NBC’s Classic Soap THE DOCTORS To Run On Retro TV Later This Year!

[allmc2008]

Cynic..

Oh, check your Facebook!!!

[EricMontreal22]

I suspect The Doctors started off as very old fashioned--it was created by the creator of Ma Perkins, for Heaven's sake, Orvin Tovrov.

Honestly, looking at the entry in Schemering's Soap Encyclopedia it may be best creatively to start with the colour episodes if they want to get any viewer loyalty or momentum. The entry says that 11 months into the run, it dropped the daily anthology format (March 2, 1964,) and Liz Hubbard was soon introduced. However, "The 1966-67 season brought color to the extremely low-rated show, and a revitalization by producer Alan Potter and writer Rita Lakin. Gerald Gordon was quickly introduced as the gruff Dr Nick Bellini, who was paired in an oil-and-water romance with the neurotically prim Dr Althea Davis. Thus began the show's greatest ever romance and Gordon and Hubbard finally won emmies for their performance inn 1976. [...] The year 1968 turned out to be The Doctors' best overall year, averaging a 36% share. The show remained highly rated for the next eight years, enjoying its greatest degree of popularity under the writing regime of Eileen and Robert Mason Pollock, who later were responsible for making Dynasty a hit when they joined that show in its second season by essentially taking their soap lessons learned from writing The Doctors and amping it up to a camp factor of ten. By 1972, the year it won the Emmy for best soap, it was often number one or two in the ratings, periodically nosing out the great workhorse As the World Turns. The show remained popular for a few more years, and the Pollocks were snatched up by General Hospital (where they completely failed to revive an ailing show.) The Doctors then went through a never-ending cycle of writing changes, including Robert Canedella, Margaret DePriest and Douglas Marland--before he switched his allegiance to General Hospital was largely responsible for reviving that bottom-of-the-basement show."

A few random other excerpts. "While the show's best stories had always been medically oriented, well-researched and dramatically executed, the revolving door of writers ignored such subject matter for more melodramatic fare: long, extremely drawn-out kidnapping-rapes, of which there were many; Perils-ofPauline gothic tales that inevitably seemed to always end in fire; and a hurrican that wrecked half the city and seemed to last an eternity. Ralph and Eugenie Ellis took the same attention-grabbing hospital hostage story that had utterly failed on As the World Turns and re-used it completely on the Doctors with similar results. Colgate-Palmolive and then NBC hired and fired so many writers one needed a box score to keep up. Harding Lemay, who had made Another World such a critical and commercial success, served briefly but executives did not cotton to his leisurely pacing and character-oriented plotting. With each new writer came new characters and new stories, with never a conclusion provided for the old, forgotten ones. The Doctors, by the mid 70s had lost continuity and momentum. "

"In another disastrous error [in 1980] NBC moved the show to a noontime slot on the East Coast pitting it against local news programs. Local affiliates began dropping the show. In a year and a half the number of markets carrying the show dropped from 185 to less than 120. Amid rumours of cancellations, in 1982 Barbara Morgenroth and Leonard Kantor took over as headwriters, injecting the show with a devil-may-care irreverence. Sometimes tasteless, sometimes strikingly original stories about grave-robbing, a subsequent plague because of it, kinky sex, plastic surgery and weird age-retardants soon spiced up the show. (This tartness also extended to the dialogue. Socialite Adrienne Hunt, complaining about the lack of sophistication in the small town, remarked, "They probably think Brecht is a hair spray.") An anti-smoking storyline was introduced and stars such as Brooke Shields, Rex Reed, James Coco and Tony Randall came on in guest shots just as Johnny Carson, Arlene Francis and Van Johnson have been worked into a sttoryline about The National Association of Mental Health in the show's first decade."

The list of the show's headwriters in the back of the book is VERY long, much longer than most of the soaps listed.

[amybrickwallace]

The book Soap World also has a pretty detailed synopsis of TD. It's out of print, but I'm sure you can find it through your local library system or used book venues like Amazon.

[EricMontreal22]

Double

[allmc2008]

I thought Ma Perkins was a Hummert soap. That said, the doctors coming back, to me, is just as odd as someone rearing Helen Trent, Road of Life, or even, Ma Perkins. I am exited either way though.

[amybrickwallace]

It will also be interesting to see a depiction of a hospital world of a bygone era. Long gone are the days when nurses wore the caps and white dresses with the aprons. Medicine has changed an awful lot since 1967, even though it was a drama show and not a documentary - it's still interesting. This really is like opening up a time capsule.

[Paul Raven]

Anyone interested in learning a LOT about TD needs to go to the cancelled soap forum for heaps of storyline and discussions about The Doctors.

[amybrickwallace]

Yes, some nice articles and photos are also posted on that thread.

[Sedrick]

SoapNet only played Ryan's Hope's episodes from 75-81, running them several times. They stopped with the 81 episodes due to high fees that would have to be paid for all the pop music used in the post 81 shows.

[Sedrick]

Claire Labine stated in an interview that former ABC Daytime President Jackie Smith insisted in the early 80's that the network's soap incorporate more current pop music into their shows. Those songs are what caused SoapNet to shy away from broadcasting Ryan's Hope episodes past 1981.

[dc11786]

Orin Tovrov was a writer for "Ma Perkins," while the Hummerts were the producers. Despite being credited to Irna Phillips, Tovrov created "The Brighter Day" also. Do we even know when Tovrov left the show? It' s possible that he was only around during the show's anthology days.

[Paul Raven]

I think it has been stated on TD thread that Tovrov was there until at least 1966.

[amybrickwallace]

Did Nurse Carolee begin on TD before or after Dr. Steve?

[DRW50]

I think she was there first, as an extra, but I don't know.

I just want to see Virginia Vestoff. There's a lot of other stuff I want to see but that's the main thing.

[amybrickwallace]

Thanks anyway!!