Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History 9781478009061

Citation preview

HER STORIES

console-­i ng passions :  Tele­vi­sion and Cultural Power  Edited by Lynn Spigel

HER STORIES Daytime Soap Opera & US Tele­v i­s ion History

Elana Levine

Duke University Press  Durham and London 2020

© 2020 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker Typeset in Minion Pro and Trade Gothic by Westchester Publishing Services. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Levine, Elana, [date] author. Title: Her stories : daytime soap opera and US television history /   Elana Levine. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2020. |   Series: Console-ing passions | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019023970 (print) lccn 2019023971 (ebook) isbn 9781478007661 (hardcover) isbn 9781478008019 (paperback) isbn 9781478009061 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Television soap operas—United States—History   and criticism. Classification: lcc pn1992.8.s4 l47 2020 (print) | lcc pn1992.8.S4   (ebook) | ddc 791.45/69287—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023970 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023971 Cover art: TV playwright Agnes E. Nixon. © Charles Bonnay/ The LIFE Images Collection. Courtesy Getty Images.

contents

Acknowl­edgments · vii Introduction · 1 PART I

T H E N E W T V S O A P   Late 1940s to Early 1960s



1 Serials in Transition: From Radio to Tele­vi­sion · 19



2 Daytime Therapy: Help and Healing in the Postwar Soap · 44

PART II

T H E C L A S S I C N E T W O R K E R A   Mid-1960s to Late 1980s



3 Building Network Power: The Broadcasting Business and the Craft of Soap Opera · 73



4 Turning to Relevance: Social Issue Storytelling · 106



5 Love in the After­noon: The Fracturing Fantasies of the Soap Boom · 153

PART III

A P O S T- ­N E T W O R K A G E   Late 1980s to 2010s



6 Strug­gles for Survival: Stagnation and Innovation · 199



7 Reckoning with the Past: Reimagining Characters and Stories · 236



8 Can Her Stories Go On? Soap Opera in a Digital Age · 280 Notes · 299 Bibliography · 357 Index · 369

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acknowl­e dgments

My experience of researching and writing this book has had surprising parallels to the world of daytime tv soap opera it examines. While I have neither faced shocking returns from the dead nor been bestowed a fairy-­tale wedding, most moments of soap opera, and most of research and writing, are far more mundane, more about daily choices around small m ­ atters that together build to a compelling story. Crucially, both on-­screen and b ­ ehind the scenes, soap operas depend on communities, w ­ hether of characters or workers. So, too, has my research and writing been embedded within a number of communities that have supported and sustained it. The University of Wisconsin–­Milwaukee has afforded me essential support over the twelve years I have worked on this proj­ect. I received vital research, thinking, and writing time through two fellowships from the Center for 21st ­Century Studies and two semester-­long sabbaticals. I am gratified to have received uwm’s Arts and Humanities Faculty Travel grants, a Gradu­ ate School Research Award, and a Research and Creative Activities Support Award, which together helped to fund my domestic archival research and supported some of my writing time. The university’s undergraduate research programs also provided me some research assistance early on through the work of students Sally McCarty and Desiree Smith and l­ater that of Audrey Waln. I have also benefited from the research support of students and staff in my department, in par­tic­u­lar from Ashley Kappers, Anna Kupiecki, Michelle Fetherston, Ana Teske, and Emily Talapa. My research was supported financially by two entities external to my university, as well. The Walter Jay and Clara Charlotte Damm Fund of the Journal Communications Foundation provided me with a grant that subsidized my initial archival research travel. So too did the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming offer support for my travel to its impressive collection. I have noted the many institutional archives that ­were crucial to my work through citation and a list of archival resources in the bibliography. All the

libraries and archives I have used have provided essential ser­vices, but some ­were especially instrumental. Kevin B. Leonard at Northwestern University provided me with crucial materials and connected me with Agnes Nixon. Sharon Black at the Annenberg School library of the University of Pennsylvania helped me to access the uncata­loged archive of Nixon’s scripts. Special thanks are due to Mark Quigley and the staff at the ucla Film and Tele­ vi­sion Archive for converting many episodes into formats that made them accessible for my viewing. Greater funding could help archives like this to convert more rare tele­vi­sion recordings into forms watchable in the pre­sent, a crucial investment for tele­vi­sion history. Closer to home, I am especially grateful to the Area Research Network and the staffs at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the uwm Archives for coordinating the transportation of many materials for me from Madison to Milwaukee. I am also grateful to have connected with three gradu­ate students who followed up on lingering questions from archives to which I could not travel: Lindsey Giggey, Bailey Kelley, and Patricia Kessler. My research benefited greatly from conversations with key figures in the daytime soap opera industry. Holly Cato discovered my work and connected me with the longtime executive producer Paul Rauch, who graciously spoke with me by phone in the very early days of my research. I am so thankful to have learned about his experiences firsthand before his passing. So, too, do I remain amazed that I had the honor of speaking to—­and sharing tea with!—­the remarkable Agnes Nixon in her home not long before her passing. Her legendary graciousness and wit ­were very much in evidence from the moment she greeted me with “Welcome to Pine Valley!” I thank Kevin Leonard and Ms. Nixon’s ­daughter, Cathy, for facilitating this conversation. R. Colin Tait introduced me to former soap writer Richard Allen, whose insights w ­ ere very helpful. My fellow soap researcher Mary Jeanne Wilson kindly connected me to Frank Valentini and Nathan Varni at abc. They both shared their time and insights about the soap business, which ­were crucial to shaping the last chapters. Donny Sheldon at General Hospital helped to make ­these meetings happen. I was delighted to learn more about con­temporary soap production from actor Max Gail, thanks to Eleanor Patterson. Thanks as well to Stanley Moger for sharing select episodes of The Doctors with me. Yet another group of individuals essential to my book ­were the journalists, lay archivists, and fans of daytime soap opera who ­were rich sources of information. Especially helpful ­were Lynn Liccardo, Patrick Erwin, Roger Newcomb, Sarah Adams, Jane Marsh, Salimah Perkins, Brian Puckett, Eddie viii  ·  Acknowl­e dgments

Drueding, and Stacey Lopez. Sam Ford has long been a key bridge for me between the academic and professional worlds of taking soaps seriously. I have been fortunate enough to be able to draw on t­ hese p ­ eople’s deep knowledge of soap history through personal communication. ­These colleagues are joined by the many named, anonymous, and pseudonymous folks who have chronicled and archived soap history in magazines, blogs, social media feeds, and user-­generated video channels, ­doing as much as any official institution to make this book pos­si­ble. I literally could not have done it without them. I also owe ­great thanks to my many academic peers who have supported this endeavor in so many ways, from pointing me to key sources to offering thoughtful feedback on my ideas. Th ­ ose who have shared specific primary sources are models of scholarly generosity: Leigh Goldstein, Marsha Cassidy, Deborah Jaramillo, Cynthia Meyers, Andrew Owens, Jonah Horwitz, Caryn Murphy, Denise Bielby, C. Lee Harrington, and my former student Shawn Glinis. Th ­ ese colleagues and o ­ thers, including Philip Sewell, Jason Mittell, Chris Becker, Zachary Campbell, Faye Woods, and Kim Bjarkman, have helped me figure out where to look when I puzzled over par­tic­u­lar questions. Every­one should benefit from enthusiastic and friendly sounding boards such as Carol Stabile, Michele Hilmes, Jennifer Wang, Allison McCracken, Caryn Murphy, Rick Popp, Amanda Keeler, Leigh Goldstein, Jonah Horwitz, Ron Becker, and Lynn Spigel. Richard Grusin and Maureen Ryan helped me refine a key point at the very end. Christine Evans was a g­ reat café-­writing companion. When you work on a proj­ect over such a long time, a lot of life happens along the way. During this period, Noah Newman was born and grew into the sunny kid who keeps me laughing, while his ­brother, Leo Newman, became a talented young man who ­will even watch General Hospital with me from time to time. Michael Newman has been beside me before, during, and ­after this book’s emergence, taking care of our c­ hildren when my research took me away, offering keen writing guidance, and listening to my excited descriptions of research finds. I could not wish for a better partner in all t­ hings.

Acknowl­edgments  ·  ix

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Introduction

In the summer of 1973, fourteen-­year-­old Jane Marsh recorded her thoughts and feelings in a daily journal, including her reactions to her favorite daytime tv soap operas. She looked forward to seeing the “gorgeous” actor Joseph Gallison on Return to Peyton Place (nbc, 1972–74), but she worried that the program would be preempted by a dif­fer­ent continuing saga, “Watergate,” labeled in her journal with the same quotation marks she used for the other stories she followed, like “As the World Turns.” “Watergate” often aired in place of the soaps the week of June 25, as former White House counsel John Dean testified before the US Senate’s investigative committee. Jane was resentful—­and intrigued: “ ‘Watergate’ has been on all week. John Dean is testifying. I think he’s cute. So are Senators Howard Baker and Edward ­Gurney. . . . ​It was getting kind of in­ter­est­ing lately. It was boring before. Dean says Nixon knew about the cover-up. Dean’s wife is very pretty.”1 Alternating moments of tedium and excitement, featuring attractive leading men and their love interests, plus the revelation of closely held secrets, “Watergate” was familiar terrain for the young soap opera fan. As part of the growing youth audience for daytime drama, Jane was invested in the soaps’ characters and their portrayers, learning about both through the burgeoning fan press, even as she had been watching with her m ­ other and s­ ister since the mid-1960s. She grasped the po­liti­cal significance of Watergate, but her soap viewing had also encouraged her to practice feminized skills such as assessing character, evaluating personal relationships, and identifying (hetero) sexual desire. In applying t­ hese insights at the safe remove of the tv screen, Jane made “Watergate” one of her stories. In the summer of 2018, fifty-­eight-year-­old Jane Marsh was still watching soaps. Instead of writing about them in her journal, she tweeted about them; this is how I first encountered Jane. She wrote about nbc’s Days of our Lives (1965–), and sometimes abc’s General Hospital (1963–), but mostly about the early 1970s episodes of The Doctors (1963–82), originally aired on nbc

but now rerunning on the twenty-­first-­century broadcast network Retro tv, its programming carried nationwide on digital subchannels and low-­power stations. Much as in her 1973 journal, Jane’s tweets combined observations about the soaps with po­liti­cal commentary; like many Americans, she noted the similarities between Watergate and the scandals of Donald Trump’s presidency.2 With maturity and the passage of time, her insights had changed, now more critical than adoring, particularly when The Doctors represented a character such as the surly Nick Bellini as heroic, when he had actually raped his wife, or when dool’s Steve told off his wife Kayla’s boss, to which Jane tweeted, “She’s capable of speaking for herself. :/”3 She shared letters from early 1970s soap viewers published in the fan press, magazines she had saved from her childhood, noting with irony, “Many of the complaints are the same as from current soap fans.”4 She still expressed her fondness for par­tic­u­lar characters, stories, and performers, now with more cynicism about the motivations of the tv business, as well as more wisdom about personal relationships. She knew where the plot of The Doctors was ­going, having watched it more than forty years e­ arlier, offering “spoiler alerts” about events that would unfold l­ater in the 1970s.5 She also knew that some of the more problematic gender politics on display would not change as much as one might have expected between the 1970s and the pre­sent, that certain aspects of the retro-­soap w ­ ere not so out of place in the 2010s. In Jane’s feed, continuities and disruptions across time, in controversies real and fictional, from the drama of the po­liti­cal sphere to that of scripted fiction, converged. Jane’s experience of daytime soap opera mirrors the experiences of many watching soaps across their lives. ­These layers of time are especially familiar to me, someone who has been thinking about soaps for more than thirty-­five years. I was aware of them across my childhood b ­ ecause my Aunt Bonne, who lived across the street, had been watching dool since before I was born. But in the fall of 1981 ­things changed. My fellow sixth graders at Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary ­were talking a lot about Luke and Laura, whose General Hospital wedding was imminent. My mom had heard about it, too—­the show was everywhere. The day of the wedding, November 16, one of my friends brought to school a radio that received tv channels. During our after­noon recess we gathered together to listen. Around the same time, my f­ ather brought home a device that allowed us to rec­ord a tv show and view it l­ater; recording gh’s daily episodes became the perfect way to use our new vcr. Like Jane in her youth, I became a serious soap watcher. General Hospital was my show, but I knew about all of them through my voracious consumption of fan magazines. In 2  ·  Introduction

the de­cades to follow, I kept watching, time-­shifting e­ very episode throughout high school, college, working years, gradu­ate school, my job as a professor. I moved, attained degrees, dated, broke up, lost my dad to cancer, got married, had two kids, lived a life, watched gh. I wrote my first paper about soaps in high school, a­ fter reading Ruth Rosen’s essay “Search for Yesterday.”6 My pen pal from the fan club of gh actor Jack Wagner gave me The Soap Opera Encyclopedia for my sixteenth birthday.7 I picked up Robert  C. Allen’s Speaking of Soap Operas from ­Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications gift shop soon ­after it opened in 1987; I also watched soap episodes in the museum’s collection— my first archival research visit.8 In college I learned that academics ­were now studying tv as they did movies; it ­didn’t take me long to want in. Gradu­ate school helped me understand the academic research on soap opera; my first gradu­ate seminar paper was about soaps. My first academic publication was about the production of gh—­the program’s producers invited me to visit a­ fter I sent them a letter asking to research their work.9 Not yet sure what broader questions I had about soap opera, I de­cided against making it the focus of my dissertation, though I did explore the daytime dramas of the 1970s in one chapter. Years ­later, eventually, inevitably, it was time to write Her Sto­ ries. I would spend another twelve years researching and writing, on top of the quarter ­century I’d already spent with soaps. As I worked, I have found myself dwelling, seemingly si­mul­ta­neously, in periods of the soap past I have lived before, such as 1981, or 1995. I have also become familiar with moments located in a past before my time, as in 1952, or 1963, or 1969. For soap opera, the past always ­matters, bearing upon the pre­sent and shaping the f­ uture.

Soap Opera’s Intellectual History In Speaking of Soap Operas, the book I was so excited to discover as a teenager, Allen wrote of the impossibility of a full textual history of a soap. He enumerated the thousands of hours passed of Guiding Light (cbs, 1952– 2009), his soap, many of them evaporated into air thanks to live broadcasts, never preserved.10 His point was that a traditionally defined aesthetic object was not essential for the study of culture; that cultural forms, soaps included, had multifaceted existences; that they ­were more than text, they ­were forces of production and practices of viewing and discussions of their impact.11 Soap opera was his case for a broader and crucial point, an intervention in fact, one refuting the formalism of traditional aesthetic criticism and Introduction  ·  3

the empiricism of American mass communication research. Allen argued for an analy­sis of culture that drew upon theories of meaning making, a “reader-­oriented poetics.”12 He demonstrated this approach through a history of soap opera focused mainly on its origins in US broadcast network radio, when it was constructed industrially and socially as programming for ­house­wives. His way of grappling with soap opera was a crucial shift for the fields of media and cultural studies but was only a start at what might be said of the history of the US daytime soap, a point with which Allen would surely agree, given his desire not to “close off the soap opera from further analy­sis . . . ​but rather to open it up . . . ​to reveal the full extent of its multiple determinations.”13 Carrying on this endeavor, I have sought to apply Allen’s lessons, and his start at a history, to put into historical perspective the ways soap opera has changed, or not, over time, focusing in par­tic­u­lar on the (many more) years of its tenure on tele­vi­sion rather than Allen’s emphasis on the radio age. Her Stories is a history of the US daytime tele­vi­sion soap opera as a gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social power of American broadcast network tele­vi­sion from the late 1940s through the 2010s. Allen’s pioneering work emerged in the 1980s alongside other strands of scholarship that considered soap opera, scholarship that initiated the cultural analy­sis of tele­vi­sion as an academic field. In some of the earliest humanistic readings of tele­vi­sion as a cultural form, as in Horace Newcomb’s tv: The Most Popu­lar Art (1974), soap opera is figured as the quintessence of tele­vi­sion’s potential as storyteller.14 Soap opera was also a central case in the emerging field of British cultural studies, a frequent example of popu­lar tele­vi­sion culture among scholars in the United Kingdom, studying British soaps, and ­those in the United States, translating t­hese ideas to American culture and its serial dramas.15 The British cultural studies work on soap opera intersected with efforts of feminist film scholars to examine tele­vi­ sion, to consider how the domestic medium might speak about gender in ways dif­fer­ent from the dominant “male gaze” of Hollywood film and in ways like or unlike other forms associated with w ­ omen, such as melodrama and 16 the ­women’s film. As Charlotte Brunsdon has explained, all of this work on soap opera was crucial to the positioning of feminism within the acad­ emy, and also central to the establishment of popu­lar culture as a valid field of intellectual inquiry.17 ­These efforts not only paved my own path but also established new perspectives on the study of tele­vi­sion, of popu­lar culture, and of ­women’s culture—­soap opera was embedded in the intellectual foundation of ­these burgeoning fields. 4  ·  Introduction

Her Stories is multiply influenced by ­these scholarly traditions, but it also differs from them, continuing the study of soap opera beyond ­these e­ arlier inquiries and departing from them by examining soap opera as a historically specific and variable form rather than as static and fixed. As such, I draw on and expand upon developments in both film and tele­vi­sion scholarship focused on the concept of genre as an operative system of media classification. My approach shares with scholars such as Rick Altman and Jason ­Mittell a commitment to a contextual, rather than transhistorical, view. Their work invites a consideration of differences and disruptions in media genres over time rather than insisting upon the coherence of continuities across instances.18 I approach soap opera akin to the way ­these scholars approach genre, exploring changes in relation to media industry structures, production pro­cesses, critical discourses, and reception practices, varying by place and time. While I attend to the ways that daytime soap opera has operated as a category of tv programming within industrial and popu­lar discourse, Her Stories reveals that soap opera has been much more foundational to the history of American tele­vi­sion than is typical of a single genre. Unlike the game show or the cop show, “genre” may not be the best descriptor for soap opera. A comparison with the place of melodrama within the world of feature film is instructive. In film culture and scholarship, melodrama is a category that at times has shared with soap opera an association with the feminine and the histrionic, particularly when used as a synonym for the classical Hollywood “­woman’s film.”19 Scholars such as Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams have argued that melodrama is best understood not as a genre but rather as a widespread narrative mode informing much of American cultural history.20 While the continuing, serialized structure of the daytime tv soap opera makes such a vast cultural reach less feasible, I argue that the economic and cultural form of soap opera plays a similarly constitutive role for tele­vi­sion itself, undergirding the medium in ways that make it far more foundational than would be the case ­were soap opera simply another broadcast genre. To trace the influence of the daytime tv soap opera, Her Stories focuses on two primary axes of change over time. One is change in US broadcast network tele­vi­sion as an economic and social institution, wherein soap opera can be seen as tracking the practices and fortunes of the system as a ­whole. The other is change in cultural constructions of gender and intersecting aspects of social identity, including race, class, and sexuality. Given the status of soap opera as a form associated with w ­ omen, my focus is especially on femininity (albeit in juxtaposition to masculinity), a femininity that has Introduction  ·  5

often been i­magined by tv creators as white, middle-­class, and heteronormative, but which gets regularly complicated and even fractured in the convolutions of soap storytelling and the investments of soap viewers. Both of ­these axes of change have received their own historical and theoretical treatment, in­de­pen­dently and intertwined, as in certain works of broadcast history and tele­vi­sion theory that have pointed to the feminized positioning of tele­vi­sion in relation to the domestic sphere and within the culture at large.21 Her Stories furthers such work and speaks to our tele­vi­sion heritage more broadly, combining analyses of the social construction of femininity and of American network tele­vi­sion in and through the daytime tv soap opera, a form ­imagined as speaking to and about w ­ omen, and persisting across US tele­vi­sion history. Instead of taking soap opera’s feminized status at face value, my approach seeks to use soap opera to “examine gender concretely and in context, and to consider it a historical phenomenon, produced, reproduced, and transformed in dif­fer­ent situations and over time.”22 As Joan Scott writes of feminist history more generally, I am approaching soap opera as “a site of the production of gender knowledge,” of how our culture has come to know and understand meanings and experiences of gender.23 As such, I am following a tradition in feminist media and cultural studies of understanding media forms as participants in broader social constructions of identity categories, not to assert a direct or exclusive causal chain between popu­lar culture and society, or to document the lived histories of w ­ omen as universal or even knowable, but to offer insights into a question posed by Lynn Spigel of “how mass culture reacts to (as well as contributes to) the social and historical construction of femininity.”24 Yet the history of soap opera cannot be restricted to the sphere of “­women’s history” or even a history of gender or gendered cultural forms. For the history of soap opera does not occur in a gendered ghetto. Rather, it is central to the history of American tele­vi­sion in its workings as a commercial, cultural, and aesthetic force. Rethinking American tele­vi­sion history through the history of soap opera shifts our perspective so that this gendered form is not an afterthought but rather a central player in a history we thought we knew. Her Stories is not an appended “her-­story” r­ unning ­behind the main “his-­story” of American tele­vi­sion; it is American tele­vi­sion history, a lens through which to see the economic, creative, technological, social, and experiential path of tele­vi­sion across seventy years that exposes its gendered structure.25 The history of the US daytime tv soap opera is a history of a media form, but it is also a history of a prominent cultural construction of 6  ·  Introduction

femininity and its imbrication within the institutional and artistic evolution of the primary mass medium in American society for nearly three-­quarters of a ­century.

The Prehistory of the US TV Soap Her Stories explores the many ways in which the daytime tv soap opera has been a crucial participant in the social construction of gendered identity as ­imagined by the American tv industry and its personnel, as well as in the development and evolution of tele­vi­sion as both a business and a means of audiovisual storytelling. But soap opera is not native to tele­vi­sion, nor are the serialized stories of the soaps their sole invention. Narratives that continue from installment to installment have been part of Western culture since at least the nineteenth ­century. As Jennifer Hayward notes, since that time, “Producers have relied on the serial form to consolidate and hold a mass audience,” ­whether in mass-­produced fiction, newspaper comic strips, early filmed adventure tales, or scripted narratives of radio and tv.26 The soap opera as we know it was a product of the system of network radio broadcasting launched in the 1920s, its name derisively intended to juxtapose the banal goods sold by its sponsor-­owners with the melodramatic intensity associated with an elite performing art. As the number of ­these fifteen-­minute daily dramas grew, by the early 1940s, “The soap opera form constituted 90 ­percent of all sponsored network radio programming broadcast during the daylight hours.”27 Daytime serials ­were substantial moneymakers for the networks and for the ad agencies that produced them, and they proved valuable sales tools for their sponsors. In 1945, the daytime serials brought in to nbc and cbs $30 million in time charges, about 22 ­percent of ­these networks’ total revenue and, due to their low production costs, about 15 ­percent of the gross of all network broadcasting.28 Ad agencies like Blackett-­Sample-­Hummert, home base of the Frank and Anne Hummert radio serial empire, established themselves as major industry players with their serials’ “hard-­sell” approach.29 Manufacturers of ­house­hold goods—­ laundry and dish soaps, breakfast foods—­found the serials an ideal advertising vehicle that helped them to achieve an oligopoly in their markets.30 In tandem with their commercial utility, the serials ­were also a significant cultural space for their w ­ omen audiences, as radio historians have shown. More than a realm for considering the travails of domestic life, the serials connected the private sphere with the public, helping their audiences Introduction  ·  7

to grapple with the world around them and their places as ­women within it, what Jason Loviglio calls “the public/private dichotomy in American social life.”31 As Michele Hilmes explains, “Daytime serials both addressed and helped to create an explic­itly feminine subaltern counterpublic, reinforcing and acknowledging the differences between men’s and w ­ omen’s lives within the hierarchy of American culture, and providing ways to envision changes, negotiations, and oppositions.”32 Radio serials ­were not raising radical challenges to the mainstream; rather, they w ­ ere offering opportunities for listeners to imagine their lives, and the world around them, in ways that sometimes supported and sometimes opposed dominant expectations of thinking and living. During World War II, the serials’ attention to connections between public and private ­matters became all the more acute, as the US government asked serial creators to assist the war effort. As radio historians such as Gerd Horten, Kathy  M. Newman, and Marilyn Lavin have detailed, daytime serials often took as their central subject ­matter ­women’s duties in the working world and in the home, from exploring w ­ omen’s paid, war­time ­labor to valorizing domestic tasks such as cooking.33 The serials’ stance on such ­matters was the product of complex negotiation among the US government, serial sponsors, networks, agency-­producers, writer-­creators, and audiences, a mix of stakeholders that would grapple with one another across soap opera history. Understanding just what audiences got from their serial listening was a preoccupation of the broadcasting industry and of commentators in the press, one bound up with anx­i­eties about gendered hierarchies and social identities. As Allen’s work documents, from the outset the daytime audience was constructed as “that which must be explained,” as if the (male) executives of the broadcasting industry, the trade press that covered it, and the researchers studying radio could not fathom why someone would listen to serials.34 In a host of studies initiated by the radio networks, by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and the Bureau of Applied Social Research he directed, and by many other researchers, from psychiatrists to anthropologists, the soap opera audience was singled out as distinct from the radio audience more generally, distinguished largely on the basis of gender and marked as aberrant. In the assumptions of many of the studies of soap listeners, and in the popu­lar commentary that was built around them, the soap listener was viewed as “isolated from meaningful social intercourse, unequipped to deal with the ‘real world,’ and forever vulnerable to psychic manipulation.”35 Some cultural commentators and researchers tried to justify and explain the 8  ·  Introduction

appeal of serials from a more empathetic perspective, defending ­women’s interest in them.36 During the radio age and since, researchers and commentators have strug­gled to explain and understand the appeal of t­hese daily dramas, in the pro­cess shaping ideas about femininity and domestic life. The radio soap opera is a well-­researched phenomenon, an object that media historians have examined in historically specific detail. But soap opera historiography dissipates with the transition to tele­vi­sion, as if the radio age explains all we might want to know about soap opera by exploring its origins. ­There is a plethora of scholarship on the tv soap, but l­ittle of it conceives of it, or the social forces it engages, as contextually specific and variable, as having a history, as changing over time.37 Her Stories begins with the radio-­to-­T V transition of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Integrating daytime soap opera into this history shifts our understanding of this early period of electronic media convergence. In the transition of soap opera can be found some of the earliest negotiations over the shape the new medium would take, the ways it would both continue and vary from the pre­ce­dents set by radio. From ­there, the US daytime tv soap opera would embark upon its own history, one influenced by the radio serial but soon speaking more specifically to the economic and creative contexts of tele­vi­sion, as well as to the continuing shifts in the construction of identities such as that of the housewife-­viewer, a role that would change significantly over the second half of the twentieth ­century and the early de­cades of the twenty-­first. From the early 1960s through the ­middle 1980s, the daytime tv soap was a power­ful force in the tv industry and in American culture. The number of soaps on air mushroomed to an all-­time high of nineteen in the early 1970s, just as the broadcast networks w ­ ere growing their profit margins at a rapid rate; by the early 1980s, daytime soaps ­were a popu­lar sensation. A gradual drop-­off in the ratings, profitability, and popularity of soap opera from the mid-1980s on matches the shrinking profile of broadcast network tele­vi­sion more generally. In the twenty-­first c­ entury, the cancellation of a number of soaps, including Guiding Light, which had originated in radio, left soap opera proper in a diminished state, even as the form had ­shaped much of tele­vi­sion culture. Her Stories traces this “rise and fall” arc, but I seek to complicate that stock narrative by examining points of strug­gle or regression, as well as innovation and pro­gress, in any given period. As befits its form, the story of the daytime tv soap opera does not have a definitive ending, even as the number of daytime tv soaps on the broadcast networks has shrunk to four as Her Stories necessarily concludes. Her Stories rethinks soap opera as a historically mutable phenomenon with determinative f­ actors that Introduction  ·  9

vary across time, from the strengths or weaknesses of broadcast network economics to the forces of change that have encouraged tentative efforts to represent subordinated social groups in new ways.

What Stories Does Her Stories Tell? Much like the programs it examines, which span de­cades, Her Stories follows the tv soap across one half c­ entury and into the early de­cades of the next. This time span is unusually broad for the cultural histories of American tele­vi­sion upon which my work is modeled. Such work, including my own previous research in US tv history, is often decade-­bound, understanding the interplay of the economic forces, reception practices, and repre­sen­ta­ tional dynamics of tele­vi­sion in historically specific detail, albeit focused on a par­tic­u­lar trend or aspect of tele­vi­sion rather than accounting for all of its multitudinous programs and production forces.38 Some histories cross de­ cades but select representative case studies of a given phenomenon to trace temporally.39 Her Stories strives to re­spect the same attention to contextual specificity that is practiced elsewhere in this scholarship, but to do so over a longer swath of time. By zeroing in on soap opera, and by focusing on its storytelling capacity especially around ­matters of social identity, I streamline my approach. But the long period of time I examine necessitates that I omit aspects of soap opera history, tele­vi­sion history, and American cultural history, omissions that I hope ­will open up ­future inquiry rather than mark my analy­sis as incomplete. That said, my story traces three general periods of tele­vi­sion history, each of which contains negotiations over soap opera’s contribution to constructions of social identity and to changes in tele­vi­sion itself. The first period is that of the immediate post–­World War II era, which for soap opera and its constructions of femininity and other aspects of identity begins in the late 1940s and carries through to the early 1960s. Chapters 1 and 2 explore this terrain by detailing the transition from radio to tele­vi­sion in the business and production practices of soap creators, and in the convolutions of soap narratives. I include sponsors, networks, writers, production personnel, and on-­screen talent within the broad category of soap creators, and I explore their institutional and individual practices, as well as the images, sounds, and stories they generated. Chapter 1 asserts that the efforts of ­these institutions and individuals ­were central to shaping the business, 10  ·  Introduction

production, and aesthetic practices of tele­vi­sion itself. In establishing the economic and creative structures that would make the tv soap pos­si­ble, ­these creators molded the contours of the new medium. Their work borrowed heavi­ly from radio but also offered substantial new opportunities. Indeed, this is a period of medium differentiation, of distinguishing tele­ vi­sion from radio (and, at times, from the stage and feature film) in ways both practical and ideological. The gradual arrival of the daily daytime soap in tv exemplified ­these pro­cesses. Chapter 2 examines the constructions of gender embedded in the era of the new tv soap, in par­tic­u­lar the ways soap opera offered a therapeutic salve to the gendered stresses of postwar American life. Soap opera was at the center of a subtle shift across this period in the vision of the w ­ oman viewer-­consumer held by the broadcasting and consumer goods industries, one that gradually came to see daytime tele­vi­sion as a vehicle of psychological help rather than a distraction from the necessary business of homemaking. So too ­were the soaps’ on-­screen characters struggling to achieve happiness and well-­being within the “containment culture” of the postwar United States.40 In keeping with the broader preoccupation with ­family melodrama across film and tele­vi­sion of this era, the daytime soaps upheld ideals of white patriarchal heteronormativity.41 But the soaps’ narrative necessity for ongoing conflict exposed the dissatisfactions of t­ hese ideals for their characters, representing ­mental and emotional stability as elusive goals and thereby challenging the soaps’ ability to uphold a consistent ideological stance. Chapters 3 through 5 traverse the second period of soap opera history, corresponding to the classic network era of American tele­vi­sion from the ­middle 1960s through the late 1980s. This period was the height of the soaps’ economic and cultural power. Indeed, in chapter 3 I argue that soap opera was the foundation of the network era business model, that it epitomized and literally upheld the structures of production, distribution, and advertiser funding that earned the networks im­mense profits and power. At the same time, over this period the soaps led tele­vi­sion in grappling with social issues, including race relations and reproductive politics. Daytime drama “turned to relevance” before most of tv, and sometimes did so in subtly progressive ways, advocating for the intersectionality of black ­women’s identity or for w ­ omen’s autonomy over their own bodies. Chapter  4 examines the form’s stories of social change, analyzing its strategic balancing of the evolving culture and daytime tv’s historic adherence to a narrow vision of its audience as confined to a white, middle-­class, reproductive femininity. I argue that a new generation of creators s­ haped soap opera into Introduction  ·  11

a liberal-­leaning cultural forum on the issues of the day, especially t­hose related to changing expectations of gender and (hetero)sexuality. In chapter 5, I detail the peak of soap opera’s economic and cultural power, within which ­were contained seeds of its decline. In the tales of supercouple romance perfected by the early 1980s ­were the soaps’ most resonant pleasures and long-­standing limitations. The mass popularity of the form took g­ reat advantage of the structures of the network system and luxuriated in the appeals of story worlds that admitted just enough cultural change to feel “of the moment,” but both network structure and supercouple fairy tale would prove to be fleeting fantasies. The third period in the history of American tv soap opera is the focus of chapters 6 through 8. Often labeled the postnetwork or convergence era, the span from the late 1980s through the 2010s is one of declining fortunes for the broadcast networks and also for the daytime dramas that had been so central to network profitability. Chapter 6 analyzes ­these strug­gles, pointing to failures of the network system that threatened the status of soaps, and to the ways that the network soap business responded, from aesthetic experimentation to an embrace of the internet as a site of promotion and distribution. At the center of the soaps’ slow decline was a changing construction of their audience, wherein the feminized viewership that had once made soaps a valuable property now made them eco­nom­ically and culturally suspect. Chapter 7 examines the same period but instead focuses on the stories and characters of the soaps across t­hese de­cades. I understand this era as one of engagement with the soaps’ own past, wherein the programs sought to reclaim their popu­lar status by reimagining narrative fixtures such as the supercouple and the f­amily. Some of this reimagining progressively confronted constructions of race and sexuality as well as gender, admitting to a new degree nonwhite and nonstraight characters. Other of ­these narrative paths rejected rather than re­imagined the soap past, at times pushing daytime drama in directions that disengaged the very audiences the industry was desperate to retain and attract, ­doing their own kind of harm to the soaps’ ­future. Chapter 8 brings this period of decline up to the pre­sent of this writing. By the late 2000s the soap business was faced with widespread cancellations of long-­running programs and severe austerity mea­sures for ­those that remained. This chapter charts this re­imagined industry but also tracks the emergent sphere of “web soaps” as a return of sorts to soap opera’s modest beginnings, albeit now directed at a diverse, fragmented set of audiences rather than an assumed-­universal mass. The re­imagined soap opera, w ­ hether a 12  ·  Introduction

product of the in­de­pen­dent web or of the shrunken broadcast sphere, necessarily grapples with its own past as its story continues. In the end, the long view Her Stories offers makes clear the fluidity of soap opera, whose borders have become less and less fixed over time and whose appeal was never as ­limited to the feminized, white, middle-­class homemaker as both the tv industry and American culture had assumed. ­These chapters alternate between an orientation around developments in soap opera production, both economic and creative, and more elaborated attention to the stories the soaps told. Th ­ ese two dimensions of the tv soap—­the forces shaping the texts and the meanings of what appears on-­screen—­are intimately intertwined, but I emphasize par­tic­u­lar developments in dif­fer­ent chapters to explore each in depth. As a result, I dwell in and retread vari­ous periods for more than one chapter in order to cover the mutually determining ele­ments of industry, text, audience, and social context within as well as across periods. In each of the three eras I explore, I examine the differing power of ­these determining forces, helping us to see the ways that such influences as network hegemony or movements for social change have ­shaped not only soap opera but also American tele­vi­sion more broadly, and the varying ways that tele­vi­sion may tell us who we are, and what we want. While Her Stories tracks the daytime soap opera and uses it to think through both American tv history and the mutability of categories (of media and of social identities), the richness of my narrative may best be found in the details, in the ways that creators experimented with par­tic­u­lar production techniques, or built audience sympathy over months of scenes, as well as in the means that network executives used to exercise new degrees of control over bud­get and story, or that fans employed to follow their shows amid days of work or school. Much as in soap narratives themselves, what happens to the daytime tv soap, its slow-­moving plot, is not nearly as surprising or enlightening as how it happens. Ratings rise and fall, bud­gets expand and contract, stories push open bound­aries of social change only to reproduce problematic assumptions. Yet the details of how such forces come and go, of how they interact to shape the resulting programs or develop in dialogue with an audience in search of par­tic­u­lar pleasures, can be revelatory. They help us to understand the interactions of social and po­liti­cal forces with the cultural sphere of tv storytelling, to see with fresh eyes the ways that the daytime drama industry has led or sustained the network tv business, to grapple anew with how the entertainment we consume works to affirm or deny our identities and values. Introduction  ·  13

How Have I Researched Her Stories? Despite its culturally denigrated status, the US daytime tv soap opera has a remarkably robust archive. Manuscript collections of the correspondences and memoranda of soap creators, sponsors, and networks, as well as scripts and story projections, fan-­targeted books and memoirs, episodes and promotions preserved in official and user-­generated collections, the soap press and blogs, fan-­built websites—­there is a rich array of resources for understanding the history of the daytime tv soap. Yet even this volume of material cannot begin to match the mountains of story, production practice, economic exchange, and everyday experience that have accrued around so many daily-­produced serials across seventy years of tv history. Thus, the resources I draw upon have s­ haped my claims in multiple ways. For example, some of my analyses of narratives and repre­ sen­ta­tions rely on story summaries or scripts ­because ­there are no extant episodes I can examine. All daytime dramas w ­ ere broadcast live u ­ ntil the early 1960s, some continuing their live feeds into the early 1970s. Th ­ ere are select kinescoped episodes from the era of live broadcasting available in conventional archives and in user-­generated websites, and I have seen all that I know of, but ­these represent a mere fraction of the episodes aired in the live era. My archive is much broader than soap episodes alone, but the particularities of the video preservation of soap opera, or lack thereof, are instructive for tele­vi­sion historiography writ large. Even once soap episodes ­were recorded to videotape, they w ­ ere not always preserved by their producer-­ owners or their networks; indeed, tape erasure schedules ­were typical of soap production across the 1960s and 1970s. Although conventional archives preserved select episodes from this period, the outdated formats on which they ­were recorded make them unwatchable in the pre­sent. Unlike other kinds of tv content, commercially available episode runs of soaps are very ­limited; I have viewed all that do exist.42 The era of home videotaping marks an impor­tant shift, as fan-­collectors have preserved much of soap history from the 1980s on. Indeed, my analy­sis is rooted in part in my own personal archive, episodes I have saved to videotape, dvd, or digital format over de­ cades. While some fan collections have been shared online, fan-­archivists have seen too many episodes removed for copyright violations to rely on such methods alone, instead exchanging private holdings of full episodes and/or story line or character edits through off-­line networks. Still other fan collections remain unshared, and the volume of content is such that no 14  ·  Introduction

one could watch ­every episode of e­ very soap from the home-­taping era on, which now spans four de­cades. As a result, t­ here are many stories, characters, programs, and individuals that do not appear in Her Stories. My personal history as a General Hospital viewer has surely s­ haped my insights—­I simply know this soap better than any other, thanks not only to my viewing history but also to my past observational research into its production and to my access to multiple weeks of episodes across the 1960s in the ucla Film and Tele­vi­sion Archive.43 The differences between soaps are quite significant for ­those familiar with them, and I am aware of the ways that gh is and is not a typical case at dif­fer­ent moments in its history. As I have watched episodes (or even read sequences of outlines or scripts) for other soaps in my research, I have found myself intensely invested in their stories, as well.44 Even as I was watching the 2000s and 2010s gh as it aired, often I found myself caring much more about the characters of the 1970s Ryan’s Hope (abc, 1975–89) or The Doctors, which I was viewing at the same time. I am hardly an objective observer, but Her Stories encompasses more than the story of any one soap, or any one viewer, myself included. Indeed, one of its lessons is that the form is internally varied enough that no one soap could represent its history. As a way of accounting for how my arguments and areas of focus have been s­ haped by the available archive, I have tried to indicate through citation ­whether I am referencing an episode I have watched or ­whether my point is based on a script or story summary. I have read multiple scripts or watched a long sequence of episodes (or scenes of par­tic­u­lar story lines) for any examples I discuss in depth. However, except for cases of episodes that are preserved in official archives or are commercially available, I do not identify how I saw par­tic­u­lar episodes, as I do not want to endanger the accessibility of the fan-­generated archives, online and off, so crucial to my work and to lay preservation. If I cite a par­tic­u­lar episode (rather than a script, outline, or other manuscript), I have watched it. I have been careful to identify scenes and episodes and contextual circumstances by exact date, both as part of indicating how I have reached my conclusions—­what happens in what order is impor­tant to seeing how repre­ sen­ta­tions change over time—­and to emphasize that moments of soap opera have occurred not in some ephemeral anytime but ­under specific historical circumstances. Attributing such moments to par­tic­u­lar dates is a means of giving them a history, of recognizing them as par­tic­u­lar rather than universal, as mutable rather than essential, but also as connected to specific historical forces that ­shaped American life in 1954, or 1988. Yet the airdates I offer Introduction  ·  15

are often dependent on sources vulnerable to the inaccuracies of memory and errors of documentation, w ­ hether t­ hose of official archives and institutions or of everyday viewers. My efforts at dating soap episodes, much like the rest of my conclusions, are products of inevitably flawed research and interpretation, although they are offered in good faith, with as much rigor as one might apply to such fleeting objects. Her Stories historicizes the daytime tv soap opera, situating a feminized form at the center of American tele­vi­sion history. For too long, our mainstream and even our scholarly conceptions of tele­vi­sion history have been directed by the high-­profile programming of prime time while the medium’s longest-­running scripted series have offered up daily episodes to a deeply invested audience. Operating ­under the radar has long worked to the advantage of the soaps and their viewers. Daytime’s dramas have grappled with social change and offered thoughtful explorations of romantic and familial relationships to an extent rarely seen in eve­ning schedules, with controversial subject ­matter airing to l­ittle notice, and thereby l­ittle upset, outside their regular audiences. ­There is much to be learned about the aesthetic and economic histories of American tele­vi­sion by studying the path of daytime soap opera, and much to be explored in the history of tele­vi­sion’s participation in the social construction of femininity and other categories of identity in soap opera’s fictional tales and in its position amid broader industry discourses about ­women viewers and consumers. The US daytime tv soap opera demonstrates that tele­vi­sion narratives and feminized popu­lar forms may at once pleas­ur­ably satisfy desires and needs and frustratingly fall short of progressive ideals. Across the continuing history of American broadcasting, the daytime soap opera has carried such promising, and precarious, possibility.

16  ·  Introduction

ONE. SERIALS IN TRANSITION From Radio to Tele­vi­sion

Portia ­Faces Life had been a popu­lar radio serial for many years, showcasing heroine Portia Blake Manning, torn between her desire to be a traditional ­house­wife and her drive to help ­others in her ­career as an attorney. Ending its run on nbc radio in 1953, the serial was revived on tele­vi­sion in 1954. ­After a brief teaser featuring Portia’s friend Kathy in a troubling situation, the first episode of the tv serial opens on the Manning living room, where we see an ironing board set up in front of a tele­vi­sion set, a basket of clothes waiting nearby. Portia enters the room, preoccupied first with a delivery, then with a squabble she must ­settle between her two c­ hildren. Kathy enters just as Portia has turned on the tv and settled into her ironing. Not yet aware of Kathy’s dilemma, Portia explains, “This way I can watch tele­vi­sion and I ­don’t have to run so far if Dickie and Shirley try to scalp each other.”1 This ­house­wife ­will soon be pulled back into her ­career, as Kathy’s presence portends, but for a brief moment she models the consumer culture’s postwar ideal: the contented ­woman seamlessly combining domestic duties and daytime tele­vi­sion viewing. Portia’s effortless mix of ­house­work and leisure could reassure the broadcasting and advertising industries, not to mention a culture guided by princi­ples of patriarchy, that ­women could manage to be productive domestic workers and productive consumer-­viewers, that daytime tele­vi­sion could meet the interests of all. While Portia’s audience may have internalized this lesson, they ­were also likely ­eager to watch the heroine crusade for justice. If they had been listening to Portia’s adventures for years,

they well knew that she would again be drawn into her ­legal work. Being able to see her manage home and f­ amily as well as a c­ areer was a compelling reason to turn on the tv mid­afternoon, ironing board or not. In the late 1940s, when Portia was still the heroine of a popu­lar nbc daytime radio serial, no one expected her to depart for the new medium of tele­vi­sion. American network radio’s daily daytime serials ­were lucrative for their sponsors and networks and deeply integrated in the lives of their listeners. That daytime soap opera would come to tv at all, much less become eco­nom­ically and culturally central, was believed impossible as the two media began to converge. As one 1950 manual on broadcast writing asserted of the new medium, “A ‘live’ dramatic show cannot be a daily pre­sen­ta­tion.”2 Yet the passage of soap opera from radio to tele­vi­sion not only happened but also helped to establish many basic practices of audiovisual production. The fits and starts of soap opera’s transition demonstrate in microcosm tele­ vi­sion’s inheritances from radio, as well as the ways the two media would be distinguished from one another. In the first fifteen years of the daytime tele­vi­sion soap opera, the American tv business used soap opera to work through specific dimensions of tv production and storytelling, as well as broadcaster moneymaking, building the foundation of the emergent network era of American tele­vi­sion history. This transition also required a reimagining of the daytime audience, specifically the housewife-­viewer, whose habits would presumably change with the arrival of programming that required watching as well as listening, Portia come to life. As chapter 2 examines, between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, the broadcast industry and the culture at large would revise their ideas about the ­woman in the home. In concert with the soaps’ stories of the prob­lems inherent to marriage and ­family life, the postwar American ­woman and the ­trials she faced would be envisioned in new ways. First, however, this chapter explores how soap opera transitioned from a radio to a tv form. In the pro­cess, the soaps laid a path for tv production and storytelling while distinguishing tele­vi­sion from its pre­de­ces­sor, as well as defining the new medium in relation to the theatrical stage and the feature film. Broadcast historians have explored this transitional period, including the evolution of daytime programming, but have paid ­little to no attention to the specifics of soap opera therein.3 The period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s has been seen as rather insignificant to the history of the tv soap opera, and the history of the tv soap opera has been seen as rather insignificant to the radio-­to-­t v transition. Allen discusses the transition briefly in Speaking of Soap Operas and suggests the radio serial creator 20  ·  chapter 1

Irna Phillips was dubious about moving serials to tv, an argument that discounts Phillips’s substantive efforts as a tv pioneer and the ways that the tv soap developed its long-­standing form in the ­later 1950s and early 1960s.4 In What ­Women Watched, Marsha Cassidy puts soap opera aside to focus on the other genres of 1950s daytime, rightly noting the prominence of ­those genres, but also taking Allen’s quick treatment of the period to mean that soap opera was rather irrelevant to it.5 The fact that daytime serials remained a prominent part of the radio schedule across the 1950s has also obscured the initial development of the tv soap.6 Yet soap opera’s transition from radio to tv and its development across early tele­vi­sion show that in thinking about, experimenting with, and gen­ ere erating the form of tv soap opera, sponsors, creators, and audiences w piecing together the contours of the new medium. This chapter examines the soaps’ industrial and production history in this period, highlighting two key realms: first, the development of practices of audiovisual storytelling and narrative structure for daily drama, in concert with practices being developed for scripted tv writing and production more generally, and, second, the economics of the daytime soap business as a tv-­specific space. While the ways that the tv industry and the advertisers that funded it ­imagined the housewife-­viewer—as well as the ways that the soaps told stories about ­women’s strug­gles—­are also crucial to this period, ­those ­matters w ­ ill wait for examination in chapter 2. H ­ ere, I resuscitate the earliest years of the tv soap to demonstrate soap opera’s intricate involvement in the origins of American tele­vi­sion as a moving image storyteller and a profitable business, a medium developed in distinction to other modes of scripted narration employing visuals and/or sound.

Crafting the Earliest TV Soaps, Mid-1940s to 1951 Determining how to make a live, scripted drama, communicating through visuals as well as sound, and d ­ oing so on a daily basis was a major challenge for tv soap opera creators. While the mid-1950s through the early 1960s would be an era of refinement and specialization as the form became fully established in tv, the initial stage, from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, was more tentative, and its earliest moments, ­those through 1951, ­were especially experimental. From the late 1940s through the early 1960s, the serials’ production and creative practices would participate in molding an audiovisual grammar for the small screen. Serials in Transition  ·  21

Initial attempts at soap-­like tv production in the late 1940s w ­ ere short-­ lived and few, although to dif­fer­ent degrees they offered steps in developing dramatic tv production methods. A single, local televising of the radio serial Big ­Sister in 1946 featured actors standing in front of a microphone reading a script—­barely differentiating tv from radio.7 The DuMont Network did more to develop a tv soap creative practice, even as it mostly avoided daily scripted production. For one, the network trained in tv production ­future daytime soap directors and producers, such as Hal Cooper and Wes Kenney, who worked on early, non-­soap programming.8 DuMont also briefly aired two serialized drama experiments. In 1946, the half-­hour Faraway Hill aired weekly and was broadcast in the eve­ning but was ­imagined as a “tele soap opera” appealing to ­house­wives. Producer David  P. Lewis integrated “stream-­of-­consciousness”–­style voice-­overs, not unlike ­those offered by the serials’ radio announcers, to allow the h ­ ouse­wife to turn her eyes away for “peeling potatoes.” Still, the program experimented with visuals, including set changes, establishing shots, and some visual effects while, narratively, it tried a recapping strategy that would become a fixture of daytime tv soaps, repeating the last scene of the previous episode at the start of the next, a development that would supplant the radio serial’s story-­recapping narrator.9 Another DuMont effort, A ­Woman to Remember, ran daily for five months in 1949, with a daytime slot for about half that time. Set backstage at a daytime radio drama and employing creative personnel from radio serials, it blurred the line between theatricality and realism as did much early prime-­ time tv, but did so ­under especially trying production conditions, hastening its demise.10 The most influential of the 1940s tv soap efforts was ­These Are My ­Children at nbc (1949), created by Irna Phillips in partnership with director Norman Felton. Robert Allen has argued that Phillips was reluctant to enter ­ thers have repeated his claims, but the tamc proj­ect challenges tv, and o this idea, centering Phillips squarely amid the emergence of the tv soap.11 Phillips and Felton’s partnership also highlights the ways that the daytime soap sphere relied on a more gender-­equitable blend of l­ abor than was typical of most early tv dramatic production. Attending to visuals as well as sound, Phillips and Felton ­were pioneers in tv soap production, and in the evolution of scripted tele­vi­sion more generally.12 As she planned tamc in 1948, Phillips drew upon the lessons of radio, mindful both of the narrative utility of dialogue and of the habits of her audience, whom she sought to draw gradually t­ oward looking as well as listening. In retrospect, it is clear that Phillips was in accord with a number 22  ·  chapter 1

of early tv producers in recognizing the importance of sound for the new medium’s storytelling capabilities, but at the time she clashed with nbc Tele­ vi­sion program man­ag­er Ted Mills on this m ­ atter, as he argued that action should overtake dialogue on tv.13 In seeking to build audience investment through dialogue before relying more heavi­ly on visuals, Phillips was crafting tele­vi­sion by attending both to narrative effectiveness and to audience expectations.14 Phillips knew how to create stories and characters, but she also required Felton’s directorial skill to invent the daily tv soap. Felton used the proj­ ect to outline “The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique”; his ideas therein ­shaped not only early soap production but dramatic tv production more generally, given his subsequent ­career in writing and directing live anthology dramas and filmed series such as Dr. Kildare (nbc, 1961–66).15 Like Phillips, Felton’s ideas both drew upon and varied from previous models of media creation. For example, he argued for a deviation from a standard of motion picture and theater production by rejecting the practice of working with preestablished, permanent, standing sets. Instead, he urged episode-­by-­ episode consultation between director and scene designer so that only t­ hose portions of sets necessary for any one day’s production would be erected, increasing efficiency and conserving costs. Felton urged this efficiency of set use to be included in scripting, a practice that would be ongoing across soap history, continuing well into the 2010s, in order to minimize studio resets from day to day.16 Felton also proposed some prefilmed exterior shots as a way to orient the audience to the on-­screen space, as well as performing preliminary character work—­telling us something about the female lead by including an exterior shot of her Victorian mansion, for example.17 Soap creators would use prefilmed (­later, taped) exterior shots across their history, as in the images of the Collinwood mansion in Dark Shadows (abc, 1966–71), the footage of the ambulance driving up to General Hospital in that program’s opening credits between 1978 and 1993, or the visuals of the exteriors of the Abbott and Chandler estates on The Young and the Restless (cbs, 1973–) in the 2010s. While Felton and nbc’s Mills disagreed on some ­matters, they ­were united in believing that the look of tv drama should be dif­fer­ent from other media; their choices for tamc began to shape this tv-­specific style.18 Felton’s ideas about visuals w ­ ere rooted in more than production efficiencies; they ­were also connected to the narrative and affective dimensions of the program. Along with Phillips, he understood the need to get viewers Serials in Transition  ·  23

figure 1.1 Irna Phillips reviews floor plans of sets for ­These Are My ­Children, the first soap opera she created for tele­vi­sion, produced in 1949 at wnbq, Chicago. ­Wisconsin Historical Society whs-102844.

invested in the characters on-­screen. It was ­because the emphasis of tamc would be on the “dramatic working out of emotional conflicts” that he believed the production needed only minimal sets. He i­magined that scenes might fade out on a close-up reaction shot of one character, obviating the necessity of seeing other characters’ exits or entrances, and thereby of more elaborated sets. The scene-­ending, close-up reaction shot would become a standard of the tv soap, one Felton designed to maximize emotion while minimizing the costs of set creation and setup.19 In keeping with his investment in the visual power of tv, nbc’s Mills agreed that an emphasis on “face-­ to-­face cutting” in sequences of “high, sustained emotion” would make for compelling viewing.20 Despite Phillips’s and Felton’s efforts, nbc’s support of tamc was poor, and the soap was broadcast for less than one month in 1949. This was indicative of nbc’s attitude ­toward daytime soaps across the 1950s, as it failed to carry out several plans for tv soap blocks, especially when it lacked guaranteed sponsors to foot the bill.21 In 1951 the Biow Com­pany’s Roy Winsor offered the network a package of two sponsored serials and a third that would initially need to be sustained by the network u ­ ntil a sponsor was found; 24  ·  chapter 1

nbc declined. According to Winsor, “They wanted no part of soap opera on tele­vi­sion and certainly would contribute no f­ ree time on the air.”22 cbs was more open to the tv serial during this transition period. It carried Procter & ­Gamble’s first attempt at a tv soap, The First Hundred Years, in 1950, and saw the benefits of the forty-­five-­minute serial block Winsor was offering, which launched two long-­running programs, Love of Life (1951–80) and Search for Tomorrow (1951–82; nbc, 1982–86), on the network in 1951.23 Each of ­these efforts further developed the practices of tv soap production. Hundred Years, for example, instituted long-­term contracts for its on-­screen talent, based on the idea that specific performers became more essential when they could be seen on tv as well as heard, a practice that would become standard to soap production across its history.24 While the tv industry logic in ­these early years was to create daytime programming that would allow ­house­wives to follow along by listening rather than watching, early tv soap creators paid more attention to visual style than such logic suggests.25 The earliest tv soaps evidenced ­these conflicting investments in the visual. Some ­were shot with static cameras and relied more on two-­shots than on close-­ups, taking the proscenium style of the theater rather literally and avoiding putting cameras deep enough into diegetic space to shoot true shot/reverse shots over characters’ shoulders. But other early tv serials borrowed more from another antecedent, feature film, and employed visual devices such as the close-up from the start. The first episode of Search for Tomorrow in 1951 bore this out, with close-­ups of key props, such as a typewriter and a child’s doll, serving as indicators of character priorities and concerns, while close-­ups of characters’ ­faces, especially that of heroine Joanne Barron, communicated emotions, such as Joanne’s worries about her in-­laws pulling her husband away from her and their ­daughter.26 Even radio serial specialists like Frank and Anne Hummert recognized the narrative utility of the close-up for tv serials. As they wrote while planning the first on-­screen appearance of eponymous heroine Nona Brady in their never-­aired tv proj­ect, “The close-up in our opinion is God’s gift to the small screen of tele­vi­sion.”27 Some early tv soaps also used the same visual strategies employed in nonserialized nighttime tv drama of the period, such as the in-­depth staging of characters engaged in conversation who are both facing t­oward the camera, one character’s back to the other’s front.28 Jonah Horwitz makes clear that this was a standard device in the nighttime anthology dramas that received so much acclaim in the early 1950s.29 Daytime soaps used it, as well, as early as the first episode of sft with Keith Barron in the foreground and Serials in Transition  ·  25

figure 1.2 Search for Tomorrow used superimpositions to mimic the character Walter’s (Don Knotts) dreamlike state, nbc, March 27, 1953.

his demanding ­father, Victor, ­behind him, trying to impose his vision for Keith’s ­future on his resistant son.30 This technique would eventually come to be associated largely with soap opera, but it was used widely in early tv, perhaps due to the movement of creatives such as Felton and writer Agnes Eckhardt (a protégé of Phillips’s) between prime time’s anthology dramas and daytime’s serials. Along with close-­ups and in-­depth staging, early tv serials experimented with such visual storytelling devices as reaction shots and effects meant to mimic characters’ states of mind. Phillips insisted on the importance of depicting characters listening to other characters, and the Hummerts understood the dramatic utility of a reaction shot to demonstrate the male lead’s instant infatuation with the heroine.31 Early fifties soaps used both visual and audio effects to represent characters’ states of mind, from superimpositions of the toys a l­ittle girl imagines her absent f­ather might be buying her to a wave effect mimicking a comatose character’s ­mental activity.32 To represent the character Walter’s dreamlike state, Search for Tomorrow used a closeup of his distraught face superimposed upon shots of Walter from ­behind 26  ·  chapter 1

(portrayed by a stand-in) struggling to open a series of locked doors.33 ­These visual storytelling strategies remind us that early soap creators w ­ ere well aware of the new medium’s differences from radio. Yet the extent to which creators would distinguish tv soaps from radio’s daily dramas was a major preoccupation of this period, as all strug­gled to define the new medium.

