Paradise Bay (1965-1966)

[DRW50]

Didn't see a thread on this. If I missed it then we can merge them.

Thanks to saynotoursoap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wb_IIlUmXQ

[Bright Eyes]

I knew you'd be on this Carl. Just finished the episode, myself. The ending was kind of hilarious with the sudden extreme turns of emotion from Mary.

I could see why it was canceled though as the show didn't exactly feel very complete.

[DRW50]

So this was in color? I wonder what it looked like. This would have been the second color soap (Ben Jerrod was the first).

[Paul Raven]

Dennis Cole was Duke Spaulding.He returned to soaps as Lance on Y&R in the early 80's.

[Paul Raven]

Keith Andes was the lead as Jeff Morgan

[Paul Raven]

Would these ads entice you to watch the shows?

[amybrickwallace]

Maybe it's because I have a very sick and twisted sense of humor, but those ads just made me laugh. At least in the case of Paradise Bay. Didn't anyone connect the dots when putting those promos together? LOL

[dc11786]

It's a shame saynotoursoap's material is gone. The episode he posted was from February 1966.

Keith Andes' final episode was Friday, April 6, 1966. He left when the show's original headwriters quit. The character of Jeff was shipped off to Africa. In the final episodes, Mary announced Jeff would be returning.

[Paul Raven]

Paradise Bay- a small city south of Hollywood and north of the Mexican border is the setting for NBC's new half hour daytime serial of the same name. Here, against the contrasting backdrop provided by the holiday season influx of sun worshipping tourists and the harvest time flood of migrant farm workers, the residents iof this restless, growing community wrestle with the complex problems that confront their contemporaries everywhere in America.

 

Written by John Monks Jr and Jerrry D Lewis.

 

The Morgans

Jeff ex actor who owns and operates radio station KPPX

Mary his wife, whose late uncle had owned KPPX

Fred 17 year old high school baseball star

Kiitty 15 year old and president of high school teen girls club The Moonglows

 

Also

Bertha De Kalb

Lucy Spaulding her socialite daughter

Duke Spaulding Lucy's son charged with murdering girlfriend Sally Baxter

Walter Montgomery newspaper editor

 

Directed by Dick Darley and Willian Howell (alternating)

Darley relates that a number of scenes were shot on location and taping was 6.30 - noon 5 days a week.

 

Keith Andes,coming from movies, had trouble memorizing the amount of dialogue.

 

In the final episode, written by Manya Starr.

Duke concussed and with broken ribs was in hospital, got accepted to university and planned to marry Rosita Martinez. Kitty and Mary visited him but Fred and Jeff were not seen.Jeff was said to be on vacation.

 

Over a final shot of a patio

We, of Paradise Bay,in saying goodbye, thank you for your visits with us and hope the time spent with us brought you as much pleasure as your many letters brought us"

[Paul Raven]

TV Radio Age  Jan 66

NBC-TV has a daytime soaper called Paradise Bay. Recently the program had a problem that dealt with the teaching of sex education in school, and the show drew more than a thousand favorable letters, claims the network. No one, to be sure, is doubting the claim but one letter quoted in a press release seems a bit suspect. From a "university English Department spokesman," the letter said: "Bravo ! ! ! . . . it is the finest half-hour of television education broadcast since television became a medium of communication. Suddenly Paradise Bay has orbited the field of daytime television serials. What imagination, what courage, what a production." Question: does the "university English Department spokesman" teach a course in how -to -write promotional blurbs?

[dc11786]

The sex education story occurred in November, 1965. I'm pretty sure you posted about the appearance by the doctor who appeared on Jeff Morgan's radio show to discuss the issue. The sex education story I believe was born out of the original Sally Baxter murder mystery. Sally Baxter was pregnant at the time she died or had had an abortion. The local high school physical education teacher wanted to teach her class about sex education. When some of the parents learned of this situation, they were livid and tried to get the teacher fired. Jeff supported her.

 

Fred Morgan was written out in January, 1966, when he joined a baseball team and left Paradise Bay. 

 

Keith Andes wasn't happy with the direction the show took and asked to be written out. In his final months, Jeff became involved with a writer who penned a "Peyton Place" style novel. Andes had agreed to appear because the show had promised to do more serious storylines. The show did deal with sex education, censorship in film, environmental issues, illegal immigration, political corruption, and others. Andes departure coincided with the exit of the show original writers. 

 

Manya Starr, the show's second and final writer, focused heavily on the romance between Duke Spaulding and Rosa Martinez. Their "West Side Story" romance involved conflict between their families who did business together. Rosa's parents were also featured as well as a brother or cousin. There was a looming threat that Duke might be shipped off to war, and Rosa campaigned to be Citrus Queen against Ellen Braddock, the daughter of some locals who clashed with the Morgans. 

[soapfan770]

I've shared Matt P. Smith's write-ups from his Soap Opera History project on other short-lived as well as current soaps several years ago, here's what he had to say about Paradise Bay:

 

premiered
September 27, 1965
last telecast
July 1, 1966
setting
Paradise Bay, California
created by
Ted Corday, Jerry D. Lewis, & John Monks, Jr.
network
NBC
production company
Corday Productions
Screen Gems
NBC Television
broadcast history
Mon-Fri 
11:30am - noon 
(9/27/65-7/1/66)

 

This series, part of NBC’s attempt to launch a late-morning soap block, was the second soap opera created by long-time As the World Turns executive producer & director Ted Corday and premiered on the same day as his 1st series Morning Star.  Set in Paradise Bay, California, this series was one of the first soap operas to be set in that state (along with Never Too Youngwhich would premiere later that same day on rival ABC).  Like NTY, PB focused primarily on the younger members of the cast making this series NBC’s first youth-focused soap (if you discount Another World’s rather generous original canvas of college-aged characters).  However, PB’s central storyline was not on young love, as one might expect, but on a murder mystery.

