Look into the past: December 1972

[Sylph]

Thank you, Dion, that's very interesting.

[FrenchFan]

Sorry for the mistakes

"Where The Heart Is" is the only soap not included in the newsletter in 1972.

[DRW50]

Don't worry -- there's so much stuff here that we have never had any real idea of. When you go this far back, there are going to be some mistakes. You're doing a real service.

[Khan]

Did Theodore Apstein (who, by the way, was a mentor of sorts to Claire Labine when she was a playwriting student @ Columbia University's School of the Arts) join Ralph Ellis, Eugenie Hunt and the Soderbergs @ ATWT after leaving SEARCH? With Gillian Spencer (ex-Jennifer), the five seemed to form a sort of "dream team," writing-wise, for ATWT in the mid- and late '70's.

[All My Shadows]

*soaks this all up* This is the era of daytime I want to see more than anything else. I could sit and read this type of thing all day.

[MichaelGL]

If I'm correct, this was the year The Doctors was awarded the first Daytime Emmy for Best Show. Allen Potter sure collected plenty of Emmy's as an Executive Producer.

I'm very curious as to who this Chuck Weiss guy is who helmed over LIAMST around this time. The next show he'd produce would be DOCTORS, and his period on that show known is as one of the few times the show seemed like itself before all the big changes started occurring.

Was LoL the only soap the Shapiro's worked at before going on to create Dynasty nearly a decade later?

[saynotoursoap]

FrenchFan, I apologize. In retrospect my post was terse. My intent was not to denigrate your efforts or appear a "know it all". I simply wanted to point out a few inaccuracies, because I know that avid fans such as yourself will document and perpetuate accurate information henceforth. So little is documented of this particular era. I feel it is my duty to pass on what information I have from old tapes and scripts to the next generation. For instance, I do not believe Loring Mandel's regime is cited in Chris Schemering's book, and Mandel's team won a WGA award for their work. Chris did the best he could from available sources, too, but unfortunately, much of the material was unavailable to him when he compiled The Soap Encyclopedia.

Your efforts are appreciated by all of us and should not be undervalued by my comments.

[DRW50]

You both do such a fantastic job filling in gaps for this era, and saynotoursoap, in telling us your memories of these stories. You're two of the main reasons I always enjoy coming to this board.

[saynotoursoap]

Yes, Toni Bull Bua wanted to leave. I am certain that you know Toni was married in real life to the actor who played her TV husband Bill. Love of Life fell from 5th place to 11th in 1970. The desperate production team decided to give Bill a terminal illness ala Love Story to boost the ratings, and TPTB exploited the situation by the fact that a real life husband and wife were playing the fictional husband's death on television. Bill died in January 1972. Toni remained under contract until November 1973, and amazingly, she was completely professional and stayed with the role. One could not blame her had she decided to leave earlier.

I think the exit was the right choice for the actress. She and Gene Bua continued to work successfully in other areas of performing arts, including brief stints each on Somerset in its final year. In my opinion, Tess had been so inextricably bound to the love story with Bill that she would have languished on screen without his presence. Indeed, after Bill died, Tess was charged and tried for the murder of Bobby Mackey, who had attempted to defraud Tess of Bill's inheritance. This was Tess' second murder trial in just three years, as she had been tried for the murder of her husband John Randolph.

Tess' departure bugged me. After exoneration for the Bobby Mackey crime, Tess dumped her young son with Charles & Diana Lamont and supposedly left for a relaxing vacation in Mexico. When Charles and Di became worried at Tess' lack of communication, they phoned the hotel and discovered that she had never registered. They later received a letter from her stating that she was never coming back to Rosehill and asking them to care for her son. Tess' abandonment left a sour taste in my mouth. I felt that it maligned the character.

I am certain that Jane Chambers influenced some of the feminist aspects of the series and may be one of the reasons she was hired by Ellis and Hunt. I neglected to point out that Jane also won a WGA award for her work on Search for Tomorrow. She was a very good writer. I have a feeling that had she lived, she would be quite well known today. Sadly, she died much too young, within 10 years of her work on SFT.

[DRW50]

Do you think the ratings drop was based on what was attributed elsewhere (the return of Van's first husband, stories about campus unrest or drugs)?

I can't believe they gave such an exit to a popular and longstanding character like Tess. And to kill off Bill when he was an audience favorite. It all seems so tacky and desperate. I guess it's a credit to those who managed to turn the show around in 1973.

[Khan]

+1, FrenchFan. Thank you so much for all your contributions to this board (same goes for saynotoursoap).

[Khan]

From the Feb. 8, 1981 issue of the New York Times:

PLAY'S THEME:LESBIANS WITH OUT APOLOGY

By ALVIN KLEIN

JANE CHAMBERS is a playwright who speaks for the cause of women in general and lesbians in particular. Ask her which has been the greater obstacle in her life: her gender or her sexuality, and she answers: ''That's easy - judgments are based on seeing; one of the things about being gay that doesn't get in the way is that, most of the time, you can't see it, but being a woman is something you have to deal with every minute.''

Miss Chambers, a resident of Greenport, has been spending most of her evenings of late at the Actors' Playhouse in Greenwich Village, where her play, ''Last Summer at Bluefish Cove,'' which is billed as ''a lesbian love story,'' recently opened.

