ALL: General Retro Soap Discussion

[j swift]

You have got to watch for the third personality, every soap fan knows, DID comes in threes…

[Contessa Donatella]

Fourteen years ago today on April 14, 2011, it was a very dark day in soaps.

 

There's a reason (or reasons) why Brian Frons not only correctly has the label #SoapKiller but even more than that he individually has the specific nickname Daytime Destroyer.

 

That morning from what we think we know he had it in his mind as an employee of Disney, to want to cancel the entire Disney/ABC lineup.

 

Now, he could not announce the cancellation of General Hospital because they did not have a show ready to put in that timeslot. That is the only reason that GH escaped the fate OLTL and AMC received.

 

Despite the fact that OLTL was doing better in the numbers, he had a mandate to deliver a cancellation notice to that show.

 

Somehow - and we will never know the why of it - he, without such a mandate, did also deliver a cancellation notice to All My Children.

 

As we can all imagine & know from her autobiography, Agnes Nixon was personally devastated.

 

[alwaysAMC]

Such a sad day in soap opera history.  I remember reading the AMC telephone line from fans was insane and the mailbox was full (or something to that effect).  Such a sad day.

[Contessa Donatella]

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[Contessa Donatella]

A fan on my soap opera group on FB found this almost forgotten gem:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abc-daytime-soaps_b_851989?fbclid=IwY2xjawJskdJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHmGk5zLeXvePdsx2ReyMnIVBas7RKnmnjFQ0pKnbpp_np3E2Nl45TFzUFxyH_aem_9Nhs3D_Mr73HOxwVJvD6ew

I don't know who this Ed Martin guy is, but, boy, was he ever right on the money!

Quoting it in whole  because you never know when something from a defunct site might vanish.

 

[Paul Raven]

TV Guide looks at soap operas 1965

THE SOAPS —anything but 99 44/100  percent pure by Edith Efron

With daytime dramas sloshing around in human frailties, authorities contend they merely reflect America’s disintegrating morals.

Some months ago, the sleepy, Victorian world of daytime drama made news. The news was that it had ceased to be sleepy and Victorian. In fact, said the reports, the soap operas were doing something no one could quite believe: “peddling sex.”

Announced one astounded critic: “Folks squawking about cheap nighttime sex should harken to the sickly sexuality of daytime soap opera. Love of Life details frank affairs between married women and men; Search for Tomorrow has a single girl in an affair with a married man, result: pregnancy; The Secret Storm has another single girl expecting a married man's child.”

And, under the headlines “Era of Souped-Up Soapers” and “Torrid Days on TV Serial Front,” Variety, the weekly newspaper of the entertainment industry, reported that there was a daytime “race to dredge up the most lurid incidents in sex-based human wretchedness,” and cited “a torrid couch scene involving a housewife with gown cleaved to the navel who was sloshed to the gills on martinis, working her wiles on a husband (not hers). The fade to detergent blurb left little doubt as to the ensuing action.”

Even a superficial investigation of events in the soap-opera world confirms that these reports are true.

To understand this phenomenon, one must enter the total universe of the soap operas. And if one does, one soon discovers that the central source of drama is not what it used to be in the old days, when the brave housewife, with husband in wheel chair, struggled helplessly against adversity. The soaps have shifted drastically on their axes; the fundamental theme today is, as Roy Winsor, producer of Secret Storm, puts it: “the male-female relationship.”

More specifically, the theme of nine of the 10 daytime shows on the air when this study was launched* is the mating-marital-reproductive cycle set against a domestic background. The outer world is certainly present—one catches glimpses of hospitals, offices, courtrooms, business establishments—but the external events tend to be a foil for the more fundamental drama, which is rooted in the biological life cycle. Almost all dramatic tension and moral conflict emerge from three basic sources: mating, marriage and babies.

The mating process is the cornerstone of this trivalue system. The act of searching for a partner goes on constantly in the world of soap opera. Vacuous teen-age girls have no thought whatever in their heads except hunting for a man. Older women wander about, projecting their intense longing to link themselves to unattached males. Heavily made-up villainous “career women” prowl, relentlessly seeking and nabbing their prey: the married man. Sad, lonely divorcées hunt for new mates.

This all-consuming, single-minded search for a mate is an absolute good in the soap-opera syndrome. Morality —and dramatic conflict—emerge from how the search is conducted. Accordingly, there is sex as approached by “good” people, and sex as it is approached by villains.

“Good” people’s sex is a somewhat extraordinary phenomenon, which can best be described as “icky.” In The Doctors, Dr. Maggie confides, coyly, to her sister: “He kissed me.” Her sister asks, even more coyly: “Did you want him to kiss you?” Maggie wriggles, and says: “He says I did.” Then archly adds: “You know? I did.”

