The soap opera writers' discussion

[danfling]

 

 

Donald Wallace Obituary

Wallace, Donald T.
May 17, 1922 - Dec. 16, 2015
Don was born in Iowa and grew up in Oklahoma. He graduated from the University of Michigan in May, 1943 with a Bachelor of Music degree. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946 where he earned the rank of Captain. Don was married to Peggy Johnson in 1946. They moved to New York where he took graduate work at Columbia. He was hired by Benton and Bowles (a New York ad agency) where he served as a radio program director and television director (The Edge of Night). In 1968 he partnered with Agnes Nixon to form Creative Horizons and brought One Life to Live and All My Children to television. He became Executive Producer, and later Head Writer, for One Life to Live. In 1971, he went on to do freelance writing and directing on numerous shows in N.Y. and L.A. He retired in 1989. Don was a member of the Directors Guild and Writers Guild of America. He received one Writers Guild award and three Emmy nominations during his career. He also served as organist/choir director for 20 years at two Long Island churches. He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Peggy, three married sons, Bruce (Lois), Tom (Debbie), Gordon (Bj), seven grandchildren, and two great grandsons. He moved to Sarasota, Florida in the early 1990's. A memorial service and reception will be held at Plymouth Harbor in Sarasota on Saturday, December 19, 2015 at 3 PM. Please make a donation to Plymouth Harbor in lieu of flowers. Don will be loved and missed forever. Arrangements entrusted to National Cremation & Burial Society.

 

This is the obituary for director/writer/producer Don Wallace from 2015.  I don't remember that his death was reported.

The obituary does not mention his work as a writer on Loving, The Guiding Light and Love of Life.  He was executive producer of The Best of Everything and the serial Return to Peyton Place (both of which he collaborated with the late James Lipton). as a producer and director of From These Roots, and as a director of Search for Tomorrow.

I had not known of his musical background.

 

 

 

[Paul Raven]

Manya Starr Obit Variety Aug 8 2000

Manya Starr, president of the Writers Guild of America East from 1965 to 1976, died July 26 at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York, from complications after surgery. She was 79.

Starr, a longtime veteran of radio shows, began her career writing ad libs for the “Dorothy and Dick” radio show after graduating from Bryn Mawr College. During WWII, she was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. After the war, Starr continued writing for radio, most notably as principal writer of “Claudia,” a long-running soap based on a Rose Franken play.

Starr worked briefly with the production staff of the original “Today” with Arlene Frances. Soon afterward, she served as a writer for several TV soaps including “The Doctor’s Wife,” “First Love,” “Paradise Bay” and the comedy series “The Egg and I.”

Starr also jumped into the producer role for such shows as “Love of Life” and “Clear Horizon,” and served as a scribe for “Passport to Prague” and NBC’s “Experiments in Television.”

In 1981, Starr married documentary filmmaker Amram Nowak, which marked the start of a 20-year collaboration on dozens of documentary and dramatic films. These included the drama “The Cafeteria” and Academy Award- nominated “Isaac in America,” a documentary on Polish-born writer Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Starr is survived by her husband, two sons and three step-children.

Baltimore Evening Sun Jan 2 1955

Writer's Happy In Her Work

Manya Starr, writer of the daytime TV serial. First Love, is one of those happy persons who is thoroughly pleased with what she is doing and is delighted with the' response that the show has received. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, Manya began her career while still in college. The estate of George Gershwin granted her rights to "Porgy and Bess," which he rewrote, directed and produced at school. George Gershwin was her godfather.

When she graduated, she was hired by the Theater Guild as a production assistant. Following this, she was a script reader for Producer John Golden and later a publicity writer for the Theater Wing. Married Business Man During World War II. While serving as a WAVE public-relations officer in Washington, she became interested in script writing, and immediately after leaving the service,sold her first script "to the Columbia Workshop. In 1945, she married Roger Starr, a New York business man and returned to her native Manhattan, where she wrote scripts for a number of radio and television shows. Mr. and Mrs. Starr now have two children, Adam, 3, and Alexandra, 1. Born January 21, 1921, she is the daughter of Doctor and Mrs.Abraham L. Garbat. From her upbringing she received plenty of authentic background for her NBC radio series "Doctor's Wife."

Edited October 23, 2023 by Paul Raven

[Liberty City]

Oh that would have been MAGIC!

[RavenWhitney]

But Jill Phelps had to be the top head writer after Nancy C left. Jill couldn't take a strong, seasoned real HW in the writers' room. 

[Paul Raven]

Variety Jan 86 reports that Paul Mayer and Stephanie Braxton were fined $5000 and suspended from active membership for 6 months by Writers Guild for head writing Search for Tomorrow during a guild strike March 85.

This must have been a short lived east Coast strike as I don't recall hearing about it before.

[dc11786]

It looks like it was a two-week strike and it was on both coasts. 

[Soaplovers]

It was a 2 week strike and it was about residuals for the burgeoning home video market... and it only lasted 2 weeks because the Guild accepted the low ball offer from the studios because 'home videos were an untested market'... and as we all know the WGA lost out on  money because of giving in too quickly.

[Contessa Donatella]

I don't understand. JFP was a Producer not a Writer. Are you saying she tried to usurp HW's prerogatives?

[RavenWhitney]

Here's a profile of Pete T. Rich who mostly wrote scripts in collaboration with N. Gail Lawrence (GL, Passions, Days, AMC and a few others)

https://berkshirestyle.com/features/Pete_Rich.html

[Contessa Donatella]

@JAS0N47  I happened to be jotting down all of the writers from the closing credits DAYS today & Joanna Cohen was missing. Any chance that's some kind of a glitch or fluke or is she gone?