The genesis for the fictitious Bluefish Cove is a place where Miss Chambers used to rent a cottage near Orient Point; it is a summer haven for lesbians. A heterosexual woman wanders in, naively. She has left her husband and is looking for a retreat - and a friend. A lesbian, the only other ''single'' in a colony of couples, invites her to a party. When the visitor arrives, eager to meet men, the resort regulars are embarrassed by the intrusion of a ''straight'' stranger. But she winds up having a love affair with the hostess, who is dying of cancer.

''The play came out of my feelings about a friend's death,'' Miss Chambers said. Ironically, the most personally felt aspects of the play - the leading character's death and the newcomer's identity crisis - were dismissed as ''lesbian soap opera'' by some critics.

By consensus, the critics responded most positively, least pejoratively to the scenes of clever repartee. ''If the play turned into an entertaining evening of theater, that's fine,'' Miss Chambers said. ''But it's silly to pretend I don't recognize it's more than that. The testimonies I get afterward just overwhelming.

''Gay people tell me they feel better about themselves, and straight people can suddenly understand a son or a daughter who is gay. I didn't mean for the play to do that, but I'm thrilled that it's helping people.''

''Growing up female in this country and wanting to be a playwright'' was perhaps Miss Chambers's biggest frustration. ''When I went to college,'' she said, ''women were not allowed in the playwriting or directing courses unless there were seats left over after the men signed up. It was insidiously clear that this was not a field women were expected to excel in. We were steered into design and acting.''

To this day, the reaction of producers to plays written by women, according to Miss Chambers, goes something like this: '' 'But they're not about anything important; they're only about women's issues' - as if having a baby is not as important as Vietnam,'' she said.

''I've come out of many experiences, and I want to write about all of them,'' Miss Chambers said. ''I'm not a one-subject playwright, and there is no reason to believe I will be categorized - at least I hope not.'' She mentioned some dozen plays she has written, of which only two are about lesbians. Nor is she a one-dimensional artist, having started out as a performer and now replacing an ailing actress in her own play.

The question of whether film companies have expressed interest in ''Bluefish Cove'' elicits from Miss Chambers the sort of agitated response that interview subjects usually prefer to keep ''off the record.'' Here's one who insists it be kept on.

''Two major studios felt that the play presented lesbianism too positively and that the general audience is not ready for this,'' she said, ''They want us to be unhappy and shoot ourselves.''

Which brings Miss Chambers to her mission of enlightening people about ''the gay image'' in theater. As a member of the East End Gay Organization, which originated on the Island and has, she maintains, ''the largest membership of any gay organization in the United States,'' she often addresses just that issue - on college campuses and as keynote speaker at club meetings and teachers' associations.

''The Boys in the Band,'' the breakthrough play for male homosexuals, ''was negative; the characters didn't like themselves,'' Miss Chambers declared. ''Maybe 'Bluefish Cove' '' - which has been referred to as ''The Girls in the Sand'' - ''will open the door for lesbian characters,'' who, Miss Chambers says, have been depicted as bizarre (''The Killing of Sister George'') or suicidal (''The Children's Hour'') or simply nonexistent.

''None of the women in this play apologize for being lesbians,'' Miss Chambers said. ''They accept it and go on to lead productive lives. I don't know why that should be a threat to people.''

''Lesbians have been ignored,'' she added. ''People turn their heads the other way as if to say, 'We know you exist, but we don't want to have to deal with this, so let's all keep our mouths shut and we'll all pretend it's not there.'

''We are bonding together to gain a kind of strength that will enable us to move out into society and be who we are, so everyone knows, and there'll be no problem. As we become more comfortable with ourselves, the rest of the world will become comfortable with us. We've got a big battle to face in a way that no other minority group does,'' she concluded, adding in considered afterthought, ''except women.''

[saynotoursoap]

Thanks for this, Khan. I had not realized that it was as late as 1981. Chambers must have died in 1982 or 1983, because I remember reading that she was diagnosed with a brain tumour while appearing in the play. Tis a shame that she never had an opportunity to use her voice more influentially in daytime.

[saynotoursoap]

Weiss helmed The Secret Storm around this time. The interesting thing about Charles Weiss was that Jada Rowland left her role as Amy Ames in 1971 after spending two years complaining to CBS about Weiss ruining the show. He had taken over for departing creator/producer Roy Winsor in 1969. Ironically, Weiss and Rowland found themselves working together again on The Doctors about 5 years later when he became the producer, and she assumed the part of Carolee Aldrich. Weiss must not have been one of those executives to hold grudges, because Jada was given ample screen time and good storylines. Despite what happened at Secret Storm or what Rowland thought of his producing, I thought Weiss did a better job at The Doctors than Joe Stuart.

Yes. The Shapiros have stated in interviews that daytime soaps were a learning experience, and once they got it, they did not ever consider going back. They had a 5 year contract with CBS to do Love of Life and managed to escape after two years.

[DRW50]

That must have been awful, to do a play about her friend dying and then learn she was dying.

Not much has changed with portrayals of lesbians either.

It's interesting that the Shapiros felt their soap run was a learning experience -- their Dynasty stories were generally what one might see as the most old of soap cliches.

Was Weiss the guy who started writing out the Ames family?