Another World - 1973 Intro + Act 1
The intro and first act from a 1973 episode of the classic soap opera, Another World.
Showing posts with label Another World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Another World. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
September 1979 Soap Opera Summaries (Part 1)
Courtesy of French Fan at SON.
All My Children
Written by: Agnes Nixon and Wisner Washam
Produced by: Agnes Nixon and Bud Kloss
Frank invited Betsy to Donna's party after Nancy turned him down. Eddie took sexual advange of a drunken Brooke, but she later told him to scram. Charles and Mona laughed that Phoebe’s been acting the saint while she's secretly playing around with Langley. Phoebe had a fit when Paul announced he's divorcing Ann, who had flashing memories of him in the sanitarium while plotting an escape. Myra cried after overhearing Nina talking to her mother's portrait and Palmer warned Myra never to mention his wife to Nina. Kelly claimed she's suffering from narcolepsy but Myrtle and Joe knew better. Tom's surgery was successful. Brooke told Mark she's pregnant. Kelly had nightmares that Linc ditched her after Eddie squealed that she’s a speed freak.
Ann escaped from the sanitarium and arrived on Phoebe's doorsteps. Nina put her foot down about Cliff to Palmer. Chuck leveled with Charlie that there's no hope for Chuck and Tara, and Charlie returned to Washington. Kelly struggled to resist her pill habit while dating Linc at a posh social function where he ran into an old girlfriend. Phoebe agreed to invest in Langley’s oil deals. Phoebe kept Ann hidden although she realized Ann's still living in the past. Brooke admitted she's not absolutely sure she's pregnant, but wishes like all get-out that she were. Nancy and Frank argued about his abuse of visitation rights with Carl.
Brooke’s pregnancy test was negative. Erica was miffed to find Betsy giving Tom a hospital back rub. Benny and Edna returned from a honeymoon in the Poconos. Claudette laughed at Eddie’s notion that he can catch Brooke romantically. Langley's marriage proposal to Phoebe was prompted by his plans to get her money. Phoebe swore him to secrecy about keeping Ann hidden. Edna called Estelle a tramp when she spotted Benny and Estelle during an innocent meeting. Wally and Betsy warned Erica to tell Tom about her disco. Myra refused to do Palmer’s dirty work in keeping Cliff and Nina apart.
Ann disappeared after searching for Paul and overhearing him and Ellen discussing their romantic ties. Myrtle told Linc that Kelly was having a breakdown after Kelly went bananas in front of Linc. Kelly has had a bad drug reaction. Eddie was put out that Brooke is only interested in sex, not his love. Myra suggested Nina see Cliff when she's at school to avoid Palmer’s wrath.
Palmer hired detective Bernard Raab, who found Cliff's former girlfriend Janice Rollins in Chicago, then tempted her with money to help break up Nina and Cliff. Erica accused Betsy of having more than a clinical interest in Tom.
Another World
Written by: Tom King
Produced by: Paul Rauch
Eileen moved back with Rita and steered clear of Joey after admitting to Morgan that she had lost her virginity to Phil. Clarice tipped off Jamie that Elaine planned an abortion. He rushed to Blaine's side. Kirk's company is in financial straits and he urged Iris to persuade Mac to sell Cory Publishing. Kirk's detective, Murdock discovered that Janice had once been kept by a guy named Howard. Murdock continued tracking down dirt on Sylvie also. Frank wasn't enthused that Janice wanted him to write an article about the plight of Vietnamese children. Mike thought Karen was bonkers when she insisted that Ted was alive. Iris feared that Vivien would return to the farm after Viv's mother died. Larry decided to enter the police academy. Sally taunted Eileen about knowing about Eileen and Phil. Paul learned he can get an annulment if Rita knew she was barren when they married.
A very-much alive Ted kidnapped Karen, who realized he's bonkers. Iris threatened to squeal about June and Jeff unless June left Kirk free to dally with Iris. Sylvie was outraged that Kirk tracked down her sister Myrtle, since the ladies never saw eye to eye. Blaine and Sally became roommates. Sally plotted with Phil to get Eileen out of town while Joey’s working in Boston where he planned to check out Serenity House. Rachel was confused by Mac's jealousy of Frank and decided to spend a few days at the artist colony. Kirk conned Iris saying he only wants to help Mac's company. Jamie wants to be responsible for Blaine's baby but doesn't want to marry her because of Cecile. Murdock discovered a scandal surrounding the death of Janice's former lover. Charlie courted Ada now that she's rid of Fred.
Myrtle told Kirk and Sylvie that she’d reveal a secret about Sylvie to the highest bidder. June agreed to put up a divorced front with Kirk but only until he got Iris’ vote at the Cory stockholders’ meeting, then Kirk must dump Iris. Rita confessed about lying to Paul before their marriage about her infertility. He insisted the marriage must end because he loves Rose. Frank searched for an Asian child whose photo he carries. Mike and Ben rescued Karen from Ted’s mad clutches. Eileen insisted to Joey that Phil didn’t do anything to make her want to leave town. Kirk blackmailed Sylvie about her alcoholism and threatened to squeal to Iris if Sylvie continues to side with mac. Frank was upset that Rachel lent moral support to Mac over Kirk’s takeover schemes. Gwen assured Mac that Willis would stick by Mac if he puts Willis on the board of directors.
Phil pressed charges against Joey who beat him up after Sally told Joey that Phil had sexually conquered Eileen. Karen and Mike headed for a new life and a wedding in Florida while Ted was committed to a prison for the criminally insane. Kirk learned from Myrtle that Sylvie had been sent to prison where she gave birth. Sylvie returned to New York after saying goodbye to a tearful Iris. Joey skipped town after patching things up with Eileen. Jim overheard Sylvie threaten to kill Kirk if he ever harmed Iris. Ben followed Karen and Mike to Florida. Rachel refused to spend a night in Frank's bed.
Kirk left Iris at his mountain retreat not knowing June was there, too. June pulled a gun on Iris but she wouldn't kill her. She's going to wait for Kirk to destroy Iris.
As The World Turns
Written by: Douglas Marland
Produced by: Joe Rothenberger
Hester stood in the garage shadows as Grant borrowed Lisa's car. Grant was injured in an accident and suspected that Bennett had tampered with the brakes. Jay warned Matt not to get hung up on Melinda who is still married to Beau. Ian admitted to Barbara that he used her to get closer to Dana. Alex departed on business after he and Val returned from their honeymoon. Val reported a missing ruby stickpin, but Tom remembered spotting one of the wedding caterer's assistants, Sheila, guiltily hanging around Kate's room. Ellen's in a funk about Dan and Dee doesn't want to return to an out-of-town school. Marcia admitted to Jeff that Doug's lost interest in her and is bait for another woman.
Grant raged at Lisa for giving Ben nett a fake alibi. Ian claimed he's throwing in the towel and arranged a divorce meeting at a lodge with Dana. Sheila was arrested for theft and Tom was appointed her lawyer, although he admitted to Barbara he doesn't trust Sheila. Ralph lamented to Jay that he's sure Mary loves Don but she won't back out of marriage because she's too decent. Ralph began making Mary suspect he hasn't reformed from his playboy days. Tom got Sheila out on bail but the police found more jewelry in her locker. Valerie went to Ecuador with Alex, but will return, leaving him there on assignment until the spring. Dan prepared Emmy and Betsy for his death. Bennett realized Lisa's not sure she trusts him now.
Ralph saved Grant from a “fixed” elevator accident after Grant was knocked unconscious by a masked person. Bob and Dana realized that Dan tricked Dana into going to the lodge, although his lawyer already canceled out. Melinda began to enjoy Matt’s attentions. Tom asked Don to take Stella’s case since she reminded him of Natalie. Grant hired a bodyguart after considering that Bennett had put a contract on him.
Kim and the children moved in with Ellen and David while adjusting to Dan's death. Lisa moved into the Inn. Bennett accused Lisa. Ian presented Barbara with a contract to do his record album cover.
Bennett refused Lisa's offer to live in Oakdale giving her a week to return to the inn. Mary and Ralph broke off their engagement. Dan told Mary that they must face their feelings for each other.
Days Of Our Lives
Written by: Elizabeth Harrower
Produced by: Betty Corday & H. Wesley Kenney
Doug fell for Lee's sympathy act and offered financial support after he inherited Byron's estate. Julie refused to see Hope. Bill dined with Maggie during Mickey's absence. Linda hired an investigative firm to tail Stephanie. Julie promised to keep mum about Stephanie being Brooke unless Stephanie hurts Bob. Steve paid court to both Mary and Lee until he learned Lee is poor as a churchmouse. Alex flirted with Maggie. Amanda had pregnancy problems after learning that her baby will legally belong to Greg even if it's Chris' child. Jordan helped Julie psychologically at Linda's urging. Mary asked Bob to hire Steve. Don became a city councilman. Chris rehired Mike at Anderson’s thanks to Margo.
Amanda was rushed to the hospital and must have a therapeutic abortion. Simpson came for his canes with the smuggled diamonds, and Steve flared at Maggie for unwittingly selling one to Tom and one to Trask. Marie admitted to Tommy that she had a disastrous affair before she entered the convent. Julie reminded Jordan of a woman he once loved and lost. Alex let Stephanie know that he's aware of her real identity. Steve retrieved Tom's cane but Trask went to Europe, and Steve failed to convince Trish to give up her diamond supply. Lee gladly accepted Doug's invitation to live under his roof. Greg arrived and learned from Tom that Amanda may have a malignancy. Alex told Phyllis he's not the marrying kind. Donna returned from Hollywood. Julie finally saw Hope and realized the child isn't repulsed by Julie's scars.
Steve intimated that Maggie and Bill are up to no good after they dined together. Cathy Breton joined the hospital cafeteria staff. Greg agreed to divorce after Amanda had a hysterectomy. Jordan convinced Doug to leave Julie alone after she got hysterical because Doug bought her a house, which she refused to accept. Since Lee is moving in on Doug, Steve expects to be her partner. Marlena learned that Samantha has a kidney problem. Trish rebid her diamonds, them was threatened by Simpson. Trish asked Margo to return the diamond she had loaned Margo to pay Earle. Maggie found Simpson in the shop and a gunshot is fired. David asked Bob for a transfer because of Stephanie.
