Link: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscont...hp3?artid=12808

Soap Secret Revealed!

Shoah plotline on ‘Y&R’ centers on hunky Jewish character.

Curt Schleier - Special To The Jewish Week

Deep in the WASP-y provinces of Genoa City, the Midwestern metropolis where the long-running soap opera “The Young and the Restless” is set, there lurks a dark secret.

No, not that kind of run-of-the-mill soap secret — someone sleeping with someone else’s wife, so-and-so’s child being born out of wedlock. This secret, as far as anyone in the world of soap operas can tell, is a historic one, and it’s one ripped from the headlines, so to speak, about the provenance of works of art, set against the history of the dark days of World War II in Europe.

“The Young and the Restless” character Brad Carlton is — how to put this? — not who we think he is.

Carlton, portrayed by the ruggedly handsome actor Don Diamont, has been a fixture on the show, a regular from 1984 to 1995 and again since 1998. Yet how well do we really know our soap characters and their backstories? After all this time, it turns out that Carlton is not really Carlton at all. In fact, he’s George Kaplan, the son of a Holocaust survivor who changed his name because someone is after him and his mother.

And there’s more.

Carlton/Kaplan’s mother was in a concentration camp and assigned by the Nazis to catalogue the art they’d plundered. She’s made it her mission since the war to use her knowledge to help return the art to its rightful owners. And someone (it’s not yet clear who or why) is after them, which is why he changed his name.

Stephanie Sloane, editor of Soap Opera Digest and a 16-year veteran of the industry, says she has never heard of such a story arc on a soap. “Judaism is not often addressed in daytime [programming].

“There is only one other prominent character in daytime [Nora Hanen on ‘One Life to Live’], and the stories are not about her being Jewish. We don’t see her celebrating the High Holidays. Her religious affiliation is not often addressed.

“I think [the ‘Y&R’ storyline] is interesting,” Sloane continues. “I think it opens the door to a lot of potentially interesting information for people who may not have delved deeply into the Holocaust and know little about Judaism.”

She does not believe “Y&R” viewers will be turned off by this arc, which began last week, any more than Jewish viewers are turned off when weddings and funerals take place in churches.

Lynn Latham, the show’s head writer, feels the same way. In fact, she contends, “I think knowing this dimension about Brad’s character will enhance the audience’s enjoyment of it.”

Ironically, Latham was unaware that she was breaking new ground. She knew that there’d been Jewish daytime characters, but didn’t realize that there apparently hadn’t been such a rich Jewish story arc.

While Latham is not Jewish, she has written Holocaust stories before, when she and her husband created “Homefront,” an ABC television series set in the years immediately following the war that featured a Holocaust survivor.

The “Y&R” story line evolved slowly, Latham said in an e-mail. “We wanted to explore Brad Carlton’s backstory. The character had been on the show for 20 years, but almost nothing was known about his past. We started asking ourselves questions? Was he hiding something? What was he hiding? Had he committed a crime?

“Ultimately, we decided he should be protecting another person. Finally, we landed on a story that stemmed from the Holocaust. But we didn’t follow a straight line in developing it. It took us months to finally solidify the story before we began to play it.”

As is customary, the idea was run by various executives, including the people at Sony, which produces the show, and CBS. No one objected.

Barbara Bloom, senior vice president of daytime programs at the network said: “I had no reservations at all about doing this story. Lynn is a sensitive character-driven storyteller, and I knew in her hands that material would reveal the heart of the … character.”

When Diamont became aware of the storyline, he met with Latham and sought assurances that there “was going to be some commitment for Brad being Jewish moving forward, some acknowledgement of his heritage.” He was assured that would happen.

For Diamont, who is Jewish and made People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list in 1990, the storyline comes at an interesting time in his life. Born in the Bronx, he was raised in Los Angeles in a “mixed” family — that is, his father came from a religious household while his mother was secular. He was raised in a secular fashion, but on his deathbed two decades ago, Diamont’s father “expressed real regret to me that he had not given us a stronger sense of our religion and heritage.”

Diamont remembers being called a kike in high school and not being entirely sure why. The only holiday the family celebrated was Christmas. “It’s a funny thing not knowing who you are and where you came from and yet being attacked for it,” Diamont said.

Diamont is his mother’s maiden name; he was raised Bruce Feinberg. When he started modeling, his entrée into show business, his agent suggested he change his name to something more rhythmic. He took Diamont, and “while I probably didn’t acknowledge it at the time, the truth is it gave me a layer of insulation from the outside world. I didn’t look Jewish, and from my [new] name you couldn’t tell who I was.

“Then as I got older, it was just the opposite. I made it a point to let people know I was Jewish and that my name was Feinberg. It became important to me that when I have children that they are raised as Jews.”

Diamont returned to his faith and became a bar mitzvah as an adult; his oldest son was a bar mitzvah and his youngest will be in 2008.

Unlike Latham and Bloom, Diamont is not as sure that there won’t be negative feedback from the show’s audience.

“I’m sure that bigotry and anti-Semitism and racism are alive and well. So I’m sure there will be some segment of the viewership that will be upset. It doesn’t concern me, to be honest with you. You can’t tell the Holocaust story too many times and in too many ways. And not just the Holocaust, but genocide, period.” n

Very interesting read. Thanks.

I think Don is right about some backlash, I just hope it isn't substantial.

Daytime needs more Jewish characters that are more than just Jewish in name only (along with every other type of minority). The really sad thing is that Brian Frons is Jewish and yet not only is he scared to have minority characters on his shows, but he was willing to end Nora's run...the only Jewish character in daytime (prior to this)!

I like this, this sounds amazing. Time to dump OLTL For Y&R, just the bit about the writer being a character driven sensitive writer makes me sad that OLTL is so horrible about being the complete opposite.

This is cool that a Jewish angle is being shown, as well as the holocaust one. I will definitely be tuning it to see what this is about. Thanks for posting.

Very well written article and very interesting, thanks for that.

There really is *NO* excuse the lack of Jewish characters on daytime. I still remember scenes of Nora/Matthew partaking in the Hannukah festivities on OLTL a few years ago. It was so rare, it's still in my head very vividly!