Maggie has already been married; her sister has had at least one lover. Coyness, not chastity, is the sign of their virtue.

“Good” people’s sex is also passive, diffident and apologetic. In The Doctors, Sam, after an unendurably long buildup, finally takes Dr. Althea, a troubled divorcée, in his arms, and kisses her once, gently, on the lips. He then looks rueful, says, “I’m sorry,’ and moves to look mournfully out the window. “I’m not,” murmurs Althea softly, and floats out of the room.

The “good” people act like saddened goldfish; the villains, on the other hand, are merely grotesque. One gets the impression that villains, both male and female, have read a lot of Ian Fleming, through several layers of cheesecloth.

To wit: a dinner between villainess Valerie Shaw and Dr. Matt in The Doctors in which Valerie leers, ogles and hints (“A smart woman judges a man by his mouth. Yours is strong and sensual. I’m glad I came to dinner”), announces she will be his “playmate” and boasts throatily, “I play hard and seriously—but not necessarily for keeps.”

And in Love of Life a sinister chap named Ace drinks in a bar with a teen-age girl who used to be his mistress. “We used to ignite,” he breathes insinuatingly. They exchange a kiss— presumably so inflammable that the camera nervously cuts the picture off beneath their chins. “Not bad, baby,” he gasps heavily.

This endless mating game, of course, has a purpose: It leads to marriage, the second arch-value in the soapopera universe. And the dominant view of marriage in the soaps is also worthy of mention. According to the “good” women, it consists of two ingredients: “love” and homemaking.

“Love,” in the soaps, tends to be a kind of hospitalization insurance, usually provided by females to male emotional cripples. In these plays, a woman rarely pledges herself to “honor and obey” her husband. She pledges to cure him of his alcoholism, to forgive his criminal record, paranoia, pathological lying, premarital affairs, etc—and, generally, to give him a shoulder to cry on.

An expression of love, or a marriage proposal, in the daytime shows, often sounds like a sobbing confession to a psychiatrist. In Search for Tomorrow Patti's father, a reformed drinker, took time out from brooding over his daughter’s illegitimate pregnancy to express his “love” for his wife. It consisted of a thorough—and convincing—rehash of his general worthlessness and former drinking habits. “I need you,’ he moaned. “That’s all I want,” she said.

In General Hospital Connie’s neurotic helplessness proved irresistible some weeks ago; Dr. Doug declared his love. They engaged in a weird verbal competition as to who was more helpless than whom, who was more scared than whom, who “needed” whom more than whom. Doug won. Connie would be his pillar of strength.

Homemaking, the second ingredient of a “good” woman’s marriage, is actually a symbolic expression of “love.” There is a fantastic amount of discussion of food on these shows, and it is all strangely full of marital meaning. On The Guiding Light the audience sat through a detailed preview of the plans for roasting a turkey (the stuffing has raisins in it), which somehow would help get separated Julie and Michael together again. On The Doctors one ham was cooked, eaten and remorselessly discussed for three days; it played a critical role in the romance of Sam and Dr. Althea.

If domesticity is a marital “good,” aversion to it is a serious evil. On Secret Storm a husband’s arrival from work was greeted by a violent outburst by his wife, who handed him a list of jobs he had not done around the house. His neglect of the curtain rods was a sure sign that he was in love with a temptress who works in his office. Conversely, if a wife neglects her house, the marriage is rocky.

After mating and marriage, the third crucial value in the soap-opera universe is reproduction. The perpetuation of the species is the ultimate goal toward which almost all “good” people strive. And “The Baby” is the household god.

“Good” people discuss pregnancy endlessly. Young wives are either longing to be pregnant, worried because they are not pregnant, getting pregnant or fighting heroically “not to lose the baby.” And at whatever stage of this process they happen to be, it justifies their being inept, irritable, hysterical and  irrational.

“Good” men, needless to say, are unfailingly sympathetic to the reproductive process and are apparently fascinated by every detail of it. In The Doctors you knew one chap was a “good” husband because he referred to himself as “an expectant father” and earnestly discussed his wife’s “whoopsing” with his friends.

The superlative value of “The Baby” is best revealed when he makes his appearance without benefit of a marriage license. He is usually brought into the world by a blank-faced little girl who has been taught to believe that the only valid goal in life is to mate, marry and reproduce, and who has jumped the gun. The social problem caused by this error in timing is solved in different ways. The girl has an abortion (Patricia, Another World); she loses the baby in an accident (Patti, Search for Tomorrow); she gives the baby up for adoption (Ellen, As the World Turns) ; she has the baby and marries its father (Julie, Guiding Light); she has the baby and marries someone else (Amy, Secret Storm).

