"Secret Storm" memories.

[danfling]

I am not positive that Rex Ingram ever appeared on The Brighter Day. I know that he was hired, but was the show gone before his character could be introduced?

Also, Billie Allen (The Edge of Night, As the World Turns) was hired to appear on A Flame in the Wind/A Time for Us, but I also have not accertained that she indeed appeared.

[DRW50]

Who was Billie on ATWT?

[toml1962]

He was hired in late August, started on September 17th, and the show ended on the 28th.

You can see the actual advertisement here:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2238&dat=19620821&id=8IclAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yPQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4529,3421842

Forgot to say there is a video out there (shokus I think) with two episodes featuring him.

[toml1962]

I have never been able to confirm Bille Allen either.

[danfling]

I read that she was on the show in 1994, playing the role of Louise (mother of Jennifer Griffin).

But, if you are asking about her role on A Flame in the Wind/A Time for Us, I cannot confirm that she ever appeared - just that this was announced.

[DRW50]

December 1959 TV Radio Mirror

[danfling]

Miss Graham later played Jean Scott on The Guiding Light. (I think that the character's first name was Jean.) Then, she disappeared to me, but I saw her on an episode of All My Children in 1984.

[zanereed]

Close - her character's name was Maggie Scott.

[DRW50]

for six summers on network TV from New York while Betty took off on vacations, and when I had added other important commercials to my list, people seemed to forget I had once played everything from scullery maids to queens."

June delivered commercial messages on hundreds and hundreds of the big dramatic shows and, from the sidelines, watched other actresses in roles she longed to have. Whenever she approached a producer or director and asked if she could please just read for a part, they gave her a figurative pat on the head and a reply to the effect of: "Now, little girl, you're doing the commercials very nicely and just be happy about that."

Out of a clear blue sky, one day last summer, everything changed. One of the girls associated with the production of The Secret Storm remembered June Graham, the actress, and recommended her for the part of Myra Lake Ames, which was then open. June could hardly believe it, when the call came. Even less, when she had read and got the job. She went into the part on short notice, after brief rehearsal, and it fitted as if molded to her measure.

There was immediate and excited reaction from her family. While admiring her mother's every word and gesture, Nancy, who turned twelve in October, was concerned about the impression June was making. "I'm not sure I liked your hair," she worried. Chris, who will be ten in December, gave unqualified approval, with a boy's disregard for details of appearance. June's mother, watching from her home in St. Louis, thought she was fine - "but when you were up on that ladder in one scene, didn't you think you look just a little bit plump from that rear view?" (June's one hundred and fifteen pounds are nicely distributed over a five-foot-six frame, so it could only have been the fault of an unfortunate camera angle.)

Her husband Clint (Clint Senholzi, married to June since a year ago last April) was busy at the big New York bank of which he is an officer, but was sure everything would go exactly as it should for her debut as Myra Ames. It did. There was no hesitancy in her approach to becoming Myra. She already began to feel like her, and their personalities merged well.

"I liked Myra from the first, partly because our director, Gloria Monty, took such care to sketch in her background for me. She told me how much this girl had been through and what situations had turned her into a woman who now understands herself and has great understanding of others. Myra has honesty. She is kind. She has the qualities important in a wife, and in the woman who becomes stepmother to Peter Ames' three children.

"Peter Hobbs, who plays Peter Ames, made me feel at ease immediately in our scenes together. The whole cast and everyone concerned with the show were simply wonderful. I can't tell you what fun it has turned out to be.

As an only child, pretty enough to be pampered by all who came under the spell of dancing brown eyes, vivacious manner and quick sense of humor, June was always quite unspoiled but determined to be an actress. Her dentist father and her mother would smile indulgently and say, "That's fine, but what do you want to do when you grow up?" Their small daughter would suppress a secret smile of her own, and go on trying out for parts in school plays, little-theater productions and the like. And she got them.

Her father taught her to ice-skate and, at twelve, she was a member of a skating club when a professional ice show came to St. Louis and recruited local young people as extras. June was one of them, thrilled by her first "pro" job, determined more than ever to get to New York someday and become a real actress. But, after high school, her father was adamant about a college education, for which she is now grateful.

"I was a drama major at the University of Iowa, worked summers in St. Louis writing advertising copy and sometimes modeled for junior clothes. If my daughter ever wants to model," June says now, "I wouldn't put my foot down, as long as it doesn't interfere with her education. I think it's wonderful experience for a youngster, but first things come first, as my father believed."

There was work with a stock company in St. Louis, and some stock in Wisconsin and Michigan. She played dramatic parts on radio and television. But her reputation was building up as a girl who could deliver a commercial message with true savoir faire. She liked that, but hoped it wouldn't be all.

While all this was happening to her career, June's personal life was concerned with an early first marriage (when still in college) and the arrival of two adorable children. And, finally, the necessity of supporting a home for them and for herself. New York seemed the best place for an actress who had to keep busy. So - armed with three letters of introduction, the knowledge that she had a couple of good friends there, and fortified with youth and high hopes - she left St. Louis for the East."