Maggie was questioned by the police after Simpson died of a gunshot wound inflicted during their struggle at the shop. Steve pushed for a job at Anderson Manufacturing. Phyllis warned Bob that Stephanie may be out to take over the company – and Bob. Jordan warned Doug not to contact Hulie who agreed to another skin graft.
Amanda returned to Chicago with Greg leaving a bitter Chris behind. Margo returned Trish’s diamond to her not knowing Earle had substitued a fake.
The Doctors
Written by: Elizabeth Levin & David Cherrill
Produced by: Doris Quinlan
Greta nixed Billy's marriage proposal and he skipped town. The cult moved into Lisa's hospital room while Steve and Carolee tried to convince Lisa to leave the group. Far Wind put a curse on Steve indicating that if Far Wind lost "a child" so would Steve and Carolee. Kim rubbed it in to Missy that Luke doesn't have a choice about Kim becoming a club partner since Evan would take him to court.
Stephanie came under the influence of Far Wind and the cult. Luke borrowed from a loan shark to keep Kim out as a partner. Matt fretted about a threatened nurses' strike. Steve and John tried to de-program Lisa. Nola couldn't stand living with Barney and moved back with Mona. Carolee was in the dark about Stephanie and didn't want Steven involved with Lisa's problems because of the cult's threats.
Viveca Strand, a hospital commission inspector, didn’t want to recommend Colin’s cardiac unit because of Hope Memorial’s financial problems. Kim left town after Luke and Nola bought the remaining share of the club. John lamented to Greta about his troubles with his wife; then snatched a kiss. Nola taunted M.J. by giving Colin a photo of Jessica, which M.J. realized is Colin’s child.
Maggie warned Greta not to get involved with John since he’s still married. Barney was injured when the stove blew up at The Medecine Man. Lisa manipulated Carolee and Steve into letting her recuperate in their home. Mike treated Mary Hopkins, an overworked housewife. Madison Memorial’s fate rests with Viveca’s recommendation to the governor on the hospital’s efficiency.
Steve gave Nola until the end of October to move out of Mona's house. Carolee and Bennett searched the rubble in a house vacated by Far Wind.
The Edge Of Night
Written by: Henry Slesar
Produced by: Erwin Nicholson
It was revealed that Tobias is really Mickey who assured Paige he didn't want to kill her. But, Mickey slashed Tobias and arranged with gang member Zack to set up Steve and Paige for a hit Sarah and Raven slapped each other around over Elliott, then Sarah warned Logan that his wife is cheating on him. Nola went on a bender after overhearing Owen tell producer Eddie that she's washed up. But, Owen finally consented to direct the horror flick with Nola as star. Logan asked Draper to arrange Logan's adoption of Jamie.
Owen spotted Paige kissing Brian and reminded Brian that Paige is his real sister, not his stepsister. Mickey (Tobias) shot Zach because Mickey truly loves Paige. Steve recognized Mickey’s gun as the one that Joey had when Steve killed him and realized that Mickey had switched a toy gun for the real thing. Logan went on a campaign trip but Raven claimed she had the flu so she could rendezvous with Elliott. Eddie admitted he's always loved Nola.
Raven blamed Geraldine for having Logan return unexpectedly and fiding Raven and Elliott in the sack. Cliff was jealous that Owen is sparking up to Deborah and telling her he doesn’t love Noa. Bill rehired Steve. Logan prepared to fight for Jamie’s custody after he called it quits with Raven. Owen and Eddie planned to film the horror film in Monticello. Brian told Paige they are brother and sister and she agreed to run away with Mickey (Tobias). Mike and Nancy learned that Margo arranged for Draper’s New York job cancellation.
Steve cornered Mickey who jumped out of a window to his death while trying to escape with the money from his South American gun-running escapade. Raven left for London after putting April and Draper’s names on an adoption form for Jamie. All charges were dropped against Paige who confessed that Mickey was really Tobias.
Actor Trent Archer arrived in town and Nola planned a pre-production party for "Mansion of the Damned." She's invited Deborah whom she knows Owen is seeing on the sly. April said she'd divorce Draper if he helped Logan get custody of Jamie.
General Hospital
Written by: Pat Falken Smith & Margaret DePriest
Produced by: Gloria Monty
Laura warned Amy not to get interested in Luke. Joe, Jeff and Steve headed for Mexico where Carol is hospitalized. Mitch told Tracy he couldn't live with her since the mob might hound him about Ted's death. Tracy spotted Mitch coming on to Susan. Amy blabbed to Scotty that Laura got a job at the disco. Alan found Amy admiring his house, then consoled her after learning her father had died. Monica and her unborn baby's condition improved. Dorrie told Howard it is over between them and packed her bags. Lesley investigated whether Mrs. Kakorian had a history of heart trouble.
Cal died but not before he told Jeff that Heather knows the truth about Steven Lars. Mrs. Grant realized the game was up and beat around the bush to Peter about knowing of an illegal adoption. It finally dawned on him that she was trying to explain that P.J. is actually Steven Lars. Anne won temporary custody of Jeremy who suggested she marry Jeff. She vetoed the idea although she's been drawn closer to Jeff. Luke comforted Laura about her stepfather's death. Laura and Scotty argued about her job schedule. Bobbie avoided one of her ex-johns who's a patient. Monica returned to Alan, although the baby may have heart problems.
Peter had a coronary after Mrs. Grant revealed the P.J. / Steven Lars story. Bobbie and Roy were upset when Barry Johnson recognized her in the hospital. Lesley’s reports on Mrs. Kirkorian’s previous ailment couldn’t be proved. Rick and Monica were forced to confide to Howard about their night together after Mrs. Kirkorian’s surgery. Luke and Roy worried they’d have to eliminate Mitch to prove their mob royalty. Joe admitted his love for Ann, who asked they married.
Dorrie returned to England. Bobbie told Jessie she had once be a hooker. Peter died before he could tell Jeff about P.J / Steven Lars but he left Diana a mysterious letter. Kirkorian refused the hospital’s settlement so Rick and Monica prepared for a court battle. Monica returned to Alan upon her hospital release and accepted Amy’s offer to move in and help out during her recuperation.
Alice blamed herself for Peter's death because she told him about P.J.-Stephen Lars. Diana made quick plans to take P.J. to visit her mother in Florida.
All My Children
Written by: Agnes Nixon and Wisner Washam
Produced by: Agnes Nixon and Bud Kloss
Frank invited Betsy to Donna's party after Nancy turned him down. Eddie took sexual advange of a drunken Brooke, but she later told him to scram. Charles and Mona laughed that Phoebe’s been acting the saint while she's secretly playing around with Langley. Phoebe had a fit when Paul announced he's divorcing Ann, who had flashing memories of him in the sanitarium while plotting an escape. Myra cried after overhearing Nina talking to her mother's portrait and Palmer warned Myra never to mention his wife to Nina. Kelly claimed she's suffering from narcolepsy but Myrtle and Joe knew better. Tom's surgery was successful. Brooke told Mark she's pregnant. Kelly had nightmares that Linc ditched her after Eddie squealed that she’s a speed freak.
Ann escaped from the sanitarium and arrived on Phoebe's doorsteps. Nina put her foot down about Cliff to Palmer. Chuck leveled with Charlie that there's no hope for Chuck and Tara, and Charlie returned to Washington. Kelly struggled to resist her pill habit while dating Linc at a posh social function where he ran into an old girlfriend. Phoebe agreed to invest in Langley’s oil deals. Phoebe kept Ann hidden although she realized Ann's still living in the past. Brooke admitted she's not absolutely sure she's pregnant, but wishes like all get-out that she were. Nancy and Frank argued about his abuse of visitation rights with Carl.
Brooke’s pregnancy test was negative. Erica was miffed to find Betsy giving Tom a hospital back rub. Benny and Edna returned from a honeymoon in the Poconos. Claudette laughed at Eddie’s notion that he can catch Brooke romantically. Langley's marriage proposal to Phoebe was prompted by his plans to get her money. Phoebe swore him to secrecy about keeping Ann hidden. Edna called Estelle a tramp when she spotted Benny and Estelle during an innocent meeting. Wally and Betsy warned Erica to tell Tom about her disco. Myra refused to do Palmer’s dirty work in keeping Cliff and Nina apart.
Ann disappeared after searching for Paul and overhearing him and Ellen discussing their romantic ties. Myrtle told Linc that Kelly was having a breakdown after Kelly went bananas in front of Linc. Kelly has had a bad drug reaction. Eddie was put out that Brooke is only interested in sex, not his love. Myra suggested Nina see Cliff when she's at school to avoid Palmer’s wrath.
Palmer hired detective Bernard Raab, who found Cliff's former girlfriend Janice Rollins in Chicago, then tempted her with money to help break up Nina and Cliff. Erica accused Betsy of having more than a clinical interest in Tom.
Another World
Written by: Tom King
Produced by: Paul Rauch
Eileen moved back with Rita and steered clear of Joey after admitting to Morgan that she had lost her virginity to Phil. Clarice tipped off Jamie that Elaine planned an abortion. He rushed to Blaine's side. Kirk's company is in financial straits and he urged Iris to persuade Mac to sell Cory Publishing. Kirk's detective, Murdock discovered that Janice had once been kept by a guy named Howard. Murdock continued tracking down dirt on Sylvie also. Frank wasn't enthused that Janice wanted him to write an article about the plight of Vietnamese children. Mike thought Karen was bonkers when she insisted that Ted was alive. Iris feared that Vivien would return to the farm after Viv's mother died. Larry decided to enter the police academy. Sally taunted Eileen about knowing about Eileen and Phil. Paul learned he can get an annulment if Rita knew she was barren when they married.
A very-much alive Ted kidnapped Karen, who realized he's bonkers. Iris threatened to squeal about June and Jeff unless June left Kirk free to dally with Iris. Sylvie was outraged that Kirk tracked down her sister Myrtle, since the ladies never saw eye to eye. Blaine and Sally became roommates. Sally plotted with Phil to get Eileen out of town while Joey’s working in Boston where he planned to check out Serenity House. Rachel was confused by Mac's jealousy of Frank and decided to spend a few days at the artist colony. Kirk conned Iris saying he only wants to help Mac's company. Jamie wants to be responsible for Blaine's baby but doesn't want to marry her because of Cecile. Murdock discovered a scandal surrounding the death of Janice's former lover. Charlie courted Ada now that she's rid of Fred.