The attitude of the baby-worshipping “good” people to this omnipresent social catastrophe is strangely mixed. The girl is viewed as a helpless victim of male villainy: “She loved the fellow too much,” said Angie’s father sadly in General Hospital. Of course, she has acquired the baby “the wrong way” and must—and does— suffer endlessly because of it. Nonetheless, she is having “The Baby.” Thus she receives an enormous amount of sympathy, guidance and help from “good” people.

It seems almost unnecessary to say that only “bad” people in soap operas are anti-baby. The fastest bit of characterization ever accomplished in the history of drama was achieved on Secret Storm, when Kip’s father recently arrived on the scene. He said: “I can’t stand all this talk about babies.” This instantly established him as a black-hearted villain.

The worst people of all, in the soaps, however, are the “career women,” unnatural creatures who actually enjoy some activity other than reproducing the species with the single exception of The Doctors, which features two “good” career women, Drs. Maggie and Althea, even the feeblest flicker of a desire for a career is a symptom of villainy in a woman who has a man to support her. Some weeks ago, we could predict that Ann Reynolds, in The Young Marrieds,was heading for dire trouble. She was miserable over her lost career, she had no babies, and she said those most evil of words: “I want a purpose in life.’

It is hardly surprising to discover that even when the female characters achieve their stated ideal, they are almost invariably miserable. A man to support them, an empty house to sit in, no mentally demanding work to do and an endless vista of future pregnancies do not seem to satisfy the younger soap-opera ladies. They are chronically bored and hysterical.

They also live in dread of the everpresent threat of adultery, because their husbands go outside every day and meet wicked “career women.” They also agonize frequently over the clash between their “needs as a woman” and their “needs as a mother.”

The male denizens of this universe are equally miserable for parallel reasons. They suffer quite a bit from unrequited love. They are often sick with jealousy, tortured  by their wives’ jealousy of their careers and outer-world existence. They, too, have a remarkable amount of trouble reconciling their “needs as men” with their “needs as fathers.” So we find, amid all the gloom in Sudsville, a lot of drinking, epidemic infidelity, and countless cases of acute neurosis, criminality, psychotic breakdowns and postmaternal psychosis.

And this, dear reader, is the “sex” that the soap operas are “peddling” these days. It is a soggy, dreary spectacle of human misery, and is unworthy of all those “torrid” headlines. In fact, if one wants to be soured forever on the male-female relationship, the fastest way to achieve this state is to watch daytime drama.

The real question is not “where did all the sex come from?” but where did this depressing view of the male-female relationship come from?

Hardened observers of TV’s manners and mores have claimed that sex is being stressed in the soaps because it “sells.” But the producers of soaps retort hotly that this has nothing to do with it. Their story lines, they insist, simply reflect social reality.

Says Frank Dodge, producer of Search for Tomorrow: “We always try to do shows that are identifiable to the public. These shows are a recognition of existing emotions and problems. It’s not collusion, but a logical coincidence that adultery, illegitimate children and abortions are appearing on many shows. If you read the papers about what’s going on in the suburbs—well, it’s more startling than what’s shown on the air.”

“The moral fiber has been shattered in this Nation, and nothing has replaced it,” says Roy Winsor, producer of Secret Storm. “There’s a clammy cynicism about life in general. It deeply infects the young. It leads to a generation that sits, passively, and watches the world go by. The major interest is the male-female relationship. That’s the direction the daytime shows are going in. Some of the contemporary sickness has rubbed off onto TV.”

A consultation with some authorities on feminine and family psychology seems to support these gentlemen's contentions about the soap operas.

“They’re realistic,” says Dr. Harold Greenwald, training analyst of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and supervising psychologist of the Community Guidance Service in New York. “I think they’re more realistic than many of the evening shows. They’re reflecting the changes taking place in our society. There are fewer taboos. The age of sexual activity in the middle classes has dropped and it has increased in frequency. There is more infidelity. These plays reflect these problems.”

Dr. William Menaker, professor of clinical psychology at New York University, says: “The theater, the novel, and the film have always reflected people's concern with the sexual life; and in this sense, what’s on the air reflects these realities of life. Increasing frankness in dealing with these problems isn’t a symptom of moral decay but rather reflects the confused values of a transitional period of sociosexual change.

“Unfortunately, the vision of sex that seems to emerge on these shows is mechanical and adolescent, immature. The ‘love’ seems equally childish; it is interacting dependency, rather than a mutual relating between two autonomous adults. As for anti-intellectualism of these shows, it is actually antifeminine. It shows the resistance of both writers and audience to the development of the total feminine personality. There is no doubt that these shows are a partial reflection of some existing trends in our society; it is not a healthy picture.”

