Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[Broderick]

Poppy was Eddie Lorimar's secretary (seems like).  Eddie was a film noir gangster-type, and she was his film noir ditsy secretary.  When that section of the story concluded, it became evident Poppy was merely putting on a "ditz act" and was really a lot smarter than we'd previously believed.  But suddenly she was buying Sid's Tavern with Mitzi (who really WAS a ditz, and it was just kind of a ditz overload.)  

 

Eliot Dorn wasn't the "bad guy", in the re-written version of the storyline that aired on TV.  Eliot was merely the charismatic "front man" for the group.  The villain was a character named "Cody", who'd been instructing the mentally-challenged big guy (Albert) to drown the kids who defected from the group.  Ultimately, Albert (who was as dumb as a rock) realized Cody had been tricking him into killing people without Eliot's permission, and Albert drowned Cody in revenge.  That was the end of both Albert and Cody, and it was the abrupt ending of the story. 

The only characters salvaged from the hastily rewritten scripts were Eliot Dorn himself and Star Wilson, who ultimately married Calvin Stoner.   

I thought the story was interesting from Day One.  If I remember right, it initially surrounded April and Draper (which was the case with most of the stories between 1978 and 1981).  April was about to go to trial for killing her sister-in-law, Denise Cavanaugh (whom April hadn't killed, of course).  April was worried half to death about the upcoming trial.  Meanwhile, Raven Jamison got pregnant, and her husband Kevin couldn't possibly be the father, as Kevin was sterile.  The real father was Logan Swift.  But as she always did, Raven decided to lie about the paternity of the baby.  She told April that Draper  was the father of her baby.  Since April was aware that Draper and Raven had previously been in a relationship, April believed Raven's lies.  April was worried sick about the upcoming trial and about Draper's "impending fatherhood", so she just ran away.  Vanished. 

A body was pulled from the Monticello River.  The body had been in the water for several days and was decomposing.  It was the body of a young blonde girl, who was about April's size.  For several days, it appeared the dead body might be April.  Calvin Stoner and Steve Guthrie thought it was. 

Miles Cavanaugh went to the morgue to identify the body, as he didn't want Draper to know that April might be dead.  Turned out the body wasn't April's -- it had a weird tattoo on the shoulder, a cross with a circle around it.  The police were familiar with the tattoo, because some other young people had been fished from bodies of water with the same tattoo on their shoulders.  The police suspected everyone with the tattoo had something in common, which of course ultimately turned out to be that they were members of Children of the Earth, and they'd defected, leading to their drowning.     

[Soaplovers]

From watching the episodes, I would have kept Poppy and written out Mitzi.  Poppy seemed like she had more potential.

And I know when the actress playing Poppy was on the Locher episode..she said she found one day that the voice she had used for Poppy would be fake..and had to figure out what Poppy's 'real voice' would be. 

[danfling]

Was Joanie Collier ever a member of the cult?

[Broderick]

Yes, she was all up in the middle of it.  

My recollection is Joanie was the on-again/off-again girlfriend of Cody Patrick.  

During 99% of the story, I was under the impression Eliot Dorn was the "leader" of the group, while Cody Patrick, Joanie Collier, and Star Wilson comprised Eliot's "inner circle" of underlings.

But when the storyline abruptly wrapped-up, we discovered the opposite was actually true -- Cody was the real leader, Eliot Dorn was merely an itinerant showman working as a recruiter in exchange for money and celebrity, and Eliot, Joanie & Star were blissfully ignorant of the murders being committed.  

The premise of the story was that if you joined the Children of the Earth and subsequently defected, the other members would recite "the killing prayer" and expel you.  Anyone who'd had "the killing prayer" recited over them would ultimately "commit suicide", feeling cut-off from the other Children of the Earth.  Except it wasn't really suicide.  Cody had convinced the big dimwitted boy (Albert) that Eliot Dorn wanted all the defectors drowned.  Eliot Dorn was completely ignorant of all this.  Cody was tricking Albert into drowning the defectors, as Albert was extremely loyal to Eliot Dorn and was willing to do whatever he believed Eliot had instructed.

Some of the defectors were drowned in Monticello (where the recruiting occurred), and others were drowned up in Graham County (or wherever the Children of the Earth farm was located).  

Deborah Saxon appeared to join the group after Tony Saxon's death.  She resigned from the police force, befriended Star and Joanie, and seemed to be hypnotized by the charms of Eliot Dorn.  But it turned out Deborah was merely gathering information for Chief Marceau, and Deborah's resignation from the police force was a hoax planned by Deborah in conjunction with Bill Marceau.

Joannie Collier discovered that Deborah wasn't a "real" member, and Joannie blabbed the revelation to Cody. 

Cody then instructed Joanie to give Deborah a sedative, which knocked Deborah out.  Cody had "the killing prayer" recited, and then sent for big dumb Albert.  Cody lied to Albert that Eliot Dorn wanted Deborah drowned.

