THE LEADER - HERALD, GLOVERSVILLE - JOHNSTOWN, N.Y. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1966
Confidential for Women' Is Distressingly Realistic by Cynthia Lowery
NEW YORK (AiP) - "Confidential for Women," ABC's new daytime dramatizations of rather common problems, this week is tackling the situation of the retired widower who moves in with his married daughter and family. This series devotes a week to each episode and then goes, with a new cast, to another one. Thus it does not quite fall into the soap opera classification, it seems distressingly realistic.
Life in the soaps, while full of woe, is basically entertainment. Amid murder trials, illicit romances, mortal illnesses and emotional turmoil, the characters are theatrical. Viewers identify with the good people if they get hooked and sympathize with their troubles, but most know darn well that life is not quite as turbulent.
"Confidential for Women" has a different aim, its producer, George Lefferts insists, and that is to take direct aim at that which has become a cliche because it is reality. Thus by dramatizing a bickering couple on the verge of breaking up a 20-year marriage, troubles of a divorcee or self pitying, bored and boring old man, Lefferts believes he is helping people to understand ''and gain insight." Not having to cope with an with an unattractive elderly man fretting over his inactivity, this viewer's reaction to the show Tuesday was the same as that of a suburban housewife upon leaving a Tennessee Williams play-"If I'd wanted to be depressed," she said, "I'd have stayed at home".
Thursday June 9 1966
After only 15 weeks, ABC's Confidential for Women dramatic series will call it a day July S. It will be replaced fey another audience participation program called The Newlywed Game on.The daytime series presented complete dramas, mostly about emotional problems, in five installments over a week's time, a departure from the routine soap opera format. It also had a staff psychiatrist discussing the problem at the end of the program. But the series failed to make a dent in the popularity of competing programs, most notably Password.
By
Paul Raven ·
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