Finally, Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique,” says: “The image of woman that emerges in these soap operas is precisely what I’ve called ‘The Feminine Mystique.’ The women are childish and dependent; the men are degraded because they relate to women who are childish and dependent; and the view of sex that emerges is sick.

“These plays reflect an image built up out of the sickest, most dependent, most immature women in our society. They do not reflect all women. In reality there are many who are independent, mature, and who  possess identity. The soaps are reflecting the sickest aspect of women.”

On the basis of these comments, one can certainly conclude that all this “sex-based human wretchedness” is on the air because it exists in society. And the producers’ claims that this is dramatic “realism” appear to have some validity.

But does the fact that a phenomenon exists justify its incessant exploration by the daytime dramas? Two of the three experts consulted actively refrain from making moral judgments. Betty Friedan, however, does not hesitate to condemn the soap operas. “The fact that immature, sick, dependent women exist in our society is no justification for these plays,” she says. “The soap operas are playing to this sickness. They are feeding it. They are helping to keep women in this helpless, dependent state.”

~ Edge of Night, the 10th, is not a “‘soap opera’; it is a serialized melodrama whose hero is a criminal lawyer, and its events bear little resemblance to those described in this article. The two newest daytime dramas, Flame in the Wind and Moment of Truth, have not been on the air long enough to permit extensive study and are not included in this analysis.

8

 

[DRW50]

@Paul Raven Thanks! Lots of endless pseudo-intellectual navel-gazing, typical of a number of TV Guide soap articles in those years, but invaluable for all the story information and even the dialogue recited which we may not know otherwise.

Roy Winsor's views on the youth viewer haven't changed that much.

[Paul Raven]

As though the messages and representation on nightime TV was any better at that time.

Yes, a lot of TV Guide articles and interviews in that era took a very high handed cynical approach . Biting the hand that feeds them in a sense.

Meanwhile readers were watching Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched in droves.

[Contessa Donatella]

[This is an article I found about soaps that has so many quotes in it, you're not going to believe it! Have fun!]

Scandals & Death in the Afternoon: An Oral History of the American Soap Opera

How Soap Operas became so popular that they were televised instead of the Watergate hearings.

Mental Floss

Lisa Rosen

Part I: The Addiction Begins (1932–1963)

They started out on radio—live, 10- to 15-minute chunks of ongoing romance, anguish, and high drama, all aimed squarely at housewives and sponsored, as their moniker suggests, by soap conglomerates such as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive. The first of the half hour–long television soaps, As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, premiered on the same day in 1956 (specifically Apr 2). And there was no turning back. Soaps quickly garnered a freakishly dedicated audience that was in agony every Friday when their “stories” left them with a cliffhanger.

The genre’s first auteur was an eccentric writer, producer, and former actress named Irna Phillips. She invented her first daytime network radio serial in 1930 at the age of 31 and then went on to create many of the biggest titles in radio and TV. In the same years she churned out 2 million words a year. And in doing so, she single-handedly invented most of the conventions that have defined soaps for the past century.

Ken Corday, executive producer, Days of Our Lives (1985–present), and a second-generation soap man (son of Days co-creators Ted and Betty Corday): Irna Phillips was the grand pharaoh of soap operas. She really cooked up all of it. She was a brilliant woman who lived a very secluded life. She only traveled by train; she never stayed above the second floor of any hotel. All of us knew about her quirks. But her imagination was so vivid that she was able to personify so many aspects of life and get them down on the page—and then into people’s homes.

Tim Brooks, former NBC executive, TV historian: There was a lot of experimentation going on in those days; stations and networks were just getting up and running. They were all trying to figure out this new medium. Soaps were a big part of that process. What could be done with them dramatically? And how much could they make? No one knew.

Ken Corday: My earliest memory is picking out the logo for As the World Turns with my father at the Museum of Natural History—that incredibly famous film clip of the Earth turning around and around. I was about 5. The show went on the air in 1956.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, soaps were increasingly welcomed into the daily lives of American women. Fans identified so strongly with the characters that the line between reality and fantasy often blurred. No matter what your life was really like, the life of a soap character was infinitely more interesting.

Sam Ford, co-editor, The Survival of Soap Opera: I had a high school teacher who came home from school one day, and her mother was talking to her aunt on the phone, saying, “You won’t believe what happened to Joe!” She listened to the conversation, and it was getting worse and worse, and she thought, “My God, which neighbor could she be talking about?” Of course, they were discussing soaps.

William Reynolds, writer, presidential historian, The Edge of Night superfan: In 1961, on The Edge of Night, a character was killed saving her toddler from an oncoming car. The switchboards lit up so much at CBS that the actors who played the husband and wife on the show appeared as themselves at the end of an episode a few days later to explain why the character was killed. Nothing like this had happened before, or since, on a daytime or nighttime show.

