Initially I thought of breaking this up into separate articles, as eventually I'd like to see threads on each of these shows, but I thought the article was worth seeing in it's full form. I wish we knew more about these shows - although there are 3 or 4 Hawkin's Falls episodes available.

It may tell you about what was considered most or least desireable - First Love gets its own page, and World of Mr. Sweeney gets color.

July 1955 Radio TV Mirror.

Those can't be clickable links instead of copy and pasted it?

Sorry - I'm lucky to know how to even put them up, as I suck at computer stuff.

Wonderful. Thank you for these. I've seen single episodes of 'First Love' and 'Concerning Miss Marlow' ages ago at the Paley Center. The 'First Love' one was quiet good and featured Rosemary Prinz and her character's young stepdaughter fighting over the young girls' behavior. The 'Marlowe' episode didn't play very well on the viewer, but I remember it focused on a party revolving around the theatre characters.

'The Greatest Gift' sounds promising but Phil Stone looks so much older than Anne Burr.

I had no idea any of those shows were available. What were the dates?

I'd love to see the First Love episode. I doubt I will ever be going to Paley...I wish they could allow them to be seen online, for a fee or something.

I believe the FL episode was from November 1955. It was late in the show's run. The episode featured Amy and her stepdaughter fighting while the man of the house was away and Zach's father Matthew charming the woman who ran his boarding house.

I don't think episode from 'Marlowe' was dated, but I think the entire episode took place in a restaurant between Kit / Maggie and their beaus Jim / Bojalian so I believe this was a later episode as well.

There are also three episodes of 'Three Steps to Heaven' available at the Paley Center all from the final month the show was on air. The episodes dealt with the ramifications of a tenement fire which blinded the lead heroine's husband and injured her brother. In one bizarre scene, a female physician freaks out during surgery and I wasn't sure if this was scripted or the actress unable to cope with what's going on. The actress who played Mrs. Howell on 'Gilligan's Island' played a nurse who tended to Poco, the heroine suffering from all the drama.

In the final episode, Jennifer kissed Bill as the story faded to black. Lauren Gilbert, who played Jason Cleve, stepped out of character and addressed the audience. He explained Bill and Mary Claire would eventually find their way back to one another and thanked the viewers for watching.

Thanks Carl this wonderful to see. It's a real shame none of these even lasted more than a year aside from Hawkins Falls. I think most of the soaps got replaced by either variety shows, game shows, or anthology shows. It's great to see a younger Helen Wagner in that one picture!

I had meant to post a couple of these guides up, these write-ups coming from Matt P. Smith on his guide to soap history:

First Love:

premiered

July 5, 1954

last telecast

December 30, 1955

setting

Harrison

created by

Adrian Samish

network

NBC

production company

???

broadcast history

Mon-Fri

3:30pm - 3:45pm

(7/5/54-8/27/54)

4:15pm - 4:30pm

(8/30/54-12/20/55)

This series was another youth-centered soap that premiered as part of NBC’s attempt to start an afternoon soap block (premiering immediately after the first episode of Golden Windows). The focus of this series was on young married couple Zach and Laurie James, their friends (and fellow young marrieds) Chris and Amy, Laurie’s family the Kennedys, and their surrounding friends. Typical soap plots ensued including Zach’s trial for the murder of a woman who he may or may not have been romantically involved with, the resulting strife in the James marriage, and Chris’s death in a plane crash which left Amy a young widow. The crash in question led to one of the most famous bloopers on air in soap opera history – during the scene (aired live, mind you) where Zach tells Amy the horrible news, Val Dufor (who played Zach) said, “ Chris crapped on the plane” instead of “Chris cracked up the plane”. The entire scene then disintegrated into mayhem as Dufor’s castmates fell into uncontrollable fits of laughter – all on national live television. It was only thanks to the support and understanding good humor of the viewing audience that all the actors involved were saved from losing their jobs.

In a decade full of weak, failed soap operas, First Love was a clear standout. Viewers absolutely loved this series. In fact, response to FL was so positive that it ended up lasting longer than any of the other soaps premiered on July 5, 1954. Unfortunately, even though viewers loved it, there weren’t enough viewers as a whole and NBC, in their trademark move, didn’t have the faith that the audience would gradually grow. FL was cancelled along with the floundering The World of Mr. Sweeney (the only two remaining soaps NBC had on the air at the time) and replaced with Modern Romances, a serialized anthology series based on the magazine of the same name. NBC would remain soapless for the next 2 years until the premiere of Kitty Foyle in early 1958.