Myrtle told Kirk and Sylvie that she’d reveal a secret about Sylvie to the highest bidder. June agreed to put up a divorced front with Kirk but only until he got Iris’ vote at the Cory stockholders’ meeting, then Kirk must dump Iris. Rita confessed about lying to Paul before their marriage about her infertility. He insisted the marriage must end because he loves Rose. Frank searched for an Asian child whose photo he carries. Mike and Ben rescued Karen from Ted’s mad clutches. Eileen insisted to Joey that Phil didn’t do anything to make her want to leave town. Kirk blackmailed Sylvie about her alcoholism and threatened to squeal to Iris if Sylvie continues to side with mac. Frank was upset that Rachel lent moral support to Mac over Kirk’s takeover schemes. Gwen assured Mac that Willis would stick by Mac if he puts Willis on the board of directors.
Phil pressed charges against Joey who beat him up after Sally told Joey that Phil had sexually conquered Eileen. Karen and Mike headed for a new life and a wedding in Florida while Ted was committed to a prison for the criminally insane. Kirk learned from Myrtle that Sylvie had been sent to prison where she gave birth. Sylvie returned to New York after saying goodbye to a tearful Iris. Joey skipped town after patching things up with Eileen. Jim overheard Sylvie threaten to kill Kirk if he ever harmed Iris. Ben followed Karen and Mike to Florida. Rachel refused to spend a night in Frank's bed.
Kirk left Iris at his mountain retreat not knowing June was there, too. June pulled a gun on Iris but she wouldn't kill her. She's going to wait for Kirk to destroy Iris.
As The World Turns
Written by: Douglas Marland
Produced by: Joe Rothenberger
Hester stood in the garage shadows as Grant borrowed Lisa's car. Grant was injured in an accident and suspected that Bennett had tampered with the brakes. Jay warned Matt not to get hung up on Melinda who is still married to Beau. Ian admitted to Barbara that he used her to get closer to Dana. Alex departed on business after he and Val returned from their honeymoon. Val reported a missing ruby stickpin, but Tom remembered spotting one of the wedding caterer's assistants, Sheila, guiltily hanging around Kate's room. Ellen's in a funk about Dan and Dee doesn't want to return to an out-of-town school. Marcia admitted to Jeff that Doug's lost interest in her and is bait for another woman.
Grant raged at Lisa for giving Ben nett a fake alibi. Ian claimed he's throwing in the towel and arranged a divorce meeting at a lodge with Dana. Sheila was arrested for theft and Tom was appointed her lawyer, although he admitted to Barbara he doesn't trust Sheila. Ralph lamented to Jay that he's sure Mary loves Don but she won't back out of marriage because she's too decent. Ralph began making Mary suspect he hasn't reformed from his playboy days. Tom got Sheila out on bail but the police found more jewelry in her locker. Valerie went to Ecuador with Alex, but will return, leaving him there on assignment until the spring. Dan prepared Emmy and Betsy for his death. Bennett realized Lisa's not sure she trusts him now.
Ralph saved Grant from a “fixed” elevator accident after Grant was knocked unconscious by a masked person. Bob and Dana realized that Dan tricked Dana into going to the lodge, although his lawyer already canceled out. Melinda began to enjoy Matt’s attentions. Tom asked Don to take Stella’s case since she reminded him of Natalie. Grant hired a bodyguart after considering that Bennett had put a contract on him.
Kim and the children moved in with Ellen and David while adjusting to Dan's death. Lisa moved into the Inn. Bennett accused Lisa. Ian presented Barbara with a contract to do his record album cover.
Bennett refused Lisa's offer to live in Oakdale giving her a week to return to the inn. Mary and Ralph broke off their engagement. Dan told Mary that they must face their feelings for each other.
Days Of Our Lives
Written by: Elizabeth Harrower
Produced by: Betty Corday & H. Wesley Kenney
Doug fell for Lee's sympathy act and offered financial support after he inherited Byron's estate. Julie refused to see Hope. Bill dined with Maggie during Mickey's absence. Linda hired an investigative firm to tail Stephanie. Julie promised to keep mum about Stephanie being Brooke unless Stephanie hurts Bob. Steve paid court to both Mary and Lee until he learned Lee is poor as a churchmouse. Alex flirted with Maggie. Amanda had pregnancy problems after learning that her baby will legally belong to Greg even if it's Chris' child. Jordan helped Julie psychologically at Linda's urging. Mary asked Bob to hire Steve. Don became a city councilman. Chris rehired Mike at Anderson’s thanks to Margo.
Amanda was rushed to the hospital and must have a therapeutic abortion. Simpson came for his canes with the smuggled diamonds, and Steve flared at Maggie for unwittingly selling one to Tom and one to Trask. Marie admitted to Tommy that she had a disastrous affair before she entered the convent. Julie reminded Jordan of a woman he once loved and lost. Alex let Stephanie know that he's aware of her real identity. Steve retrieved Tom's cane but Trask went to Europe, and Steve failed to convince Trish to give up her diamond supply. Lee gladly accepted Doug's invitation to live under his roof. Greg arrived and learned from Tom that Amanda may have a malignancy. Alex told Phyllis he's not the marrying kind. Donna returned from Hollywood. Julie finally saw Hope and realized the child isn't repulsed by Julie's scars.
Steve intimated that Maggie and Bill are up to no good after they dined together. Cathy Breton joined the hospital cafeteria staff. Greg agreed to divorce after Amanda had a hysterectomy. Jordan convinced Doug to leave Julie alone after she got hysterical because Doug bought her a house, which she refused to accept. Since Lee is moving in on Doug, Steve expects to be her partner. Marlena learned that Samantha has a kidney problem. Trish rebid her diamonds, them was threatened by Simpson. Trish asked Margo to return the diamond she had loaned Margo to pay Earle. Maggie found Simpson in the shop and a gunshot is fired. David asked Bob for a transfer because of Stephanie.
Maggie was questioned by the police after Simpson died of a gunshot wound inflicted during their struggle at the shop. Steve pushed for a job at Anderson Manufacturing. Phyllis warned Bob that Stephanie may be out to take over the company – and Bob. Jordan warned Doug not to contact Hulie who agreed to another skin graft.
Amanda returned to Chicago with Greg leaving a bitter Chris behind. Margo returned Trish’s diamond to her not knowing Earle had substitued a fake.
The Doctors
Written by: Elizabeth Levin & David Cherrill
Produced by: Doris Quinlan
Greta nixed Billy's marriage proposal and he skipped town. The cult moved into Lisa's hospital room while Steve and Carolee tried to convince Lisa to leave the group. Far Wind put a curse on Steve indicating that if Far Wind lost "a child" so would Steve and Carolee. Kim rubbed it in to Missy that Luke doesn't have a choice about Kim becoming a club partner since Evan would take him to court.
Stephanie came under the influence of Far Wind and the cult. Luke borrowed from a loan shark to keep Kim out as a partner. Matt fretted about a threatened nurses' strike. Steve and John tried to de-program Lisa. Nola couldn't stand living with Barney and moved back with Mona. Carolee was in the dark about Stephanie and didn't want Steven involved with Lisa's problems because of the cult's threats.
Viveca Strand, a hospital commission inspector, didn’t want to recommend Colin’s cardiac unit because of Hope Memorial’s financial problems. Kim left town after Luke and Nola bought the remaining share of the club. John lamented to Greta about his troubles with his wife; then snatched a kiss. Nola taunted M.J. by giving Colin a photo of Jessica, which M.J. realized is Colin’s child.
Maggie warned Greta not to get involved with John since he’s still married. Barney was injured when the stove blew up at The Medecine Man. Lisa manipulated Carolee and Steve into letting her recuperate in their home. Mike treated Mary Hopkins, an overworked housewife. Madison Memorial’s fate rests with Viveca’s recommendation to the governor on the hospital’s efficiency.
Steve gave Nola until the end of October to move out of Mona's house. Carolee and Bennett searched the rubble in a house vacated by Far Wind.
The Edge Of Night
Written by: Henry Slesar
Produced by: Erwin Nicholson
It was revealed that Tobias is really Mickey who assured Paige he didn't want to kill her. But, Mickey slashed Tobias and arranged with gang member Zack to set up Steve and Paige for a hit Sarah and Raven slapped each other around over Elliott, then Sarah warned Logan that his wife is cheating on him. Nola went on a bender after overhearing Owen tell producer Eddie that she's washed up. But, Owen finally consented to direct the horror flick with Nola as star. Logan asked Draper to arrange Logan's adoption of Jamie.
Owen spotted Paige kissing Brian and reminded Brian that Paige is his real sister, not his stepsister. Mickey (Tobias) shot Zach because Mickey truly loves Paige. Steve recognized Mickey’s gun as the one that Joey had when Steve killed him and realized that Mickey had switched a toy gun for the real thing. Logan went on a campaign trip but Raven claimed she had the flu so she could rendezvous with Elliott. Eddie admitted he's always loved Nola.
Raven blamed Geraldine for having Logan return unexpectedly and fiding Raven and Elliott in the sack. Cliff was jealous that Owen is sparking up to Deborah and telling her he doesn’t love Noa. Bill rehired Steve. Logan prepared to fight for Jamie’s custody after he called it quits with Raven. Owen and Eddie planned to film the horror film in Monticello. Brian told Paige they are brother and sister and she agreed to run away with Mickey (Tobias). Mike and Nancy learned that Margo arranged for Draper’s New York job cancellation.
Steve cornered Mickey who jumped out of a window to his death while trying to escape with the money from his South American gun-running escapade. Raven left for London after putting April and Draper’s names on an adoption form for Jamie. All charges were dropped against Paige who confessed that Mickey was really Tobias.
Actor Trent Archer arrived in town and Nola planned a pre-production party for "Mansion of the Damned." She's invited Deborah whom she knows Owen is seeing on the sly. April said she'd divorce Draper if he helped Logan get custody of Jamie.
General Hospital
Written by: Pat Falken Smith & Margaret DePriest
Produced by: Gloria Monty
Laura warned Amy not to get interested in Luke. Joe, Jeff and Steve headed for Mexico where Carol is hospitalized. Mitch told Tracy he couldn't live with her since the mob might hound him about Ted's death. Tracy spotted Mitch coming on to Susan. Amy blabbed to Scotty that Laura got a job at the disco. Alan found Amy admiring his house, then consoled her after learning her father had died. Monica and her unborn baby's condition improved. Dorrie told Howard it is over between them and packed her bags. Lesley investigated whether Mrs. Kakorian had a history of heart trouble.