Between 1951 and 1959, 35 soaps had premiered— most produced in New York City—and the need for actors was overwhelming. While the genre was often derided for offering some of the worst acting ever broadcast, most of the thespians actually came from Broadway or film. It took a special performer to memorize a 44-page script up to five days a week for 50 weeks a year.

Don Hastings, actor (Jack Lane, The Edge of Night, 1956–1960, and Dr. Bob Hughes, As the World Turns, 1960–2010): Almost all of us came out of the theater or radio. There was no such thing as a “soap actor.”

Chris Goutman, executive producer, As the World Turns (1999–2010): I’ve been with the best theater and film actors who’ve been thrown into day roles on shows and who just couldn’t hack it.

William J. Reynolds: I always remember the episode where Lobo Haines kidnapped Mike Karr (actor Forrest Compton) on The Edge of Night in 1972. Karr was taken to a warehouse, tied up, and blindfolded, and because Compton was blindfolded, he couldn’t see the teleprompter, and he skipped a whole act’s worth of dialogue. This was aired live.

Don Hastings: It was murder. There were a lot of actors who would do one show and quit.

Erika Slezak, Daytime Emmy award–winning actress (Viki Lord, One Life to Live, 1971–present): (Producer) Doris Quinlan said to me, “I’d love to have your father (Tony award–winning actor Walter Slezak) on the show, but I can’t afford him.” I said, “Well, just ask him.” He spent three days on the show. He said it was the most difficult, nerve-wracking thing he’d ever done. We rehearsed all day and then taped at 4:30 p.m. He was used to six weeks of rehearsal. I was really worried about him because he kept saying, “It’s so hard! It’s so hard!”

Chris Goutman: One actor wrote his lines on the rim of his plate during restaurant scenes. You just hoped he would spin the plate in the right direction, so he’d get his lines right.

Kimberly McCullough, actress (Robin Scorpio, General Hospital, 1985–present): There was this one actress who was really mad because she was fired, so on her last line of her last scene she opened up her shirt, took her bra off, looked at the camera, and said “F--- you!” and walked off the set. Stuff like that happened all the time. I think every door in the building was broken from someone slamming it.

Ken Corday: William Bell (creator of The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful) had a great quote: “Give me a great script, two wonderful actors, and a waterfall—and who in God’s name needs the waterfall?”

Part II: Leave No Taboo Unbroken (1962–1972)

Despite highbrow disdain for soaps, the genre has constantly pushed the envelope on TV’s depiction of socially sensitive issues such as abortion, rape, drug addiction, and homosexuality. In 1962, when Agnes Nixon—Irna Phillips’ protégé and successor as the most powerful writer-producer in the business—proposed a story that dealt with cervical cancer (inspired by a friend’s death from the disease), the network and sponsor recoiled in horror. Nixon used her clout to get it made. After this, the taboos fell fast and hard, making prime time seem tame by comparison.

Kay Alden, co–head writer, The Young and the Restless (1973–2007), The Bold and the Beautiful (2007–present): Agnes (Nixon), more than any single individual, realized she could use her shows as a vehicle to get messages out about things that were important. She was largely responsible for first making women aware of the importance of getting a Pap smear. Agnes did that story, and it was huge, and it was fabulous.

Michael Fairman, soap journalist and advocate:Erica Kane had daytime TV’s first legal abortion, on All My Children (in 1973). It was like, they’re going to tell an abortion story? And use Erica Kane? It was such a big deal. But they botched it years later—the story line, not the abortion—by negating that it was an abortion. Instead, it turns out she’d had a demon-seed child.

Tina Sloan, actress (Kate Thornton Cannell, Somerset, 1974–76, and Lillian Raines, Guiding Light, 1983–2009): I had my TV abortion shortly after Erica Kane had hers. It was one of the first depicted in any way on television, on Somerset in 1974. Ted Danson, who played a scheming lawyer, went with me to get it. And then I was punished for it by going completely insane.

Ken Corday: It was always a battle. In 1968 we wrote a story line that had one of our characters, Tommy Horton, return from Vietnam with amnesia and post-traumatic stress disorder. War was completely raging at the time, and the network wouldn’t let us mention it in any way whatsoever. They said, “No, let’s just say that he came back from Korea.” We said, “Wait, Korea was 1950 … this is 1968!” But they insisted that we couldn’t talk about Vietnam. So he came back from Korea.

Soaps continued to fight the networks and sponsors by weaving controversial issues into their story-lines. None brought as much attention—and respect—as the honest depictions of the AIDS epidemic on One Life to Live and General Hospital.