First Love was one of 2 soaps created by Adrian Samish, former head of daytime programming for NBC, that premiered on the same day (the other being A Time to Live which premiered during the morning). Also the cancellation of FL didn’t hurt the soap careers of the series' 3 main stars – Val Dufor (who payed Zach James) went on to very popular and memorable runs as Walter Curtin on Another World and John Wyatt on Search for Tomorrow, the later role earning the actor a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in 1977; Patricia Barry who played Zach’s wife Laurie is probably best remembered for her popular runs as both Addie Olson Williams on Days of our Lives and Sally Gleason on Guiding Light; and Rosemary Printz who played Amy later starred as Penny Hughes on As the World Turns for 12 years, making several return guest appearances since then.

The World of Mr. Sweeney:

premiered

as part of the Kate Smith Hour

October 14,1953

as an individual series

June 30, 1954

last telecast

December 31, 1955

setting

Mapleton

created by

???

network

NBC

production company

???

broadcast history

The Kate Smith Hour

one 10 minute episode weekly

4pm - 5pm

(10/14/53-???)

Individual Series

Tue-Fri

7:30pm - 7:45pm

(6/30/54-8/20/54)

Mon-Fri

4:30pm - 4:45pm

(10/4/54-12/31/55)

This series was a comedy/drama serial (with more comedy than drama) that had a rather interesting origin. It began life as a sketch on the hugely popular variety series The Kate Smith Hour a year earlier. It then became a 3-times-a-week prime-time series during the summer of 1954 before moving to daytime. The series focused on general store owner Cicero P. Sweeney and his daughter and grandson. Late in the run of the series, it moved production from New York to California.

Even though its run was short (just over a year) be thankful it did air. Irna Phillips watched the show and was rather taken with the actress who played Cicero's daughter Marge and remembered that the actress had earlier appeared on Phillips' The Guiding Light. Later, when Phillips was developing a new daytime soap, she thought the actress would be perfect in the part of the mother. That actress? Helen Wagner. The new soap? As the World Turns. The role? Nancy Hughes.

Edited July 22, 201114 yr by soapfan770

Thanks for the extra info, dc. That's certainly an interesting ending to Three Steps to Heaven. At least they wanted to reassure their viewers.

Love the writeups soapfan...it's kind of funny that Irna was so taken with Helen Wagner, as she soon tried to fire her. It's a shame that First Love didn't last, but what do you expect from NBC.

Rosemary Prinz said the story about the "crapped on the plane" wasn't true. I'd rather believe it is

March 1955 Radio TV Mirror.

struggling mightily to be quiet and get over a case of sniffles.

Even on her birthday, and with all the usual demands upon a mother-house-keeper-wife, Pat had to allot time for the interview, because being an actress, like being a wife and mother, knows no real "days off." Which is what the interview turned out to be about - about family life, and work, and some play, too, and how busy people must organize their time to fit everything in.

"You can see I have had to put myself on a strict schedule," Pat began. "We all do, we mothers, if we want to get anything done. And I have my career, besides. So I have learned to use every odd moment for the things Phil and I want to accomplish." She laughed. "And it isn't nearly so grim as it sounds. In fact, it's quite wonderful."

Right now, along with everything else that interests them, they are re-doing their apartment on New York's upper East Side -re-papering some of the rooms (hanging the paper themselves); painting and refinishing some of the furniture and woodwork,; laying wall-to-wall carpeting.

Robin must have been impressed with Pat's and Phil's talk of things to be done and the constant bustling about, because she announced one day that she would like to add dancing classes to her morning sessions at nursery school. "Everybody around this house is so busy," she said earnestly, "and I want to be busy, too."

"We quite understood her point of view," Pat commented, "and promptly enrolled her. She now adores telling us all about the exciting things she does all day. It has helped her to understand why we, too, must go out and do things away from the house, knowing that we will get together at home again and have wonderful discussions of the things away from the house, knowing that we will get together at home again and have wonderful discussions of the things that have happened. Robin seems to understand about my program and watches it every day. One afternoon, when she had to make up a dancing class she had missed, she was quite apologetic about not being in front of the television set as usual.

