A World Apart

[DRW50]

Share your thoughts on this short-lived but fascinating soap opera. And thanks to saynotoursoap, you can enjoy a promo for the show as well as the finale - probably my favorite soap finale.

[DRW50]

From the January 1971 TV Picture Life.

[DRW50]

Edited May 2, 2011 by CarlD2

[Paul Raven]

Great thread Carl and I'm sure some interesting stuff will be posted.

Fun to see youthful Tom Ligon and Nick Surovy as they are so fixed in my mind as Lucas Prentiss and Mike Roy.

Other notable cast members were Matthew Cowles,Susan Sullivan,Robert Gentry.David Birney and Dorothy Lyman.(by the time I posted this,you had posted the rest of that great article,so some of those names were mentioned)

At some point,the Hollands took over as headwriters.Did the Phillips (mother and daughter) abandon the show?

Edited May 2, 2011 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

I guess the Phillips must have gone - I always wondered if Irna had any major role beyond supervising anyway.

Tom looks like a beach party extra. Nick has his mouth hanging open. I love it. It's nice to see Rosetta Lanoire (I have an article with her somewhere, from a year or two after this, when she played Peggy or Vera's mother on AW).

Do you know anything about Erin Conner?

So what was Bill Sims' story? Was this the first Vietnam story ever on daytime? I hadn't heard anything about it.

A shorter cast summary and a few different photos.

[soapfan770]

I wonder if Katherine Phillips is still alive, and why her and Irna left the show so soon. I think a couple articles I've seen on this suggest Irna happily helped her daughter out at ABC to stick it to CBS for their interference at ATWT and LIAMST. I recall one poster on the old WOST site talked about the three ABC soaps that debuted in 1970 and said they felt A World Apart was far superior in quality to AMC. Maybe A World Apart should have aired on CBS, but the concept reminds me of the long lost P&G soap From These Roots.

[Paul Raven]

Katherine Phillips died last year. It would have been great if someone had interviewed her about her career and her legendary mother.After AWA she doesn't seem to have done any more soap writing. I read that Katherine Babecki,who is listed as an ATWT writer in the 60's, is in fact Katherine Phillips.

[DRW50]

That's sad to hear. I wish We Love Soaps, which gets some great interviews, had had a chance to talk to her. I'm sure she had many stories to tell.

[Paul Raven]

Edited May 16, 2011 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

At first you can't tell that's Elizabeth Lawrence, until you look at her profile.

[Paul Raven]

Edited July 12, 2011 by Paul Raven

[Paul Raven]

[DRW50]

Not sure where you found this stuff but what a treat. I'm so fascinated by that story with Patrice and her anarchist boyfriend. Where did that go? Was he her baby's father?

It's so strange seeing Elizabeth Lawrence with that style and this character. Did she want to leave or did they fire her?

[saynotoursoap]

Pat's boyfriend Tony was involved with a radical group that was partly based on the real life terrorist faction The Weathermen. Tony was accused of plotting to blow up a government warehouse that was used to produce chemical warfare for Vietnam. He had been exposed to chemicals and was ill with mercury poisoning. Pat found out that she was pregnant with his child. It was rather amusing as this coincided with the change in writers from Phillips to the Hollands. The Hollands decided to increase ratings by acclerating the stories, which moved more leisurely with Phillips. After Pat realized she was pregnant, she went into labor about six weeks later! The child was named Jeremy. By this time, Tony had died, so Pat decided to give the baby up for adoption, just as she had been adopted. This was the storyline in the final episode: Jeremy's christening and Pat kneeling before God trying to make the right decision.

[DRW50]

Thanks. Wow, six weeks? I often think this is the type of thing which is parodied but rarely actually happened in daytime, but this and the Kim Ryan's Hope mess tells me otherwise.

Did they mention any worry about whether the baby would have problems, due to Tony's exposure to chemicals?