Michael Fairman: On General Hospital, they brought in Stone (Michael Sutton) as a love interest for Robin. They had unprotected sex. He was HIV positive. She got the virus from him. So while he died, she lived.

Wendy Riche: We figured that if we did that story through the innocence of an intelligent girl, we would be able to have a big impact—it’s not just gay people or heroin addicts that get AIDS; it’s anybody.

Michael Fairman: That story broke our hearts.

Wendy Riche: We did a spin-off ABC Afterschool Special with Kimberly and Michael. It was called “Positive: A Journey into AIDS.” We took them to a real hospice, which is where we taped.

Kimberly McCullough: There was this guy there, Lewis, who I connected with right away. He was going blind, so I was reading to him. I went back for the taping and found out he had died a few days before. They hadn’t told me, because they wanted to get my reaction on camera. I was so pissed off at the producers for putting me in that position that I almost didn’t finish the special. I didn’t want to be used as an actor playing a character to represent something. It became about me at that moment.

Soaps introduced more and more gay characters into their stories, though not all were steps forward. One Life to Live featured a closeted gay district attorney who killed two people to cover his secret. On the other hand, Eden Riegel’s character on All My Children became a gay icon.

Eden Riegel, actress (Bianca Montgomery, All My Children, 2000–2010, and Heather Stevens, The Young and the Restless, 2010–2011): Bianca was the first main character who was a lesbian. She was an essential character because she was Erica Kane’s daughter.

Julie Hanan Carruthers, executive producer, All My Children (2003–2011): In the focus groups in cities around the country, people were like, “She’s Erica Kane’s daughter—there’s no way she’s gay! She’s just mixed up. They’re going to send her to a psychiatrist and fix her.”

Eden Riegel: Agnes was inspired by what was then going on with Cher and Chastity Bono.

Julie Hanan Carruthers: Over time, viewers got to know the characters as people and not as labels.

Eden Riegel: It didn’t seem like a big deal to me. It was only later that I realized how groundbreaking this was. Soaps are geared toward Middle America, and these people were inviting a gay person into their living rooms every day. It was powerful, and because of that particular medium, I think it changed a lot of minds.

begin here

Part III: The Go-Go Glory Years (1973–1999)

Bill Hayes, actor (Doug Williams, Days of Our Lives, 1970–present):Susan and I met in 1970, doing some scenes together. Our producer, Bill Bell, saw something flashing between our eyes and said, “Whoa—I’m going with a new story.” And he started writing fabulous stuff for us.

Ken Corday: The networks tried to outdo each other. We’d spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going on location. We went to Greece, to France. And primetime started to imitate daytime. But daytime was better.

Suzanne Rogers, actress (Maggie Horton, Days of Our Lives, 1973–present): A lot of firemen came up to me and said they loved my show. I guess they don’t fight fires all the time. They’re in the firehouse; how often can they wash those hoses?

William Reynolds: In 1973, the Watergate hearings were televised. Nobody wanted to preempt soaps on all three networks at once, so they had to rotate coverage. One day CBS would air the hearings, the next day NBC, and the next ABC.

The 1980s might well be called the Luke and Laura Decade. The undisputed super heavyweight supercouple from General Hospital started their relationship with rape and ended it at the altar. General Hospital became the wild soap epicenter, mirroring the excesses of the times—on and off the set.

Kimberly McCullough: Everyone was on coke. There were a lot of affairs. There were things I wasn’t picking up on, but I was a kid. As I got older, I was like, “Oh, that’s what’s going on.”

Tristan Rogers, actor (Robert Scorpio, General Hospital, 1981–2008, and Colin Atkinson, The Young and the Restless, 2010–2017): It was a crazy decade. As long as you made sense of what you were doing on camera, you could get away with anything.

Michael Fairman: The 1980s started out with [executive producer] Gloria Monty’s resuscitation of GH. The show was dying. It was her idea to bring in Tony Geary and pair him with Genie Francis. Also to break out of the four walls of the studio and start doing location shoots.

Jacklyn Zeman: All of a sudden, it was cool to be on General Hospital.

Kimberly McCullough: I remember one time Jack Wagner and [then-wife] Kristina were doing a love scene, and he didn’t want to get out of bed because he was actually naked. He took the bottle of Champagne they were supposed to be drinking, pulled it under the covers and peed in it. He did stuff like that all the time, and (Kristina) was like, “Jack, oh my God, stop it!”

Tim Brooks: You had guys on soaps who’d take their shirts off in May and wouldn’t put them back on until September.