"Actually, I never thought I would be keeping an engagement pad with something crowded into almost every hour. But, no matter how busy the day, Phil and I breakfast with Robin before she goes off to school. My show is in the afternoon, so I have some morning hours at home to take care of household matters and to do my telephoning. I go over my script from 11 to 12. Sometimes I bound around town looking for bargains in materials I can use to make drapes and slipcovers and curtains and things for the apartment. Twice a week I'll work with an actors' group to keep up in my work, and I, too, take dancing lessons, and singing. But I am home for dinner with Robin, and usually Phil is, too, and we read to her and always hear her prayers before she goes to sleep.

"If it weren't for my excellent maid, Alleen, I would have much less freedom. She not only helps me to organize and run the house, but I can leave Robin with her and never worry. I don't suppose any mother could be away from home with a free mind if she hadn't just the right person with whom to have a child, and I am fortunate."

Fortunate also is Pat in her marriage. She identifies herself closely with this girl, Laurie James, whom she plays in First Love, which is written by Manya Starr. But, unlike Laurie and Zach James, Pat and Phil have an understanding and happy relationship. Like Laurie, Pat is a domestic woman who, if there had to be a choice, would always put home and family first, but Laurie's love story has run turbulently of late.

Pat's own love story began in a way that would make a lovely sentimental sequence in any TV dramatic serial - or in any life, for that matter! Her home is Davenport, Iowa, but she had been in Hollywood a couple of years, making pictures for Warners and Columbia, when she was sent East to do a movie with a New York background. After the picture was finished, one of her friends said to her, "Now Pat, it's time you got married (She was all of about nineteen then!), and I'm going to introduce you to the man for you."

Meanwhile, the friend had said about the same thing to Phil, who was then stage-managing for the Theater Guild and not particularly interested in being married to anyone but his job. The busy friend made several dates for them to meet. Once Phil couldn't make it. Several times Pat couldn't. Then one day they did meet at a cocktail party.

"I was still doing publicity for the picture I had just finished," Pat said. "I was on my way to another party, where I had to make an appearance for the sake of the movie, and I was dressed in an outfit the studio had asked me to wear - Hollywood's idea of what I should look like. A pale yellow suit just dripping with fur, when I longed to wear something simple.

"When I was introduced to the nice-looking, crew-cut young man who looked as if he had stepped out of a Brooks Brothers advertisement. I thought he was pretty stuffy. He thought (and told me so later), 'Oh, the Hollywood starlet type. Pretty, with that auburn-red hair and the big brown eyes, but probably no talent.'

"He didn't get in touch with me. I didn't expect him to, nor did I care. Then, three days later, I went to another party, feeling quite miserable. A wisdom tooth had been pulled that morning, and how that gaping hole did ache! I had been rushing around all day, and now I was tired and didn't care how I looked. I sat 'way back in a corner and am sure my make-up was a mess, and my mood to match.

Phil came over to me. This time I was just myself, my least attractive self, I suppose, but without any pose, and I was dressed in something of my own choosing. Phil was sweet and kind and seemed to understand that I didn't feel like putting myself out even to be very friendly. We made a date for a few evenings later.

"On the dance floor, that night, he asked when he might see me again and I found myself answering, to my surprise, 'Oh, soon. ' On the way home, he was just as surprised to hear myself asking me to marry him! That was the beginning, although at the time I thought it ridiculous for him to ask a girl he hardly knew.

"I had to go back to California, where I sold the house in which I had lived with my aunt (who chaperoned me during the Hollywood part of my career, because I was only seventeen when I went into pictures). Then I came back to New York, and a little more than a year after our first meeting, Phil and I were married, on June 11, 1950.

Phil, who adapts many of his late father's plays for television ("The Philadelphia Story," "The Joyous Season, "The Animal Kingdom," to name just a few) is also a story editor, writer, and assistant producer for ABC-TV. For a couple of seasons after marrying Pat, however, he ran the Palm Beach Theater in Florida during the winter and the one in East Hampton, Long Island, during the summer, acting as producer. Pat worked under his direction. (She has worked with stars such as Ruth Chatterton, who was very helpful to the talented young actress. In fact, they worked together at an Ann Arbor, Michigan, Festival, where Pat received the award as the most promising young performer to appear at the Festival. Last summer, Pat went back to appear in "The Crucible," with the original New York Cast of the play.)

But it was before that, when they were first married and she was doing summer theater around Boston, that Pat discovered she was going to have a baby. "I was playing in 'Our Town' and I can't imagine a better play to be in at such a time," she says. "It's all about life and about death, but mostly about life and its wonderful moments, and about children and their parents and the happy relationships that exist in families."