Transitioning the Radio Serial While the industrial structure for broadcast network tele­vi­sion carried over from that established in radio, the development of the new medium in the late 1940s and early 1950s included some concern over which aspects of the radio business would remain ascendant. In par­tic­u­lar, some in the industry and the broader society hoped that the power of sponsors would be ameliorated, and that the networks would have greater control. This stance was rooted in criticisms of radio’s commercial orientation that had circulated since the 1930s both within the industry and among journalists, politicians, and intellectuals. Broadcast historian William Boddy has analyzed the links between t­hese critiques of sponsors and commercialism and the excoriation of radio’s daytime serials and their ­imagined female audience. He points to Charles A. Siepmann’s manifesto Radio’s Second Chance (1946), which associated the “alleged pathology of female soap listeners” with “the commercial constraints and program mediocrity that Siepmann and other broadcast reformers saw as central to the cultural and civic shortcomings of US broadcasting.”34 Popu­lar screeds such as Philip Wylie’s Generation of Vipers connected radio serials to broader critiques of American society as emasculated.35 Such discourses made radio, commercialism, femininity, and daytime serials representative of the disparaged past against which the new medium of tv could be built.36 As a result, early discussions of the possibility of tv soap opera ­either opposed sullying tele­vi­sion with radio’s worst or insisted that tv soap opera would have to improve upon its radio past, that tele­vi­sion could not abide the low quality and crass commercialism represented by the radio serials.37 Once tv soaps appeared, critics often judged them according to how well they distinguished themselves from radio versions. When journalist Ann Griffith wrote to Ted Corday, director of As the World Turns (cbs, 1956– 2010), in 1957, she praised his work by saying, “I would not have believed that the serial drama, as I have been informed the soap opera is now called, could be rescued from raucousness and dishonesty and turned into honest, Serials in Transition  ·  27

intelligent entertainment, but you have proved that it can be done and thus provided, I think, an impor­tant example of how tele­vi­sion can grow.”38 In contrast, when a critic judged a tv serial as inferior, as in the case of one 1958 review of Kitty Foyle (nbc), it was damned for being “no dif­fer­ent from the misery-­ridden productions aired on yesteryear’s radio channels.”39 The complicated relationship between the new tv soap and its radio pre­ de­ces­sors was s­ haped by ­these gendered cultural hierarchies, but also by more pragmatic economic concerns, such as w ­ hether daytime radio’s profitability would be harmed by tv. Even t­hose curious about tv, like longtime radio sponsor Procter & G ­ amble, did not want to risk the revenue of radio, and initially kept its radio properties away. Successful radio writers, including Jane Crusinberry and Frank and Anne Hummert, contemplated bringing their dramas to tele­vi­sion but did not ultimately do so.40 Indeed, other than ­ hildren, which was a remake of a Phillips the experiment of ­These Are My C radio serial, all of the soaps that aired on tele­vi­sion through 1951 w ­ ere original to tv. The most substantive effort to transition a radio soap came, again, from Phillips, who designed, funded, and advocated for an experimental tv production of radio’s The Guiding Light despite p&g’s re­sis­tance.41 As had been her position with tamc, Phillips believed t­ here was a fundamental similarity between radio and tv serials—­both ­were about character conflict.42 But she strug­gled with how best to use video as well as audio to this end.43 She began to write original scripts for the gl experiment and focused especially on demonstrating the storytelling power of the visual. She planned an opening scene in a bar, with sultry Gloria singing about her feelings for the married Bill Bauer, followed by a dialogue-­free sequence of the desperate, alcoholic Bill tempted to take a drink. The relatively minimal dialogue included a discussion about rejecting words as a way to communicate, as well as a forbidden kiss between Gloria and Bill.44 Realizing that an overemphasis on visuality might suggest that radio was passé, Phillips changed course—­she did not want p&g, the sponsor-­owners she was hoping to persuade, to panic about risking radio profits and de­cided to suggest a radio-­t v simulcast instead.45 Thus she de­cided to shoot video versions of two radio scripts. Phillips’s pragmatism did not mean she was ignoring the visual. She planned to use just one set, divided into two settings for the two dif­fer­ent scripts she sought to produce, keeping with the procedure of partial set use Felton had designed for tamc.46 She was thus mindful of bud­getary and production efficiencies but also attentive to visual storytelling, writing long descriptions speculating about what dif­fer­ent shot scales might communi28  ·  chapter 1

cate, what viewers should see during a character’s stream-­of-­consciousness voice-­over, and how fog might be used to communicate emotion.47 Phillips’s attentiveness to the image continued once p&g eventually agreed to sponsor a tv version of gl. She watched the existing tv soaps and made multiple (not always welcome) suggestions to the producer and director regarding visual ele­ments. She attended closely to actors’ facial expressions and physical gestures, noting which characters should be standing or sitting in scenes as indicators of their real or ­imagined power over one another. She understood physical actions as expressions of character and of dramatic conflict, including arguing for the value of characters restricting their physical expressions. For example, in a scene between Meta and Bruce scripted for the program’s first week on tele­vi­sion, Phillips urged restraint, insisting that the characters should only touch once and that “sex should be pre­sent, but only in the face, the eyes. We should be made conscious of the desire of the man, but never does he manifest his desire in a­ ctual action.” She was drawing upon her expertise in radio storytelling, noting that with this kind of suggestiveness, “­there is so much more that can be left to the imagination of the viewer,” as in radio. She also drew upon her radio experience in urging a visual equivalent of the phrases and verbal expressions par­tic­u­lar to each character, such as distinctive hand gestures.48 The radio and tv versions of gl ran concurrently as daily fifteen-­minute episodes for four years but ­were not simulcast. The radio episodes ­were recorded a day in advance, serving as a read-­through for the next day’s live tv production. The same story, using the same scripts, proceeded in each medium, but the program was increasingly oriented ­toward tv. Scripts ­were formatted with two columns, for audio and video. The cast was expanded to make for a more manageable workload, and plot was oriented around two stories (rather than the three or four that had been typical of radio), with complications that allowed for scenes between a range of characters.49 Actors, newly valued now that audiences could see them, ­were put on thirteen-­week contracts that promised a certain number of episodes, the first iteration of the appearance guarantees that would remain in place across tv soap history.50 The radio version was still ­viable, for a time, but the industry was orienting itself ­toward tv. ­These shifts, and the example of gl, led a number of radio serials to transition to tv ­after 1952, some reviving a dormant radio serial, ­others adding a tv version to a still-­running radio program. Many of t­hese veered away from the premise or timeline of the radio programs, an effort to differentiate and update for the new medium.51 Still, many characteristics of radio serials Serials in Transition  ·  29

accompanied the soaps to tv. Some carried on a tradition of serials having meta­phorical themes that offered some kind of worldview or outlook for the fictional community, as in the “guiding light” of faith and f­amily that inspired the characters of Phillips’s creation.52 The new-­for-­t v Golden Win­ dows (nbc, 1954–55) used a fable about learning to appreciate what one has rather than longing for what one does not to narrate the story of heroine Julie Goodwin, who longs to leave her home and fiancé to pursue her dreams of musical stardom. The opening credits featured a golden-­windowed h ­ ouse and an announcer repeating the fable; the theme was reiterated in dialogue, as in Julie declaring, “It was foolish of me to think I could go and search for my golden win­dows.”53 Golden Win­dows was one of several early tv soaps that used an announcer much as did radio serials. As Allen has explained, the narrator was a key ele­ment of the radio serial, transitioning between and linking the program and the commercial announcements, as well as guiding the listener through the story: “The dominant voice (both narratively and physically) of the soap opera was that of the narrator. He . . . ​interpreted the world of the narrative and that of the commercial message.”54 Some tv soaps eschewed this device or drastically ­limited the role of the narrator. The Guiding Light had ­stopped using a narrator to recap the story or provide character insight even on radio by the time the program came to tv, and Phillips insisted that the tv gl use a narrator only to remind viewers that the show would return ­after the commercial break and the next day, a way of training audiences to tv’s rhythms.55 Increasingly, the more interpretive narrator was associated with radio serials, not with tv, potentially opening the audiovisual text to a more flexible array of meanings, even as the cameras and shot se­lections worked to direct audience attention. With or without a radio-­style narrator, early tv soap writers strug­gled with how to communicate character psy­chol­ogy in ways that maximized the affordances of tv. When Crusinberry wrote potential scripts for a tv version of The Story of Mary Marlin, she included both a conventional narrator, commenting on the action, and characters introducing themselves via direct address.56 While this version never came to light, one early soap, ­Woman with a Past (cbs, 1954), from radio writer Mona Kent, also had characters address the audience, breaking the fourth wall and taking on the explanatory role previously held by the narrator.57 Such experiments did not last long. The more enduring practice would instead incorporate internal monologues, voice-­overs in shots of pensive characters; Phillips saw this as a key technique for providing viewers access to a character’s inner life, one that 30  ·  chapter 1

did not disrupt the diegesis through a narrator or direct character address to the camera.58 Even as the narrative devices of the tv soap adapted radio practices to the tv context, early tv serials relied on standard plots and character types from radio, such as that of the struggling but strong heroine, replicating existing gendered characterizations. As Michele Hilmes has described the radio age, “In serials w ­ omen provided the strong characters, for good or evil. Men occupied ancillary roles, usually as love interests for the ­women, and w ­ ere often ‘problematic’ to some degree: unstable, disabled, or criminal.”59 In the early tv soaps, ­these heroines faced tensions between their professions and their domestic lives. Julie of Golden Win­dows desired to pursue a singing ­career rather than marry John, Concerning Miss Marlowe’s (nbc, 1954–55) titular actress debated continuing with her ­career or marrying as she approached m ­ iddle age, Portia kept getting involved with l­egal cases as she tried to prioritize ­family life.60 O ­ thers fought against ­those who doubted their professional competence: Dr. Eve Allen of The Greatest Gift (nbc, 1954–55) had to face “a small town’s prejudice against ­women doctors”; ­lawyer Susan Martin, of Miss Susan (nbc, 1951), strug­gled against sexism, rolling her eyes at a male district attorney who cautions against her becoming emotionally involved with a client.61 ­Because both the business and creative sides of the new tv industry saw their audience as the same ­house­wives they had been reaching in radio, they initially veered very ­little from radio formulas. This began to change beginning midde­cade, as the tv soap achieved permanent status in the new medium and radio’s serials began to wane. Once the economic viability of the tv soap was established, creators more freely moved its stories and structure away from the radio model; it took commercial stability for the narrative and style of the tv-­ specific soap to wholly develop.

“Video Soaps Are ­Here to Stay”: The New Business of Daytime Tele­vi­sion Despite the creative experimentation with the new medium underway, the place of soaps in daytime tele­vi­sion remained a subject of debate within the industry throughout the early 1950s. In the late 1940s and across much of the 1950s, radio serials w ­ ere both popu­lar and profitable, whereas tv production was still pricey, time-­consuming, and difficult. By 1954, however, sponsors, networks, creators, and audiences began to see soaps as Serials in Transition  ·  31

belonging in the new medium. “Video soaps are h ­ ere to stay,” announced 62 Newsweek early that year. This is an ­earlier point for the secure position of TV soaps than historians such as Allen and Cassidy have identified.63 While it is true that early daytime programmer DuMont never truly pursued soap opera and that abc as yet had no daytime schedule, both nbc’s negotiations over ­whether to include soaps and cbs’s robust soap lineup are revealing of the ways the form found its footing in tv beginning midde­cade. This period from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s would establish par­tic­u­ lar patterns of network and sponsor business that would shape the industry thereafter. One reason we have l­ ittle historical rec­ord of the development of tv soap ­ ecause this netopera in the 1950s is nbc’s hesitation to program soaps. B work is the only national broadcaster with a publicly available archive, its past has dominated our understanding. nbc perceived a mismatch between soap opera and its broader mission. Led by president Pat Weaver, the network’s vision of tele­vi­sion as a “tool for broad cultural enlightenment” made the low-­status soap opera (and its associations with radio’s daytime serials) a poor fit.64 Indeed, being antisoap was one of nbc’s distinguishing features in much of the 1950s, even as the network circled around soaps off and on across the de­cade.65 Albert McCleery, creator of nbc’s daytime anthology drama Matinee Theater (nbc, 1955–58), made multiple efforts to get nbc to pick up tv soaps he pitched.66 Yet once Matinee was a go, McCleery actively participated in painting soap opera as an inferior relic of radio. He rejected Weaver’s suggestion that Phillips, a major success in radio and in soaps on cbs-­t v, be invited to write some Matinee scripts: “We are a l­ittle dubious that a writer of the nature of Irma [sic] Phillips would provide us the kind of story material that would be as effective on tele­vi­sion as it was on radio.”67 nbc’s “uplift” mission and desire for cultural distinction may explain some of its hesitancy to commit to soap opera, but the network’s minimal participation in tv serials was also a product of business missteps. One of its few early soaps, Hawkins Falls (nbc, 1950–55), suffered from scheduling challenges and lackluster promotion; sponsor Lever Bros. withdrew due to ­these kinds of concerns.68 In contrast, cbs continuously built its serial lineup in the early 1950s, a strategy that moved it ahead of nbc in the daytime ratings by early 1954, when its Search for Tomorrow surpassed nbc’s variety-­style Kate Smith Hour (1950–54) and claimed the top-­rated spot.69 In response, Procter & ­Gamble shifted a large amount of its daytime business to cbs, a significant endorsement of tv soaps by one of broadcasting’s biggest advertisers. 32  ·  chapter 1

Procter & G ­ amble’s investment in cbs Daytime, and in daytime tv soaps, was a signal of sponsors’ shifting loyalty ­toward tv over radio across the early 1950s.70 In 1950, only 3 ­percent of p&g’s ads had gone to tele­vi­sion. Between 1952 and 1953, a roughly equal balance between radio and tv shifted slightly in ­favor of tv. By 1955, 80 ­percent of p&g’s ads ­were video.71 The com­pany’s tv advertising bud­get more than tripled between 1951 and 1954, when it became the largest advertiser in the new medium.72 Thus, p&g’s investment in the cbs soaps drew nbc’s notice; the network tried to correct course and pulled together a two-­hour soap block, but was impatient with it, ending the effort by 1955.73 By 1954, p&g’s alignment with cbs, and cbs’s alignment with the tv soap, had made clear the staying power of tv over radio, and of tv soap opera as a crucial component of the daytime schedule.74 It was at this point that vari­ous ad agencies, producers, and distributors began to consider ways to expand and develop soap opera through new business models, including film production in Hollywood instead of the live, New York–­based productions of existing tv soaps, syndication of ­those filmed programs, and possibilities for cross-­national production and international distribution.75 The same year, Phillips proposed a tv version of her radio serial, Young Doc­ tor Malone, offering to make test kinescopes as she had for gl three years ­earlier, and was assured that kinescopes ­were no longer necessary in making the case for moving a radio property to tv.76 By 1954, ­there was wide support for the idea that soap opera belonged in tele­vi­sion. Radio serials would persist u ­ ntil 1960, but their decline became more pronounced by the mid-1950s. nbc Radio began to replace serials with other programming starting in 1955.77 In 1956, p&g dropped the radio version of gl, making the show a tv-­only property. By 1958, producer David Lesan was arguing to his Compton Advertising colleagues that “the radio audience has ceased to be an equal partner in the industry,” and that radio titles ­were no longer an ideal draw as tv soaps.78 Throughout 1959 and 1960, the remaining radio soaps gradually left the air. This transition marked a major change for radio, as affiliates began to demand that the networks give them more control of their broadcast days, and the medium shifted away from the national, networked practices that had provided broadcast tele­vi­ sion with its very structure. With the growing security of tv as the home for the daily daytime soap, new iterations began to emerge midde­cade. Especially notable was the introduction of the half-­hour time slot. More than just a scheduling shift, the thirty-­ minute soap marked both an economic and a creative distinction between tv Serials in Transition  ·  33

and radio serials, which had only run in fifteen-­minute slots to this point. The soaps’ creative personnel had been intrigued by the thirty-­minute serial for a while; Phillips had considered the possibility in radio, and creatives such as Adrian Samish (at nbc) and David Lesan (at Compton Advertising) promoted the idea at the same time as Phillips and one of her colleagues, director Ted Corday, began to explore the possibility for gl in 1954. All believed that audiences invested in serial characters would happily spend more time with their fictional friends.79 The thirty-­minute soap would come to pass by 1956, when Phillips and Corday persuaded p&g with a self-­financed test episode of their new soap, As the World Turns.80 Procter & G ­ amble may have recognized the audience appeal of the longer daily episodes but was most persuaded by the economics. Corday and Phillips argued that one longer program would cost less to produce than would two separate fifteen-­ minute productions.81 Production costs for a fifteen-­minute soap ­were about $10,000 a week; atwt and the other thirty-­minute soap debuting in 1956, The Edge of Night (cbs, 1956–75; nbc, 1975–84), would cost about $17,000 a week each, a 15 ­percent savings for the sponsor.82 From this point on, the industry heralded daytime tv, and soaps in par­ tic­u­lar, as valued profit centers; every­one favored the tv soap once it was indisputably profitable. In 1956, Variety reported that two separate studies had found daytime to be a “whopping success story,” demonstrating that ­earlier beliefs about tv before 6:00 pm had “widely underestimated” both audience size and cost efficiency.83 Advertisers readily responded, increasing their daytime investment throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. Network daytime ad billings for 1961 ­were expected to double t­hose of 1955.84 By 1964, audiences ­were 25 ­percent larger than in 1961 and ad revenues r­ ose accordingly, setting the stage for the networks’ massive growth in daytime profits as they would consolidate their power over soap opera—­and the rest of the tv schedule—­across the network era from the 1960s to the 1980s.85 The commercial significance of the daytime sector was touted by cbs, proudly labeling itself “The Network That In­ven­ted Daytime” in a 1957 trade press ad.86 Soaps ­were especially crucial to this status, as indicated by a separately bud­geted unit within the network’s daytime division devoted to serial development.87 By the fall 1958 ratings period, cbs’s soaps filled six of the top ten daytime spots, with As the World Turns the most highly rated daytime program. By 1960, the network promoted its head of daytime to direct programming for the w ­ hole network; having made tv soaps a success, Oscar Katz could now be trusted with the full cbs schedule.88 Across this era, soaps proved themselves not only as valued daytime fare but also as 34  ·  chapter 1

figure 1.3 cbs touted its top status in the daytime tv ratings in trade publications such as Tele­vi­sion in May 1957. The daytime schedule cbs “in­ven­ted” included many more soap operas than that of its competitor nbc.

a growth area in the tele­vi­sion industry. cbs continued its dominance, nbc recommitted to serialized daytime drama, and, in the early 1960s, abc entered both the daytime and soap fields. In 1964, cbs could boast in a Variety ad of its many daytime advertisers and its more than $1 million in yearly daytime ad revenue.89 It was the consistent success of cbs that encouraged the other networks to invest in daytime and in soaps in par­tic­u­lar.

Refining Soap Production, Mid-1950s to Early 1960s Once soap opera was established eco­nom­ically in daytime tv, its creators began to move beyond the ­earlier, more experimental phase, developing practices of production and storytelling that would shape the form, and the creation of scripted tele­vi­sion as a ­whole, in influential ways. All media production toggles between creative potential and the constraints of economic, technological, and practical forces, but daily live production of scripted Serials in Transition  ·  35

drama magnifies ­these tensions. This era of the daytime tv soap is thus especially instructive in the ways such tensions functioned in this period of tv history. ­Whether through negotiation of bud­getary constraints, new techniques in visuals and sound, or disruptions to the relationships between ad agencies, networks, and creative personnel, the ­later 1950s and early 1960s set patterns in soap production that would influence the industry across its history. ­Because much of the soaps’ economic value was rooted in their relatively low production bud­gets, financial constraints structured the production pro­cess, even as soap opera became more established in tv. The thirteen-­ week contractual pro­cess for soap talent begun even ­earlier in the 1950s continued to shape story plotting midde­cade, as writers had to use, or not use, talent in line with their contracted guarantees—­overuse meant ­running over bud­get, underuse wasted a finite bud­get line. Some soap actors found t­ hese contracts—­and the demands of tv soap acting, which ­were more intensive than ­those of radio’s serials—­constricting and left their roles, leading writers to create dramatic exits, such as shocking deaths, or to recast and hope the audience would accept the change.90 Bud­getary demands and the pressures of intensive production could thereby shape storytelling, as in the killing off of central characters due to actors seeking release from binding contracts.91 Soap writers and producers also had to become careful bud­geters of sets, another practice established in this era and carried across soap history. ­There was a marked difference in soap opera mise-­en-­scène from the early 1950s to late in the de­cade. Instead of the bare-­bones look of the early, more experimental years, in the latter part of the de­cade it became more typical for soaps to feature elaborately dressed sets, including full bookshelves, well-­ appointed furnishings, and knickknacks decorating the on-­screen homes and offices.92 With the more elaborate details of the new soap sets, and the need for more sets used each day with the expansion to thirty-­minute episodes, writers had to bud­get sets much as they did cast appearances. Sometimes set expenses w ­ ere kept modest for weeks or even months in order to reserve resources for planned f­uture needs. For example, in atwt’s early years, Phillips used sets judiciously in order to reserve bud­get for the climax of a major story, that of Jeff Baker’s trial for the murder of Al James, a bully who taunted Jeff ’s estranged love, Penny Hughes. The trial did not air u ­ ntil March 1958, but Phillips was planning set use with the trial in mind as early as July 1957.93 The trial was a crucial narrative linchpin: Jeff was exonerated thanks largely to Penny’s moving testimony, and the longing looks in the reaction shots of the two to one another assured the audience of their ongoing 36  ·  chapter 1

bond.94 Yet Penny had become involved with a new beau during Jeff ’s l­egal trou­bles. The trial scenes signaled a new phase in their relationship—­Jeff might be freed, but he remained bound to Penny; Penny may have moved on, but she was clearly still in love with Jeff. The set and staging of the trial scenes helped tell this story in a way that would not have been pos­si­ble in an audio-­only medium. The interest in the look of impor­tant scenes such as ­those of Jeff ’s trial on the part of soap creators was an indicator of key changes to soaps in this period, as creators found more ways to use the visual dimension of tv to tell stories. Even early in the de­cade, creators had used close-­ups to highlight character emotions and reactions, or to draw attention to details, but some programs did so more than o ­ thers. It was also typical for early 1950s soaps to play scenes primarily in two-­shots, switching between cameras shooting a proscenium set from slightly dif­fer­ent a­ ngles. In one quarter-­hour episode of Concerning Miss Marlowe from 1955, the characters Kit and Aram sit at a restaurant ­table. Aram leaves the ­table for a time, and another character, Jim, comes to talk with Kit, but our focus remains largely on the forward-­facing ­table. We see some medium close-­ups of the characters, but much is played in two-­shot; all cameras approach the scene from in front of the proscenium, as from the view of an audience watching a stage.95 This more theatrical style was more common in the early part of the de­cade. By the l­ater 1950s and early 1960s, more tv soap creators had expanded their visual repertoires. In one episode of nbc’s From ­These Roots (1958–61) from this ­later period, visuals communicate story through close-­ ups, zooms, character and camera movement, and facial expressions. First, we see the characters Liz and Lyddy discuss Tom and Lynn’s engagement. Lyddy suggests that Tom and Lynn seem to want Liz to find out about their engagement before anyone e­ lse. The scene ends with Liz remarking, “It does seem that way, d ­ oesn’t it?” accompanied by a swell of m ­ usic and a zoom in to Liz’s quizzical expression, cueing the viewer to her (correct) sense that this engagement may not be genuine.96 Zoom lenses had been used in tv production since the late 1940s but ­were most prominent in shooting sports and other live events on location.97 It was not u ­ ntil the ­later 1950s that they gained more use in daytime soap production and in scripted, studio-­based tv production more generally, employed h ­ ere as a dramatic means of draw98 ing viewer attention to emotional stakes. ­Later in the episode we learn that Tom and Lynn are faking their engagement ­because they hope to separate Liz from David; Lynn wants David for herself and is counting on his reciprocal feelings being stirred at news of the Serials in Transition  ·  37

engagement. We watch Lynn’s plan play out when David comes to see her. In this scene, Lynn’s duplicity—­and the true feelings of both—­are communicated visually as much as through dialogue. We see her primping for his arrival (telling us she wants to impress); as planned, David is preoccupied by the news of the engagement, but Lynn stokes his jealousy further, saying, “David, I ­don’t think that’s any of your business.” The camera zooms in to David’s close-up, a punctuating reaction shot of his distress before a fade to black. When the scene resumes, David tries to convince Lynn that Tom is an untrustworthy playboy, demanding, “Do you love him?” A swish pan back to Lynn as she asserts, “He loves me!” heightens the drama of the scene and the escalating emotions between the two. She slaps him, she cries, as extreme close-­ups of each are intercut and David grabs her face and kisses her passionately—­still in extreme close-up. A ringing phone breaks the tension as Lynn ducks out to answer it. Longer shot scales for the rest of the scene emphasize the distance between them, despite their clearly passionate feelings for one another. The power of the scene, even to a viewer unfamiliar with the characters or story, comes from its ability to communicate layers of information beyond what is said—­the kind of paradigmatic depth of meaning scholars such as Allen have identified as central to soap opera’s narrative form.99 What is distinctive in this period of soap history, in comparison to the ­earlier 1950s, is how much of that meaning is communicated visually, how much the visual style emphasizes the meanings and intensifies their affective pull. This was tele­vi­sion designed to be watched, notably dif­fer­ent from a radio drama played out on a stage. The growing elaboration of the soaps’ visual production was matched by more experimentation with audio ele­ments such as m ­ usic. The e­ arlier period of tv soaps tended to rely on the organ compositions so strongly associated with radio serials as background ­music. But creators began to try out other kinds of ­music in the mid-1950s, including the use of pianos rather than organs. cbs occasionally cleared atwt to use phonograph recordings of popu­lar ­music, and the program featured young heartthrob Jeff Baker playing piano and singing the original song, “Penny,” that the character has written for his sweetheart.100 In 1961, the composer-­pianist for Young Doctor Malone (nbc, 1958–63) prepared jazz-­inspired musical themes for each of the program’s characters, replacing the traditional background scoring, and by 1963, the new program The Doctors was using orchestral scoring rather ­ usic differentiated than live organ accompaniment.101 The changes in soap m the tv serial from radio, but marked the stories they accompanied in other ways, as well, as in heightening the specialness of Jeff and Penny’s relationship 38  ·  chapter 1

or enhancing the sophisticated feel of a new soap like The Doctors, set in a gender-­mixed workplace. As soaps began to try out new looks and sounds, some industry players explored changes to soap production models. Throughout this period, soaps ­were nearly exclusively broadcast live from New York City, in studios owned by the networks, through contractual arrangements with the ad agencies that produced the serials in ser­vice to their clients, sponsors such as Procter & ­Gamble or Colgate-­Palmolive. While the sponsors owned the soaps and the agencies had a strong creative hand, the networks had a fair degree of power, since the sponsors and agencies w ­ ere subject to the networks’ decisions regarding the availability and costs of their studio facilities.102 For example, within the first year of atwt, cbs moved the soap to a temporary fa­cil­i­ty that was not appropriately equipped; for one, it lacked a means of communication between the production stage and the control room, a standard of studio production.103 The networks controlled the production facilities and ­were not above raising the rates they charged for studio use. ­Because this situation was disadvantageous to the agencies and sponsors, some began to explore alternate production arrangements. In 1958, the owner of an in­de­pen­dent studio sought Compton Advertising’s business by offering his fa­cil­i­ty for the production of a new nbc soap, ­Today Is Ours. Studio owner Walter Gorman pledged to make the soap, “the best-­looking show on the air,” with “a physical setting extensive and attractive beyond the means of all daytime tv shows and most nighttime shows,” a clear appeal to the growing range of stylistic techniques employed by soap creators.104 Gorman’s pitch also hinted at the other forthcoming disruption to the soaps’ production practices: videotape. Gorman’s new business was proposing to produce a daily soap on videotape in 1958, just the time when the technology was gaining traction across the tv industry.105 Agencies like Compton and sponsor-­owners like p&g would consider producing soaps on tape, instead of live, several times between 1958 and 1962, usually in response to a pitch by an external production com­pany seeking to replace the networks’ production facilities.106 While the networks did have videotape recorders at this time, they w ­ ere not committing them for use in soaps, which w ­ ere seen by many as essentially ephemeral. No one thought t­ here w ­ ere additional ­revenues to be gleaned from their rebroadcast; one proposal for videotaping soaps included a procedure for erasing and reusing the tapes—­this was seen as more cost-­effective than selling soap episodes in a secondary market.107 In this re­spect, soaps ­were treated differently than much of scripted tele­vi­sion by the late 1950s, as more and more programs w ­ ere shot on film Serials in Transition  ·  39

in order to be sold into first-­run or off-­network syndication, increasingly crucial revenue streams for much of the industry.108 Even as a few soaps had brief periods of taped production in 1961 and 1962, videotape made its way into daytime drama rather slowly, becoming a production standard only once the first soaps originated their productions in Los Angeles, rather than New York, beginning with General Hospital in 1963.109 Many of the New York–­produced soaps continued to be produced live well into the 1960s. The refinements in practices of soap production across the l­ater 1950s and early 1960s established long-­standing strategies for managing bud­getary constraints and using images and sound to tell compelling stories, but they did not alter the soaps’ historic reputation as a cheap means of attracting w ­ omen viewers to sponsors’ products.

Storytelling in the TV Soap, Mid-1950s to Early 1960s The per­sis­tence of live, New York–­based productions coordinated by advertising agencies on behalf of major clients like p&g may have made daytime tv soap opera seem ­little changed from the days of radio. But just as creators developed audiovisual production strategies to suit the new medium, so too did their storytelling strategies change in this crucial era, putting into place narrative practices that would persist over de­cades. Often this meant differentiating the tv soap from its radio pre­de­ces­sors, not only to benefit from efforts to legitimize tele­vi­sion over radio but also to adapt to the distinctive ways tv narratives might shape characters and stories. One point of differentiation from radio involved the use of melodrama, a quality that tv soap writers of the late 1950s approached cautiously, associated as it was with radio serials’ lowbrow reputation. To industry professionals of this time, “melodrama” referred to dramatically intense plot points that caused ­great upheaval for characters, qualities that ­others within the culture might have labeled “soap opera.” Soap creators’ aversion to “melodrama” was in keeping with a broader cultural disdain for anything associated with feminized, mass culture. As Barbara Klinger has studied, critics seeking to dismiss Douglas Sirk’s films in the 1950s described them as crassly commercial soap opera, an especially damning claim in an era when dramas of emotional realism ­were the most celebrated feature films.110 The “soap opera” critics referenced so disparagingly was not that of the new TV soaps but rather the (still airing) radio serials, the scapegoats for the anx­ie­ ties about mass culture and the feminine that had obsessed innumerable commenta40  ·  chapter 1

tors since the 1930s.111 None of the cultural commentary referencing soap opera was spending much time attending closely to the ­actual radio or tv programs, but a hegemonic consensus about soap opera had emerged in the radio years. The new tv soap had a much lower profile, and its creators understood their practice as dif­fer­ent from that which was assumed of radio and so heavi­ly disdained. They sought to align their efforts more with the emotional realism associated with the respectable drama of the stage and screen than with the “melodrama” of “soap opera.” As a result, moderating melodrama was a regular issue for soap creators of the ­later 1950s. When Search for Tomorrow head writers Frank and Doris Hursley responded to suggestions made by p&g’s Stan Potter about plans for a rape and a murder in an upcoming story, they pondered ways to keep such potentially melodramatic events realistically grounded, arguing to Potter, “The melodramatic developments you suggest seem to us a contradiction to the basic long-­term story which is essentially an emotional strug­gle rising out of character.”112 Similarly, producer Lucy Ferri warned The Guiding Light writer Bill Bell to be cautious about the melodramatic reaction of the character, Kathy: “If she is hysterical it would have to be developed emotionally or we run the risk of injecting a melodramatic note if not a red herring.”113 And in David Lesan’s critique of sft (before the Hursleys took over), he insisted, “We d ­ on’t need headlong melodrama t­oday,” b ­ ecause of the many real-­world prob­lems a writer could mine for dramatic material.114 The rejection of (a dated kind of) melodrama was paired with an embrace of character, another means of asserting the kind of realism valued by critics, as in one review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Klinger references, which praised its characters as “vivid and believable ­human beings.”115 The investment in character realism became a central value of tv soap writers. Search for Tomorrow’s Roy Winsor told tv Guide in 1961, “The radio serial held you through the plot, the tele­vi­sion serial holds you through the characters.”116 In practice, this meant that ­those who ­shaped soap stories regularly discussed questions of character motivation and sought justification for plot developments within their characters’ psyches. In a memo titled “The Importance of Character,” Winsor told his shows’ staffs: “Once we decide who our characters are, and once we determine to keep them consistent, we can pre­sent characters with whom the viewer feels instant empathy. Most impor­tant of all, such characters should not stand around and talk. To any except the most trivial subject the characters would bring an attitude. When attitudes clash, ­there is conflict, and that’s what this business of drama is all about.”117 Serials in Transition  ·  41

Stan Potter made a related point when he weighed in on the writing for sft in 1960, noting, “We get a ­little too preoccupied with surface reaction to incidents rather than utilizing the under­lying strong emotional attitudes as they develop.”118 Potter wanted to see the program “getting inside the characters more to give them greater depth, more attitudes, more consistency,” rather than jumping from plot point to plot point.119 That this storytelling philosophy was espoused not only by creatives like Winsor but also by executives like Potter is telling of the extent to which ­these princi­ples became central in the period of redefining soap opera for tele­vi­sion. Sound dramatic princi­ple though it may be, this emphasis also served to differentiate the tv soap from the widespread cultural assumptions about radio serials and to align daytime drama with more culturally legitimated fare. The focus on character and the avoidance of melodrama ­were princi­ples that s­ haped soap storytelling in multiple re­spects by the late 1950s. In a story projection the Hursleys wrote early in their tenure at sft, they described their plan to multiply the concurrent stories. Though the program was still a fifteen-­minute serial, this shift in story structure was surely motivated by the new half-­hour soaps that ­were ­running several stories featuring a range of characters. The Guiding Light, another fifteen-­minute soap, had started to do this ­earlier in the de­cade, as well. But this shift was especially significant for sft, which had, since its 1951 debut, been the story of heroine Joanne Barron Tate. In that re­spect, sft was modeled a­ fter the many radio serials with a heroine at their core. As the Hursleys saw it, however, the central heroine was synonymous with the single-­story serial, and “A single-­line story is almost inevitably pushed ­towards more and more melodramatic developments to sustain interest.”120 The Hursleys recognized that Joanne was a crucial point of investment for the audience, but also that neither a constantly suffering central heroine nor “a perpetual do-­gooder, a Ma Perkins,” was the ideal way forward for the tv soap. Their desire to achieve a more culturally valued form of emotional realism led them to assert, “Search for Tomorrow should not be the story of one life or two lives but the story of intermingled lives united by force of circumstance and the personality of Joanne.”121 In the sft of the late 1950s, Joanne would become the central hub of a community of characters. This would be one of the tv soap’s major narrative contributions—­the establishment of an ensemble community as a way to both multiply and interweave stories. The community would ground the narrative in the kind of emotional realism so valued in postwar culture, distinguish the tv soap from radio, and solve some of the challenges of generating enough story for the soaps’ massive volume of episodes without too 42  ·  chapter 1

much melodramatic plotting. Not only in this revised approach to sft, but soon thereafter in the Hursleys’ proposed college campus–set soap and then in the first of the workplace-­set soaps, General Hospital, the Hursleys embedded a sense of community in their proj­ects’ very premises.122 By the early 1970s, this became a given of soap scripting, as seen in the case of writer Ann Marcus planning that a new character would have seven dif­fer­ent connections to other characters and stories, weaving him in multiple re­spects across the on-­screen community.123 In such efforts, daytime tv soaps innovated the continuing ensemble drama, crucial to tv storytelling writ large for de­cades to come. Many of the aesthetic features of the daytime tv soap—­visuals, sound, narrative—as well as its business practices, w ­ ere rooted in the soaps’ early years in the new medium, from the tentative steps of the late 1940s through the more developed practices in place by the early 1960s. While ­these practices solved many of the challenges of daily dramatic tv production, they also emerged due to creators’ efforts to position the tv serial in relation to its radio past and to the more culturally legitimated worlds of the stage and feature film. This era was also foundational to soap opera’s contributions to the social construction of gendered identities, communicating ideas about ­women’s and men’s lives in the postwar United States, both in stories playing out on-­screen and in discussions about the w ­ omen in the audience. Just as the new tv soap was developing its production and business practices, so too was it offering up understandings of the strug­gles of postwar American life, shaping notions of gender, marriage, and f­ amily as desperately in need of therapeutic intervention.

Serials in Transition  ·  43

T W O . D AY T I M E T H E R A P Y Help and Healing in the Postwar Soap

In 1956 and 1957, across its first year on air, As the World Turns told the story of the crumbling marriage of respectable middle-­aged ­couple Jim and Claire Lowell, their relationship compromised by Jim’s affair with Edith Hughes. Creator Irna Phillips was not satisfied with a conventional path for this story, resisting a pat blaming of Edith as predatory interloper, Jim as faithless philanderer, or Claire as inadequate wife. In the spirit of the era’s investment in emotional realism, she wanted to explore the implications of this situation for all of the characters.1 Jim and Claire would question their traditional life, a reckoning that would lead Claire to a ­mental breakdown. Their teenage ­daughter, Ellen, would rebel amid the dissolution of her f­amily, eventually finding herself pregnant and unwed. And Edith would face the judgment of her own f­amily, that of her b ­ rother and sister-­in-­law, Chris and Nancy Hughes, and her once-­admiring niece Penny (who was also Ellen Lowell’s best friend). The Edith/Jim/Claire triangle was a rich fount of story for the new soap. It was also a resonant microcosm of the questions surrounding gender, marriage, and ­family life in postwar Amer­ic­ a, seeking to depict the strug­gle to achieve happiness, even ­mental and emotional stability, therein. Both Claire and her friend Nancy Hughes offered versions of the efficient middle-­class homemaker, central to ideals of 1950s suburban domesticity. The travails of the young Ellen and Penny embodied the hopes and fears pinned on the baby boom generation. The specters of divorce, psychological

trauma, and moral ambiguity haunting the narrative fit with what Phillips identified as “the many influences, pressures, of everyday living in this par­tic­u­lar era—an era that is breeding insecurity, fear, almost futility.”2 So launched As the World Turns, making tele­vi­sion soap opera a crucial sphere for the social construction of gendered identities, their ­trials and pains, in the “atomic age.” In representing not only the ideals of postwar American society but also their inherent fragility, atwt complicated Betty Friedan’s claims in her influential volume, The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, the book excoriated the “happy ­house­wife heroine . . . ​created by the ­women’s magazines, by advertisements, tele­vi­sion, movies, novels, columns and books by experts on marriage and the ­family,” for being out of step with the “nameless aching dissatisfaction” experienced by many ­women.3 In so ­doing, Friedan located the blame for the “prob­lem with no name” in this wide range of popu­lar cultural texts, particularly t­hose directed at and consumed primarily by w ­ omen, and she defined w ­ omen as synonymous with the white, middle-­class, suburban homemaker. A number of historians have since argued that the culture Friedan critiqued—­that of w ­ omen’s magazines and Hollywood films in particular—­was not as univocal as her analy­sis suggested, that ­these spaces included varied expressions of the dissatisfactions of the white, middle-­ class, patriarchal ideal, and did not simply parrot the dominant ideology.4 Such correctives to Friedan rarely mention tele­vi­sion, much less daytime soap opera. But the focus of soap opera on the very m ­ atters of femininity, masculinity, marriage, and ­family life so central to the feminine mystique make it a crucial space for considering popu­lar culture as a site for constructions of gendered identity. That soap opera was also so central to the ways the broadcasting, advertising, and commercial goods industries ­imagined and addressed their viewer-­consumers makes it a doubly significant sphere for understanding constructions of gender in the postwar United States. This chapter continues to explore the era of the new tv soap, covering the late 1940s through the early 1960s, that period of soap opera’s transition to tele­vi­sion and participation in the development of the production and business practices of the young medium. ­Here, I turn in more detail to the constructions of gendered identities in industry discourses of the i­magined housewife-­viewer and in soap stories themselves, exploring the specific narratives about ­women, men, marriage, and ­family life generated in such spaces. I find that across ­these realms, soap opera functioned therapeutically, in that it came to be understood in industry discourse as a means of helping the potentially unstable ­woman in the home cope with her life.5 This Daytime Therapy  ·  45

therapeutic function persisted in the narratives and repre­sen­ta­tions of the soaps themselves, in that the programs depicted characters suffering from an array of emotional and psychological difficulties, difficulties that might receive temporary relief but that would often morph and continue, given the programs’ constant need for narrative complication. Tales of psychological distress invited explorations of interiority that fit well with soap creators’ investment in character and emotional realism over “melodrama,” and that fit with the broader industry’s justification of soap opera as helping the ­woman in the home to cope with her life. In telling ­these kinds of stories, and in understanding its audience as adults with emotionally complex psyches, the daytime tv soap constructed a vision of the typical American ­woman as more than a mindlessly compliant “happy ­house­wife heroine,” with a more nuanced inner life than the feminine mystique critique acknowledged. But the remedy for her trou­bles usually did not transcend the private, individual, and consumerist sphere within which the soaps circulated. The industry, and some audiences, asserted that watching the programs was a help to the housewife-­viewer, and soap narratives represented their characters’ prob­lems as personal, rather than as tied to broader social forces. Any solutions characters might find ­were usually temporary and located within their own psyches and interpersonal relationships. The soaps acknowledged the dissatisfactions and strug­ gles of postwar American life, but the help and healing they offered usually failed to see beyond home, ­family, and gender-­specific roles therein. In what follows, I first trace the changing conception of the ­woman in the home as the audience for daytime soap opera. I find a subtle but significant shift between the early transition from radio to tele­vi­sion and the more secure positioning of daytime tv by the ­later 1950s. The new ways the industry ­imagined the housewife-­viewer relied on notions of tele­vi­sion’s therapeutic value to help solidify the position of daytime tele­vi­sion (over radio) and of daytime soap opera in par­tic­u­lar. Scattered evidence of a­ ctual audience perspectives reveals that some w ­ omen viewers accepted this view of serials as therapeutically beneficial, although they tended to accord themselves more agency in seeking out such benefits, understanding their viewing within the broader context of their daily lives and the commercial motivations of the tv industry. The chapter pairs this analy­sis of the construction of the housewife-­viewer with a dissection of the soaps’ stories of marriage and ­family life, focusing on the gendered constructions of character psy­chol­ogy and emotional travail t­ hese programs offered. I highlight the ways the soaps offered real recognition of the challenges and dissatisfactions of the hetero46  ·  chapter 2

sexual nuclear ­family ideal, but also the ways they failed to connect that unhappiness to structural forces, leaving the characters to seek answers to their prob­lems within the very conditions that generated them in the first place.

Domestic ­Labor and the Prob­lem of TV Among the multiple concerns about bringing soap opera to tv from radio was the conviction that radio serials ­were uniquely suited to ­women’s work in the home. Tele­vi­sion’s visual dimension, it was believed, would inevitably disrupt this profitable symbiosis by absorbing the h ­ ouse­wife’s full attention.6 A 1948 tv production manual fretted, albeit with some humor, “If the ­house­wife [watches tele­vi­sion] for too many hours each day and for too many days each week, the divorce rate may skyrocket, as irate husbands and neglected ­children begin to register protest.”7 A tv station man­ag­er expressed a similar concern: “The h ­ ouse­wife ­will not very long remain a ­house­wife who attempts to watch tele­vi­sion programs all after­noon and eve­ ning instead of cooking or darning socks.”8 Th ­ ese ­were not only the worries of men threatened with upsets to their domestic contentment. Radio serial creator Irna Phillips expressed a view more sympathetic to the ­house­wife when she advocated for tv’s first daily serial to air in the eve­nings rather than in the after­noon, given the “hundred and one chores around the home” the ­house­wife managed during the day.9 House­wives themselves had similar concerns, at least as documented by market researchers. In one 1945 study, a w ­ oman wondered of tv, “If this takes the place of radio, how ­will I ever get my work done?”10 ­Women’s acknowl­ edgment of ­these challenges could also slip into disapproval of t­hose who ­were watching. An early 1950s study found that 44 ­percent of t­ hose w ­ omen who did not watch daytime tv saw daytime viewers unfavorably, remarking that tv watchers “­don’t do their work,” are “wasting their time,” and are “not real ­house­wives,” transferring to tv viewing some of the disparagement once reserved for radio serial listening.11 In the uncertainties surrounding the introduction of daytime tele­vi­sion, both corporate profits and the care and maintenance of Amer­i­ca’s homes and families ­were at stake. Concerns about ­women taking time away from h ­ ouse­work to watch the presumably all-­consuming screen kept many sponsors out of the daytime tv business in the late 1940s and early 1950s.12 Lynn Spigel has detailed the ways that daytime tele­vi­sion solved the prob­lem of ­women’s work in the home by training and addressing the Daytime Therapy  ·  47

­ ouse­wife as “Mrs. Daytime Consumer,” urging her to integrate the inforh mation and sales pitches offered by daytime’s segmented schedule into her daily ­labor.13 Indeed, the broadcasting and advertising industries gradually became invested in daytime tv across the late 1940s, a strategy the short-­ lived DuMont network pioneered in 1948 with tv’s first daytime schedule.14 But soap opera could not be fitted as easily into this discourse of consumer instruction. Historian David Weinstein makes clear that DuMont’s early daytime successes ­were deliberately “not driven by dramatic plots and narratives” so that w ­ omen could readily walk away from the set.15 The prob­lem soap opera posed for the daytime “solution” of consumer training was that, while serials included key minutes of commercial messaging and had, in some instances, integrated sponsor products into their narratives, the programs themselves needed to offer compelling fictional tales, and thus their instruction in domestic consumerism would have to be more subtle than that of a talk show fashion segment or a game show awarding new kitchen appliances. Phillips ­imagined some elaborate forms of commercial integration when she began planning ­These Are My ­Children for tv in 1948, including having a young w ­ oman character work as a tv cooking demonstrator, showing off the wares of a sponsor such as refrigerator manufacturer Frigidaire, and having the ­woman’s f­ amily watch her on a tv positioned within the diegetic domestic space.16 But the challenges of such an enterprise loomed large and ­were not quickly welcomed by sponsors, ad agencies, or networks. The broadcasting and advertising industries and the masculinized culture could ­ omen’s domestic tasks, and not easily categorize tv soap opera as assisting w its development was hampered as a result.17 An alternate approach to daytime was the scheduling of “big-­time shows” such as The Kate Smith Hour and The Garry Moore Show (cbs, 1950–58), the kind of “appointment” viewing that would bring “show business” to day­ ese efforts ­imagined that the h ­ ouse­wife could take a break in her time.18 Th day to experience this kind of high-­quality spectacle. As one 1949 network study noted, “It is pos­si­ble for a program to overcome the incon­ve­nience ­factor by causing the ­house­wife to rearrange her work schedule so that she finds time to view a program she likes.”19 Allowing for the possibility of a break in the ­house­wife’s duties was part of a broader shift in conceptions of ­house­hold l­ abor due to developments in consumerism, such as the packaged foods industry, and in lifestyle, such as suburbanization, that suggested an easing of domestic work. The corollary for the broadcasting business was that the ­house­wife could spend more time watching tv, which served the 48  ·  chapter 2

i­ nterests of the consumer goods marketplace in multiple re­spects. References to “some laborsaving device [taking] over a nasty ­house­hold chore,” thereby freeing up time for tv, and quips like “It’s a good t­hing electric dishwashers and  washing machines ­were in­ven­ted. The ­house­wives ­will need them” could justify all kinds of purchases, and all kinds of daytime viewing, and helped to open the door to tv soaps.20 Still, some daytime programs w ­ ere considered more justifiable pastimes than ­others. Instructional fare was initially understood as the daytime ideal ­because it supported, rather than detracted from, ­house­hold ­labor. Variety shows could also be seen as worthwhile, even as they offered entertainment over information, given the respectability and “charm” of the talent involved.21 But soap opera could not be considered overtly instructional or culturally enriching and was a more difficult fit with discourses of ­women’s wants and needs as a result, particularly in a culture in which conceptions and experiences of domestic ­labor ­were changing even as the middle-­class ­woman was believed best suited to the private sphere of home and ­family. She was expected to be at home, but what she was d ­ oing ­there became more suspect given the ­imagined lessening of ­house­hold ­labor. As one well-­ known exploration of w ­ omen’s psyches noted, the “destruction of the home” left ­women with ­little but “aimless leisure” to fill their days.22 Watching soap opera could seem the epitome of that aimlessness, as in so ­doing the ­woman was not d ­ oing h ­ ouse­work, receiving edification, or satisfying her “instinctive desire” to care for ­children.23 Yet soap opera did come to daytime tv, in concert with an even further revision to ideas about ­women and domesticity. The growing assumption that domestic ­labor had gotten easier was already underway, but the tv soap emerged in tandem with attitudes t­oward con­temporary h ­ ouse­work that matched the disparagement directed ­toward soaps with that ­toward homemaking. That ­house­work might now demand so ­little time and skill that the ­woman in the home could afford to watch even that programming that had no overtly beneficial function could seem evidence of how paltry w ­ ere ­house­work’s demands on ­women’s time. ­These attitudes ­were increasingly evident in media culture of the m ­ iddle and late 1950s. By 1953, in reference to the growing numbers of successful tv soaps, tv Guide announced, “tv proves ­house­wives do have time for crying out loud,” reflecting, “Maybe ­house­wives ­haven’t so much to do a­ fter all.”24 By 1958, this stance had become a standard of misogynist humor, as illustrated in Look magazine’s book of collected essays, The Decline of the American Male, which featured cartoons such as that of a ­woman and her cleaning supplies reclining atop a Daytime Therapy  ·  49

figure 2.1 Cartoonist Robert Osborn depicted the late 1950s ­house­wife as loafing atop her array of domestic appliances, all with tv-­like screens featuring the close-up ­faces associated with daytime soap opera. Look magazine, The Decline of the American Male, published by Random House, 1958.

“train” of ­house­hold appliances with tv screens on their fronts, captioned, “House­work is no longer an exhausting, full-­time job.”25 Daytime viewing, especially of the lowly soap, was h ­ ere articulated to the lazy h ­ ouse­wife’s easy ­ride. ­These attitudes ­were part of a broader, patriarchal shift that had been mounting across the twentieth c­ entury as industrialization and the development of ­house­hold technologies changed domestic ­labor. While some domestic work was “less laborious than it used to be,” for most, h ­ ouse­work was “just as time consuming and just as demanding” as high standards concentrated duties around the h ­ ouse­wife alone (­whether working-­or middle-­class) rather than across ­family members or shared with servants.26 That the broadcasting and advertising industries, along with the culture at large, could take on the (false) idea that w ­ omen’s ­house­hold burden had been lessened without acknowledging t­hese new demands was a con­ve­ nient and ideological fiction that perpetuated corporate profits (via the booming consumer culture) as well as gendered social inequalities. The 50  ·  chapter 2

place of soap opera in the daytime tv schedule was part of this formulation; it helped to maintain social hierarchies that encouraged consumerism, diminished femininity, and belittled domestic work through its very existence.

Soaps and Psychological Need The gradual ac­cep­tance of soap opera as part of the daytime tv schedule, and as part of the life of the ­woman in the home, was solidified thanks to its ability, and that of daytime tv more generally, to reach ­these valued consumers, even as ­women’s daytime viewing would still be disparaged in some quarters. The industry’s strategy for reconciling the economic value of the housewife-­viewer with the dominant culture’s refusal to accord the w ­ oman in the home the privilege of watching soaps for plea­sure was to imagine an altered relationship between ­women and daytime tv, especially soap opera. Instead of understanding ­women’s interest in daytime soaps as born of their plea­sure in the programs, or in their desire for a break in their ­labor, daytime tv was i­ magined to be operating on the emotions and psyches of audiences vulnerable to its power. Tele­vi­sion and ad industry executives, market researchers, journalists, and other laypeople, as well as ­mental health professionals, all spoke of the psychological impact of daytime tele­vi­sion, and of soap opera in par­tic­u­lar. While some found dangerous and damaging influences in ­these tv forms, in keeping with the cautionary tales that circulated alongside radio serials, ­others saw daytime tv as providing a therapeutic salve to the psychological stresses of modern life. This outlook could justify ­women’s viewing without seeing ­women as a discerning audience making choices about what they enjoyed. Such perspectives ­were part of a broader embrace of psy­chol­ogy in postwar American culture. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, best-­selling works such as The Lonely Crowd, by David Riesman, and Modern ­Woman: The Lost Sex, by Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, md, diagnosed the psychological deficits of the con­temporary society, including t­ hose specific to ­women.27 In 1963, Friedan’s Feminine Mystique would engage with ­these and other works of the era, alternating endorsing or refuting their theories in forwarding her own, which applied ­human potential theory to the feminist cause.28 As Daniel Horo­witz describes, in so ­doing Friedan was part of a major postwar cultural and intellectual movement invested in “psychological and therapeutic approaches to public policy and social issues.”29 Daytime Therapy  ·  51

Friedan was vehemently opposed to Freudian perspectives on ­women’s purportedly inherently maternal and domestic natures as examined in works such as Lundburg and Farnham’s. But Freudianism had even broader purchase in the postwar culture, including in the growing universe of market research. Ernest Dichter’s Motivational Research (mr) saw consumption as therapeutic, especially for w ­ omen, whom Dichter encouraged to “relieve their tensions” by applying themselves to solving h ­ ouse­hold prob­lems, a viewpoint that jibed well with the long-­standing view of ad men that ­women ­were irrational and thereby subject to emotional appeals.30 Along with providing his ser­vices to a number of major brand advertisers, Dichter also worked with broadcasters such as cbs, researching how audiences might react to the introduction of tele­vi­sion, including the question of how w ­ omen might be encouraged to combine tele­vi­sion viewing and ­house­hold tasks.31 Friedan disdainfully referred to Dichter as “the manipulator,” yet the two shared a belief in “the centrality of self-­realization as well as a tendency to psychologize social prob­lems.”32 They shared the era’s faith in psy­chol­ogy and sought therapeutic relief for w ­ omen’s dissatisfactions, albeit in very dif­ fer­ent places. Dichter’s use of psy­chol­ogy was aligned with the interests of broadcasters, advertisers, and the consumer culture, whereas other thinkers’ investments in psychological theories ­were applied to alternate, even feminist, ends, but together ­these discourses made the psychological and the therapeutic central preoccupations of postwar American life. Such ideas permeated the emerging tv industry, its attitudes ­toward ­women audiences, and both the offscreen and on-­screen worlds of the daytime tv soap. Market researchers understood the psychological impact of daytime tele­ vi­sion and of soap opera differently for dif­fer­ent ­women, often in relation to assumptions about social class, itself a central preoccupation of postwar marketing.33 One mr study of the “workingman’s wife” asserted that “tv is the working class ­house­wife’s tranquilizer,”34 indicating the therapeutic impact of the medium, albeit as a lower-­status alternative to the psychotropic medi­cations widely used to manage the emotional dissatisfactions of middle-­and upper-­class ­house­wives (and their husbands) at the time.35 Audience analyses that w ­ ere less class-­specific (but that presumably categorized most ­women viewers as white and middle-­class, as was typical of mr) did not go so far as to suggest that ­house­wives ­were drugged into submission by tv. But they did see a real therapeutic benefit to ­women, the latest way in which the broadcast industry sought to convince a broad constituency—­ sponsors, regulators, audiences—­that daytime tele­vi­sion was not just pos­si­ble but necessary. 52  ·  chapter 2

In 1961, nbc’s market research made the case that “the ­house­wife both needs and wants daytime tele­vi­sion. It serves as com­pany for her in a lonely home”; she “needs the gratifications which daytime tv offers her, she is glad to have daytime tv available to fulfill ­those needs.”36 The tv and advertising industries promised ways to fulfill ­those needs in their ads as well as their programs. Frequently advertised in daytime was the over-­ the-­counter sedative Miles Nervine, which one commercial promised could “soothe nerves” and “relieve ner­vous tension” that you, and your husband, built up over the day.37 ­These ads offered an overtly commercial solution, but daytime’s programs w ­ ere similarly understood as offering the ­woman at home a means of “emotional expression,” including “enriching her life vicariously through serialized drama,” as one nbc sales brochure promised.38 Executives at cbs ­imagined that they ­were meeting needs and desires specific to adult ­women, not via h ­ ouse­hold instruction or narcotization but through emotionally fulfilling fare, distinguished from the not-­so-­distant past of radio’s daytime serials: We try to give her adult voices . . . ​­because ­women are interested in the drama of emotional rather than physical conflict, we try to mold our daytime dramas to that frame. . . . ​We d ­ on’t try to talk down to our audience. We consider them as adults and we treat them that way. We’ve come a long way from the old radio daytime programs. ­Today, the most successful serials are t­hose with the most fully developed three-­dimensional characters.39 When nbc programmed new daytime soaps in the late 1950s, it pitched them in similar terms, as serials that “have been able to treat mature, adult themes in depth without ever sliding into sensationalism or over-­sentimentality,” treating issues of con­temporary import—­infidelity, alcoholism, adoption—­ with the seriousness of the novel or the Broadway stage.40 Legitimating daytime drama in t­hese ways not only differentiated tv from radio but also figured the con­temporary viewer as seeking guidance and benefit to her psyche through daytime tele­vi­sion. As Leigh Goldstein has argued of the public affairs programming that came to daytime in t­hese same years, the tv business was refiguring its relationship to w ­ omen viewers in such efforts, seeking respectability (in reaction to controversies such as ­those attending the quiz show scandals) and a new kind of therapeutic value, one that made tele­vi­sion itself the answer to ­women’s needs.41 This altered understanding of the function of tele­vi­sion, and especially of soap opera, in w ­ omen’s lives Daytime Therapy  ·  53

provided the ideological justification for the expansion of soaps across the daytime schedule by the early 1960s.

­Women Viewers and the Benefits of Soap Viewing ­ ere is evidence that w Th ­ omen in the audience accepted t­hese discourses of tele­vi­sion fulfilling psychological needs, taking on to varying degrees the industry’s logics. Some viewers borrowed the language of Motivational Researchers, but in so ­doing they expressed more agency than mr’s assumptions of ­women’s manipulability typically allowed. “I admit it! I’m addicted! I’m one of t­ hose poor deluded ­house­wives (so the critics say) who has been enslaved by a soap opera,” wrote one ­woman in 1960, describing the “escapism” she found in the prob­lems of soap characters while mocking the idea that this made her “deluded.” In the same column, another viewer took this emphasis on the psyche even more seriously: “The only relaxing programs on tv are daytime serials. Soap operas are psychotherapeutic! Sigmund Freud might not have approved of the method, but trying to untangle other p ­ eople’s prob­lems makes one’s own predicaments seem insignificant.”42 Another writer challenged the idea that she was at the mercy of “unconscious martyr complexes,” while still noting the ways that soaps met her psychological needs ­because they “deal with the prob­lems that most w ­ omen have to deal with in real life.”43 Some viewers engaged critically with assumptions about the psychological impact of daytime tv, arguing against the idea that they ­were victims of manipulation. Betty Friedan published an essay in tv Guide critiquing daytime tv for its alignment with the “mystique” that she believed to be quashing ­women’s potential, their very possibility of psychological well-­ being. She diagnosed daytime viewers as duped by the programming and commercials, which made the mystique seem natu­ral. Many ­women wrote to the magazine in protest, declaring pleasures that Friedan’s assertions did not allow. One twenty-­two-­year-­old ­house­wife described her investment in Love of Life, pointing out, “All of my friends and I enjoy soap operas ­because the ­people on them become friends or enemies and we get interested in the t­hings that happen to them.”44 She clearly enjoyed the stories on offer, but her comments also reference the social benefits of soap viewing, an appeal audience researchers in l­ater years would note, as well.45 Other ­women found in the soaps a way to take time for themselves amid busy lives of care work, much as the ­women Janice Radway studied in the 1980s saw their romance novel reading.46 As one Missouri ­house­wife wrote of her friends 54  ·  chapter 2

and neighbors ­after reading Friedan’s tv Guide treatise, “­Every one of them watches soap operas and enjoys them,” some using the soaps to accompany their ­house­work, ­others resting and having a “wonderful time.”47 Still other postwar era viewers indicated a plea­sure in serials unrelated to their own emotional satisfaction, such as one w ­ oman who noted that she found the soaps’ excesses amusing and that she delighted in the “­mental exercise” of predicting plot twists in advance.48 Viewers found a range of pleasures in soap watching and w ­ ere not easily contained by the explanations of market researchers or of critics like Friedan. ­Others in this period resisted the assumption that they w ­ ere blindly drawn to soaps out of psychological or emotional need by directing critiques at the programs’ commercial functions. Viewers of The Guiding Light in the late 1950s argued that the addition of another commercial break within the then-­fifteen-­minute episodes was an insult to their intelligence.49 When Friedan’s tv Guide essay quoted a tv industry executive who argued that the substance of daytime programming was a result of the warped desires of ­women viewers, one respondent pushed back: “Let’s not blame the American ­house­wife for the poor programming of daytime tele­vi­sion. The truth is: No one wants to spend the large amount of money that it takes to produce a decent program, since daytime audience is comparatively small.”50 Another explained that she and her friends ­were “selective tv viewers who are quite disappointed in ‘rating systems’ which seem to cancel the best shows and keep the mediocre.”51 ­Others scoffed at the idea that the ads ­were telling ­women anything about how to live. As one viewer wrote, “Way out ­here in the Midwest we ­haven’t taken commercials seriously since the beginning of tv!”52 Another balked at the very idea that ­women would be swayed by commercial messaging: “We ­don’t watch the commercials, that is when we do the ­house­work.”53 While some audience members spoke about their viewing in ways aligned with industrial and social discourses that i­ magined soap opera as therapeutically addressing the emotionally and psychologically needy h ­ ouse­wife, ­others refused such discourses, instead placing the soaps within the broader contexts of their social lives and the advertiser-­funded tv business.