Genie Francis, actress (Laura Spencer, General Hospital, 1977–2008, Genevieve Atkinson, The Young and the Restless, 2010–2012): Gloria [Monty] really had a plan for the two of us. I think the rape was a calculated part of it. People were enraged. It was all over the news. Then they sort of switched the whole thing and called it a rape/seduction. I was supposed to be fascinated by Luke—thankfully, Tony (Geary) made that very easy. I didn’t foresee that the whole thing would become that big. At all.

Michael Fairman: The biggest moment was obviously Luke and Laura’s wedding in 1981. I was inside a Sears, and all of us were watching in the store. It was a huge crowd.

Sam Ford: The wedding episode drew more people than any single daytime episode ever—30 million viewers. That won’t be broken.

Genie Francis: I was always kind of shocked at the hordes of people who were interested in it. It’s a strange experience to think about now. It’s almost like it happened to someone else.

During the Luke and Laura era, General Hospital had celebrity groupies who vied for a cameo. Elizabeth Taylor was their biggest catch.

Tristan Rogers: When Liz came on the show, I had a one-on-one scene with her. She had all the dialogue down, a total pro. She walks on with a drink in her hand, and I’ve got my prop drink. I said, “What did they give you to drink?” She said, “Some of that stuff there.” Piled against one wall was all this pink Dom Perignon. She said, “You want a hit? Drain it!” I drained it, thanks. So we’re having our own little fun. Gloria Monty comes out onto the set. Of course she wasn’t going to chew Elizabeth out, so she said to me, “Tristan, this is a professional show, you’re wasting our time.” Liz turned to her and said, “Who do you think you’re talking to?” I had close-ups of the back of my shoes for about a month.

Chris Goutman: I think (Luke and Laura’s wedding) was when soap operas took a wrong turn. We started chasing this chimera, instead of trying to be true to our roots.

Sam Ford: Suddenly every other soap starts pushing their longtime characters far into the back burner, and they each have their super-couple. That might have been a great model to save General Hospital, but when every soap went in that direction, the whole genre changed.

The frenzied success and lavish productions of the 1980s soon gave way to a harsh reality in the 1990s. Ratings were declining, so story lines became more outlandish, involving demonic possession, bizarre murders, orangutan nurses, and talking dolls. Passions premiered in 1999. It would be the last new network daytime drama.

Ken Corday: MTV came along, and we noticed people’s attention span had gotten a bit shorter. Our head writer, James Reilly, started coming up with stories that made all of us say, “You’ve got to be kidding.” One was when Vivian buried Carly alive. Ratings went through the roof. Then Jim said, “I’m going to go one better. I’m going to have Marlena possessed by the Devil!”

Erika Slezak: I think the writers got bored, and they thought, oh Christ, what can we do now? They came up with ridiculous stories. There was one called “Eterna” where we found an underground city, and nine of us fell through a rabbit hole and spent months there. They had a story where I was hypnotized to kill my son. I went to them and said, “This is horrible.”

Part IV: Daytime Turns to Twilight (2000–2011)

By the end of the 1990s a sky-is-falling paranoia gripped network execs, who saw that cable TV was forever ending their monopoly. Soaps were showing their age. And cheap reality TV was flooding the airwaves. Producers began to cut costs drastically, but it was clear that the networks had other plans for their time slots.

Julie Hanan Carruthers: The week before I was supposed to start work at General Hospital, I was glued to the set watching O.J. Simpson’s white car driving all over Southern California, thinking, I can’t believe I’m watching a car. All of a sudden people realized what cable meant: options. When you looked at numbers, you could mark it almost to the day. The drop was immediate, and it never came back.

Barbara Bloom, vice president, director, daytime, ABC (1996–2000), and senior vice president, daytime, CBS, (2003–2011):[Ratings] have gone down consistently since the 1970s. I’ve had it researched every way from the wazoo. Sometimes there’s a big, publicized story line where things pick up, but other than that, it’s been a slow, grinding, consistent loss.

Stephanie Sloane, editorial director, Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly: You’re still looking at ratings that some shows on the CW don’t get. There’s still a passionate audience. The people who are watching remain hugely invested in these shows.

Greg Meng, co-executive producer, Days of Our Lives (1999–present): NBC came to us and said we have to cut our licensing fee in half. Well, everyone was freaking out: It can’t be done!

Ken Corday: We’ve had to reinvent the way we do the show; it’s a much tighter, leaner machine. We’re still on the air because we showed we could do the show for half the cost. Quite a bite.

Bill Hayes: When Susan and I started out in this business, we read through every episode the night before, staged it, timed it, rehearsed it, and the next morning started again. Then we rehearsed for the cameraman, had a dress rehearsal, notes, and then we did the taping.

Susan Hayes: Today, your blocking rehearsal is “Cross to his elbow, and then leave the room. Got it, thanks. Moving on.”