"People told me that actors are too competitive to help one another," she smiles. "One actress I knew found an apartment for me, helped me make the rounds, told me about every possible job. Everybody was kind. I landed a commercial job on a show called Broadway TV Theater and, after a few days, was put on a regular basis. It was luck, a matter of being in the right place at the right time, but it was more than that. Everyone had helped.

When she was asked to substitute the first summer for Betty Furness, this time on the network, it was the beginning of a long list of wonderful things. Betty herself helped with advice and instruction. ""She couldn't have been kinder. She was just great, and always has been." Interspersed at times were a few dramatic roles for June - on Alcoa Theater, Robert Montgomery Presents, Goodyear Playhouse - enough to keep her hand in and satisfy her heat a little. The children were growing up nicely, the career was going ahead, and, if there were lacks in her personal life, she put them out of her mind.

Until she met Clint, a bachelor with no thought of ever marrying an actress, as she had no thought of ever marrying a banker. Dark-haired, with rugged good looks and nice, humorous gray eyes. One day, he asked her just what it was she did on television and she tried to explain. "You know who Betty Furness is?" she asked. He didn't. She was stumped. "I don't suppose you even know who Howdy Doody is - ?" she questioned. He thought that must be one of the morning news shows!

"That did it. I gave him a copy of Variety and told him it is our show-business trade paper and maybe he would understand more about my work if he read it. I started to read the Wall Street Journal. After we were married, I woke him up one night to ask what it meant to 'sell short' and, at that point, Clint advised me to forget the whole thing! Now he's way ahead of me. He knows a lot more about TV than I know about finance."

They discuss her job, but his is the important one. "At home, we get down to everyday living. The house, the kids, Clint's work, our friends - who aren't all in finance or in show business. We have a lot of interests."

Home is a big, somewhat old-fashioned apartment in an old-fashioned building made into four apartments and surrounded by private grounds where the kids can ride their bicycles without the menace of traffic. "We live in a world of reality there. Maybe it's the discipline of finance, but Clint never lets anything get out of proportion. He has a solidity that is wonderful for me, and the kids adore him."

On the days she is on the show, June gets to the studio in New York around noon to rehearse for the afternoon broadcast. At four-thirty, New York time, they are off the air. Maybe there are next day's scenes to be blocked, or an interview, or a business conference. Usually, she is able to meet Clint at the commuter train and they go home together to dinner with the children.

Chris, who practically hibernates in the winter until spring baseball training gets under way, is apt to busy himself between homework and last season's score cards, when he isn't absorbed in Westerns on TV. Nancy is at the age when, after schoolwork, social life becomes increasingly important. They are collectors all, particularly of rocks and minerals, and they like to take out their most prized specimens and look them over and decide where they want to go next to get more.

June does needlepoint, learned on the set from Betty Furness. "She seemed to be having so much fun that I asked her to show me how," June said. "Now I'm an addict." She has a book of poems coming out soon - "it's really doggerel, not poetry, humorous lines written while I was in a hospital, disenchanted. Rather than take out my complaints in a long series of useless griping, I put it down in rhyme and called it 'Please Don't Tip the Internes.' I hope it will make people laugh a little."

Her humors made her first months in New York easier, even when necessity forced her to approach people she would never have dared approach without the need. "Necessity forces us all to do things that are good for us, and a little humor keeps it from being quite so hard. And then we find it all turns out fine.

"An actress never knows what she will be asked to do. I rebelled at doing nothing but commercials, and now I love doing them and hope I can continue. But it's also a great satisfaction to be a dramatic actress again. Particularly to be Myra Ames, a nice, normal kind of wife, as all women want to be," says June Graham.

[JohnTudor]

Hi, I'm new here, doing research.

I'm writing a book about my mentor, Coe Norton (He was a stage magician as well as soap actor).

For three years he played on Secret Storm, doing 41 episodes from 1961 thru '63

Does anyone have any:

1.) info on storylines, besides what's in this forum

2.) photos of him and the cast

3.) video in which he appears?

Thanks so much!

John Tudor

[Paul Raven]

In 1968 he also appeared on Secret Storm as Tom Kane.

[JohnTudor]

Paul,

Thanks! You've been helpful already.

Can you tell me who Tom Kane is, in relation to the other characters, or any other info or sources?

John

[Paul Raven]

I have never seen the Tom Kane character mentioned in story summaries,bit assume he is the father of Nick Kane played by Keith Charles.

The character of Nick was married to Joan,played by Christina Crawford,whose mother Joan famously replaced her daughter for a few episodes and played a 24 yr old housewife.

[BFORE02]

I have episodes of The Secret Storm going back to Feb 1955 for my complete list of Vintage Soap Opera episodes email me at [email protected]

[Paul Raven]

Variety reported in the Dec 28th 1966 issue that Jessica Rains,daughter of Claude Rains,would be joining the cast in a 'running lead'.I have never seen her name in cast lists.Does anyone know more?