Cal died but not before he told Jeff that Heather knows the truth about Steven Lars. Mrs. Grant realized the game was up and beat around the bush to Peter about knowing of an illegal adoption. It finally dawned on him that she was trying to explain that P.J. is actually Steven Lars. Anne won temporary custody of Jeremy who suggested she marry Jeff. She vetoed the idea although she's been drawn closer to Jeff. Luke comforted Laura about her stepfather's death. Laura and Scotty argued about her job schedule. Bobbie avoided one of her ex-johns who's a patient. Monica returned to Alan, although the baby may have heart problems.
Peter had a coronary after Mrs. Grant revealed the P.J. / Steven Lars story. Bobbie and Roy were upset when Barry Johnson recognized her in the hospital. Lesley’s reports on Mrs. Kirkorian’s previous ailment couldn’t be proved. Rick and Monica were forced to confide to Howard about their night together after Mrs. Kirkorian’s surgery. Luke and Roy worried they’d have to eliminate Mitch to prove their mob royalty. Joe admitted his love for Ann, who asked they married.
Dorrie returned to England. Bobbie told Jessie she had once be a hooker. Peter died before he could tell Jeff about P.J / Steven Lars but he left Diana a mysterious letter. Kirkorian refused the hospital’s settlement so Rick and Monica prepared for a court battle. Monica returned to Alan upon her hospital release and accepted Amy’s offer to move in and help out during her recuperation.
Alice blamed herself for Peter's death because she told him about P.J.-Stephen Lars. Diana made quick plans to take P.J. to visit her mother in Florida.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Hall of Fame: Douglas Watson
Douglas Watson
2009 Soap Opera Hall of Fame Inductee
2009 Soap Opera Hall of Fame Inductee
- Dr. Clay Carroll, The Nurses
- Dr. Robert Wallace, Moment of Truth
- Walter Haskins, Search For Tomorrow
- Dr. Lloyd Phillips, Love of Life
- Mackenzie Cory, Another World
A character actor since 1950, his most notable roles were in the movies Julius Caesar (1953), Sayonara (1957), and The Money Pit (1986). He was also one of the most acclaimed actors on the New York stage, acting in several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. In addition, he played on such daytime dramatic dramas as Moment of Truth (1965) (a Canadian serial), Search for Tomorrow (1966-1968), Love of Life (1972-1973), and Another World (1974-1989).
Before his acting career began, he received two Purple Heart awards and a Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Air Force during World War II.
After the war, he toured as Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor and made his New York debut in 1947, personally selected by Eugene O'Neill to play Don Parrit in The Iceman Cometh.
His theater career quickly took off with a Theatre World Award for his performance the next year as Eros in Antony and Cleopatra. In 1949, Watson won the Clarence Derwent Award for That Lady opposite Katharine Cornell, and the next year he topped Variety's New York Drama Critics Poll for The Wisteria Trees opposite Helen Hayes. A number of critically acclaimed roles followed in the 1950s, including Romeo opposite Olivia de Havilland's Juliet, Eben Cabot in Desire Under the Elms, Christian de Neuvilette in Cyrano de Bergerac, the title role in Henry V, Mr. Harcourt in The Country Wife opposite Julie Harris, Ralph Touchett in Portrait of a Lady opposite Jennifer Jones, Brian O'Bannion in Auntie Mame opposite Constance Bennett, and the title role T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk.
Celebrated for his outstanding performances in a series of Shakesperean productions, Watson broke into motion pictures in 1953 as Octavius in Julius Caesar opposite Marlon Brando's Mark Antony. Four years later, he was reunited with Brando in the film version of Sayonara. During the 1960s he continued his Shakesperean award-winning theater streak, appearing in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and Othello. He appeared in a number of non-Shakesperean roles, including King Henry VIII in A Man For All Seasons, Herald in Marat/Sade, Teddy Lloyd in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie opposite Zoe Caldwell, and the Major General in The Pirates of Penzance.
After two decades of busy stage work, Watson starred in his own daytime serial, Moment of Truth, in 1965. He played Dr. Bob Wallace, a psychiatrist, in this ill-fated, Canadian produced entry. Then he was seen as Walter Haskins on Search For Tomorrow for awhile, followed by a stint in 1972 as Dr. Lloyd Phillips on Love of Life. Nancy Marchand who would later appear with him on Another World portrayed his wife, Vinnie.
In 1974, he joined the cast of Another World. On Another World, Watson portrayed Mackenzie "Mac" Cory; the third actor to play the role, he had replaced Robert Emhardt. Watson earned the Another World role after a critically-acclaimed turn playing Kent in King Lear at the 1974 New York Shakespeare Festival.
As the doting father of the spoiled Iris, who found his match in the fiery Rachel, Watson quickly garnered notice inside the industry for his alternately charming and volatile performances, resulting in two Emmy awards for Outstanding Actor in 1980 and 1981.
Although Mac was busy enough for a dozen men (three marriages to Rachel, a poisoning administered by his wife Janice, a hostage kidnapped for weeks, a plane crash survivor who wandered for days on frozen tundra), Watson found time for other projects besides soaps during the 1970s and early 1980s. He appeared in the film Ulzana's Raid with Burt Lancaster and repeated his stage performance in The Trial of the Cantonville Nine in the film version. In 1973, after starring as Don Pedro in the highly praised Joe Papp production of Much Ado About Nothing, he repeated the role in a television production. He also appeared on Broadway in the musical Over Here with the Andrews Sisters and in the revival of The Philadelphia Story.
As if acting with Dame Judith Anderson in Medea, dancing with Martha Graham in several of her premier works, and singing with The New York City Opera were not enough, Watson also managed an equally impressive home life. From November 28, 1942 to his death, he was married to Harriet Eugenia (Genie) Clark. The Watsons had three children: Larkin Douglas Watson, a construction engineer; Celia Strome, a national award-winning poet; and Randall Forsberg, an internationally recognized expert on world armaments and the originator of the Nuclear Freeze Movement.
Watson died on May 1, 1989 from a heart attack at the age of 68, just a few days short of Another World's silver anniversary. His character on the show also died shortly afterward. Douglass Watson is interred at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Some Another World Fan Art
Some Another World Fan Art
I could have done better on the Hunks banner. I was just learning Photoshop at the time and I did something to Hank Cheyne and Robert Kelker Kelly that scrunched them some - so they look distorted.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Where Are They Now: Anne Heche
Anne Heche (Vicky Hudson/Marley McKinnon, Another World; Amanda Hayes, Everwood; Nicole Morretti, Nip/Tuck)Source: The New York Times
Anne Heche Is Playing It Normal Now
Anne Heche sat in a chair while a former professional soccer player from Israel drew dots on her scalp with a black marker. Piny (pronounced PEE-nee, one name only, like Cher) of Beverly Hills has been a guru of wigs and hair extensions since he started here in 1975, with clients like Liberace and Dolly Parton. He also created John Travolta’s flowing mane in “Pulp Fiction.”
“It’s like having a toolbox I never knew existed,” Heche said, holding up a strip of long blond hair dyed to match her own that would be sewn onto a foundation of tiny braids along her scalp. Heche said she worked with Piny to create her two latest characters, in the same way she would a costume designer. “These make it easier for my hair to stay in a style,” she said of the three rows of extensions Piny recommended. “And if I have to reshoot and already have a different look, I can just take the character off the shelf. But since I’m doing publicity for these two roles now, it’s important to look how I do as these characters. I’ve learned that it’s jarring for people to see what a chameleon I am.”
And how. For a woman who recently turned 40, Heche has had more than her share of incarnations. She started life as the sexually abused child of an evangelical Christian father, who was also a closeted gay man who died of AIDS in 1983, and his eerily compliant wife, who after his death became a Christian therapist, lecturing on behalf of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family about “overcoming” homosexuality. Fresh out of high school in 1987, Heche had a four-year starter career as a soap star, playing good and evil twins on “Another World,” for which she won a Daytime Emmy in 1991. That led to a period as a budding Hollywood leading lady, co-starring with Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco,” Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in “Wag the Dog” and Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights,” while off screen she veered through a string of relationships with a variety of father figures, including Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac and Steve Martin.
Then, at the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, lightning struck and she fell madly in love with Ellen DeGeneres, becoming half of the most famous lesbian couple in America. Because she had never given any indication of being gay, Heche was pilloried as both publicity hound and career opportunist — though in retrospect, given her experience with her duplicitous father and homophobic mother, it could seem that her attraction to DeGeneres had less to do with acting than acting out. The romance actually destroyed her prospects as a leading lady; the deal for “Six Days, Seven Nights” was the last one made as the affair became public, and no more were offered. When the relationship soured after three and a half years and the couple split, Heche experienced what seemed to be a psychotic break, giving in to Celestia, whom she described as an alternate personality she had lived with for years, one who ultimately believed a spaceship was coming to take her to a better place. Her 2001 memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” recounted that episode, along with her sordid childhood, and started her on the road to career recovery.
Feature films mostly gave way to guest roles on shows like “Ally McBeal” and “Nip/Tuck,” and she starred on Broadway in “Proof” and “‘Twentieth Century,” for which she earned a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Barely a year after splitting with DeGeneres — and Celestia — she married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman who worked on the documentary Heche was making on DeGeneres’s stand-up tour before their breakup. (It was never broadcast.) Entertainment Weekly described Laffoon as “a jovial golden retriever of a man whom Heche credits with picking her up, brushing her off and putting her on a path to stability.” They had a son, Homer, now 7, but the path to stability reached an impasse, and Heche and Laffoon divorced last year. In March, Heche gave birth to her second son, Atlas, whose father, James Tupper, was her co-star in the ABC series “Men in Trees,” which was canceled last year after two seasons.