It became clear that the American daytime drama was doomed. The eccentric, low-rated Passions was first to fall in 2008, but then came some shockers. Irna Phillips’ venerable Guiding Light—the longest-running show in radio and TV history—was extinguished in 2009, followed by As the World Turns in 2010. Then, on April 14, 2011, to the dismay of soap fans, ABC announced the cancellation of both All My Children and One Life to Live. In 2012, only four daytime soaps will air on the three legacy networks.

Tina Sloan: We believed we could save Guiding Light. We knew that if our 72-year-old-show went, everybody would go. [CBS President and CEO] Les Moonves and I had a talk, and he said, “I gave you an extra year or two.” Then he replaced us with a game show.

Chris Goutman: We knew that when Guiding Light went off, our days [on As the World Turns] were numbered. I was bawling like a baby when they announced it.

Erika Slezak: I think that Brian Frons, the head of ABC Daytime, doesn’t believe in the genre. He never believed they could last. My biggest objection is ABC saying people don’t want entertainment anymore; they want information. That’s ridiculous. People always want entertainment.

Julie Hanan Carruthers: I’m a little shell-shocked. I feel part of the cultural fabric of what I’ve grown up with is disintegrating and changing.

Don Hastings: CBS didn’t even say goodbye to us after 50 years. There was nothing to anybody on the show who had served on it, any kind of official “Gee, we’re sorry, and good luck.” The show itself gave the cheapest party I’ve ever been to. Just a very sad end. That’s the part I don’t miss.

But all soap fans love a good resurrection story. Since 1995, shoestring-budget short-form serials for the Internet, such as Venice and Empire, have attracted loyal followers who pay annual subscriptions to watch on YouTube and other outlets. Three months after ABC cancelled All My Children and One Life to Live, it made a surprise announcement: The shows would live on, in a downscaled form, on the Web. Prospect Park, an indie production company, will begin airing new episodes online when the shows’ network TV runs ends. It’s the ultimate cliffhanger: Can a beloved American institution reboot in the 21st century?

Roger Newcomb, founder, Welovesoaps.net: We invented the term “indie soap” a few years ago. It’s how we refer to all these Web series, which are like minisoaps with continuing story arcs from week to week. That’s the future.

Frank Valentini, executive producer, One Life to Live (2003–2012): Our society underestimates the attention span of people on the Internet. It’s a different platform, but it’s still entertainment. I think a longer form will work. It’s obvious where the technology is going, and people aren’t getting tired of looking at nice, large, beautiful screens.

Kay Alden: The potential exists for a return to the very origins of the soap opera format.

Roger Newcomb: In the early 1950s, there were so many articles that said soap operas were for housewives who were moving around the house and listening to radio; no way they are ever going to sit in front of a TV and watch this stuff. Now I read that people aren’t going to want to watch soaps on their computers. I think the technology is going to keep changing and make everything meld together.

Barbara Bloom: It will evolve. It’s just not going to evolve in the traditional sense. That part is over. And it’s not coming back.

This post originally appeared on Mental Floss and was published August 25, 2011. This article is republished here with permission.

[Now I've posted it here but with nobody's permission.]

[Khan]

Nor have Betty Friedan's views on how soaps portray women, I'm afraid, lol.

[DRW50]

You aren't wrong there. The misogyny doesn't feel as suffocating as it did in the '00s, but given where the country is now, I shouldn't speak too soon.

I wish we could see more of that period of soaps as the bits I've seen don't come across as heavily sexist, although reading the synopses, I can see where characters like Julie and Robin on GL may have met a misogynist fate.

 

[Contessa Donatella]

In case you ever find yourself with an episode or a clip where the A/V is out of synch, if you're on a Windows computer, you can use this VLC Media Player. It will temporarily correct the synch problem. But, there's no way to save it in the fixed version. 

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[Contessa Donatella]

As some of us are what I call aficionados of obscure, short-lived primetime soaps, I will be posting some about this from time to time. Today, THE MONROES. When it aired in 1995 on ABC, fans of Susan Sullivan, John Barrowman, stories of dynastic political families, etc. may have been intrigued. But, things did not go well. So much so that only half of the 13 episodes that were made, made it to air. Later, in 2005, the whole show was aired on SOAPnet. As a collector of some of these soaps, this one leaves me in the lurch. This is also because the originally broadcast episodes were shown all out of order. So I find that I have Episodes # 1,2,4,5,6 & 8. If anyone knows where I might find Episodes # 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13, I would be much obliged to have that information. 

(Unintentionally bolded)

[Reverend Ruthledge]

Hey there, I'm just curious as to why you feel that way. Because they both suffered mental illness and both committed suicide? 

[te.]

The Monroes only produced nine episodes in total as it was pulled from production before completing the entire 13 episode order.