Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[DRW50]

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

at the ripe young age of twenty-two!

In love Don certainly is. "Lots of crushes in my time," he says, "three months, six months - then over. But when I met Nan, I knew what love could be."...In luck, too - although the term, as applied to the career of hardy perennial Hastings, is actually misapplied.

Don, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, April 1, 1983 - the youngest of four sons (all Dodger fans!) - made his first appearance on stage in the long-run smash hit, Life With Father. After three years of playing, successively, tow of the four children in the company - a record-breaking 1248 performances in all - Don, "fearing he would wind up portraying "Father" himself, quit the road tour at the end of the season and wound up as Uncle Chris' nephew in the stage play, "I Remember Mama."

For the next four years, child-actor Hastings appeared in a number of Broadway shows...among them, "Georgia Boy," "Dearly Beloved," "On Whitman Avenue" (which starred the late Canada Lee) and - as he was entering his fifteenth year - Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke," in which he played the hero as a boy during the ten-minute prologue....All this - and radio, too!

"I started doing radio," Don recalls, "started getting auditions at each of the major studios, when I was about twelve. Tough, too...had to bring your own material. Mine was a mishmash. I had the scripts of some of the plays I'd done. I read them over, picked out a couple of scenes I liked in each one, and sort of ran them together as one scene. Once you get started, though...not so tough. Your name gets around. You meet people. If you make some sort of an impression, they call you. I never had an agent. Except me," he smiles.

They did call Don. They kept on calling him. When he was in a play, he did radio, daytime and on Sunday nights. "I did a lot of daytime dramas," he says, "Portia Faces Life, for one, Hilltop House, and quite a few others. I used to be on the big-time radio show, Cavalcade, quite often, too. On that show, they always had a 'name' star...but the stars I worked with were just like actors without 'names.' Regulars, that is, friendly. Real friendly."

"You'd never take him for an actor," Don's pals say, "no one ever does." Don has his folks to thank for this - for being the normal, well-adjusted, well and warmly liked young man he is - and well he knows where the credit is due. "When anyone asks me who helped me the most," he says, "I always answer: 'my family more than anyone.'"

As one example of good judgement on the part of his parents: During his childhood years in the theater, young Hastings never took a curtain call. When he was on tour, his father travelled with him and as soon as Don's last line was spoken, he whisked him out of the theater and off to bed. When Don was on Broadway, his mother usually picked him up and took him home before the final curtain fell and applause summoned the cast (minus its junior member) to the footlights. "I never had footlight fever. I guess," Don laughs, "you can't have what you've never been exposed to!

"But the best thing my parents did for me was that they left most of it up to me. When a part came up for me in a play or on radio, they'd ask, 'Do you want to do this? Or do you want to stay in school and forget all about it?' If a ball game came up at school, in which I was scheduled to play - and a job was offered at the same time - they'd say, 'You play with the team, and forget about the job.'

"When I was six years old," Don reminisces, "we moved from Brooklyn to St. Albans, Long Island, in St. ALbans. I went to the Catholic school, as my brothers did. When I toured, I had to 'go' to correspondence school. Summers, I was always home, and the four of us did the things all kids do. Played ball. Went to Ebbets Field and rooted for the Dodgers, you bet! Went swimming at Long Beach and Jones Beach. Went to the movies. I've always been a movie fan, used to go two and three times a week. To Westerns, mostly. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart - they were my boys! Later on, as we were growing up, the interest shifted to girls. With four boys in the family - quite a lot of girls!

"Charlie, my oldest brother, is now thirty-five and in the textile business. Richard - he's thirty-three - works for Western Electric. Bobbie, thirty-one, is an actor, in radio and TV, like myself. There's quite a bit of difference in our ages, but it didn't, somehow, seem to make a heck of a lot of difference. We were always buddies, my brothers and I, and are now. They did a lot for me, just being around..."

A good, sound, sensible bringing-up like this, a family like this, three older brothers to keep you cut down to size...a lad just doesn't learn how to dramatize himself. Even in his "big moments"...such as that telephone call from Du Mont in 1949.