She’s on a definite upswing now, both personally and professionally. She co-stars with Ashton Kutcher in the movie “Spread” (which opens Aug. 14), playing a corporate lawyer in L.A., a savvy older woman who relishes the control of “keeping” Kutcher as her boy toy even as she frantically tries to appear his contemporary physically. And she has a supporting role in the critically acclaimed HBO series “Hung,” playing Jessica, the ex-wife of Ray (Thomas Jane), a former high-school athletic star, now a broke and losing high-school basketball coach who is forced to make ends meet as a gigolo. Jessica, his former high-school-cheerleader girlfriend, dumps him for a successful dermatologist in a desperate bid to reinvent herself and find some meaning in her life. Heche has done the same thing so often herself, making brave new starts seemingly fueled by great gulps of hope and wonder — until boom, it all falls down and she has to start again — that she brings an unexpected poignancy to the role.
“We auditioned a lot of people,” says Colette Burson, the co-creator of “Hung.” “It is incredibly difficult to find beautiful, talented, funny women over 35.”
The hardest part may be getting them to admit they’re over 35, but Heche doesn’t lie about her age. She has been working since she was 12. Her first role was in a New Jersey dinner-theater production of “The Music Man.” She was paid $100 a week, which helped support her family, who had lost their home and were living with neighbors. Eight days after giving birth to Atlas, she was on set, shooting “Hung.”
Her work ethic never changes, and the invitation of her book’s title aside, she did not seem crazy in the two days I spent with her. She appeared to be a focused mother and a loving partner to Tupper. Though she is perfectly capable of uttering sentences like “Every character puts me through a journey of acceptance about myself,” it is hard to discount either her intelligence or her intention. Maybe it’s because there’s an integral part of her — the abused part — that remains vigilant, a shadow of childhood anxiety that still hovers, a tireless antenna seeking approval. She has an uncanny ability to intuit who she needs to be in any situation — her persistent need to please, a phantom limb. As an actress, she uses this to feed her inner chameleon, and it informs her instincts in plumbing a character’s depths, her normally low-key energy erupting, either in lashings of passion or unanticipated fits of whimsy, both of which are just unhinged enough to be riveting. In her pre-screening remarks to the audience at the “Hung” premiere, Burson quoted Alexander Payne, who directed the pilot, on working with Heche: “Every take was different. Every take was true.”
When Piny was skeptical of Heche’s choice to let me watch two hours of the unglamorously intimate process of tightening her hair extensions, she just laughed. “No more secrets,” she told him. “Not for me, you know that.”
With Heche’s hair firmly in place, we climbed into her slightly used Jaguar sedan and headed toward Shutters hotel in Santa Monica, where Tupper and Homer were spending the day, using the pool. The house they’re renting in Venice doesn’t have one.
Driving with Heche felt like being back in high school. She is an easy person to be with, relaxed and chatty. She wore jeans and a flowing top — she was still breast-feeding — and huge sunglasses. Her extended blond hair became her, and her face had no discernible pores or oil glands. People have killed for less, but the urge never quite struck — maybe because she makes no distinctions between herself as a celebrity and the mere mortals she encounters in the course of a day. That attitude seems rooted both in her willingness to work (that work is worth was a mantra she acquired early) and the fact that, as a mere mortal herself, her need for a paycheck is real.
A sticking point at the heart of her acrimonious split with Laffoon was the very issue of employment. Their initial arrangement was that she would be the breadwinner and he would stay home and take care of Homer. In May 2007, after they separated, The San Jose Mercury News ran an article, “Anne Heche’s Husband Says Actress Is a Bad Mother,” based on an Associated Press report that an accountant hired on Laffoon’s behalf offered “a guideline of $45,239” for payments by Heche in monthly spousal and child support. Laffoon claimed Heche left her son with nannies or assistants in her trailer while she was filming “Men in Trees” in Vancouver and “after one visit, she forgot to return Homer’s favorite shoes and ‘his bedtime stuffed animals which . . . caused him extreme distress.’ ” Lisa Kasteler, Heche’s publicist, was quoted as saying, “For the past several years, the child’s father has refused to get a job in order to contribute financially to the child’s care.”
In March the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that Heche had to pay Laffoon a lump sum of $515,000 and $3,700 in monthly child support, and assume 75 percent of Homer’s private-school tuition.
When I asked her about it, she kept her tone even. “I pay an extraordinary amount of money to him, and it’s unfortunate because it is what I believe keeps him from getting a job,” she said. I reached Laffoon, a registered real estate agent in Los Angeles, by phone. He chose not to respond directly, saying only, “I’m glad it’s over and everyone seems to be moving on with their lives.”
Heche agreed about that. “I have that beautiful 7-year-old boy. The blessing of his life is that he adores his stepdad, and they have a beautiful relationship. Homer feels like he has more love in his life, that’s been the outcome of this whole thing. I’d like to leave it there.”
So she’s working as fast as she can. For “Hung,” she was originally asked to audition for the leading role of Ray’s pimp, now played by Jane Adams. “Who am I not to take a meeting?” Heche said, turning onto the freeway. “I didn’t get that part, but then they thought of me for the other. So, great. Listen, one job doesn’t ever change the path of your career. Even the greatest job can never guarantee the next five years.” That’s certainly not the prevailing wisdom out here, where “stars” are insulted if they aren’t handed a role just for being. But for Heche, in either tight times or flush, work has always been less about entitlement than salvation. “People like people who work,” she said. “When have you ever gotten upset with someone for having a job?”
At Shutters, 31/2-month-old Atlas was sleeping in a cabana while his nanny watched him. Tupper and Homer were both in the water. Heche stopped to say hi on her way to the room where we would talk. When she asked, “Can I have a kiss?” they swam toward her simultaneously, and all three laughed. Heche, who’s understandably marriage-shy at the moment, told me, once we sat down, about a recent trip to Paris. “James and Homer asked me to marry them together as a family, and all three of us decided that we would forever be engaged,” she said. “From that moment Homer said that he would like to call James his stepdad. Although recently he says James is my Dad II.” She smiled. “Homer is in this exquisite world where there are friends that have two dads and friends that have two moms, and so his understanding of the uniqueness of family really helps us out. He understands two dads. And it’s my Dad II, as in ‘also.’ You know, ‘He’s my dad, too.’ ”
Before settling on the couch, Heche poured cream into a cup of Earl Grey tea. We talked first about “Spread.” The character she plays is so hard-bitten yet, as is eventually revealed, so insecure that she resorts to vaginal surgery to remain appealing to younger men.
“It’s interesting when all of a sudden you’re the older woman,” Heche said. “I had to ask myself: ‘What am I not confident about? Why does this scare me?’ As a theme in my life, I’ve always looked at how I can rid myself of shame, so I definitely saw this character as a way to get rid of shame about getting older. Did I understand that there was a person who wanted so desperately to feel loved that they would put themselves through almost any trial, hers ended up being surgery, to stay connected to her youth? Sure. So I had a lot of compassion for this woman.”
Jessica, her character in “Hung,” has a somewhat softer cast. “I really wanted to tell a more loving tale about women,” she said, “that we are fragile, loving people who get to moments in our lives and make some really silly mistakes. I think she still has a lot of love for Ray; it ignites every time she sees him. I think she makes a decision with an open, open heart, but looks back and says, ‘How did it go wrong?’ It’s what I see in so many women: ‘How did I make this choice? Why can’t I redo it?’ That’s what I see in so many faces. ‘How did I get here?’ ”
The relationship between Ray and Jessica has some parallels to that of Heche’s parents, who met while in high school. Her father, Don, was a handsome golden boy, good at everything; her mother, Nancy, was excited and in love. Though there the story took its own turn. After Don dropped out of medical school, he never found a profession that lasted, becoming a part-time church organist and choir director, hatching doomed schemes to make money and stowing his family in rural Ohio in a religious compound. In her own 2006 memoir, “The Truth Comes Out,” Nancy Heche wrote that she essentially missed the ’60s there, never reading a newspaper, listening to the radio or watching television. Don disappeared for long periods, living in New York City, doing odd jobs. He claimed to have worked as a driver for Brooke Shields’s mother. He deified movie stars, pushing his children, whenever he reappeared, to pursue show business. After losing a series of homes, the family ended up living with neighbors.
Heche had four siblings. The eldest, Susan, also wrote a memoir about growing up with a closeted gay father, “Anonymity,” published in 1994 under her married name, Susan Bergman. She died of brain cancer in 2006. The second daughter, Cynthia, died in infancy, from a heart defect. The only son, Nathan, a target for much of his father’s nonsexual abuse, died three months after his father did, in a car accident that some surmised might have been suicide. Abigail, now a jewelry designer living in Michigan, was the other child; Anne, the baby. Anne’s account in her own memoir of her father’s sexual abuse and her mother’s denial of it is devastating. She writes that Nancy Heche told her that as an infant she couldn’t diaper Anne properly because of sores and rashes she had on her vagina but never knew why. Anne got herpes from her father, and in 1983, after he died of AIDS, doctors told her she would have to wait years to learn that she was not infected. She was 14 then; she wrote that the abuse stopped when she was 12.
Heche said that when she called her mother — during her seventh year in therapy — to confront her about the abuse, her mother ended the conversation by saying, “Jesus loves you, Anne,” before hanging up. In her memoir, Nancy Heche, who is now 72, never addresses the issue of Anne’s abuse. I contacted her publisher, Regal Books, for a response to her daughter’s comments, and was told by Jackie Morales, its marketing and publicity coordinator, that Nancy’s agent, Mark Sweeney, said his client would have no comment (though she protested Anne’s account of events at the time). Perhaps the most damning comment came from Heche, who told me she has never introduced either of her children to her mother.
Nor has she read her mother’s book. “My mother’s had a very tragic life,” she said. “Three of her five children are dead, and her husband is dead. That she is attempting to change gay people into straight people is, in my opinion, a way to keep the pain of the truth out. People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love. My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she still stands up against love. And one wonders why I’m not rushing to have her meet my children.”
Understanding the circumstances of Heche’s childhood makes it easier to see past the publicity circus of her relationship with DeGeneres. “My love was so all-consuming for a human being who would tell the truth,” she told me. “The impact that has on a child who grew up with such shame about who she was, who her father was, the disease he died of, the hatred my mother had for anything gay. And I got to participate in a loving truthful celebration of the way I thought the world should be.” She turned up her palms. “How could that destroy my career? I still can’t wrap my head around it.”
