Search For Tomorrow Discussion Thread

[slick jones]

The article^^^^above was in the Pittsburgh Press November 1, 1962 in the Q&A column

[Paul Raven]

Bud was Jo's cousin.Never seen mention of Cynthia.

[amybrickwallace]

Me neither.

[slick jones]

Oops...meant to say cousin. I thought it was odd, I remember he and Janet had a son, ?Chuckie? but I never knew of this "Cynthia".

[amybrickwallace]

It seems that SFT's Chuckie ended up on the Island of Misfit TV Characters with Chuck Cunningham, Judy Winslow, Carl Dixon, Bobby Martin, etc. LOL

[slick jones]

Yup, never to be heard from again.

[antmunoz]

Chuckle came back as a serial killer in 1995, after Jill Farren Phelps took over, and killed his cousin Jo.

Or at least he WOULD have, under Phelps.

[amybrickwallace]

Sad but true!!

[Paul Raven]

Late 70's cast photo

Edited October 20, 2014 by Paul Raven

[amybrickwallace]

Today, I received a lovely autographed photo and handwritten note from Rod Arrants (Travis Sentell). I wrote to him about a month ago and sent him a copy of the Sherry Mathis article. He thanked me for both my letter and the article. His words about Sherry:

"She was a dear friend and an amazing artist - as an actress and a singer."

I'll have to scan them and email them to Carl so he can post them, since I don't have Photobucket and he does.

[Paul Raven]

Louise Shaffer as she appeared as Emily on SFT

[DRW50]

Louise looks so young there.

Maree Cheatham is so dramatic even in that cast photo. I love it.

[amybrickwallace]

I love Louise - and Maree. Definitely class acts.

[Paul Raven]

Lovely article about Ann Williams by her daughter.I decided to post it here as SFT was her longest running role.

Soaps of Our Lives

By LIZ WELCH

Published: December 12, 2009

MY mother financed porn films and married a cult leader. She was also a doctor. And a hopeless alcoholic.

Courtesy of the Welch Family

Ann Williams as Eunice Wyatt on “Search for Tomorrow.”

Courtesy of the Welch family

Ann Williams at 29.

She was a soap opera actress.

In the early ’60s, my mother was cast as Erica Brandt on “Young Dr. Malone,” one of the first televised soap operas to be produced by Procter & Gamble. Last week, “As the World Turns,” the last Procter & Gamble-owned soap, was canceled after a 54-year run. It is the end of an era.

My mother — Ann Williams to her fans, Mrs. Welch to my teachers and friends — did not live to see this. She died of cancer 24 years ago today, leaving my three siblings and me orphans (our father had been killed in a car crash in 1982). I was 16, Amanda 20, Dan 14 and Diana 8. Amanda moved to Brooklyn to live on her own, and the rest of us were split up to live with different families in our hometown, Bedford, N.Y. Still, that story line paled in comparison to my mother’s daytime roles, and deaths.

She rose to fame as the original Dr. Maggie Fielding on “The Doctors” in 1964, leaving the show to give birth to Amanda in 1965. When she conceived me in 1968, her pregnancy was written into her role as Eunice Wyatt on “Search for Tomorrow,” another Procter & Gamble production. She played Eunice for 10 years until Morgan Fairchild, in one of her first TV roles, as Jennifer Pace, shot Eunice in the back during a schizophrenic fit. Jennifer held the gun, hearing voices; Eunice whimpered, trying to reason with her psychotic murderess. Though I was only 7 when Eunice was killed, I remember receiving a big box from Procter & Gamble every Christmas, filled with soaps and hair products.

Mom’s next role lasted from 1978 to 1980, on yet another Procter & Gamble-sponsored soap, “The Edge of Night.” Margo Huntington was the most successful businesswoman in all of Monticello. She owned the local TV station, wore fur coats and painted her long fingernails a bloody red. Margo was my favorite, nothing like Mom, who made me cringe with embarrassment whenever she wore her earth-toned velour tracksuits and clogs to the grocery store. Margo’s shady business deals led her into financing pornography; her unrequited love for a married man led her into a marriage-cum-business arrangement with Eliot Dorn, a former cult leader, in the hopes it would make her true love jealous. That backfired — Margo instead was bludgeoned with a fire poker by one of Eliot’s love interests, who also happened to be her maid. Cut to a commercial.

In our real life, Mom was married to Robert Daniel Peter Welch, an investment banker who died in a mysterious car crash two years after Margo’s fictional demise. At the time of his death, our father was $1.2 million in debt, unbeknownst to my out-of-work 46-year-old mother. Collection notices replaced condolence cards and then, exactly one month after his death, Mom was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer. That summer she got a radical hysterectomy and put our three-story, five-bedroom house on the market. We moved into the caretaker’s two-room cottage, which Mom had wisely kept, along with the remaining seven acres of land. When she started radiation therapy, we were scared. When she was cast as June Slater on the ABC drama “Loving,” we celebrated.

June had a drinking problem, which was hilarious because Mom was a lightweight: one glass of Dubonnet Blonde made her nose fall asleep. On “Loving,” June liked Scotch (which was actually apple juice) and was married to Garth Slater, a college dean who kept her drunk so he could sneak into their teenage daughter’s bedroom at night.

I was 14 that summer and spent one week at a volleyball camp. Practice started one morning with a journal writing exercise. I wrote about my mom’s new job and storyline. That afternoon, I was called into the camp director’s office, where four very concerned-looking adults were waiting for me.

At first, I thought it had something to do with my reluctance to try an overhead serve. Then, my coach said, “Liz, tell us about your father.” I was confused. “What about him?” I asked.

A stern-looking woman spoke next: “It’s O.K., you’re safe here. We read your journal.” I suddenly understood and burst out laughing: “Oh, no! That’s my mom’s husband on TV! My real father is dead! He died in a car accident last year!” The adults let out a collective sigh of relief. Everyone smiled. “All right-y then,” the camp director said. And I was sent back to practice.

That was the magic of soap operas in their heyday. They exorcised people’s feelings about whatever ills plagued them in their own lives. Today, though, people don’t need soaps for that. And we certainly don’t need actors to play these sometimes scary and often sensationalized roles. Real people get to play those, in news stories that are horrendous, stupendous and almost impossible to believe. Talk shows, reality shows, cable news do for us what radio serials and soap operas once did: They make us feel better about our own dramas.

When my mother was very ill and undergoing chemotherapy, she played her final role, a blind woman on “Guiding Light.” She wore a wig and sat in a wheelchair — a Method actor to the end, she argued that it worked for her character. The truth was, she was bald from chemo and too weak to walk. But she needed the union hours to be eligible for her health insurance. Several months later, she died at home. “Guiding Light” continued for two decades more, broadcasting its last episode on Sept. 18 — a 72-year run.

The death of “As the World Turns” is the final nail in the coffin of soap operas as my mother knew them. I just wish she were around to mourn them with me.

Liz Welch is the co-author with her sister Diana Welch of a memoir, “The Kids Are All Right.”

Edited October 21, 2014 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

Thanks.

She got the Edge story wrong, but that's not a big deal.