2 most popular on Days before that.

Here are definitions of both:

Anti-hero – Not necessarily a villain, an anti-hero is a character with villainous or generally negative behaviour and often advances selfish or ignoble goals but most often fights alongside the "good guys" or is considered a protagonist. The anti-hero may violate the law or the prevailing social standards, but may nevertheless have the audience's sympathy (and may be or become good-hearted). Sometimes, they may be heroes with noble goals but have villain-like or uncouth personal qualities. Often considered "grey" characters due to their moral ambiguity. Although the anti-hero may be the protagonist of the story, they generally show traits which are in contrast to those of the traditional hero, such as cowardice or greed.

A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether an historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the bad guy, the character who fights against the hero. A female villain is sometimes called a villainess. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.

Every definition I found for anti-hero said nothing about being popular with the audience but eliciting audience sympathy. Believe me Rachel, Julie, Erica and Lisa for many years even though popular did not elicit audience sympathy. They liked them but they did not feel sorry for them. It was not until around 1973 that Erica elicited any sympathy from audiences when she got sick after the abortion, but that was short-term. Lisa did not elicit any audience sympathy until she fell for Grant Colman and Joyce made life difficult for her. Julie's sympathy came along when they paired her with Doug and they had to fight to stay together.

I will agree with you that they were not the garden variety villianess but that was more of a credit to the writers who did not make them cardboards villians. They created special characters of them, but in the end I still think they fall into the villian category.

[Khan]

Fantastic argument, Steve! I stand corrected!

[SteveFrame]

If it came off that way I am sorry but I was trying to correct you just state my opinion on it. Sorry about that.

I think all the ones you mentioned have ranged through the years. They all started off as a villians, emerged as anti-heroines/heroes and then finally into heroine - which again was a tribute to great writing.

The sad fact is that the current round of bad writers that AMC has had in the last few years have emerged Erica back into anti-heroine mode when Agnes had pretty much moved her to heroine mode.

Back then writers worked to make distiguishable characters and not archetypes or cardboard characters. You would even see heroes like Bob Hughes have moments of weakness. But today the characters are not like that anymore.

They can't even make up their minds if they want Todd Manning to be rootable or not. One year he is played off as if we are supposed to be sorry for him and feel that he is changing and then the next year all of it is wiped away. It is sickening. They do the same thing with Carly Tenny on ATWT and Kendall & Greenlee on AMC. I say get a plan and stick with it.