Psychological Distress in the Postwar Soap Just as the 1950s tv industry and culture at large saw soap opera as addressing the emotional and psychological neediness of the American ­woman, so too did the soaps themselves tell stories of psychological pain and suffering, Daytime Therapy  ·  55

representing characters struggling with gender-­specific forms of m ­ ental and emotional distress. In this, daytime drama was in keeping with an exploration of ­mental health in lit­er­a­ture and film of the era. Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest, a novel about a ­woman with multiple personality disorder, was published in 1954 and made into the feature film Lizzie in 1957, alongside the acclaimed The Three Faces of Eve, a film (based on a nonfiction book) exploring the same condition. Such works dealt with particularly dramatic forms of ­mental illness, but psychological prob­lems and treatment ­were widespread in postwar soaps, as well. As journalist John Crosby noted in 1953, “Freud—­with some generous assistance from Dr. Kinsey—is all over the place” in the soaps. Crosby referenced the psychosexual deviance of gl’s Kathy Grant, as did many of that program’s characters, who tried to get her to see a psychiatrist.54 In 1959, journalist Frances Kish described daytime serials as reflecting “an awakened public interest in psy­chol­ogy, psychiatry, and medicine,” while Variety acknowledged, “Whereas once brain tumors ­were the favorite ailment of soap opera principals, a large percentage of t­oday’s matinee characters are assailed with head-­shrinking prob­lems.”55 Psychological prob­lems beset ­women and men, adults and ­children, in the postwar soaps. For example, on The Brighter Day (cbs, 1954–62) in 1954, actress and widowed ­mother Althea Dennis experiences hysteria, verges on a ner­vous breakdown, and fi­nally receives psychiatric care from Dr.  Hamilton, who tells her that ­women like her are happier in the kitchen.56 Across soaps and across the de­cade, male and female characters have drinking prob­lems, are committed to ­mental institutions, and are seen as psychologically damaged. On The Guiding Light, young Michael Bauer runs away from home when his parents’ trou­bles keep them from paying attention to him, resulting in “a search for a boy who is lost not only physically, but emotionally.”57 As in much of the psychological research of the day, in the soaps, characters’ emotional prob­lems ­were closely linked to assumptions about appropriate gender roles. In the culture at large, experts regularly voiced their beliefs about w ­ omen suffering from the “rejection of femininity,” and gynecologists began to assume expertise on w ­ omen’s psyches as well as their sex organs, seeing the two as inherently connected.58 This sort of insight reached the broadcasting industry through market researchers like Dichter, who advised sponsors like Procter & ­Gamble about their consumers’ needs and desires, tying assumptions about w ­ omen’s psychological well-­being to traditional gender roles.59 Friedan relied on dif­fer­ent theories of psy­chol­ogy and dif­ fer­ent conceptions of gender, but she also linked internal fulfillment to this 56  ·  chapter 2

aspect of social identity, asserting, “Our culture does not permit w ­ omen to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as h ­ uman beings.”60 Phillips was invested in similar questions; her daytime characters and stories circled around the roles of w ­ omen and men in marriage and f­ amily life. She sought to explore how her characters found their gender-­specific forms of fulfillment, and the ­mistakes they made in the pro­cess. Preoccupied with her own health, she was regularly in and out of hospitals, described herself as a “chronic, compulsive worrier,” and privately admitted to having suffered from depression and contemplated suicide.61 Across her work, but especially in her creation of As the World Turns for tv in the 1950s, Phillips told stories that drew on her own experiences with such strug­gles, along with her ­trials as a never-­married, adoptive m ­ other who, despite her c­ areer success, longed for a traditional f­amily life. While she had told stories of career-­oriented ­women in her radio soaps of the 1930s, she admittedly “stacked the decks against” ­these characters, writing them out of the story or having them turn to marriage and f­ amily life a­ fter all. She declared she was “not a believer in the equality of the sexes,” and she designed atwt’s “heroine,” homemaker Nancy Hughes, as her “answer to the feminine mystique.”62 While Phillips crafted Nancy as a flawed character, she also saw her as “all w ­ oman,” in that she found her fulfillment “within her home and herself,” an ideal of well-­being Phillips believed her audience held, as well.63 Although she was thereby suspicious of Friedan’s argument that the “feminine mystique” was a prob­lem for ­women, the two shared a conviction that ­women and men needed to achieve full self-­realization in order to have functional relationships and a healthy society. Phillips’s perspective resulted in soap stories that contradictorily exposed the trauma of the very gendered ideals of traditional marriage and ­family life that she sought to uphold. Among ­these was her story of the m ­ ental breakdown of atwt’s Claire Lowell, who sinks into a depression ­after discovering her husband Jim’s affair with Edith Hughes. Phillips i­ magined Jim and Claire as having followed a traditional, “essential” path, one assumed to be best for all, but which had nonetheless led them to unhappiness. As she wrote in crafting the characters’ experiences: Claire the girl lived in the dream that she was in love with the boy next door, and she married the boy next door, and Claire the girl loved like the girl next door. But the man matured. The boy became a man, and one day awakened to the fact that t­ here was no love between him and Daytime Therapy  ·  57

his wife. . . . ​Claire never realized . . . ​that she had never been ­really in love with her husband as a ­woman should be.64 The hollow structure on which the Lowells’ marriage had been built leads to Jim’s affair with Edith and then to the ­couple’s split. The story dramatized Claire’s awakening to the fact that her marriage was based on duty and tradition rather than love, and she moves forward with a divorce as Jim plans to ­ amble was largely supportive of Philask Edith to marry him.65 Procter & G lips’s plans, but it was very reluctant to allow central characters to divorce; Phillips agreed that such a step might be offensive to a significant swath of the audience.66 As a result, Phillips designed the story so that divorce made the characters no happier than had marriage; neither the conventional ideal nor its disruption would result in happy fulfillment. As she explained it years ­later: “They told me I could go ahead and let the man divorce his wife but that I could not let his infidelity be rewarded by having him happily married to the other ­woman. It was ­either keep him around but miserable or kill him off. [Phillips shrugs] I killed him off. He went to Florida (on a fishing trip), fell over, and hit his head.”67 ­After considering a number of ways to conclude the story line, Phillips made the experiences of the female characters the significant ones; the man at the crux of the triangle was dispensable.68 While “other ­woman” Edith was not rewarded, the focus of the story becomes Claire and her ­mental health. Producer Charles Fisher described Claire’s depression as an interior state made outwardly evident: “Claire [is] completely disinterested in the ­people around her and in herself. Silence typifies her mood and ­there is a child-­like attitude ­toward life in general. Her appearance, while a startling shock from the former properly attired, carefully groomed Claire, is merely a physical manifestation of her inner sickness.”69 Claire’s fragile m ­ ental health, and her recovery from that psychological trauma, became a tale of the therapeutic rehabilitation of the white, middle-­ class ­house­wife, her troubled state represented through the visual image tv made pos­si­ble. Watching Claire’s appearance and be­hav­ior alter was a way of watching her identity dissolve in order to be rebuilt into “a fully adjusted ­woman, not the girl next door,” a way of coming into her own through a pro­cess of psychological maturation.70 This belief in therapeutic renewal was not needed just for ­women in Phillips’s outlook. Men, too, needed pro­cesses of interior growth in order to fulfill their proper roles. Before the launch of atwt, in 1954 and 1955, Phillips explored Dr. Dick Grant’s depression on The Guiding Light. Believing that his 58  ·  chapter 2

figure 2.2 In the early years of As the World Turns (cbs), stable married ­couple Chris and Nancy Hughes (Don McLaughlin and Helen Wagner) worry about the psychological health of their friend Claire Lowell (Anne Burr McDermott) as she seeks to divorce her unfaithful husband.

former wife is to marry another man and that he has lost a patient through his own negligence, Dick begins a depressive spiral and leaves town. Seeking to “lose himself, be nothing, do nothing,” he sinks to “a new low,” which was Phillips’s coded way of suggesting, but never explic­itly depicting, Dick’s suicide attempt.71 As she would ­later script for Claire’s breakdown, much of the narrative featured Dick’s months-­long rehabilitation. She wanted to tell a story about the depression “that is a part of all of us” being overcome. Dick’s therapeutic renewal involves him reclaiming his ­career as a doctor, which Phillips saw as the reclamation of his identity as a man.72 Several years ­later, Claire’s recovery coincides with her remarriage, perhaps suggesting that reclaiming her identity as a ­woman required reclaiming her “­career” as wife.73 Phillips’s outlook on psychological well-­being was that men and ­women each needed to establish strong senses of themselves in order to engage healthily with one another. As she wrote in describing Dick’s story, “­There Daytime Therapy  ·  59

is no doubt that the happier marriages, friendships, associations of any kind result from an equality between man and w ­ oman, where a w ­ oman is a ­woman by her own right, and a man is a man by his own right.”74 While ­there may be some sense of gendered parity in her attitude, she was in fact advocating for individualized, gender-­determined self-­realization, one in which w ­ omen’s and men’s true, fulfilled selves ­were distinct from each other and constrained within conventional nuclear ­family roles. She believed that Dick Grant’s story could be instructive in this regard to the w ­ omen in her audience, presumably in need of some self-­realization of their own: “This [need for equality] is something that very few w ­ omen are able to understand; this I hope we ­will make all ­women understand who listen to and view The Guiding Light.”75 Phillips believed in the importance of marriage and ­family life; she sought to help repair the prob­lems therein through the therapeutic models of her characters. Phillips’s stories of psychological suffering fit with the “therapeutic approach to life” in the postwar period that Elaine Tyler May has argued was an inherently apo­liti­cal means of giving “­women and men a vocabulary with which to tame and manage their frustrations. Many of life’s traumas could be categorized in psychological terms and, to some extent, then explained away.”76 In this re­spect, soaps ­were part of a broader hegemonic focus on individualized trou­bles, a distraction from the under­lying structural inequalities that made for ­these instabilities in the first place.

Marital Trou­ble in the New TV Soap Even as creators like Phillips reinforced private, therapeutic solutions to trou­bles that may have been rooted in the structural flaws of institutions such as heteronormative patriarchy and an emphasis on marriage as “the highest fulfillment of maturity and repository of healthy sexuality,” in the new daytime tv soap no solution was ever permanent.77 The soaps’ ravenous need for interpersonal conflict made it impossible for characters to find ongoing happiness or fulfillment. While this helped to keep the era’s investment in psychological healing at the forefront, it also made the vision of marriage and f­amily life on offer one of constant trou­ble, reminding the audience over and over that “happily ever ­after” was more an ideal than a real­ity. As Jane Feuer would note in the 1980s, unlike other storytelling forms, in soap opera, “Marriage . . . ​is never viewed as a symbol of narrative closure.”78 In the period of soap opera’s arrival on tele­vi­sion, across the 1950s 60  ·  chapter 2

and into the early 1960s, when its story worlds w ­ ere almost entirely oriented around ­family life (rather than the workplace, social issues, or fantasy, as would come in subsequent eras), the prob­lems of the white middle-­class familial ideal insistently recurred, keeping any means of managing them—­ even therapeutic self-­realization—­from taking permanent effect. Historian Jessica Weiss has argued that “marriage was an institution in transition” in this period of American social history as ideals of egalitarian ­unions conflicted with inherently unequal gendered expectations.79 Daytime soap opera was a cultural site within which such notions of marriage and ­family life w ­ ere constructed and explored. Marital strug­gle had been a part of numerous radio serials, and many of the earliest tv soaps made marriage their central problematic.80 The First Hundred Years told the story of newlyweds Chris and Connie Thayer, as well as of both sets of their parents, and made the challenges of marriage its theme. So, too, did First Love (nbc, 1954–55) tell a story of “a young marriage and the hardships that beset it day by day.”81 The tv version of Portia ­Faces Life (nbc, 1954–55) contrasted Portia and Walter’s “not too perfect marriage” (the tag line attending the show’s daily opening) with that of attorney Portia’s client, Kathy Baker, and her husband, Bill. Portia and Walter embodied an egalitarian ideal; they discuss interviewing potential ­house­keepers when their respective ­careers keep them equally busy, and they use one another as sounding boards for their professional dilemmas.82 In contrast, Bill belittles Kathy and treats her like a child; she rebels against his treatment.83 Portia and Walter’s relationship is privileged as the more fully realized and appealing. It may be “not too perfect,” but the man and ­woman are mutually respectful adults. Conflict arises from ­those who are not as well adjusted, initially from Kathy and Bill but also from Walter himself, who falters in his adult male role, getting led astray by vari­ous w ­ omen or embarking on failed professional endeavors. Narrative complications come out of the inability to live up to adult, gender-­defined expectations. Th ­ ese early tv soaps ­were short-­lived, but Search for Tomorrow weathered the experimental era, developing into a long-­running serial that helped establish the narrative par­ameters of the form in tv. Widowed shortly ­after the soap’s 1951 debut, by midde­cade heroine Joanne Barron meets Arthur Tate, who becomes her second husband and stepfather to her d ­ aughter, Patti. While Joanne is a pillar of the sft community, connecting many characters and helping them with their prob­lems, her marriage also becomes a central source of conflict. Writers Frank and Doris Hursley ­imagined of Jo and Arthur: “This is not the Hollywood concept of love and marriage,” Daytime Therapy  ·  61

figure 2.3 The marriage of Search for Tomorrow’s Joanne and Arthur Tate (Mary Stuart and Terry O’­Sullivan) was beset with prob­lems in the late 1950s, some surrounding Joanne’s ­daughter, Patti (Lynn Loring), ­others born of Arthur’s infidelity, belying the ­family’s upstanding appearance.

aligning their realist drama with more sober cultural forms, driven by the soaps’ need for continuing narrative complication.84 “­There is no drama in protracted happiness,” they acknowledged while plotting Jo and Arthur’s ongoing unhappiness.85 Unhappy they ­were. Arthur has an affair with Joanne’s s­ister, Eunice; Joanne suffers and strug­gles to adjust. This was not only a choice for maximizing story. The Hursleys saw “marriage in jeopardy” as a relatable theme for their audience: “­Women ­will understand Joanne, identify with her, strug­gle with her. Her prob­lem is not too dif­fer­ent from prob­lems they have had to deal with. Their husbands have not proved to be paragons.”86 In this version of marital trou­ble, the man failed to live up to the masculine ideal, causing the ­woman emotional pain. Of their audience, the Hursleys noted, “They have adjusted to real­ity and sal­vaged what they could of re­spect and affection and devotion for their marriages.”87 Helping Joanne to salvage her marriage was the next twist of her story, which involved Arthur’s secretary, Cynthia, fleeing from a violent husband, and Arthur’s overinvestment in 62  ·  chapter 2

helping her. Cynthia’s marriage was clearly much worse than Jo’s, allowing the soap to hierarchize marital prob­lems—­the typical kind in which one might strug­gle to make do (e.g., Arthur’s failings) versus the unacceptable kind (a violent husband could be a temporary villain but not a continuing character). In keeping with the era’s focus on psychological health, ­women’s magazines and expert advice books offered up the new discourse of marriage counseling, which suggested that troubled marriages could succeed with hard work. This form of expertise declared that w ­ omen had a personal responsibility to know and accept their husbands’ limitations, as well as their own. As Kristin Celello’s history of the culture of marriage explains, this was ­ andling of Jo and seen as the path to “emotional maturity.”88 The Hursleys’ h Arthur’s marriage relied on a similar ethic of marriage as requiring therapeutic intervention, if not by a professional then by the c­ ouple themselves, and especially by the w ­ oman. Thus, they painted Jo as making a “valiant effort” to avoid divorce by seeking to heal her marriage, depicting “a situation in which a husband and wife try to face honestly what has happened to all of them emotionally.”89 A soap like sft contributed to the construction of marriage as a proj­ect to which ­women must devote their emotional ­labor just as did more didactic forms of 1950s American culture.90 But Jo’s story did not resolve with this effort. Instead, it continued for decades—­she never resolved the challenge of marriage, outliving three husbands before divorcing her fourth in the 1980s, when the institution had ceased to carry the weight of the postwar period. Social expectations of marriage changed; Joanne’s inability to find fulfillment in it did not. The marital strug­gles of soap characters w ­ ere intertwined with ideas about the gender-­specific roles that made for successful ­unions. Much as popu­lar psychological analyses such as Lundberg and Farnham’s diagnosed con­temporary ­women as “maladjusted” and struggling to find value in their gendered role, soap creators explored how characters might fulfill their true selves in gendered terms.91 David Lesan, who worked on Search for Tomorrow and other soaps for Compton Advertising, was unhappy with the characterization of Joanne in light of her marital trou­bles with Arthur. His critiques would lead to the Hursleys’ arrival as sft’s new writers, who designed the story of Jo working to heal her marriage. Lesan argued, “For many months Joanne . . . ​has been forced to wear the pants in the f­ amily, forced to behave not like a w ­ oman but like a man.” He wanted the character to learn from her misfortune and to reclaim her true self and was disappointed by a story projection (from the Hursleys’ pre­de­ces­sor) that “put her right back into Daytime Therapy  ·  63

that same pair of pants.” Lesan was urging that Joanne behave in accord with “her own honest emotional needs,” out of “psychologically valid reasons for be­hav­ior,” and found sft writer Milton Geiger lacking in his ability to script her this way. To Lesan, Jo’s path beyond her troubled marriage involved an embrace of her true, feminine self as “symbol of wife, ­mother, ­woman.” His understanding of Jo’s gendered identity was not to him regressive but rather progressive, a way of the character actualizing her true self, appropriate to the “modern idiom of daytime serials.”92

Generational Conflict and Gendered Selves As centrally as marriage figured in the stories of psychological healing for the new tv soap, soap characters faced other forms of interpersonal turmoil, as well. The midlife c­ ouples dealing with the strains of marriage also experienced conflicts with t­hose older and younger. Intergenerational tensions demanded their own therapeutic interventions. At times, the soaps modeled the ways that the older generation could counsel their adult c­ hildren, providing the healing insights the middle-­aged characters needed to be fulfilled. On both gl and atwt, the mother-­homemaker characters ­were entwined with aging fathers-­in-­law who offered them guidance. Kristen Hatch argues that characters like atwt’s Grandpa Hughes became the voice of patriarchal authority in tv soaps, displacing the narrators of radio, and Robert Allen identifies ­these men as “tentpole characters” who expressed dominant ideological norms.93 Rather than functioning solely as voices of authority, however, t­hese el­derly male characters might be seen as therapeutic interlocutors for their daughters-­in-­law, as when Grandpa Hughes points out to Nancy that she is overinvolved in her adult ­children’s lives.94 On gl, Papa Bauer was a marriage counselor for his son and daughter-­in-­ law, Bill and Bert, whose prob­lems ­were rooted in their failures to maintain their true, gender-­specific selves. In the early 1950s, Bert confesses to Papa that she’s “found a ­great weakness in [her] husband,” as a way of explaining her hostile be­hav­ior ­toward Bill. L ­ ater, Bill asks his ­father, “Who of us, man or ­woman, ­doesn’t have weaknesses? And why is it that every­one always expects nothing but strength in a man?” his voice quavering. Bill complains about Bert, “What’s she’s ­really trying to assume is a man’s role in life! She’s not content with her own.” Papa urges Bert to work on understanding herself and encourages Bill to learn from his ­mistakes and meet Bert partway.95 He listens to their pain and directs them ­toward an ac­cep­tance of their roles, 64  ·  chapter 2

figures 2.4 and 2.5 Papa Bauer (Theo Goetz) serves as marriage counselor to his son, Bill (Lyle Sudrow), and daughter-­in-­law, Bert (Charita Bauer), guiding them ­toward gender-­specific roles, on The Guiding Light, cbs, in 1952.

even as they are clearly frustrated with ­those gender-­restricted bound­aries. While the counsel of an elder such as Papa Bauer helps to heal Bert and Bill’s marriage, at least temporarily, the frustrations they feel, perhaps especially ­those of the clearly pained Bill, well aware of his own “weaknesses,” may have made the prob­lems of gendered expectations as prominent as the characters’ acquiescence to them. That Bill’s prob­lems (alcoholism, unfaithfulness, ­career trou­bles) and Bert’s demands recurred u ­ ntil Bill’s death in the late 1960s suggested that this marriage, if not the institution itself, would never be healed.96 The soaps of the postwar period included stories of conflict between older characters and their adult offspring, as well, especially in cases of meddling ­mothers and mothers-­in-­law. El­derly ­women tended to be prob­lems while el­derly men ­were kind guides. In the early days of sft, Joanne’s biggest trou­ bles came from her in-­laws, who sought to take their grand­daughter, Patti, away from Joanne ­after the death of their son. While both Barron elders ­were untrustworthy, Irene was the truly controlling one, as represented in an October 1952 episode through a close-up of her hand placed on her husband’s as he makes a phone call to manipulate the local hospital into firing the widowed Joanne.97 This story, and o ­ thers like it, replicated misogynist ste­reo­types of “momism,” a lay diagnosis of the psychological disorder of controlling m ­ others 98 and emasculated sons. Some soap creators painted ­these “moms” as villains, whereas ­others crafted the characters as in need of therapeutic intervention. Phillips fell into the latter camp, seeking to depict the challenges such a ­woman faced as she tried to adjust to a life changed by widowhood and grown ­children through the story of Elsie Miller, ­mother of gl’s Bert Bauer. Phillips wanted the audience to feel sympathy for Elsie as a w ­ oman who “has lived not her own life” but instead “dominated her husband . . . ​mothered him, ‘wifed’ him, and filled her somewhat narrow life with this man.” Elsie’s failure to mind her own well-­being in her past experience as wife and ­mother leads her into a state of “loneliness, uselessness” that w ­ ill be harmful not only to herself but also to her ­daughter, Bert, burdened with caring for her own husband and young ­children, as well as with her m ­ other. The “reeducation” of Elsie that Phillips planned was as much a therapeutic intervention as was the path Phillips scripted for Bert and Bill, working on their troubled marriage, and for their son, Michael, who would need psychiatric intervention for his “aggressive, defiant” be­hav­ior, heightened when his ­mother and grand­mother neglect him due to their own prob­lems.99 Three generations of gl characters grappled with troubled psyches in relation to one another. 66  ·  chapter 2

Young Michael Bauer’s trou­bles exemplified the ways that the c­ hildren of the middle-­aged leads w ­ ere also sources of conflict and suffering. Phillips built on this model of intergenerational pain in creating atwt, which included prominent stories for teen­agers Penny Hughes and Ellen Lowell. Phillips knew that ­these tales would be of special interest to her audience of midlife m ­ others and that beginning with young characters would allow for long-­term storytelling as audiences saw the characters age, a par­tic­u­lar affordance of the tv soap over the radio one.100 She was also a savvy businessperson working within a culture of ­music, film, and tele­vi­sion increasingly focused on addressing the new baby boom youth audience. The troubled romance of Penny Hughes and Jeff Baker, including peak moments such as Jeff ’s trial, his original love song to Penny, and eventually his death, w ­ ere central narratives for the soap into the early 1960s. The path of Penny’s friend Ellen Lowell took even greater advantage of tv’s ability to track a character across multiple stages of life and to represent the ways that psychological damage can resonate across generations. Ellen was the only child of the fractured marriage of Jim and Claire Lowell. From the launch of atwt on, she suffers: her ­father’s affair and death, her ­mother’s breakdown and remarriage. By May  1958, at age eigh­teen, Ellen outwardly rebels and pursues Dr. Tim Cole, ten years her se­nior. E ­ ager to “prove many ­things to many ­people,” Ellen convinces Tim to take her to a dance and eventually discovers both that he is married and that she is ­ ere typical on soaps by pregnant.101 Unplanned and unwanted pregnancies w this point, but unwed pregnancies w ­ ere not. Designing Ellen’s story in this way introduced an especially controversial and shocking “disorder” to the prob­lems of youth, one that Phillips had to negotiate with the conservative Procter & ­Gamble.102 As the World Turns was at the forefront of repre­sen­ta­ tions of unwed pregnancy, and unwed teen pregnancy in par­tic­u­lar, in developing this story. The feature films that would take on this subject became a trend beginning in 1959, starting with the box-­office hit Blue Denim. This film and ­those of the same era that told stories of teen sexuality, pregnancy, and potential abortion emerged alongside a revision of the Hollywood Production Code that permitted such subject ­matter as long as abortion specifically and teenage sex more generally ­were condemned; characters had to be “duly punished” for their transgressions.103 Procter & ­Gamble assented to Phillips’s plans for Ellen’s pregnancy but wanted her to miscarry. Phillips insisted on the long-­term narrative utility of the child’s birth and p&g relented, albeit requiring that “Ellen should be made to suffer for her indiscretion,” much as the Production Daytime Therapy  ·  67

figures 2.6 In the ­later 1950s, As the World Turns told stories of teenage girls’ trou­bles, as in Ellen Lowell’s (Wendy Drew) prob­lems with her depressed ­mother, Claire (Anne Burr McDermott).

Code required of such circumstances in feature film. Phillips assured p&g “not to worry,” that Ellen would give the child up for adoption, “but when the child reached early adolescence he would come to know Ellen and hate her.”104 While many of the feature films emerging at this time would resolve their moral dilemma with a marriage proposal, Ellen’s problematic be­hav­ior was not so readily fixed. ­Because she continued as a character central to a core atwt ­family, so too would her suffering continue—in this case, over more than a de­cade of trauma. Nina Leibman has argued that the treatment of such controversial issues in feature film melodramas made both the prob­lems and their solution appear to be “native to the nuclear ­family,” rather than born of the society as a ­whole.105 Ellen’s story also remained at the level of the ­family, but the prob­lem of her errant sexuality did not reach resolution within the f­ amily. Ellen resents her grand­father in par­tic­u­lar for forcing her to give up her child “to save the Lowell reputation, the Lowell name.”106 She remains in distress, and her ­family continues to be beset with prob­lems. It was difficult to lay blame or to find resolution across such misery. 68  ·  chapter 2

Yet the story of Ellen’s unwed pregnancy and her resultant suffering ultimately did achieve resolution, albeit in 1969, more than a de­cade a­ fter the initial event and in an era when an array of social disruptions had made sexual indiscretion less momentous. By this point in Ellen’s story, she is married to David Stewart, the adoptive ­father of her son, Dan. Over time, vari­ous characters have learned that Dan is Ellen’s biological son. Dan himself, long resentful of the w ­ oman he believes to be his stepmother, is the last to find out. Rapidly aged, by 1969 Dan is a surgical resident when a troublemaking se­nior doctor reveals to him his true parentage.107 (This doctor is Claire’s former husband; Claire has forgotten that she revealed Ellen’s secret to him before an alcoholic blackout. Claire’s psychological stability has not improved.) Before Dan can confirm the story, he unexpectedly must operate on Ellen and saves her life. Across weeks of episodes in February 1969, David shares Ellen’s story with Dan, mostly via flashbacks to original scenes from 1961 or 1966. The audience is reminded of Ellen’s suffering, and her dedication to her son, alongside Dan’s pro­cess of coming to understand his ­mother’s story. Two months ­after he first discovers the truth, he tells Ellen that he knows, and that he “is very proud to be [her] son.” He bears her no ill ­will, embracing Ellen as he explains what he now knows, that “life i­sn’t—­isn’t fair, i­sn’t equitable,” in effect, that Ellen was trapped in circumstances beyond her individual choices.108 Phillips explained this happy ending as a product of the audience’s long-­ term investment in Ellen. Indeed, they had watched her be constantly thwarted in her efforts to reclaim her child. Having suffered with her for so long, the audience clamored for a reunion between m ­ other and son; they 109 already knew what Dan came to understand. Procter & ­Gamble agreed, now more concerned with appeasing its viewership than with upholding increasingly outdated moral standards. Dan would of course face a number of his own trou­bles—­marriage and ­family life ­were far from ideal for him—­ and Ellen would be part of his prob­lems and ­those of her other descendants. She would even outlive Dan, who passes away in 1979. As the World Turns would never suggest that f­ amily life was pain-­free, but some deviations from normative ideals, such as Ellen’s unwed teen pregnancy, would become accepted, over time, as part of the challenge of living, of the ways that individual trou­bles ­were never solely about the individual. While certain aspects of Ellen Lowell’s emotional pain would be salved by the late 1960s, the therapeutic function of daytime soap opera would become a less prominent part of the discourse of daytime and its scripted dramas as the postwar period and the era of the new daytime tv soap shifted into the world of the 1960s. Beginning around 1963, the daytime tv soap began to Daytime Therapy  ·  69

tell new kinds of stories, bringing such social developments as ­women in the workplace, questions of racial and gender equality, and the po­liti­cal upheavals of the youth and antiwar movements into daytime’s narrative sphere. The daytime soap itself became a well-­established participant in broadcast network tele­vi­sion economics. In fact, it would become an essential foundation for the network era of control over the industry by abc, nbc, and cbs. The tv and advertising businesses, the soaps themselves, and the audiences who followed them would continue to see daytime drama as having some psychological impact, but such rationales ceased to be as crucial to the perpetuation of tv soap opera as they had been in its period of origination. As American culture took up new preoccupations, the obsession with the psyche waned a bit as well, becoming less central to the ways that the soaps told their stories, although the emotional strug­gles of characters would persist. In 1960, the soaps w ­ ere still settling into place in the new medium and guiding w ­ omen viewers in managing the emotional strains of marriage and ­family life, but a shift in their industrial and social functions was on the horizon. That year, tv Guide offered a prime-­time broadcast, meant to entertain viewers with comedic skits and announce the winners of its reader-­ determined awards for favorite tv programs and personalities. Among the skits was a bit featuring comedienne Nanette Fabray, playing a busy ­house­wife who finds endless, inventive ways to watch her soaps while ­going about the business of preparing meals, caring for ­children, and receiving deliveries. Hilariously, Fabray’s character never takes her eyes off her stories, employing tools such as mirrors and a periscope mounted inside the refrigerator to follow ­every moment.110 The skit encourages us to laugh at her obsession and even to admire her ingenuity. She is wholly riveted by her soaps; she is excited and engaged despite her banal chores. In representing the housewife-­viewer in this way, the tv Guide Awards offered a significantly dif­fer­ent perspective than had circulated in previous de­cades’ disparagement of radio serials and their listeners. It was also significantly dif­fer­ent from the discourses that more recently had rationalized tv soap viewing as therapeutically impactful. The skit introduced the idea that soaps might be a fun, entertaining pastime, an escape from daily life, one we might see as an amusing distraction rather than a sign of tele­vi­sion’s power to harm or help its ­women audiences. This notion would come to dominate the discourse of soap opera over the next few de­cades as the soaps grew in popularity and profitability. With this 1960 skit, the next era of the daytime tv soap, that of its greatest power, influence, and resonance, had begun to emerge. 70  ·  chapter 2

THREE. BUILDING NETWORK POWER The Broadcasting Business and the Craft of Soap Opera

From the early 1960s through the 1980s, ­there was no more lucrative realm of US broadcast network tele­vi­sion than the daytime soap opera. ­These w ­ ere the boom years, the period in which programs proliferated, profits soared, and players across the industry sought a greater and greater piece of the action. Broadcast historians have designated this period in US tele­vi­sion history as the “classic network era,” the period in which nbc, cbs, and abc made large amounts of money targeting their programming to a broad, captive audience and tightly controlling the production, distribution, and sale of that programming. The networks’ daytime schedule—­increasingly dominated by soap operas—­was a central hub in their circle of power. This was a control t­hese corporations made an effort to achieve, given the complex production arrangements involving sponsors, ad agencies, and in­de­pen­ dent producers that emerged in this time. Daytime soaps w ­ ere so crucial to network economics b ­ ecause their reliable audience base, deeply invested sponsors, and relatively low production costs generated substantial profits, subsidizing more expensive prime-­time slates. The soaps of the sixties, seventies, and eighties did not merely participate in the classic network era; their profitability was a foundation for the entire enterprise. Both daytime and prime time featured a growing exploration of social issues and a growing recognition of social change across the sixties and seventies. Characters of color slowly entered fictional worlds, and politicized upheavals ­were translated into entertaining tales. Prime-­time and feature film

genres began to influence daytime storytelling as soaps incorporated new subjects and styles. But the influence of daytime on prime time was arguably the more impactful, as the soaps’ serialized storytelling practices began to inform the rest of scripted tv. ­These influences emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and became all the more prominent by the 1980s, as the prime-­time soap became a popu­lar sensation and daytime’s dramas wholly embraced romantic fantasy and generic hybridity, pushing aside the social issue focus that had emerged in the preceding de­cades. Chapters 4 and 5 explore ­these developments in soap opera narrative and repre­sen­ta­tion, as well as changing modes of audience engagement. Chapter 4 examines the ways that workplace settings, attention to politicized social issues, and new modes of representing gender and sexuality spoke to and about the concerns and priorities of the soap audience in ways that differed significantly from the e­ arlier tendency ­toward therapeutic address to the housewife-­viewer. Chapter 5 takes on the peak of the soaps’ popularity in the 1980s, when soaps reached their broadest awareness in the culture at large with fairy-­tale-­like stories about youthful “supercouples,” even as the limitations of the network business model and the fanciful repre­sen­ta­tions it had spawned hinted at a decline to come. Enabling the narrative shifts of the network era was the solidification of soap economics as the base of broadcast network power. At the same time, changes in production practices would undergird the growth of the soap business and its altered modes of speaking to and about its audience. This chapter analyzes the network era soap industry, focusing on the growth period of the sixties and seventies. In this time, the industry grew both as an economic force and as an innovator in tv production. By the early 1960s, the place of the soap opera in tele­vi­sion, rather than radio, had been secured. Over the subsequent two and a half de­cades, the soaps’ profitability would expand as the networks concentrated their power and the soaps’ creative practices innovated in ways that magnified that power. In what follows, I trace the development and expansion of the soap business in this time, including changes in sponsorship and owner­ship, and how such developments altered the relationship between the networks and the soaps’ creative personnel. Such ­matters of control ­were a primary realm within which the networks consolidated their economic and creative power. I then turn to an analy­sis of how ­these structural changes underwrote changes in production and storytelling practice, including technological shifts, evolving norms of visual and sound style, and narrative strategies. ­These dif­fer­ent means of creating the daytime tv soap would enable new ways of representing soap characters and the prob­lems they faced. 74  ·  chapter 3

Economic success would not have just one set of implications for the stories the soaps told. Rather, as chapter 4 illustrates, the economic developments that positioned the soaps as the foundation of the network era initially permitted creative interventions that engaged with the changing society in progressive ways. Yet, as we w ­ ill see in chapter 5, t­hose same economic practices of network dominance also enabled a degree of repre­sen­ta­tional retrenchment in the 1980s. At that point, the pursuit of profits encouraged repre­sen­ta­tions of romance and sex that could not be sustained over the long term, ­either eco­nom­ically or culturally. The current chapter explores the evolution of the network power and production practices that would facilitate ­these narrative developments.

The Expanding World of Soaps From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, the US daytime tele­vi­sion soap opera grew into a lucrative and power­ful part of the broadcast network business. Across this period, the soaps took up a greater portion of the networks’ daytime schedules, reaching a peak in the number of programs on air in 1970. The first sign of this expansion was abc’s entrance to the network daytime schedule; its first soap, General Hospital, debuted in 1963, with a unique network-­owned status (it was produced by subsidiary Selmur Productions).1 nbc was also rapidly expanding its soap slate in the early 1960s, debuting two new programs the same day that abc launched gh.2 In 1964 and 1965, the com­pany added two more soaps created in some part by Irna Phillips, first the Procter & G ­ amble–­sponsored Another World (1964–99), and then the Hollywood studio–­owned Days of Our Lives, for which Phillips was more con­sul­tant to longtime collaborator Ted Corday than creator proper.3 Meanwhile, once assured that gh was v­ iable, abc experimented with a number of other soaps, including taking a chance on outlier Dark Shadows in 1966, appealing due to its exceptionally low cost, albeit risky b ­ ecause creator Dan Curtis was new to scripted tv, not to mention to daytime soaps.4 It became such a big hit that abc credited it for building its affiliate roster—­local stations wanted to carry Dark Shadows, and so they affiliated with abc.5 Across the sixties, abc’s and nbc’s daytime schedules became much more competitive with the long-­dominant cbs. By 1969, the industry saw daytime as “more of a ­horse race” between all three networks.6 Sponsor-­ owners like Procter & ­Gamble, having placed most of its soaps on cbs, had to deal with competition for the first time in tv.7 This only made the other Building Network Power  ·  75

two networks more aggressive. In 1969, nbc launched Bright Promise (1969– 72), and in 1970, it began a new soap spun off from Another World. The same year, abc added three new soaps and considered a gh spin-­off.8 All of this activity resulted in the peak number of programs in the soap’s history by mid-1970, when nineteen soaps w ­ ere broadcast across the three networks, totaling nearly fifty hours of weekly programming. The plentiful opportunities for creative l­abor soap opera afforded earned New York the label “Soap City” in a period Variety predicted would become the “Golden Age of the soaps in video.”9 The expansion of the soap world also was evident in a number of other ways by the 1970s. A new arm of magazine publishing developed to cover the soaps and their stars, as did new realms of merchandising and promotion, drawing viewers and multiplying revenue streams.10 Talk shows (albeit ­those in daytime) began to have soap actors and writers as guests, fi­nally overturning a historic belief, held by p&g at least, that soap actors should only be identified publicly by their characters’ names.11 Indeed, soap actors received more and more publicity, and engaged in substantially more public appearances, across the network era. At the same time, network promotion for soaps expanded, with late night and daytime specials, as well as on-­air spot campaigns.12 This magnified presence for daytime drama, built across the 1960s and 1970s, peaked in the early 1980s as the soaps became a mainstream pop cultural phenomenon—­one born of ­these deliberate industry efforts amid a range of other developments, explored in chapter 5. The expanded reach of network era daytime soaps included the expansion of the influence of soap opera and its creative personnel on prime time.13 Multiple daytime soap players ­were exploring prime-­time proj­ects in the early and mid-1960s.14 But abc was first to bring soaps to the eve­ning schedule with Peyton Place (1964–69), premiering in the fall of 1964 with two weekly thirty-­minute episodes, adapting the best-­selling book and feature film to a serialized narrative. Producer Paul Monash had not worked in soaps, but abc’s director of program planning, Douglas Cramer, had come to the network from a position at Procter & ­Gamble, guiding its owned daytime serials. Cramer also contracted Irna Phillips as a con­sul­tant for abc’s new effort, solidifying her business ties to all three networks in the mid1960s, another marker of the soaps’ expanded reach.15 ­Because pp was a hit, soap-­style prime-­time proj­ects ­were widespread in the mid-1960s. Although plans for Phillips to write a pp spin-­off ­were not executed, producers pitching new series for 1965–66 promised that their 76  ·  chapter 3

premises could be readily serialized.16 Programs that would eventually land in daytime, like Days of Our Lives, ­were considered for prime time or ­were envisioned as a potential fit for daytime or prime time.17 The producers of Dr. Kildare, including Norman Felton, director for the 1949 experiment in ­ hildren, announced a plan to serialize the tv soap opera, ­These Are My C strictly episodic medical series.18 Caryn Murphy details how Kildare shifted to two half-­hour weekly episodes and stories that stretched over five or six segments.19 Meanwhile, abc had already picked up The Long Hot Summer (1965–66) to capitalize on the pp sensationalism.20 The expanded reach of daytime was also felt with a prime-­time spin-­off of atwt, Our Private World, airing in the summer of 1965. James Aubrey, president of cbs, ordered the program from p&g and Phillips in recognition of the successes of both atwt and Peyton Place. But its summer scheduling was a sign of the network’s lessening interest, a quick turnaround from the initial hype, seemingly in relation to Aubrey’s firing in February 1965 amid intimations of impropriety and scandal.21 The dismissal of Aubrey, who was one of the primary supporters of opw, likely doomed the show months before its debut; from that point on the program faced tight bud­getary constraints and was scripted with a nineteen-­week run in mind.22 Phillips and her colleague Bill Bell, who knew the possibility of a continuing prime-­time serial was far from assured, wrote their story flexibly, so that they could keep atwt transplant Lisa Hughes on opw’s Chicago-­based canvas or reintegrate her into daytime’s Oakdale.23 Their foresight paid off when Our Private World was canceled, ending in September 1965. Perhaps the most significant markers of the soaps’ broadened reach ­were the growing place of serialized storytelling and expanded attention to character development across 1970s tv. The prime-­time miniseries, first imported from Britain in the form of The Forsyte Saga and then taken up by Hollywood producers, featured both continuing narratives and a focus on ­family, romance, and emotional drama.24 By the mid-1970s, prime-­time mogul Norman Lear, in partnership with experienced soap writer Ann Marcus, pitched his comedic soap Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976–77) to all three networks for daytime, and all declined, leading Lear to distribute it through first-­run syndication.25 Soap opera fan magazines debated ­whether to cover it in their pages, inviting readers to weigh in, and eventually asserted the program’s status as soap.26 In 1977, abc’s serialized comedy Soap was also a site of controversy. As Jason Mittell details, much of the sensation surrounding the show dealt with its soap-­like characteristics in relation to its weekly, eve­ning scheduling.27 Building Network Power  ·  77

By the mid-1970s, multiple network programmers recognized the impact of daytime’s soaps on the serialization potential of prime time. As cbs’s Michael Ogiens noted, “The serial is the most successful form in tv.”28 Not only miniseries but a number of weekly series ­were increasingly experimenting with continuing storytelling and character memory.29 Brandon Stoddard of abc, another successful daytime executive promoted within the network, argued in 1977 that soap-­like storytelling gave prime time “richness, continuity, and depth.” He asserted that the “concentration on character and personal relationships” from daytime drama was the tradition he sought to develop in prime time.30 Critics like Stephen Zito at American Film saw t­ hese soap-­originating princi­ples across the prime-­time schedule in the 1970s, in comedies like One Day at a Time (cbs, 1975–84) as well as in drama.31 The influence of daytime soap opera pervaded classic network era programming; it was central to the dominance of the medium both culturally and eco­nom­ically.

Changes in Sponsorship and Owner­ship The expansion of soap opera in the network era included some crucial shifts in the ways that the programs ­were funded, which also altered which parties most profited. Beginning in the early 1960s, the very business of soaps began to change, functioning differently than it had in radio and in the first ten to fifteen years of tele­vi­sion. The radio model of serial sponsorship (and ­really of all commercial programming), in which a single advertiser would pay for the production of a program and would advertise its product at the start, finish, and within commercial breaks, initially was carried over into tv. Histories of broadcasting have detailed how this model began to change by the mid-1950s, as some sponsors alternated support weekly for prime-­ time series and then as multiple advertisers purchased spots across dif­fer­ent programs, the practice known as participation or magazine advertising.32 Daytime soaps seem like the exception to this development, since advertisers such as Procter & ­Gamble continued to own and single-­sponsor tv’s daily serials, assigning par­tic­u­lar brands to par­tic­u­lar programs, such as Joy dish soap and Spic and Span ­house­hold cleaner for the early 1950s Search for Tomorrow.33 But Procter & ­Gamble’s practices began to change by the mid-1950s as its product lines expanded. By 1957, Procter & ­Gamble owned eight dif­fer­ent detergents and did not want to be advertising two dif­fer­ent brands within 78  ·  chapter 3

a single program, or even adjacent ones. As a result, the com­pany cut back on the number of ads placed within and across its soaps to more effectively disperse its spots.34 This meant that the networks had commercial slots to fill on p&g-­sponsored soaps, which they did through participation advertising deals with non-­p &g advertisers.35 By the ­later 1950s, soaps ­were funded in ways similar to the rest of tv—­via participation sponsorship—­despite the fact that they ­were almost exclusively owned by sponsors ­until the early 1960s. The new developments in daytime soap opera owner­ship beginning in the early 1960s, moving away from sponsor owner­ship and ­toward other arrangements, worked to the advantage of the networks, allowing them to generate more ad revenue and to retain more creative control. But the emergence of t­hese new models was also motivated by the creative and logistical challenges of sponsor owner­ship, wherein advertising agencies served as producers of both the programs and the commercials, working with writers contracted by the sponsor. Within Benton & Bowles, the agency that produced As the World Turns for p&g, the program’s producer and his colleagues producing commercial spots for Oxydol disagreed over the amount of time assigned to the ads, their placement within the dramatic flow of the program, and the studio space devoted to ad setups versus the program’s sets.36 Procter & ­Gamble tried to manage such conflicts in-­house by a separation of duties between oversight of commercial spots and of programming, but t­ hese tensions persisted in the agencies.37 Th ­ ere ­were also conflicts between agencies, as p&g hired dif­fer­ent shops to produce dif­fer­ent soap operas and manage the ads for dif­fer­ent product lines.38 Tele­vi­sion production introduced complications to the sponsor-­owned, agency-­produced model for soaps that had worked so well in radio. In tv, program production and sponsor messaging became more clearly distinguished practices. This is quite unlike the radio production of the daytime serials written by Frank and Anne Hummert, as described by advertising historian Cynthia B. Meyers. In the Hummert “factory,” hard-­sell, “reason-­ why” advertising messages ­were woven into serial stories that spelled out clear prob­lems and solutions.39 Relatively early in the production of the tv soap, the continuing narrative and the product-­oriented messages of its sponsors became more loosely aligned. The sponsor-­ownership model that had undergirded the soaps since the beginning no longer allowed for an efficient assembly line in support of the sponsor’s messaging. The entry of abc into soap opera was the first significant structural shift in ­these models of funding and production—­a network-­produced daytime Building Network Power  ·  79

soap without a major sponsor. General Hospital was supported through participation advertising from its 1963 launch. As such, it was in keeping with abc’s broader strategy of development as a tv network, one that turned away from many of the patterns established by cbs and nbc. The network had launched a production subsidiary in partnership with Paramount Studios (ab-­p t) in 1960 in order to add in-­house content to its programs licensed from Hollywood studios.40 ­Because gh was produced in Los Angeles (rather than New York where, apart from brief experimental exceptions, all other soaps w ­ ere produced), and recorded to videotape rather than broadcast live, it was more like the West Coast, filmed programming that dominated abc’s prime-­time schedule than like the rest of the soap business. Unlike prime time, however, abc would avoid licensing daytime content from major Hollywood studios, instead keeping production in-­house or in the hands of in­de­pen­dent producers such as Curtis Productions (for Dark Shadows). In the late 1960s, abc added another in­de­pen­dent com­pany to its soap providers with Creative Horizons, owned by Phillips’s protégée Agnes Eckhardt Nixon and her husband, Robert. The com­pany created One Life to Live in 1968 and debuted All My ­Children in 1970.41 nbc joined abc in putting soaps with alternate owner­ship structures on its schedule in the mid-1960s, differentiating itself from cbs’s dominant practice of sponsor owner­ship. In 1965, four major sponsors pitched serials to nbc, and the network passed on all of them. Instead, nbc licensed Days of Our Lives from Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures Tele­vi­sion, as well as a second, ultimately short-­lived soap, Morning Star (1965–66).42 By 1969, nbc was also working with in­de­pen­dent producers Bing Crosby Productions and Frandor, Inc., from which the network licensed Bright Promise. By the ­later 1960s, the successes of gh, dool, and Dark Shadows had demonstrated that network owner­ship, Hollywood studio owner­ship, and in­de­pen­dent owner­ship w ­ ere all v­ iable options for soap production. The continuation of such practices moved soap opera further from its radio roots and from sponsor control. This shift was additionally cemented when cbs, long rooted in a sponsor-­ owned soap slate, self-­produced Love Is a Many Splendored Th ­ ing in 1967 (ended 1973), initially in partnership with Twentieth ­Century Fox, and followed up with the network-­owned Where the Heart Is in 1969 (ended 1973). Also in 1969, cbs took over production of The Secret Storm (1954–74) and Love of Life, both of which had been airing on the network since the 1950s. Both soaps had been agency-­produced for sponsor-­owner American Home Products (ahp). But when the contract of founding producer Roy Winsor 80  ·  chapter 3

Owner­ship Types for New Daytime Soap Operas by Debut Year, 1963–1975 Network 1963

In­de­pen­dent

Studio

General Hospital, abc

The Doctors (nbc), Colgate-­Palmolive Another World (nbc), Procter & ­Gamble

1964 A Flame in the Wind, abc The Young Marrieds, abc Days of Our Lives (nbc), Columbia–­ Screen Gems Morning Star (nbc), Columbia–­Screen Gems

1965

Dark Shadows (abc), Curtis Productions

1966 1967

Love Is a Many Splendored ­Thing, cbs

1968

One Life to Live (abc), Creative Horizons

1969 Where the Heart Is, abc

Bright Promise (nbc), Bing Crosby Prod. & Frandor, Inc.

1970

Sponsor

A World Apart, abc

Somerset (nbc), Procter & ­Gamble

All My ­Children (abc), Creative Horizons The Young and the Restless (cbs), Columbia–­Screen Gems

1973

1974

How to Survive a Marriage, nbc

1975

One Life to Live, abc All My ­Children, abc (both acquired from Creative Horizons)

Ryan’s Hope (abc), Labine-­Mayer Prods.

expired, ahp turned over production to cbs, which fit with the network’s broader move to bring more soap production ­under its own (rather than sponsors’) control, even as ahp technically remained the serials’ own­er.43 In the early 1970s, cbs also took the step of licensing a soap, The Young and the Restless, from a Hollywood studio, Columbia–­Screen Gems.44 The turn away from sponsor owner­ship continued across the 1970s, resulting in more power concentrated in network hands. Two impor­tant figures at Procter & G ­ amble left the com­pany and began to work for networks. Paul Rauch, in charge of soaps at p&g, left the sponsor in 1970 to join cbs as the new director of daytime.45 The same year, Irna Phillips ended her career-­long relationship with p&g and signed on with abc to be story editor on its new soap, A World Apart (1970–71), created by her ­daughter Katherine.46 Procter & ­Gamble continued to own a number of soaps, but the sponsor’s dominance was on the wane. Indeed, in 1974, p&g hoped to get abc to schedule a new sponsored soap, but the network instead picked up Ryan’s Hope from the in­de­pen­dent Labine-­Mayer Productions.47 abc further consolidated its power the following year, purchasing One Life to ­ hildren (1970–2011) from the Nixons’ C ­ reative Live (1968–2012) and All My C H ­ orizons.48 By the second half of the 1970s, abc’s four-­hour daily soap schedule was 75 ­percent network-­owned, and the network was a major competitor in the soap sphere.49 The days of sponsor domination of soap production had faded; the network power ascendant in daytime was representative of an industry-­wide turn. While the sixties and seventies are well known historically for the networks’ dominance, this was also the era of regulatory efforts to curb that oligopolistic hold. Understanding US tele­vi­sion history through the story of the daytime soap opera, however, demonstrates how ineffective such regulations w ­ ere for the crucial space of daytime. The Federal Communications Commission’s (fcc) Financial Interest and Syndication Rules of 1970 mainly restricted the networks’ ability to profit from the domestic syndication business, a moot point for even the network-­owned soaps, since, at the time, no one even considered secondary distribution of daytime drama.50 More potentially significant ­were the consent decrees the networks entered into with the Justice Department between 1976 and 1980, which restricted the number of hours of self-­produced entertainment programming the networks could air, with separate limits for prime time, daytime, and fringe periods (late night and early morning). The allotted eight hours per week of network-­ produced daytime would have been a prob­lem for abc by the late 1970s, when three hours daily (fifteen weekly) w ­ ere taken up by the network-­owned 82  ·  chapter 3

block of amc, oltl, and gh; as a result, the network sought to have its daytime lineup grandfathered in.51 Instead of allowing this, the government permitted the network to “borrow” self-­produced hours from the other two periods; for abc that meant using hours from the prime and fringe times to support daytime.52 abc would reap massive profits from its owned soaps by the early 1980s, indicating the ways this point of negotiation largely benefited, rather than restricted, network strength. The federal regulations of this period have been seen by scholars as one of the government’s few successful attempts to limit network dominance and encourage in­de­pen­dent production, but the case of daytime suggests that the impact of such decisions in the big picture of network power was negligible.53 It would not take the deregulation of the tv industry across the 1980s and 1990s to allow a com­pany like abc to profit handsomely; its tight control over daytime, and especially over the soaps, strengthened the network during the 1970s. ­These developments in the owner­ship and control of soaps ­were crucial shifts in the business, enabling network dominance. They help to explain how the classic network era came to be, and the central role that soaps played in it. About half the soaps then airing ­were still owned by sponsors, but networks had come to see that sponsor owner­ship could be ­counter to their own interests. By this point, the networks w ­ ere selling 50 to 70 ­percent of the commercial spots in sponsor-­owned soaps to participation advertisers, but the sponsor-­owners w ­ ere able to buy their spots at reduced rates, and the networks w ­ ere paying ­those soaps’ production costs (sometimes with a profit for the sponsors on top). In licensing a serial from a production com­ pany or producing it themselves, in contrast, the networks could sell all the commercial spots at top rates. And owning a serial rather than licensing it could allow the network to avoid renegotiating (higher) license fees for a successful program. With sponsor-­owners out of the picture, the networks could have complete control over the soap schedule.54 Many saw that control as the key to success in daytime, and in broadcast network tv as a ­whole.

Soap Profitability and Network Economics The changing landscape around the sponsorship and owner­ship of daytime soaps positioned the networks to profit handsomely. But the growing network revenue from daytime soaps was the product of multiple forces—­the networks saw the advantages of greater owner­ship over daytime ­because of its revenue-­generating potential, and they sought ways to generate and Building Network Power  ·  83

keep more of that revenue. cbs had long benefited from the ad dollars soaps generated. In the early 1960s, commercial minutes on cbs’s As the World Turns sold for two to three times the rate of the other networks’ soaps.55 Across the mid-1960s, cbs Daytime garnered 46 ­percent of total daytime billings.56 As the 1960s proceeded, however, all of daytime, and soaps in par­tic­u­lar, benefited from advertisers’ increasing interest in demographics and more sophisticated media planning techniques.57 The “young ­house­wife” became an especially significant target, and advertisers understood soaps as surpassing daytime genres such as game shows in their ability to reach t­ hese w ­ omen 58 and engender viewing loyalty from them. By the early 1970s, the “young ­house­wives” w ­ ere more specifically defined as ­women aged eigh­teen to forty nine, the audience sought by all of the soaps.59 That half of the audience for a longer-­running soap, such as The Guiding Light, was over age fifty was a sensitive point for cbs, especially when demographic data revealed that nbc was outperforming cbs in reaching younger viewers.60 While “young” audiences ­were desirable target audiences for soaps by the late 1960s, “young” nonetheless referenced adult w ­ omen, especially t­ hose fitting the h ­ ouse­wife label, the logical buyers for the domestic goods that continued to dominate the daytime ad market. Other audiences characterized by youth—­kids and teens, college students, and unmarried young adults of any gender—­were also emerging as soap viewers across the sixties and seventies. Dark Shadows was notable for drawing ­actual youth audiences rather than just young adult w ­ omen, although the latter w ­ ere crucial to the program’s value. The merchandising revenue generated through Shadows’ kid and teen fans was a boon for abc and owner-­producer Curtis Productions, which sold paperback novels, comic books, throw pillows, rec­ord ­albums, and toys. But this array of goods was more an anomaly than a new standard for daytime, which remained primarily invested in selling time slots to advertisers seeking to reach young h ­ ouse­wives.61 The affective investment of ­actual kid and teen audiences (or adults who ­didn’t fit the “young ­house­wife” descriptor) was no doubt essential to ­those viewers’ experiences, as vis­i­ble in the robust fan culture and camp readings of Dark Shadows that have persisted for de­cades.62 But the industry’s interest in targeting t­ hose other than young h ­ ouse­wives as a broader practice and logic would be slower in coming, emerging only gradually over the network era. In some ways such a shift never fully arrived, as male viewers, for example, have remained devalued by soap opera advertisers well into the twenty-­first ­century. 84  ·  chapter 3

40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1962

1966

1973

1975

1977

figure 3.1 The cost per minute of network daytime tv ad time increased significantly between 1962 and 1977, the key period of dominance of the broadcast networks.

Even without an industry-­wide interest in targeting new audiences, the soaps became increasingly profitable for the networks between the early 1960s and the late 1970s thanks to large growths in ad revenue. In part due to a rising rate of inflation, advertisers paid eight times as much for a commercial slot in 1977 as they did in 1962.63 Between 1963 and 1967, daytime registered a substantially greater rate of growth in ad revenue than did the rest of network programming, 63 ­percent compared with 36 ­percent.64 A number of changes facilitated the soaps’ ability to attract such large increases. For one, more companies began to advertise in daytime amid a surge in the number of ­house­hold products to be sold. The networks began to offer thirty-­second spots instead of t­hose one minute long, and to sell ads on a quarterly rather than yearly basis, each of which allowed more advertisers admittance into the daytime world. The increasing ad costs ­were matched by increasing ratings, allowing the networks to justify the hikes in their charges.65 Into the 1970s, daytime continued to offer double the ad minutes as prime time and to produce its programs at much lower cost than prime time. As inflation ­rose, time slots expanded, and productions grew more sophisticated, making soaps was more costly by 1975, but ad rates and revenues also increased, keeping soaps profitable to the networks. By the end of 1977, when Building Network Power  ·  85

most soaps had moved to hour-­long slots, t­ hese dramas filled ten and a half hours daily at an estimated annual production cost of $109.2 million. The estimated gross yearly revenue from ad sales was $457.5 million, leaving the networks with a massive profit margin of more than 300 ­percent.66 In contrast, prime-­time programming in this era could have significantly higher production costs. An action-­oriented show like The Streets of San Francisco (abc, 1972–77) could cost $340,000 per weekly episode in 1976, when an hour-­long soap like Days of Our Lives cost about $34,000 per daily entry.67 While the networks ­were not paying the full costs of prime-­time production (the production studios made up the difference, recovering costs and garnering profits upon the sale of shows into syndication), neither ­were they always making a substantial profit in the margin between the sale of ad time and the license fees they ­were paying to broadcast the show.68 During the 1970s, the soaps brought in 75 ­percent of the networks’ revenue, in effect subsidizing prime time.69 Indeed, in 1970 cbs president Robert  D. Wood credited the profits from the networks’ soaps with allowing for the prime-­ time experimentation that would lead to groundbreaking series like All in the ­Family (1971–79), M*A*S*H (1972–83), and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–77).70 Daytime dramas ­were the engine that powered the classic network era.

Network Power and Creative Control The networks’ consolidation of power through the owner­ship of daytime soaps was crucial to their economic foundation, but the shifts in the soap industry of the network era also altered the networks’ creative involvement in the programs, giving executives a more hands-on role in storytelling and production. While this was the result of corporate greed, it also emerged as a solution of sorts to the creative tensions of the sponsor-­ownership model. For example, in the late 1950s sft writers Frank and Doris Hursley created a western-­themed soap, Hope Springs, but their efforts to bring it to fruition ran up against a system in which writers did not own or control their own creations and in which sponsors did not want their agencies—or their contracted writers—­producing soaps for their competitors.71 So, too, did soap writers clash with sponsors and with ad agency-­producers. In the 1950s, Phillips regularly complained to p&g (to which she was contracted) about the producers and directors at Compton Advertising and their ­handling of production for The Guiding Light. She expected creative autonomy from the 86  ·  chapter 3

sponsor and the agency and was repeatedly frustrated by agency personnel.72 Doris Hursley also challenged p&g on the bound­aries of her creative purview as writer.73 The Hursleys would have a dif­f er­ent experience when they created gh for abc in 1963. Sponsor-­owners ­were certainly invested in attracting viewers, but their business model did not depend on proving to (other) advertisers that a program would be an effective vehicle for sales messages. Within that system, the networks had almost no creative input; they just provided production facilities (for a fee). But abc’s investment in and responsibility for gh had high stakes, especially as the program was its first serious daytime soap effort. Months before gh’s debut, abc executives made clear their strong creative hand, conferring about the development of key characters.74 Once the first three episodes had aired, abc’s Richard Dunn shared with the show’s in-­house producers his concerns about involving new viewers in the serial, making notes about scripting as well as such production ele­ ments as m ­ usic.75 The involvement of network executives in creative m ­ atters grew from the mid-1960s on, an effect of the networks’ consolidation of power. During the 1960s, it became clear that successful leadership of daytime was a winning ­career path for a network executive. cbs was first to prove the viability of soaps for tv. Rewarded for that achievement, the network’s head of daytime, Oscar Katz, was promoted in 1960. Leonard Goldberg brought Dark Shad­ ows to abc and expanded the network’s affiliate lineup as a result. In 1967, he was promoted to head of programming for the w ­ hole network. Perhaps the most notable such rise was that of Fred Silverman, who oversaw cbs Daytime beginning in 1963 and was promoted to vice president of program planning and development for the entire network in 1970. His across-­the-­ board achievements at cbs got him hired as president of abc Entertainment in 1975, the com­pany he led to its first number one rating in its history, a victory spanning daytime and prime time. While his tenure at nbc, beginning in 1978, was less successful, Silverman (alongside Irna Phillips) was one of the few industry players to be involved with all three networks across the era of the industry’s greatest power. In the classic network era, daytime was not only a foundation for corporate profitability but also a ­career proving ground for the network executive. Silverman was the prototype of the creatively involved executive. His dominance across the network era made his practices particularly significant for the relationship between network executives and soap creatives from the mid-1960s on. He was responsible for cbs’s first move away from Building Network Power  ·  87

sponsor owner­ship with the launch of Love Is a Many Splendored ­Thing in 1967. As cbs production units began to prepare the sets and other materials for that program’s debut, Silverman demanded that control be in the hands of programming, his domain, rather than the previous realm of production.76 This was an entirely dif­fer­ent role for cbs than it had played with its past (sponsor-­owned) soaps. By 1969, Silverman had four of cbs’s eight soaps ­under his control. He replaced the head writers for three of them in the name of “creative upgrading,” expanded the remaining quarter-­hour serials to thirty minutes, and programmed soaps in a solid block from late morning through late after­ noon.77 His ongoing involvement in the creative pro­cess was a source of tension between the network and a number of soap writers and producers. Silverman’s insistence that she get rid of Eurasian character Mia Elliott, among other demands, led Phillips to quit liamst within the program’s first five months.78 Phillips had had disagreements with p&g and especially with their agency-­producers, but her relationship with the sponsor-­owner was typically more collaborative than that with liamst’s network-­owner. Even as Phillips and Silverman w ­ ere friendly, she also challenged him across his reign at cbs, seeing him as more invested in sensation than in quality storytelling. As she snarked to producer David Lesan over Silverman’s critique of atwt in 1972, “In any case let’s be a bit more repetitious from day to day than I’m prone to be in recent months. Let’s create conflict w ­ hether t­ here’s conflict or not.”79 Phillips was infamously irascible, but Silverman had similar conflicts with other writers and producers. Ann Marcus, head writer for liamst, scoffed at the lip ser­vice cbs paid to letting her write what “excites” her while still demanding that she script stories involving certain characters that stretch over prescribed amounts of time. She complained about the “ulcerous executives” dictating “straight melodramatic story without any conflict and with no residual long term effect.”80 Similarly, in 1972, producer Tom Donovan wrote with distress to Silverman about the network’s involvement in Where the Heart Is, arguing that the story the network “mandated” was “not an audience story.” Donovan attributed a brief increase in the show’s ratings to the creative team’s “freedom to create.” His long history in soaps had taught him that the writer had to be working for “Mrs. Murphy,” the i­magined ­woman at home to whom the show must connect. Silverman’s demands interceded in the relationship between the creators and Mrs. Murphy, which Donovan saw as disastrous: “When the writer begins to write for anyone other than Mrs. Murphy—­that is, if his thinking and framing of story is split between 88  ·  chapter 3

his audience instincts and ac­cep­tance by management . . . ​then the show must suffer.”81 Silverman may have been especially meddlesome at cbs, but tensions between the networks and soap creatives ­were common in this period of expansion amid the centralization of network power. Executives at nbc employed some of the same strategies as ­those at cbs for both network-­owned and externally produced soaps. Lin Bolen, nbc Daytime vice president (the first w ­ oman to achieve such a role) helped create How to Survive a Mar­ riage (1974–75) and then meddled with it so much that producer Allen Potter blamed her overinvolvement for his decision to quit.82 Days of Our Lives, produced by Screen Gems, was beset by economic constraints across the 1960s, many imposed by nbc, which retained control over production space and ­labor. For the first few years of production, the network did not dedicate a studio to the serial—it got moved from place to place.83 It was forced to have an extremely early production day (directors began at 4:30 am) in order to f­ree up nbc’s videotape recorders for The To­night Show’s (1954–) taping in the after­noon.84 By 1968, the network had slightly increased the program’s below-­the-­line bud­get, but setups and storage of multiple sets, use of flashbacks and dream sequences (which required extra time with tape playback equipment), and expenses of props and makeup had led to a significant overage, which nbc was threatening to withhold from Screen Gems’ license fee.85 Head writer Bell pleaded for a larger cast and set bud­get so that he could play more characters per episode, which he believed would allow more catalysts for story and make dool more competitive with other soaps. As he wrote to producer Betty Corday, “We both know that the cast bud­get is quite incidental to the overall monies nbc takes in on this program.”86 Once again, the network’s drive for profits overrode creative interests.