That is naïve at best; Hollywood executives are notoriously skittish about homosexuality and its potential to harm their bottom line. The rap on Heche is that when her bid for greater glory as DeGeneres’s other half failed, rushing to marry a man was the only plausible career rehabilitation. When I said that to her, she didn’t flinch. “I think that when I was in a same-sex relationship, it was hard for people to separate my message from the person I was with,” she said. “The message of my life has stayed the same. I think I was a wonderful spokeswoman for the right to love.”
Because Heche’s emotional breakdown happened the day after her breakup with DeGeneres — she turned up near Fresno, dressed in a bra and shorts at someone’s front door asking to take a shower before leaving Earth on her spaceship — people seemed to think it was a reaction to DeGeneres. But Heche wrote in her memoir that Celestia began six years earlier, after her mother’s refusal to acknowledge her abuse. “In that moment I split off from myself,” she wrote. While working on movies she would go to her trailer to transcribe messages she believed she was receiving from God, as Celestia.
To have crashed so publicly and rebounded so mightily is no less than extraordinary. “I went to a lot of therapy,” she said. “I talked my head off and pounded enough pillows and confronted enough ghosts. I didn’t avoid the feelings of what my childhood was. I went right into them and went as deeply as I could.” She does seem remarkably free of anger or bitterness, at this point, at least. “I think people saw how hard it was for me,” she said. “It’s what makes me the artist that I am, it’s my bag of sorrow, of human tragedy that I’ve lived through, and I go to this well every single time I create a character. But that no longer dictates my daily life.”
Neither does religion. When I asked her the differences between evangelical and fundamentalist — her family slid between the two — she said she didn’t know. “We went through different phases of being every kind of whatever was the deepest, whatever kept the blinders on,” she said. “I had a mother whose whole life was based on not looking around or knowing anything. If you’re a man who’s living with that kind of woman, you’re keeping her in a bubble so that you can do whatever you want. It’s not a big mystery how people hide abuse. They keep somebody in a bubble, and they go and do whatever the hell they want, and the person in the bubble says: ‘I love my bubble. This is the only bubble I’ve ever known, and I don’t want out of my bubble.’ Then 20 years later, you’re confronted with truths that happened from all of your children, and you say, ‘I was in a bubble.’ ” She sighed. “There’s no mystery to any life story. How do you think I turned out the way that I am? Because every single thing in my life leads to it. Every single thing in her life leads to where she is — still living in a bubble. Exactly where she always wanted to be. There’s not a lot of mystery. It’s why my brother ended up on the side of a road.” She stopped talking then and looked at me, seeming suddenly to realize someone else was there. She took a deep breath. “I hear people’s stories,” she said quietly, “and I’m so touched by how people survive their lives.”
On the afternoon of the “Hung” premiere, Heche stood on her tiny patch of backyard, giving Tupper a haircut. The three-bedroom house in Venice, rented from an American Airlines pilot, sits on a street lined with small, squat houses. Inside, the floors are poured concrete, and a basketball hoop was set up in the living room for Homer. Heche’s Mother’s Day gift from Tupper was an upright piano. Heche still talks about how her father promised to teach her to play and never did. She and Homer are now learning together.
Upstairs, Homer was setting out his pirate treasure so I could see it. At the home they own together in Vancouver, where “Men in Trees” was shot, Heche and Tupper concoct elaborate treasure hunts for Homer with clues written on parchment paper. The collection of arrowheads and colored stones is one of his prize possessions. Heche finished the haircut. “I’ll take my tip in cash,” she joked, and we went upstairs to admire the treasure. Then Homer and his mom played basketball while Tupper spent the better part of an hour making a salad. The kitchen and living room are essentially an open space, and Atlas napped in his crib next to the refrigerator decorated with Homer’s drawings.
Tupper, who is 43, used to be a carpenter. He is handsome and low-key and seems somewhat amused by his success on “Men in Trees” and by the absurdity of show business in general. Next to the cylindrical fireplace sat a pile, not of newspapers but of old scripts, ready to be burned. Tupper was about to relocate to New York to star in a new NBC medical drama, “Mercy,” and he appears with Claire Danes and Zac Efron in “Me and Orson Welles,” the new Richard Linklater movie, which opens this fall. But for the moment, he chopped carrots and celery, boiled corn on the cob for Homer’s lunch — cutting off the kernels when it was done—– and made him macaroni and cheese. Not Kraft. From scratch.
Heche and Homer then sat down to practice piano, the inevitable trade-off for basketball. Tupper brought her a plate of his salad and some tuna salad, and after a few songs, Homer ran to the front window. “Mommy, your hair person is here,” he announced. “Fantastic!” she exclaimed. “Why is that fantastic?” he asked grumpily. His happy family day was giving way to work, which in this house means hair, makeup and wardrobe.
Patrick Jagaille, the hairstylist, and Gregory Arlt, the makeup artist, set up shop on the kitchen counter. Arlt had brought a CD with him, and soon there was music playing and a blow dryer blowing. “Let the party begin,” Heche said, as her stylists, Wendi and Nicole Ferreira, rolled a dress rack through the front door and proceeded to cover the dining-room table with jewelry.
Tupper reached for his keys. “Should I get some Champagne?” he asked. Heche nodded. “It’s a tradition for us,” she said, as he headed out. This did not make Homer happy. “Mommy, how far away is the wine?” he asked.
Arlt didn’t miss a beat. “I ask myself that question every day,” he said.
Homer rebounded. “Is it O.K. if I move this a little bit?” he asked, wheeling the dress rack away from his basketball hoop. The stylists worked around him, opening boxes of shoes, propping up evening bags next to each pair. “I’m not much of a nit-picker,” Heche said, watching. “If I need them to, they can pick it out almost without me there. I say, Thank you so much for making me look like this and go out the door.” Heche’s dress was fitted the day before; another dress was for the “Hung” wrap party that weekend.
“Champagne, ladies?” Tupper poured flutes of Mumm and handed them around. “Here’s to you darlin’,” Arlt said to Heche. They have worked together for seven years, and he knows how to jolly her up and calm her down when the red carpet looms. Homer, meanwhile, curled up on Tupper’s lap in front of the computer, building a monster. Once that was done, he ran next door and returned with two little girls from the neighborhood in tow. The group headed upstairs, chattering excitedly about water balloons. Tupper followed close behind.
Heche’s upturned face remained serene as she sat, perfectly still, eyes closed. As Arlt worked, an eyebrow appeared. Then two. Atlas woke up and fussed in his crib. “Hi, sweet boy,” Heche called, without moving, as the nanny went to get him. Jagaille twisted long fat banana curls into her hair as Arlt drew her mouth and started on her eyes. Jagaille blew out the curls, pulling them into waves.
Arlt handed her a bottle of liquid lip gloss. “For your bag,” he said. She checked the bathroom mirror to see how she looked. “I love it,” she exclaimed, kissing and hugging them both. She went upstairs to put on her dress, and Tupper went to shower. I could hear her tell Homer, “Leave James alone, he has to get ready for tonight.” She came back down in her black Paule Ka dress, and Wendi tied the bow around the waist, moving it to the back.
“I’m going to put lotion on your legs, you’ve got to have a little sheen,” Arlt said, bending beside her. “I don’t get down on my knees for just anyone,” he added. Wendi held up a pair of shoes with what looked like five- or six-inch heels.
“Are these Jimmy Choos?” Heche asked. Wendi hesitated. “Why, do you hate them?” she asked. “People think they’re uncomfortable.” Heche put them on, anyway. “We’re not going for comfort tonight.” She walked around. “Years of soap-opera training,” she said. “People thought it taught me how to act, but it really taught me how to walk in high heels.” Nicole fastened an intricate silver necklace, almost like chain mail, around her neck and put on a ring and earrings. She was in full movie-star mufti.
Homer ran downstairs, unimpressed by the vision before him. “Mom, are you leaving?”
“Yes,” she said, “and you still can’t bring water balloons in the house.” She stood still while they taped her bra to the deep scoop of the dress in the back. The little girls invited Homer to come next door and stay for dinner. He started out as Heche clomped up the stairs in the Jimmy Choos. “You want me to grab a sweatshirt for you?” she called, and came down with it in hand. “I’m just going to take him next door,” she told Tupper. When we walked outside I saw Heche kneeling on the front stoop of the neighbor’s house, Homer clutching a Slinky in one hand as he hugged her, head resting on her shoulder.
In the car, the three of us made small talk, and Heche seemed preternaturally calm until we were almost there. Then, in a burst of nerves, she whipped out a mirror to reapply her lip gloss — unnecessarily —– and forced a laugh. She turned her face away and looked out the window. She hadn’t had this much at stake in a while.
As we pulled into the Paramount lot where the premiere was being held, it was hard not to feel a shiver of excitement. A bevy of handlers appeared and hustled Heche toward the red carpet. She stepped onto it and the cameras flashed, blinding and white. Perfectly composed, she fielded the shouts: “Anne! Turn left! Anne! Over your shoulder!” Obligingly, she pivoted this way and that. The shouts kept coming, and she kept smiling. For a few seconds the glare abated when the photographers paused and Heche peered past them, catching my eye. She grinned — a real, happy grin. Yes, work is worth. But at that glorious moment, on the way back up, it was also tremendous fun.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Hall of Fame: Denise Alexander
Denise Alexander
2009 Soap Opera Hall of Fame Inductee
- unknown role, Perry Mason
- Lois Adams, The Clear Horizon
- unknown role, General Hospital
- Emily Sanders, Ben Jerrod
- Lorna Hill, General Hospital
- Susan Hunter, Days of Our Lives
- Dr. Lesley Wiliams, General Hospital
- Gail McLain, Hotel
- Mary McKinnon, Another World
- Sister Beatrice, Sunset Beach
Denise Alexander (born November 11, 1939) is best known to modern audiences for her role as Lesley Webber on General Hospital, a role she created in 1973. She has been called at times the most consistently popular actress in the history of television soap operas.
Born on Long Island, New York, she moved to Los Angeles when her father, Alec Alexander, an agent who handled at that point such notables as Frank Gorshin and Sal Mineo, decided to make the switch from the east to the west coast.