"Liz Mears called from Du Mont," he says matter-of-factly, "to say she wanted me to come up and read for the part of the Video Ranger in Captain Video, the new science-fiction series which was about to make its debut on the Du Mont network. I went up and read. After I'd read, Miss Mears more or less told me I had the part. The author of Captain Video was there, too. 'As far as I'm concerned,' he said, 'you're the boy we're looking for.' But I never believe I have a part until I'm actually doing it...When I read for the part of Jack Lane in The Edge of Night, it was about three weeks before I got the call to come up for the final reading. The contract was signed the following week. But, not until Jack Lane faced the cameras, did I believe it...

"It was a great job. I enjoyed it. You sort of had the feeling the show was making Space history as well as TV history. I got so that the progress of real rocket-navigation became my favorite reading matter and my favorite topic of conversation. There were other perquisites, too. I got a lot of fan mail from the kids, had quite a few fan clubs. Still have. The kids still write me letters. Very faithful, kids.

"During the six years we were on the air, there were two 'Captain Videos.' Dick Coogan - (now in the 20th Century-Fox film, 'The REvolt of Mamie Stover') - was the first one. Dick played it a year and a half. Then Al Hodge. Al was Captain Video for four and a half-years - or until the ax fell.

"Al is a real wonderful guy to work with. Good guy just to be with. Weekends, he and I would travel, play theaters, automobile shows, food shows, lot of fairs, and things like that. We did a lot of telethons, too, for muscular dystrophy, infantile paralysis, cerebral palsy and so on. We couldn't either of us sing of dance, so we'd just get up and make little speeches. I used to make one about what a date would be like in Space. We used gimmicks, too, like my standing up there and swearing the kids in as Rangers.

"Once, in Washington, D.C., we were doing a muscular dystrophy telethon, and no calls coming in. Then we started directing all our pitch to the kids - and, all of a sudden, they started coming down with their piggy banks. That started the parents. And we came in over the mark we'd hoped for. Kids They're potent.

"It was on April 1, 1955 - my birthday," Don observes, "that the ax fell. The network was being broken up. Du Mont was taking off most of its big shows. Captain Video was one of them...Gave you the feeling of jumping, without benefit of a parachute, from Outer Space. If it had to go sometime -- and most things do - it was a good thing for me that it went when I had no such responsibility as I hope to have," Don grins, "within the next few months.

"I was worried," Don admits, "although at first, not too worried. With all the experience I'd had prior to and during the run of Video, it wouldn't, I thought, be too tough. But it was tough. From April to October, not a TV show, not one. A few offers came along, but not from the networks. Universal-International Pictures wanted to send me to the Coast. One of those stock $125-a-week deals. They were signing kids off the street for that. I didn't go. I had a couple of chances to do summer stock. I didn't take them. Figured I'd been in Outer Space long enough. What I needed now was to ground myself in the vicinity of Broadway.

"I stayed around. But that summer of '55 was rugged. I spent most of it on the golf course. As a result of Video's going off, I now have a pretty good game of golf! Biggest thing that happened to me all summer, in fact, was that I won a pro-amateur golf tournament - the pro and I won it - at Pine Hollow, here on Long Island.

"Only other even worth mentioning is that Al Hodges and I did a play together - 'Detective Story' -- with a group of actors who live on the Island and work together summers. Al, who is married and has two children, lives in Manhasset. My folks and I now live in Franklin Square. Still in the character he made fabulous and famous from Coast to Coast, Al - as Captain Video - is currently introducing science films, et cetera. Al's the right man for that job, all right - but in my opinion, the job is not big enough for the man.

"I got my first break in October, when I did a role for Studio One. Played a naval ensign. I wasn't around long enough -- I got killed in the first act! I did some slide films, too, including one for the Chrysler Corporation. Slide films, which demonstrate new selling techniques, are not released to the public, just to salesmen. Salesmen of cars, chewing gum, household appliances, any commodtiy you can name - with the exception of unemployed actors! Pretty thin going. Freelancing is tough, anyway. Especially when you've worked steady all your life.