Changing Modes of Production for the Network Era Soap Across the network era, the tv soap’s period of greatest expansion and profitability, the mode and practice of the very creation of the programs—­their writing and production—­changed alongside their changing economic structure. Some of this had to do with the involvement of network executives in creative ­matters. But other shifts in the making of soap opera w ­ ere related to its positioning between tele­vi­sion’s original mode of live dramatic production and the potential applications of new technologies. As new soaps emerged across the 1960s and 1970s, they differentiated themselves from Building Network Power  ·  89

e­ arlier soaps. Often this meant telling dif­fer­ent kinds of stories from new perspectives, as chapter 4 examines. But the ways soaps told ­those stories—­ the images and sounds and narrative structure of ­those tales—­were also in transition. By examining the ways that the practice of soap opera production changed during the network era, we can see how the shifting context of the tv business affected the programs that resulted. While the revenue the soaps generated helped to support the progression of the broadcast networks’ business as a w ­ hole, the low bud­gets with which the soaps worked, crucial to their profitability, made their production practices rather dif­fer­ent from much of the rest of the network schedule. The network era is the period in which soap production transitioned from live broadcasts to videotape, albeit usually “live on tape” production, or the recording of an episode as it would have played out had it been broadcast live. The adaptation to videotape in the 1960s moved soap opera in the opposite direction of prime-­time narrative tv, which left ­behind live broadcasting for single-­camera, filmed production. Nonfiction genres such as news, sports, and game shows, as well as commercials, also turned to videotape in the 1960s, but the soaps’ closest analogues, the scripted series airing in prime time, would mostly be produced like theatrical features, with footage captured single-­camera style and edited together into a final product. By the 1970s, ­there was more convergence between daytime and prime-­time production modes as some prime-­time sitcoms w ­ ere shot with multiple cameras, on video, often in front of a live studio audience. At the same time, some soap production moved slightly closer to prime-­time drama as electronic video editing equipment made it much easier to intercut videotaped footage. As a result, beginning in the mid-1970s soaps ­were more heavi­ly edited between shooting and broadcast. Live and live-­on-­tape broadcasts looked the same to the viewing audience, and the videotaped soaps of the 1960s carried on many of the same production practices as had been established in the mid-1950s, when most programs had moved away from the proscenium style that dominated the early years. New soaps such as gh and dool began as live-­on-­tape and developed a style that continued many of the more elaborate live production practices of the late 1950s. But they also explored new iterations of t­hose practices, finding ways to use the expanded studios available on the West Coast, as well as technological developments such as prerecording, improved zoom lenses, and fluid-­head camera bases to explore on-­screen space while maintaining bud­getary and temporal efficiency. For example, gh had a basic set, permanently constructed, within which most action occurred—­the nurses’ 90  ·  chapter 3

figure 3.2 The “beauty shots” at the end of nbc’s The Doctors, as in this example from 1970, illustrated the ongoing business of the hospital as an active workplace.

station and an adjacent medicine room with two corridors branching off of them, chief of staff Steve Hardy’s office and a patient room along one corridor, an elevator along the other.87 This set was cost-­effective, in that it remained standing, but it was also more expansive than the sets typically used in soaps, due to the greater studio space available in Los Angeles than in New York. The program’s directors used the multiple dimensions of the basic set to evoke the feel of an active hospital. Cameras regularly followed actors as they moved through this space, w ­ hether via a­ ctual camera movement (dollies) or zooms, as in one 1965 episode, when the camera follows Jessie as she leaves a patient’s room and walks to Dr. Hardy’s office, enters, and speaks to him. ­Later, Steve meets Dr. Lyons as he exits the elevator and walks with him to his niece’s room.88 The real-­time following of hospital personnel as they move through the set made for a slow pace, but it also made the hospital feel like an active narrative space, especially significant to the first soap set in a workplace rather than the home. Even when soap sets w ­ ere not as expansive, Building Network Power  ·  91

as in the hospital set for The Doctors, built in a New York studio, the physical space meaningfully evoked the ongoing world of the workplace through devices such as the “beauty shots” of everyday hospital business played ­under the ending credits, enhancing the sense of Hope Memorial as a communal workspace. A videotaped soap like gh also extended the more elaborate live production practices of the late fifties with its use of in-­depth staging and blocking to emphasize characters’ relationships with one another. It was more feasible for creators to generate the careful compositions required for some of ­these shots with the cushion of prerecording (even though t­here was l­ittle to no postproduction editing). They accomplished this in part by repeating particularly effective setups so that cast and crew ­were familiar with them. One common setup was to position three characters in a triangular arrangement, emphasizing the intrusion one character was imposing upon the other two. In one episode from 1965, Audrey and Phil are talking in his office. We have grounds to think their friendship might lead to something more, and that this may be a bad idea, a stance enhanced through shot composition. Audrey’s ­sister, no-­nonsense nurse Lucille, enters the doorway, in the background of Audrey and Phil’s conversation. She is positioned in an in-­depth three-­shot between and ­behind the two, and we see her look questioningly from one to the other. Her entrance midscene draws the viewer’s eye and perspective to her as she literally and figuratively comes between Audrey and Phil.89 Soaps frequently used multiple planes of staging in the live-­on-­tape era as a way of communicating actions and reactions si­mul­ta­neously. Th ­ ese compositions could be rather fleeting, as a slight movement of an actor or a camera might make the foreground figures obscure ­those in the background or shift the focus inopportunely. Their very fleetingness, however, made them narratively compelling cues for viewers engaging with characters they knew well, flashes of insight into what was at stake. Such compositions ­were used in major story moments, such as Barnabas of Dark Shadows tragically killing his ­uncle, who was married to Barnabas’s true love, Josette, in the program’s 1795 time frame. Barnabas stands in the foreground, horrified by his actions, as Josette cradles Jeremiah’s head in the background, wailing, “You killed the only man I ever loved!” All three characters are in states of despair, their fates intertwined, as emphasized by the shot’s composition.90 Such compositions ­were also used in less momentous scenes, as in one 1971 episode of The Doctors, when John, in the background, reacts to Althea’s phone conversation in the foreground. She is passive-­aggressively rebuffing him by phoning 92  ·  chapter 3

figure 3.3 and 3.4 Network era soaps used in-­depth staging in major and minor story moments. On Dark Shadows, this framing emphasized the intertwined fates of Barnabas (Jonathan Frid), Josette (Kathryn Leigh Scott), and Jeremiah (Anthony George) within a climactic scene in the program’s 1795 timeline, abc, December 14, 1967. In a more mundane narrative moment, The Doctors staged Althea (Elizabeth Hubbard) in the foreground and John (Patrick Horgan) in the background to si­mul­ta­neously depict her action and his reaction, nbc, January 21, 1971.

her ex-­husband; her back is to him, but she knows he is listening. We see her determination and his surprise si­mul­ta­neously.91 The choreographing of studio production to offer major and minor moments like t­ hese was noticeably developed and refined between the l­ater 1950s and the early to mid-1970s. At that point, advances in video editing and the expansion of soaps to hour-­ long episodes made the soaps alter their practices yet again. The expansion to hour-­long time slots in the mid-1970s was a product of the networks’ hands-on involvement in the creation of soaps, but it was also a development made feasible by technological changes, especially in video editing. The move to hour-­long episodes was initiated at nbc, led by executive Lin Bolen, who took on the expansion to one hour of Another World and dool in 1975. Another World was one of the network’s biggest daytime hits. Playwright Harding Lemay had taken over as head writer in 1971, and Paul Rauch left his post as head of cbs Daytime to become the program’s executive producer in 1972. While the expansion was feasible b ­ ecause advances in video editing made it pos­si­ble to abandon live-­on-­tape practices, Lemay advocated for it for purposes of narrative enhancement, hoping to “enrich the fabric of be­hav­ior within each episode and to give fine actors in secondary roles more rewarding scenes to play.”92 While the serial was still owned by p&g, nbc was intimately involved with the expansion, facilitating big increases in studio space and behind-­the-­scenes l­abor. Bolen claimed that doubling the time slot more than doubled the bud­get, but the substantial increases in ad rates across this period made it worth the network’s while.93 The expansion was profitable enough to encourage the expansion of dool, as well. nbc’s success with the hour format and the intense climate of network competition in the 1970s led the other networks to extend most of their soaps to an hour. But some of the industry’s most experienced writers ­were quite resistant. Initially, Nixon claimed she would never take amc to an hour.94 She eventually relented, given pressure from abc, which agreed to expand the program’s studio space so as to allow for more sets in a given episode. Nixon saw this as essential in order to be able to tell the additional stories necessary to keep the show from dragging.95 Bell held out for even longer on y&r. cbs threatened to continue the show without him when it planned an announcement of the expansion before he had assented to it.96 While production and writing practices ­were adjusted to accommodate the new episode length, some in the industry continued to see the hour as presenting creative challenges that network interests had not considered. Actor Don McLaughlin, who played atwt patriarch Chris Hughes, argued 94  ·  chapter 3

that the changes to the production pro­cess detracted from the ensemble feel of the show, as actors worked in shifts as opposed to ­running through full episodes together now that the live and live-­on-­tape models ­were abandoned.97 In 1977, Bell diagnosed dool’s ratings prob­lems as a result of the program devoting too much time to one story line, a story line he believed to be unappealing to the majority-­female audience. As he explained, “In the hour format . . . ​you cannot run with one story . . . ​­there is no one story on any program that all the audience is deeply involved with.”98 In the hour format, in­effec­tive stories ­were especially detrimental. Even if some creative interests welcomed the hour-­long soap, and as it was enabled by technological shifts, its widespread adoption was a result of the networks’ drive for profits. That drive resulted in potential creative missteps, but it also yielded innovations in production that allowed the soaps to tell their stories in new ways.

Differentiating the Network Era Soap in Visuals and Sound The live-­on-­tape era was a transitional stage between wholly live broadcasts and the more edited programs of the 1970s, more an evolution of production practices developed in the ­later 1950s than an upending of them. Yet t­here ­were also multiple ways in which the many new soaps of the network era ­were differentiated from the soaps begun in the postwar period. Chapter 4 explores how ­these programs told new kinds of stories and offered up new kinds of characters. But this period also generated a host of new formal and aesthetic practices, resulting in programs that looked and sounded dif­fer­ent than the tv soaps that preceded them, and that varied the pacing of and the generic influences on the stories being told.99 At times, this resulted in new emphases on long-­standing ele­ments of soap production; at ­others, it meant the emergence of practices wholly new to the soap world. One prominent instigator of change to the visual and sound styles of the daytime soap was The Young and the Restless. As creator Bill Bell noted in the program’s proposal, it was “time that the daytime serial change. That we up-­date and innovate!”100 From its 1973 debut, the production had a slicker, more polished look and sound, attending with extreme care to ­every detail of the mise-­en-­scène, lighting, shot se­lection, and sound track.101 Designers coordinated the color palettes of sets and costumes; the latter ­were expertly fitted to the bodies of the cast. The lighting designer focused on lighting the actors rather than bathing the sets with light, resulting in shadows and contours that ­shaped the mood of scenes. Th ­ ese painstaking choices w ­ ere Building Network Power  ·  95

emphasized with an intensive focus on close-­ups. As producer John Conboy explained, “Our directors have developed ­great skill at using extreme closeups and in cutting from one character to another just to capture the look in the eyes.”102 Such practices ­were vis­i­ble in scenes of heightened emotion, such as the reveal of Jennifer Brooks’s breast cancer diagnosis. We see the distraught ­faces of three of her ­daughters one by one, in close-up, receiving the news at her bedside. The last close-up before the opening credits is of Jennifer herself, her elegant face in repose postbiopsy. The close-­ups are repeated in a ­later scene as the d ­ aughters tell Jennifer the news, emphasizing the emotional stakes for all of the characters.103 While this use of close-­ups was impor­tant to dramatic scenes such as this, it was especially prominent in y&r’s romantic and sexy scenes, which Bell employed to a greater degree than had soaps previously. Bell saw y&r as focused on “man-­woman chemistry. Live, flesh and blood p ­ eople who can get the adrenaline flowing. Damn, nifty ­people who can turn you on and keep you turned on.” Along with the program’s young, attractive cast and a glamorous, emotionally intense visual style, Bell also made ­music “mooded to the moment” central to this sensibility.104 Distinctive orchestral themes ­were matched with par­tic­u­lar characters and ­couples, leading to the sound track a­ lbum for the show sold in 1974. Main character Leslie Brooks was a musician, a concert pianist who ­later opened a nightclub where she sang, and restaurateur Pierre serenaded his patrons in En­glish and French. The Young and the Restless combined many of the visual and aural features that signaled a new era in soaps, but some of t­ hese ele­ments, especially the intensification of close-­ups and an altered sonic background, ­were more widespread. By the 1970s, Another World was also using close-­ups to communicate the passionate emotion of its characters. The tumultuous love story of Steve and Alice was a central plot, and scenes between the star-­crossed lovers ­were often played almost entirely in tight close-­ups, as when Steve tries to convince Alice of his devotion, coming to her ­because “I wanted to look into your eyes and I wanted to hear your voice and I wanted to tell you the truth about the night you left me.”105 Soaps with heightened romantic stories like y&r and aw ­were early adopters of this intensified style, but creators of other soaps saw the appeal of this new, intimate framing. As Agnes ­ hildren in 1974, “This is not to say that we should Nixon wrote of All My C never have anything but tight shots but I do think that we could use them more effectively and somewhat more often than we do at this point.”106 The intensification of the close-up in the 1970s soap fits with Tania Modleski’s assertion of the ways soaps invited spectators to care for and in96  ·  chapter 3

figures 3.5 and 3.6 Another World (nbc) typified the intensive use of close-­ups in a scene from the October 8, 1973, episode, when Steve (George Reinholt) pledged his love to Alice (Jacqueline Courtney).

vest in their characters as might a m ­ other to her c­ hildren, the face of the child filling the m ­ other’s frame of vision.107 But theories like Modleski’s, focused on the narrative distinctiveness of tele­vi­sion soap opera, particularly in opposition to cinema, do not account for the historical specificity of this stylistic shift, which was new to soaps in the 1970s. Jennifer Hayward has argued that the studio space within which soaps are shot precludes the voy­eur­ is­tic suturing of the viewer into the gaze of a character as occurs in cinema, that soaps insist on a more objective perspective that acknowledges each character.108 But the stylistic options available with zoom lenses and postproduction editing made it entirely pos­si­ble beginning in the 1970s to offer ­these more subjective gazes between characters. ­These intensified close-­ups ­were a key way that the network era soap set itself apart from the soaps of the past, a technique not especially dif­fer­ent from the strategies of Hollywood film, and one that would be pushed ever further in the romantic supercouple tales of the 1980s. The emphasis on ­music in y&r signaled the soap’s “­today” status ­because it was so dif­f er­ent from the organ accompaniment associated both with radio serials and with some tv soaps, particularly p&g productions. As the World Turns did not move from organ ­music to a recorded, multi-­instrument track u ­ ntil 1973.109 Yet the changes in soap ­music had been developing across the network era, as when The Doctors used an orchestral score to set it apart upon its 1963 debut.110 By 1967, liamst was promoted as employing an orchestra of multiple musicians accompanying its live broadcasts, and in the early 1970s, a one-­man band accompanied The Secret Storm and then Love of Life as the serials ­were recorded live on tape.111 Newer soaps like oltl, ­ usic from amc, and A World Apart on abc used prerecorded orchestral m 112 the outset. Soaps from dif­fer­ent producers and dif­fer­ent networks began to have differentiated sounds. Another sonic practice that differentiated the soaps’ “newness” in the network era was the occasional use of diegetic, recorded m ­ usic. Tele­vi­sion had always included musical per­for­mances in variety shows, as well as in scripted series.113 In the 1960s and early 1970s, pop and rock m ­ usic began to replace original jingles in tv commercials, just as feature film began to offer sound tracks filled with con­temporary hits.114 ­There is ­little evidence of popu­lar ­music in tv sound tracks (as opposed to per­for­mances on-­ screen) before the 1970s. Yet such recordings w ­ ere used in daytime soaps of the 1960s, suggesting that the soaps may have pioneered this practice. Phillips integrated popu­lar ­music into her aw scripts in 1964 to dramatize Pat Matthews’s loss of innocence a­ fter her unwed pregnancy, abortion, and 98  ·  chapter 3

the murder of her boyfriend, Tom. For the scene in which Tom waits in the car during the abortion, Phillips scripted that “It’s a Big, Wide, Wonderful World,” “Make Someone Happy,” or “It’s Almost Like Being in Love” should play, their sentimental lyr­ics offering ironic commentary.115 Throughout Pat and Tom’s doomed relationship, Phillips used “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” as “their” song, playing it across Pat’s early romantic musings and ­later traumatized panic.116 Popu­lar m ­ usic made diegetic appearances across many soaps in the 1960s and early 1970s, in keeping with on-­screen per­for­mances in prime-­time shows such as Hawaiian Eye (abc, 1959–63) or The Partridge ­Family (abc, 1970–74) and nondiegetic pop ­music in tv sound tracks as of the 1970s. The short-­lived soap Never Too Young, which aired on abc in 1965 and 1966, was prescient in its use of pop ­music, both as diegetic background ­music and in the form of special guest stars’ on-­screen per­for­mances. Set in Malibu, California, the program featured a cast dominated by youth, mostly teens. The final episode took place largely at Alfy’s High Dive, a beachside snack shop with an outdoor patio. Three pop songs played in the shop across the episode: Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man,” the Mindbenders’ “Groovy Kind of Love,” and the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.” Rock star Freddie Cannon performed on-­screen, and the episode was bookended by the eponymous rock-­ and-­roll theme song.117 Never Too Young’s integration of popu­lar ­music became increasingly common in the soaps of the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially ­those that sought to market themselves as part of the “new” soap world. Early episodes of liamst integrated ­music by the Rolling Stones. Phillips scripted young lovers Mark and Iris dancing sensuously to the rock m ­ usic, which Mark describes as “­music with a new message and an old jungle beat.”118 A ­couple of weeks ­later, Iris sobs while listening to Barbra Strei­sand’s “­People,” worrying about her ­sister making it through surgery.119 Within the first ­couple of weeks of amc in 1970, college student and potential draftee Philip Brent listens to Arlo Guthrie’s antiwar anthem, “Alice’s Restaurant,” a countercultural touchstone. Nixon was careful to script a starting point for the m ­ usic just before the ending chorus, avoiding the censorable spoken-­word lyr­ics that form the heart of the song’s status as protest.120 As was typical for Nixon’s socially engaged soaps, an uninformed viewer could take Philip’s choice as standard young-­people fare, while ­those in the know would understand the implications of the character listening to this par­tic­u­lar, oppositional song. In the 1970s, a number of soaps also featured characters singing on-­ screen, a trend that would continue into the 1980s. Doug Williams on dool, Building Network Power  ·  99

both Heather and Ginger on Somerset (nbc, 1970–76), Nick Davis on amc, and even long-­standing heroine Joanne and new young leading man, Steve Kaslo, on sft, performed within their soap communities.121 Across multiple soaps of the network era, m ­ usic was used to identify a character—­and the program itself—as part of a new age.

New Modes of Storytelling in the Network Era Soap Visuals and sound ­were not the only formal qualities of soap opera to change across the network era. This period also included structural shifts in narrative as the soaps began to introduce new generic influences and revise their pacing. ­These alterations of form would help shape the social issue stories that would rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, explored in chapter 4. In the 1980s, the subjects of the stories would change rather drastically, turning away from the “relevance” that dominated the preceding period. But the storytelling devices, as well as the visual and sound styles, that marked the first de­cades of the network era would continue into the 1980s. A key way in which the network era soaps differentiated themselves from the tv serials of the postwar period was the integration of new generic features. Mystery and suspense had been a part of some soaps across their history, as in The Edge of Night’s focus on mystery stories from its 1956 debut; new soaps such as the aw spin-­off, Somerset, would adopt a similar orientation.122 But abc’s entry into daytime in the 1960s introduced further innovations. While doctors had long been soap characters and medical crises had been central to many stories, before the launch of General Hospital no soaps ­were centrally set in a hospital, or in any workplace. Frank and Doris Hursley had been pitching new soaps for several years, including one set on a college campus, but gh was the first to get picked up, drawing abc’s interest due to the emergence of successful prime-­time medical series such as Dr. Kildare (nbc), Ben Casey (abc, 1961–66), and The Nurses (cbs, 1962– 65).123 abc received pitches for a number of other workplace-­set soaps ­after the introduction of gh.124 The more drastic generic integration came with Dark Shadows, begun in 1966 with a gothic sensibility and introducing super­natural stories at the end of that year. In 1967, the character of vampire Barnabas Collins joined the program and became a popu­lar sensation, doubling the ds audience by late 1968.125 The program’s (low-­budget) special effects and eerie sensibility made it dif­fer­ent from other soaps, and its freedom from the constraints of 100  ·  chapter 3

realism also allowed for a number of narrative devices that generated new stories, such as time travel and alternate universes. Through such narratives, writers could kill off a character in one universe only to resurrect the actor (and sometimes the character) in another time or dimension. While this made for convoluted storytelling that could become incomprehensible, it could also justify drastic changes in direction when a plot ­wasn’t working, as in early 1970 when the byzantine Leviathan story turned into a tale of Barnabas and a familiar group of characters working together to fight evil. The boldness of Dark Shadows in bringing characters back from the dead and allowing actors to play dif­fer­ent roles opened the door for other soaps to draw upon similar devices, although such practices w ­ ere uncommon before the late 1970s and would not be embraced to the same extremes ­until the 1990s. The more immediately influential trend when it came to generic blending was the inclusion of comedy. Soaps began to include humorous touches in the 1960s, assisted by stylistic developments such as a varied musical score. When gh nurse Lucille March condemned ­others’ interest in hospital gossip but knew every­body’s business, lighthearted m ­ usic cued the audience to chuckle at her maneuverings.126 Also in the 1960s, The Doctors included multiple comedic characters, such as exasperated nurse Carolee Simpson, wisecracking about the drama surrounding her, and daffy lab assistant Martha Allen. The romance of doctors Nick Bellini and Althea Davis teemed with the witty repartee of screwball comedy; their wedding rehearsal featured one comedic incident a­ fter another, concluding with a voice-­over from the minister, marveling that ­these bumbling fools could be performing surgeries e­ very day.127 By the late 1970s, network executives and soap writers saw comedy as vital to a successful soap.128 One of the ways that Bridget and Jerome Dobson “contemporized” Guiding Light at that time was to inject more humor, a practice they would develop even further with their creation of Santa Barbara (nbc, 1984–93) in the next de­cade.129 Network era soaps also introduced changes in story pacing, including the question of how much recapping was necessary. One audience research effort of the period found that viewers’ biggest complaint about soaps was that they w ­ ere “boring” or “repetitious.”130 Creators and network executives alike w ­ ere concerned about retaining audience interest as the economic stakes grew. On the one hand, this meant that recapping of story was impor­tant for keeping involved t­ hose who did not watch daily. On the other, too much recapping made stories feel slow and tedious. Building Network Power  ·  101

Prob­lems with pacing and uncertainty about recapping made the early months of Dark Shadows, with writers new to soaps, particularly plodding. Episodes 5 through 20, three weeks on air, occupied just one day in the story world, and dialogue at times recapped conversations from ­earlier in the very same episode. The changes to the program in its first two years w ­ ere not only about introducing new generic ele­ments but also about providing more narrative momentum. Eventually, the program was staffed by more experienced soap writers, who sought to end each episode with a cliffhanger.131 While stories still played out slowly, the goal was to keep viewers engaged from day to day. Videotape made the most basic form of recapping, the rollback, wherein the last scene of the past episode is repeated at the start of the next, a more typical practice in the 1960s. But experienced writers also found ways to make recapping within a new episode dramatically effective. Agnes Nixon understood the importance of recapping for the new soaps she was launching, but she made sure recaps ­were used “within the context of conflict . . . ​ difference of opinion” such that recapping revealed “not just the plot structure itself but the relationships between the ­people.”132 Nixon also understood that some backstory needed to remain in the past, that one had to trust that long-­term viewers would accept “lopping off ” past relationships in order to move characters in new directions, as long as the writing did not outright deny or reverse that history.133 As creators like Nixon applied their deep experience to new soaps, the creators of ­earlier soaps, like Nixon’s mentor Irna Phillips, ­were aware of the differences between their proj­ects and the newer versions. Phillips acknowledged in the early 1970s that atwt was “both noted and notorious for its pace. Nearly ­every significant (and sometimes insignificant) complication is played against the full reaction of the show’s characters.”134 Yet even the newer generation of soap writers saw that moving through the story too quickly was also problematic. During a 1973 writer’s strike, one soap purportedly ran through a plan for four months of story in three weeks of episodes, a reflection of the substitute writers’ inexperience.135 Similarly, in her assessment of Somerset in 1972, writer Bridget Dobson criticized the program’s rapid pace. She found the daily event-­heavy prologue put too much emphasis on plot over “insights into humanity”; beginning at such a high pitch left no way to build tension over an episode and made for an overall “lack of emotional honesty.”136 The way to write soaps paced appropriately for the con­temporary audience, according to creators like Nixon, was more about changing the pacing 102  ·  chapter 3

of individual episodes than that of the long-­term story. Nixon’s scripts now included multiple scenes per act. She also eliminated what she called “the verbal connective” at the end of scenes, a deliberate “hook,” such as a trailed-­ off question, which she found dramatically detrimental. She advocated for more rapid transitions between scenes, using cuts over dissolves, shortening dissolves when used, and abbreviating or eliminating ­music cues.137 When the Dobsons took over writing gl, they made a similar effort to tighten the pace of individual episodes. They sought to avoid “serving-­the-­coffee-­and-­ folding-­the-­laundry-­and-­talking-­about-­a-­patient’s-­gall-­bladder-­dialogue.” Like Nixon, they added more scenes per act and, especially with the turn to hour-­long episodes, built dramatic tension across the multiple moments of a single scene linked across the hour.138 It was not so much that long-­term stories moved more quickly than in the past, but that individual episodes ­were structured so as to deliver a more satisfying and propulsive exploration of the stories underway. Nixon worked to combine this updated structuring of episodes with princi­ples of extending stories over time from the very debuts of her own soaps. With the launch of One Life to Live in 1968, she used videotape to interlace “retrospective action . . . ​with progressive action,” quickly making evident the stakes of the characters’ current circumstance by providing insight into their pasts.139 Brief, pretaped flashbacks, made up of four or five lines of dialogue, ­were rolled into live-­on-­tape scenes in the pre­sent, deepening the audience’s historical knowledge of characters they ­were first meeting.140 In the program’s first week, Viki Lord flashes back to her ­sister telling her she wants to marry Larry, not Ted; Vince Wolek flashes back to his siblings’ pride at Larry’s graduation from medical school; vari­ous characters flash back to Larry and Ted’s argument before Ted’s fall down the stairs.141 We learn about histories of f­amily dynamics, forbidden love, and class-­based resentments and pride as the characters deal with events playing out “live.” In the early weeks of All My ­Children in 1970, Nixon concealed the true parentage of Philip Brent while still offering clues from day one that Amy was his birth m ­ other. She knew that “a g­ reat deal of audience interest is stimulated by allowing them to make their inferences, to play a guessing game.”142 Nixon’s mantra, often associated with Charles Dickens, “Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait,” may have been a long-standing princi­ ple of serialized storytelling, but she employed it in ways specific to the network era.143 Through the use of new technologies, an effort to ramp up the audience’s “guessing game” from the very first episode, and new practices of episode pacing, Nixon and her fellow writers of the new network era soap Building Network Power  ·  103

figure 3.7 Daily tv Serials devoted a four-­page spread to the wedding of Days of Our Lives’ Julie and Doug (Susan Seaforth Hayes and Bill Hayes) in its January 1977 issue, highlighting the fans’ involvement in the occasion.

­ ere crucial contributors to the expanded influence of daytime drama on w the economic and cultural power of tele­vi­sion. Across the 1960s and 1970s, the practices of creating daytime soap opera changed just as the soaps’ cultural presence and economic profitability grew. A marker of this expanded influence was a January 1976 Time magazine cover story, “Soap Operas: Sex and Suffering in the After­noon,” featuring the glamorously presented central c­ ouple of Days of Our Lives, Julie and Doug.144 This kind of mainstream attention was an acknowl­edgment of daytime drama’s expanded influence, even as the article made light of the programs and their overinvested viewership. In perpetuating t­ hese cultural hierarchies, the article did not examine how the mid-1970s dool was representative of a key moment in the history of soap opera, both industrially and culturally. A product of the expanding and changing industry of the network era, dool was owned by a Hollywood studio, not a sponsor, was broadcast on nbc, a rather late competitor in the daytime business, and had recently been expanded to one hour, a signal of the industry’s grab for more and more ad revenue. 104  ·  chapter 3

Julie and Doug ­were also representative of a hinge point in the kinds of stories the soaps told. As we ­will see in chapter 4, the ­couple was imbricated in a socially “relevant” story line, a prominent trend of the sixties and seventies soaps, in this case around the m ­ atter of interracial relationships, as Julie’s (white) son, David, fell in love with a black ­woman, Valerie Grant. The soap’s focus on the coupling of Julie and Doug also indicated a major, approaching turn in soap storytelling. As explored in chapter  5, by the early 1980s relevance would fade as soaps became oriented around star-­ crossed “supercouples” whose romances built to spectacular weddings, occasions marked by extra investments in production, such as location shooting. Presaging this turn, parts of Julie and Doug’s fall 1976 wedding ­were shot on location, a production opportunity made pos­si­ble by recent developments in portable video recording equipment and electronic video editing technology, not to mention expanded bud­gets. The event was es­ ecause they w ­ ere invited to gather outside pecially notable for dool fans b the program’s Burbank home the day the in-­studio portion of the wedding was shot, so notable that fan magazine Daily tv Serials reported from the taping. The scenes ­were fed to closed-­circuit monitors set up in the parking lot; the fans got to watch the wedding “live.” When taping concluded, the actors, still in costume, exited the studio to greet their guests, who ­were served wedding cake as they took photos of the bride and groom and showered them with rice.145 As Julie and Doug embarked on their new life of (endlessly troubled) wedded bliss, so too did the industry that created them and the audiences that watched them glimpse the emergent peak of the soaps’ popularity and profitability. The daytime tv soap was a building block of the classic network era, its stories central to the culture that tele­vi­sion ­imagined.

Building Network Power  ·  105

F O U R . T U R N I N G T O R E L E VA N C E Social Issue Storytelling

Jessie and Phil Brewer w ­ ere a dif­fer­ent sort of c­ ouple than t­hose that had graced the soaps in their first de­cade on tele­vi­sion. Like the Bauers of The Guiding Light, they ­were unhappy in their marriage; like the Tates of Search for Tomorrow and the Lowells of As the World Turns, they grappled with infidelity. But unlike their pre­de­ces­sors, Jessie and Phil’s prob­lems ­were not confined to their domestic lives. As a nurse and a doctor at General Hospital, the Brewers found that their personal prob­lems followed them into the workplace, and that the prob­lems of the workplace followed them home. Eight years Phil’s se­nior, Jessie was also the more experienced medical professional. Upon the debut of General Hospital in 1963, Phil is an intern, insecure about his abilities and restless in his marriage. Jessie worries that the combination of her age and her support of him through medical school—­ she still takes home more money than he—­have compounded “the burden of his gratitude.”1 When her hunch about a patient takes them back to the hospital one eve­ning, allowing Phil to save the patient’s life, he is resentful that her professional instincts surpass his. She expresses her pride in him, and he snaps, “Why are you proud of me? It was your idea, not mine. You ­were right again.” Jessie buries her face in her hands, punishing herself for making him feel inferior.2 The fictional ­couple’s prob­lems, rooted in each character’s gendered insecurities, spoke to the psychological stresses of married life in the postwar United States, a central theme of the soaps across the 1950s and into the

figure 4.1 Nurse Jessie Brewer (Emily McLaughlin) and her husband, Dr. Phil Brewer (Roy Thinnes), have a troubled marriage in the early years of General Hospital, abc.

1960s. Yet the story of Jessie and Phil’s prob­lems also differed from that past pattern in that their trou­bles took place not only in their home but also in the ­couple’s mutual workplace, the hospital, and stemmed as much from their public, professional roles as from their private interactions. As a transitional narrative between the soaps’ first period on American tv and their expanded power in the network era, gh’s story of Jessie and Phil’s marital pain combined a focus on gender-­specific “disorders” of the psyche with a sense that gendered roles and the prob­lems associated with them ­were changing, no longer to be confined to the sphere of home and ­family. Across the network era, the daytime tv soap opera expanded not only its presence and economic power but also the foci of its stories, gradually interweaving ­matters public, and even po­liti­cal, into its tales. Historians of American tele­vi­sion have identified this period as one of “turns to relevance” in prime time, from the documentaries that established the responsiveness of tv news divisions in the early 1960s to the dramas and comedies that engaged with controversial themes such as race relations, the generation gap, antiwar activism, and w ­ omen’s liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.3 But ­there has been l­ ittle attention to similar developments in daytime, developments that often preceded and exceeded attention to such issues in prime time, including to some of their more controversial dimensions. Turning to Relevance  ·  107

The chapter argues that the “turn to relevance” in the daytime soaps of the 1960s and 1970s was marked both by bold innovations and by the “logic of safety” that makes the advertising-­supported medium ever hesitant to risk offense.4 In this era, soaps directly engaged with the issues of the day, often prior to their consideration in prime time and often in more nuanced and elaborated form than in prime time, given the duration over which stories unfolded and the volume of content generated. While network executives ­were increasingly involved in the creative direction of soaps during the network era, they did not typically interfere in the subject ­matter of stories, allowing tales of antiwar protest, race relations, and abortion to play out over months. Sponsor-­owned soaps, especially t­ hose of the conservative Procter & ­Gamble, tended to be more cautious. And yet the convolutions of soap stories w ­ ere such that even p&g soaps began to entertain more liberal and tolerant stances, at least on certain subjects, such as atwt’s late 1960s reconciliation between Ellen Lowell Stewart and the son she bore out of wedlock. Across daytime drama, potentially controversial stories tended to offer “balanced” perspectives, filling the extensive airtime with a range of views on the given subjects. Within individual stories and across the form, the soaps exemplified the function of American network tele­vi­sion as a cultural forum, a space for the raising of questions of import to the society. Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch’s theory of the cultural forum suggests that the medium “does not pre­sent firm ideological conclusions . . . ​so much as it comments on ideological prob­lems,” enabling a “rhe­toric of discussion” that works within the limits of American capitalism and po­liti­cal pluralism.5 Newcomb and Hirsch ­were not making a historically specific argument, but it is clear in hindsight that their analy­sis was specific to the network era. The variations in perspective they note within genres or across schedules are especially evident in the daytime soaps, given the variations in owner­ship structures, network involvement, and individual creators amid soap opera’s expansion. Nevertheless, the overall bent of the soaps’ “forum” in the sixties and seventies tilted t­ oward the liberal, even as other perspectives w ­ ere aired, a ­factor surely indebted to the broader culture of progressive sentiment that undergirded the period’s many left-­leaning social movements. Unlike prime time, however, daytime was not especially focused in this era on attracting a young, urban, sophisticated viewership; its “turn to relevance” cannot be explained by the same industrial argument as has been applied to prime time, that of the networks seeking to appeal to audiences in the urban centers wherein the networks owned the local stations, and thereby stood to profit from local as well as national ad sales.6 The soaps 108  ·  chapter 4

already had a narrower target audience than prime time, given their bent ­toward ­women, although that bent was increasingly oriented around the “young ­house­wife.” In daytime, the networks aimed younger in their shifting preference for soaps over game shows.7 Many of the new soaps may have had a topical sensibility similar to prime time, but ­these programs’ distinctiveness is best explained by a new generation of creators engaging with the upheavals of the world around them, not by a deliberate network strategy to reach particularly located viewers. That being said, both creators and networks sought to make their soaps, particularly new entries, stand out amid the competition, and attention to the issues of the day was a common method for ­doing so. ­These efforts also drew a wider array of viewers to soap opera, including teen­agers, college students, and men, an expanded audience that made soaps a mass cultural phenomenon by the early 1980s, as chapter  5 examines. The soaps’ network era attention to a new range of subject ­matter, particularly conflicts of generation, race, and gender, participated in a cultural forum for the changing society. While vari­ous soaps offered overtly politicized takes on issues such as the Vietnam War or race relations, the more developed of such stories w ­ ere mostly the product of one creator: Agnes Nixon, whose work on her own creations brought to tele­vi­sion some of its most progressive depictions, medium-­wide. Nixon’s work would also be crucial to the soaps’ consideration of changing gender relations, but it was around questions of gender and (hetero)sexuality that the form as a ­whole offered its most robust cultural forum. Sometimes in explic­itly politicized stories and other times amid the many exchanges of dialogue and character development that fill the hours of soap narratives, the programs participated in shaping new ways of thinking about femininity, masculinity, and relations between the two. The heterosexual dynamics of soap characters took on new forms through a range of stories, including especially tales of “reproductive drama,” like abortion. At the same time, the soaps’ female characters took on new roles as working ­women and as sexually desiring agents, characterizations in conversation with discourses of the ­women’s liberation movement. While the topics of soap story lines would move away from and t­oward relevance in dif­fer­ent historical periods, t­ here ­were two new, gendered character types to emerge out of this cultural forum on questions of gender, types that would shape soap narratives for de­cades thereafter. Supplanting the gendered roles that characters had strug­gled to fulfill in the postwar period, the network era saw the evolution of the newer archetypes of the scheming villainess and the tortured hero. ­These figures ­were as gender-­specific as Turning to Relevance  ·  109

t­hose ­earlier iterations of the psychologically disturbed h ­ ouse­wife and the failed patriarch, but they engaged with gendered expectations in new ways, produced in relation to the changing society, especially to changes in expectations of masculinity and femininity. In addition to exploring the soaps’ social issue storytelling on m ­ atters of generational conflict, race relations, and reproductive politics between the m ­ iddle 1960s and late 1970s, this chapter also includes an analy­sis of ­these new, gendered types constructed and perpetuated in the influential space of the network era soap.

Generational Conflict: Youth as Site of Social Change Given the focus on the psychological strains of f­amily dynamics and intergenerational conflict into the early 1960s, telling stories about tensions between young and old was consistent with soap history, as well as a potentially lucrative draw for the young ­women daytime advertisers sought to reach—­a demographic growing in size and value. Between 1960 and 1970, the population of eighteen-­to twenty-­four-­year-­olds increased by an unpre­ce­dented 53  ­percent.8 The sheer numbers of ­these baby boomers made them a notable group, but their maturation coincided with other social and po­liti­cal developments that gave their re­sis­tance to the authority of their parents’ generation a particularly substantive impact. The prob­lems of US involvement in Vietnam and in relations between black citizens and the white mainstream had deep roots in American society—­the baby boomers inherited circumstances primed to explode. This convergence resulted in what Aniko Bodroghkozy has termed a “generational civil war” between 1966 and 1971, when the rebellion of the young began to effect substantive change.9 Within this period, the soaps offered up stories of young ­people whose values and actions conflicted with ­those of their parents, contributing to the cultural construction of the new generation in opposition to the old. But dif­fer­ent soaps explored this clash in dif­fer­ent ways, often depending on the sensibilities and positioning of their creators. While Another World was a new soap for the network era, Irna Phillips and her cocreator, Bill Bell, envisioned it as a companion to the more established atwt. In the program’s early days in the mid-1960s, generational conflict was central, but it was typically depicted from the perspective of the parents and was more about personal values than po­liti­cal princi­ples. Central middle-­aged ­couple Mary and Jim Matthews fret over the prob­lems of their teen and young adult c­ hildren, 110  ·  chapter 4

Mary noting to Jim that it’s “the morals of our young ­people” that worry her.10 The young ­people saw the world through their parents’ eyes, as well. When the Matthews’s d ­ aughter Pat contemplates an abortion, her m ­ other’s voice echoes in her head, reminding her, “When parents lose faith in a child, ­they’ve lost faith in themselves. Our morality is their morality.”11 The prob­ lems in this narrative came from the young abandoning their elders’ ways of life; the adults’ perspectives ­were presented as superior and just. This stance resonated with older adult ­women in the soap audience, particularly as the baby boomers ­were just starting to come of age in the mid1960s. Some valued the upholding of traditional values via the more se­nior characters, praising the program as “high-­principled, ideal, grammatically perfect, and morally clean.”12 Some similarly aligned viewers disliked the amount of airtime devoted to the younger characters, even if ­those characters’ lifestyles ­were represented as wanting. As one ­woman wrote, “We strug­gled through the coco [sic] dates, the fraternity dance—­naseaum [sic]. Hoping each day would bring forth some superlative polished acting from the adults.”13 In the same period, however, the program received letters from viewers passionately invested in the young characters, viewers who empathized with ­those characters’ points of view, even if the program did not privilege them. One fifteen-­year-­old declared of her affinity for the scheming, young Lee Randolph, “She’s so neat. Please d ­ on’t let her die. Please. Even 14 take Pat but not Lee!!!!” Another dismissed the older w ­ oman characters: “Believe me ­those three old biddies you have Kathryn, Liz, and Helen, they are nothing to write home about its [sic] too much for me I ­can’t stand them, they work on my nerves.”15 The program may have punished characters who strayed from conventional values, but audience engagement did not always align with ­those princi­ples. Phillips seemingly learned from the investment of young audiences when she created Love Is a Many Splendored ­Thing in 1967. It was pitched as a serial of “new frontiers,” inspired by the legacy of John F. Kennedy and the “precarious times” of the 1960s, with intergenerational conflict at the center.16 The soap was set eigh­teen years ahead of the original narrative (first a novel and then a 1955 feature film), which had taken place in 1949. Phillips’s version told the story of Mia Elliott, the mixed-­race ­daughter of the Eurasian Dr.  Suyin Han and American journalist Mark Elliott, when she comes to the United States to study medicine. Another key figure was Mia’s cousin, Mark (named a­ fter her deceased f­ ather), newly returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam. Mark gets romantically involved with Iris Donnelly, a young ­woman who speaks the hip language of the day and listens to the Rolling Turning to Relevance  ·  111

Stones. As she described their relationship: “Together, ­we’re a Trip. ­We’re a happening.”17 ­These markers of “todayness” ­were not merely superficial references. Splendored ­Thing acknowledged that the day’s conflicts between generations had po­liti­cal consequences, and tacitly offered support for the young ­people’s viewpoints, an unusual step for Phillips’s more typical emphasis on traditional ­family life and the values of the older generation. While she wrote matriarch Helen Elliott as sharing the worries of AW’s Mary Matthews when it came to relationships with youth, she also allowed Helen’s son, the young vet Mark, to credibly challenge her outdated views. Thus, Helen frets, “Why must ­there be this lonely, empty gap between generations t­ oday?” and disapproves of the choices of her niece Mia, noting that in her own youth, “We accepted our parents’ values without question.”18 But Phillips also scripted Mark pushing back against Helen’s disapproval, convincingly asserting, “­Mother, w ­ e’re not ­going to compound that ­mistake. I know it’s been ­going on for thousands of years, but ­things are changing faster now than ever in history.”19 As a returned vet, Mark has a critical and ­bitter perspective on the war that was especially power­ful. He claims that the experience made him lose “belief ” and that most of the men with whom he served “­were only kids,” enforcing the idea that the antiwar movement and the young ­people who advocated for it ­were on the side of morality and justice.20 Soap characters who took such stances marked a gradual admittance to rumblings of social change. Newer writer-­creators crafted stories and characters with even more overtly politicized intentions, often using intergenerational conflict as a means of voicing such disruptions. While they had long written for their mentor’s soaps, Phillips’s protégés Agnes Nixon and Bill Bell embodied this practice of the young challenging their elders in the original serials they launched and guided. Nixon and Bell tended to represent this challenge in ways that acknowledged the older generation’s perspective rather than outright defying it, modeled a­ fter their own respectful differences from Phillips. ­ hildren in 1970, she sought As Nixon crafted the early weeks of All My C to encourage her audience of older w ­ omen to understand the fear and uncertainty with which the young ­were seeing the world around them. She knew that a scene about the teenage Philip Brent talking to his ­mother, Ruth, about w ­ hether to enlist in the military would not do much to advance the plot, but she hoped it would demonstrate “the plight of the young man at 18, 19, 20, t­ oday who just r­ eally ­doesn’t know what the f­ uture ­will bring or if ­he’ll have a f­ uture at all.” She sought to communicate the awareness of young 112  ·  chapter 4

­ eople that “it’s a pretty mixed up world ­they’re inheriting.”21 This form of p cautious, tolerant liberalism was embedded in Nixon’s vision for the serial; she wrote central, middle-­aged characters like Ruth and her hospital colleague Joe Martin as admirable, giving citizens whose deep belief that “the strong are indebted to the weak” was the embodiment of the philosophy she envisioned for the program as a ­whole.22 But she also gave more radical perspectives voice, particularly through the character of Amy Tyler, portrayed by former atwt ingenue Rosemary Prinz (she had played Penny Hughes), whose fame among soap fans helped launch amc. Prinz, now forty years old, agreed to a six-­month contract in order to have a forum for her own antiwar views; Nixon shared her perspective and crafted Amy as a peace activist.23 In the first week of episodes, we learn that Amy is involved in “­Women Demonstrate for Peace” and that she is “very upset about the state of the world.”24 Yet Nixon strove to offer a “balanced” view of the war by having Amy’s wealthy in-­laws challenge her stance.25 Nixon’s aim was not necessarily to avoid criticism; rather, it was to heighten dramatic tension and, ultimately, to strengthen the persuasiveness of the antiwar case: “I r­ eally feel that to do the best bit of realistic drama we have to picture life as it r­ eally is ­today and give some of that ‘­silent majority,’ which I ­don’t believe is a majority, a voice. We all know how we feel but the cause Amy’s working for ­will not be presented as strongly as it should be if she ­doesn’t have some adversaries.”26 Amy and her husband, Linc, debate ­whether the antiwar position aligns with communism; her father-­in-­law questions ­whether she wants to be “chiming in with ­every left-­winger in the country”; her mother-­in-­law urges her to get involved in c­ auses that “­aren’t of such a controversial nature.”27 As a continuing soap character, Amy’s story was about more than her po­liti­cal beliefs; it was about the connection between t­ hose beliefs and her personal trou­bles, namely, that she is the biological ­mother to her ­sister Ruth’s son Philip, and that Philip is in danger of being drafted. Philip does not know of his true parentage—­Amy gave him to her married ­sister to raise as a result of Amy’s youthful, unwed pregnancy. Through such a history, the radicalism of Amy’s beliefs could be tempered and explained via the “universal” bond of a m ­ other’s love for her child. Amy’s objections to the war are entangled with her fears about her secret being exposed and her worry that Philip might be drafted. In the fifth episode, Amy gazes at a pair of Philip’s baby booties and then has a terrifying dream in which she stands amid a thick fog—­the smoke of ­battle?—­and is surrounded by multiple sounds: blasts of gunfire, the voices of her ­family talking about Turning to Relevance  ·  113

figure 4.2 During 1970, the debut year for All My ­Children (abc), soap veteran Rosemary Prinz played peace activist Amy Tyler, a ­woman motivated by po­liti­cal passion and fear for the life of her son, Philip Brent (Richard Hatch). Her mother-­in-­law, Phoebe Tyler (Ruth Warrick), disapproves of her po­liti­cal activism.

Philip, and Philip himself calling for her help. The sequence then depicts Philip walking ­toward her: “Wearing what’s left of a camouflage suit. His face streaked with dirt and blood, using his ­rifle as a crutch as he stumbles along, and carry­ing his army boots in his other hand.” Amy rushes to him, and he collapses, ­dying in her arms. A shot of the army boots dissolves into one of the baby booties as the sequence ends.28 The parallelism of the baby boots and the army boots emphasized Amy’s maternal strug­gle but also offered a po­liti­cal critique, suggesting that Amer­ic­ a’s youth ­were being sent off to a dangerous and unjustified war. All My ­Children treated the m ­ atter of concern over US involvement in Vietnam as both po­liti­cal and personal.29 This allowed the story to read differently to dif­fer­ent audiences and to minimize the likelihood of viewers taking offense. While Amy’s story is ultimately more about the truth of Philip’s parentage than it is about Vietnam, the program’s attention to this issue continues past Amy’s/Prinz’s ­limited run. Eventually, Philip does get drafted—­and is killed in action.30 When she gets the news, his adoptive m ­ other, Ruth, offers her own antiwar speech: 114  ·  chapter 4

Philip ­didn’t want to go to war. Think of the millions and millions of young men like Philip through the history of time who have fought and died in wars they never wanted. Oh Joe, think of the waste, the tragic waste of all ­those beautiful young lives! And what did it ever accomplish? All the wars, the killing, the destruction, the hatred and suffering—­and it never solves anything! Why does it have to go on and on and on?31 Ruth’s denouncement targets acts of mass strife as a whole—­she is not engaged with the specificity of Vietnam. But the fact that such a stance comes from a ­woman of the World War II generation, a parent of the baby boom, speaks to the soaps’ changing engagement with the po­liti­cal sphere. As recently as ten to fifteen years ­earlier, a model of maternal femininity like Ruth would have been much more likely to voice nationalist pride in the sacrifices American families necessarily made in times of war. But the impact of the youth rebellion against the war combined with the costs of the extended, ill-­ defined fighting in Vietnam and the unsustainable pressure upon maternal duty within Cold War ideology had veritably reversed the feminized position on war. In the emotional travails of characters like Amy and Ruth, soap opera represented the centrality of conventional femininity to this major disruption of nationalist ideology. The characters’ personal pain was connected to a social and po­liti­cal context. This linkage between personal strug­ gles and broader forces consistently guided Nixon’s work.32

Racial and Ethnic Difference If the ­handling of generational strife and youthful re­sis­tance repeatedly found ways to personalize the po­liti­cal in order to address it with a minimum of controversy, the attention to racial and ethnic difference in soap opera walked an even trickier line, given the soaps’ history of assuming its tales of white, middle-­class ­family life w ­ ere universally resonant. In a period of growing civil rights activism, the soaps’ racial and ethnic uniformity was becoming increasingly suspect. Soap creatives and soap audiences began to question the nearly non­ex­is­tent diversity in daytime, slowly opening the form to change in ways that rarely disrupted presumptions of a white norm but that introduced cracks in its placid surface. Once again, Nixon’s work on this pressing issue went further than most in advocating for progressive values, even as it embedded this stance within a compelling interpersonal narrative. Turning to Relevance  ·  115

The racial dynamics of the soap industry w ­ ere shaken up by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which codified the aims of many years of activism around racial in­equality. In March  1965, the Congress for Racial Equality, an activist group working ­toward abolishing racial discrimination in the arts, wrote to daytime soap sponsors to urge them to “depict non-­whites as an integral part of the American scene.”33 In April, abc announced a concerted effort to “integrate” its daytime slate, mostly with guest spots for black actors in stories of varying length. While the network made a point of noting that black characters would not only appear in “racially-­angled plots,” their roles ­were always secondary and often temporary.34 Midde­cade, executives at the network and sponsor levels remained wary of racially integrated soap casts, perhaps not surprising given that prime time would not feature its first black lead (Bill Cosby in I Spy) ­until the fall of 1965. abc worried about “affiliate and public ac­cep­tance” of its modest plans for racial inclusion.35 Phillips claimed that she wanted to be able to treat topics like segregation in her soaps, but that p&g forbade “significant Negro portrayals.” Phillips was interested in telling a story about divorce through the eyes of a black child, a means, typical in her work, of avoiding highly politicized racial topics. As she asserted during a 1965 appearance on a Chicago talk show, “I would like to integrate my shows . . . ​but I w ­ ill not use Negroes for filler. I have no Negro performers now ­because I ­can’t use them as I want to.”36 Some soaps did have characters of color as extras and in background roles across the 1960s; viewers noticed and praised the programs for ­these steps.37 As racial unrest continued during ­these years, a number of groups probed potential c­ auses. Both the federal government’s Kerner Commission and the New York H ­ uman Rights Commission saw media repre­sen­ta­tions as entangled in the nation’s race prob­lems, largely due to the lack of consideration of black Americans and their concerns.38 Initiatives like ­these fi­nally pushed the industry into action. In 1968, an unpre­ce­dented amount of tv programming featured black Americans, w ­ hether in documentary or fictional form, integrating casts and probing race-­related issues.39 This was true in daytime as well as prime time. Black characters became more central to soap casts, including Rita and Joe Bonds on Love of Life and Ed Starck and Anna Ford on The Doctors.40 By 1970, the Joint Equality Committee of a number of entertainment industry creative guilds urged soap sponsor-­owners like p&g to better address minority hiring on-­screen and offscreen, and abc issued directives about improving minority employment across positions.41 The industry was clearly motivated to change, but its efforts to that end typically ­were l­imited. 116  ·  chapter 4

Allen has noted the difficulty soaps faced in integrating nonwhite characters into their story canvases, given the primacy of familial and romantic ties in soap narratives.42 With contemporaneous anx­ie­ ties about miscegenation, nonwhite figures tended to have marginal positions within network era soaps, appearing alongside the predominantly white characters but rarely involved with them interpersonally. The Doctors’ black characters of the late 1960s fit this formula. Dr. Ed Starck, a Vietnam vet, is helped by the (white) doctors at Hope Memorial, who perform surgery on his injured hand and allow him to return to medicine. Ed is romantically paired with Anna, a black journalist also injured in the war. Their heroic pasts make Ed and Anna indisputably admirable, the sort of “ideal civil rights subjects” Bodroghkozy has identified as a common means of representing African Americans in civil rights era tv, but their involvement is primarily with each other, and even that never matures into a full-­blown romance.43 Both left the program within a ­couple of years. Such respectful but sideline roles ­were typical for the soaps’ nonwhite characters across the network era. A few serials drew upon taboos of racial mixing, and even miscegenation, as the impetus for stories, although network involvement often quashed the disruptive potential of such efforts. In 1967, the debut of liamst included a potential romance between the Eurasian Mia Elliott (played by the actress Nancy Hseuh, who was of Asian descent, unlike the character of her m ­ other in the 1955 film, portrayed by the white Jennifer Jones) and a white doctor. Variety described Mia in racialized terms, as “appropriately enigmatic as a sort of nubile symbol of Oriental wisdom and mysticism,” taking a cue from the program’s press release, which described Mia similarly, and from the soap itself, which characterized Mia as “untouched by Western influence.”44 Mia encounters some re­sis­tance from her aunt, Helen Elliott, who finds her uncomfortably dif­fer­ent, and even deals with a racist patient, who asks to be treated by “persons of my own kind.” But other characters educate ­these uninformed individuals, safely locating their racism in their individual flaws rather than in the society as a ­whole.45 The Orientalization of Mia, paired with the repudiation of overt racism and the locating of her difference apart from the more contentious status of black Americans, might have allowed her an intelligible, if still Othered, place in the soap’s community. But poor ratings led the hands-on cbs to make changes to the show, including firing Hseuh, less than five months into its run, at which point Phillips left the serial as well. One of Phillips’s more po­liti­cally engaged efforts (she was also responsible for Mark Elliott’s cynical take on Vietnam) was quickly dissolved due to the network’s heavy hand. Turning to Relevance  ·  117

Such tepid attempts at racial integration marked most of the soaps’ initial efforts at diversity. Yet one program, Nixon’s One Life to Live, explored racial and ethnic identity in a more substantive way with its 1968 launch. The soap was explic­itly promoted as an effort to take daytime out of “wasp Valley.”46 One press account even labeled it a “Soap Opera About Negroes,” ­because it debuted with three black characters; the canvas also included eco­nom­ically struggling adult ­children of immigrants and an interfaith married ­couple. In keeping with her progressive agenda, Nixon’s goal was to appeal to the masses by “show[ing] all of the masses,” including a degree of racial and ethnic diversity as yet unseen in daytime.47 The specifics of how one early story of racial identity unfolded on oltl are telling of what was pos­si­ble when the soaps took on such questions, and when a writer like Nixon, owner of her own soap at the time, had so much creative control. Early in the soap’s run, in October  1968, Carla Benari, a white w ­ oman suffering from a mysterious malady, checks into the town hospital. Within a few months, she is engaged to marry her white doctor, Jim Craig, but she is also drawn to Dr. Price Trainor, the black intern from a wealthy f­amily who also treated her. On the January 3, 1969, episode, Price and Carla admit their mutual feelings, kissing as the episode ends. Soon a­ fter, they and other characters begin to discuss the challenges of interracial romance. Price decides to leave town, noting his black pride and his friendship with Jim, to whom Carla is still engaged.48 But on January 20, the story takes a dramatic turn. Carla bumps into an older black ­woman, Sadie Grey, who has been a continuing character on the soap. Sadie was mostly a supporting character, but we knew her ­daughter, Clara, had died some time before. As Sadie and Carla come face to face, “­there is a long, long moment of awareness of each other that turns to recognition.” Sadie exclaims, “Clara!” and Carla replies, “Mama” as the episode ends.49 We soon learn that Carla/Clara left home as a teenager, ­eager to work as an actress but stymied by ­those unwilling to cast a black girl, changing her name and passing as white to advance in her ­career. Sadie told ­people her ­daughter had died rather than explain this betrayal. As ­others begin to learn Carla’s true identity, multiple scenes center on her motivations for passing, but also on racial pride, class difference, the place of a c­ areer in a ­woman’s life, and the performative dimensions of femininity. Carla locates blame for her choice in the racially discriminatory society, but characters like Sadie and Price believe that a more just world depends on proudly claiming one’s racial identity; Sadie also thinks a ­career is not worth abandoning one’s f­ amily.50 Price talks to other black men about his feelings, as well as to Jim Craig. One black friend challenges Price to consider his 118  ·  chapter 4

figure 4.3 Carla Gray (Ellen Holly) tries to help her ­mother understand her choice to pass as white on One Life to Live, abc, 1969.

privilege in coming from a well-­off, respected f­amily. Jim recognizes that he cannot fully understand the black experience, but he also asks Price to think about the pressures Carla faced in coming from a less prosperous background. Price explains, “Being black t­oday is like—­well, like being an American during a time of war, of ­great crisis,” making explicit the intense pressure of racial difference.51 Carla talks to white friends Anna Wolek and Karen Martin, who share experiences of lying about themselves to men, currying male f­avor by hiding one’s immigrant, working-­class ­family or just participating in the evasions of heterosexual femininity. As Karen describes, “­There are a lot of ways of passing. . . . ​Particularly a girl. . . . ​­Doesn’t she get dressed up special, do ­things a ­little differently, pretend a ­little bit with the man she wants to marry? And she certainly never tells him what’s actually on her mind.” Anna sees her own past deceptions as misguided, but Karen, a less secure and more deceptive character, is just being frank about her experience as a ­woman.52 For three months ­after the reveal of Carla’s identity, oltl explored the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in ways rarely broached in American commercial media, and untouched to such an extent in 1960s prime-­time tele­vi­sion. Turning to Relevance  ·  119

The truth of Carla being Sadie’s d ­ aughter was a shocking and dramatically effective twist, but the choice to use it as an opportunity to delve into the multiple dimensions of identity made the story more engaged with social questions than was the typical melodramatic tale of passing, such as the 1959 feature film Imitation of Life, which, according to Marina Heung, drove ­toward “closure and ideological containment, rather than open-­ended and subversive interrogation,” due in part to its emphasis on ­matters of race as being “familial rather than social.”53 Imitation inspired Nixon’s story in the first place, but she deliberately set out to use “the luxury of time” in soaps to “prompt the audience to examine its own racial prejudices.”54 Carla’s portrayer, Ellen Holly, understood the comparison similarly, arguing that in a story such as Imitation, passing “is never actually examined or illuminated but merely exploited for its surface melodrama.”55 The oltl story engaged more directly with the social construction of identity along multiple axes, its open-­endedness allowing more opportunity for questioning dominant beliefs. Through both form and execution, the soaps of the network era had the potential to function as a unique space for connecting the personal to the po­liti­cal when it came to ­matters of race. Carla’s story was aty­pi­cal for the soaps but demonstrated that racial difference not only could be integrated into soap storytelling but also could make for a power­ful, engaging tale.