[JAS0N47]

I don't usually know any writing changes until they happen in the credits. I only knew the Cullitons were retiring because of your chat with them. So, with her name gone, I would assume she's gone. So they must have a new hire or two just before the strike started. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Okay. I will check full credits again on Monday just to see, just in case as a double check. 

[JAS0N47]

I check the credits every day, so I note any changes I see to the staff. But, always good to have a double check.

[Paul Raven]

Desert Sun, 6 June 1986

Soap opera writer pens comedies in his spare time

LOS ANGELES (AP) As a soap opera writer, Frank Salisbury earns his living putting words in other people’s mouths. Salisbury, who writes the dialogue for two episodes a week of the NBC daytime serial “Santa Barbara,” has been writing soap opera dialogue for the past 15 years. His credits include “The Guiding Light,” which brought him an Emmy award, “General Hospital,” which won him an Emmy nomination, “As the World Turns” and ABC’s prime-time serial “Dynasty.” In his spare time, Salisbury turns out yet more dialogue in the form of stage plays. But for contrast he writes comedies rather than the angst and suffering of the soaps. His play “The Seagulls of 1933” won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award. He has another play, “Shooting in Scotland,” which he hopes to have produced on Broadway. Soap operas consume so much material most are now an hour long that they require a platoon of specialized writers. “Santa Barbara” has three head writers, a script editor, three breakdown writers and four dialogue writers. ABC’s “General Hospital” has 15 writers, making the credits look like those of “Star Wars.” Salisbury said he’s always pleased when an actor follows his dialogue precisely, but he’s also resigned to the fact that most actors merely use the script as a blueprint and change the words.

[Paul Raven]

Wonder how she ended up writing soaps?

St Louis Post Dispatch June 2 1980

Addie Walsh: An Actress Turned Playwright By Patricia Rice Of the Post-Dispatch Staff

Many actors who tinker with their lines, after the show has opened and the 'director has left, dream of writing their own play. In the case of Addie Walsh, that dream has come true. ' Ms. Walsh's first acting job after she left school five years ago was with the Imaginary Theatre of the Loretto-Hilton Theatre. There, actors and actresses gave a contemporary touch to traditional children's fairy tales and folk stories.

Many of the performances were from improvisational scripts, and Ms. Walsh was able to come up with children's stories much more often than other members of the company, she recalls. So two seasons ago, when she became pregnant with her daughter, Lauren, the Imaginary Theatre offered her the new job of playwright in residence. Her husband, Eric Brooks, remained as an actor with the troupe. The Imaginary Theatre plays chiefly plays in schools in Missouri, but tours other states. For 10 days or so each year, it gives performances on the mainstage of the Loretto-Hilton for the general public.

Ms.Walsh's two adaptions of favorite children's stories for the group have been successful with children. We saw two young audiences revel in her updated, jazzy version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," a cool cat she calls "Rat Man." "I thought there had to be more than music to make the rats follow the Pied Piper. I thought he should look like a rat," she said. Last year, David Frank, former Loretto-Hilton general manager, asked her to try adapting Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" for the stage. The month-long run of her version, featuring the Imaginary Theatre actors and some from the regular Loretto-Hilton cast, as well as several children, was a box-office success and will be repeated as a Christmas special this winter.

On June 6, her latest adaptation for the stage will open under the Queeny Park tent. It is sponsored by the St. Louis County Department of Parks and Recreation, in cooperation with the New Music Circle, and is a musical version of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." Composer Robert Wykes wrote the music to Ms. Walsh's lyrics for the production. "He changed only a few words," she said.

"We cut out a few songs, added a line here and there. We didn't work together. I gave him the lyrics, and he wrote the music. It's just beautiful, just beautiful. He's a wonderful composer."

It was Ms.Walsh's idea to do a play based on the Mark Twain novel, which is set in the England of Henry VIII. After a performance of "A Christmas Carol" last winter, Elizabeth Sayad,the mother of two of the children in that production, came to Ms. Walsh and began talking about producing a play at Queeny this summer. "She asked me if I could find something to adapt that would be suitable for Missouri and young people, and would have music," Ms. Walsh said.

"Because she said Missouri, I thought of Mark Twain. I like his work." She settled quickly on "The Prince and the Pauper." She enjoyed working on the adaptation because she could do it leisurely, with about five months to work it up. Her only interruption was in the weeks she spent returning to acting, playing Joan Hogan, the daughter of the manic-depressive in "Father Dreams" at the Loretto-Hilton Studio Theatre. The language of her version of "The Prince and the Pauper" script reflects the Victorian words that Twain used when describing Tudor times. "I used as much of Twain's words as possible," she said.

"He has a lot of dialogue." But she edited out much of the more caustic part of Twain's work, she said. "In the story, when the prince (who changes roles with the pauper) hits the pauper's world, Mark Twain puts in a message that is not pliable enough for the stage. It is too preachy; it would hit too hard for kids. "Hopefully, his (Twain's) ideas about the streets will come out from the background." Ms. Walsh helped in the casting of the play.

Christopher Nickel, who played Tiny Tim in "A Christmas Carol," plays Edward, Prince of Wales, and Jack Reidelberger, who played the hyperactive child in "Put Them All Together" at the Loretto-Hilton, plays Tom Canty, the pauper. About half children in the play were in summer classes that Ms. Walsh gave at Loretto-Hilton.

After her husband finishes a run of "South Pacific" the end of Junes she plans moving to New Vork City. His family lives there, and she grew up Connecticut. She is working on adapting a novel for the stage and she may write another play some day, she said, but both and her husband plan to concentrate acting for a while after the move to New  York.