"Now comes November - the red letter month in my life! A new TV series of Philip Wylier stories was being filmed in Bermuda. It's called Crunch and Des - the names of the main characters - and they've now filmed thirty-nine episodes. I was in just one of them. One out of thirty-nine isn't a big deal. But, in that one, I am the villain. Having been a hero for six years - and, prior to that, usually cast as a college boy, the kid next door, a good kid - I found it kind of fun to be a rat for a change. Besides, a trip to Bermuda for free...a week's work...what did I have to lose?

"Nothing to lose. And as I found out, everything to gain - everything worth the having...For, in Bermuda, I met Nan.

"She was working as cashier in the dining-room of the Princess Hotel, where I was staying. I got there on a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, but I didn't talk to her (time wasted) until Sunday morning. I'd noticed her, thought she was cute. But I was dating back home, so I wasn't thinking, or noticing - much. Although, if anyone had asked me to describe her, I think I could have told them, even then, that she's five-foot-four or five, has light brown hair, wears it short - blue eyes, almost the same color as mine - only she has pretty eyes, really pretty. 'And, of course, I would have said, ' she smiles a lot.'

"Sunday morning, I had a date to play golf with Forrest Tucker, the star of the Crunch and Des films. I was on the porch of the hotel waiting for him to call. He didn't call. I didn't know how to reach him. So, when I saw Nan on the porch, I asked her if she could get Tucker's home number for me. She did, and I called him. There'd been a mix-up on time. He couldn't make it, so I went out and played alone. Before I left, I talked with Nan for a few minutes. About baseball and stuff like that. I thought she was very cute and pleasant, but didn't think of taking her out - even when I heard myself asking her if she was going to be busy that evening. She was. She was dating, too, it seemed. 'Tomorrow evening,' I heard myself saying then, 'how about that?' Tomorrow evening would be very nice, Nan said.

"We went to a place called the Clay House, a sort of calypso joint, and danced. I didn't intent to get involved. Neither did she. Just out to do a little dancing, have a few laughs. What could happen? But something did. The next night, she again had a date with another guy, I was going to ask her to break it, but I didn't. 'If you get home early,' I said, sort of off-hand, 'I'll be around.'

"She got home early. I was 'around.' I'd been around (and around) waiting for her to get back. When she did, we took a walk. And started talking. All of a sudden, I was telling her about myself and my family, about my brothers and their wives (all three of my brothers are married) - and about my nieces and nephews, eight in all! Telling her other things, too. The kind of thing you don't tell people. Or you tell to just one person. The one.

"Nan, whose full name is Noretta Kennedy, told me about her life, too. She was born in Sudbury, Canada, and now lives in Toronto. She has an older sister, one brother. Teaching is her real job,. In Toronto, she teaches the fourth and fifth grades at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Catholic grammar school. The preceding June, she'd taken a leave of absence from teaching. She hadn't been feeling well and, when her doctor advised her to get away and relax, she took the job of governess with a family who were to spend the summer in Bermuda. The summer (and the job) over, Nan decided to get another job and stay on a while. The job she got was that of cashier at the Princess. She's back in Toronto now, has been for some months, and is teaching again. The kids in her classes, by the way, are all crazy about her.

"In the few days left after that night, we talked and we were together as much as possible. We went to Castle Harbor, to Elbow Beach. The morning of the day I left we went swimming at Coral Beach. ... Before I left, I knew. But, even though I told her I'd be back, Nan didn't quite believe it. She sort of thought that, when I got back to the normal routine, Bermuda would be out of the window!