Reproductive Drama: Stories of Pregnancy and Abortion Reproductive drama—­stories about pregnancies wanted and unwanted, term and aborted, within and outside the bounds of marriage—­had long been central to soap narratives. In the 1960s and 1970s, the soaps’ cultural forum grappled with developments such as the birth control pill, the legalization of medical abortion, the growing practices of artificial insemination and natu­ral childbirth, the increasing acceptability of adoption, and shifting mores of sex outside of marriage, all upending the implications of sex, pregnancy, and motherhood for ­women’s lives. The changes in the soaps’ perspectives on abortion in par­tic­u­lar are revealing of the ways the form was engaging with and participating in broader discursive shifts about gender identity and ­women’s autonomy. As with such issues as generational conflict and race relations, Nixon was again at the forefront of ­these programs’ carefully presented support for progressive stances. In tackling abortion, Nixon’s creative influence fortuitously met with a broader context of ac­cep­tance ­toward ­women’s choices that would prove to be short-­lived. 120  ·  chapter 4

Early in the network era, the young ­women characters who found themselves pregnant outside of marriage typically suffered, in line with the psychological distress depicted in the postwar soaps. But even t­ hese early stories tilted ­toward the raising of questions rather than the explic­itly ideological attribution of blame or assertion of solutions. They also put the young ­woman’s experience at the center, quite unlike the prime-­time ­handling of abortion in the same era, when single-­episode treatments of the issue tended to focus on male doctors, ­lawyers, and f­athers; their compassionate morality was at the heart of the tales.56 In contrast, the young ­woman’s perspective was at the center of one of Irna Phillips’s first stories for p&g’s Another World, which returned to her ­earlier theme of unwed pregnancy, but this time introduced abortion, rather than adoption, as the young ­woman’s means of (in­effec­tively) solving her prob­lem. Virginal college student Pat Matthews’s May 1964 assignation with Tom Baxter, the playboy-­like student with whom she has fallen in love, results in her pregnancy, which she hides from her ­family, eventually getting an illegal abortion. She falls ill from an infection afterward, learns she is sterile as a result, shoots and kills Tom when he makes clear their relationship is over, then blocks it all out. It is only in February 1965 that Pat fi­nally remembers what has happened to her and her ­family learns the truth. Although Pat’s sexual activity and decision to have the abortion are disastrous for her, the specifics of how the story unfolded allowed for some variation in understanding the implications of nonmarital sex and of abortion itself. One question the story raised is that of marriage and w ­ hether it is the necessary, or best, choice for t­hose who find themselves pregnant and unwed. When he learns of the pregnancy, Tom resists Pat’s talk of marriage, making clear it is not what he wants, that he sees an unintended pregnancy as a poor basis for such a commitment.57 In this, he is somewhat sympathetic. Tom is not an outright villain. He cares for Pat, assists her a­ fter the abortion, is honest about what he is and is not ready to do. Tom’s own parents have an unhappy marriage, offering the character and the viewer a logical rationale for why he might be hesitant about the institution.58 That the audience was privy to Tom’s background and perspective, and that he meets his own tragic demise, may have kept him from being the source of blame for Pat’s trou­bles. Even if viewers believed his duty was to marry Pat, they knew that the marriage would not have been a happy one. The abortion itself was also a space within which questions of cause and effect ­were raised, helping to tilt the plot slightly away from ideological fixity. nbc’s Broadcast Standards Department ­shaped the story by asking for Turning to Relevance  ·  121

figure 4.4 In 1964, ­during the early months of Another World (nbc), Tom Baxter (Nicholas Pryor) and Pat Matthews (Susan Trustman) are a carefree young ­couple whose lives are destroyed by an unwed pregnancy, abortion, and death.

script edits that maneuvered around any one site of blame. The department requested a distinction between the abortion itself and the resultant infection, with the latter stated as the cause of Pat’s sterility. Vari­ous characters make clear the dangers of abortion, and Pat gets ill nearly immediately afterward, but ultimately the program did not blame the procedure itself.59 Other negotiations surrounded Pat’s level of responsibility for her suffering. The network’s censor cautioned against dialogue that made Pat “totally innocent and blameless.”60 While this placed responsibility on the young ­woman for her violations of gendered propriety, it also attributed to her some agency; she was not a mere victim of a duplicitous man. Fi­nally, the censor made sure that abortion was not presented as Pat’s only option. Pat’s cousin Bill was initially scripted as saying so, but his line was changed to say that neither having the baby nor aborting the pregnancy would have made for happiness for Pat.61 ­These adjustments ­were clearly designed to protect the network from blame for endorsing illegal practices that some considered immoral. But they also resulted in greater ambiguity about the c­ auses of Pat’s trou­bles—­did 122  ·  chapter 4

she make bad choices, or was her situation an impossible one to navigate? If the latter, what made it so untenable? The specifics of the network business but also the necessity of months of talk by a range of characters allowed for questioning of what might other­wise seem an ideologically clear condemnation of a villainous man, a sexually “loose” w ­ oman, or an illegal and immoral procedure.62 The clearest indicator that the story allowed some room for negotiation on questions of premarital sex and abortion was the sympathy Pat gained from viewers. Pat’s portrayer, Susan Trustman, reported that aw fans expressed their faith in Pat whenever she encountered them, assuring her, “­We’re all pulling for you.”63 As the story resolved, Pat slowly began to bond with her attorney, John Randolph. As Pat and John fell in love, they became audience favorites, with some viewers ­eager for Pat’s happiness in direct relation to her suffering the previous year. While one ­woman criticized the lax morality of new characters like John’s ­daughter, Lee, she saw the “scandal with Pat and Tom” as “well handled,” “well done,” and in “good taste.” 64 A letter from a group of viewers insisted, “Pat’s just got to have John’s baby”—­ they knew she was supposed to be sterile but ­were also convinced that “that sterile idea can have been an error or just clear itself up.”65 Viewers like t­ hese knew Pat’s history and did not condemn her for it; in fact, they wanted redemption for her. As one fan wrote to new head writer Harding Lemay in the early 1970s in response to the character’s alcoholism, Pat was especially deserving of marital and maternal serenity given her past—­“I have known Pat Randolph all her life . . . ​and she would never do what y­ ou’re forcing her to do.”66 Fans like ­these remembered Pat’s history (a history of which Lemay himself was unaware before receiving this letter) and read her pre­sent in light of it. What­ever judgment was implicit in the original story had not stuck with t­ hese viewers—­their affinity with Pat surpassed the vari­ous ways in which the story condemned her choices and punished her for them. An array of forces, including contemporaneous abortion law, the narrative demands of soap opera, and nbc’s self-­protective standards, gave Pat’s story the shape it had. But Phillips’s impact as writer was also an impor­tant influence, given that Pat’s story in some ways mirrored Phillips’s own. As a young ­woman, Phillips had become pregnant by a man with whom she had fallen in love, and for whom she had uprooted her life, moving to his hometown without any assurance from him of a f­uture together. The man was a doctor who was also a bit of a playboy, much like Tom Baxter, and Phillips’s innocent romanticizing of the doctor’s less-­than-­admirable qualities was much like Pat’s mooning over the flawed Tom. Pat fantasizes about Turning to Relevance  ·  123

Tom while listening to “their song,” “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,” also a favorite of Phillips’s. When the doctor abandoned her, Phillips intended to carry her child to term and raise it on her own, but her encounter with him had also left her with “an infection,” presumably a sexually transmitted disease, which may have contributed to her baby being stillborn late in the pregnancy, leaving Phillips unable to have c­ hildren thereafter.67 Phillips ­imagined a dif­fer­ent outcome for several unwed ­mothers she scripted in her radio serials, w ­ omen who defied expectations and raised their babies on their own, although Procter & G ­ amble insisted on more negative consequences on its serials, including for Ellen Lowell on tele­vi­sion’s atwt.68 While Pat’s story included the abortion, her suffering thereafter was especially resonant with Phillips’s own. Pat’s eventual (mostly) happy marriage with attorney John Randolph may have been Phillips’s fantasy of her own missed path with Ralph Skilken, the attorney who stood by her side and helped her have the doctor named in court as her unborn baby’s f­ ather, but who married another ­woman.69 While Phillips was no crusader for ­women’s rights, she knew from experience the pain and strug­gle of unwed pregnancy and its potential consequences, contributing to a sense in Pat’s story of the characters, and especially the young ­woman at the center, suffering due to individual circumstances and a social structure outside their control. Nonetheless, while the story of Pat’s abortion included some room for varying perspectives, it was contained by postwar discourses of gendered expectation and their associated limitations of ­women’s reproductive freedom. Soap stories of pregnancy and abortion in the l­ater 1960s and the 1970s, in which w ­ omen characters had more choices and exercised t­ hose choices in ways that w ­ ere not necessarily judged negatively, w ­ ere notably dif­fer­ent. New creators with more progressive views taking control of soaps w ­ ere one key ele­ment, but so too ­were the networks’ move t­ oward social issue storytelling and the broader changing social and po­liti­cal context. ­After the 1965 Supreme Court decision that made married c­ ouples’ birth control use a right of privacy, public opinion began to f­avor l­egal abortion for physical and ­mental health reasons.70 Between 1965 and 1972, thirteen states liberalized their abortion policies and four states repealed antiabortion laws.71 ­After the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, abortion became a l­egal right nationwide, even as states continued to regulate access to it. While still considered a difficult choice, by the early and mid-1970s abortion was rather widely accepted as a ­legal real­ity that might be the most appropriate option for a ­woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. Feminists 124  ·  chapter 4

active within the Republican Party ­were supporters of ­these reproductive rights; indeed, the party as a w ­ hole, e­ ager to find wider approval in the wake of the Watergate scandal, accepted many princi­ples of equal treatment–­style feminism. It would not be ­until l­ater in the 1970s, when socially and religiously conservative New Right interests began to dominate, that antiabortion activism became the party-­specific, po­liti­cal hot-­button issue it would remain for de­cades.72 This period of tentative acquiescence to ­legal abortion in the early and mid-1970s helps explain the soaps’ turn to more nuanced stories of ­women contemplating, and even moving forward with, abortions; the soaps’ stories might also be credited with encouraging this social ac­cep­tance among their growing audience. Most groundbreaking in this regard was a 1971 All My ­Children story, written by Nixon, in which the young, married Erica Kane Martin doggedly pursues, and gets, an abortion.73 The selfish and vain Erica is a college student at this point, newly married to medical student Jeff and well aware that she would make a terrible ­mother. When she finds she is pregnant, she travels from her Pennsylvania home to New York City, where, thanks to differences in state laws, she can pursue a l­ egal abortion. However, as she tells her disapproving ­mother, she is unable to have the procedure “­because t­ here are hundreds of pregnant ­women g­ oing to New York for the same reason,” and the wait is unacceptably long. This convolution of Erica’s story, stretching out her prob­lem across more and more episodes, also offered a commentary on w ­ omen’s need for a procedure to which they had restricted access.74 As Erica realizes she has to tell Jeff about the pregnancy, she quickly also tells him she wants an abortion. Erica is adamant and unwavering in her stance: “­We’re not ready to have a baby”; “I ­don’t want it, Jeff. I hate the very idea of it.”75 Both Jeff and their respective parents repeatedly say that Erica ­will get used to the idea, that she does not have a good reason for an abortion, that abortion is wrong, that she is acting out of fear that a baby w ­ ill come between her and Jeff.76 Many of t­ hese arguments fit with the antiabortion stances of the day. But Erica is relentless. Never for a moment does she waver in her certainty that her choice is the correct one and that it is entirely within her right to make it. Her rebuttals to ­others’ assertions are clear statements of her stubborn immaturity, but they are also bold declarations of self-­determination. To her doctor: “I’m not just a body, Doctor, I’m a person. And I ­don’t want that baby.”77 To Jeff, an accusation of “driving me into a motherhood I’m not ready for, that I d ­ on’t want.”78 To her father-­ in-­law, whom she characterizes as seeing her as “a baby-­machine for Jeff ”: Turning to Relevance  ·  125

“­Whether or not I have an abortion is none of your business.”79 And to her ­mother: “­You’re all treating me like a ­thing, not like a person. It’s as if I ­don’t count at all. And that’s ­really very funny, you know? ­Because when you come right down to it, I’m the only person who should have anything to say about it.”80 Erica, still a teenager, was not a virtuous character—­audiences knew her as a manipulative troublemaker, a prototypical villainess, the crucial new feminine character type of the network era. But audiences also had insight into her motivations. Her f­ather had abandoned her and her ­mother, leaving her desperate for male attention. Her m ­ other, Mona, was well aware of her ­daughter’s selfish nature but supported her nonetheless. According to Nixon, Mona’s relationship to Erica was key to audience sympathy with the young villainess; viewers ­were encouraged to see Erica through Mona’s eyes.81 Erica’s encounter with the doctor she w ­ ill eventually trick into performing the abortion eerily echoed Pat Matthews’s situation from 1964, as if Nixon was offering a variation on the theme created by her mentor, Phillips. But Nixon’s variation differed in some crucial ways. Erica essentially takes on Pat’s story, telling the doctor she is single and that the f­ather cannot marry her, that she c­ an’t tell her parents, that she is desperate.82 One key difference from Pat’s experience is the purported legality of the abortion Erica pursues. In real­ity, however, the legality of abortion in Pennsylvania was indeterminate at this time. The state banned illegal abortion but had not made clear its standards of legality. As a result, the availability of ­legal abortion varied around the state, according to local interpretation.83 In the narrative universe of amc, abortion was ­legal, but it required the permission of a married ­woman’s husband. This is a key plot point that emphasized the inconsistencies in ­women’s rights across state lines. But the main difference for Erica in comparison to Pat was in her control ­ on’t over her situation. Pat gets her abortion out of a lack of control. Tom w marry her, she is too ashamed to tell her parents, Tom insists this is the only way. But Erica, as was true of the more newly conceived villainess archetype, controls her entire situation. When the unrestricted legality of a New York abortion does not fit her needs, she finds a way to make a Pennsylvania abortion work for her, albeit through manipulation and lying. Indeed, she keeps up her lies ­after the fact, hoping to convince every­one that she miscarried when she falls ill from an infection. But Erica never regrets her decision, and she d ­ oesn’t r­ eally suffer from it, especially in comparison to the trauma Pat endured. Nixon specifically scripted that Erica’s only qualms ­were about 126  ·  chapter 4

potential harm to herself from the procedure—­they had nothing to do with its results.84 Erica feels g­ reat relief when it is done.85 Even ­those characters who opposed Erica’s decision note that her infection was not caused by the abortion itself but rather by her efforts to hide having had it and not taking the proper postprocedure precautions as a result—­a further elaboration of the slight opening in Pat’s story that attributed her sterility to the infection, not the abortion itself.86 The older generation disapproves of what Erica has done, but Jeff is notably understanding, reversing his ­earlier stance when he tells her, “I’m not condemning you. ­There was nothing wrong with your having the abortion. The only t­hing wrong was the way you did it . . . ​without telling me. You should have been honest with me,” thereby making a case for openness of communication between young ­couples in love, suggesting that this is the new generation’s more progressive style, and that abortion need not be a life-­destroying sin for ­today’s youth.87 Ultimately, the soap allowed Erica to be deceptive and selfish while also being sympathetic and even admirable in her unwavering resolve. Due to the soaps’ dialogue de­pen­dency, the other characters’ reactions w ­ ere as impor­tant as the character’s own claims. In this story, the ­woman’s ­legal and moral right to abortion is given voice, and even supported, through dialogic developments and narrative progression. It is a remarkably dif­fer­ent story from the one Phillips told just seven years e­ arlier. Across the 1970s, abortion was not a regular event in soap storytelling, but a number of characters contemplated it and did not necessarily face condemnation for d ­ oing so. In 1976, dool’s Brooke Hamilton has an abortion when David Banning makes clear that he w ­ ill not marry her—­the fact that her fetus may have been endangered by an overdose of sleeping pills she had taken suggested that the abortion may have been for the best. A number of other characters across soaps (albeit not typically in t­ hose owned and sponsored by p&g) saw abortion as a ­viable choice; cases in which the child’s health might be threatened w ­ ere a common means of exploring the issue without inciting much controversy. A number of characters voiced pro-­choice perspectives, and some w ­ ere even able to articulate abortion as a w ­ oman’s right, echoing feminist discourse. Most typically, the network era soaps used abortion and other issues around reproduction as ways to explore changing discourses of femininity; t­hese ­were still stories about the consequences of being a heterosexual ­woman, but the characters at their center had more control over their own fates than did characters of ­earlier eras. The network era Turning to Relevance  ·  127

soaps ­were a cultural forum on questions of reproductive rights, wherein the range of possibilities for w ­ omen and their potential for self-­determination ­were broader than they had been in the previous era of the tv soap.

Gendered Liberation: ­Women and Work While some soaps, especially Nixon’s new entries, engaged directly with the issues of the day, encouraging audience empathy with progressive interests, across the form no aspect of social identity was more fully explored and offered up for debate than gender. While soap opera masculinity would undergo a significant transformation with the emergence of the tortured hero, many of the period’s most notable engagements with the changing times ­were vis­i­ble in shifting constructions of femininity. The archetype of the scheming villainess would be the most enduring of such shifts, but also in the soaps’ everyday repre­sen­ta­tions of ­women characters’ lives the programs provided a forum on femininity in an age of social change. One of the more subtle ways in which the soaps introduced significant change in their constructions of femininity was by giving more and more female characters jobs, figuring them into the story canvas through their workplaces in addition to or instead of their home lives. That The Doc­ tors and General Hospital ­were both set in workplaces made this central to their premises. By the early 1960s, soap creators ­were aware that w ­ omen in their audience increasingly w ­ ere seeing a c­ areer as a v­ iable option; by 1963, 41  ­percent of American w ­ omen aged twenty-five to forty-­four w ­ ere employed, tilting especially ­toward w ­ omen with ­children of school age and older.88 As significantly, attitudes ­toward ­women and work ­were changing across the 1960s, as “approving attitudes t­ oward married w ­ omen’s work became the norm” for working-­class and middle-­class Americans alike.89 The success of Helen Gurley Brown’s advice book, Sex and the Single Girl, in 1962, made widespread the fact that work was central to the lives of unmarried ­women, as well.90 The soaps ­were participants in such changing discourses, as more and more w ­ omen characters, including ­those married and with ­children, ­were employed as a ­matter of course.91 Even t­ hose more traditionally drawn ­women characters—­the matriarchs of soap families—­considered new lives for themselves in this spirit. In proposing Another World in the mid-1960s, Phillips and Bell noted “that t­ here’s a question in the minds of many ­today ­whether the ­woman at home is r­ eally a fulfilled ­woman; or is she . . . ​seeking to escape the boredom of being only a 128  ·  chapter 4

wife and a ­mother.” They i­ magined that the maternal Mary Matthews would have “read the Feminine Mystique, and having read it, she begins to question and won­der, as does ­every ­woman who is ­today reading books and articles on the unfulfilled ­woman,” and, as a result, might even consider ­whether she wants to go to work.92 Soap creators saw their audience as aligned with their fictional heroines, and they increasingly ­imagined work outside the home as acceptable to their viewers and their characters. The working w ­ omen characters of the 1960s soaps w ­ ere often positioned between the psychologically troubled h ­ ouse­wives of the postwar soaps and a new iteration of femininity, still beset with trou­bles but not necessarily on the level of the psychically disordered. On The Doctors in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the main female characters ­were physicians whose ­careers ­were not the source of their prob­lems. Yet remnants of that e­ arlier psychoanalytic emphasis remained, as in 1967, when Dr.  Althea Davis’s therapist indicates that she has pursued a “man’s profession” in a desire to please her f­ ather.93 Such a diagnosis was an ill fit with a workplace-­set soap that needed to keep a heroine like Althea in the hospital to embroil her in the conflicts of the on-­screen community. Thus, while the suggestion of Althea’s ­career as a sign of her troubled psyche is raised, it gets ­little endorsement. Instead, she defends her right to practice medicine and to be treated the same as a male doctor. When she learns she may be fired for violating the hospital’s “morals clause” through her unwed pregnancy, she rails against the policy, particularly ­because it ­will not affect Dr. Nick Bellini, the baby’s ­father. Althea and her friend Dr.  Maggie Powers label the policy outdated and unfair, a charge repeated by another single doctor, Karen Werner, when she becomes pregnant months l­ater.94 The w ­ omen doctors may have had similar prob­ lems to ­earlier soap heroines in their surprise pregnancies and love affairs gone wrong, but their status as professionals typically was not implicated in ­these trou­bles, nor w ­ ere their prob­lems attributed to disordered psyches. If anything, in the stories of Althea’s and Karen’s pregnancies, the institution of the workplace is blamed for its failure to treat female and male employees equally. The longer-­term consequences for the characters are largely personal—­centering around the outcomes of their pregnancies and their relationships with the f­ athers—­but a broader point of public import emerges as well, thanks to their status as working ­women. Even as The Doctors took such a clear stance on ­women’s professional equality, reminders of the w ­ omen doctors’ difference from their male colleagues persisted, albeit not at the deeply embedded psychological level of ­earlier narratives. Both Althea and Maggie work in the hospital’s outpatient Turning to Relevance  ·  129

clinic. In contrast, Maggie’s husband, Matt, is the chief of staff and Althea’s sometime-­husband Nick is a star researcher. Both men occasionally perform heroic surgeries. The w ­ omen doctors are presented as wholly competent and skilled, but their abilities are represented as smaller in scale and significance than the men’s. Maggie also embraces her identity as a homemaker, regularly mentioning what she is making for dinner, serving Matt drinks when he comes home, tending to her school-­age ­daughter. Not only does Maggie perform all of this domestic l­abor, but she does so seamlessly, with l­ittle effort and as if ­there is no question ­these are her responsibilities alone. Maggie is also an advocate for housewifery—­she counsels an exhausted ­woman patient that her work in the home is preferable to the job the ­woman’s husband must do.95 While Maggie’s professional competence was not questioned, her prioritization of her roles as wife and ­mother, and her support for ­women’s domestic duties more generally, exemplified the way the soaps’ forum on working womanhood struck its balance, assuring an audience presumed to be primarily made up of ­house­wives that their roles w ­ ere still vital. A program like The Doctors did not embrace the ­women’s movement in any overt ways, but its daily repre­sen­ta­tion of professional ­women, accompanied by similar depictions across the daytime schedule, helped shape attitudes of ac­cep­tance ­toward con­temporary working womanhood before such matter-­ of-­fact images suffused prime time. B ­ ecause many of the soaps’ working ­women w ­ ere not the young, sexually bold singles being profiled in best-­selling books of the 1960s such as Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl and Sex and the Office, or analyzed in popu­lar magazines, they could find ac­cep­tance with an audience whose own experience likely did not match t­ hose more glamorized and risqué portrayals.96 The workplace put the w ­ omen characters of the 1960s soaps into new circumstances, but the characters’ prob­lems ­were ­little dif­fer­ ent than t­ hose soap heroines had long faced. As the w ­ omen’s liberation movement expanded its visibility and reach into the 1970s, however, the tele­vi­sion industry scrambled to keep up, adjusting ad campaigns and scheduling new prime-­time series that put w ­ omen in “liberated” roles, assumed by many to involve ­careers.97 The “relatable” working ­women like Mary Richards of prime time’s Mary Tyler Moore Show ­were ­little dif­fer­ent from the working w ­ omen characters who had been peopling daytime across the 1960s, conventionally feminine and familiar, comfortable signifiers of not-­so-­radical change. By the 1970s, a soap like abc’s Ryan’s Hope, which debuted in 1975, modeled a new kind of working ­woman character through heroines such as Jillian Coleridge, an attorney, and Mary Ryan, a journalist. Th ­ ese ­women w ­ ere more overtly feminist than the 1960s characters, albeit still conventionally 130  ·  chapter 4

feminine and embroiled in personal trou­bles. Jillian suffers greatly but gains strength and security in her work as an attorney; she was unfailingly confident when it came to the law. Mary’s story lines included her efforts to combine her ­career ambitions with caring for her husband and ­daughter. When Mary is recruited to be the press secretary for her ­brother Frank’s senatorial campaign in 1978, she declines, as she and her husband, Jack, have been struggling over the demands of their two-­career ­house­hold. Frank’s campaign man­ag­er, Rae Woodard, a middle-­aged w ­ oman with an impressive ­career, offers Mary a number of ser­vices to make the job pos­si­ble for her—­child care, meal delivery, shopping, a driver—­the ideal army of assistance for a w ­ oman with a demanding job also trying to manage a home and ­family. Rae also goes to Jack to plead Mary’s case, arguing he is impeding her ­career, and that by the time she is forty-­five she w ­ ill be regretting her missed opportunities.98 Rae is a manipulative person who is scheming to put Mary in this job, but her speech to Jack rings true nonetheless. Jack thinks so, as well, as the next day he encourages Mary to take the job if she wants it.99 The strug­gles Mary ­faces as she pursues her ­career alongside her more traditional roles are a recurring story line across the character’s narrative life, making her one of the soaps’ working w ­ omen characters engaged in challenges more akin to t­hose of ­women in the audience than to t­hose of prime-­time’s sex symbol action heroines, which came to dominate eve­ning portrayals of working ­women in the ­later seventies.100 In using stories of working womanhood as a means of grappling with the implications of the ­women’s movement, the soaps fused to one of the less c­ ontroversial platforms of the feminism of the day, emphasizing a liberal, rather than radical, means of reaching gender equality. ­These ideas carried over into the new soap opera fan press, especially in its profiles of soap actresses as working w ­ omen, wives, and m ­ others. This was in distinct contrast to the profiles of soap actresses in fan publications of the postwar period, wherein readers w ­ ere assured that the actresses valued homemaking above all ­else. In 1961, Mary Stuart, Search for Tomorrow’s Joanne, spoke of the value in her d ­ aughter seeing her m ­ other perform conventional domestic tasks, saying, “this is impor­tant work for a w ­ oman, b ­ ecause it is done for her ­family,” and she insisted that she saw herself as a homemaker.101 As she told one 1959 publication of her soap job, “The hours are perfect. I’m through early enough to do the h ­ ouse­work.”102 In contrast, in the 1970s, the fan press regularly profiled actresses who identified as feminists, seeing their jobs as part of their liberation. The magazines championed the (white) actresses’ professional lives and progressive views, but often did so Turning to Relevance  ·  131

figures 4.5 and 4.6 Fan magazines gave soap actresses very dif­fer­ent coverage in the postwar period than in the network era. In 1961, tv/ Radio Mirror highlighted the traditional domestic life of Search for Tomor­ row’s Mary Stuart. In 1974, Daytime tv featured Love of Life’s Deborah Courtney as rejecting the role of ­house­wife in ­favor of her ­career.

in relation to their marital and maternal experiences.103 Lucy Martin of The Edge of Night described herself as a “mildly militant feminist” in a Daytime tv profile that approvingly observed of Martin and her husband, “They work energetically at furthering their c­ areers, and each helps raise [their ­daughter] baby Gemima.”104 Like the heroines they portrayed, soap actresses of the 1970s ­were invested in both their professional and personal lives. The open embrace of such liberal feminist princi­ples in 1970s fan publications demonstrates the participation of soap opera in a mainstream ac­cep­tance of ­women’s expanded place beyond the worlds of home and ­family. The embrace of w ­ omen in the workplace both in the soaps’ fictional narratives and in ­these ancillary texts was a rather drastic turn from an industry that had long assumed it was speaking only to the homebound ­house­wife. ­These on-­screen and offscreen stories about ­women with ­careers and active home lives helped to keep this embrace of social change from reading as extreme to the audience, some of whom may have feared that their traditional roles ­were ­under threat. The soaps necessarily walked this line in the 1970s as the numbers of w ­ omen working outside the home continued to rise; by 1978, more than 50 ­percent of ­women participated in the ­labor force.105 But the growing soap ratings of the same era suggested that working ­women—­not to mention viewers such as teens, college students, and men—­were still watching daytime drama, as explored in chapter 5, suggesting that the soaps’ repre­sen­ta­tion of working womanhood was broadly accepted.

Gendered Liberation: ­Women Characters and Sexual Desire The network era soaps also participated in constructing a sense of changing notions of femininity through their growing acknowl­edgment of w ­ omen’s sexual desire, another ­matter embraced by the ­women’s movement in both liberal and more radical sites. ­Women’s romantic lives had always been part of daytime soaps, but it was not ­until the 1960s that ­women characters began to express their desires in more open and increasingly more explicit ways. In the mid-1960s, the repre­sen­ta­tion of w ­ omen characters’ sexual desires was relatively contained. In 1964, Another World’s Pat Matthews, mooning over Tom and dreaming of marriage, agrees to join him at his ­family’s lake ­house over her parents’ objections and falls into his arms at the end of a scene that leads offscreen to a sexual encounter. He tells her she is exciting, to which she replies, “I ­don’t want to be exciting. I want to be loved,” not so much as an objection but as a plea that their “real embrace of two bodies clinging together” Turning to Relevance  ·  133

­ ill be about more than passion. Tom moans, “Oh, Pat! Oh, Pat!” as their w love scene fades out. Pat is represented as being in love and perhaps as having a flicker of desire for Tom, but her interest in romance is depicted as more ­wholesome than Tom’s lascivious motivations.106 Beginning a few years l­ater with Dark Shadows and proceeding across that de­cade and the next, however, soap heroines would begin to share Tom’s open expression of desire. The emerging presence of sexually desiring female characters was connected to a number of social and cultural developments. William Masters and ­Virginia Johnson’s ­Human Sexual Response, published in 1966, helped to open public discourse to the idea of w ­ omen’s sexual plea­sure with its scientific challenge to Freudian assumptions about female sexuality.107 This book emerged alongside popu­lar works like Brown’s advice guides and Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, a novel about young w ­ omen exploring sexual relationships with men, to signal a new “sexual revolution,” one that was especially focused on ­women’s desires.108 By the ­later 1960s and across the early 1970s, ­women’s sexuality was a central concern of the feminist movement, bridging its radical and liberal arms in writings such as Anne Koedt’s “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” and the pages of Ms. magazine.109 As one analy­sis of this period describes it, “The feminist reclamation of sex made ­women’s liberation, at least for a brief few years in the early seventies, as much a movement for sexual liberation.”110 Daytime soaps would rarely venture as far as any of ­these cultural spaces when it came to an overt embrace of ­women’s sexual liberation, but the soaps clearly shifted across the sixties and seventies into a site that acknowledged and validated w ­ omen’s sexual interests; this would pro­gress even further in the 1980s. Beginning in the midsixties, soap audiences w ­ ere increasingly open about their attraction to the programs’ male leads, in keeping with the sexualized fan frenzy around performers like the Beatles that had helped to make public girls’ and ­women’s expressions of desire.111 Soap creators knew that female viewers took plea­sure in seeing handsome men attracted to female characters of all ages, from middle-­aged ­mothers to ingenues. For example, one viewer wrote to The Guiding Light in 1965, describing an idea for a “handsome, suave gentleman” attracted to the suffering wife and m ­ other character, Bert Bauer.112 In 1966, a range of viewers, including a group of five self-­described girls and a “middle-­aged wife and m ­ other,” admired the dim113 ples on Another World’s teenage Tony. Dark Shadows’ Barnabas, a prime example of the soaps’ turn to the tortured hero, regularly elicited such fan declarations as, “I wish he’d bite me in the neck. I get so excited, I could smoke a ­whole pack of cigarettes just watching him.”114 134  ·  chapter 4

figure 4.7 The formerly demure Charity (Nancy Barrett) boldly declares her desire for vampire Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) on Dark Shadows, abc, June 26, 1969.

Dark Shadows’ male characters, first Barnabas and then the werewolf, Quentin, w ­ ere frequent objects of desire, but audiences w ­ ere invited to embrace this stance in part through the program’s repre­sen­ta­tions of sexually desirous w ­ omen. Characters like the witch Angelique, willing to do anything in her passion for Barnabas, embodied this kind of sexual agency. Other w ­ omen characters, such as Maggie and Vicky, w ­ ere Barnabas’s sexualized victims, a status that worked against their sexual agency but was perhaps arousing for viewers nonetheless. The program’s super­natural ele­ments allowed for scenes of ­women in states of physical arousal that could be interpreted as orgasmic plea­sure. W ­ hether through Vicky moaning while possessed by a spirit during a séance, Carolyn writhing in a body-­swapping machine, or the typically restrained and demure Charity arching her back, hair in disarray, clothed in black lace and an open-­necked gown, breathless with desire for Barnabas to bite her again, ds allowed female characters to experience intense sensations.115 The generic hybridity of Dark Shadows permitted repre­sen­ta­tions not as pos­si­ble on other soaps. By the ­later 1960s, however, soap creators ­were Turning to Relevance  ·  135

realizing that asexual or virginal repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen ­were not resonating with con­temporary mores. In 1969, producer Betty Corday sought to persuade Bill Bell that ­there was ­little audience draw in maintaining Marie Horton’s status as a nun, that their viewers had “­little self-­identification with ­these prob­lems.”116 The Hursleys’ college-­set soap, Bright Promise, strug­gled with the likability and believability of its female characters: young Sandy was seen as too sweet, innocent, and virginal, while Martha Ferguson, wife of the professor with whom Sandy has an affair, was seen as too cold and impassionate, a “moralistic prune.”117 ­These extremes of innocence and frigidity seemed more akin to the psychoanalytically fraught ­women of the postwar soaps than to the growing openness around sex of the con­ temporary era. Between the late 1960s and the 1970s, soap characterizations ­were revised accordingly. cbs had Splendored Th ­ ing’s Laura Donnelly leave ­behind her life as a nun when the program’s early ratings w ­ ere disappointing. By the early 1970s, new head writer Ann Marcus sought ways to explain Laura’s history as a novitiate, imagining that the character was actually “deeply sensual, sexual, emotional” but was afraid of her feelings, especially “her sexual drive.”118 The trend in soap storytelling was moving ­toward a depiction of ­women as sexual beings in ways that did not automatically classify them as morally loose or evil. ­Women across a number of soaps began more overtly identifying as sexual, often triumphing over their initial strug­gle to see themselves as such. On The Doctors in 1968, Maggie Powers goes through a period of doubting her attractiveness, referring to herself as “Mrs. Robinson,” the older w ­ oman 119 ­eager to be desired in The Gradu­ate. Once she and her husband, Matt, reconnect, she is noticeably happier, admitting to her friend Althea in barely coded language that her mood is thanks to the sex she has been having.120 In 1974, nbc’s How to Survive a Marriage heroine Chris Kirby explores her sexuality as she emerges from a divorce. She dates Barry, who tells her she is a “mature, desirable w ­ oman.” The two are pictured embracing in silhouette as the suave Barry tells her, “I would like to hold you very close and not say a word and not do anything, just hold you for as long as I like and as long as you like without any commitment to let go.”121 Barry offers many similar lines, describing Chris as “the prim and proper exterior and the sexy female inside, passionate to the fingertips.” Chris knows Barry is a playboy but kisses him passionately; she is trying to be more open to her desires. We see them next the morning a­ fter; the sex scene is offscreen, but the program makes clear that it has happened.122 As a ­woman willing to explore her desires even as she feels hesitant about ­these more daring choices, Chris was 136  ·  chapter 4

designed to be a relatable figure for an audience making sense of new attitudes. Her experiences ­were notably dif­fer­ent from ­those of soap heroines just a few years ­earlier. Apart from the super­natural axes of desire in Dark Shadows, all of the continuing characters expressing their sexuality in the network era soaps ­were strictly heterosexual (and white). Nonstraight identities w ­ ere gradually gaining attention in the culture at large and even in network tele­vi­sion, typically through single-­episode guest characters interacting with the straight leads, and often as the prob­lem the series regulars ­were helping to solve. By the m ­ iddle and late 1970s, the cautious p&g refused at least two soap stories dealing with homo­sexuality, but in 1977, two of the non-­p &g soaps pursued stories of ­women attracted to other ­women.123 ­These appeared alongside more sustained attention to gayness in prime time, as with the debut of Billy Crystal’s out character, Jody, on the serialized comedy Soap the same year.124 On The Young and the Restless the recently widowed Kay Chancellor finds herself attracted to her friend Joanne, and on Days of Our Lives Sharon Duvall expresses her feelings for Julie Williams. Kay was a main character, but her feelings for Joanne do not persist. Sharon was a new character and would not last long. She explic­itly identified as a lesbian (or perhaps as bisexual) but also faced psychological turmoil. She pursues the married Julie, who rebuffs her.125 The program’s two female psychiatrists, Marlena and Laura, speak understandingly of Sharon’s strug­gle, but she does not get a continuing story to lead her out of this period of “anguish and heartbreak.”126 In this re­spect, the soaps’ h ­ andling of queer identities was similar to the prime-­time practice of treating “homo­sexuality” as a prob­lem that the presumed straight norm might ­handle with compassion but that did not have a more permanent place in the on-­screen community. This is not to deny the investment that queer audiences had in the soaps of the network era. The camp potential of Dark Shadows drew many gay male fans in the 1960s and since. Alongside the queerness of the vampire’s nonheteronormative sexuality, Barnabas’s unconventional relationships with characters such as his committed servant, Willie Loomis, in thrall to his vampire master, and Julia Hoffman, a masculinized, professional w ­ oman whom Barnabas sees as his equal, invited queer identification.127 Even the more heteronormative soaps had such appeal. One viewer wrote to dool to share her own path to self-­acceptance as a lesbian, urging the same for the lesbian Sharon.128 Young men sent letters to soap creators and magazines across the 1970s and 1980s, expressing their enthusiasm for the shows, including a sexualized desire for their “young, handsome” “hunks.”129 Turning to Relevance  ·  137

The queer identities of some soap viewers are one way we might understand the complicated relationship between the programs and their audiences. Across soap history, viewers who did not fit the position of white, heteronormative ­house­wife assumed by the industry to be the natu­ral soap audience took g­ reat plea­sure in daytime drama, experiencing a range of desires and identifications that did not necessarily align with their real-­world identities. When the soaps opened the door to a wider array of characters experiencing sexual desire, they also, likely inadvertently, invited in a wider array of pleasures discovered by a wider array of viewers. The broadening of gender repre­sen­ta­tion in the network era mattered in a number of ways, even as it was inevitably ­limited.

New Gendered Character Types: The Villainess Network era soaps served as a cultural forum on changing discourses of gender by altering the experiences of w ­ omen characters, positioning them in the workplace and admitting their sexual desires, as well as by telling stories of gender-­specific issues of the day, such as abortion. But they also constructed new iterations of both femininity and masculinity through the development of character types that would shape soap storytelling through to the pre­sent, namely, the villainess and the tortured hero. While t­ hese types served par­tic­u­lar narrative ends, they w ­ ere also a means of exploring the changing gender expectations of the sixties and seventies. In being ­shaped by the broader context of progressive change, ­these fictional characterizations also contributed to the changing culture, encouraging soap audiences to imagine ­women, men, and the relations between them in altered terms. Tania Modleski’s analy­sis of the gendered appeals of soap opera in the 1970s notes the significance of the villainess as a character that elicits both viewer fascination and disavowal. B ­ ecause, she argues, soaps encourage the spectator to identify with and as a “good ­mother” figure by providing access to the motivations of all characters, the villainess serves as an outlet for ­ thers feminine anger and not for identification.130 Yet Modleski and the o who have built on her analyses do not consider the villainess as a historically specific figure. While soap heroines had always dealt with foils, some female, the figure of the villainess as a continuing character was developed in the network era and was an archetype with whom audiences ­were invited at times to sympathize and at times to demonize. In this period of the soaps’ construction of the villainess, the repre­sen­ta­tion of the soap heroine also 138  ·  chapter 4

underwent transformation, a transformation that would again evolve with the creation of the supercouples of the 1980s. The prototype for the soap villainess was atwt’s Lisa Hughes, who began her history of manipulating suitors and husbands soon ­after she married Bob Hughes, medical resident and son of moral centers Chris and Nancy, in 1960, placing the origins of the soap villainess at the hinge point of the postwar and network eras of the soaps. Lisa and Bob had a son and divorced ­after she had an affair. Nonetheless, she was an extremely popu­lar character, so much so that she was spun off as the star of the prime-­time Our Private World in 1965, in which Lisa sought a new life in Chicago. Yet opw both ­limited Lisa’s role and neutralized her, keeping her from engaging in many of her typically manipulative practices, which atwt viewers must have found puzzling. Phillips was well aware of the differences between the Lisas of the two programs—as one opw script noted in stage direction when Lisa read a letter from home, “This is the Lisa of daytime.”131 Only t­oward the end of the program’s run did Lisa have moments of resonance with her daytime self: per stage directions, “This is a Lisa we have known who attempts to wangle out of one situation ­because another ­will be more advantageous for her, and yes for her son.”132 In toning down Lisa’s sexualized scheming, opw most likely was following the pattern of tv’s Peyton Place, which had made the character Betty Anderson more an innocent than the vixen she had been in the novel.133 But once Lisa returned to daytime, she also returned to her old, villainous ways.134 Her longtime portrayer, Eileen Fulton, has noted that the late sixties (daytime) Lisa used ­house­wifely duties like cooking and sexual availability to tempt and then stymie a husband she hated.135 This Lisa closely matches Modleski’s assertion that “the villainess is able to transform traditional feminine weaknesses into the sources of her strength,” using as tools of manipulation aspects of ­women’s lives that may other­wise make her helpless.136 In the mid-1960s, other soap writers also began to create villainess characters who deliberately sought to control o ­ thers through machinations of femininity. In 1965, Phillips and Ted Corday created Julie Olson for dool, the troublemaking grand­daughter of the program’s core ­family, and in 1967, Nixon introduced Rachel Davis on Another World as a striving schemer from the wrong side of the tracks. By the late 1960s, Julie became a more full-­fledged villainess, with Bill Bell invested in the character living up to her potential as “a conniving young ­woman.”137 He recognized the audience appeal of tapping into “a hidden fascination to this young w ­ oman who dares to say and do what so many ­women wish they had both the courage Turning to Relevance  ·  139

and opportunity to do. Suffice to say that the pre­sent—­and more particularly the ­future design of this character—­will be to bristle yet tantalize the libido of ­every homemaker.”138 Bell saw a scheming villainess as a sexy fantasy figure for the (female) soap audience, constructing Julie as a ­woman who defied expectations of “proper” femininity that the average ­woman might wish she could challenge. She and other of the villainess types ­were the extreme version of the sexually empowered ­women characters who ­were emerging in the 1960s. The witch Angelique of Dark Shadows fit ­these traits, too, as she drew upon her super­natural skills primarily to get her love, Barnabas, for herself, a strategy the more typical villainess accomplished through old-­ fashioned seduction, pregnancy, and lies. Th ­ ese characters would remain central to the soaps in the 1970s, as Modleski’s examples from y&r, rh, and dool demonstrate.139 Modleski also makes clear that the soap villainess was regularly thwarted in her efforts, arguing that the spectator was not invited to comfortably identify with her. Instead, the spectator would learn to “enjoy repetition for its own sake” as the villainess geared up for yet another scheme, reconciling that spectator to “the meaningless, repetitive nature of much of her life and work within the home.”140 Subsequent audience research has challenged this theoretical insight, albeit in the 1980s. ­Here, audiences expressed “love and admiration” for the soaps’ “power­ful female transgressors.”141 Historical research confirms viewers’ passionate feelings about ­these manipulative ­women, both pro and con, but also reminds us of the inevitable change soap characters experience as they move through years and even de­cades of narrative life. Indeed, many a villainess reformed her ways, and many a conventional heroine became more morally nuanced as programs moved through their second and third de­cades on tele­vi­sion, and as longer time slots demanded more convolutions of story. By the 1970s, viewers and creators sought to make more ambiguous the line between villainess and heroine, seeking more multilayered repre­sen­ ta­tions. As one Procter & ­Gamble executive advised in the development of a new soap, “Our experience is that an ambivalent ‘villainess’ (i.e., one whose actions are not over-­keyed ­toward the negative) is far more ­viable long term than predictable clichéd types.”142 When playwright/college instructor Harding Lemay began writing Another World in the early 1970s, he found that the working-­class students he met in his night courses w ­ ere intensely invested in aw’s Rachel, seeing her as “a fighter, perhaps a surrogate fighter for them,” as she time and again found ways to pull Steve Frame to her and away from the passive “ninny” Alice. Lemay credited t­ hose fans with 140  ·  chapter 4

figure 4.8 tv by Day appealed to soap fans by ­depicting the Another World love triangle be­tween Rachel (Victoria Wyndham), Steve (George Reinholt), and Alice (Jacqueline Courtney) on its March 1972 cover. Making Rachel the central figure in the image acknowledged the audience investment in the villainess.

prompting him to make Rachel, the villainess, rather than Alice, the virtuous heroine, “the dominant sympathetic character” of the soap.143 Over the coming years, Lemay transformed Rachel from outright villainess to complex heroine, rewarding her striving with (relative) marital happiness and economic security. This was a gradual transition, and one that audiences doubted at first, familiar as they ­were with Rachel’s devious past.144 Through making Steve and Rachel as compelling a pairing as Steve and Alice, then involving her in some comedic scenes and having her be a compassionate aide to her ­mother, Lemay gradually drew wider audience sympathy to Rachel, eventually pairing her with the older, dashing Mac Cory and making Mac’s ­daughter Iris the serial’s new villainess, meeting her match in the still-­headstrong Rachel.145 Across the 1970s, soap fans had been asking for more complexity, intelligence, and strength in the heroines who had so often suffered in soap narratives.146 When Ann Marcus wrote Search for Tomorrow in the mid-1970s, she sought ways to make ­wholesome matriarch Joanne more flawed, able Turning to Relevance  ·  141

to express frustration and even anger.147 Audiences noticed. As one wrote to “Jo”/actress Mary Stuart: “I was glad when they began letting you be a ­little ­human and become angry or irritated now and then. For years you ­were just too sweet, never got mad. Now ­you’re more h ­ uman which seems to be a trend in realism on all the shows . . . ​a good trend.”148 While in many ways the soaps of the 1970s continued to endorse normative identities for w ­ omen—­heterosexuality was a given, men and motherhood w ­ ere their primary concerns, and all of the characters given serious development ­were white—­within ­those norms w ­ ere characterizations that deepened and broadened repre­sen­ta­tions of femininity. The increasingly blurred lines between villainess and heroine stretched ­these archetypes in new directions.

New Gendered Character Types: The Tortured Hero The soaps’ alterations in repre­sen­ta­tions of femininity w ­ ere paired with changing constructions of masculinity as the programs moved away from stories of admirable or failed patriarchs. While ­earlier a figure like The Guid­ ing Light’s Bill Bauer had strug­gled to live up to expectations for the postwar husband and f­ather and wise elders such as atwt’s Grandpa Hughes had offered moral guidance, the soaps of the network era began to imagine masculinity in dif­fer­ent terms. By the late 1970s ­these repre­sen­ta­tions would change again, but in the early and mid-1960s, soap creators strug­gled with how to characterize male leads, uncertain how to make a male character capable and admirable as well as romantic and sexy. On the new General Hospital in 1963, the Hursleys puzzled over how to use Dr. Steve Hardy, established as single and on the young end of ­middle age. They needed for him to be a savvy and caring doctor for their medical stories, an older version of prime time’s Dr.  Kildare. But the narrative demands of the daily soap also required that he be a romantic figure, paired with a leading lady.149 Soaps had typically introduced conflict by making their heroines’ partners failed patriarchs, as in the Hursleys’ work at sft, where they told the story of Joanne’s difficulties in the face of Arthur’s personal and professional inadequacies. But Steve had to live up to his workplace duties to make the hospital setting function in a way similar to the new eve­ning medical series. To make this work, the Hursleys rationalized that they could get him married and make his personal prob­lems minor domestic ­matters, perhaps in conjunction with him functioning as a “Pa Perkins” figure, counselor to o ­ thers; alternately, they could enter him into a series of 142  ·  chapter 4

“unsuccessful love affairs.” The former seemed inadequate for a youngish leading man, the latter too oriented around failure for a character who was supposed to be an admirable, attractive doctor. It was a challenge to script a male lead who was neither an aging, stalwart patriarch nor a failed version of the masculine ideal.150 The workplace setting did not as readily expand the potential for depicting male characters as it did for their female counter­parts; it even may have caused some new storytelling conundrums, as in the case of gh’s Dr. Hardy. For the repre­sen­ta­tion of masculinity, the more significant innovation came via Dark Shadows and its introduction of the tortured hero, a characterization that would join the villainess as a crucial network era archetype. While in ds ­these figures would take the form of vampires and werewolves, other soaps would adapt the type to their more realistically grounded settings, making men in pain a new, compelling feature of the daytime tv soap. Male leads of the postwar period had been plenty flawed, often failing in their efforts to be upstanding husbands and ­fathers. But the tortured heroes of the network era did not even try for conventional masculine respectability; they ­were too emotionally damaged to aspire to such a role. Their refusal of ­these gendered expectations resonated with broader cultural dissatisfactions with the “breadwinner” ideal that had been rumbling through American culture since the 1950s and that turned into a rejection of Freudian notions of gender-­specific, psychic “maturity” in the 1960s.151 While popu­lar psy­ chol­ogy subsequently embraced the princi­ples of individual “growth” and “self-­actualization,” the tortured heroes of the network era soaps w ­ ere not self-­aware enough to pursue such ends; they ­were too consumed by their own pain.152 Th ­ ese characterizations of young and middle-­aged men roiled by their feelings and refusing conventions of masculine respectability ­were intensely popu­lar. Their appeal to younger viewers, seeking to differentiate their ways of life from ­earlier generations, to gay men, drawn to new ways of imagining masculinity, and to w ­ omen of all ages, attracted to a masculinity oriented around emotion, was an exciting turn that surely helped in broadening the appeal of soap opera beyond its ste­reo­typical ­house­wife audience. By the late 1960s, many of the soap’s male characters ­were tortured souls, often with gruff, dangerous, or aggressive exteriors masking their inner pain. The most successful models for this archetype ­were Dark Shadows’ Barnabas and Quentin Collins. Barnabas was introduced late in the program’s first year of episodes, and by the summer of 1967 he was developed into a menacing vampire plotting to attack the virginal heroine, Vicky Winters.153 But Barnabas is no straightforward monster; he is greatly distraught by his Turning to Relevance  ·  143

urges, more a gothic antihero than a beast or a villain.154 As tortured as he is, he trea­sures the pain his condition brings him; he thinks he deserves it. As he declares to Dr. Woodward, “Loathsome I am and evil. You can mock me for that. But leave my pain alone!”155 As Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott explain of the character’s impact, “Fans saw Collins as a tragic figure, a reluctant vampire struggling against his affliction.”156 By the end of 1968, however, Barnabas became more hero than antihero, complicating his status; the introduction of Quentin Collins allowed for a new iteration of this tortured type. Younger and more conventionally handsome than Barnabas, Quentin was initially both ­silent and menacing and did not display the emotional fragility that had been so essential for Barnabas. Gradually, however, Quentin is endangered and begins to show insecurity and fear; like Barnabas before him, he is transformed into a brooding, romantic figure rather than a wholly dangerous one.157 Both characters’ super­natural proclivities (Quentin is a ghost, a werewolf, and immortal at dif­fer­ent points) made it clear that they ­were neither traditional patriarchs nor conventional leading men, enhancing their appeal to a range of viewers and making them objects of queer as well as heteronormative desire.158 The tortured hero was a product of the new network era soaps and changing cultural discourses of gender, but his rise was also notable for what it supplanted, namely, ­earlier versions of the soaps’ male leads, now disappearing or being minimized on-­screen. The benevolent el­derly patriarchs of postwar era soaps, like gl’s Papa Bauer and atwt’s Grandpa Hughes, passed away when their portrayers themselves died. Meanwhile, former leading men ­were eliminated or transitioned into new roles. Bill Bauer, gl’s failed patriarch, was killed off not once but twice during the network era, his alcoholism, ­career trou­bles, and inadequacies as husband and ­father following him to the end.159 And gh’s Dr. Steve Hardy was fi­nally scripted as a “­father figure, a Marcus Welby type,” a role he would fill u ­ ntil his portrayer’s death in 1996.160 The versions of the soaps’ tortured masculinity that displaced the e­ arlier generation of male leads typically did not match the subversiveness of Dark Shadows’ characters, but power­ful young to middle-­aged men wracked with emotional pain w ­ ere increasingly common from the late 1960s on. In the late 1960s, The Doctors’ Nick Bellini is bellicose and aggressive, unwilling to accede to many conventions of propriety, in noted contrast to his friend Matt Powers, a more typical, responsible patriarch. Though she loves him, Nick’s wife, Althea, refers to him as an “insensitive monster” with “an awful lot of rough edges.” Her friend Maggie notes that Nick might be better 144  ·  chapter 4

described as “oversensitive” than “insensitive,” hinting at his buried pain.161 Nick himself admits his vulnerability to Althea as he pushes her to rely on him: “Believe it or not, this guy ­here, this Nick Bellini, sometimes feels weak, he feels hurt, he feels vulnerable, and sometimes maybe I want to tell you about a nightmare, maybe I want to share my tears with you!” Nick’s confession is matched with the door he slams as he storms away from her, his anger as strong as his vulnerability.162 We know that Nick grew up poor, his toughness a product of his street upbringing, and his love for Althea and her ­daughter are evident. Nick resembled the gruff heroes of romance novels who masked their inner pain with a borderline-­abusive exterior, a type that can be traced back to fictional Victorian era love interests like Jane Eyre’s Rochester but that was pop­u­lar­ized anew in the latter half of the twentieth ­century.163 In the sixties and seventies, this style of romantic leading man became increasingly prominent not only in soaps but also in the more sexually explicit romance novels that surpassed gothics in popularity, beginning with Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower in 1972.164 As Janice Radway has explained, the appeal of such heroes was the way they validated the heroines’ unique ability to draw out their tender interiors, a fantasy that readers might imagine could be true of their own less-­than-­nurturing husbands.165 The network era soaps ­were active participants in such a fantasy. Some of the tortured male characters in this period acted out their pain violently. As I have examined elsewhere, characters across multiple soaps in the late 1960s and early 1970s raped ­women they loved, overcome by emotion as circumstances kept them from expressing their true feelings.166 In 1968, dool’s Bill Horton rapes Laura, his ­brother’s wife and the ­woman Bill truly loves, out of distress that she is lost to him; similarly, Nick rapes Althea in 1969 out of neediness and fear of losing her when she has amnesia and resists a sexual relationship with him.167 ­Under dif­fer­ent circumstances, Mark Elliott of liamst rapes his sister-­in-­law, Iris, in 1971, mistaking her for his wife, from whom he is torturously estranged. On gh, two dif­fer­ent continuing male characters rape w ­ omen with whom they are involved.168 In ­these years before the spread of the antirape movement, such acts could be understood as (troublesome) expressions of the intensity of men’s emotions rather than as violent crimes; often, they w ­ ere not even called rape. The rapists’ actions ­were explained by recourse to their tortured masculinity, ­whether due to unrequited love or to doubts about their worth, even as the female characters ­were represented as being justifiably traumatized.169 Rape stories ­were a major part of the soaps across the network era, from t­hese Turning to Relevance  ·  145

more romanticized tales to social issue–­engaged narratives that emerged in concert with the antirape movement.170 Rape plots ­were one of the soaps’ most commonly employed ways of representing the tortured hero and the suffering his pain might bring to the ­women in his life. The archetype of the tortured hero was part of a broader cultural discourse about the prob­lems inherent to hegemonic masculinity, a discourse that had been emergent since the 1950s but that grew more dominant during the network era. As the limitations imposed on w ­ omen ­were being questioned, so too ­were expectations for men beginning to seem unjust, especially as of the 1970s. A number of popu­lar books, including The ­Hazards of Being Male and The Liberated Man, “diagnosed the suffering that traditional notions of masculinity imposed on men and the benefits of becoming more sensitive, more liberated.”171 While some models of liberated masculinity, such as actor Alan Alda or talk show host Phil Donahue, became new icons, the soaps tended to respond to such shifts not with wholly feminist men but rather with stories of men coming to terms with their feelings, the sort of “men’s liberation” that challenged the rigidity of bifurcated sex roles but that kept change to the level of the individual and internal rather than of full social ­ ere typically disruption.172 This suffering and the potential for redemption w restricted to relatively young, conventionally attractive, white, heterosexual men; indeed, t­hese characters usually sought redemption through their bonds with w ­ omen. Ryan’s Hope illustrated this transformation through the evolution of curmudgeonly reporter Jack Fenelli, who learned to open his heart and share his feelings, thanks to his romance with Mary and his bonds with ­women like his mother-­in-­law, sister-­in-­law, and d ­ aughter. Across the latter half of the 1970s, viewers watched Jack revise the masculine gruffness he wore protectively as the result of an orphaned childhood. ­These emotionally tortured men not only replaced the more typical failed patriarchs of ­earlier eras but also became the narrative centers of many soaps, especially newer entries. The Young and the Restless made handsome young men facing emotional ­trials and romantic drama central to its 1973 debut, distinguishing itself from past soaps in part through an emphasis on ­these new male types. In the opening scene of the first episode, Brad Eliot rides in the passenger seat of an eighteen-­wheeler, his suit torn and a cut on his head. When the trucker asks, “You a f­amily man?,” Brad, clearly distanced from such an identity, even troubled by it, shakes his head and sharply responds, “No.” The conventional masculine role has meant trou­ble for this mystery man. Indeed, as we watch his intense gaze out the win­dow in close-up, Brad remembers the voice of a w ­ oman demanding, “What is wrong with love 146  ·  chapter 4

figure 4.9 The mysterious pain of tortured hero Brad Elliot (Tom Hallick) launched The Young and the Restless with its first episode, March 26, 1973, cbs.

between a man and a ­woman?!” ­Later in the episode, Brad has arrived in Genoa City and enters a restaurant, Pierre’s, in which the titular owner entertains the guests with a rendition of “A Man and a W ­ oman,” sung in both French and En­glish, evoking the 1966 French film from which it originated, and emphasizing a masculine investment in heterosexual romance. Also in the restaurant is another young man, Bill “Snapper” Foster, who we have already learned is torn between two ­women.173 Pierre’s song cues us to the sophisticated romantic trou­bles of each of ­these leading men, neither of whom is a conventional authority figure or an ineffectual breadwinner. The Young and the Restless demonstrated its status as an up-­to-­date soap with this new focus on masculine pain. But by the 1970s, nearly all soaps ­were revising their repre­sen­ta­tions of masculinity, openly inviting audiences to express desire for the young, attractive, emotionally intense men on-­ screen. A typical example was the casting of thirty-­year-­old Michael Nouri as Steve Kaslo on Search for Tomorrow in 1975, a character one fan described as “a man of mystery, a man with scars and pain from the past,” in keeping Turning to Relevance  ·  147

with the tortured hero archetype. But Steve was not aggressive or violent; he sang and played the guitar on-­screen, falling in love with Liza Walton. Fans found this gentler depiction of masculine emotion “spectacular.” As one wrote of an “incredible” Steve and Liza love scene, “I’ve never identified with anything on tv so much . . . ​I was so jealous of Liza.”174 While remnants of the tortured hero as aggressive and violent continued, by the 1980s ­these male characters would express their pain differently, often by behaving as boyishly charming rogues, “bad boys” in appearance or style but heroic and tender inside. Th ­ ese secretly emotional drifters from the wrong side of the tracks would be paired with headstrong “princesses” to form the supercouples that made the soaps a mainstream popu­lar sensation in the early 1980s, their network era peak.