That was the event that concluded the hastily truncated story.  With help from Eliot Dorn and Joanie, Steve Guthrie and Calvin were able to save Deborah from the drowning. 

[Anyone who was alive in November of 1978 realizes this story had to be stopped immediately.  Henry Slesar was writing this story for an American audience, and overnight 900 Americans died in a situation exactly like this storyline.   The California-based Peoples Temple in Guyana was a farming commune; the Children of the Earth was a farming commune.  Peoples Temple was headed by a charismatic leader; Children of the Earth was headed by a charismatic leader.  Defectors from Peoples Temple were cut-off by the remaining members; defectors from Children of the Earth were cut-off by the remaining members.  The method of death at Peoples Temple was suicide; the method of death at Children of the Earth was suicide.  It was the worst possible time for this storyline to be airing.  I believe Eliot Dorn was likely intended to be the "real leader" of Children of the Earth, but Henry Slesar abruptly shifted the power to Cody, to downplay the similarities of Eliot Dorn and Jim Jones.  Eliot, meanwhile, had arranged to do a television interview with Margo Huntington at WMON, which conveniently shifted Eliot Dorn into a different sphere, shaking the dust off this doomed and untimely storyline.]   

[Vee]

That's a fascinating recollection of the cult storyline, thank you. I'd always been curious about it. It was very topical for the time given the ongoing controversy over Jim Jones and other cult movements like the Peoples Temple in that era, but unfortunately it ended up being too topical given what subsequently happened at Jonestown. You can't fault them for dropping it at all, but in another time and place it could've gone far further story-wise.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Vee

[RavenWhitney]

My recollection was that Mike went blind sometime the next year and didn't he get Joanie's corneas? Also, after reading that excellent plot summary, it was merciful that Henry pulled the plug on it early.  It does seem that he repurposed some of the structure for the Paige Madison gun running plot. Similarities.....

[NothinButAttitude]

Question--so the EON cult story predates the actual Jonestown incident by months? 

[Broderick]

I'm not pretending to be an authority on any of this.  I was just a schoolboy.  But If I remember right, Mike Karr was blind during the Children of the Earth storyline, and there was a dying man who was willing to give Mike his corneas, provided Mike would rescue the dying man's daughter (Diane or Diana) from Children of the Earth.  Mike ended up with the dying man's eyes, as the girl (Diane or Diana) was ready to get the hell out of Children of the Earth.  

There was much discussion surrounding what was going with the money generated from the Children of the Earth farm.  I suspect  it was Henry Slesar's intent to have Eliot and Cody subvert the money into illegal arms.  But that's not what happened on TV.  As the show actually aired, we found out Eliot and Cody were drawing big salaries, and that's where the money was.  The illegal arms aspect was postponed till 1979, when it could be done by the "Tobias Gang" that Paige Madison was running with.  (If Slesar had planned to use the illegal arms in conjunction with Children of the Earth, he would've drawn even MORE ire, as Jim Jones was sending suitcases full of cash to the Communist party during the height of the Cold War, and this similarity would've really upset viewers.)  

Yes.  Henry Slesar had outlined the Children of the Earth storyline in very early 1978 (according to Slesar).  He spent months getting all of his storyline pieces in place.  Then there was the process of casting, writing the actual scripts, and taping.  The first body -- the one initially believed to be April Scott -- was found in early October(?) of 1978.  The story took-off from there, and was in full swing by November of 1978.

In November of 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan of California started getting multiple letters and calls from Californians, concerned about their family members who were living on the farm in Guyana.  Congressman Ryan made a "fact-finding trip" to Guyana in mid-November.  Congressman Ryan was murdered by the Peoples Temple on 11/18/1978, and 900 other Americans died in Guyana that night.  On the morning of November 19, 1978, people all over the world woke up to newspaper and TV accounts of the carnage. 

"Edge" aired after school.  Kids (like me) were coming home from school and watching the exact same scenario occurring on an afternoon crime show.  Obviously the Edge storyline had been taped weeks earlier, written weeks earlier than that, and outlined months earlier than that.  But there it was, playing on TV, while the families of the deceased were grieving over their loss.  Outraged viewers were calling ABC and P&G demanding that the show be pulled.  (They seemed to be under the foolish impression the scripts were being written in real-time, rather than months earlier.)  Slesar had no choice but to close it down as quickly as possible and move on.  It was probably the most unfortunate timing of any storyline ever on TV, up to that point. 

Visualize, if you will, a daily crime show writer plotting a storyline, in early 2001, about fictional terrorists crashing airplanes into towers.  He writes the scripts, casts the actors, tapes the episodes, and then it begins airing on television or about 9/11/2001.  That's what happened with Children of the Earth.    

 

[NothinButAttitude]

Thank you for answering my question! And wow! Talk about weird circumstances. Much like the weird circumstances of AW having Iris tape her ex-husband years earlier prior to Watergate. But that just shows how soaps were so in the pulse back then. 