Alexander began her career as a child actress performing in radio shows such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I Remember Mama, The Marriage where she played the daughter of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and the radio soap opera Perry Mason. A successful child actress, Alexander racked up literally thousands of performing credits on TV and radio, 5000 in radio alone, by the time she was a junior at UCLA where she majored in English. On the stage, she starred on Broadway as Evelyn Munn in the revival of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour and appeared with Ethel Waters in A Member of the Wedding. She made her feature movie debut at age fourteen in the John Cassavetes film Crime In The Streets in 1956. Television began to claim her almost exclusively, and she eventually guested in over 200 shows, including Father Knows Best, I Remember Mama, Ben Casey, Twilight Zone, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Virginian, The Danny Kaye Show, and Combat.
On daytime television, she got her first regular job in 1960 portraying Lois Adams on The Clear Horizon for two years. She next appeared in daytime on the pilot episode of General Hospital on April 1, 1963; the name of her character is unknown. Next she would have a shorter stint as Emily Sanders on the short-lived NBC soap opera, Ben Jerrod, which had debuted the same day as General Hospital.
Alexander took a brief reprieve from acting and tried to sell real estate. Her return to acting happened in 1965, again on General Hospital for a short stint, this time as Lorna Hill.
Alexander first came to fame in the soap opera genre by playing Susan Hunter Martin on Days of our Lives a role she created in March 1966. A popular actress, much of the show's early success had to do with Susan's rivalry with Julie Olson (played the longest by Susan Seaforth Hayes). She became so popular in the role that she was frequently at number 1 in the most popular fan poll of the time conducted by Daytime TV magazine; twice being named Best Actress of the Year for 1972 and 1973. For seven years, her character was involved in a never-ending series of melodramtic turns -- mental instability, serious illness, rape, murder, etc. -- but Alexander tore into the role with exquisite emotionalism and gothic beauty that kept viewers riveted.
In 1973, Susan Martin was written out of the show temporarily when the Days casting office hit a snag renewing her contract and the contract lapsed. ABC Daytime rushed to offer her a then-unheard of salary/perks package to join General Hospital. When Susan Martin finally returned to Days, a new actress was playing her.
A few months later, she started on General Hospital, playing the role of Dr. Lesley Williams, which would become her longest-tenured role in daytime. At the time of her move to General Hospital, she received the highest salary every paid to a daytime actress.
For several years, the character of Lesley lacked direction. She was burdened with frigidity, a psychopathic husband, and a child that aged ten years overnight. It seemed for at least awhile that General Hospital just didn't know what to do with the character. That all changed as Alexander as Lesley proved pivotal to the show's comeback in 1978 after the late Gloria Monty took over as producer. In a storyline written by the late Douglas Marland, Lesley took the rap for her daughter's murder of David Hamilton, culminating in Lesley's trial for murder and the alienation of her husband Rick. Alexander's performance in this plotline and in the subsequent Rick-Lesley-Monica triangle was just as important as the Luke and Laura love story in bringing General Hospital to number one in the ratings. This culminated in her once again being named Best Actress of the Year by Daytime TV magazine in 1980.
In a 1981 People Weekly interview, Alexander spoke about her General Hospital boss, calling the late Gloria Monty "a wonderfully bossy little lady."
Alexander stayed with the show for eleven years, choosing to leave after tense contract negotiations in 1984. She last appeared in March 1984. Fans were outraged when her character was not just written out but killed off in an automobile accident, leaving little chance of a return to the show, especially since at this time returns from the dead were not standard fare in daytime dramas. Fans picketed the ABC studios. General Hospital's ratings which were already declining continued to do so after her departure.
In 1986, she was offered a big salary to portray the absent McKinnon matriarch, Mary, on Another World. The role was created by Margaret DePriest who had written for General Hospital years before, and had worked with Alexander there. When the commute from her home in Los Angeles to Another World's studio in New York City proved to be difficult for her, she left in 1989. In 1996, she returned to General Hospital and has played the character of Lesley on a recurring basis. In 1997, she began appearing for a few months as Sister Beatrice on the NBC soap opera, Sunset Beach.
Outside of soaps, she has produced for both network and cable television, spoken as guest lecturer/speaker to groups from charities to civic groups to college audiences. She has also worked as a photojournalist for Ladies Home Journal and other magazines. For the Katherine Hepburn film Olly, Olly, Oxen Free, directed by her longtime companion Richard Colla, she served as still photographer and production coordinator.
In 1982, she also co-produced and co-starred in Shaft of Love for Showtime Cable Network. The soap opera comedy featured such daytime favorites as Tony Geary, Kin Shriner, Morgan Fairchild, Ed Nelson, and Susan Flannery.
Besides her wins as Best Actress mentioned above, Alexander holds the record as being the performer with the most appearances in their monthly Top 10. She received one Daytime Emmy nomination in 1976 as Best Actress for the role of Lesley.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Hall of Fame: Agnes Nixon
2009 Soap Opera Hall of Fame Inductee
- Writer, Woman in White
- Co-Creator/Head Writer, Search For Tomorrow
- Writer, As The World Turns
- Head Writer, The Guiding Light
- Head Writer, Another World
- Head Writer/Executive Producer/Creator, One Life To Live
- Head Writer/Executive Producer/Creator/Story Consultant, All My Children
- Head Writer/Creator/Story Consultant, Loving
- Co-Creator/Story Consultant, The City
- ABC Daytime Overall Story Consultant
- Agnes Eckhart, All My Children
- Agnes Eckhardt, One Life To Live
- Aggie, All My Children
Often termed the "queen" of contemporary soap opera, Williams Agnes Eckhardt Nixon, better known simply as Agnes Nixon, was born December 10, 1927 in Chicago, Illinois. She is often called the most respected and influential writer in daytime drama. She is best known, and most honored, for introducing social issues into the soaps.
Shortly after her birth, her parents divorced. Nixon's mother returned to Nashville with her. They lived with Nixon's grandmother and invalid aunt. Her grandmother was said to be a difficult woman, and Nixon's mother strived to give Nixon as normal a life as possible. As a child she cut out pictures from comic stips such as Etta Kent and Tillie the Toiler, and played with them as if they were paper dolls, moving them about and creating her own variations of the stories. As she grew older she became enchanted with the novels of Louisa May Alcott, followed the serial Little Orphan Annie on radio, and took drama lessons.
Nixon was gifted and petite; a vivacious and beautiful blond. These attributes caused her to suffer a great deal of envy and spitefulness from her peers. She attended St. Cecilia Academy of Dominican sisters in Nashville. During that time, she studied privately with Eleanor Dubuission Fossick, who first identified her as gifted, and taught her "expression" and music. Nixon was "Miss Eleanor's" delightful protégé, and she wanted to attend Northwestern University. Her father, who had a company that provided materials for funeral businesses, refused to underwrite this, and instead wanted her to work for him. Nixon was distraught. She disclosed this situation to her teacher. "Miss Eleanor" told her to write to her father as though she had not received his letter refusing Northwestern, and tell him how wonderful he was and how all her friends were jealous that her father was going to pay for this. Shortly after, her father wrote her, saying "he was in a bad mood" when he wrote his letter of denial, and of course he would pay for Northwestern.
At Northwestern she majored in speech and drama. In her class were such luminaries as Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal, Martha Hyer and Cloris Leachman. She is said to have observed the enormous talent pool there, and instead of pursuing acting, opted instead to write.
She had been engaged to a young World War II pilot, Hank. Hank went missing in action. This was devastating for young Nixon. She dated again, and once had a semi-long distance relationship with a young Frenchman named Etienne. It was said to be fascinating to hear her prattle in French, long distance, with him. She was also friends with one of Hank's buddies, Robert "Bob" Nixon, an executive with the Chrysler Corporation. "Miss Eleanor" remarked to her that her eyes only sparkled when she spoke of Bob, and not when she spoke of Etienne. In the end, she married Bob Nixon on April 6, 1951. Together, they had four children. Her oldest daughter, Cathy Chicos, became a dialogue writer for All My Children. Nixon was loyal to her mentors, and visited "Miss Eleanor" several times during her last illness and attended her funeral. "Miss Eleanor" had directed seven roses be placed on her casket. The first six were for members of her family, and the seventh was for Nixon, symbolizing "All My Children" she had taught throughout the years. Nixon had always said she wanted to write the great American novel. She did this as a collaborative effort, and the book was made into a mini series in the 1980s called Manions of America. It is believed it was loosely based on her own ancestry.
While still at Northwestern, she sold a radio play, and to avoid working in her father's burial-garment business, went to see soap opera queen Irna Phillips with dreams of becoming a professional writer.
The formidable Phillips took Eckhardt's script and, to the shock of the young writer, read every word of it aloud. After she finished reading, Phillips turned to the trembling author and asked, "Would you like to work for me?"
Under Phillips' tutelage, Eckhardt began her job as a dialogue writer for the radio soap opera Woman in White at $100 per week.
Later she struck out on her own, free-lancing in New York during television's Golden Age of live drama -- a golden age that, she said, "lasted fifteen minutes." She wrote teleplays for Studio One, Playhouse 90, The Hallmark Hall of Fame, and My True Story.
In 1951, the same year of her marriage and move to Pennsylvania, she created the NBC soap opera Search For Tomorrow with Roy Winsor. She stayed with the series, writing the first three-month cycle. It became the first successful daytime television soap opera, and would for awhile hold the honor of the longest-running serial in the history of televison.
A few years later, she was reunited with Irna Phillips, and became a writer for The Guiding Light. After co-creating As The World Turns with Phillips in 1956, she became head writer at The Guiding Light in 1958. There she began her much-heralded "relevance" campaign, mixing social issues and education crusades into the story.
A friend of Nixon's had died from cervical cancer, and Nixon wanted to do something to educate women about getting a Pap smear. She wrote it into The Guiding Light by having the lead character, Bert Bauer, encounter a cancer scare. This storyline aired in 1962; Nixon had to work around some difficulties of getting this storyline to air, as she could not make use of the words “cancer,” “uterus,” and “Pap test”. However, after this storyline the number of women who took a Pap smear surged dramatically. The studio and Nixon both received numerous letters from appreciative women, some of whom said that the story had saved their lives by prodding them to seek regular checkups. In 2002 she received a special Sentinel for Health "pioneer award" for her work on The Guiding Light.
In 1965, Nixon, while on vacation in St. Croix, completed the first proposal/Bible for her future soap opera All My Children. Procter & Gamble at first optioned the series, but could not find any room for the series at the time.