"You have a dream - I guess most fellows do," Don says slowly, "of what a girl could be like. But you tell yourself, they don't make them like that. Then you meet a girl better than anything you ever dreamed. As I did. Her way of doing things. The way she enjoys doing things. The way everything seems so much fun with her, so much better...even things I've done a billion times before,...like dancing, like singing together, in the car, like just talking, or just not talking. We laugh together. She thinks I'm a riot, I think the same of her. We're each other's best audience, I think. The way she feels about her religion, which is my religion, too. The way shes's helped me understand my religion more than I ever did before. The way her blue eyes are sometimes gray, sometimes greenish. The way she smiles, the way everyone likes her...

You only get one chance - and boy, it looked awful good! On New Year's Eve, I flew back to Bermuda. I was down there a week. During that week - I don't know what day it was, or where it was...I just remember saying, 'I'd marry you tomorrow'...and she - you don't believe in miracles? - felt the same."

When the CBS contract was offered to him a couple of months later, Don felt it was the signature to his happiness. "It's the standard contract," Don laughs, "with the standard thirteen week options - at the end of any one of which I can be given the gate! Meantime, it's 'working steady' again. I like that. I like the part I'm playing. He's basically a nice kid, but a nice kid who is taking the wrong turn - which gives the character some variation, some dimension. I like Irving Vendig, who created the show, and John Wallace, who directs it. And the cast is real great. Teal Ames, who plays my sister Sara Lane, is a very sweet girl. As most of our fan mail remarks, we look alike, Teal and I.

"Nan also enjoys the show, which they get in Toronto via Buffalo, New York. She get s on the bus at school at 3:30, races home and watches the opus. She's watched other daytime dramas, and thinks this is the best. Could she be prejudiced? ...But I wish she were watching it from the living room of the ranch house we hope to get - hope to buy, if we can - here in Long Island. Not a big house - (she has to clean it) - but big enough for the family we'd like to have as soon as we can, by the grace of God.

"We write every day and I call her once a week. It's tough, by the way, writing to a teacher. I'm bad at spelling. She could correct my spelling, but she doesn't. (A love letter sent back with the spelling corrected - how about that?) It's tough being separated, period. We want to get married now. Seems a waste of something that shouldn't be wasted even for a day. But a priest, a friend of Nan's in Toronto - I've made three trips up there, to date - advised us to know each other a year before marrying. And Nan's family feels the same.

"We're hoping, though, for the fall. October, maybe. Or maybe November - which will be a year, come to think from the day we first met...We may have to wait longer, depending on her family's consent to it being sooner, but it won't be any longer," the young man in love says firmly, "than the first of the year. And then it will be for as long as we both shall live."

In love - and in luck. May it always be that way!

[Paul Raven]

Don and Nan married in 1956 and had 3 children.They divorced in 1980. That same year he married Leslie Denniston whom he met at ATWT when she played his love interest Karen in 1978.

[DRW50]

Yeah - once again these stories in these magazines usually have an ending not expected (although that's not always true - Mary Linn Beller and her husband stayed together until she passed away).

Don Hastings has such a good sense of humor, you can see it in even this interview. He had another one from the early 70s that I enjoyed where he talked about how his tailor wanted him to wear bellbottoms and his wife wanted him to start growing his hair out. He said the tailor called his style "country casual," and that he'd have to tell his wife, as she thought he had no style at all.

[DRW50]

Joe Lambie and Juanin Clay fell in love while they were on Edge together, and married.

Was Juanin let go or did she want to leave?

Did you sense any strong chemistry between them that might have translated offscreen? Of course that type of thing is just a myth anyway.

How awful that she passed away so young.

[DRW50]

July 1961 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

Why is everyone so excited about her? What happened today on The Edge of Night to start such an uproar?"

Letters began to block normal mailroom procedures. Sackfuls from the New York area alone, snowballing day by day. Some local stations forwarded mail, some merely reported it was beyond belief. TV Radio Mirror itself got hundreds of letters, sent directly to the editor, containing such comments as: "Why did this wonderful story and this wonderful family have to be broken up?"..."My friends and I are wondering why Sara had to die and leave Mike alone."..."Our whole neighborhood is waiting to hear why Teal Ames left the show. It's like losing a very dear friend."..."Thousands of women must have wept for Sara and her family, as we did."..."My husband hurried home to watch the show with me every day. And now Sara is gone."

