Friday, April 15, 2011

"My Name is Victoria Winters, my journey is just beginning...." Introduction to Soap Opera Dark Shadows

ANOTHER WORLD, AS THE WORLD TURNS,DARK SHADOWS,DAYS OF OUR LIVES,GENERAL HOSPITAL,THE GUIDING LIGHT,SEARCH FOR TOMORROW,THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS....I could go on and on and on with title's of much of America's guilty pleasure...Soap Opera's!!! I'll just bet that most of our 6 1/2 have at one time or another in their lives watched a daytime soap. I know I did when I was young. Soap Opera's started back in the 1930's on the radio and by the early 1950's had switched to TV. They are called "Soap Opera's" because soap company's like Proctor and Gamble produced 15 min. drama's to help sell their soap products such as Ivory Soap. When I was a very small child at 12 noon everything stopped to watch Bill Burns read the news on KDKA. After that it all began...all the drama, the laughter, the tears the murders, the split personalities!!! What happened at 12:30 pm Monday through Friday????The Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow!!! Now dear reader I was born in 1959 and I remember when both of these programs were 15 min. each!!! Imagine that...each show had 15 min. to cover all the bases of the above said!!! They of course by the 70's graduated to an hour format and still didn't have enough time, of course by then we had drugs, homosexuality, abortion and the usual promiscuity to deal with. I used to dread Search for Tomorrow and "The Liding Gite" as I called it cause I knew when they were over at 1 pm I had to take a nap...YUK! But even as a 4 year old child I was hooked. Mom and I or if I was with Grandma would sit and eat our lunch and watch these two programs. The trials and tribulations of the Bauer and Spalding families on The Guiding Light and the wretched life of poor Joanne Gardner on Search for Tomorrow kept us entranced. When Papa Bauer died on The Guiding Light we cried as if a member of our family died. Actually the actor who played Papa Bauer passed away in real life and they did not do him the injustice of replacing him with someone else like he was the "other Darrin" from Bewitched. It was horrible because we all loved Papa Bauer! Joanne on Search for Tomorrow went through the wringer...she a husband who died in a plane crash only to come back years later not so dead. She went blind and every man in the entire vicinity of her wanted to bang her! Poor woman had a wretched life in general but was evidently very happy in the sack. I could never figure out why everyone wanted her (of course I still didn't understand sex at that point in my life). My Dad was off always for the week of Christmas because his machine shop closed for the holiday. During that week he would catch up with Joanne, Papa Bauer, Bertha and Marge and Stu Bergman. Then he would say "well I'm all caught up for this year,i'm sure I will have no trouble picking up next year"! During the 1970's Another World became one of our favorites. One day Daddy came home from work to find 4 sobbing women in his living room (me, my Mom, and two sisters) it seems that Hugh and Jill took off in a plane and crashed. He was so upset because all we could sob was "dead". Well he thought a member of the family died. We finally calmed down enough to explain to him that it was Jill and Hugh from Another World...he was not thrilled with us that day! It was all so personal and emotional. My Mom was a avid Young and The Restless fan, or as it progressed in years I called it The Old and The Horny, and watched it from the first day it premiered in 1973. She loved the ups and downs of the Foster and Brooks families, Foster's being the wrong side of the tracks and the Brooks, the rich family. David Hasselhoff played Snapper Foster an up
and coming young doctor. As the years went by Victor Newman became her favorite played by Eric Braden. She loved Victor so much that she refused to watch the movie Titanic because Mr. Braden had a small part and went down with the ship as they say. She didn't want to watch Victor die even if he wasn't playing Victor!Of course I had my favorite, can anybody guess???? DARK SHADOW'S. This was the first supernatural daytime drama and started my love affair with Vampires. Barnabas Collins was my dream boat! I was the worlds worst Girl Scout because of Dark Shadows, why you might say?? Because on Friday's they always left you with a cliff hanger and I knew on Monday there would be answer's. Well, my scout meeting was on Monday after school. I skipped alot which would explain why I only earned 4 merit badges in 4 years of Girl Scouts. Dark Shadow's can boast of the actress Joan Bennett who played the lead of Elizabeth Stoddard Collins. Other notables on this program were Kate Jackson (Charlie's Angels)and the actor Dana Elcar. The list of notable actors and actress's who started their careers on soaps is long and varied. Ryan Phillippe played a Gay teen on One Life to Live. Another World had Ray Liotta and Lindsay Lohan. Jensen Ackles was on Days of our Lives. The Edge of Night had Bill Macy, Dixie Carter and Pittsburgh's own Frank Gorshin (The Riddler of Batman fame and date of one of my mothers friends). Ruby Dee, Kevin Bacon and Calista Flockhart were all on the Guiding Light. Search for Tomorrow had at one time Don Knotts, Lee Grant and the ever popular Morgan Fairchild (yeah...that's the ticket...as Jon Lovitz would say). Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford did a stint on The Edge of Night and when she became ill she let her abused daughter, Christina take over her part, explain that character's age difference in a day??? Elizabeth Taylor was a guest at Luke and Laura's wedding on General Hospital. The list goes on and on not to mention all the wonderful actors and actresses who have made a living and given much enjoyment to people being soap opera actors. Let me give you a fun fact about the sponsors of the soap opera, Proctor and Gamble. It seems that the Porn Star, Marilyn Chambers (star of Behind the Green Door) appeared on the packaging of Ivory Snow. Now that's a conderdiction in terms! Now you might ask what has brought on my history of the soap. Well, today I read that ABC is canceling All My Children and One Life to Live due to viewers looking for different programing. The replacement, reality TV! I don't think TV will be the same without Erica Kane and Pine Valley and poor Susan Lucci, thank god she finally did win that daytime Emmy!I think my random thought for today is that these are the good old days. That soon all of these type of daytime show's will be but a memory. Enjoy them while you can. I know I became jaded of Soaps in my 20's and 30's but as I took this little walk down memory lane it reminded me of so many funny, sad and happy things and all of it came from a little program that might have started as a 15 min. bleep in the day. Such a simple thing to make us all happy...ahhh those were the days!! So I will leave you with this thought "Like sands through the hourglass so are the days of of lives" xoxox Pammy aka Mrs. Barnabas Collins!!!