Every­one’s Stories? Limitations in the Turn to Relevance The turn to relevance in soap storytelling from the mid-1960s through the 1970s presaged prime time’s similar turn and participated in a cultural forum on pressing m ­ atters of the day. It also constructed new ways of imagining gendered identities, albeit largely restricted to straight, white, normative bound­aries. The changes in the kinds of stories the soaps told, and in the kinds of characters that enacted t­ hose stories, combined with economic and structural changes to grow the audience for daytime drama to new heights. For the first time in the history of soap opera, both the tv industry and the culture at large recognized that the soap audience was broader than that of the ste­reo­typical ­house­wife, and that even the housewife-­viewer might take interest and plea­sure in narratives that engaged with social and po­liti­cal questions. As one male college student told the New York Times in 1974, noting the soaps’ social relevance, “It was a sense of your stuff being on tv for the first time.”175 The possibility that soap opera might appeal to t­ hose other than the ­house­wife, as well as the potential for that ­house­wife to have dif­fer­ ent interests than had been previously ­imagined, shifted the status of soap opera in American culture, suggesting that it might be a form of tele­vi­sion offering something to all. This altered positioning was especially clear in the declarations of devotion by aty­pi­cal viewers, which garnered more and more publicity across the network era. The rise of soap fan magazines, and especially their published letters to the editor, made vis­i­ble the variations within the audience. Young ­people, particularly teenage and college-­age girls but also some boys, ­were 148  ·  chapter 4

especially prominent in ­these pages, interspersed with the adult w ­ omen who continued to be critical and engaged soap fans. In one 1970 issue of After­ noon tv, three generations of the Whittaker f­ amily—­seventy-­three-­year-­old grand­mother, ­mother, and two kids, boy and girl, shared their views.176 A 1971 issue of Daytime tv published letters describing the soap fandom of a sixteen-­year-­old Swedish au pair, a high school student, and a college foot­ other ball player and his wife.177 A 1974 issue included letters from both a m of nine and a girl insisting that daytime soaps, “the best t­hing since rock ’n roll,” ­were her classmates’ favorite topic of conversation.178 Across the 1970s, a host of mainstream publications carried stories about the popularity of soaps, emphasizing college students, their professors, and the rising numbers of men who ­were drawn to the programs.179 In the pages of Soap Opera Digest, one viewer refused to accept that soaps belonged exclusively to ­women, referencing the large male audience: “­People of Amer­i­ca, wake up to the changing times!”180 The spreading awareness of the broadened audience for the soaps would peak in the early 1980s, but the investment in soap opera across lines of age, gender, sexual orientation, and race belied the limitations of what was appearing on-­screen, the ways that even amid a turn to social relevance, the soaps only rarely told stories other than ­those about white, hetero­ sexual characters. Especially illustrative of the ways the soaps’ broadening of repre­sen­ta­tion was ­limited was the 1976–77 Days of Our Lives story of the interracial romance between the white David Banning and the black Valerie Grant. The program’s creators pursued this story with g­ reat tentativeness but, eventually, the two got engaged and kissed on-­screen. Writer Bill Bell, a con­sul­tant to the soap, argued in early 1977 that this was ­going too far, that “If we [are] ­going to play this love story, they [are] never to kiss or touch, that we [should] use restraint in the ultimate in this relationship ­because to ‘cross the line’ would have serious repercussions.”181 Tallies of the fan mail the program received over the second half of 1976, as David and Valerie became a ­couple, recorded roughly equal numbers of viewers in ­favor of and opposed to the pairing, although the balance tipped in opposition.182 Focus group research in the early months of 1977 found that viewers ­were interested in the story and found it acceptable. They did have complaints about the slow pace at which it was being developed, suggesting that audiences w ­ ere both aware of and potentially unhappy with the tentativeness of the program’s approach.183 Despite ­these relatively favorable reactions, by late spring 1977 David and Valerie ­were breaking up, their split narratively motivated by another Turning to Relevance  ·  149

hot-­button issue of the era: unwed pregnancy and abortion. When David and Valerie break up temporarily at the end of 1976, David sleeps with his friend Trish Clayton. David and Val then re­unite. Quite a long time l­ater, in May 1977, Trish discovers that she is pregnant from her encounter with David and seriously considers an abortion, which a number of other characters encourage.184 Given that abortion had become a more acceptable option for soap characters across the preceding de­cade, it would have been a logical step for Trish, who was now involved with a new man.185 But the pregnancy reveal came so many months ­after David and Trish had sex that it is likely that it was generated as a plot point a­ fter the fact as a means of breaking up David and Valerie. The pregnancy does just that when Trish decides to have the baby and Valerie leaves town, the last of her black f­amily, the soap’s only characters of color, to do so. The dool creators went to g­ reat lengths to justify Trish not having the abortion, which is revealing of the discourses of ac­cep­tance around the procedure in the 1970s.186 Interracial romance did not have the same degree of ac­cep­tance. One character’s pro-­life decision was used to motivate the end of an interracial coupling. Even in this relatively clear case of the soaps’ cultural forum reaching ideological conclusions—­that abortion was wrong and that interracial relationships should not survive—­discourses that challenged t­ hese perspectives also circulated. The actors who played Trish and Mike (Trish’s new boyfriend) both told the soap press that they disagreed with Trish having the baby, arguing that the story should have included her abortion.187 The African American entertainment magazine Jet featured actors Richard Guthrie (David) and Tina Andrews (Valerie) on its cover in the summer of 1977, reporting on the pos­si­ble end of their story. While the magazine avoided placing blame for the characters’ breakup, the actors each spoke about the unfair treatment ­those in interracial relationships face, and the cover image of the two embracing offered a tacit ac­cep­tance of their bond.188 Guthrie and ­Andrews, as well as Ketty Lester, who had portrayed Valerie’s ­mother, elsewhere argued that the interracial romance was ended ­because the program caved to racist pressure. Lester saw it as more of the same discrimination long faced by black Americans, a point against which a number of dool viewers bristled, uncomfortable with being implicated in systemic racism.189 ­Others reacted with sadness and words of criticism for dool and nbc, calling out the cowardice at work.190 Viewers identifying themselves as black chastised the creators, and three ­women co­wrote a letter expressing that they w ­ ere “deeply disappointed” with the outcome, noting that the pro150  ·  chapter 4

figure 4.10 The African American magazine Jet featured Days of Our Lives’ interracial pair, David (Richard Guthrie) and Valerie (Tina Andrews), on its August 18, 1977, cover, highlighting the significance of the ­couple for black audiences.

gram had now ironically proved the truth of Mrs. Grant’s scripted assertion that ­little had changed for black Americans, her reason for protesting her ­daughter’s involvement with David, certain as she was that it would bring Valerie pain.191 Soap viewers and even soap talent remained active interrogators of the racial, sexual, and gendered politics of soap storytelling across the 1960s and 1970s, even as the form often took two steps backward for ­every step forward in grappling with social and po­liti­cal change. In the network era, soap opera’s relationship to con­temporary concerns was a breakthrough for American network tele­vi­sion, even as its repre­sen­ta­tional politics could still disappoint its diverse viewership. Nonetheless, the arc of soap history is long, and in 2016 Valerie returned to the dool canvas, soon followed by her adult son, Eli. Eli’s ­father, we learn, was David Banning; the story retrospectively constructs that Valerie left town in 1977 pregnant with David’s Turning to Relevance  ·  151

baby.192 David has since passed away, but Eli is quickly integrated into his white ­family, thanks to the enthusiasm of his grand­mother, Julie, who had been opposed to David and Valerie’s relationship in the 1970s. The interracial ac­cep­tance scripted in the twenty-­first-­century dool did not revise the program’s reluctance to embrace social change forty years e­ arlier, but it did well illustrate the soaps’ status as a historically variable space, a forum that has the potential to air a range of perspectives and to accent ­those perspectives in ways specific to its historical moment.

152  ·  chapter 4

F I V E . L O V E I N T H E A F T E R ­N O O N The Fracturing Fantasies of the Soap Boom

In 1981, one Washington, DC, bar owner found a unique way to bring in customers. With his new Betamax recorder, he would videotape General Hos­ pital each weekday after­noon. That eve­ning during happy hour he would play the episode on the tvs of the Pierce Street Annex, selling drinks to the after-­work crowd ­eager to follow the events in the fictional Port Charles, New York. Impressed by the turnout, the Annex even began playing back the week’s five episodes on Sundays, turning its “General Hospital marathon” into a daylong event, accompanied by food and, when the episodes ended, live m ­ usic to keep the party g­ oing.1 The customers ­were working ­women and men, unable to see the soap during the business day, and drawn to a continuing drama featuring adventure, romance, even science fiction, as Luke and Laura, the “supercouple” at the center of the story, sought to stop the bad guys from freezing the world.2 The frenzy at the Annex typified the status of the US daytime soap in the early 1980s, with new technologies like vcrs, new social identities like “working ­women,” and new trends in soap storytelling, like the fantasy-­filled exploits of young romantic pairs, helping daytime drama reach an unpre­ce­ dented peak in profitability, popularity, and cultural legitimacy. By 1984, the networks’ yearly daytime revenues would reach their all-­time apex, just shy of $1.25 billion in ad sales.3 Soaps remained profitable across this de­cade, but the gradual decline in their earning power from 1984 on would be permanent. Never again would soaps be as lucrative for the networks, or as prominently

placed in the American popu­lar imagination. In the early 1980s, soaps became common cultural currency. The 1981 wedding of Luke and Laura attracted the largest audience for a daytime soap episode in US tele­vi­sion history. A surfeit of media attention to the wedding was paired with a boom in the merchandising of ancillary products such as soap-­inspired T-­shirts and board games, celebrities declaring their soap fandom, and large groups of college students gathering in communal campus spaces to watch the daily installments.4 That audiences beyond the ­house­wife had become so invested in soap opera accorded it a new level of re­spect, but this re­spect assumed that eighties soaps w ­ ere “better” than the daytime dramas of the past; the soaps’ greater cultural legitimacy was dependent on a distancing from their feminized history.5 Many of the soaps of this period ­were dif­fer­ent from soaps of e­ arlier eras, although not necessarily in ways that inherently improved their worth. The shifts across the network era, magnified in the early 1980s, help us to see how variable the category of soap opera, and perhaps the ordering concept of genre itself, may be. Multiple dimensions of the programs’ production and funding, their textual features, and their reception practices had changed by the early eighties. Attending to such shifts is more revealing of the programs’ institutional and cultural impact than is a perspective oriented around historical continuities. This is noticeable across soap history but especially so by the 1980s. This chapter identifies the significant ways in which soap opera had changed by the late network era, arguing that key developments in economics, audience practices, cultural status, production, and repre­sen­ta­tion resulted in an altered form, largely dif­fer­ent from the one that had transitioned to tele­vi­sion in the 1950s. Daytime soap opera had been long invested in realist drama, but in the 1980s many of daytime’s highest-­rated serials took a fantastical turn. Not only did action adventure and science fiction plots infiltrate the narratives, but the styles and sensibilities of comedy, ­music video, and the fairy tale also made appearances. The generic hybridization and broadened audiences of soaps across the sixties and seventies magnified and peaked in the early 1980s. But instead of the social and po­liti­cal concerns that had defined so much of the network era soaps, the challenges faced by soap characters in the 1980s tended to lack explicit connection to the issues of the day, promising instead a turn away from such ­matters. The seeds of the soaps’ cultural and economic decline lay dormant within this moment of unpre­ce­dented success, as the network era began its gradual wane and the fantasies on-­screen proved as precarious as the daytime 154  ·  chapter 5

profit margins. Imaginings of young, heterosexual supercouples, nearly always white, falling in love against backdrops of pop ­music as they embarked on ­great adventures, made for compelling viewing. But in the world outside the soaps, economic inequalities continued to grow. The w ­ omen’s liberation movement was being displaced by a “postfeminist” mind-­set that revalued gender difference now that the imbalances of patriarchy purportedly had been resolved. On-­screen, the differences of class or gender between the ­couples w ­ ere a source of cele­bration and fun, not of po­liti­cal protest or personal pain, offering a reassuring reprieve from the incomplete social changes initiated across the 1960s and 1970s. However, the troubling realities that had yet to be addressed in American society—­not only income in­ equality and imbalances of gendered power but also exclusions of race and sexual identity—­would prove impossible to stave off. The pleasures of the 1980s soaps spoke to real desires and needs shared by a wide cross section of the American public. Their ultimately short-­lived dominance reveals the tenuousness of the appealing fantasy they offered.

The Peak of Soap Power By the late 1970s, all three broadcast networks had become serious competitors in the daytime ratings and the advertising revenue they accrued. Especially notable was the rise of abc to the position of highest rated in daytime, a steady climb initiated in 1978 and largely dependent on a soap lineup that had not even begun ­until 1963. As of 1983, abc Daytime was so lucrative as to be generating 50 ­percent of the full network’s profits.6 Even without sustaining its prime-­time lead of the previous de­cade, abc was the most profitable network in the early 1980s due to its daytime riches.7 A thirty-­second spot on abc’s gh (the top-­rated soap) earned $27,800 while a similar ad on Guiding Light, gh’s time slot competitor on cbs, generated $16,500.8 abc’s market value was not just one of overall numbers but of pull among younger demographics, for example, by attracting as many eighteen-­to forty-­nine-­ year-­old ­women as cbs and nbc combined in one quarter of 1983.9 Yet the entire industry benefited from the success of abc and of soaps. Thanks largely to soaps, in 1981 total daytime ad income was up 12 to 15  ­percent from the previous year, generating 25  ­percent of all network revenue.10 The range of soap advertisers expanded as detergents and cooking oils ­were no longer the top sponsors; dental supplies, over-­the-­counter medi­cations, makeup, and feminine hygiene products grew in prominence Love in the After­noon  ·  155

as soaps became a means to reach men, young ­people, and older adults alongside ­house­wives.11 An ad for the Rolling Stones’ latest concert film run during a 1983 episode of General Hospital epitomized this shift.12 Ad sales executives saw the period as opportune for luring new sponsors of all stripes: smaller companies looking to break into tv and the big game of car manufacturers, long resistant to day schedules.13 The influence and economic power of soaps was also vis­i­ble in other realms. Just as daytime was booming, the tentative experiments with serialization in prime time begun in the 1970s turned to fully serialized narratives. Dallas (cbs, 1978–91) embraced serialized storytelling in its third season, peaking in a cliff-­hanging final episode in the spring of 1980. By that point, its spin-­off, Knots Landing (cbs, 1979–93), was underway and its chief competitor, Dynasty (abc, 1981–89), was a pilot-­in-­the-­making. nbc’s Hill Street Blues (1981–87), the “quality” version of the prime-­time serialization trend, was also in the works, debuting alongside Dynasty in January 1981.14 In the ­ ill shower screen with spring of 1980, Broadcasting declared, “Next season w soaps,” referencing ­these prime-­time developments.15 The first-­run syndication market was also heavi­ly influenced by soaps. In 1982, syndicators marketed at least five soap-­themed talk shows.16 ­These programs ­were envisioned as tv versions of the successful soap magazine market, which had grown throughout the 1970s and by the early 1980s touted its younger and more affluent readership.17 A market for soap-­themed merchandise also developed past its e­ arlier burst around Dark Shadows, now licensing novelizations, board games, and clothing, becoming an additional revenue stream for soap producers, a “bonanza,” according to abc.18 The power of abc’s soap lineup was made especially evident in the lead-up to the 1984 Summer Olympics, to which abc had the broadcast rights. While it was initially assumed that the network would preempt its soaps for the Los Angeles–­based Games, as it was d ­ oing for its prime-­time schedule, instead the network featured a two-­hour interruption in the Olympics coverage each after­noon for shortened versions of its three top-­rated dramas. As abc’s sports sales vice president grimly noted, “It was done for the good of the corporation”; the value of both the ad dollars and the audience loyalty of soaps trumped that of the prestigious, international athletic spectacle.19 The profitability of soap opera also led to greater economic investment via production bud­gets, as well as in promotion and the value of creative workers. abc was a strong investor in soap promotion, its “Love in the After­noon” campaign dominating from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. The network also innovated a number of call-in ser­vices to keep fans involved 156  ·  chapter 5

with its shows.20 Meanwhile, gh’s executive producer, Gloria Monty, earned prime-­time development deals with abc and Twentieth C ­ entury Fox, while many of that program’s on-­screen talent leveraged contract renewals into salaries unpre­ce­dented for daytime.21 Soap acting became a highly desired job, a trend that a number of casting directors and soap actors parlayed into the business of soap acting classes.22 Celebrities whose fame had been established in other spheres of media also sought out roles on daytime. Although soap opera did not become a prestigious place to work, it did become lucrative for some and trendy for all during the 1980s peak.

New Audiences The improved status of soap opera was indebted to the expansion in size and broadening in scope of its audience across the network era. By the early 1980s, recognition of the mass popularity of soap opera became a media trope. As one Detroit columnist introduced his 1981 piece on the widespread soap craze, embodied by one gh supercouple in par­tic­u­lar, “Who are Luke and Laura? Gimme a break. Have you been living on another planet? Are you a real American? Every­one, simply every­one, knows who Luke and ­ ere numerous examples of the swath of viewers who Laura are.”23 ­There w ­were soap-­obsessed. Male fans included shift workers home during the day, corporate types taking lunch at a men’s club, college professors and professional athletes with flexible schedules.24 Young fans described as “the bulk of [the soaps’] audience” ­were especially prominent.25 Academics, the soap press, and the networks themselves researched t­ hese young viewers, ­eager to understand the soaps’ appeal to college students and teens, whose viewing helped them accrue cultural capital among their peers.26 ­Whether ­middle schoolers and high schoolers gossiping about the soaps or college students congregating in student ­union and dormitory lounges, familiarity with ­these daytime tales became desirable youth currency.27 Young ­people ­were such valued viewers that understanding their interest in soaps became a preoccupation of t­ hose ­behind the scenes. Many believed that the secret to attracting youth was showcasing young characters and actors.28 Agnes Nixon expected that a 1985 amc summer story line featuring the college-­aged Tad and Dottie working in a beach community would “give us the opportunity to see young ­people in bathing suits, and should provide the show with a youthful ambience.”29 But some sought to understand young viewers’ interest as more than watching characters mirroring their own life Love in the After­noon  ·  157

stage. In 1981, atwt producer Mary-­Ellis Bunim studied one young man’s analy­sis of college students’ draw to soaps. The writer, Richard Greenberg, argued that young ­people w ­ ere especially attracted to ­those soaps that embraced their own excesses, for which a young viewer might say, “It’s such trash; I love it!” Greenberg assured that “trash” was a term of high praise for young ­people like him: smart, cynical, and invested in the lives of fictional characters of all ages despite the studied cool and media savvy that marked their generation.30 It was a hip and legitimated kind of trash that saw soap opera’s newfound fantastic plots and comedic ele­ments as central to its appeal, and to its newfound cultural status. Along with men and young ­people, “working ­women” w ­ ere also seen as a new, appealing addition to the soap audience.31 ­Women employed outside the home had been watching soaps across the 1970s. Examples of working ­women as soap viewers offered up in industry and mainstream press discourse of the 1970s acknowledged the range of w ­ omen’s employment, noting both shift workers f­ree during the day and higher-­status occupations such as “concert cellist” and “freelance editor” that led to flexible schedules and daytime availability.32 The press coverage of the early eighties soap craze featured multiple illustrations of working w ­ omen’s viewing practices, including the example of the four w ­ omen in one office who took their fifteen-­minute breaks sequentially across the hour of gh’s daily broadcast, collectively sharing the day’s events.33 Even e­ arlier, across the 1970s, the growing soap fan press was filled with letters to the editor and editorial cartoons referencing ­women’s determination to keep up with their soaps despite other demands on their time, from childbirth to paid work.34 Many shared their viewing strategies in letters to writers and producers, among them communal, lunchtime viewing while at work, as shared by the seventeen ­women who urged SFT to retain its midday slot in 1975 and the sixty-­four “ibm Girls and Xerox Girls” who gathered to watch Santa Barbara together in 1984.35 By the early 1980s, the tv and advertising industries ­were well aware that ­women beyond “bored ­house­wives with nothing better to do” ­were part of the soap audience.36 Indeed, one 1980 Nielsen ratings analy­sis noted that half of the w ­ omen who watched soaps worked outside the home, a number that surely grew as w ­ omen’s ­labor force participation increased across the de­cade and as the time-­shifting technology of the vcr became more and ­ omen became another symmore common.37 The audience of working w bol of the soaps’ elevated cultural and economic status. In a telling revision to daytime’s historic reputation as the ideal forum for targeting w ­ omen, one ad agency executive asserted that daytime remained “the most efficient 158  ·  chapter 5

figure 5.1 As early as 1970, fan magazines like After­noon tv joked about ­women’s determination to keep up with their soaps, despite other demands on their time and attention.

area to buy working ­women.”38 In 1985, the Wall Street Journal touted y&r as “the Yuppie soap opera,” creator Bill Bell making clear of t­hese gender-­ neutral “upwardly mobile professionals,” “We want ­these working adults in our audience.” While the piece’s author saw the soap’s Yuppie characters as a key draw, Bell credited the vcr with facilitating access to this “new kind of viewer.”39

Alternative Viewing Practices The vcr offered audiences a remarkable opportunity to stay connected to the soaps what­ever their daily commitments. It disarticulated daytime drama from the long-­disparaged position of the “bored ­house­wife” in ways that w ­ ere crucial to its cultural elevation. This disarticulation could have Love in the After­noon  ·  159

perpetuated the misogynistic dismissal of domestic l­abor and the w ­ omen associated with it that had attended daytime soap opera in the late postwar period. But the fact that the new technology was so embraced by ­women (and girls) e­ ager to enhance their soap viewing practices challenged that consequence. The vcr could allow h ­ ouse­wives, working w ­ omen, men, and high school kids to take plea­sure in the feminized form while also engaging in all manner of public pursuits. One could enjoy and affiliate with the feminine while participating in more masculinized social spheres. The vcr helped to blur gendered binaries that had disadvantaged femininity and the cultural products associated with it for de­cades. Audio taping of soaps was a regular practice of some soap viewers since at least the early 1970s, when compact cassette recording became an accessible domestic technology. Some fans recorded theme m ­ usic or episodes purely for plea­sure, o ­ thers did so for business purposes.40 When Bryna Laub began to write her Daytime Serial Newsletter in 1973, she kept up with multiple soaps by audio recording ­those airing concurrently.41 Once home videotape recording became a possibility, soap fans quickly understood its value, even as most knew it was beyond their financial reach. In 1978, one dool fan begged writer Ann Marcus to share the date of Don and Marlena’s upcoming wedding. Her husband was pressuring her to plan their vacation, but she was desperate not to miss the wedding. She wrote, “Maybe next year I can afford to buy a video tape and then my prob­lem w ­ ill be solved but right now if I ask my husband for one he is ­going to kill me.”42 Elite audiences such as soap writers and professional athletes began to talk about taping soaps.43 In 1981, Daytime Stars magazine presented the pros and cons of vcr owner­ ship, warning against the expense of the technology but also its ability to make one ever more deeply in thrall to the multiple soaps one might tape. On the plus side, the vcr “allows you to be your own programmer” and to expose the w ­ hole ­family to a favorite show. The magazine noted with savvy that once the husband and kids w ­ ere hooked, “the traditional criticism lev44 eled at soap fans ­will dis­appear.” As vcr penetration increased across the de­cade, soaps w ­ ere regularly noted as the most-­taped programs. In 1984, seven of the ten most frequently taped shows ­were daytime soaps; the other three w ­ ere prime time’s new serialized fare.45 By 1988, about half of working ­women owned vcrs, and just ­under half the soap audience w ­ ere employed; the suggestion was that ­those employed ­women ­were prominent vcr users when it came to soaps.46 The networks and soap creators made the case that both out-­of-­home viewing and time-­shifting accounted for a substantial portion of the soap audience.47 160  ·  chapter 5

Late in the de­cade, abc conducted studies that asserted the significance of ­these audience segments, determining that the working ­women who found ways to watch soaps w ­ ere viewers with money, making soaps especially worthwhile for higher-­end advertisers.48 Rhetorically, eco­nom­ically, and experientially, the vcr was a crucial component of the widespread popularization of soap opera, and of its prominence in the lives of a broad set of viewers that defied historic ste­reo­types about the soap audience. ­These developments legitimated soap opera in unpre­ce­dented ways, even as that legitimation had a glass ceiling beyond which it could not reach.

Legitimated Soaps? The new legitimacy of soap opera in the 1980s was clearly indebted to the expanded audience and economic profitability that brought. But that legitimacy contained within it its own limitations. Even when the mainstream press took soaps seriously, it often noted the prob­lem of the viewer who might ­mistake the on-­screen fantasy for real­ity, holding fast to the feminized denigration that had long plagued the form.49 Some of the industry’s most prominent players perpetuated similar distinctions, as when gh’s Luke, actor Anthony Geary, declared that his show was “a high-­class act. . . . ​We do a movie h ­ ere ­every day, not a soap opera,” therein articulating his show to a more widely respected medium.50 Even as soap opera achieved new heights, its embedded associations with the domestic and the feminine ­shaped and constrained its status. One of the most prominent signs of that status, and of its inherent limitations, came with the visibility of soaps in the world of feature film. Beginning with the successful Tootsie in 1982, in which Dustin Hoffman plays actor Michael Dorsey, who finds work on a soap by impersonating a ­woman, a number of feature-­length productions took a humorous look at the world of daytime drama. Some w ­ ere more parodic than ­others, and some employed current or former soap actors in central or supporting roles, but all found comedy in the excesses of daytime drama, imagining the world ­behind the scenes or in a “real” hospital as riddled with sex, betrayal, and heightened emotion as the on-­screen, fictional spheres. At times, this kind of gentle mocking was a sign of fondness and re­spect. This was most vis­i­ble in Young Doctors in Love (1982), an over-­the-­top depiction of a hospital in which the doctors and nurses dealt with exotic diseases, shameful secrets, and intense passions. Blackout sketches throughout featured contemporaneous Love in the After­noon  ·  161

figure 5.2 The feature film Young Doctors in Love (1982) affectionately mocked daytime soaps, using daytime actors such as Kin Shriner and Janine Turner from General Hospital and signaling the broad cultural awareness of soaps in this period.

soap actors, many from gh, but also from y&r and amc, trying out their comedic skills. Sean Young’s Dr. Stephanie Brody leads a group of kids in an exercise routine set to the campy strains of the After­noon Delights’ “General Hospi-­tale,” an affectionate tribute that name-­checked multiple gh characters and stories.51 In most of ­these features the soaps themselves ­were only backdrops for more conventional comedic and romantic tales. The most respected of t­ hese, the Acad­emy Award–­winning Tootsie, arguably had the most dismissive stance of all ­toward soaps. It did not employ any ­actual daytime soap talent, and it treats Michael’s disruption of the production of the diegetic soap (when he “comes out” as a man during a live broadcast) as a victory for his artistry (he crafts more compelling soap than do the ­actual creators) and his enlightened masculinity (given what he has learned about w ­ omen by impersonating one). Scholars have argued that Tootsie’s gender politics ultimately ­favor the masculine, “promoting the notion of masculine power while masking it.”52 But they fail to note that the soap opera setting is quite central to t­hese gender politics; Michael’s masculinized gender awareness comes from his ability to transcend the feminized sphere of soap. Soap opera’s dismissive positioning in most of ­these films managed to wink at and benefit from the culture’s obsession with soap opera without taking soap viewing or the work of its creative personnel too seriously. It kept in place 162  ·  chapter 5

cultural hierarchies in which the feminized world of daytime remained well below that of feature film.

Producing the 1980s Soap: New Visuals and Sounds The peak of the daytime soap’s power and popularity in the early 1980s was the result of a number of industrial and extratextual developments, from advertiser interest in young demographics to the development of the vcr, that made for a broader, more diverse audience that had been building across the network era. But this period was also marked by changes in the production of soap opera, in how the programs looked and sounded, in how their narratives brought multiple genres into the storytelling mix, and in the fantasies of sexy, romantic adventure that resulted. Assisted by increased production bud­gets, by the 1980s daytime soap opera was elaborating upon creative developments initiated across the network era to generate programs that felt fun and exciting to their continuing and new audiences. As of the late 1970s, when many soaps expanded to hour-­long episodes and all soaps ­were recorded on tape rather than being produced live, the industry was investing more bud­getary resources in production values than ever before. Ad revenues w ­ ere also climbing steadily, so the programs remained profitable even as their o ­ wners spent more to create them. Yet the increased production bud­gets w ­ ere distributed unevenly across networks, ­owners, and shows, and dif­fer­ent instances looked dif­fer­ent as a result. Take wardrobe expenses as an example. In the earliest years of tv soaps, actors wore their own clothing on-­screen, a trend that continued into the 1980s for male actors on nbc’s soaps.53 For much of tv soap history, the midrange department store Ohrbach’s supplied wardrobe for many of the soaps in exchange for a show credit. By the 1980s, as initiated in the high-­gloss production of The Young and the Restless in the 1970s, many wardrobe designers ­were shopping high-­end stores, and even taking actors like gh’s Geary on couture shopping sprees. The costume designer for y&r saw wardrobe as part of the fantasy the soap offered, tending to dress characters “one step higher” than a typical person in a similar social role.54 By 1986, when Bill and Lee Bell proposed a new soap, Rags, eventually retitled The Bold and the Beautiful (cbs, 1987–), fashion was to be “more than merely a backdrop” but instead part of the program’s “excitement and glamour,” via the fashion business of the central ­family.55 Early promos included images of a fashion shoot, and the first episode featured patriarch Eric Forrester and his son Love in the After­noon  ·  163

Ridge debating what makes ­women’s fashion sexy.56 This glamorous sensibility suffused the program, which included elaborately staged fashion shows. The sponsor-­owned soaps ­were slower to invest in a high-­fashion wardrobe. In 1981, GL’s costume designer argued that soap characters’ clothes should have a history, that they should be worn more than once as a nod to realism.57 Similarly, The Doctors’ costume designer claimed that soap characters should reflect the average person in their wardrobes, “current but not trendy.”58 Gradually, however, by the mid-1980s even the sponsor-­owned shows began to invest more in costumes and sets in hopes of keeping up with their competition, instituting a shift ­toward a more glamorous look across daytime.59 West Coast soaps, including b&b, y&r, and gh, tended more ­toward lavish and expensive productions than East Coast shows, in part due to questions of owner­ship (­there w ­ ere no sponsor-­owned soaps produced in Los Angeles), but also due to space considerations. abc built a new studio for gh in the l­ ater 1980s, constructing a building devoted to the show on the Prospect Studios lot. The ample space offered more room for sets, wardrobe, and props than was pos­si­ble in New York City. In so ­doing, abc may have been aiming to help gh uphold its position against its newest competitor, nbc’s Santa Barbara. Bridget and Jerome Dobson created this soap, retaining owner­ship over it, in 1984. nbc licensed it at g­ reat cost, building the largest studio ever used in daytime and bud­geting $30 million for the production’s first year.60 The expense of the production was one of the serial’s most-­promoted features, with nbc’s investment touted in a promotional video introducing the program to affiliates.61 The first episode amply displayed the generous bud­get, featuring a formal engagement party for heiress Kelly Capwell, many extras, location shooting, even a he­li­cop­ter.62 As the Dobsons and their production team planned the soap’s first November ratings sweeps period, they discussed a number of elaborate scenarios for remote locations, including chase sequences, outlandish settings for a ­couple’s first lovemaking, and a story line set aboard a boat.63 When sb’s ratings proved disappointing, nbc’s executives reported their plans to fix the show to their affiliates. Central to ­these plans was a hugely expensive earthquake staged to kill off ­those characters that h ­ adn’t been working well.64 Even as the show strug­gled to establish itself, making the large bud­get vis­i­ble on-­ screen remained key to the network’s strategy. While nbc was ­eager to distinguish Santa Barbara from its competitors, its lavish production was basically a more elaborate version of most soaps’ practices by the mid-1980s. The greater investment in soap production was most vis­i­ble in two trends that dominated the eighties industry: location 164  ·  chapter 5

shooting and the integration of popu­lar m ­ usic, each with roots ­earlier in the network era. In the 1960s, the short-­lived abc soap Never Too Young shot on-­location beach scenes, and Dark Shadows used a number of New ­England exterior shots to help establish its Maine setting. In 1970, One Life to Live enhanced its social issue focus by taping a­ ctual group therapy sessions at the Odyssey House drug treatment center.65 Across the 1970s, location shooting became more common, but bud­ getary constraints meant that footage was often captured without sound. Sometimes programs even used a sequence of location-­shot stills set to ­music as a way to capture an experience outside the studio, as did Ryan’s Hope in 1978 to depict Seneca and Jill’s honeymoon and in 1979 to illustrate Maeve Ryan’s Irish hometown.66 Even when soaps spent money to travel to the ­actual locales depicted on-­screen, the sequences tended more ­toward montage than dialogue-­heavy interactions. On rh in 1977, Mary narrated visuals of her Irish honeymoon in voice-­overs scripted as letters home to her parents.67 More typically, the New York–­based soaps would do brief location shoots in areas relatively close to the studio. Characters might visit the city, as did gl’s Ed and Rita before their wedding in 1978, but soaps also used a range of more remote settings to simulate country estates, Ca­rib­bean yachts, and the like. In the early 1970s, amc even used a riverside Connecticut town as a stand-in for the Viet­nam­ese village where the presumed dead Philip Brent was found.68 Ryan’s Hope was one of the few soaps set in a real locale, Manhattan, so location shooting close to the studio was logical.69 It was still aty­pi­cal, so location-­shot sequences usually marked impor­tant narrative moments, as in a 1977 episode when the troubled Frank Ryan, having discovered that the baby Jillian is carry­ing is not his, paces the city at night, eventually breaking into an angry run. The location shoot emphasizes his pain by layering the audio of Frank and Jill’s breakup over the visuals of his journey through the streets.70 This turning point for the character, falling within the February ratings “sweeps” month, was meant to attract audiences. Location shoots ­were planned as central features of the new soaps that debuted in the 1980s, a benefit of the real-­world settings of Texas (nbc, ­ ere also a 1980–82), Capitol (cbs, 1982–87), and Santa Barbara.71 They w means of trying to save struggling soaps, like Search for Tomorrow.72 Most of the 1980s location shoots featured action sequences, a practice begun in the 1970s but one that became increasingly elaborate in the 1980s. Like romantic montages, action sequences could be shot with relatively ­little dialogue, a means of cutting down on costs and production time. Yet such sequences also helped shift the very textual features of soap opera, orienting it more Love in the After­noon  ·  165

figure 5.3 Ryan’s Hope (abc) occasionally took advantage of its Manhattan setting to shoot location sequences, such as a February 9, 1977, episode in which Frank Ryan (Andrew Robinson) roams the city’s streets to deal with his pain.

t­ oward fantastical adventure than the everyday realism that had dominated across most of the network era. While General Hospital would achieve its greatest popularity with the location-­set adventures of Luke and Laura’s 1980 “summer on the run,” soaps that w ­ ere even older, and that had been less s­ haped by the innovations of the network era, ­were also changing drastically, as adventure-­oriented location shooting highlighted. In March and April 1980, Guiding Light b ­ rothers Mike and Ed Bauer raced through the jungle in Santo Domingo, hoping to save Ed’s former wife, Holly, from Roger Thorpe. Viewers saw not only an exotic setting but also two legacy characters, now in their forties, a l­awyer and a doctor, brandishing guns, scaling cliffs, and sporting the sweat, grime, and bloodied clothing of rugged adventurers.73 That the sons of Bert and Bill Bauer, whose troubled marriage had been the focus of so many 1950s plots, could find themselves in that setting, behaving as action heroes rather than relationship-­ troubled small-­town citizens discussing their damaged psyches over coffee 166  ·  chapter 5

figure 5.4 Mike (Don Stewart) and Ed Bauer (Mart Hulswit) leave ­behind their usual activities as respected scions of Springfield to rescue Ed’s ex-­wife, Holly, in the jungle of Santo Domingo. Guiding Light, cbs, April 1, 1980.

was a signal of how much soap storytelling and production had changed. In moments like this, it was clear that the 1980 Guiding Light had fundamentally dif­fer­ent features than did the serial that had transitioned from radio in 1952, the year attorney–­turned–­adventure hero Michael Bauer was born on-­air.74 Across the 1980s, the increasingly elaborate location shoots included action scene sound tracks of ambient noise, dialogue, and con­temporary pop hits, creating ­music video–­style sequences similar ­those appearing in prime-­ time series such as Miami Vice (nbc, 1984–90). In 1982, As the World Turns sent Tom and Margo on an adventure set in the fictional island of Drasue and shot along the Rio Grande as they chased a cartoonish, diminutive bad guy named Mr. Big. As the characters float upon a raft, an older recording, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “­You’ve Got a Friend,” helps illustrate their growing closeness. Once they capture Mr. Big and begin to sail away at the end of the adventure, the chorus of Bertie Higgins’s 1981 hit, “Key Largo,” plays u ­ nder their victorious departure. The lyr­ics, referencing the 1948 Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film, connect Tom and Margo’s Love in the After­noon  ·  167

romantic adventure with that of the classic screen ­couple. The association with old Hollywood was deliberate. The Dobsons referred to this as the ­couple’s “African Queen type of adventure” as they planned the story.75 As they sail away, Tom tells Margo, “You make me feel like Errol Flynn!”76 Nearly ­every soap c­ ouple of the 1980s had a pop theme song associated with their romance, a means of aligning soap ­couples with ­great cinematic pairings. In 1982, when gh’s Luke met a new love, Holly, Patti Austin and James Ingraham’s “Baby, Come to Me” was the refrain, a matchup that helped the single climb the ­music charts.77 By 1984, the soaps ­were invariably using major hits of the day to punctuate key moments in their supercouples’ stories. Bo and Hope of dool escape her almost-­wedding to another man aboard Bo’s motorcycle to Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero,” made famous in that year’s feature film Footloose.78 Santa Barbara introduced the audience to the star-­crossed pairing of Kelly and Joe in its 1984 debut episode with Peabo Bryson’s “If Ever Y ­ ou’re in My Arms Again.” Kelly flies away by he­li­cop­ter with her fiancé, and Joe looks up at her, remembering the love they shared before he was unjustly imprisoned.79 ­These moments made the soaps not only con­temporary and hip in the vein of the new mtv, but also cinematized them, especially given their frequent pairing with location sequences. The grandness of the supercouples’ love, the magnitude of their stories, the fantasies of significance they enacted ­were visual and auditory as well as narrative, matching the classic big-­screen romances they emulated. In this period, the soaps often looked and sounded more like a ­music video or a Hollywood film than they did a soap opera of twenty years ­earlier.

Producing the 1980s Soap: Generic Hybridity The stylistic and production ele­ments that differentiated the daytime soaps of the eighties w ­ ere paired with a new degree of generic hybridity, now taken to a greater extreme than ­earlier in the network era. Along with the adventure ele­ments vis­i­ble in so many location shoots was an ever-­growing integration of comedy and the occasional inclusion of such genres as science fiction and the western. The comedic ele­ments that had increasingly been included in soaps became a major feature of many of the programs by the 1980s. Individual comedic characters livened up serious situations. On amc, the new character Opal Gardner, whom Nixon created as “white trash personified,” was a somewhat villainous foil to her sweet ­daughter, Jenny.80 But she quickly became a comedic figure as well. So too did amc’s Verla 168  ·  chapter 5

figures 5.5 and 5.6 On the May 31, 1984, episode of Days of Our Lives (nbc), Hope (Kristian Alfonso) escapes her wedding to Larry by ­running away with Bo (Peter Reckell) on his motorcycle. This location-­shot adventure was intercut with the comedy of the wedding itself, in which Howie Hoffstedder (Stanley Brock) has taken Hope’s place as the bride.

Grubbs, played by renowned comedian and amc fan, Carol Burnett, figure comedically into the soap.81 Comedy in the screwball vein of classic Hollywood also played a central role in the supercouple romances of the 1980s. When Luke and Laura went on the run in the summer of 1980, their interactions ­were both romantic and comedic. With ­little money, they stay in a motel room with one bed. At this point in their story, Luke is avowedly in love with Laura, but their relationship is chaste; thus he tries to get his gangly body comfortable to sleep in the bathtub. When he fails at this, he sneaks into the bed, looks at her with love, and declares, “­You’re an angel and I love you but, damn, I wish you had mo’ money!”82 Many a scene features Laura’s barely suppressed giggles as Luke takes on absurd disguises, such as that of a French hairdresser, to maintain their cover. Th ­ ese scenes signaled their lightheartedness through musical cues, sound track ele­ments repeated in 1984 when gh’s next supercouple, Frisco and Felicia, try to evade the bad guys.83 Also in 1984, dool’s Bo and Hope re­unite against the comedy of the goofy Howie Hoffstedder disguised as the bride when Hope abandons her wedding to Larry Welch, taking off with Bo instead.84 On Guiding Light in late 1983 an exasperated Rick is laden with packages during the spoiled Mindy’s New York shopping spree, a humorous scene meant to contrast the more serious, tender, and fairy-­tale-­like experience of their friends Phillip and Beth.85 Comedy played a further role in the soaps of the 1980s through clever, self-­reflexive commentaries represented by “soaps within the soap” story lines. In 1981, rh introduced the character of actress Barbara Wilde, star of the fictional soap The Proud and the Passionate, when Dr. Seneca Beaulac ­becomes a con­sul­tant to the show. A number of Ryan’s Hope characters are revealed to be fans.86 Unlike the feature films referencing soaps in this period, this fictionalized daytime drama was treated with respectful affection. ­Toward the end of the de­cade, this trope was repeated, as oltl featured the fictional soap Fraternity Row, in which the character Megan Gordon starred.87 In 1989, the first scene of nbc’s new soap, Generations, featured the fictionalized Tomorrow’s Another Day, starring the character Jessica Gardner.88 The more legitimated status of soap opera allowed for this self-­referential humor. Indeed, comedy and the ability of soaps to poke fun at themselves became a source of distinction during the 1980s. It was one of the ways that Santa Barbara was presented as unique upon its 1984 debut and across its run. As Bridget Dobson told one interviewer, the goal was that no one would watch sb and “Dare to say, ‘yech, a soap.’ ”89 Two years ­later, she explained 170  ·  chapter 5

of the show, “Santa Barbara is unique in that it combines a kind of black, bizarre humor with a kind of intelligent­sia with a kind of emotionality I ­haven’t seen on any other soap. Humor, particularly, is unique.”90 Even as the soap strug­gled in the ratings, it achieved a level of re­spect for its comedic chops, such as its “deft timing and sight gags.”91 SB’s audience saw ­these as key features, as well, lamenting when the soap became a “sappy, melodramatic hour of misery.”92 As most soaps integrated action and adventure alongside comedy and romance, all strove to help their stories stand out. At times, this resulted in additional generic variations. Thus, when gl’s Nola Reardon accompanied her boss and budding love interest, archaeologist Quint McCord, on an adventure, it included some mystical Indiana Jones–­style ele­ments. Such material veered into science fiction when Luke and Laura teamed up with spy Robert Scorpio to stop the Cassadine ­family from controlling the weather. A machine the Cassadines manipulated from their under­ground, island lair tried to freeze the c­ ouple’s hometown! Two years l­ ater, gh combined science fiction with the super­natural as villain David Grey used futuristic hologram technology to mask his theft of ancient trea­sures while hypnotizing locals with his mesmerizing powers. ­Later in the de­cade, oltl integrated both time travel and western ele­ments, telling the story of the Buchanan f­ amily’s history in the Old West of 1888. The extreme genre variance introduced to soaps by Dark Shadows in the 1960s had proved that audiences, young ones in par­tic­u­lar, would be open to such combinations. Beginning in the 1980s (and continuing off and on into the first de­cade of the 2000s), such hybridity would become a more widespread feature of multiple soaps, a turn unheard of when soap opera established itself on tele­vi­sion in the early 1950s. The array of genres soap opera incorporated over time suggests that the soap opera “mode” might fit fluidly across tele­vi­sion narrative, unconstrained by typical generic par­ameters.

Sex and Romance Almost all of the generic hybridity, location shooting, and integration of pop ­music that made the soaps look, sound, and feel dif­fer­ent by the early 1980s supported stories of young, romantic pairings, tales of men and ­women who fell in love amid danger, adventure, and sexual tension–­infused bickering. ­These “supercouples,” as the soap fan press began to refer to them by the mid1980s, embodied the appeals of soap opera for many. Their gender politics Love in the After­noon  ·  171

represented a new elaboration on the altered archetypes that had evolved across the network era, but the ways such stories turned the focus of soap narratives heavi­ly ­toward romance and sex was also a new development, one that had been emerging across the network era. Alongside the introduction of the sexually desirous ­women characters by the 1970s was an increase in explicit talk about and repre­sen­ta­tion of (heterosexual) sex in soap stories. A key way for 1970s soaps to express their status as “relevant” was to offer bolder depictions of sex, in keeping with prime time’s turn to “wallowing in sex” in that de­cade.93 When How to Survive a Marriage premiered in 1974, it emphasized this feature by including two scenes of characters in bed.94 In so ­doing, nbc was seeking to compete with cbs’s The Young and the Restless, the other new soap that dealt more explic­ itly with sex. ­These depictions ­were notable ­because sex scenes—­characters in bed, undressed or undressing, kissing passionately or glowing with postcoital satisfaction—­were practically non­ex­is­tent in daytime before the 1970s and, even then, appeared in some soaps more than ­others. More typically, characters might kiss and sink onto a bed or couch, often departing the frame as they did so. In the 1960s, married c­ ouples such as The Doctors’ Matt and Maggie might talk while in bed, and even engage in a romantic clinch, but both wore vis­i­ble nightclothes; in any case, such scenes ­were infrequent. When, in the 1970s, soaps began to include sex scenes, in bed, with characters seemingly unclothed and often unmarried, it marked a new era. As writer John Haggert wrote to Bill Bell in 1971, responding to a dool scene of two characters, naked and in bed together, covered by a sheet, “­Aren’t you the bold one!”95 By 1973, nbc audience research noted that viewers “do enjoy seeing lovemaking (short of Linda Lovelace [star of the hard-­core porn film Deep Throat]) in the serials.”96 Soap fans wanted more sex scenes, which they understood as dif­fer­ent from pornography, even as they took real, and even erotic, plea­sure in such moments.97 Fans of dool begged the creators of the already-­sexy soap for more of their favorite pairings in seductive situations. One ­woman wrote on behalf of her friends and f­ amily of their favorites, Don and Marlena, “We miss their love scenes specially their bedroom scenes, if we have to wait for the wedding since Don has moved out of Marlena’s ­house, why ­don’t you have a flashback of the first beautiful bedroom love scene they had when she was wearing the black night gown.”98 Fans of dool enjoyed the sexy interactions of multiple ­couples. As one audience report stated, “Viewers very much like the kissing scenes between Doug and Julie and seem to derive vicarious plea­sure from it.”99 Indeed, many viewers found 172  ·  chapter 5

the growing prominence of characters’ romantic passion inspirational, as testified by one ­woman who wrote to Love of Life actress Veleka Gray in 1978 to tell her that the pairing of Gray’s Mia with Ben was r­ eally “­doing won­ders for [her own] love life.”100 The audience excitement around the growing attention to sex and romance made ­these especially appealing subjects for creators and fans alike at the start of the 1980s. General Hospital intensified its focus on romantic love and sexual passion in late 1979 when it launched the story of Luke Spencer and Laura Baldwin. Luke was a new character for the show, molded in the vein of the emotionally tortured romantic lead, including in his violent tendencies. One night, Luke, drunk, fearing for his life, and desperately in love with the married Laura, rapes her on the floor of the Campus Disco where they both work. Over the next nine months, Luke and Laura suffer through the consequences of the rape, eventually reestablishing a friendship as Laura hides the fact that Luke was her rapist. In my previous work, I have argued that this story may have been most compelling to viewers for the ways that it helped them to explore the meaning of rape in a period when the very definition of the term was a point of social contention.101 It is unclear how thoroughly the soap’s creators planned Luke and Laura’s romance. Many involved have argued that the decision to pair them long-­term was made ­after the rape, when all concerned realized the actors’ and characters’ chemistry.102 But the episodes themselves reveal that the seeds of their attraction ­were planted before the rape; Luke declares his love for Laura overtly, and she is clearly torn between her feelings for Luke and her devotion to her husband. Launching a love story with a rape born of the man’s out-­of-­control passion was a common narrative device of 1970s romance novels, and some feminist critics of the day argued that it allowed ­women to explore their sexual fears and fantasies in a safe, fictional space.103 By the summer of 1980, the program shifted away from the rape when Luke and Laura run away from Port Charles together, evading Laura’s husband, who believes the two have been having an affair, as well as escaping the mob boss for whom Luke had been working. The two have all manner of alternately suspenseful and lighthearted adventures that summer and again the following year, when they strive to defeat the evil Cassadine f­ amily. ­These stories combined the ­couple’s romance with action, science fiction, and comedy; that t­ hese tales coincided with the program’s jump in the ratings and widespread popularity made their combination of ele­ments the textual formula other soaps strove to imitate. ­These two characters shared the occasional kiss, but their sexual involvement built slowly, perhaps in an Love in the After­noon  ·  173

figure 5.7 The extreme close-­ups of supercouples in intimate moments, such as the kisses between Frisco (Jack Wagner) and Felicia (Kristina Malandro) upon their engagement, invited audiences to take plea­sure in the ­couples’ sexual desire. General Hospital, abc, December 6, 1985.

effort to redeem their violent origin story (which was never mentioned once they embarked on their adventures). The subsequent supercouples shared much more extensive sex and, especially, kissing scenes, with more skin on display and more intensive close-­ups on ­faces and bodies. This was a relatively rapid shift in the early 1980s. In 1980, Guiding Light head writer Douglas Marland faced obstacles in getting a sex scene for teen lovers Morgan and Kelly on air, but a 1982 story projection for As the World Turns by the Dobsons, another p&g soap also on cbs, noted that what the soap needed most was “more emphasis on the basic primordial man/woman relationships . . . ​sexuality in ­every scene.”104 When the Dobsons launched Santa Barbara in 1984, they bragged about the extensive standards and practices notes they received as a sign of how “spicy” the soap would be.105 Days of Our Lives producer Ken Corday has remembered the period as one in which “kisses went from closed mouth to lots of lips and tongues,” and the ­women characters caressing the shirtless bodies of the male leads.106 174  ·  chapter 5

Extreme close-­ups magnified this sexual intensity. General Hospital’s Frisco and Felicia had sex scenes but especially many, many kissing scenes. When Frisco proposed marriage in December 1985 and Felicia happily accepted, the aftermath included a two-­minute-­long stretch of extreme close-­ ups of their ­faces and especially their lips, with a brief medium shot midway. As the two pledge their love and passionately kiss, the camera is zoomed so closely in to their f­aces that we see e­ very caress of their lips in intimate detail.107 A 1987 scene between dool’s Patch and Kayla finds the two naked in a hot spring. The emphasis is on Kayla’s experience and plea­sure, with extreme close-­ups of her large blue eyes, expressing her desire, held for longer takes than the reverse shots of Patch. As Patch finds Kayla in the spring, already undressed, and she pulls him in with her, it is clear that her desire is directing the action, and that we are invited to watch with and through ­ ere the kinds of sexual expressions that filled 1980s soap her.108 ­These w screens; unlike the juvenile double entendres that peppered 1970s prime time, supercouple sexuality emphasized feminized desires and female plea­ sure, and encouraged audiences to experience some of the same thrills as the on-­screen heroines.109

Fantasies “Real” and ­Imagined The mixing of genres, boost in production values, and focus on sex and romance that marked soaps of the 1980s as dif­fer­ent from e­ arlier iterations made for more glamorous and lighthearted programs. Th ­ ese features contributed to a turn away from the “relevance” that had pervaded the ­earlier network era, making the 1980s soap dif­fer­ent from even its own immediate past. This shift was vis­i­ble in the overt embrace of adventure and supercouple romance but was also evident in the literal inclusion of fantasy sequences, stories that featured individual characters’ imaginative worlds. ­These explorations of character psy­chol­ogy ­were in keeping with the soaps’ long-­term investment in ­human interiority but ­were figured as wish fulfillments and flights of fancy, entertaining turns away from the “real world” of the characters’ lives, much as location shoots and pop m ­ usic–­scored montage sequences broke ­free of the mundanities of typical soap scenes. As ­counters to the fantastical scenes of Luke and Laura dancing the night away in formal wear across a closed department store during their 1980 summer on the run, writers for other soaps designed even more elaborate scenarios, fitting them into more realistic story lines by locating them Love in the After­noon  ·  175

figure 5.8 Nola Reardon (Lisa Brown) imagines herself and her object of desire, Quint McCord (Michael Tylo), as famous romantic pairs from Hollywood history, including Casablanca (1942). Guiding Light, cbs, January 1982.

in characters’ minds. In 1981 and 1982, GL’s Marland scripted Nola Reardon’s dreams of romantic relivings of classical Hollywood scenes, featuring herself and her thus far unrequited love, Quint McCord, in the starring roles. In re-­creations from such films as Dracula, Jane Eyre, Casablanca, Wuthering Heights, Now, Voyager, Rosemary’s Baby, Rebecca, and My Fair Lady, the poor, unsophisticated Nola imagines dramatic and power­ful scenarios of emotional intensity, rousing to won­der, “Oh, why ­can’t real life be that beautiful?”110 In 1982, the Dobsons tried a similar tactic on atwt as Barbara Stenbeck lapses into fantasies of herself as Bianca, a w ­ oman in love with Geoffrey, her husband’s ­enemy. The eighteenth-­century setting of ­these dream sequences, stretched over forty-­six episodes, allowed for elaborate period costumes as Bianca and Geoffrey’s forbidden love paralleled Barbara’s attraction to Gunnar, ­enemy of her devious husband.111 Played with a somber gravity, this story was not as well received by viewers as the more lighthearted stories at a remove from real­ity on this and other soaps.112 As the de­cade continued, more and more soaps regularly included fantasy sequences as reflections of character interiority, and most programs 176  ·  chapter 5

featured larger-­than-­life stories even when they ­were rooted in the real­ity of the diegetic world. The early weeks of The Bold and the Beautiful in 1987 included the parallel dreams of both Brooke and Caroline, each imagining a fantasy wedding to the wealthy playboy Ridge Forrester.113 Even once Brooke and Ridge get together the following year, she continues to see their relationship in fantastical terms, gushing to her s­ isters that their bond is “magical.”114 Brooke and Ridge’s less-­than-­ideal relationship made her perspective on their happiness more delusional than covetable as their story proceeded, but the fantasy of romantic bliss she i­magined had become central to the soaps of the 1980s, represented most overtly in the elaborate weddings staged for many of the de­cade’s supercouples. ­These episodes often combined the distinguishing traits of 1980s soaps: fairy-­tale romance, location shooting, popu­lar m ­ usic, and expensive production values evidenced in elaborate hair, makeup, and wardrobe. Cliff and Nina’s 1980 ceremony on All My C ­ hildren, shot on location at an estate scripted as Cortland Manor, home of Nina’s wealthy ­father, included the bride’s arrival in a horse-­drawn carriage, presaging the types of soap weddings soon to air.115 In 1981, the wedding of gl’s Morgan and Kelly included some brief location-­shot moments and an instrumental version of Anne Murray’s late 1970s hit “You Needed Me,” but the ­union was not the site of the elaborate investment in narrative significance or production of Luke and Laura’s ceremony, shot on location on grounds standing in for the mansion of the Port Charles mayor a few months ­later.116 The massive audience for the wedding encouraged increasingly elaborate supercouple betrothals. The most elaborate of the fairy-­tale weddings was that of Bo and Hope on dool in 1985, which was shot and set on location in E ­ ngland in a massive cathedral. With hundreds of extras, a choir, and a groom racing to the ceremony on a constable’s ­horse, the expense and narrative significance of the event w ­ ere detailed on-­screen.117 Such productions led soap viewers to expect similarly extensive productions for their favorite ­couples. One Santa Barbara fan demanded a “sumptuous wedding” for her favorites, Eden and Cruz, while another, aged fourteen, wrote Bridget Dobson with a detailed plan for that ­couple’s long-­awaited ceremony, including their song (Sade’s “Your Love Is King”; she included a cassette tape with her letter) and sketches for Eden’s gown.118 No part of the supercouple narrative was more emphasized in producer and fan efforts than t­ hese fantasy weddings, representing as they did the triumph of the ­couples’ idealized, magical love and epitomizing the embrace of fantasies of all kinds. Love in the After­noon  ·  177

figure 5.9 Bo and Hope’s (Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso) 1985 wedding, one of the most elaborate of the supercouple ceremonies, was shot on location in a British cathedral. Days of Our Lives, nbc, May 23, 1985.

Supercouple Romance, Fantasy, and the Rise of Postfeminist Culture Supercouple weddings epitomized the emphasis on romance, fantasy, and glamour in 1980s soaps, a trend that dominated the industry and marked many of its most popu­lar programs. In this era, creators such as Agnes Nixon and Bill Bell continued to pursue some social issue storytelling, but even their soaps included ele­ments more aligned with a turn away from engagement with social and po­liti­cal issues than a focus upon them.119 Supercouple stories are revealing of a historically specific shift the soaps made in their construction of gendered character types and their broader engagement with discourses of social identity at a time when the impact of the ­women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s had been felt. Together with the economic might of daytime drama at its network era earning peak, the turns the programs made by the early 1980s may be best explained by the shifting po­liti­cal winds, and their expression in popu­lar culture. The massive popularity of the soaps and their supercouples may be seen as a 178  ·  chapter 5

particularly significant instance of t­hose popu­lar cultural expressions, one that helped turn the cultural mainstream away from questions of ongoing social equality, perhaps especially t­hose of gender and sexuality, but also ­those of race and class. By the early 1980s, the activism and publicity surrounding the w ­ omen’s movement had begun to die down, and conservative responses ­were increasingly given voice across the culture, ­whether in the popularity of new US president Ronald Reagan and the neoconservative interests that ushered in his win, or in the high-­profile tv series that many interpreted as glorifications of Reagan-­style wealth, including prime-­time soaps like Dallas and Dynasty. While some have identified this period as one of backlash against feminism, historical distance might more usefully help us to see that backlash as just one piece of a broader turn ­toward a “postfeminist” sensibility, one that took feminism for granted more than actively opposing it. The supercouples embodied this very tendency. Not overtly antifeminist, the supercouples and the stories surrounding them did help to turn daytime soap opera away from the social issues that had been more prominent ­earlier in the network era. In so d ­ oing, they began to place questions of w ­ omen’s rights, as well as other politicized concerns, in the past, as if the m ­ atter had now been settled, and men and ­women could get back to focusing on what r­ eally mattered—­each other. The soaps’ ambivalent attitude ­toward feminism was in keeping with a broader shift in attitudes ­toward the ­women’s movement. While mainstream feminist ideals had been accepted even among many with conservative po­liti­cal leanings in the early 1970s, by the ­later part of the de­cade the social conservatism of the New Right, especially vis­i­ble in a newly invigorated antiabortion crusade, made feminism incompatible with Republican thought.120 Antifeminist activists like Phyllis Schlafly, founder of stop era, the movement opposing the Equal Rights Amendment (era) to the US Constitution, held increasing sway, not only within official po­liti­cal ranks but also publicly. Schlafly’s writings, such as her 1977 book, The Power of the Positive ­Woman, asserted the value of traditional gender roles, arguing that feminist activists w ­ ere in fact harming w ­ omen by endangering some of their inherent privileges.121 As Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election and the failure of ­ ere the era to achieve ratification by its 1982 deadline reveals, such views w becoming more mainstream than fringe as the 1970s passed into the 1980s. As Lisa McGirr has written, the growing power of the religiously oriented New Right was often, at heart, “an effort by middle-­class men and ­women to assert their sense of a properly ordered world—­one they felt was threatened Love in the After­noon  ·  179

by sexual liberation, the w ­ omen’s movement, the burgeoning Left, and the youth culture movements—by championing ­family values, authority, and tradition.”122 Interviews with ­women active in the pro-­life movement reveal that many Americans saw feminism as both out of touch with and harmful to men’s and w ­ omen’s true natures. As one such activist argued, “The feminist movement has wanted to, as it w ­ ere, ­really turn ­women into men or to kind of de-­sex them, and [feminists] pretend that ­there are no impor­tant differences between men and ­women.”123 Motivated by ­these desires to preserve long-­standing ways of life, the neoconservative turn of American politics and culture by the early 1980s surely swayed the soaps’ turn away from more overtly feminist content, as well. In keeping with this po­liti­cal climate, the supercouples often fulfilled rather narrow gender roles, typically featuring naive, privileged “princesses” pairing up with rebellious, vaguely dangerous outsiders. In line with the growing attention to the emotionally tortured male begun in the late 1960s, the supercouple stories centered as much around the wounded psyches of their rebellious leading men as upon the experiences of their heroines. Indeed, each member of the ­couple helped to heal the pains of the other. The adventures the ­couples had together often equalized them, allowing the ­women in par­tic­u­lar a means to reject conventional, unsatisfying ways of life in f­ avor of romance and adventure. In this re­spect the characters lived lives influenced by feminism, in that the heroines embarked on adventures and their male partners generally accepted their assistance during their capers. The young heroines w ­ ere not sitting at home, fretting about their marriage prospects. But the soaps’ take on feminism also suggested that ­there was no gender-­ based discrimination to be concerned about. Such ­matters seemed to be a past prob­lem now resolved, in that ­women characters w ­ ere not frustrated by the limitations imposed on them (as in the psychologically strained female characters of the postwar period), nor ­were they advocating strongly for their self-­determination (as in early 1970s characters like amc’s Erica Kane, ­doing what­ever it took to get the abortion she knew was the right choice for her). Instead, in the supercouple stories of the 1980s, the soaps occupied an ambiguous ­middle ground that accepted the basic tenets of w ­ omen’s liberation while avoiding engagement with the conflicts feminism had exposed. ­These stories made romantic love the answer to the prob­lems of gender and sexuality raised by the ­women’s movement and conservative responses to it. While feminists could find in the supercouples a progressive statement about heterosexual pairings as meetings of equals, more conservative perspectives 180  ·  chapter 5

might have seen in ­these tales a validation of conventional gender roles and heteronormativity, especially given the ­couples’ drive t­oward traditional, lavish weddings. While this echoed the “balance” in outlook so central to the network era cultural forum that soaps offered, it did not directly gesture to any issues or questions of the day. Instead, this version of the forum raised ­matters of difference, largely in terms of gender and (hetero)sexuality but also of class and, fleetingly, of race, as individual distinctions that could be bridged through the power of love, an appealingly hopeful, if privileged and naive, perspective.