If the network and agency and the sponsors were astonished at the quick and violent reaction to Sara's demise, Teal Ames was even more so. When the CBS head of promotion asked her to come in and take some "conference calls" - a round-robin of phone calls in which half a dozen or so editors were on the line and Teal answered their questions - she was still in a state of bewilderment.

"I must say it was ego-satisfying," she observes. "I had no idea that what happened to me would make that much impression. I knew people loved Sara, and I knew they would miss her very much. But I had to leave when I did."

Why didn't the show simply replace her, immediately or later?

Don Wallace, its producer, says: "Teal had told us she wanted to go. Her contract was expiring, and this was her right. Of course, we would have liked to keep her on the show, but she had made up her mind. TV is essentially an honest medium - anything dishonest in a story shows up quickly. The Edge of Night has always been an honest program. To please our audience, we could have sent Sara away for a time. But she is not the kind of person would ever leave her husband.

"We couldn't put another girl in the show and call her Sara. Teal was too closely identified with the part in everyone's mind. It was not illogical to have her pass on. Death comes to families, and mothers sometimes give their lives to save a child. This is what Sara Karr did. She ran into the street to save Laurie Ann from the wheels of an automobile, and was herself struck down."

Why did Teal herself want to leave the show?

"I left because I felt primarily that the time had come to expand, to do some things that would 'stretch' me, and my talents. I had been Sara during five wonderful years. I loved her. I loved my TV family. But when the time came to sign a new contract, I found myself wanting to be in a position of greater freedom. To be able to try new parts, play other kinds of women. Maybe to work in something like the Shakespeare Festival, or a Broadway or off-Broadway play. In the big nighttime dramatic productions on television. In roles completely new to me, presenting new challenges."

Indirectly, Teal left because there are certain things she now wants from life: "A girl who is tied so closely to a job may neglect other aspects of her life. Getting out and meeting many kinds of people. Having time to get to know some of them well. Looking ahead to a home, and marriage. A husband's wishes might have to take second place to the demands of a long-term job."

She has a house in a suburban area, which she shares with two other actresses, the first step toward the country living she would like for part of every year. She wants to live on a farm someday. "It is possible to have a life like this - a life in the theater and a life in the country. I want some of both those worlds. I want to work intensively, and then be free for a period."

Some of that freedom she wants to use in travel. She has an invitation to visit friends in Japan. "East and West are beginning to meet, and I want to be a small part of that. Long trips are simply out when you work in a daytime serial. You can't be away that much."

How did she prepare to break away from the show? What were her feelings? "I thought about it a long time. These people had all become dear to me. They were like a family. And there was the audience, too. People all over the country who had bothered to write me. We had established lasting friendships through letters - friendships I intend to continue."

What was the final break like?

"First, I must tell what happened a few weeks before my last day on the show. We had started our broadcasts, in 1956, from a CBS studio which we vacated after six months. Then, those last weeks, The Edge of Night was transferred back to its old studio. I hadn't let myself think too much about leaving, and what it might mean to me, up to that point.

"But when I walked in, a flood of memories came back. My happiness when I got the part of Sara. Working with John Larkin and the rest of the cast and crew. The way everyone had helped me from the first day, especially John, who knew so very much more than I did. It was like getting to page 100 in your life, suddenly flipping back to page 50, and remembering what you felt at that time. What have I set in motion? I asked myself. Will I ever again find such a wonderful group of people and work under such happy conditions?

The very last day filled her with mixed emotions. She stood at the threshold of something new, but the old still called to her. "There are alternate directors on the show, Allan Fristoe and DIck Sandwick. Allan had directed the accident scene and Dick was directing the scene in the hospital. He had some ideas which were very moving. John Larkin and I decided to go easy during rehearsals and try not to be too emotional. We were saving that, and ourselves, for the actual broadcast.