Instead of shopping the new series around to another network, Nixon was convinced by the rejection that the new series wasn’t any good, she went back to TGL. P&G decided that Nixon might just be what the struggling NBC soap opera Another World needed and moved her over to head write the struggling soap. She took the job as a challenge. She met the challenge and ended up turning AW into a certifiable hit.
Her first order of business was getting rid of the previous writer's new family and returning the Matthews family to prominence. To accomplish this, she simply killed off the entire Gregory family in a plane crash. She then crafted a compelling storyline for Bill & Missy where Missy married the dastardly Danny Fargo (Antony Ponzini) out of convenience, was raped and impregnated by him, and then put on trial for Danny’s eventual murder, bringing Bill & Missy back together. Nixon also moved TGL characters Mike Bauer and young daughter Hope to AW and plunged Mike into a romantic triangle with rivals Pat Randolph and Lee Randolph while hooking up Lenore Moore (Judith Barcroft, and later Susan Sullivan), a former girlfriend of Bill’s and who’d been much more socially acceptable to Liz, with social climbing attorney Walter Curtin (Val Dufour). In the end, Nixon’s take on the show worked! Viewers couldn’t wait to see what twists and turns would befall the residents of Bay City and the ratings began to rise. Then Nixon would introduce two new characters and a storyline that would send the ratings through the roof.
She was intensely invested in a conniving character in her rejected soap opera named Erica Kane and wanted, if nothing else, for that character to see realization on screen. To this end, she created the character of Rachel Davis along with her long-suffering mother Ada. Rachel & Ada (Robin Strasser and Constance Ford) had been abandoned years earlier by Ada’s husband and Rachel’s father Gerald. Ada was determined to make up for the abandonment and indulged Rachel’s every whim, leaving the poor young girl immensely spoiled. A conniver and social climber of the highest order, Rachel set her sights on her doctor – intern Russ Matthews – and married him in secret. Shortly thereafter, Agnes introduced the wealthy and rakish Steve Frame (George Reinholt) who was taken with Russ’s sister Alice. As Steve & Alice fell in love, Rachel grew dismayed with the life of a doctor’s wife and took a liking to Steve. Before long, Steve had slept with Rachel (who was still married to Russ) and got her pregnant, but Rachel attempted to pass the baby off as Russ’s. The Russ/Rachel/Steve/Alice quadrangle was a smash! Viewers swooned to Steve & Alice, sympathized with Russ, and loved to hate Rachel.
Ratings skyrocketed. AW, once in danger of cancellation, was the first soap opera to break through CBS’s ratings dominance. For the 1966-1967 TV season, AW ranked 7th behind all of CBS’s soaps. For the 1967-1968 season, AW had shot up to 2nd, right behind ATWT.
Her success at AW didn’t go unnoticed. ABC, seeing the magic she’d worked, lured her away to create a hit soap for their own struggling line-up and Nixon jumped at the chance, leaving Irna Phillips and P&G for good.
ABC executives passed on the earlier program she created, but asked her to create a show that would reflect a more "contemporary" tone; that creation was One Life to Live. Nixon, "tired of the restraints imposed by the WASPy, non-controversial nature of daytime drama, presented the network with a startingly original premise and cast of characters. Although the show was built along the classic soap formula of a rich family and a poor family, One Life to Live emphasized the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the people of Llanview, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.
The real beginning for her presentation of issues in television soap opera was One Life to Live. In 1968 social structures and attitudes were changing, and One Life was rich in issue stories and characters: leads who were Jewish, up-from-poverty Irish-American, Polish, and the first African-American leads, Carla Gray (Ellen Holly), doctor-to-be, and Ed Hall (Al Freeman, Jr.). Gray's story, for example, had her develop from a character who was passing as white to one who embodied black pride, with white and black loves along the way, to antagonize racists. When Carla kissed the black intern she had become engaged to, one affiliate in Texas cancelled the program immediately. Ironically, when Holly and Freeman brought Carla and Ed back to One Life in the mid-1980s, they seemed out of place in by-then WASP-ish Llanview, Pennsylvania. "Color" in this era was created not by race, but by style, in the persons of the nouveau riche, Dallas-style oil family, the Buchanans. By the Democratic mid-1990s, however, interracial and Hispanic families had become central characters.
Agnes Nixon created One Life to Live for ABC in order to obtain the opportunity to write her "dream" story, All My Children. It all happened in 1970. Based on her success with OLTL, ABC decided they wanted the project P&G had passed on. AMC was more personal than OLTL, but social issues were still tackled: child abuse (again tied to a real organization in Philadelphia, and again drawing a strong and practical response); the Vietnam War; and the first legal abortion, Erica Kane's, in May 1971. Assuming the audience would be shocked, AMC's writers gave Erica a "bad" motive (she wanted a modeling job), and, following the abortion, septicemia (planned as educational as well as "poetic justice"). But Susan Lucci's fan mail cheered Erica on, and urged her to take the modeling job in spite of the objections of her then-husband.
Other issues pioneered by Nixon include political nonconformity, very rare in prime-time television, rarer still in daytime drama. When All My Children debuted in 1970, it featured Amy Tyler (Rosemary Prinz) as a peace activist. Next Nixon had the young hero, Phillip Brent, drafted against his will and later missing in action. Political pages in U.S. newspapers took note of a speech against the war by Ruth Martin (Mary Fickett), who had raised Phillip as her son: even the mothers on those escapist soap operas were against the war, the newspapers said. Fickett won the first Emmy given to a daytime performer, for her work during the 1972-73 season. In 1987, Agnes Nixon remembered simply, "I didn't feel that took so much courage. It was like a mother speaking. Like Friendly Fire." But Friendly Fire was not published until 1976. In 1974, Nixon turned to humanizing the Vietnamese, showing Phillip, in one of the few war scenes on TV soap opera, being rescued by a young Vietnamese (played by a man who had been adopted one of Nixon's friends).
Nixon's stories characteristically show both sides of the issues on which she focuses: of the teenage prostitute, the drug addict, even the wife beater. When she feels there should be no sympathy for the other side, she works toward empathy--as in the 1988 AIDS story in which she had a lead character, Skye Cudahy (Robin Christopher) become so irrational with AIDS fear that she almost killed Cindy (Ellen Wheeler). Nixon sees both sides, and usually has a third type of character--perhaps in a position similar to that of most viewers--who is pulled in both directions.
Characteristic of Nixon's soaps, AMC hooked young people and men. The focus on young adult characters included not only romance--and sex--but also their growing pains. AMC, from its earliest days, presented Erica Kane, the willful but winningly vulnerable teenager who, in the hands of Agnes Nixon and Susan Lucci, has grown through multiple lovers (usually husbands) and careers. She has found her "lost" father, a surprise daughter and in the 1990s--even some women friends. In the early 1980s, AMC's popularity soared as young people raced home (or to their dormitory lounges) at lunch time to watch the classic star-crossed romance of Jenny Gardner (Kim Delaney) and Greg Nelson (Laurence Lau). The issue was class: Jenny was from a troubled, lower-class family; Greg's mother, Enid Nelson, was Pine Valley's stereotypical snob. Equally popular were Angie Baxter (Debbi Morgan) and Jesse Hubbard (Darnell Williams), soap opera's first African-American super-couple.
Delaney and Williams, an Emmy winner, were given daytime drama's highest honor when they left AMC. Their characters were killed off so no other actor could play them. Jenny Gardner's kid brother Tad (Michael Knight)--flirting, cheating on girls, and otherwise adventuring--epitomized another Agnes Nixon gift to soap opera: humor, the "lighter" moment amid the Sturm und Drang. A waif-foundling, Tad is an archetypal character, his story a myth, or fairy-folk tale. He has two sets of parents. His biological parents consist of an evil father, Ray Gardner (dead since the 1980s), and a loving but ditzy mother, Nixon's famed comic creation, Opal Gardner. But Tad was raised by Joe and Ruth Martin (Ray MacDonnell and Mary Fickett, retired in the mid-1990s and replaced by Lee Meriwether), after his father abandoned him in a park. Joe and Ruth Martin are the central father and mother of AMC, and in folk-myth terms, they are the good parents, as steadfast as Tad's blood parents are unreliable and frightening.
Nixon's other archetypal creations include "tentpole" characters, usually older women such as Erica's mother Mona Tyler (the late Frances Heflin) and Myrtle Fargate (the late Eileen Herlie). Tentpole characters, says Nixon, are "the Greek chorus, in a sense ..., telling the audience how to feel."
Besides folk myth, Nixon also draws on the religious and mystical. One of her favorite tales is from the third soap opera she created (with the late Douglas Marland), Loving (ABC, 1983; later changed to The City). Archetypal good-bad twins Keith and Jonathan (John O'Hurley) battle, and in one twist, evil Jonathan, fallen from Golden Gate Bridge, returns with supernatural powers. Nixon says Jonathan made a pact with a devil. Wisely, the pact-making was not shown, and the evil one, though shown, was unlabelled--he left the Bridge area, slithering away as a snake. For this story, she cites as sources Faust and C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters.
Loving also allowed Nixon to break one of daytime's last taboos. That was her story of a father sexually abusing his daughter. Other shows had done similar stories but the abuser was always a step-father, never a blood relation. Nixon and Marland broke that taboo with the story of Garth Slater abusing his daughter Lily. Even with that story, it was only one of the many issues that Loving tackled in its first year and entire run.
Agnes Nixon, in her long and much-honored tenure as queen of soap opera, has created a treasure trove of characters and stories as rich as Aladdin's, tales from the deepest depths of our fears and the starriest heights of our dreams. She is indeed "the storyteller."
Through the years, she has been a member of the International Radio and TV Society; National Academy of TV Arts and Sciences; The Friars Club; and the Board of Harvard Foundation. She has been the recipient of the National Academy of TV Arts and Sciences Trustees Award, 1981; Junior Diabetes Foundation Super Achiever Award; Wilmer Eye Institute Award; American Women In Radio and TV Communicator Award, 1984; American Academy of Achievement Gold Plate Award, 1993; TV Hall of Fame, 1993; Soap Opera Weekly's Soap Opera Hall of Fame, 1994; Editor's Choice Award from Soap Opera Digest, 1996; and The Innovator Award (SoapsWEB), 2008.
She has received five Writer's Guild of America Awards; one primetime Emmy Award; five Daytime Emmy Awards, and numerous nominations.
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