In the premiere episode, the dead body of a young girl named Sally Baxter (murdered via a blow to the head) washed up on the beach and the remainder of the series would focus on the investigation into the girl’s murder.  The prime suspect was Sally’s boyfriend at the time of her death, Duke Spaulding.

The central family of this series was the Morgan family headed by father Jeff Morgan and mother Mary Morgan.  In keeping with the young-ish theme, Jeff owned the town radio station (helping to introduce contemporary music to daytime soaps) and daughter Kitty Morgan joined a rock band.

Despite the youth and mystery theme (which was helped along by the fact that the series was written by Irving Vendig who had created and successfully written the hugely successful mystery soap The Edge of Night for many years), the show wasn’t a ratings success, possibly because of the show’s late-morning timeslot.  Both PB and Morning Star rated well below NBC’s other 2 soaps The Doctors and Another World (as well as Days of our Lives which would premiere later) and ended on the same day as Morning Star which had also premiered the same day.  Unfortunately, none of my source material reveals who actual killed Sally Baxter and, I suspect, the series ended with the murder remaining forever unsolved.

 

 

The cast of PB contained several standouts – Fred Morgan was played by feature film star Keith Andes (who had earlier appeared in the Academy Award winning film The Farmer's Daughter). Playboy Duke Spaulding was played by Dennis Cole, best known to soap audiences as the 2nd Lance Prentiss on The Young & the Restless, who would later be a frequent and familiar performer on numerous prime-time episodics as well as the one-time husband of Charlie's Angelsstar Jaclyn Smith (from 1978-1981).  Mary Morgan was played by Marion Ross who would later achieve fame as Marion Cunningham on the hit sit-com Happy Days.  Also, just like on Morning Star, two PB performers would later appear on Days of our Lives, also created by Ted Corday. K.T. Stevens (PB’s Estelle Kimball) played Days’s Helen Martin (biological grandmother of David Banning).  Later, Stevens would appear on The Young & the Restless in the hugely popular role of the villainous Vanessa Prentiss (who just so happened to be the mother of PB co-star Dennis Cole’s Y&R character).  Aspiring musician Kitty Morgan was played by Heather North who would later appear on Days from 1967-1971 as Sandy Horton.  However, North is probably best known to several generations of TV audiences not for her appearance, but for her voice – since 1970, North has provided the voice of Daphne Blake in a legion of Scooby-Doo cartoons.

[dc11786]

Matt is a great person, who use to post on this board years ago. I know he himself has done a lot of research since that has been posted. So much of that is just no longer true. The murder mystery and the rock and roll stuff are what have been mentioned in books, but were only a brief glimpse into what happened on the series. 

 

The show did feature a number of young characters, but, for the most part, the story initially was focused on the adults. A lot of the dramatic tension was between Jeff Morgan, radio station operator, and Walter Montgomery, the editor of the local paper. The problems of the youth were definitely worked into the story, but it isn't really until the final months when Manya Starr takes over that the drama shifts to the young people (mainly the Duke / Rosita love story) after the departure of Keith Andes from the series in April, 1966. 

 

The Sally Baxter murder mystery was only a storyline for about six weeks. By the end of October, Duke was cleared of murder charges and I believe the killer may have been Clint Forest, who I believe Sally may have been carrying on with behind Duke's back. By November, the sex education storyline was developing, which I believe was born out of Sally's predicament. The sex education story was quickly followed by the discovery of a paramilitary group in Paradise Bay who was stockpiling weapons. After the paramilitary group was disbanded, the story involved the arrival of the Hamiltons, relatives of Walter Montgomery, and the Uvaldes, illegal immigrants hiding in the caves where Kitty and the Moonglows would rehearse. Kent Hamilton provided a love interest for Lucy Spalding, they had shared a romantic past, while Caroline Hamilton revealed herself to be a complicated young woman who attempted to tarnish Kitty Morgan's reputation before becoming involved in arson. Jeff became involved in the plight of the Uvaldes, but I don't know what happened with them. It was around this time, January 1966, that the show wrote out Fred Morgan. Caroline and Kent were both written out in February, but Kent would return in the show's final weeks. 

 

From the episode previews I've seen, it seems like a dated concept for daytime (central characters dealing with shorter story arcs) with contemporary issues. I think Manya Starr's version, which emphasized young love, familiar conflict, and business machinations would have worked better in the long run had it been given some time to develop. It's a shame how PB featured an early romance featuring white and Hispanic characters and that has been quickly forgotten.

[Paul Raven]

Thanks so much for all that extra information. Love finding out more about those long ago soaps.

I wonder who played the hispanic characters?

http://www.famousfix.com/topic/keith-andes

This link is a 1964 article about Keith Andes and how he is finding it hard to find work,despite several high profile gigs.

Guess that's what led him to a daytime soap.

Was it just bad luck or was there another reason he didnt work more steadily?

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Paul Raven

[slick jones]

@dc11786  These actors/actresses were reported to have been on PB

 

???????????

...Barbara Boles

...Michael Christian                     GH,TYM, PP

...Diana Deane

...Brena Howard

...Karen Lawrence

...Robert Lowery

...Hal March

...Tony Perez

....Mala Powers

...Bernie Thomas

 

 

Could any of the above portrayed any of these characters?

Ellen Braddock

Mr. and Mrs. Martinez

Caroline Hamilton

Kent Hamilton

Clint Forrest

members of paramilitary group

members of the Uvalde family

 

Curious for any input.

 

@jam6242 

 

 

RIP Heather North, Kitty Morgan, PB