"But it didn't work. We were moved to tears each time we went through it. The scene was so well written, so poignantly directed, that we had to play it to the hilt. I had never before played a death scene, and I was grateful it wasn't long and drawn-out. That it had not been made harrowing and morbid.

"Actually, it was a beautiful scene, because John handled it so beautifully. When he softly sang, 'And for bonnie Annie Laurie, I'd lay me down and die,' I could hardly keep the tears back. Sara had died for Laurie Ann, their daughter. Perhaps some people still didn't know that, in real life, Laurie Ann is John's daughter, Victoria Larkin. An adorable child, who was just beautiful to work with. She's a natural-born actress."

Teal almost spoiled the surprise farewell party that was given for her, by planning one of her own in the studio immediately after the show. "Everyone who had planned to be at the surprise party had to show up at mine, to keep me from suspecting. I was so excited that I didn't change from the hospital gown I wore in the final scene. One of my friends saw me pouring champagne for my guests in this funny short nightgown and whispered, 'Don't you think you ought to take time out to get dressed?'"

By a pretext, they got her over to the hotel where their big party was waiting for her. By this time, she was practically in tears. The spray of red roses they gave her was presented with deeply touching words of appreciation and affection. So was the charm bracelet, to commemorate the five years then ending.

"I never had a charm bracelet," says Teal. "I always wanted one, but felt it should have special significance. This has. The tiny basket of flowers which dangles from it is to remind me that I was working in a flower shop in my early scenes on the show. The little bride-and-groom is for the marriage of Mike and Sara. The baby carriage is for Laurie Ann. The poodle is for a poodle I owned who appeared with me a few times. The TV camera, the medal which give s the name of the show and the dates, and the wishing well with the little bucket that goes up and down - these are self-explanatory. The wishing well belongs to the future - my future."

What will the future bring to Teal Ames?

At this writing, it is filled with exciting promise. A Theater Guild offer to tour Europe with a repertory company had to be turned down because a part was pending in an off-Broadway show she may do this summer or fall. There is talk of a Broadway show. There are some nighttime TV dramatic roles. There are also some trips she wants to take - short ones, and perhaps the long one to the Orient she has dreamed about so long.

"Everything in life has a beginning, and an end," she says. "Many times you want to fight the end of something, especially of something you have loved. But you must move on."

Meantime, The Edge of Night has had an audience bonus. Little Laurie Ann, desperately ill at the time of Sara's death, is restored to health, and to the arms of her adoring father, Mike Karr, and her grandparents. Even those viewers who could not accept Sara's passing, at the time, have found new interest in the story's growing developments.

"I'm glad they close the way they did," Teal says now. "When I left the show, Sara did, too. It would have seemed strange to watch anyone else in my part."

She can see herself in it, any time she wants to run the kinescope of that final scene. The program presented it to her, as one more remembrance of five good years on The Edge of Night. And of Sara Karr, the girl Teal Ames helped to create.

[Goldensoaps]

Some EON pictures I found on ebay....

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[DRW50]

Just great. Beautiful photos.

Who is the first guy, on the left?

[Goldensoaps]

Fortunately, I also save the back of the pics...the info is there....

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[DRW50]

So Ted Tinling. Thanks.

[Paul Raven]

One of the few times that EON made the cover of SOD

[Paul Raven]

Even back in 75,affiliates were playing around with Edge's timeslot

[edgeofnight]

Wow! Thanks, once again for the fabulous magazine clips! I wrote to Teal Ames and told her, but she wasn't able to navigate the site, so, I'll make copies and send them to her. She is currently in a play where she is an Irish maid, whose antics make the audience howl with laughter. Next, she will be appearing in 'The Uninvited,' and lastly, she will be starring in 'Kimberly Akimbo,' a 16 year old girl afflicted with progeria, the disease where you age quickly.

[DRW50]

I'm sorry about that - I guess I can see where SON would be tough to navigate at first.

I wasn't sure if she was still acting. I hope some show will give her a good part.