New Gendered Archetypes: The Princess and the Drifter The gender roles of the supercouples fit conventional conceptions in multiple ways. Most often, the w ­ oman in such c­ ouples was a product of privilege, coming from wealth or at least economic comfort. She was young, sometimes not yet eigh­teen, and sexually innocent. While the details of her background might vary, the supercouple heroine was nearly always princess-­like in some way: exceptionally pretty, imperious, demanding, used to getting her own way. She might be seen as a combination of the prefeminist girl, too young and innocent to be aware of her power, or lack thereof, and the liberated ­woman, self-­determined, capable, and focused on a goal. Her innocence helped assure her a normative path, but her personality and, most centrally, her attraction to the unconventional hero hinted that she might not be such a traditional ­woman ­after all. A heroine rather than a villainess, she was also a product of the more nuanced repre­sen­ta­tions of admirable and devious ­women alike that had developed across the network era. General Hospital’s Laura was a prototype for this princess heroine. Having experienced her share of trauma, Laura found happiness at age seventeen, when she married her sweetheart, Scotty. As the d ­ aughter of prominent town doctors and the wife of a law student, Laura has a level of security not known by Luke or his ­sister, Bobbie Spencer. They lost their parents at a young age, ­after a childhood of deprivation. They went to live with their Aunt Ruby Anderson, who loved them but who was the madam of a Florida whore­house. Bobbie was a teenage prostitute and Luke had regular run-­ins with the law. When they come to the gh canvas in the late 1970s, Bobbie sees Laura as her ­enemy. Not only does Bobbie want Scotty for herself, but the blonde, sweet Laura seems to have had all the privileges that redheaded, cynical Bobbie, with the makings of a villainess, lacks. The contrast between Love in the After­noon  ·  181

Laura and Bobbie further emphasizes Laura’s princess-­like status. However, as Laura gradually gets more and more involved with Luke, the ill fit between Laura and the privileged life she has lived becomes clear. As Luke and Laura run away from Port Charles in the summer of 1980, they are on a mission to decode mobster Frank Smith’s black book, but they are also escaping from Laura’s “normal” life gone wrong. Scotty has been suspicious of Laura’s relationship with Luke for months, but viewers know that the two are just friends, despite Luke’s declarations of love. ­After discovering that Luke was Laura’s rapist, Scotty attacks her verbally, calling her a tramp, insisting it was an affair, not rape as Laura had claimed. When Laura flees town with Luke, she is trying to escape Scotty’s cruelty and the collapse of what had once been an ideal marriage as much as she is trying to help Luke. As Luke and Laura hide out in an array of places, a seedy motel room, a department store, a farm, ­there are two subjects of conversation that they visit repeatedly, both of which emphasize Laura’s role as sexually innocent (despite being married and having been raped). First are Luke’s regular statements about how much she has grown up, about how she is a ­woman now. As he tells her when she refuses to go back home and instead stays with him, “­You’re changing, y­ ou’re changing on me. Y ­ ou’re not a ­little girl anymore. ­You’re becoming a w ­ oman before my eyes and it’s very exciting and I’ve been waiting a long time to see it.”124 Such declarations reinforce Laura’s purity and youth but also suggest that she is bolder and braver, more in­de­pen­dent and self-­assured, than she might seem.125 That Luke recognizes this about her is part of his appeal—to Laura and to an audience that has been affected by the widespread ac­cep­tance of a mainstream, liberal feminism. The reminders of Laura’s age and innocence are often paired with the other key strand in their conversations, the chaste distance between them. As Luke says immediately ­after noting her womanliness, “I’m trying not to touch you, but one day . . . ​it’s gonna happen.” The characters appeared in nearly ­every episode that summer, and a large percentage of their scenes included similar exchanges. They have many conversations about their sleeping arrangements, given that sharing a bed is out of the question for Laura. This is not ­because she fears Luke, who has sworn not to touch her, even as he declares how much he longs for her; rather, it is ­because she is so committed to proving Scotty wrong. As she explains to Luke, “I ­don’t want to break my marriage vows ­because I ­don’t want Scotty to be right about me.”126 The supercouple heroines could be identified by both their sexual purity and 182  ·  chapter 5

figure 5.10 Felicia (Kristina Malandro) has the imperious demeanor, flowing locks, and ­actual lineage of a princess, but she refuses the trappings of femininity. General Hospital, abc, September 1984.

their defiance of conventional expectations, a prefeminist ideal benefiting from the pro­gress enabled by feminism. When Laura’s portrayer, Genie Francis, left the show soon a­ fter the ­couple’s 1981 wedding, the soap strug­gled for several years to create another supercouple. By September  1984, the program began a story that would produce the next such pair in Frisco Jones and Felicia Cummings. The two meet when Frisco catches Felicia hiding u ­ nder his bed, trying to steal from him an unusual ring he has just purchased. Disguised as a boy, Felicia initially refuses to speak, and when she does it is to give ­orders: “­Don’t touch me!” Once Frisco snatches her cap and her long, blonde braid tumbles out, she declares, “With that, I s­ hall leave you!” before he threatens to call the police.127 Her imperious demeanor foreshadows an impor­tant plot point. Felicia, it turns out, actually is a princess, an Aztec princess who is searching for a lost trea­sure, of which the ring is part. Frisco calls her “Princess,” first contemptuously, then lovingly, and the following year, Felicia narrates their love story to a ­little girl as that of “the princess and the drifter.”128 Love in the After­noon  ·  183

Over the subsequent weeks, Frisco helps Felicia to hide from the villains chasing ­after both her and the ring, and her difference from the other ­women in Port Charles is highlighted. Across ­these weeks, Felicia is costumed only in the valet uniform she had been wearing as a disguise. She breaks her leg, and so this outfit is also paired with a clunky cast. She wears no visible makeup, and her hair is not styled. That hair is crucial to her identity as a princess. It is unusually long, falling down her entire back, and quite a contrast with the other ­women characters. In early 1980s style, ­these w ­ omen tend to have big, teased hair, more tall and wide than long. Terry Brock, a young ­woman trying to attract Frisco’s interest just as he is getting more and more involved in helping Felicia, epitomizes this look. Terry’s vibrant makeup, big hair, and brightly colored clothes are a marked contrast to Felicia’s bare face, long, straight hair, white button-­down shirt, black pants, and cast. While Felicia looks more a girl than the ­woman Terry does, she is also so determined and demanding that she is hardly girlish. Even more so than Laura in the summer of 1980, Felicia combines the innocence and purity of prefeminist girlhood with the resolve and focus of a liberated w ­ oman. Ensuring the unconventionality of the heroine is her choice of the rebellious figure of the hero. Th ­ ese young men, older than the barely adult heroines but still youthful, often came from underprivileged backgrounds, held a kind of outsider status, and found themselves in trou­ble with the law or other institutions of authority. Luke’s rough background epitomizes this, but many other of the ­couples’ male partners w ­ ere characterized similarly. Frisco is a rock singer initially estranged from his ­family, and atwt’s Holden Snyder is a stable boy working for Lily Walsh’s wealthy m ­ other. Bo Brady of dool is a motorcycle-­riding Merchant Marine, then a private investigator, as he begins his romance with rich Hope Williams, while the program’s Steve “Patch” Johnson, who had been in the Merchant Marines with Bo and had lost an eye in a knife fight with him, worked for the mob when he fell in love with Bo’s s­ ister, Kayla. Meanwhile, Santa Barbara’s working-­class Joe Perkins begins the series by getting released from prison, where he was sent for a murder he ­didn’t commit, that of the b ­ rother of his rich girl love, Kelly Capwell. Even when the young men came from wealth, as in the case of gl’s Phillip Spaul­ding, they become outsiders to their privileged backgrounds, as when Phillip discovers the secret of his parentage and rejects the respectable world of his wealthy parents. Although many of the supercouple heroes eventually work in law enforcement (which better enabled their adventures), they remained edgy, willing to skirt the letter of the law, never quite fitting into a traditionally 184  ·  chapter 5

figure 5.11 Patch (Stephen Nichols) has the outsider status of the supercouple hero; Kayla seeks to heal his physical and emotional pain. Days of Our Lives, nbc, July 1986.

masculine breadwinner role. As such, they retained some characteristics of the tortured hero even as they eschewed the vio­lence and disaffection that had once been central to the type. When Bo Brady becomes a police officer, he still sports his long, shaggy hair and beard; when Frisco Jones joins the police force, he gets involved in undercover work that leads him to a similarly scruffy look. While he was necessarily strong, brave, and manly, the supercouple hero could also be riddled with insecurity as a result of his underprivileged background or outsider status, more remnants of the tortured man. The stories often focused on his emotional wounds and the heroine’s ability to salve them. As much as Phillip rescues Beth Raines from her evil stepfather, she also helps him to heal from the discovery of his true parentage. Just as dool’s Patch protects Kayla from danger, she also tends to his physical and emotional pain, unfazed by the eye patch he initially refuses to let her remove.129 As much as the hero works to save and protect both the heroine and the community from which they came, he is also in need of protection and support, which the heroine can uniquely provide. Both characters, princess and drifter, ­were variations on the gendered types that Love in the After­noon  ·  185

had developed across the network era, both palatable for a world changed by feminism (the men ­were no longer rapists, for example) but also widely readable as heteronormative ideals along the lines of pairings familiar from classical Hollywood film and con­temporary romance fiction.

Obstacles to Supercouple Romance? Class, Race, and External Threats Central to the supercouple narratives’ ability to dismiss inequalities of all kinds as relics of the past was the role of the ­couple’s class differences. ­These ­were impor­tant in drawing a contrast between the two, but they ­were never a serious obstacle to their u ­ nions. Even when class resentment indirectly ­causes them trou­ble, it cannot truly come between a supercouple. For example, the stepfather of gl’s Beth, Bradley Raines, resents the wealth of his former employer, Alan Spaul­ding, and the privilege of Alan’s son, Phillip. Bradley is hostile to Phillip and Beth’s budding romance in part due to his class-­based resentment of the Spaul­dings. But Bradley’s feelings are given no credence, as he is a villainous character who rapes Beth, suggesting that any grievances he has are not valid. The class difference between a supercouple pair was typically no more than a minor obstacle to their happiness, as when dool’s Hope buys Bo a cashmere jacket for him to wear when he escorts her to her eigh­teenth birthday party. When she gives it to him, he storms out uncomfortably. L ­ ater, when they fi­nally talk, Bo admits that he ­doesn’t know what he’d do with such a jacket, and he seems ashamed to have given Hope a mere poetry book that his own f­ather had given him. Although the book is a prized possession, he downplays its worth, exclaiming, “I hope you ­didn’t get your hands dirty on this old book!” Their class-­based conflict, it turns out, is r­ eally a mask for the real tension between them, the fact that Bo has been resisting their mutual attraction. Indeed, the conflict over the gifts leads Bo to admit his feelings, and the two begin to kiss passionately.130 The ­couples’ class differences dissolve in the face of their love. Once the c­ ouple unites, the less eco­nom­ically advantaged of the pair seemingly moved up in class status, as displayed by their elaborate weddings and in the heroes’ turn to more respectable occupations such as law enforcement. Figuring class as one of multiple stumbling blocks in a supercouple’s path to togetherness helped to signal it as ultimately inconsequential. In the context of the Reagan era United States, in which the gap between rich and poor was growing ever wider, this dismissal of class difference fit with the soaps’ turn away from 186  ·  chapter 5

realism and social issues in ­favor of a romantic fantasy in which the happiness of heterosexual coupling triumphs over structural forces, in this case ­those of economic in­equality. Racial difference was an even more obscured issue for the supercouples. The ­couples ­were almost exclusively white, and in the cases of the two notable exceptions, class difference trumps race. The Dobsons planned for Santa Barbara to feature a Latinx ­family, the Andrades, as core characters from the outset, and a range of advocates for Latinx ­causes, from activist groups to individual viewers, praised the serial for it.131 While the introduction of the Latino character Cruz Castillo seemed to open the door to a pairing with the Andrades’s ­daughter, Santana, the soap soon began to test out the interracial coupling of Cruz with one of the blonde, privileged ­daughters of the wealthy Capwell f­ amily, Eden. Eden’s portrayer, Marcy Walker, noted that ­there was some caution b ­ ehind the scenes about potential public reaction, but the pair’s initial bickering, a common interaction for emerging supercouples, proved compelling for the audience.132 Eden and Cruz became SB’s most prominent and popu­lar ­couple; viewers quickly read them as a supercouple on par with Luke and Laura or Bo and Hope.133 As one viewer wrote, making just such a comparison, “Let [Eden and Cruz] get involved in mysteries/ adventures that they work to solve as a c­ ouple.”134 Fans w ­ ere deeply invested in their u ­ nion and intensely distraught at the obstacles that separated them. In nbc’s audience research and in in­de­pen­dently composed letters, viewers advocated for the pair, their interracial status beyond mention. The more problematic history of interactions between black and white Americans made interracial pairings of African American and white characters less ­viable in the minds of soap creators. In 1981, Nixon planned the introduction of a new slate of young characters for amc. The centerpiece was to be the “starcrossed lovers” Greg Nelson and Jenny Gardner.135 While both Greg and Jenny w ­ ere white, they reversed the class dynamic of most supercouples: Greg was the child of wealthy privilege, Jenny, of deprivation and shameful parentage (her f­ ather was imprisoned, having raped town matriarch Ruth Martin). As the two fall in love, their best friends, the black characters Jesse Hubbard and Angie Baxter, also begin a romance. But Jesse and Angie’s story is initially and continuously subordinated to Greg and Jenny’s across the early 1980s. Even during episodes featuring major developments in Jesse and Angie’s relationship, the travails of o ­ thers, often Jenny and Greg, get more airtime and narrative prominence.136 Nixon did consider reworking ­these pairings, allowing Jesse and Jenny’s friendship to blossom into romance and Angie and Greg to find love with Love in the After­noon  ·  187

figure 5.12 Santa Bar­ bara’s pairing of the white Eden (Marcy Walker) and the Latino Cruz (A Martinez) was a rare instance in which the supercouple formula varied from its usual racial homogeneity.

one another.137 All My ­Children did not tend ­toward the same kinds of adventure plots as other soaps, but the closest the soap came to a “love on the run” story involved Jesse and Jenny’s summer together in New York City in 1982, each escaping their own traumas and bonding in mutual affection as they strug­gle to get by in the big city. Jesse notes to Jenny the suspicions with which their interracial friendship was viewed, giving Nixon the opportunity to adhere to her long-­standing social justice mission by depicting “the full flowering of this beautiful—­totally non-­romantic—­friendship . . . ​ pointing up the fact that the pure in heart are truly color blind.”138 Nixon well realized the appeal of a Jesse/Jenny romance and meant for the characters to recognize both their love for one another “on a very deep level” and the ways in which their romance was not to be, citing Jenny’s devotion to Greg and the ways that Jesse’s background in a black, underprivileged 188  ·  chapter 5

community “has programmed him against a relationship with a white ­woman.”139 Surely Nixon was being cautious about the potential controversy an interracial romance might generate, even as she found a way to advocate for cross-­racial understanding. A more in-­depth exploration of interracial romance would have been an ill fit with the supercouple trend, which depended on a depoliticized sense of ­great love triumphing over ultimately minor obstacles. The kinds of obstacles that did confront the supercouples ­were typically represented as the complications of old-­fashioned, universal gender difference, though ­these ­were often communicated in terms of class or age, as in the heroes’ comments about the heroines’ youth or sense of entitlement. Sometimes the heroine dismissed the hero (and her unsettled feelings about him) by demeaning his masculinity along lines of class and age. ­After atwt’s Lily Walsh meets Holden Snyder at her f­ amily’s stables in 1985, she haughtily comments, “I d ­ on’t have to take o ­ rders from some dumb stable boy. . . . ​As soon as I get home I’m telling my ­mother she hired a kid to do a man’s job.”140 While they filled archetypally gendered and classed roles, the supercouples ­were united by the needs they mutually fulfilled and by their shared re­sis­tance to convention and tradition. Even though the heroine was more conventional than the hero, both sought lives of excitement and adventure, fighting against the strictures of traditional marriage and ­family life. ­There are many instances of one or both members of the ­couple fleeing a more conventional relationship to be with their superpartner. Laura ­running off with Luke in defiance of Scotty exemplifies this tendency. Also, although Hope initially resists Bo’s attempt to kidnap her from her wedding to Larry Welch, the audience is assured that Bo is the one for her via the musical cues and location shooting that marked key relationship moments.141 In multiple cases, the appeal of the supercouple is one that rejects a “safer,” more conventional relationship in ­favor of the supers’ undeniable passion. Audiences ­were much less forgiving of external threats that w ­ ere less handily defeated, as in the sb fans’ outrage over Eden’s victimization at the hands of her villainous husband, Kirk Cranston. Particularly disturbing for fans was seeing the strong, “sensible,” and “spunky” Eden become “spineless” and “passive.”142 Crucial to the superheroine was her strength. She was unlike the suffering leading ladies of an ­earlier period in soap history. Supercouples offered a fantasy of love between equals; threats to the pairings that made the characters vulnerable beyond the assistance of their partners w ­ ere too disruptive to the vision of a world beyond such dangers. Love in the After­noon  ·  189

In depicting supercouples as conventionally gendered yet mutually empowered, soap stories sidestepped some of the most contentious issues of their day. They told “old-­fashioned” love stories of men as heroic rescuers and ­women as supportive and/or endangered damsels, but the stories did not stop t­here. They w ­ ere also tales of vulnerable, wounded masculinity and brave, defiant femininity, of men and w ­ omen together rejecting lives of conventionality in ­favor of ­those of mutual adventure and excitement. The stories could fit with the goals and fantasies of ­those who supported the ideals of the w ­ omen’s movement and of t­ hose who valued more traditional conceptions of gender. The tales also turned our gaze away from the growing economic inequalities of American society by encouraging us to see class as an ultimately insignificant difference that could be overcome by true love. The supercouples perfected the fantasy space the soaps offered, allowing an audience that had witnessed the changes enabled by feminism and other progressive social movements, but who w ­ ere nonetheless struggling with the ongoing social inequalities pervading American society, to imagine a less troubled world.

­Couples in Community While the appealing combination of young romance, references to classical Hollywood, location shoots, and con­temporary pop hits made for a distinctive alchemy that was specific to the early 1980s, other characteristics of the period relied on features established ­earlier in soap history, especially an emphasis on the c­ ouples as members of a broader on-­screen community. Soap creators had begun to shift their narratives from being structured around a central heroine ­toward that broader community within the soaps’ first de­cade on tele­vi­sion; this was one way the tv soap was differentiated from its radio pre­de­ces­sor. The workplace setting introduced early in the network era continued this practice, which was developed even further with the expansion to hour-­long episodes in the 1970s, when soaps required more sets, characters, and story lines to structure ­these more extended narratives. As much as the members of the supercouples w ­ ere deeply entwined with one another, they w ­ ere also intricately embedded in broader diegetic communities. Even as the programs attended less to social issues of public import, they nonetheless affirmed the idea that individuals are members of communities and that, in communities, members bear responsibility for one another. 190  ·  chapter 5

Much of the supercouples’ screen time took place in a world of two. A major allure of the “on the run” and “in hiding” stories so popu­lar with creators and audiences alike was the “­couple ­bubble” that they created, a sensibility magnified by ­couples with matching physiognomies and coloring, as well as alliterative names.143 Luke and Laura’s world was mainly oriented around each other during their adventures in the summer of 1980. When Frisco and Felicia meet in 1984, they spend weeks of episodes with Frisco hiding Felicia from the bad guys who are out to get her. They fall in love in scene ­after scene alone with each other. Phillip and Beth spend Christmas in New York in 1983, away from their painful ­family situations. The frequency of this device helped to make it feel like amc’s interracial noncouple, Jesse and Jenny, on their own in New York City, w ­ ere in a c­ ouple b ­ ubble, despite their platonic relationship. While the isolation of the c­ ouple ­bubble was a key narrative strategy for developing a relationship and getting an audience to invest in it, t­hese periods of seclusion ­were notable for their difference from the more typical stories and scenes, which emphasized the many-­peopled communities within which the soaps ­were set. In the 1980s, not only workplaces and gathering spots such as hospitals and restaurants but also apartment buildings/ boarding­houses that served as semicommunal homes for myriad characters ­were typical sets. General Hospital’s brownstone was one such space. A number of families and ­couples lived ­there from 1985 on, often meeting up in the entry­way, which was also the living room of landlady Bobbie Spencer’s apartment.144 The growing emphasis on the soap community overlapped with the supercouple stories. The supercouples’ adventures, and major moments in their relationships, took place against the backdrop of their communities. We see gl’s Phillip and Beth falling in love at their Cinderella-­themed prom, but so do the other residents of Springfield. A remarkable number of adults attend the high school affair, alongside the central teenage characters and a wide swath of extras.145 Luke and Laura’s adventures ­were not only about their personal well-­being but also about the safety and survival of Port Charles. They try to stop mobster Frank Smith from controlling the city; they strive to turn off the Cassadines’ weather machine as Port Charles gets ever colder. The scenes of the c­ ouples bonding while adventuring ­were intercut with the happenings back home, where the typically older, more established members of the community sought to manage the impact on that front. In the under­ground bunker of Cassadine Island in 1981, Laura and Robert Scorpio, the globe-­trotting spy teamed up with the c­ ouple, hold guns on the bad guys Love in the After­noon  ·  191

as Luke tries to crack the code to stop the weather machine. ­These scenes are intercut with t­hose in Port Charles, where Steve and Audrey Hardy manage the crisis at the hospital, gathering blankets and figuring out how much longer the building can stay heated, and Laura’s parents work on reaching impor­tant contacts in Washington. Other characters rally around; t­ hey’re all in this together.146 Time and again, the soaps emphasized that the supercouple was impor­ tant to the w ­ hole on-­screen community. When atwt’s pregnant Margo (paired with Tom Hughes) is injured while trying to track down the villainous James Stenbeck in 1986, seemingly all of Oakdale frets outside her hospital room. It is not only the c­ ouple’s respective families but even t­ hose with more peripheral ties who gather in support of the endangered superprogeny.147 The community is unified not only in support of Margo and Tom but also against Stenbeck, a recurring threat to the town more generally. Similarly, dool’s town of Salem unites both to grieve the death of Marlena Evans (she is erroneously believed to have been killed by the Salem Strangler) and to defend themselves against the threat the serial killer poses to all. This community is much bigger than the conventional ­family; it crosses lines of race, age, and story line.148 That production bud­gets of this era allowed for many characters to appear in a single episode amplified this sense of communal spirit. When a soap such as atwt could include twenty-­two regular characters and a number of day players in a single 1987 episode, viewers could easily engage with the world on-­screen as a cohesive community.149 As the story of James Stenbeck demonstrates, supercouples ­were not the only unifying force for the soap communities of the 1980s. Th ­ ese communities also banded together in opposition to villainous characters who posed a new kind of threat. Morally compromised characters had long been part of the soaps, and the villainess had become a key archetype over the 1960s and 1970s, but she was not the kind of threat that rallied w ­ hole communities. Instead, in the 1980s many soaps incorporated more blatantly evil characters, usually male villains who went to greater extremes than the emotionally tortured heroes or villainess characters ever would. Some of the tortured heroes, especially ­those who w ­ ere part of a supercouple, softened over time, sharing their feelings in ­music or tears rather than vio­lence, but a separate strand of the tortured male became more overtly evil, morally compromised to an extent that the community became united against them. gl’s Roger Thorpe crossed over into villainy in 1979 and 1980 as he raped Holly, stalked Rita, and attempted to kidnap his d ­ aughter, Christina, taking her m ­ other 192  ·  chapter 5

instead. Not only ­were town scions Mike and Ed Bauer the ones to rescue Holly and strug­gle with Roger to his seeming death, but their efforts w ­ ere intercut with friends and f­amily worrying and talking about the situation. A graphic match between Mike, recovering in a hospital bed in Santo Domingo, and his ­mother, town matriarch Bert, gratefully praying that her sons have survived, connects the location-­shot effort to stop Thorpe with the home-­world of Springfield.150 Across the soaps, new villains emerged. Many of ­these came and went as plot dictated. But a longer-­running type of villain threatened multiple soap communities. Along with gl’s Roger Thorpe, dool’s Stefano DiMera, atwt’s Stenbeck, and aw’s Carl Hutchins all exemplified this type, an ongoing character with ­little to no redeeming traits who menaced the diegetic community on and off for years, beginning in the 1980s. Viewers learned more about ­these figures’ backgrounds and came to some understanding of their evil ways over time. Such types ­were characterized differently from more morally conflicted characters (some of whom w ­ ere the villains’ archnemeses), such as atwt’s John Dixon, an ethically compromised character but one who did not match Stenbeck’s villainy. The evil villains who ­rose in prominence during the 1980s did more than create suspenseful stakes; they brought a broad canvas of characters together in unity against them. ­These communities provided an under­lying sense of security and support for soap characters and for the audiences that invested in them during t­hese boom years. This sense of the united community with some (­limited) diversity gave the soaps a hold on their ­earlier investment in a broader sense of social responsibility and belonging, even as the prob­lems the community fought against ­were as individualized as the romances that bonded c­ ouples across their ultimately minor differences.

The Beginning of the End? As profitable and popu­lar as the world of daytime tv soaps w ­ ere in the 1980s, within both their narratives and their industrial structuring ­were signs of the soaps’ impending decline. The peak in the soaps’ cultural and economic power was unsustainable, as the challenges of the 1990s and 2000s would make clear. While many of soap opera’s trou­bles would be attributable to the structure of the broadcast network system, t­ here w ­ ere also limitations to the on-­screen world of the 1980s that imperiled the soaps’ resonance with a culture of changing social identities and dynamics. The Love in the After­noon  ·  193

fantasy of the supercouple was so appealing to so many b ­ ecause of its ambivalent stance on changing gender relations. It allowed for a pairing of equals that was nonthreatening, hopeful, and fun; it made a world in which ­women ­were not expected to remain within the confines of home and ­family while men adventured seem a better scenario for all. But the supercouples’ experiences remained so safely ensconced in a fantasy space that they failed to grapple with the extent of the changing culture, and their turn away from social relevance made them all too readily co-­opted by the backlash against gender pro­gress that had emerged alongside feminist gains. The isolation of the supercouple ­bubble is what made it so compelling, and so tenuous. The turn away from social relevance also had notable repre­sen­ta­tional limitations. The supercouples ­were by definition male-­female pairings; their heterosexuality was foundational to their status. Gay characters w ­ ere as infrequent in the 1980s as they had been in the 1970s, a clear effort to avoid mounting social issues such as the aids crisis, which was closely associated with gay men.151 Characters of color became relatively minor parts of most soap communities by the 1980s, but apart from the interracial pairing of SB’s Eden and Cruz and amc’s African American Jesse and Angie, the romantic fantasy the soaps offered was restricted to white characters. By the late 1980s, the US population was 12 ­percent African American, but only 6 ­percent of soap characters w ­ ere black.152 The pleasures of 1980s soaps relied on a privileged set of identity markers. The soap audience had long been more diverse than was widely acknowledged, which had become increasingly clear in the 1980s soap boom. Many in the active online soap fandom of the early twenty-­first ­century are the older, adult versions of the young, male fans who discovered the soaps during the network era. Many are particularly invested in preserving and remembering the soaps they cherished in the past, and many identify as gay.153 One explanation might be found in Hollis Griffin’s analy­sis of the potential queer pleasures in soaps, particularly the ways that their “excessive hegemonic masculinity” might spark interest in gay male viewers.154 Black ­women, too, have a substantive history of soap fandom, which became increasingly evident in the soap boom. Bebe Moore Campbell described her investment in the soaps for the African American magazine Essence in 1978, sharing her passion for the characters while acknowledging their racial difference from herself.155 Fan letters to soap creators and soap magazines across the 1970s and 1980s regularly featured audiences identifying as black. In the late 1980s, demographic research suggested that 194  ·  chapter 5

20 ­percent of the soap audience was black, meaning that African Americans ­were overrepresented among soap viewers in comparison to their population numbers.156 A higher percentage of black ­house­holds watched soaps than the percentage of viewers from all other ­house­holds.157 Black and gay audiences ­were long accustomed to finding plea­sure in media texts that excluded characters with whom they shared par­tic­u­lar aspects of their identities, but their efforts to “make do” with such limitations surely became more and more cumbersome over time, not least in a period of emergent change like the years of the network era. By the 1990s, the homogeneity of soap characters would become increasingly noticeable as multiculturalism and the politics of social difference became more widespread phenomena in American society, affecting advertisers and the tv industry as much as the public at large.158 As a result, the universe of racial and sexual privilege in which daytime soap stories occurred would make them less and less resonant with the American public in the years to come. nbc’s launch of the new soap Generations in 1989 (ended 1991) illustrated both soap opera’s potential for change and its ongoing limitations. Genera­ tions was the first US daytime soap to feature a core black f­ amily alongside a central white one. In presenting the program to affiliates, executive Brian Frons acknowledged the ways the network hoped that the soap would attract an African American audience, already a significant demographic segment for daytime.159 The soap borrowed from its network-­owner’s prime-­time success in representing black characters, most notably in The Cosby Show (1984–92) but also in dramas such as Hill Street Blues, from which Genera­ tions found its patriarch in actor Taurean Blacque.160 In keeping with Cosby’s stance, Blacque’s Henry Marshall espoused a color-­blind philosophy in the first episode, noting of his chain of ice cream stores, “I thank God e­ very day that I live in a country where, despite the odds, a man can ­really make it, even the son of a poor farmer from the south.”161 Generations was created by a white ­woman, Sally Sussman, and the soap had few writers of color.162 The program did consult a sociologist on m ­ atters of changing race relations and gradually incorporated some culturally specific experiences for its black characters, another way it took ­after Cosby’s pedagogical mission and attention to African American history.163 New soaps always take time to build an audience, but nbc had long proved itself impatient with that pro­cess, and Generations folded within two years. The program’s short life was ­little help in instituting new repre­sen­ta­ tional practices in the overwhelmingly white world of soaps. As the program strug­gled in the ratings, its executive producer was sure to note, “We ­don’t Love in the After­noon  ·  195

just play t­hings from a black point of view,” suggesting that the program’s racial identity may have been suspected as a reason for its poor per­for­ mance.164 Despite its ultimate failure, Generations may be best understood as the first experiment in a period of creative exploration and boundary testing that would proceed into the 1990s, but that would not reverse the fortunes of the gradually declining form. The 1980s would prove to be a pivot point for daytime tv soap opera; neither the soaps nor the broadcast network system they served would rise to the same heights again.

196  ·  chapter 5

S I X . S T R U G ­G L E S F O R S U R V I V A L Stagnation and Innovation

The tremendous economic and cultural impact of the daytime tv soap in the early years of the 1980s slowly began to lessen as the de­cade wore on, beginning a period of decline that would continue over at least the next quarter-­century. The trendiness and profitability of the US daytime tv soap opera peaked in 1984. The extended duration of its subsequent dip testifies to the soaps’ robustness and that of the broadcast network system they have exemplified; this was an especially high peak from which to fall. B ­ ecause the gradual decline in earning power proved permanent, it also exposed fatal fractures in the broadcast network business model. Just as the soaps had been foundational to the classic network system that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, so too would the long-­term breakdown of the soap business at times presage and at times parallel the weakening power of American network tele­vi­sion. This chapter and the following two chart this passage, first through the faltering structure of the broadcast network system and the soap industry’s creative efforts to shore itself up and, second, in chapter 7, through the narratives and repre­sen­ta­tional patterns of the programs themselves. Chapter 8 surveys the vastly shrunken soap world ­after 2012 and contemplates potential ­futures. While on the w ­ hole the fortunes of soap opera diminish across this era, the period also includes innovations in business, production, and aesthetic practices and the adoption of soap features across more and more instances of tele­vi­sion programming. A similar tension between retrogression and progression pervaded the soaps’ repre­sen­ta­tional

politics, as moments of self-­reflexive maturation in constructions of gender, race, and sexuality persisted within broader denials of social inequalities that at times worked to reject the soaps’ own past. The shifts of the postnetwork age are vis­i­ble in the way the soaps’ fortunes ­were discussed in industry discourse from the mid-1980s on. At first, such narratives noted the shrinking profit margins of daytime drama. From 60 ­percent margins in the early part of that de­cade to 34 ­percent margins a few years l­ater, the soap business was no longer depicted as a space of growth.1 Over the next twenty-­five years, the news got worse, but the pro­ cess of decline was hesitant and gradual. The networks would see brief periods of improvement in ratings or ad revenues, and both networks and advertisers would from time to time note the ongoing value of the soaps as an eco­nom­ical way to reach consumers of domestic goods. Throughout the 1990s, the trade and business presses would note that “most soaps still make plenty of money,” even as ratings slipped and some soaps ­were canceled.2 In 1990, average daytime ratings had declined about 22 ­percent since 1981–82.3 By the mid-1990s, preemptions of some soaps for network coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial ­were understood as yet a further threat, headlines grimly referencing “The Old and the Desperate” and reporting preliminary ratings of the Simpson trial surpassing ­those of the soaps it preempted.4 Soap ratings actually improved upon the end of the trial in October 1995, but the big picture continued to be one of loss.5 By 1999, ratings ­were 24 ­percent lower than they had been in 1994.6 Between 1999 and 2003, average ratings continued to fall by about 5 ­percent each year.7 Mea­sures of the most desirable categories to advertisers, ­those of younger ­women, also saw ongoing drops; some reports put t­hese at a 12 to 13 ­percent loss from 2004 to 2005 alone.8 By 2010, when a number of cancellations reduced the total number of soaps to six, Nielsen reported the size of the soap audience to be 80 ­percent smaller than it was in 1991–92.9 Two years l­ ater, in 2012, two more long-­running soaps w ­ ere canceled, leaving just four on air. The trend was clear; daytime soaps had gradually become more a drain upon network wells than a lucrative flow into them. ­There is no doubt that the daytime soap opera was less and less remunerative across this period. But the media coverage of ­these developments left unquestioned long-­standing logics of commercial broadcasting, assumptions that equate ratings with audience interest and that seek to explain the rise and fall of that interest by pointing to external f­actors, w ­ hether new technologies and viewing alternatives or the winds of social change. Generally unchallenged was the basic system of audience mea­sure­ment itself, 200  ·  chapter 6

or the ways in which the commercial structure that underlies the industry privileges its own survival above any par­tic­u­lar connection between audiences and programming. As Eileen Meehan has written of the industry’s perspective on the audience, “It is macroeconomic structure . . . ​that determines who counts in tele­vi­sion.”10 The fate of programming is determined quite apart from a­ ctual audience investment, through mechanisms of market control designed to preserve corporate interests, indeed, to preserve systems of advertising, tele­vi­sion, and consumer culture writ large. The intensive focus on ratings in the industrial consideration of the soaps’ period of decline precluded more thoughtful attention to the flaws embedded in still other facets of the business, flaws that not only impeded soaps’ profitability but also ­shaped the programs in ways that may have made them less appealing to viewers over time. The changes in technology, viewing options, and lifestyles across the end of the twentieth c­ entury and beginning of the twenty-­first w ­ ere real shifts affecting all of broadcast tv, but the network system of daytime soap production and distribution contained the seeds of its own demise. This chapter first examines three aspects of the soap business from the mid-1980s into the first de­cade of the twenty-­first ­century that are particularly revealing of t­ hese declines: conceptions of the audience and the prob­lem of mea­sur­ing the audience, the challenge of differing owner­ship structures and their implications for creative control, and the limitations of the existing distribution system. Th ­ ese three points of structural instability help to explain the trou­bles of daytime drama and of American broadcast network tele­vi­sion in this period, and their implications for widely circulating ideas about feminized audiences. Nonetheless, the soaps continued to be an impor­tant site of industrial and creative innovation across the same era, which this chapter also examines. Through aesthetic experimentation and through efforts to incorporate new technologies such as the internet into the promotion and distribution of soaps, the industry pushed against the narrative of decline, innovating and adapting rather than stagnating.

Audience Prob­lems: Constructing Soap Viewership amid Economic Decline Ideas about the soap audience both within and beyond the tv and advertising industries changed drastically between the network era peak of the early 1980s and the first de­cade of the twenty-­first c­ entury. The diminished value Strug­gles for Survival  ·  201

of that ­imagined audience over time, understood in relation to changes in technologies, lifestyles, and expectations of femininity, has fatefully harmed soap opera, but shifting conceptions of the soap audience developed gradually across this postnetwork period. For example, technological developments ­were understood quite differently from the early part of the 1980s to ­later in the de­cade. In the early eighties, the new technologies of cable, reaching evermore homes with evermore channels, and the vcr, enabling audience time-­shifting of broadcast fare, w ­ ere not seen as especially damaging to network profitability. In 1983, one ad agency executive noted that the impact of cable on the effectiveness of network daytime was negligible.11 ­Later that year, Nielsen conducted its first study of vcr use; the results recognized the high incidence of home taping of daytime soaps, but no one saw this as having a par­tic­u­lar impact on ratings or the networks’ resulting ad revenues.12 By 1985, both technologies ­were being discussed as potential threats.13 Across the rest of the 1980s, daytime sales declined alongside daytime ratings. Regularly cited in the coverage of such developments w ­ ere the lures to audiences of “cable, syndicated programming, and the work place”; ­here lifestyle dynamics ­were joined to ­those of technological change as assumed c­ auses.14 By 1986, daytime was considered “the damaged daypart” by ad agency media buyers.15 The networks lowered their daytime ad rates, which helped to keep ad slots sold, if less lucrative. ­Because advertisers ­were more and more interested not just in the desired demographic of eighteen-­to forty-­nine-­year-­old w ­ omen, but especially in working w ­ omen from dual-­ income ­house­holds, daytime became a less desirable placement overall.16 Unlike their pairing in the early 1980s, working ­women and daytime ­were increasingly seen as incompatible by late in the de­cade.17 By the twenty-­first ­century, changing conceptions of the w ­ oman viewer made daytime soap opera increasingly untenable as a space of industry investment. In the late 1980s, however, the industry sought to solve its audience prob­ lems, at times by challenging the deeply institutionalized ratings system.18 Vari­ous network executives publicly noted the prob­lems for soap ratings in the system’s inability to mea­sure time-­shifting and out-­of-­home viewing, key means of soap consumption for working ­women and college students. ­Those ­behind the scenes w ­ ere well aware of how l­ittle the industry knew about nontraditional viewing modes.19 By the early 1990s, the networks w ­ ere conducting some of their own studies to document public soap watching, but without the official purview of Nielsen, their efforts had ­little traction.20 Ultimately the networks could not press the point too forcefully, given the 202  ·  chapter 6

entire system’s reliance on Nielsen’s ratings as a supposedly objective and comprehensive metric—­one that never adequately determined how to mea­ sure vcr viewing and did not count out-­of-­home viewing before 2014. ­Those with intimate knowledge of the soap world understood the inadequacies of ratings metrics. Agnes Nixon pointed out to tv Guide in 1983 the many soap viewers in out-­of-­home spaces, noting, “This mass of viewers has no opportunity to be counted.”21 She kept up this critique for years, declaring in 1999, “I frankly think we d ­ on’t have a true picture now of . . . ​ viewership,” due to the lack of data about time-­shifting.22 Another critique of the mea­sure­ment business came from a constituency well aware of the social inequalities commercial cultures can perpetuate. When Generations was endangered due to its low ratings, the naacp and a number of black activists urged viewers to conduct letter-­writing campaigns, arguing that “­there are a lot of viewers out t­ here who are not being counted” b ­ ecause of their exclusion from the Nielsen system.23 Soap fans have long been savvy about ­these systemic limitations, noting in letters to writers and producers the time-­shifting and out-­of-­home live viewing practices they and their communities engaged in, none of them mea­sured by ratings.24 Tellingly, the market for daytime soap fan magazines grew across the 1990s; their impressive circulation was attributed to ­women whose work e­ ither inside or outside the home kept them from the live viewing the Nielsens ­were tallying.25 Magazines like Soap Opera Weekly affectionately winked at readers with the insider knowledge of soap viewing in working ­women’s lives. One cartoon featured a w ­ oman at the unemployment office, explaining how she “took a snack break during Days of Our Lives, a coffee break during Another World, a smoke break during Santa Barbara.”26 When cable channel Soapnet was launched at the turn of the twenty-­first ­century, its savvy marketers sought to tap that very niche—­“working w ­ omen with sophisticated style and senses of humor”—by offering a “new way to watch soaps” via the channel’s nightly and weekend repeats.27 Alongside this awareness of the range of soap viewing practices, however, ran a more power­ful narrative of the diminishing value of soap audiences, one that was particularly damaging to the prospects of daytime soaps, and that constructed their audience in derogatory gendered, raced, and classed terms. When, in the late 1980s, advertisers had begun to see declines in network daytime ratings without a consequent drop in ad rates, they and their agency representatives began to complain publicly, challenging the cultural status of soaps and their audiences in the pro­cess. They speculated that audiences ­were exploring cable, or that they ­were recording the soaps to their Strug­gles for Survival  ·  203

figure 6.1 Soap Opera Weekly joked about the ways working ­women managed to keep up with their soaps in the early years of the genre’s ratings declines, December 4, 1990.

VCRs. However, as one agency researcher argued, “­People may tape five episodes of All My ­Children but play back only three ­because the plot moves so slowly.” This dig against the programs was matched with ­others suggesting the raced and classed undesirability of soap viewers. “We no longer want to reach the inner-­city, less affluent viewer,” one executive explained.28 While the ad executives interviewed in this par­tic­u­lar story deliberatively may have been deploying insults and threats to pressure the networks, the resurgence of dismissive language to characterize soaps and their viewers was a drastic shift from the conception of soaps as hip and their audiences as up-­and-­ coming just a few years ­earlier. The circulation of such discourse signaled the diminishing economic and cultural status of soaps almost immediately ­after their highest ascendance. The construction of the soap audience as old, low-­income, and nonwhite became more and more prominent over the period of decline. Beginning in 1994, the organ­ization Population Control International sponsored a series of “Soap Summits” designed to persuade the US soap industry to educate the audience about ­family planning and birth control (their efforts had previously been focused on soap opera production in developing countries).29 At t­hese summits, researchers such as communication scholar Bradley Greenberg characterized the soap audience. Greenberg’s research, which drew on survey data he did not himself collect, asserted that soap audiences 204  ·  chapter 6

­ ere generally uneducated and had low incomes, a finding that suited the w host organ­ization’s pedagogical investment in enlightening what it saw as the ignorant masses.30 But this perspective also helped to perpetuate the assumption that this audience was not an especially desirable target market, particularly in a period of increasing advertiser interest in an upscale consumer base.31 Journalist Lynn Liccardo closely examined Greenberg’s methods and findings in the years of their initial circulation, dissecting their statistical inaccuracies and labeling them “a masterpiece of obfuscation.” Liccardo contrasted Greenberg’s data with ­those of Mediamark Research Institute, which pointed to a more affluent soap audience than Greenberg had suggested. Liccardo’s piece pushed back against the disparaging picture of soap viewers, even as it did not question the objectivity of more statistically rigorous audience research.32 Her critique was published in 1996  in Soap Opera Weekly, a magazine well respected in the soap world but with l­ittle to no weight beyond ­those borders. The ­limited reach of her claims, alongside the broader and historically consistent conception of the soap audience as in need of protective guidance, kept her efforts from having a broader impact.33 By 2001, the trade press was again reporting on the “downscale” daytime audience, including a significant percentage of African American ­women and ­those who w ­ ere “unemployed or low income.” While many advertisers ­were happy to reach this market through affordable daytime rates, the press coverage nonetheless spoke disparagingly of t­hese viewers, referring to daytime’s advertisers as “bottom-­feeding.”34 Across the 2000s, advertisers ­were increasingly depicted as desiring an “upscale” consumer, a particularly damaging claim when the ongoing logic was that “daytime tele­vi­sion is not upscale.”35 The demographic specificity pervading marketing discourse was shaping the tv industry in ways that perpetuated discourses of social in­ equality and harmed the status of daytime, its soaps, and its assumed viewers. The aging of the soap opera audience was another theme of industry discourse that made soap viewers seem undesirable to advertisers. Across the 1990s and early 2000s, all involved with the soap business declared the crucial value of youthful engagement. A number of narrative innovations ­were designed to appeal to such audiences.36 A special focus in the early 2000s on Latinx viewers, typically through the addition of Latinx characters or Spanish-­language simulcasting, was a product of not only the growing size of that demographic but also its youthful skew.37 nbc’s Passions, which began in 1999, was an especially prominent case, given its central Latinx characters and its teen-­oriented cast. B ­ ecause the median age of the soap audience ­rose seven years between 1992 and 2002, bringing in young viewers Strug­gles for Survival  ·  205

was widely understood as essential for the f­uture.38 The result was another perpetuation of social in­equality, in that the market-­determined preference for young consumers implicitly condemned the aging audience the soaps continued to attract. A female viewership understood as old, poor, and/or not white was increasingly dooming soap opera, t­ hese demographic characteristics especially detrimental in a culture that privileges youthful, affluent whiteness, especially in its ­women.39 The category of “­women” itself was in fact increasingly endangered as the assumed audience for soaps across this period. In 2004, an Adweek story headlined “What ­Women ­Don’t Want? Soap Operas” was an especially damning indictment.40 If “­women,” the long-­assumed audience for daytime fare, w ­ ere not interested, daytime soaps seemingly had l­ ittle hope of a f­ uture. That some ­women ­were still watching, and that the systems of audience mea­sure­ment had never addressed a­ ctual viewers and their preferences, was becoming increasingly irrelevant. Even the male audience, up to 35 ­percent of total viewers, was of no significance. “We do not sell to men, we cannot sell them,” explained one network executive in 2008.41 Audiences that did not fit the “commodity audience” ideal of young, affluent, and/or white ­women counted less than they ever had; indeed, such viewers w ­ ere often removed entirely from the categories of “­woman” and “audience” in industry parlance.42 The cancellation of a number of soaps in the late 2000s and early 2010s was widely explained by a discourse of the changing needs and desires of the “­women audience.” Yet the categories of ­women and of audience w ­ ere defined in such discussions in particularly narrow ways, discounting soap viewers who did not fit a monetarily valued niche.

What Do ­Women Want? Canceled Soaps and the Re­imagined Audience The cancellations of Guiding Light, As the World Turns, All My ­Children, ­ ere discussed and justified in and One Life to Live between 2009 and 2012 w industry discourse as inevitable outgrowths of the changes to the daytime audience that such discourse had been portending since the late 1980s. But a step as drastic as the cancellation of serials that had aired for de­cades required a new spin, one that identified a mismatch between soap opera and the ­women who had once been understood as its core viewership. Rather than pointing to the faltering economic structure of the broadcast tele­vi­sion business, which was the most proximate cause of the cancellations, industry 206  ·  chapter 6

figures painted themselves as simply responding to the changed needs of the ­women in the audience. How they described t­ hose needs, and altered their programming strategy to address them, had deep roots in the history of the daytime soap opera and also drew heavi­ly upon the contemporaneous context, in par­tic­u­lar the postfeminist sensibility that had become dominant in mainstream American culture. In all cases, this imagining of the audience was rooted more in the commercial interests and logics of the industry than in an investment in ­women’s concerns. Much as had been the case for the origins of daytime serials in radio, and again, in altered form, in their transition to tv, the industry discourse informing the twenty-­first-­century soap cancellations regularly referenced ­women’s needs. As abc’s president for daytime programming, Brian Frons, explained of the cancellations of amc and oltl, “­Women no longer feel that they need to have an escape in their daytime tele­vi­sion. . . . ​They are looking for information so they can take an active role in changing their lives. It’s a huge difference from what w ­ e’ve seen before.”43 This explanation figured the cancellations as in the best interests of the audience. It also served to promote the programming abc was launching as replacement for its soaps: The Revolution (2012), a weight loss/personal transformation primer, and The Chew (2011–18), a cooking show, both providing “information” rather than “escape.” Journalistic takes echoed the industry’s framing. As one such piece declared, “Long gone are the days when stay-­at-­home m ­ others watched soaps as an escape, as a fantasy” and that, consequently, “As the lives of ­women change, so [do] their taste and interest in tele­vi­sion.”44 Across such discourse was the idea that the daytime audience of ­women no longer had the time, or the need, for the entertainment, leisure, or fantasy that soaps presumably provided. This perspective suited the interests of the twenty-­ first-­century network tv business, but its assumptions about ­women ­were in keeping with a long history of imagining soap audiences by referencing their practical and psychological needs. This iteration circled back to the construction of the serial listener that had enabled the emergence of daytime drama. As Ellen Seiter has analyzed, early radio serial creators premised their product on its utility, its ability to meet a ­woman’s needs by making her a more effective homemaker and shopper. ­These needs suited t­ hose of the male-­dominated broadcasting and advertising industries, not to mention ­those of a cap­i­tal­ist culture and economy dependent on ­women’s domestic ­labor. As Seiter writes, “The discourse on the soap opera audience . . . ​reflected and contributed to the implicit belief that w ­ omen working in the home have no right to time off. Soap opera Strug­gles for Survival  ·  207

listening or watching [had to] be justified as something more than plea­sure and relaxation.”45 Similar logics pervaded the discourse of soap cancellations in the late 2000s and early 2010s in emphasizing w ­ omen’s need for applicable and productive guidance not as homemakers but as postfeminist subjects striving to “have it all” across public and private spheres. The twenty-­first-­century discourse varied from that of the soaps’ origins by locating the turn ­toward more practical programming in ­women’s psy­chol­ogy, in the audience’s self-­determined “need” to “take an active role in changing their lives.”46 In referencing ­women’s psyches, the cancellation discourse was linked to another moment in the history of constructing the soap audience to satisfy corporate media interests, in this case to the serials’ transition to tele­vi­sion across the 1950s. ­Because the tv medium’s visual demands made listening to soaps while performing domestic ­labor less practicable than in radio, industry powers strug­gled to justify moving soaps to tv, as chapter 2 explores. Unlike the more informational programming that initially peppered the daytime tv schedule, soaps required more elaborate justification, much of which eventually landed on their therapeutic benefit, their ability to help the potentially unstable ­woman in the home cope with her life by meeting her need for emotional connection. While such discourse dominated the postwar period, in the network era of the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, the soaps grew in popularity and profitability, and such discourse receded. At that time, a form widely seen as a fun diversion enjoyed by a cross section of viewers, especially by men and by working w ­ omen rather than housewives—­and that made industry powers a g­ reat deal of money—­required much less justification. By the postnetwork age, however, the status of soap opera would again be in flux. This allowed the barely submerged logics of the w ­ oman viewer’s psychological need to resurface, but in altered form. The psychological needs of daytime audiences could no longer be explained via 1950s assumptions about the lonely housewife-­viewer. Instead, they would be informed by the self-­actualizing imperatives of the postfeminist culture. The audience’s needs ­were again reconstructed, now suiting the industry’s interests by rejecting rather than justifying the presence of soap opera. The discourses of the daytime audience morphed in the postnetwork age to suggest that the con­temporary ­woman had much too much work to do to devote any time to soap opera. What she needed was to take an “active role” that required a dif­fer­ent kind of programming, programming that offered both inspiration for transformation (as promised by abc’s The Revolution) and/or practical tools (as in the kitchen how-­tos of The Chew).47 In this, a 208  ·  chapter 6

broadcaster like abc was seeking to align itself with the many other forms of con­temporary lifestyle culture that w ­ ere drawing audiences to designated cable channels (hgtv, diy); to real­ity series; and to the blogs, social media feeds, podcasts, and advice lit­er­a­ture that promised to assist feminized audiences to “live their best lives.”48 Such products are attuned to a neoliberal, postfeminist culture within which w ­ omen bear individual responsibility to make over, change, and improve their intensively burdened lives without the kinds of social supports that might make the strug­gle to “balance” paid work, caretaking responsibilities, and the maintenance of par­tic­u­lar standards of personal appearance more feasible.49 The most privileged ­women might be able to outsource some of the feminized work of social reproduction, often to ­women of less advantage. But most ­were encouraged to expedite their ­labor through media technologies and products, ­whether inspirational social media feeds, life-­management apps, or, as abc hoped, tv that had “a piece of entertainment in it, but . . . ​also a piece of practicality.”50 Daily daytime soap opera had l­ ittle place in such a tv schedule, or such a con­temporary w ­ oman’s lifestyle. Also intrinsic to the discourse that figured soap opera as a relic of an ­earlier era in w ­ omen’s history was the narrowing construction of the audience that “counted” for advertisers, networks, and producers, wherein ­factors of age, race, or economic status could make one a less desirable target market. Th ­ ese logics ­were also aligned with the postfeminist sensibility that figured soap opera as irrelevant for the more privileged ­woman seeking practicable strategies for work-­life balance. Within a postfeminist culture, all could proceed as if the inequalities that the feminist movement had sought to correct had been resolved. If gender-­based discrimination was assumed to be in the past, then valuing w ­ omen audiences for some qualities over o ­ thers—­their youthfulness, their whiteness, their spending power—­ could appear to be ideologically neutral, a s­ imple preference of the market rather than a means of valuing some categories of p ­ eople over o ­ thers. So too could the figuring of the needs of w ­ omen more valued by commercial markets as mismatched with soap opera be an expression of postfeminist logic. If soap opera had once met the needs of the lonely ­house­wife, then it no longer had that task to fulfill, for the h ­ ouse­wife had become a retro figure, one displaced by w ­ omen with much more “active” agendas, w ­ hether they worked in the home or outside it. In all cases, the industry discourse that constructed the feminized audience took advantage of the altered cultural context to justify itself as meeting w ­ omen’s needs rather than as suiting corporate priorities. Strug­gles for Survival  ·  209

Changes in Owner­ship and Creative Control The changing constructions of the most desired audience and of the soaps’ ­imagined audience w ­ ere especially influential in the postnetwork era due to the changing owner­ship structures of the tv industry in general and of the soap world in par­tic­u­lar. The diversification of soap owner­ship that began in the 1960s and 1970s further complicated the industry from the 1980s on. In the postnetwork era, the long-­standing practice of sponsor-­ownership was called into question, eventually disappearing completely, as the networks sought greater control over the programs they aired and as ad sales fluctuated. This upheaval over the decades-­old model led to some new iterations of owner­ship, ranging from soaps owned by their writer-­creators to ­those owned by the global conglomerates that came to dominate the media business. ­These shifts in owner­ship structures exacerbated financial and creative challenges that had always undergirded the form but that increasingly threatened its very survival. Having acquired All My ­Children and One Life to Live from Nixon in the mid-1970s, abc was the only network that owned (most of) its soaps. In the early 1980s, the high ratings and ad revenues of abc’s shows, especially General Hospital, made network owner­ship seem the ideal structure. While abc’s soap slate was exceptionally profitable, industry wisdom was that the network’s total creative control was key to its success.51 Guiding Light veteran actor Charita Bauer compared abc to the “old movie studios,” with initiatives like a talent development program, ad sales staff with an exclusive focus on daytime, and hands-on executive involvement. Much like the ­ ere unique and highly classical Hollywood studio system, abc’s practices w 52 controlled. Procter & ­Gamble took note of abc’s efforts and integrated many of the same creative choices in the 1980s.53 But the orga­nizational and economic under­pinnings of the sponsor-­owned soaps remained distinct. Rooted in Phillips’s power in the serials of the radio era, p&g executives had historically ceded creative control to their head writers, who hired the outline writers and scriptwriters who worked ­under them. By the early 1980s, the sponsor-­owners shifted some of that power to executive producers, through whom they sought to exert more influence themselves.54 Procter & ­Gamble was pressured into changing its practices by cbs, which dropped the sponsor’s Search for Tomorrow in 1982.55 Replacing it with Capitol, owned by the in­ de­pen­dent John Conboy Productions (Conboy had led the slick y&r and promised the same for the new soap), was a statement on the changing 210  ·  chapter 6

dynamics of owner­ship.56 Indeed, cbs put the practice of sponsor owner­ship on notice when one executive commented to the trade press, “We may decide we need new kinds of soap operas to be more competitive with abc.”57 While p&g found a new home for sft at nbc, that network’s cancellation of the soap in 1986 following the cancellations of p&g’s Texas and Colgate-­ Palmolive’s The Doctors, and paired with abc’s cancellation of its only sponsor-­owned soap, p&g’s The Edge of Night, made the sponsor-­ownership era seem all the more surely on the wane. Network, studio, and in­de­pen­dent owner­ship w ­ ere seen as having more long-­term viability.58 In­de­pen­dent owner­ship was the most unknown of ­these. Nixon’s endeavor had been short-­lived, as was Conboy’s Capitol, as the soap was canceled in 1987. Other than Dark Shadows in the 1960s, the highest-­profile effort at in­de­pen­dent production to date was the Dobsons’ Santa Barbara on nbc beginning in 1984. Given that soap production values and bud­gets had so grown and that the intensities of competition had so magnified network involvement, the relationship between the Dobsons and nbc was fraught. The writer-­owners bristled when nbc Daytime’s Brian Frons tried to exert more creative control than they ­were used to, having previously worked ­under the sponsor-­ownership model of p&g.59 In addition, the costs of the lavish program’s production soon outran nbc’s license fee, leading the Dobsons to sell the soap to New World Productions and suggesting that in­de­ pen­dent owner­ship, particularly that of creator-­writers, might not work for soap opera. The tensions over finances and creative control did not end with this sale. New World clashed with nbc over which entity bore responsibility for SB’s high production bud­get, and the Dobsons clashed with New World over creative power.60 Indeed, New World’s status as the employer of the Dobsons and the writers who worked with them was a change from the long-­standing practice of head writers contracting their own writing staffs, which had helped to unify each soap’s creative vision. New World could, and did, fire the Dobsons, treating the rest of the writers as workers who could be paired with any given head writer; a broader creative outlook was irrelevant to ­these corporate ­owners.61 The fighting over Santa Barbara in the 1980s was indicative of the upheaval in m ­ atters of owner­ship, creativity, and network involvement that would cause prob­lems for the soaps across the period of gradually declining fortunes. For example, by 1987, hoping to replicate the abc model of network owner­ship and control, nbc was angling to get its owned soap, Gener­ ations, on air. At the time, nbc was unhappy with the per­for­mance of p&g’s Another World, leading nbc’s Frons purportedly to circumvent the sponsor, Strug­gles for Survival  ·  211

dictating creative ­matters directly to aw’s creatives. When p&g hoped to hire the Dobsons (who had been fired from Santa Barbara) to write aw, ­ ecause the network wanted nbc balked. The Dobsons argued that this was b aw to fail, that it wanted out of the sponsor-­owned soap business, hoping to replace aw with Generations.62 The rumors of trou­ble for aw would only magnify over the next de­cade ­until its cancellation in the late 1990s.63 Santa Barbara would be canceled e­ arlier in the 1990s, nbc’s long history of a troubled daytime slate, with mixed arrangements of owner­ship and creative control, continuing. Rising industry anxiety around declining ratings across the 1990s led to an unpre­ce­dented escalation in sponsor-­owner and network-­owner meddling in creative affairs, including frequent turnover in executive producers and head writers at almost e­ very show, as well as an ongoing series of changes in network oversight for daytime and in p&g’s soap production arm. In 1990, Soap Opera Weekly editor Mimi Torchin detailed the many personnel shifts, declaring, “Daytime is in turmoil. It’s losing viewers and the ­people who run the shows ­don’t know what to do.”64 This was as much a prediction of the coming de­cades as it was a statement about that par­tic­u­lar moment. Often the shifts in personnel ­were movements of experienced players from one position to another, exacerbating the closed world of the industry in ways that could stymie innovation. Occasionally, t­hose from outside the soap world ­were invited in. This could result in well-­received developments, as when novelist Michael Malone and feature film producer Linda Gottleib took over at oltl in 1992.65 Or it could result in disruptive misunderstandings of the business, as when Dennis Swanson was made president of abc Sports, Daytime, and ­Children’s Programming in 1991 and threatened changes to soap actor contracts that challenged the arrangements by which talent had worked for de­cades.66 Other stalwarts of the industry also faced threat and change. In 1994, p&g’s influential head of production, Edward Trach, retired ­after thirty-­ six years with the com­pany, leading to a period of shifts for the sponsor-­ producer.67 In this era, p&g explored new business models, including partnerships with Hollywood production studios Paramount and Columbia Tri-­Star, the latter specifically designed to develop the sponsor’s soap production business, given Columbia’s position as owner of Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless.68 On the creative front, between late 1996 and early 1998 each of the New York–­based soaps replaced their head writers and executive producers at least once, including all three p&g soaps.69 In 2001 the three abc soaps shuffled their head writers.70 ­These upheavals ­were 212  ·  chapter 6

matched at the network executive level. Between 2000 and 2003, all three networks acquired new daytime chiefs.71 For much of this period, the most stable spaces in the industry w ­ ere the two soaps created and controlled by Bill Bell and his ­family, y&r and The Bold and the Beautiful. The Bold and the Beautiful, created in 1987, was the only in­de­pen­dently owned, creator-­controlled soap to sustain such a structure across its history. Even though the Bells’ com­pany was never the sole owner of y&r (it has always been partnered with Screen Gems/Columbia Tele­vi­sion/Sony), Bell’s degree of creative control in relation to Screen Gems and to cbs was unique and a major point of negotiation for him from the launch of y&r on.72 In the case of b&b, that control got passed on to his son Bradley Bell, while another son, William Bell Jr., would lead the business end of Bell-­Phillip Tele­ vi­sion Productions.73 ­After Bell Sr.’s death in 2005, his creative successors at y&r had much less autonomy; even t­ hose who had worked closely with him ­were phased out by the end of 2006, subjecting the serial to the same kinds of executive meddling as was typical at other soaps.74 The involvement of network executive Fred Silverman in the 1960s and 1970s was a pre­ce­dent, but the hands-on practices of sponsor-­owners and networks w ­ ere more intense than ever before by the 1990s. In addition to the Dobsons’ clashes with nbc ­were drastic swings in p&g’s directives to its soaps, from stodgy conservatism to a heavi­ly sexualized focus on new, young talent.75 Days of Our Lives head writer Richard J. Allen was subject to constant network directives in the early 1990s—­even as the creative team felt uneasy about the soap’s frequent repre­sen­ta­tion of vio­lence against ­women, the network urged ever more of such shocking content when it led to ratings boosts, as I explore further in chapter  7.76 According to Paul Rauch, who had been executive producer at the time, cbs dictated that gl pursue a story about the cloning of heroine Reva Shayne, despite his warnings that this would be a misstep for a serial known for its stories of ­family dynamics and character-­centered conflict. The producer believed the show never recovered from taking on such an ill-­fitting plot.77 Rauch made this claim before the program’s cancellation; he was not suggesting that the clone plot was a direct cause of the soap’s demise. But Rauch’s assertion speaks to his broader point, that executive rather than creative interests ­running soaps spelled doom: “When a soap gets out of the hands of the chief creator, it becomes amorphous . . . ​diffuse . . . ​unfocused.”78 ­These intensified creative pressures ­were understood as an economic necessity in the struggling soap business of the 1990s. When nbc partnered with prime-­time mogul Aaron Spelling on Sunset Beach in 1997 (ended Strug­gles for Survival  ·  213

1999), the network was the producer’s co-­owner. As much as executives thought Spelling’s touch would generate a daytime hit, the network seemed unwilling to take on another in­de­pen­dently owned soap (like Santa Bar­ bara) or another sponsor-­owned production (like the struggling Another World), choosing Beach over a dool spin-­off (presumably to have been produced by Sony).79 The network’s stake helped keep Beach, rather than aw, on air an extra six months. nbc had been bemoaning aw’s burdensome license fee for years, as well as bristling against p&g more generally.80 The fact that aw’s replacement would be Passions (1999–2007, DirecTV, 2007–8), wholly owned by the network, suggests that the network model increasingly favored the vertically integrated structure developed at abc. abc had invested in the vertical integration of daytime early on, but this sort of oligarchic strategy was becoming the norm across the tv industry, indeed across all of media, by the mid-1990s as large conglomerates took control of more and more media outlets. All three broadcast networks had become part of larger corporations in the 1980s.81 By the early 2000s they ­were all members of one of the handful of conglomerates that controlled much of the world’s media industries. ­These corporate machinations also affected soap production. Sony’s purchase of Columbia Pictures Entertainment in 1989 brought dool and y&r ­under that conglomerate’s purview, and abc’s self-­ownership of its soap slate made ­those serials Disney productions as of the studio’s 1995 acquisition of the broadcaster. The involvement of the soaps in conglomeration had the potential both to protect the programs and to magnify their growing vulnerability. The daytime world amounted to a relatively small portion of the massive dealings of a Disney, a Viacom, a Universal, or a Sony; thus the soaps initially w ­ ere able to go about their business without drawing much attention from their conglomerate parents. Still, the mounting revenue-­generation pressures of this era made the midlevel powers at the networks especially anxious about the place of daytime. In the network era, the soaps had been clear moneymakers in a relatively straightforward system of revenue generation through ad sales. In the conglomerate age, advertising often remained the soaps’ central mode of creating capital, but ­those revenues w ­ ere now endangered, and so was the place of the broadcast network more generally within the conglomerate structure. This led to an effort by ­those who controlled the networks’ daytime divisions to synergize the soaps, connecting them to other properties u ­ nder their o ­ wners’ umbrellas, proving their worth as part of the broader corporate ­family. If One Life to Live could make money for Disney’s Hyperion 214  ·  chapter 6

figure 6.2 When Disney became the conglomerate owner of abc, the soaps became part of Disney’s synergistic efforts, as in the publication of a novel “written” by fictional One Life to Live character ­Marcie Walsh in 2005.

