Soap Writer dies

[soapfan770]

From Variety Magazine, soap writer Ron Sproat has died. I didn't see this posted anywhere yet.

The rest is at Variety He was also an LGBT writer.

[DRW50]

So he left DS for Strange Paradise? That was the Canadian "horror" soap. WoST used to have the last scenes of that.

I'm sorry to hear of his passing. He was obviously instrumental in the success of DS.

I did notice a VERY large shift in tone for DS somewhere around 1969/early 1970. I liked it, in some ways, especially in regards to female characters, but it was somewhat jarring. I wonder if his departure was a reason why.

[soapfan770]

I wonder if Sproat worked with Lemay at all on Strange Paradise. I remember watching it on WoST as well. Interesting he is the man behind Barnabas' creation. I looked up his IMDB profile and it mentions he also wrote for Never Too Young, a short lived youth soap that aired on ABC and had Tony Dow who played Wally on Leave It to Beaver playing a leading character. Dark Shadows of course was Never Too Young's replacement.

[dc11786]

Sproat wrote the final months (at least April through June) of "Never Too Young," with a writing partner. Everyone got happy endings. The token older characters got married, the older mature sister was married to Brit club owner Alfie and expecting his child, and all the young ones were paired off.

Ron Sproat was one of the writers that preceeded Lemay at "Strange Paradise." He penned episodes when Cornelius Crane was writing the bulk of the scripts at the time. Sproat arrived when Costello switched the location the Carribean to Canada. He may have written a couple of episodes when Lemay was writing, but I don't think it was for very long.

[quartermainefan]

what an great job he had, to get to just run wild on Dark Shadows. I bet every soap writer would love to be able to write an episode of that and go crazy with the goth.

[EricMontreal22]

SO was he writing DSwhen Gordon Russell was basically HW? or?

I admit I loved watching Strange Paradise the few months it was rerun on Drive In Classics here in Canada. Camp and no Dark Shadows but I also thought it was actually better than all the press and gossip claimed.