THE JOURNAL-NEWS, SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1975
Soap opera heroines fill gaps by Tom Donelly
WASHINGTON-It isn’t every day you can talk to a soap opera heroine in the flesh and when two such heroines come to town for interviews, the chance to clear up various little mysteries is not to be missed. After all, even the most ardent soap opera freak is bound to miss a crucial episode now and then. Lynne Adams and Fran Myers, who play Leslie Bauer and Peggy Fletcher on ‘The Guiding Light” weekdays on CBS were most obliging about supplying answers to nagging questions.
The most baffling single episode I've ever seen on a soap opera took place some time ago on “The Guiding Light.” We zoomed in on a London telephone booth containing Leslie Bauer. Leslie rang up her mother, an enigmatic lady named Victoria Ballenger, and said: ‘‘Hi Mom! I'm in town unexpectedly, and I’m coming right over to your flat.” Or words to that effect. Whereupon Mrs. Ballenger, looking upset in the extreme, turned to the distinguished gray-haired gentleman seated beside her and told him that she couldn’t explain why, but a woman was going to turn up in a few minutes and pretend to be Mrs Ballenger’s daughter, and the gray-haired man should pretend to be a clerk who worked in Mrs. Ballenger’s boutique. Whereupon the man leaped up, announced that Mrs. Ballenger was obviously trying to drive him crazy, and raced for the door, vowing that he was going to take a taxi back to the sanitarium, where he wouldn’t be subjected to such vile and incomprehensible games. ‘‘I can’t explain! But trust me!” shouted Mrs. Ballenger. ‘‘I have a reason!
Now what was that all about? Miss Adams said: ‘‘Well, you see Victoria Ballenger was a really terrible phony. She ran out on my father, Dr. Stephen Jackson, and me when I was a baby, and then years later she turned up pretending she was full of maternal feelings. But what she was after was money to pay for psychiatric treatments for her lover — the man who was in her flat with her. He was on leave from a mental institution. “So I had a big crying scene when I found out she didn’t really love me all that much, and she turned on me and said: ‘You think I’ve been lying to you! Well, your father has been lying to you! He’s not your father!’ So for a few weeks I was terribly upset and wouldn’t talk to him, but then I realized the man who brings you up and takes care of you is your real father even if he isn’t your blood father. You know, like in ‘Silas Mamer.’ The viewers wouldn’t know Dr. Jackson isn’t my actual fatner it they missed a few episodes. We go on the way we’ve always gone on.” See? Naturally a woman who has a lover in the booby hatch wouldn’t want him to know she was raising the money for his cure by telling fibs.
‘‘The Guiding Light” began on radio in 1937 and switched to televison on June 30, 1952. Miss Adams started playing Leslie in 1966 and Miss Myers signed on as Peggy a year earlier.
Although the bloom of youth is bright upon them - MissAdams in 28, Miss Myers is 24, these women have suffered, professionally speaking, more agony than Bette Davis and Joan Crawford collectively endured in all their years in Hollywood. During the course of the interview, I kept calling Miss Myers “Peggy” because, off and on, I’ve watched her grow from a 15-year-old boarding school innocent to a woman on trial for the murder of her first husband to a somewhat older woman whose second husband seems to have disappeared into thin air. Miss Myers said:“The writers just felt he was expendable, I guess. We’re never told why they get rid of somebody. I mean, when it happens all of a sudden like that.” Whatever became of Bill Bauer, the first character in a TV serial to have a heart transplant? Peggy, I mean Fran Myers, said: “He was reported missing after a plane crash in Alaska five years ago. But he might turn up one day.
Miss Adams said: “There’s lots more suspense in soap opera than there is in primetime television. You know Mary Tyler Moore isn’t going to drop dead on Saturday night, and whereas a series hero may be in great peril between 9 and 10 p.m. you know he'll come out of it. But you can’t ever be sure when a soap opera character will be snuffed out.” The soaps are plotted a year in advance, Miss Myers said. But changes are constantly being made, sometimes drastic ones. “The writers often get us involved in a story that looks terrific on paper,” Miss Adams said. “But when I left ‘The Guiding Light’ to play in ‘The Secret Storm’ a couple of years, nobody seemed to mind. I must say I didn’t like the story line on ‘Storm’ at all. I’m married and I think I’m pregnant but by the time I find it’s a false alarm my husband has become paralyzed. He’s living for the birth of our child, so I decide to have one by artificial insemination. And, can you believe it? The doctor who takes care of me is in love with me so he acts as the donor. ” ‘‘Such a romantic gesture,” said Miss Myers. “The whole idea was so icky I really didn’t want to do it,” Miss Adams said. “But you have no choice.”
The two heroines got into a slight argument about how the characters they play on “The Guiding Light” feel about another character, apparently a most irresponsible type “Nobody really blamed her for letting the child catch fire,” Miss Myers said. “I blamed her,” said Miss Adams. “I most certainly did blame her. At first, anyway.” Miss Myers said: “Here we go again. We iust naturally get to talking that wav.” Miss Adams said: “We were in a cab and Fran was saying, Do you think I murdered him?’ I said, ‘I’m not sure.’ And Fran said, ‘Well, he did get me pregnant. We suddenly realized the cab driver was getting more and more nervous, so we put his mind at rest. We’re always wondering out loud whether the characters we play have really done this or that. The producers seem to feel it would spoil the effect if we knew in advance. Laurence Olivier does all right, even though he’s read the third act. But then, he’s Olivier.”
By
Paul Raven ·
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