Robin was born in 1951. It was only about a year after that Philip Barry, Sr. passed away, and they both felt they wanted something tangible to link their daughter with her grandfather. The senior Barrys had lost a daughter in infancy and many of his plays had revolved around a lovely young girl. So Robin was named Miranda Robin, the "miranda" being for the heroine of one of Philip, Sr.'s last plays, "Second Threshold."

It wasn't until the young Barrys settled back in New York with Robin that Pat began to work at a more rigid schedule so she could somehow fit her many jobs into a twenty-four hour day. "Phil and I had promised ourselves that we would stay home most evenings and, after Robin was in bed, we would have a quiet dinner and catch up on our reading and watch some television. It hasn't always worked out that way, of course. We hear a play is going to close and it's something we feel we must see, so we rush to get tickets, or there's a movie in the neighborhood we have been waiting for. Or Phil has to stay at his desk and finish a script he's working on, and I've promised myself to run up some new slipcovers, and I stay at my sewing machine long after I should be in bed. Sometimes Phil decides to begin some home project, like cutting a rug into strips so we can re-lay it wall to wall (we'r e getting to be whizzes at this!), or paper a hallway will need so we can spend (Phil does the high work and I do the low, and we plan our days and our weeks and our lives while we're at it.) Weekends when we're not committed to some job, we take Robin off on all sorts of expeditions around New York, things we like to do, too - like going to the Museum of Natural History, some of the art museums, the carousel in Central Park."

Once a week the Barrys have a night for entertaining, informally, because that's a part of the plan for a happy home life. Maybe there will be six or eight guests, sometimes ten or twelve, but they won't all be people in the Barrys' own professions. There will be businessmen and and home women, architects and lawyers, the people they really like and want to see.

"We try to make it fun for everyone, including ourselves," Pat explains. "I'm the casual kind of hostess who thinks the success of a party depends upon how easy you make it seem. When I go out, I dislike to feel that my hostess has worn herself out preparing for my entertainment, and I assume others feel the same way. So I plan food that is not too difficult to cook or to serve. In fact, I try to arrange things so that if someone calls up unexpectedly either Phil or I can say, 'Why not come and have dinner with us?' and have things non hand that will lend little festive touches to an otherwise simple family meal."

Pat has been jotting down ideas for making entertaining easier and for simplifying the day-by-day round of cooking and serving meals, and she hopes to turn these notes into a sort of guide book for young homemakers. Not to compete with the many books of recipes already on the market, but as something rather special for girls who, like herself, had practically no experience in these things before marriage. "When I was growing up, we had a housekeeper who never let me come near her stove," she says. "She ruled the kitchen and I learned very little, as a consequence."

When she was growing up, in Davenport, Iowa, she was Patricia White, whose father is a well-known doctor and heads a clinic there. Both of her parents were interested in the things that affected their city and state, and Pat became an independent, mature little gir l earlier than her friends did. (The fact that her brother was fifteen years older than she was and her sister was five years older also threw her more upon her own resources.) When she was quite small, Pat's father used to take her along on some of his calls and hospital rounds, and at one point she was quite sure she wanted to be a doctor, too.

"I learned an important thing from my father very early. I learned that a good doctor has to love people and must give his career real devotion. Oddly enough, I now feel that way about acting. I think this, too, requires great devotion and there is very little place in my profession for the person who doesn't take it seriously."

Pat was a student at Stephens College, at Columbia, Missouri, during her high school and first college year,s, and studied drama there under the famous Maude Adams, not because she thought seriously of the stage but because she loved the course. As she listened to Miss Adams talk about the theater in New York, the producers and the ways and means of getting into show business, the idea of acting professionally began to grow and grow. Her parents were not pleased with this turn of events and insisted that first she finish her college education. So Pat enrolled at Barnard College in New York, knowing that at least half her interest would stray regularly from the campus to the Broadway area in which the legitimate theaters were located. And especially to those streets where the great producers sat in what she supposed must be glamorous and sumptuous suites of offices.

One day, after a class, she decided to brave an appearance at the office of producer John Golden. With her schoolbooks under hear arm and wearing her schoolgirl clothes with saddle shoes, she sailed forth and, emerging from the subway, found the address she was looking for. Her heart doing the usual rat-a-tat that hearts reserve for such momentous occasions, she approached a girl at the desk and asked to see Mr. Golden.