 

Does anyone know if any of those episode survived and are in rotation? I would really like to see some Children of the Earth episodes.

[Broderick]

Yes, soaps were very topical and fresh in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Today, they're like lumbering dinosaurs from another era, with very little similarity to real-life.  

Slesar claims he'd never heard of Jim Jones when he outlined the storyline.  And I tend to believe him.  The Peoples Temple, to the general public, was simply a group of socialist-leaning individuals who'd left California about 1974 for the "verdant rain forest" of Guyana, and for all anyone knew, they were happy as clams down there.  Congressman Leo Ryan and his staff knew there was some dissention in Guyana, but I doubt they were calling Henry Slesar and discussing it with him.  Slesar simply used his layman's knowledge of cults, along with his expertise in mystery storytelling, to craft a tale about a similar group.  If his storyline had aired a year earlier, it would've been seen as "outlandish".  (Nothing like that could ever happen in real life!) If his storyline had aired a year later, it would've served as a public service warning of relying too heavily on a charismatic leader.  But unfortunately for Slesar, it aired at a time when the wounds of loss were shocking and deep, and it appeared to those who didn't understand serialized drama, that ABC was trying to capitalize on one of the most tragic events of the 1970s. 

I'm sure some of the actors involved in the storyline have tapes of their performance.  To my knowledge, none have yet appeared in circulation.  (This was at the very tail-end of P&G's practice of "wiping" tapes for future use, so the readily available episodes of Edge in circulation commence shortly after the conclusion of Children of the Earth.)  

[Vee]

I was a far too intrigued student of the Jonestown case for a few years. There were definitely press stories in the mix about Jones and the Peoples [sic] Temple for a large portion of the '70s - mostly in local press in San Francisco, CA, etc. and at one point they even had Rosalynn Carter's ear. It was a cause célèbre, Jim Jones was a flamboyant public figure so I would not be shocked by Slesar knowing of him. The Peoples Temple had a sophisticated PR apparatus and propaganda machine, and had garnered positive coverage and very public relationships with major California politicians for most of their existence despite IIRC clashing with other government agencies over their tax status and the growing suspicions re: ex-members, families, etc. In the later years the repeated rumors, whispers, and so on from concerned families, outcasts and various agencies finally began to drag them down with some more incisive press coverage, and that's when Jones moved the bulk of the Temple to Guyana in '77 (the settlement existed years before then, but the mass migration came late). A little over a year later, the massacre followed.

This came close to happening at OLTL, where they had to very hastily scrap and reshoot what I presume was already-filmed material with Todd and Blair's plane crashing in Mexico the week of 9/11. They did it again in 2007 because of Dena Higley's planned school shooter storyline with Jonathan Groff following the Virginia Tech shootings. Sadly, in '07 those kind of shooters still seemed like a relative novelty.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Vee

[Broderick]

Could be right, Vee.  Slesar could've certainly heard of him!  There were several situations developing during that time frame -- movie and TV stars were revealing they were Scientologists (which was a "suspect organization" among some people), there was an outfit called "Heaven's Gate" in San Diego that was getting some attention, and multiple others.   I recall that after the events of November 1978, there were a number of novels published about cults, and Y&R even tried its hand at a fairly "benign" cult in the summer of 1980.  Slesar's timing, though -- yikes!

I don't want to turn this into a "cult thread", but I hope you've seen the video footage of Leo Ryan's visit to Jonestown.  It's chilling to realize all of the people in this NBC News clip would literally die within 24 hours of the filming: 

 

[Vee]

Oh yeah, I've seen it. (I can't listen to longer than maybe a minute of the death tape from the following day)

There was going to be either a HBO TV treatment of Tim Reiterman's excellent Jonestown expose Raven (a must-read for anyone interested in the case) a few years ago from Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad - Reiterman was one of the journalists who covered the Peoples Temple heavily in SF before heading to Guyana with the rest of Ryan's group and taking several bullets for his trouble. Amazingly he survived. The Raven project seems to have been derailed, but last I heard Leonardo DiCaprio had snapped up a Jim Jones feature script last year and planned to play Jones himself. We'll see what happens. But we're way off-track, lol.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Vee

[bboy875]

Thanks so much for all this info! And now that you mention it I vaguely remember the 1 on Y&R? I was 8 and might misremember but did it end with money falling out of a briefcase in front of members and that's how they found out the leader was a fraud? I have a whole lot of reading to do and hope it jogs my memory 

[Broderick]

Seems like on Y&R, the Asian lady (Sumiko?) who ran the New World commune was escaping with suitcases full of money, while Paul Williams was running around trying to save Peggy Brooks (who'd taken the "Deborah Saxon role" as the "fake member") from the rat-infested storage shed.  Peggy was representing the Y&R newspaper, while Deborah Saxon on Edge was working for the Monticello Police Department.