At that particular time, Henry and Phoebe Ephron had a play in rehearsal and were replacing an ingenue who had already been rehearsing with the cast for five days. Mr. Ephron happened to put hi s head out of an office door at the moment Pat was presenting herself at the outer desk. "Are you an actress?" he called out. She nodded.

The place was jammed with young aspirants for the job, and for jobs in general, and the only clear spot was a little closet used for the cleaning woman's paraphernalia. "In here," he motioned, and dutifully Pat entered and did her audition reading from a script he thrust into her hand. She was hired, for $75 a week, and she felt so rich that she would no longer need the family's allowance. Until three weeks later, when the play closed abruptly,

Although the play didn't get good notices, Pat did. Someone from Warners had seen her and, before she knew it, she had a motion picture contract, this time for $00 a week. Before leaving for the West Coast, Pat did one more play, with the studio's blessing. Now, she thought, the family will surely sit up and take notice. But the studio began to take cheesecake pictures of their new starlet and her father would see them printed in newspapers and would write letters of protest - to her, to the studio, to anyone concerned. It took the family quite a long time to get used to the idea of their little girl becoming a Hollywood personality.

Pat sums up her movie experience with a count of eighteen pictures - leads in B's, smaller roles in A's...and not much fun. "Because I was still a teenager, I had to be careful about dates. Actually, I knew very few young people. I bought a little house where I lived with my aunt and began to raise dogs, and I liked that. Evenings, I used to sit and do petit point for the little chair and stool Robin uses now. It was hardly the glamorous life usually associated with a movie career."

A professor whom Pat had known at Stephens was starting a professional summer theater at Wellesley, and Columbia gave her permission to go East for six weeks to work with him. The experience was extremely valuable. She played all types of parts - in "Accent on Youth" with Paul Lukas, "Holiday" with Bob Sterling, "First Lady" with Peggy Wood. She now plays a running part with Peggy in the television drama, Mama, whenever the role of Nancy, Nels' girl friend, is in the script.

Then came the picture on location in New York, "The Tattooed Stranger," a "sleeper" in which she played the lead. She wanted to sty in the East and was wondering what her next move would be, when she met Philip. After that, she knew she wanted to cut her ties with the West Coast and come back to New York.

Last year, Pat realized one of the dreams she had nurtured back at Stephens, when she was still a student actress. She was in a Broadway play, "The Pink Elephant," starring Steve Allen. It has been described as "sort of a popular flop" - which means that Steve and Pat and some others got good notices although the play's were only so-so. Another play, "The Paradise Question," folded in Philadelphia, but Pat got good notices in that one, too.

"First Love" began last July 5, and she found that being on television fitted her to a T- or maybe we should say to a TV! Actually, Pat had done many TV shows - among them Studio One, Suspense and Robert Montgomery Presents - but this was her first regular TV show. Anyhow, it is perfect for a girl with a great big schedule of career and home . It gives her time to keep the house shipshape - to run up new slipcovers or tidy up a battered piece of furniture. ("Phil and I feel that when you love children and animals - we have a cocker now named J.J. and we used to have a huge cat - you can't be saying 'don't all the time, so there's no point in having fine damasks and expensive rugs, and I keep making things that can be easily replaced.") Television gives Pat time to spend with Robin. It gives her a show in which she plays the kind of woman she admires, although she is saddened by the fact that Laurie's life hasn't run smoothly.

Maybe Pat's secret of having a busy life and a happy life is in the way she has learned to organize her time. Maybe it's in the way she knows just when to toss a work schedule right out of the window and go off with Phil and Robin on some utterly unexpected and delightful expedition. But part of her secret must surely be her enthusiasm for life, and her love of people. Two of them, in particular!

This was interesting. 'First Love' sounded intriguing, but NBC had trouble building / keeping soaps in the 1950s. Barry looks good in the pictures. When I think of Barry, I always imagine her as matronly as I associate her with a shot from the 'Days of our Lives' book where she is sitting with the Horton family.

June 1954 TV Radio Mirror

Interesting read. I think Sullivan made it to the end of "Three Steps to Heaven's" run. His character was engaged to be married and had survived a fire. I think he also turned his life around as it's implied in the article that he was a bit of a street kid. In the episodes I saw, it was implied Barry Thurmond was a victim of the series' antagonists.

January 1954 Radio TV Mirror

Three Steps to Heaven episode. Is this one of the ones at Paley?