Books via the novel “written” by character Marcie Walsh; if Universal City Walk could host a fan festival to cross-­promote dool, Passions, and (nbc-­ Universal owned) Telemundo’s telenovelas; if dool and y&r could provide the central content for Columbia/Sony’s SoapCity web portal, then perhaps the soaps could be valued for more than the ad revenues they generated in their first (and often only) airings.82 Disney–­a bc Daytime president Brian Frons pitched his com­pany’s offerings as “a holistic revenue-­driven model” that delivered more than s­imple ad slots on broadcast episodes.83 Frons’s boss, Anne Sweeney, described his efforts as “redefining daytime tele­vi­sion beyond a network daypart, and into dynamic, multiplatform entertainment that reflects pop culture and resonates with viewers.”84 Disney-­a bc was not in the daytime soap opera production, distribution, and promotion business; it was in the “studio business.”85 Strug­gles for Survival  ·  215

The rationale of the conglomerate structure was to focus on maximizing the profitability of the w ­ hole, but a number of analyses have concluded that the integrations and synergies of media conglomeration have had ­little to no positive impact on conglomerate profits. As one business scholar noted of the Disney-­a bc deal, “Content is most valuable when it seeks and receives the widest pos­si­ble distribution—­when it is readily accessible to ­every potential customer,” yet Disney’s strategy was narrowing the distribution outlets of its product to its owned channels.86 As ­others have argued, Disney’s economic success of the late twentieth ­century is attributable more to the com­pany doubling its revenues and profit margins at its theme parks (by hiking admission prices) than to other parts of its business. abc was actually valued less a­ fter Disney’s acquisition than it was previously.87 Across the 1990s and 2000s, as multiple high-­profile mergers of large media companies resulted in losses and failures (e.g., Sony, aol–­Time Warner), more and more voices raised questions about the ultimate value of synergy as a conglomerate strategy.88 As journalist Robert Fulford wrote, synergy “has become the costliest and most dangerous word in business,” albeit one that continued to have a strong hold on corporate logics. According to Fulford, “Synergistic companies hope for captive markets, but they often end up alienating customers and suppliers.”89 The failures of synergy w ­ ere particularly evident in the soap business, especially given how hard executives like Frons or his counterpart at nbc, Sheraton Kalouria, emphasized it. Often the soaps’ synergistic efforts continued the history of prob­lems when business rather than creative interests led the way. Synergy and the media conglomeration that underlay it did not cause the decline in the soaps’ ratings and ad revenues, but they did not maximize the programs’ profitability, ­either. Instead, the orientation of daytime drama within a broader conglomerate strategy maximized many of the dilemmas of owner­ship and control that had percolated across soap history.

Distribution Challenges: International Despite the efforts of network executives, in the conglomerate era the soaps’ revenue-­generation potential remained ­limited largely to ad sales. That ­these ­were premised upon a faulty audience mea­sure­ment system was already a prob­lem. Added to this was a historical shortsightedness about secondary distribution, both international and domestic. Even as the broadcast model had long relied on off-­network syndication as a key means of revenue for 216  ·  chapter 6

program producers, most of t­ hose involved in soap production did not take secondary distribution practices seriously ­until soaps w ­ ere widely understood as endangered. In addition, the declining fortunes of the soaps exposed yet another flaw in the network model: the extent to which it was premised upon quiescent affiliate stations accepting the control of an all-­ powerful network. In multiple re­spects, the network business practices that had undergirded soap distribution ­were drains upon rather than supports for the long-­term viability of daytime drama. Long understood as a cheap lure to deliver ­women’s attention to advertisers, soap opera was almost never seen as a commodity with any value beyond an initial airing. The rise of videotape as the soaps’ production mode across the 1960s and 1970s might have been seen as an ideal way to generate quality recordings for sale in after-­markets, domestic and international syndication among them. But few program ­owners saw value in such markets, instead erasing the master videotapes of soaps at regular intervals into the 1970s.90 Less typical was an in­de­pen­dent producer like Dan Curtis, who preserved the tapes of Dark Shadows. This allowed him ­later to sell the program as syndicated repeats and then to release it on dvd and through streaming ser­vices, continuing to generate revenue. International distribution was on the radar for Screen Gems/Columbia, a studio used to making money in such markets. The com­pany sold dool internationally as early as the late ­ ere also part of the com­pany’s ne1960s.91 International distribution rights w gotiations with Bell during the launch of y&r in the early 1970s.92 Although it was rather scarcely employed in the network era, international distribution would be a key tool for the soaps’ survival in the last quarter of the twentieth c­ entury. It is due to international distribution that the only soap created ­after the 1970s to survive long-­term was The Bold and and the Beautiful. The program was intentionally developed as a global property, designed for international as well as domestic sale. Its origins in the late 1980s aligned with the period in which the entire US tele­vi­sion business was becoming more global. Between 1985 and 1987, the industry saw a 53 ­percent increase in foreign revenue, largely due to the deregulation and subsequent privatization of Eu­ro­pean tele­vi­sion markets.93 The Bold and the Beautiful had an international dimension built into its fictional world; “the Paris, London, Madrid and New York fashion showings” would all feature as part of the fictional core ­family’s business.94 Bell-­Phillip Productions initially partnered with New World Tele­vi­sion to distribute b&b overseas.95 New World was already pursuing international sales for Santa Barbara, and both soaps ­were sold across Eu­rope.96 They Strug­gles for Survival  ·  217

became big hits, often airing in prime time; t­ hese cultures did not have the historical memory of soap opera as daytime-­specific, or even exclusively targeted at w ­ omen. Newer soaps like t­ hese w ­ ere ideal for international sales, as viewers could access the stories from the beginning. The first 250 episodes of ­ ere packaged as a ­free bonus included with purchase of a miniseries b&b w New World was distributing, providing a gateway to audience demand for the soap for de­cades hence.97 This success encouraged Bell-­Phillip to expand the international distribution of y&r, as well, though that soap’s longer history would make it impossible for non-­US viewers to see it from the beginning. The realization that international distribution could be a lucrative ave­nue even led to questions about the (lackluster) international distribution histories of other soaps, as when, in 1991, Bridget Dobson requested an audit of Worldvision, abc’s international distributor, regarding her parents’ creation, General Hospital.98 While abc had pursued some international sales, ­these had never been a focus of the business. In the 1990s, however, it became clear that international distribution was key to financial success. As nbc contemplated canceling Santa Barbara, it warned the potential producers of a new soap that they would have to supplement the network license fee with international sales; the network could not afford a new soap any other way.99 This meant that the network’s decision to launch Sunset Beach in 1997 was dependent on that serial’s worldwide sale. Being co-­owner helped the network save on license fees, but the production bud­get was especially reliant on Aaron Spelling’s global cachet; his international distributor presold the ­ amble’s partnership with Cosoap to twelve foreign markets.100 Procter & G lumbia TriStar/Sony in this period was also motivated by the international distribution assistance the global conglomerate could provide. In their 1997 deal, Columbia acquired global distribution rights to p&g’s current soaps as well as any ­future programs the pairing might generate.101 Clearly, a number of stakeholders in the world of daytime soaps had become cognizant of the benefits of international distribution. But the late arrival of this awareness in the industry’s long history would make such sales less effective for soap opera as a ­whole than they might have been.

218  ·  chapter 6

Distribution Challenges: Within the United States As the flaws of the classic network model for soaps w ­ ere being exposed, so too did the history of disregard for secondary domestic distribution of the programs become an increasingly clear misstep. The popularity of soaps in the early 1980s did lead to vari­ous efforts to distribute soaps via first-­run syndication, bypassing the network system by selling programs directly to local stations. Telepictures’ Rituals was the only of ­these to make it to air, ­running on about a hundred US stations between 1984 and 1985.102 While ­there was some talk of canceled soaps, such as Generations or Fox’s short-­lived teen serial, Tribes (1990), finding extended lives through first-­run syndication, such deals did not materialize.103 ­There was also some experimentation with cable channels creating and programming their own soaps, the most successful of which was the Christian Broadcasting Network’s religiously themed Another Life (1981–84), which cbn further distributed to local stations in first-­run syndication.104 As the networks gradually became concerned with the impact of cable on their audience shares, they considered the possibility of rerunning daytime soaps. Network executives contemplated the costs and benefits of late-­night repeats, debating ­whether the expense of residual payments to talent or the risk to the daytime ratings would be worth the potential benefits.105 By the end of the 1980s, parties such as ABC began to consider ways to use cable for soap reruns, an idea that became all the more pos­si­ble once the Walt Disney Com­pany purchased ABC in the mid-1990s.106 abc’s president Pat Fili-­Krushel, whose roots ­were in daytime, explained in 1998 that soaps ­were an expensive property for one run but that the network was working on “a day-­and-­date repurposing on another distribution platform to expand the amount of viewers.”107 Columbia/Sony was equally aware of the “residual value” of its soap episodes in the late 1990s.108 The parallel thinking of ­these two program ­owners led to their development of rival soap opera cable channels by 1999. The competing plans for Disney-­a bc’s channel, eventually named Soapnet, and Columbia/Sony’s SoapCity w ­ ere attempts to address the long-­ neglected secondary domestic distribution market for daytime drama. abc’s proj­ect surely had an advantage, but Columbia kept pursuing SoapCity, perhaps mostly in an effort to get abc to give them an equity stake in Soapnet, and thereby to include Columbia’s dool on the channel.109 Originally, nbc’s dool was the only soap that Columbia had rights to re-­air. Even as Strug­gles for Survival  ·  219

co-­owner of y&r, Columbia was not authorized to repurpose the cbs soap. And Columbia’s late-1990s deal with p&g only ensured international re­ distribution, not domestic, for the existing p&g soaps. Given that the p&g ­ attle in getshows, as well as y&r, aired on cbs, Columbia faced an uphill b ting the network to go along, eventually brokering a deal with cbs (and its affiliates) for repurposing rights to y&r in exchange for a financial interest in SoapCity.110 Affiliates at all three networks ­were a chief obstacle to the rerunning of soaps on cable channels, the local stations fearing their daytime audiences would be poached by cable repeats. Th ­ ese proj­ects exacerbated the growing tensions between the networks and their affiliates, magnifying daytime’s place as a site of strug­gle between t­ hese parties since the 1980s. At that point, affiliates had begun to refuse clearance to some low-­rated soaps; in other words, they opted not to air t­ hese soaps, or to air them at times other than the network’s preferred scheduling. All of the soaps that ­were canceled across the 1980s and 1990s suffered from affiliate clearance prob­lems.111 Relaxed owner­ship regulations had allowed large station groups to purchase more and more affiliates; t­ hese corporate ­owners ­were focused on the short-­term bottom line, happily preempting network programming for more lucrative fare. The networks found themselves in a standoff with the station groups, which ­were increasingly emboldened to refuse network product.112 ­These dynamics proved particularly challenging for new soaps, which had a hard time building an audience when they simply did not air in some markets.113 nbc expended significant effort at improving its daytime clearance rates for its new serials, from Santa Barbara in the mid-1980s to Sunset Beach in the mid-1990s, finding ways to make the pickups more appealing for affiliates.114 But its relatively lax policies about clearance made its daytime schedule particularly risky.115 In 1992, the network put its head of network-­ owned stations in charge of daytime in order to try to stanch the stations’ rebelliousness; at the time just 14 ­percent of nbc’s affiliates cleared the daytime schedule as the network fed it.116 While nbc’s lack of power over its affiliates made its daytime schedule particularly vulnerable, the overall loosening of network control exposed an industry-­wide weakness. The network dominance that had enabled the classic network era could not be sustained. Secondary runs of daily soap episodes touched at the heart of the tensions between networks and affiliates. In 1998, Columbia sold dool repeats to be run commercial-­free via satellite provider DirecTV’s pay per view ser­vice. nbc’s affiliates ­were already upset with the network’s move ­toward reverse compensation, asking the stations to pay the network for the (hit, prime-­ 220  ·  chapter 6

time) programming fed to them. The network threatened cancellation of dool to pressure Columbia to back off of the pay per view arrangement.117 As both Columbia and abc ­were in the early stages of planning their own cable channels, this upset was instructive, leading abc to offer affiliates a financial stake in its soap channel.118 Some of abc’s affiliates (­those owned by the network) ­were also crucial pawns in Disney’s efforts to get Soapnet carried by major cable systems such as Time Warner. Cable systems ­were reluctant to give space for a channel rerunning a program form with declining ratings. In a show of conglomerate power, Disney threatened to pull its owned and operated stations in several cities from cable carriage to pressure a Soapnet pickup, which was ultimately a successful manipulation.119 The affiliate structure on which the network system was based took on a new meaning in the conglomerate age, as a power such as Disney gambled the soaps’ conventional distribution venue (local affiliates) against the new secondary distribution venue of cable. The soaps themselves ­were l­ittle more than the filler fluffing up the conglomerate’s vari­ous outlets for selling audiences to advertisers, and for d ­ oing b ­ attle against its conglomerate rivals. The network system as it had once functioned, and as daytime soaps had helped sustain, was undergoing fundamental change as conglomerate ­owners and their business practices altered the historic positioning of soap opera within the network system.

Aesthetic Experimentation as Survival Strategy As changes in owner­ship structures, creative control, and distribution disrupted the economic relations within which soap opera had been engaged for de­cades, the creators with hands-on control over the programs themselves began to explore ways to innovate the soaps’ narrative structure and audiovisual form. Many of the soaps’ creative personnel had been producing t­ hese programs for de­cades by the 1990s. Their experience and interest in experimentation met up with a growing desperation for attention and recognition as the soaps faltered in their economic standing. Together, t­ hese forces encouraged a period of creative innovation in production and aesthetics that introduced new variations and that fit with the turn t­oward a broadened politics of repre­sen­ta­tion of social groups that would also mark this era, as chapter 7 investigates. Beginning in the 1980s, American tele­vi­sion became increasingly invested in aesthetic experimentation, a phenomenon John  T. Caldwell has Strug­gles for Survival  ·  221

figure 6.3 Another World participated in the trend ­toward “mtv style” in 1991 by shooting a ­music video for “Lady Killer,” Dean’s (Ricky Paul Goldin) song, which features his love interest, Jenna (Alla Korot), as dancer.

labeled “televisuality,” a “self-­consciousness of style” informed by an array of cultural and economic forces.120 Aesthetic experimentation had always been part of American tele­vi­sion. As Caldwell points out, however, the spread of televisuality as an industry-­wide practice was a specific reaction to the declines in viewership that marked the end of the network era.121 Caldwell excludes soaps from his analy­sis, asserting that “some genres simply do not care about style.”122 Such a claim neglects the fact that soap creators have always been part of the same broader industry as the rest of moving image media and that soap style does indeed exist, and is historically variable, like any creative practice.123 Historically, the soaps’ aesthetic changes often evolved in relation to technological shifts, such as the turn to videotape production. By the 1990s, soap creators ­were ­eager for experimentation, in part inspired by new technologies but also by a desire to garner attention in a period of strug­gle. Making soaps look, sound, and feel “new” was seen as a way to appeal to ­those increasingly valued young audiences. 222  ·  chapter 6

figure 6.4 In 1995, abc re­imagined Loving as The City, which was distinguished from other soaps in its visual style, including Filmlook technology, Steadicam shooting, and multistory sets.

The elevated production values of the 1980s soaps opened the door to ­these new techniques, especially in the 1990s before production bud­gets ­were more drastically reduced. For instance, characters had been singing on-­screen since at least the 1970s, but by the 1990s such sequences integrated m ­ usic video–­style per­for­mances, as in AW’s “Ladykiller” m ­ usic video featuring Dean and Jenna in 1991 or its fantasy sequence from Broadway’s Grease in 1994. ­These steps continued the 1980s emphasis on popu­lar ­music but further elaborated the “mtv style” in hopes of appealing to youth in par­tic­u­lar. The aesthetic experimentation of the period also integrated new technological developments that allowed creators to manipulate the look of videotape, differentiating soap visuals from their historic associations. The soaps ­were among the first to experiment with Filmlook technology, a postproduction pro­cess of effecting tape to make features such as the grain, contrast, and frame rate appear more like film.124 Days of Our Lives and Another World both used Filmlook in special prime-­time episodes and other segments in 1992 and 1993.125 When The City (1995–97) launched as a rebooted version Strug­gles for Survival  ·  223

figure 6.5 “The Case of the Stolen Heart” was a special episode of Another World in which the black-­and-­white, film noir–­style story offers insight into the fears and fantasies of Cass Winthrop (Stephen Schnetzer), ­here talking with a fictionalized version of Alla Korot’s Jenna. nbc, February 13, 1992.

of abc’s Loving (1983–95), it achieved its distinctive style through Filmlook. Sunset Beach employed it in the late 1990s, as did the 1997 two-­hour prime-­ time pi­lot for gh spin-­off Port Charles (abc, 1997–2003).126 In 2006, amc used the con­temporary version along with Steadicams to update its visual style, particularly for scenes set in the nightclub conFusion. Such efforts strove to make soaps look more like higher-­budget network dramas such as The West Wing (nbc, 1999–2006) and er (nbc, 1994–2009), which w ­ ere shot on film and for which the Steadicam had become “a staple.”127 The hope was that this kind of aesthetic legitimacy would attract young viewers in par­tic­u­lar, ­those the industry saw as most essential for ensuring its survival. This kind of visual experimentation was paired with vari­ous narrative innovations. Some soaps experimented with aty­pi­cal “special” episodes that removed the characters from their standard real­ity and offered an examination of character psy­chol­ogy. In 1992, both aw and gl featured episodes that used techniques such as black-­and-­white images, canted a­ ngles, colored ­filters, 224  ·  chapter 6

and unusual m ­ usic and costuming to offer insight into par­tic­u­lar characters. Another World’s “The Case of the Stolen Heart” displayed Cass Winthrop’s rich fantasy life as he imagines being re­united with his love, Frankie, in a story referencing 1940s film noir and classics such as Casablanca.128 Guiding Light’s Election Day episode examined the psyche of Ross Marler through an extended dream in which the politician encounters the many ­women of his past and pre­sent, who help him come to terms with the fact that he has sacrificed his personal life for his po­liti­cal ambitions.129 ­These and other instances shared their visual style and their narrative functions with similar experiments populating such prime-­time dramas as Moonlighting (abc, 1985–89), thirtysomething (abc, 1987–91), and Northern Exposure (cbs, 1990–95).130 The soaps’ typically formulaic visual style has long been crucial to their rapid production pace. Within that style are many compelling methods to communicate meaning; working within constraints can elicit its own forms of creativity. Yet variations on the formula become especially significant within the postnetwork era context, as soaps sought to prove their worth. The new soaps of the 1990s made some form of stylistic and/or narrative boundary pushing central to their identities. Sunset Beach made liberal use of fantasy sequences that relied on intertextual and self-­reflexive references, as well as stylistic flourishes, such as a sepia-­toned Wild West fantasy or a Charlie’s Angels dream sequence with 1970s costuming and a degraded film look.131 The hundreds of such scenes across the program’s nearly three-­year run made this a central feature of the soap in a way that was aty­pi­cal for older serials. Initially, the Beach segments tended ­toward romantic fantasies, but l­ater in the soap’s run they became more comedic and reflexive, self-­ consciously commenting on tele­vi­sion and popu­lar culture, gender roles, and soap opera itself. The character Sara Cummings, unlucky in love and feeling inferior to her ­sister, Meg, tends t­ oward tv credit sequence–­inspired fantasies that point to the mismatch between her tv-­fueled desires and her real­ity, as when she dreams of being Ann Marie of That Girl (abc, 1966–71), admired by her unrequited love, Casey, ­until he shouts, “No, no, not you! That other girl,” and points not to Sara but to Meg.132 While nearly all characters had fantasies at some point, villainess Annie Douglas had the most frequent and elaborate ones, encouraging the audience to delight in her vendetta against Olivia or her scheming to capture Gregory while offering meta-­commentary on a popu­lar cultural theme. Her fantasies offered a comedic means not only of seeing circumstances through Annie’s eyes but also of strengthening the character’s resolve, emphasizing her place in a pantheon of indefatigable antiheroines, including t­hose of Strug­gles for Survival  ·  225

figure 6.6 Sunset Beach regularly produced aesthetically distinctive fantasy sequences, including one for villainess Annie (Sarah Buxton) in which she imagines herself as a character on a 1950s daytime tv soap opera. nbc, April 27, 1999.

daytime soaps. In one instance that directly referenced soap history, Annie frets over how long she has tried to get Gregory to love her, wondering, “How did my life turn out like this? It’s kind of like a soap opera or something . . .” as the image dissolves away from Annie’s close-up to a zoom in to an old-­ fashioned tv set featuring the black-­and-­white title card, Search for Dig­ ­ usic. We see the nity, and an announcer introduces the show over organ m character-­Annie, a dutiful 1950s h ­ ouse­wife, begging Gregory not to leave her as she is dragged along the floor, clinging to his leg and sobbing. With a pause, actress-­Annie breaks character, dropping her grip on his leg with, “What am I d ­ oing?!” We then see a wide shot of the dream-­production crew whispering, “­We’re live!” and gesturing to the cue cards as actress-­Annie turns to the camera in defiance. She goes on a tirade, telling actor-­Gregory and the all-­male crew, “I am not the weak, subservient ­little h ­ ouse­wife you write me as! No, no! You see, I am a strong, power­ful ­woman! . . . ​I am Annie Douglas!” as she tears off her shirtwaist and apron to reveal a slinky red dress, the image converting to color as Annie has her awakening. 226  ·  chapter 6

“I ­Will Survive” rises on the sound track as Annie continues her tirade. “I ­don’t need anyone, ­because I’ve got . . . ​me! . . . ​As God is my witness, I . . . ​ ­will . . . ​s urvive!”133 The interlude has reminded Annie of the long line of ­women before her who have survived soap opera–­style obstacles, from Scarlett O’Hara and Gloria Gaynor to defiant soap ­house­wives like atwt’s Lisa Hughes and amc’s Erica Kane. The sequence not only encourages the audience to root for Annie but does so with affectionate reference to a long history of ­women characters in feminized texts, of which daytime soap opera is primary. Engaging with the past was a central focus of soap storytelling of the postnetwork age, as chapter 7 considers in relation to repre­sen­ta­tions of social groups and issues. The stylistic and narrative experimentation of the period was similarly reflective. By the 2000s, this experimentation was most often evident as generic hybridity, wherein soap conventions w ­ ere crossed with the musical, horror, and super­natural genres, as well as the Latin A ­ merican ­sister genre of the telenovela. One Life to Live continued its tradition of self-­ reflexivity and boundary pushing with several musical sequences, as did Passions. Such experiments began alongside the renewed popularity of musical storytelling in live-­action feature films such as Moulin Rouge (2001) and Chicago (2002), as well as tele­vi­sion series such as Ally McBeal (“The Musical, Almost,” May 22, 2000) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Once More with Feeling,” Nov. 6, 2001). The oltl episode “Babes ­behind Bars,” from July 4, 2002, winked at ­women in prison films with its spinning titles and mock credit sequence. The imprisoned Lindsay Rappaport imagines a series of song and dance numbers from the female residents of Llanview, magically appearing in the prison as fellow inmates, singing popu­lar hits that tell their characters’ stories. ­Later in the de­cade, the soap drew upon the talents of its teen cast, as well as some older players, to air two multiday musicals, “Prom Night: The Musical” in 2007 and “Starr X’d Lovers” in 2010, also set at the prom.134 The 2010 episodes serve as a commentary on the innocence of the 2007 episodes, given that the young ­couples featured in the ­earlier musical now face more mature, daunting trou­bles. Eschewing the more naive narrative and musical styles of 2007, which ­were clearly influenced by the 2006 smash success of the Disney Channel’s High School Musical, the 2010 episodes use many of the songs as sound track to montage sequences that intermix a number of story lines, highlighting the experiences of characters beyond just the teen protagonists. Passions was part of nearly all of the experimental trends of the 1990s and 2000s, including extensive generic hybridity. Musical interludes and Strug­gles for Survival  ·  227

figure 6.7 One Life to Live parodied ­women in prison films with its “Babes ­behind Bars” episode, including a mock title sequence, abc, July 4, 2002.

episodes ­were part of the soap beginning in 2002, when Theresa, Ethan, and Gwen perform a fourth wall–­breaking rendition of the theme song, “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” as Ethan is coaching Theresa through childbirth.135 More elaborate musical sequences that referenced contemporaneous cultural phenomena became part of the soap thereafter, with take-­offs on Broadway hits like Chicago and Wicked, as well as Bollywood film.136 Productions like t­ hese ­were substantially more time-­, labor-­, and resource-­intensive than the typical soap episode, requiring weeks of rehearsal and preproduction as well as the hiring of choreographers, dancers, and musical talent such as actresses to play the young Esmerelda and Tabitha in the Wicked-­inspired scenes of their boarding school youth.137 That this sort of investment in soap production was pos­si­ble in the 2000s reveals how gradual the decline in resources was for the industry; even in the years just before the cancellations of a number of soaps, the networks made some financial effort at invigoration. The musical episodes in Passions ­were not its only moments of genre blending. From the outset, the soap included super­natural features; in the fifth episode, the witch Tabitha brings to life a doll named Timmy, portrayed 228  ·  chapter 6

figure 6.8 Passions used self-­reflexivity and generic hybridity to stand out as a new soap, including breaking the fourth wall by having the witch Tabitha (Juliet Mills) address the audience when she puts the doll-­turned-­boy Timmy (Josh Ryan Evans) in the clothes dryer. nbc, July 9, 1999.

by the teenage actor Josh Ryan Evans, whose dwarfism made him look like a doll/child.138 Tabitha’s powers and ­those of other characters become integrated into stories throughout the soap’s run. Unlike the straight use of gothic and horror tropes in Dark Shadows, however, Passions presented its super­natural ele­ments with a comedic wink, using deliberately low-­tech special effects to emphasize their absurdity. When Timmy complains to Tabitha that he is soaked from one of their efforts to destroy the virtuous Charity, she puts him in the clothes dryer. As Timmy spins in the dryer win­dow, a close-up of Tabitha appears in the lower left corner of the screen as she admonishes the audience, “To all of you out ­there, what Tabitha just did was very, very naughty. Do not try this at home!”139 This kind of self-­ reflexive comedy was juxtaposed with the extreme earnestness of most of the characterizations and per­for­mances. The clash between ­these styles exemplified the soap’s sensibility: a campy combination of irony, comedy, and soap conventions, which ­were often taken to extremes. The close association of Passions with the telenovela marked another way it epitomized the soaps’ experimentation with form. Telenovelas differ Strug­gles for Survival  ·  229

from US soaps by their place in the broadcast schedule (eve­nings rather than days) and their ­limited runs, typically airing for a few months before concluding. Their storytelling tends to be more melodramatic than that of US daytime, with greater extremes of good and evil and more intense, shocking events.140 In t­hose re­spects, they may be more comparable to the US prime-­time soap operas that flourished in the 1980s, such as Dallas or Dynasty, than to daytime drama. In the early 2000s, the entire industry was recognizing the consumer power inherent in the young and growing Latinx population, and multiple soaps sought to appeal to such viewers.141 Passions took t­ hese practices a step further by making Latinx characters central protagonists, casting telenovela actors in contract or guest roles, and participating in joint promotional events between Telemundo (one of two US-­based Spanish-­language broadcast networks, then owned by nbc) and the nbc soaps.142 The soap also followed telenovela conventions in its melodramatic tendencies, although the extremely slow pace at which its stories progressed was quite ­counter to the novelas’ patterns. Near the soap’s end, it directly addressed this relationship when Theresa fantasizes about her life as “Las Pasiones de Theresa.”143 As much as the soap tilted t­ oward some novela features, it was more an ironic than a faithful rendition. On abc, Port Charles, the half-­hour spin-­off of gh, also took up certain aspects of telenovelas, in this case more through story pacing than by embracing the moral and emotional extremes that Passions ­adopted. Facing lackluster ratings, pc revised its format three and a half years into its run by structuring its stories into thirteen-­week “books,” deliberate imitations of telenovela structure.144 Unlike telenovelas, pc began its books with a full slate of continuing characters, some of whom had been around for more than a de­cade, given their origination on gh, and ­those characters and their arcs carried over from book to book. As one book transitioned to the next, certain plots resolved while o ­ thers began, yet the broader arcs of the characters and their relationships continued as they would on any soap between a Friday episode and the next Monday’s. The trumpeting of pc’s new structure as telenovela-­inspired was more a means of generating publicity than it was a substantive structural change. Indeed, abc Daytime used the book structure as a promotional tool, mailing postcards as each began, promising, “­Every month a new chapter, ­every Friday a revelation, e­ very day an event,” a means of appealing to audiences by promising an uncharacteristically quick storytelling pace, a way of proclaiming pc’s difference from longer-­running soaps. 230  ·  chapter 6

figure 6.9 Port Charles (abc) borrowed the structure of telenovelas to tell stories as thirteen-­week “books,” which w ­ ere promoted in 2001 through postcards mailed to viewers announcing the next installment.

A more significant disruption of the soap formula was the hybridizing of genre that took place gradually alongside pc’s turn ­toward the thirteen-­ week books. In a move reminiscent of Dark Shadows thirty-­five years e­ arlier, the soap slowly introduced super­natural and horror ele­ments in a further attempt to distinguish itself. The first book, “Fate,” was rooted in real­ity, although characters often describe relationships as “meant to be” and a feverish Eve dreams of a previous life with Ian through a black-­and-­white sequence set during World War  I. The second book, “Time in a B ­ ottle,” continues the suggestion that romantic love defies time, even including a time travel plot. By the third book, “Tainted Love,” the soap turned ­toward vampire my­thol­ogy; that focus would continue across the remaining books. Just as with Dark Shadows, pc found the most promising of its innovations in the figure of a tortured male vampire consumed with desire for a dark-­haired ingenue. Evoking the seduction of Mina Harper by Count Dracula, vampire Caleb entrances Livvie Locke, whom he believes to be his lost love, Olivia, and the two have sexy, dreamlike scenes alone, gazing at one another, pledging their love, panting with desire.145 Livvie wears flimsy Strug­gles for Survival  ·  231

white gowns, Caleb dons flowing black shirts that expose his chest, each of them have long, dark hair framing their ­faces. Their “matched set” looks and their isolated time alone evoke the supercouple formula, even as we know that Caleb is evil and Livvie is not in control of her actions. Played with a mix of earnest drama, sexy bodice ripping, and winking humor (the fortysomething Lucy Coe discovers that she is a vampire slayer), “Tainted Love” suggested the potential for combining soap opera with long-­standing mythologies and con­temporary trends. While the layers of referentiality and genre mixing at the center of pc’s super­natural turn indicate the creative potential in this sort of aesthetic experimentation, the challenge of long-­term success in the context of early 2000s daytime ­limited what was pos­si­ble, and Port Charles, still beset by low ratings, ended its run in the fall of 2003.

Innovating Online The aesthetic experiments of the postnetwork era ­were clear efforts to draw attention as the soaps sought to survive amid a multiplying media environment and a faltering broadcast network system. The soaps’ efforts at innovation ­were not only textual; they also included attempts to use the internet as a promotional space and a distribution alley. Some of the first signs of this came out of the race to get a soap-­oriented cable channel to market. Columbia eventually dropped its plans for a soap-­centered cable channel in the face of Disney’s power. Columbia/Sony’s SoapCity also had a life as a website, begun in 1997, before the cable channel plans ­were very well developed. It initially functioned as a place for soap fans to congregate and talk about their favorite programs, as well as a space for selling soap-­related merchandise.146 In 2000, SoapCity hosted one of the first moving-image narratives produced for the web, a serialized drama aired in six-­minute episodes called Santa Cruz. The web soap was a tie-in promotion for Columbia’s feature film 28 Days (2000), in which the protagonist becomes invested in that very soap along with her fellow patients in a rehabilitation center for substance abuse. Snippets of Santa Cruz appeared within the film, but a more extensive array of episodes was produced, appearing only on SoapCity ­until they w ­ ere released on the special edition dvd of the film l­ater that year. This sort of cross-­promotional effort was a typical strategy of the media conglomerates, but the effort to make this soap-­within-­the-­film ring true led to experienced soap actors being cast in the web series.147 SoapCity and the experimental 232  ·  chapter 6

“soap” it aired w ­ ere innovators in original scripted storytelling produced for the web. More typically, across the early 2000s SoapCity was used to promote the broadcast soaps, an effort of the networks’ websites as well. In 2003, this promotional role became one of distribution when the site offered the first paid downloads of daytime soaps, beginning with y&r and atwt, and plans to roll out episodes of more current and potentially even defunct soaps.148 This move, a year and a half before iTunes began to offer downloadable video, put soaps at the forefront of changing media distribution practices and solidified SoapCity’s place as an early innovator for the convergence of tele­ vi­sion and the internet. The soaps’ involvement with the internet grew across the 2000s as another strategy for boosting declining ratings. In 2005 and 2006, all three networks and many soaps introduced vari­ous forms of online promotional content, including Passions’ mock-­tabloid about goings-on in the fictional Harmony, blogs written by characters on each of abc’s three soaps, and audio-­only podcast versions of gl’s and atwt’s daily broadcasts, all in hopes of drawing viewers to their tele­vi­sion screens.149 As broadband video technology developed (YouTube launched in the spring of 2005), the soaps ­were forerunners in the networks’ experiments with streaming content. In 2006, one of the first programs on cbs’s new broadband channel, Innertube, was a real­ity competition show with the prize of a role on atwt. nbc streamed episodes of Passions on its website l­ater the same year. Each of the networks gradually brought streaming versions of their soaps to their websites. Throughout their history, daytime soaps have been industry innovators, venturing into new media and serving as a testing ground for creators’ and audiences’ engagement with technological change. That said, the efforts to move soaps into the digital realm in the 2000s ultimately did ­little to improve daytime ratings. If anything, the inadequacies of the audience mea­ sure­ment system ­were further aggravated by the complication of additional distribution platforms, which themselves ­were as yet inadequately integrated into practices of tv funding. As Erin Meyers notes, in the failings of such efforts, we see the way that “the value of new platforms of distribution and consumption are undercut by adherence to traditional mea­sure­ment structures.”150 The very structures of the broadcast network business that ­were already limiting the soaps’ profitability continued their damage even as the soaps tried to adapt to the converging media culture. ­These dilemmas, paired with the increasing interference of business interests in creative Strug­gles for Survival  ·  233

­ atters, made even the online promotional efforts of the soaps of ­limited m effectiveness. Devoted soap fans found some of the supplementary online content—­the character blogs and podcasts of episode audio, for example— to be manipulative and off-­putting, understanding ­these promotional efforts as superficial strategies that failed to engage with real viewers’ investments in their shows.151

A Shrunken Business: Canceled Soaps Despite the aesthetic experimentation and online innovation the soaps engaged in, by the late 2000s the declines over the preceding de­cades reached critical status. At that point, a wave of cancellations changed the industry in foundational ways. The result would be a drastically shrunken business: four soaps left on air as of early 2012, and cbs the only network with more than one daily drama. nbc’s long-­standing strug­gles with its daytime lineup made its many cancellations in the 1990s a logical outcome, particularly given that most of the soaps that ended at this time ­were relatively recent additions to a network with already-­fragile structures of soap owner­ship and affiliate relations. Even the cancellation of Another World in 1999 seemed rather inevitable. It was a soap ­under threat across the 1990s, and more vulnerable than its p&g siblings as the only of the sponsor’s shows on nbc. The cancellations of the 2000s ­were even more telling of the fundamental change underway, for the first of them represented the failures of the efforts at narrative experimentation that emerged in the 1990s. The end of Port Charles in 2003 suggested that the show’s distinct story structure of thirteen-­ week arcs and its turn to the kind of super­natural, gothic, and horror tropes that had made vari­ous soaps popu­lar sensations since Dark Shadows could not generate the kind of economic success required for survival in the new millennium. Passions’ 2007 conclusion on nbc similarly suggested that even the most extreme kinds of narrative experimentation in this era did not add up to lasting value. The show’s appeal to young viewers and its investment in transmedia and digital promotions also made ­those “cutting-­edge” strategies, t­hose in which the industry had been most invested in recent years, seem fruitless.152 If the most digitally engaged of the soaps, not to mention one owned by its network, could not survive, the picture was grim indeed. ­These efforts could not overcome the faltering structure of the broadcast network model as nbc became the first network to air just one daily daytime soap.153 234  ·  chapter 6

­ ese failures ­were sure signs of continuing decline, but the most damagTh ing blows began in 2009, when cbs canceled first Guiding Light and then ­ ese ­were the longest-­running soaps on air, the only As the World Turns. Th remaining examples of the sponsor-­ownership model, and the last of p&g’s presence in network daytime. With ­these programs gone the soaps’ roots in radio, their direct connection to pioneers like Phillips, and their status as the logical place for ­house­hold goods to be advertised to ­women viewer-­ consumers ­were fundamentally severed. Th ­ ese cancellations brought cbs to a schedule of one and a half hours of soap content daily, both y&r and b&b produced in­de­pen­dently (via studio and in­de­pen­dent owner­ship, respectively) and bolstered by the kinds of international sales that allowed them to be profitable even with the ­limited license fee the network could pay. In 2010, Brian Frons, head of abc Daytime, expressed faith in the strength of his network’s three-­soap lineup, even as Disney-­a bc announced plans to convert Soapnet into a preschooler-­targeted Disney channel.154 But in April 2011, abc revealed the imminent ends of All My ­Children and One Life to Live, leaving General Hospital the only soap on the network’s schedule by the beginning of 2012.155 When the once lucrative model of network owner­ ship stumbled, the soaps’ ­future became increasingly uncertain. The most immediate ­causes of the soaps’ decline across the postnetwork era ­were ­those embedded in the broadcast network system: problematic understandings of audiences and how to mea­sure them, the conglomeration of owner­ship and the business pressures exerted upon creative m ­ atters, and delayed attention to secondary markets as ­viable distribution sites and revenue generators. Some of ­these issues ­were especially magnified in the world of daytime soaps, but the broader structure of the network system was the root of the prob­lems. The resiliency of soap opera has also been evident in the postnetwork age, with aesthetic and technological innovations generating new ways of telling stories and new opportunities for communicating ­those stories to audiences just as soap-­like storytelling has increasingly suffused prime time. The substance of daytime’s stories, the plots they enacted and the characters they depicted, w ­ ere as strung between fatal missteps and innovative promise as w ­ ere the industry’s production and business practices. The extent to which soap storytelling learned from or ignored its vast history often affected its ability to engage audiences new or continuing in the postnetwork period, having a major impact on viewers’ attitudes t­oward “their stories” in ­these years of decline.

Strug­gles for Survival  ·  235

SEVEN. RECKONING WITH THE PAST Reimagining Characters and Stories

The soap fan who turned on her tv in 1995 might have been surprised by what she found: Days of Our Lives’ John Black performing an exorcism on ­ hildren’s Noah Keefer asking his love, Julia Dr.  Marlena Evans; All My C Santos, if she is hesitant to be with him b ­ ecause he is black; General Hospital’s Stone Cates facing his aids diagnosis. Twelve years l­ater, in 2007, she would have found further surprises: Luke Snyder of As the World Turns kissing his boyfriend, Noah, and amc’s Babe Chandler assuring her transgender friend, Zoe, of the inspiration she offers just as Passions’ Theresa and Ethan are expressing their anger and fear at a rapist and blackmailer they refer to as “It,” given the character’s half-­male/half-­female dress and horrific mask. ­These ­were not your m ­ other’s soaps, the daytime dramas of the postnetwork age eagerly trumpeted to what they hoped was a new, young audience. The economic challenges soaps faced from the late 1980s on shrank daytime drama from a widely popu­lar and extremely lucrative tele­vi­sion fixture to a much smaller and more precariously positioned space within an expansive culture of moving-image storytelling. The threatened status of soap opera enabled creators to do some risk-­taking, but t­ hose risks had varying degrees of success, as seen with the aesthetic experimentation and technological innovations described in chapter 6. This chapter is focused on the implications of this risk-­taking for the ideological bent of the soaps’ stories and for the politics of the repre­sen­ta­tion of social groups.

The changes to the kinds of stories the soaps told and the types of characters that peopled them w ­ ere made in dialogue with the long history of the form, and of altered discourses of gender, race, and sexual identity in the culture at large. The postnetwork age was marked not only as a period of reaction to a changed economic and technological climate but also as an era impacted by previous de­cades of feminist, racial justice, and gay rights activism, not to mention backlash against ­these movements. This made the late 1980s to the 2010s a period of soap history roiled by dueling cultural winds. It was a time both of real cultural transformation and of the reproduction of social inequalities, often in the name of such m ­ atters having been resolved in the recent past. ­These complicated dynamics w ­ ere vis­i­ble in daytime soap opera across ­these de­cades as the form revisited its own past while it strug­ gled to survive. In the 1990s, the soaps evidenced the social and po­liti­cal tensions of the times in one of two ways: through attention to social change via a return to relevance or through a dive to fantastical extremes, surpassing the fantasies of the eighties soaps by moving even further away from social realism. By the 2000s, as the soaps’ fortunes continued to decline and the culture was more firmly situated in a post­race, postgay, postfeminist state, the increasingly desperate soaps more openly embraced exploitative treatment of social difference, such as race and sexuality, and more fully rejected their historic standing as a gendered space associated with ­women’s interests and concerns. By the late 2000s, the combination of the challenged network tv business and ­these narrative missteps drastically harmed the soaps’ position within the media industries and the culture at large, including among some long-­standing viewers. While this entire period was marked by engagement with the past, that reflection at times allowed for a recasting of the strengths of soap opera in concert with a changed world and at times led to a repudiation of history in ways that damaged the soaps’ ­future. This chapter considers the postnetwork era soaps’ reckoning with the past in roughly chronological order, first attending to the opposing directions in 1990s storytelling: namely, the reembrace of “real­ity” versus the fantastical turn away from it, each of which re­imagined the supercouple formula that had anchored the eighties heyday. I then explore in depth the period’s repre­ sen­ta­tional engagement with gendered social issues that had previously pervaded soap storytelling, most prominently rape and abortion, also vehicles that revisited the supercouple. The tentative integration of nonwhite characters figures into my examination of the period’s reinvention, as well, and into its depiction of both heterosexual romance and gendered social issues. Reckoning with the Past  ·  237

In the 2000s, ­these patterns of repre­sen­ta­tional revision continued in new directions; thus the chapter turns to the inclusion of nonstraight characters, investigating in par­tic­u­lar the ways their presence re­imagined the soap ­family, another historic stalwart. The 2000s also saw the magnification of some of the more fantastical extremes of the 1990s, at times combining them with an exploitative treatment of social differences of gender, race, and sexuality. Alongside the exploitation of difference ­were repudiations of the soap past that I conceptualize as violations of soap opera history. While the patterns I chart cannot always be neatly delimited to par­tic­u­lar de­cades, the  broader movement in the narratives and repre­sen­ta­tional politics of daytime drama over the twenty years that spanned the cancellation of more than half of the soaps on air illustrates how the programs’ engagement with the past s­ haped their most promising and most damaging tendencies in the postnetwork age.

Real­ity versus Fantasy As soap ratings initiated their slow decline by the ­later 1980s, the programs began to explore new developments in storytelling, shifting the bound­aries of soap opera both topically and in the politics of its repre­sen­ta­tion of social groups. Seeking to reverse the ratings declines of the l­ ater 1980s, many soaps turned away from action-­adventure and fantasy and t­ oward the social issues that had once been central. “Nets prescribe real­ity for soaps,” read Variety in 1990.1 This “prescription” was meant to cure not only the general ratings dip but also the more poorly received extensions of early eighties–­style fantasy, as in gh’s introduction of Casey, an alien from the planet Lumina, in 1990, or the discovery of the under­ground city of Eterna on One Life to Live in 1989, which critics in the soap press referred to as the “tragedy” and “destruction” of that soap.2 Responding to such critiques, oltl took on the tale of young heroine Megan Gordon Harrison being diagnosed with lupus; she succumbs to the disease in 1992 while gazing out her hospital win­dow, braced in her husband’s arms.3 This turn continued the legacy of supercouple-­style ­grand romance, but it did so by dooming the ­couple to real-­world trauma.4 One Life to Live’s shift from Eterna to lupus over less than three years typified this altered narrative strategy. The return to social relevance was also assisted by the changing social and po­liti­cal climate. Public attention to topical issues, particularly espousals of ac­cep­tance around social difference, w ­ ere magnified with the 1992 election 238  ·  chapter 7

of Bill Clinton as US president and the message of progressive change it signaled ­after twelve years of Republican dominance. The soap stories of this period both contributed to and resulted from this altered “structure of feeling.”5 Their earnest concern with the felt impacts of real-­world strug­ gles, particularly ­those surrounding the physical and emotional health and well-­being of oneself and one’s loved ones, fit well with soap opera’s historic emphasis on personal life and liberal tolerance. Initially, such issues as childhood sexual abuse, incest, organ donation, and breast cancer kept the return to relevance more at the level of the individual than the social, even as soaps espoused educational and public ser­vice motives for such stories. ­These w ­ ere not necessarily the po­liti­cally engaged critiques of the mid–­network era’s relevant turn, but the stories w ­ ere so dif­fer­ent in tone from t­ hose of the supercouple era that, at the very least, they gestured ­toward wider significance. One way the postnetwork era soaps demonstrated this “return” to relevance was by attending to the aids crisis, albeit largely by afflicting heterosexual, female characters rather than the gay men with whom the disease was initially associated.6 In the ­later 1980s and the 1990s, gay and aids-­ afflicted characters alike tended to be short-­term residents in soap communities, at least one step removed from the long-­term, core characters. Even as ­these plots w ­ ere one way of embracing social issues, the soap press charged that soaps had “copped out on the issue of aids” by not depicting a central character with the disease.7 The answer to such critique was to place aids at the center of a youthful, heterosexual romance, which still avoided the long-­ term integration of gay identities—­a m ­ atter with which the soaps would not grapple ­until the 2000s—­but which brought the recent past stories of young ­couples in love into dialogue with relevance and real­ity. One prominent such case was created by General Hospital in 1995, when rebellious “street kid” Stone Cates, unknowingly infected with hiv by a past drug-­abusing girlfriend, confronts his aids diagnosis alongside his love, “good girl” teen Robin Scorpio, ­daughter of two of the program’s central adventurers of the 1980s. The progression of Stone’s disease put the program in touch with real­ity by representing the devastation of aids, but it also brought an insurmountable obstacle to the ­couple, one drastically dif­fer­ ent from the undercover operations and villainous foes the supercouples of Robin’s parents’ generation had faced. Their tragic love story was compounded by the revelation that Robin had been infected, as well.8 Robin’s hiv-­positive status subjected a “legacy” character to the aids threat, all the more impactful since the character had been played by the same actor since the age of six, making her an especially significant figure for audiences that Reckoning with the Past  ·  239

had watched gh in its network era peak. Robin’s diagnosis kept her from fulfilling the archetypal princess role that had been so impor­tant to the supercouple phase. She was a dif­fer­ent kind of soap heroine for a story that offered a near inversion of the fantastical tales of the 1980s. By beginning the story as a tragic, heteronormative romance, gh engaged with the primacy of young love in recent soap history but refigured it into the more socially engaged terms of the early postnetwork age. While the (re)embrace of social issues and the reimagining of romantic love ­were crucial shifts in the 1990s, some soaps moved in the opposite direction, pushing ever further away from the issues of the day, and at times from progressive shifts in repre­sen­ta­tion. The most infamous such case appeared on Days of Our Lives, where in 1994 and 1995 heroine Marlena Evans was possessed by the devil. Created by head writer James E. Reilly, who had been experimenting with increasingly over-­the-­top narratives since he joined the soap in late 1992, it was a story designed to stand out at a time of declining economic fortunes for daytime drama.9 The story aired amid a peak of po­ liti­cally conservative backlash against the Clinton presidency, magnified in the rightward swing of the 1994 midterm election and the religiously tinged rhe­toric of “values” associated with politicians like Newt Gingrich and William Bennett.10 Also significant is the airing of the plot amid the media sensation of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, which caused frequent disruptions to the daytime schedule and offered a compelling real­ity that could seem as sensational and bizarre as what was happening to Marlena. The dool story helped to keep fans engaged amid this distraction, but that engagement was not entirely favorable, as viewers strug­gled to reconcile the story line with the soap opera they thought they knew. The story’s politics of repre­sen­ta­tion ­were part of this discomfort, as dool’s engagement with the devil and focus on Christian religiosity offered more a backlash against gender equity than pro­gress ­toward it. Despite the potential to enjoy the story’s campy excess, the narrative extremity of Marlena’s possession was rooted in especially conservative values. The story conformed to features of the supercouple era in certain re­ spects. While Marlena is the most directly affected, the threat the devil poses is to the ­whole community of Salem and is instigated by the serial’s reigning villain, Stefano DiMera, who puts Marlena ­under a spell that unwittingly makes her vulnerable to possession. In November 1994, before the audience or anyone in Salem understands what has happened to Marlena (she is mysteriously ill), the community f­ aces acts of anti-­Christian vandalism: statues in a Catholic church are destroyed, a public Christmas tree and the toy drive 240  ·  chapter 7

beside it set on fire. The police dub the vandal “The Desecrator,” a “very disturbed individual [who] w ­ ill stop at nothing to ruin Christmas.”11 Indeed, when setting fire to a church, the Devil-­Marlena bellows, “I. W ­ ill. Not. Let. God. Win!”12 The soaps had centered suspenseful stories around threats to the community frequently in the 1980s, the supercouples working in concert with o ­ thers to save the day. But this threat was dif­fer­ent, surpassing the menace of a villain like Stefano and posing a more elemental, spiritual danger, one that even Stefano himself comes to fear.13 As the devil would soon announce, the goal was to “discredit the church and destroy p ­ eople’s faith,” to dismantle the moral authority of religious belief.14 Such a menace seemed to have more in common with the fears promoted by 1980s televangelists—­ their neoconservative values continuing to push against the purported immorality of the Clintons in the midnineties—­than with the bad guys fought by the eighties supercouples. Another way in which the story had only partial resonance with supercouple narratives is in its ­limited focus on heterosexual romance and the mutually supportive gendered identities therein. Th ­ ere is no central c­ ouple in this story, as Marlena and her ex-­husband, John, are not romantically involved at this point. John has only recently learned that he is a priest; his amnesia about his previous life has kept him from remembering this vocation. Thus, along with desecrating the symbols and structures of Chris­tian­ity, the devil aims to accomplish its goals by tempting John to betray his priestly vows. While the Devil-­Marlena tries to seduce John, their involvement does not conform to the pattern of the fated ­couple facing adversity. Nor is Marlena a fit with the strong-­willed, yet innocent, heroine. If anything, she is a younger, more glamorous version of the wise and understanding town matriarch, who, when possessed, behaves much like a villainess, using exaggerations of femininity as she tries to tempt John. But Marlena herself is not undertaking ­these actions, for she is an unresponsive, bedridden body. The devil is the one taking action, including at times disrobing Marlena. She is a sexualized victim, evacuated of thought or desire, most of the time literally supine.15 John’s role is closer to that of the supercouple hero in that he strug­ gles emotionally (as well as spiritually) and serves the community as both cop and priest. Instead of the supercouple supporting each other to defeat their foes, it is John alone who eventually rids Marlena of Satan. Unlike the supercouple narratives that found ways to negotiate heteronormative fantasies and a changing society, dool’s possession plot hewed to a more conventional melodramatic strug­gle between good and evil. Paired with the religiosity at the center of the story and the evacuation of the female Reckoning with the Past  ·  241

figure 7.1 When Marlena (Deidre Hall) is possessed by the devil, her eyes glow a yellowish-­green, and her voice takes on a guttural growl, clueing the audience in to the fantastical developments before the characters accept that Satan is in Salem. Days of Our Lives, nbc, December 28, 1994.

character’s agency, the story was unusually overt in its conservative bent. And yet it was also rife with campy pleasures. Once the audience is clued into what has happened to Marlena, the reminders of her possession are frequent, as when, just days a­ fter we first see her levitate, her eyes turn yellow and she cackles in a deep, guttural voice, warning God, “You w ­ on’t win!”16 Marlena’s portrayer, Deidre Hall, took what opportunities she had to ham up her scenes as the Devil-­Marlena, perfecting a thrown-­back head and maniacal laugh. While most of the story is played entirely seriously, much as had ­ ere mobeen the case with Dark Shadows, another camp favorite, ­there w ments of ironic play, as might be expected of the self-­reflexive postnetwork age. When the Devil-­Marlena mocks Celeste, Stefano’s sidekick, or mimics Kristin’s attempts to be both virtuous and sexy (Kristin had been Marlena’s rival for John’s affections), the program winks at fan sentiments.17 The story’s campy bent allowed a viewer cynical about religious piety or the heteronormativity of soap opera to take plea­sure in the Devil-­Marlena’s 242  ·  chapter 7

tactics, yet the dominant reading of the story depicted the dev­il’s actions as dangerous and frightening, as a true threat to the sacredness of Chris­tian­ ity. In permitting both dominant and subversive meanings, it functioned in the tradition of a horror film like The Exorcist, in that it si­mul­ta­neously endorsed a religious, Catholic worldview in its depiction of the church’s noble ­battle against evil and was open to alternative, even queer, readings that took plea­sure in the text making abject that which is typically normalized and idealized (the girl-­child in one case, the pure soap heroine in the other).18 As one critic asserted in the soap press, with this story and o ­ thers related to it, dool “ingeniously worked both seriously and as high camp.”19 The story did not work ingeniously for all; segments of the audience ­were quite wary. Soap Opera Weekly characterized it as “offensive” to many readers, and Daytime tv labeled it as “risky ground.”20 Such perspectives took offense at the story’s deviation from soap expectations. According to Day­ time tv, “With this sordid tale, one t­ hing Days definitely did was shy away from what soaps are all about!”21 Some viewers reconciled this discomfort, and perhaps also discomfort with the queer aura of the story’s campiness, by reading the plot as gradually bringing John and Marlena back together, a take Hall herself endorsed in the soap press and that corresponded to some extent to the supercouple trajectory.22 One fan noted this potential, which was underplayed on-­screen: “We hope ­Father Black w ­ ill realize how much he belongs with Marlena and Belle [their d ­ aughter]. Flashbacks of John and Marlena . . . ​would bring home t­ hese unique relationships.”23 The story eventually did include flashbacks of the two in more romantic times, which Devil-­Marlena uses in her attempts to seduce John. As another fan explained, “The thought of John exorcising the devil from Marlena is fantastic and exciting . . . ​once the devil has come and gone, keep John and Marlena together. They are the most passionate, compelling c­ ouple ever to hit daytime.”24 The soaps had dallied with stories of priests tempted by love in the past, and such a narrative had been a proven draw in the best-­selling novel and hit miniseries The Thorn Birds in the 1980s. Surely some of the excitement over the story’s potential to re­unite John and Marlena was bound up with the (heteronormative) transgressiveness of ­Father Black sacrificing all for his love of a w ­ oman, which also fit con­ve­niently with soap expectations. For many, the undercurrent of potential romance was all that saved the plot from “the show’s cheap attitude t­owards quality soap opera,” and perhaps also from its queer undercurrent.25 Although the story’s remove from real­ity reversed the renewal of “relevance” in most soaps of the 1990s, it did inspire other such plots, as in Reckoning with the Past  ·  243

Reilly’s subsequent involvement on nbc’s new soaps, Sunset Beach and Pas­ sions, but also in a less expected venue, such as p&g’s Guiding Light in 1998, wherein cbs executives pressured creators to tell the story of Josh having his love, Reva, cloned when he believes her dead. Many viewers saw the plot as a misguided attempt to follow in dool’s footsteps and made direct comparisons to that end.26 They resisted the generic variance the clone story required: “Guiding Light is not a science fiction show, nor is it a talk show or tabloid. In an attempt to chase a­ fter the ratings of other genres of shows, the powers at Guiding Light are forgetting that Guiding Light is a soap opera.”27 Such stories suggested a boundary beyond which few viewers w ­ ere willing to go. ­ ere one strategy for The fantastical extremes of dool and its imitators w shoring up soap opera in its initial de­cades of decline, one that was especially risky for the ways it ­violated the audience’s expectations. Some such attempts would combine t­hese excesses with new repre­sen­ta­tional efforts, particularly ­those that integrated nonwhite and nonstraight characters into soap landscapes. ­These instances, exemplified in Sunset Beach and Passions, would face their own challenges, walking a line between integrating and exploiting markers of social difference. As far as dool’s story pushed the par­ameters of soap opera, its rootedness in the most conservative of values provided a counterweight that not all such fantastical stories would have, placing it at one extreme of the soaps’ efforts to reinvent themselves in the postnetwork age. More typically, the postnetwork era soaps used social issue storytelling to encourage liberal tolerance, particularly in politics of gender, race, and sexuality. Across both the return to relevance and the fantastical extremes, however, was a form confronting its past as it strove to continue into the ­future.

Revisiting Rape, Exploiting the Supercouple The social issue storytelling of this period was more common than was the fantastical extremity of dool, but ­these stories did not have a unified perspective on social change. Instead, they borrowed some of the tendencies ­toward exploitation found in the more fantastical plots while espousing a vision of pro­gress that condemned repre­sen­ta­tions from the soaps’ past. While gh’s aids plot was one take on social relevance, more prominent ­were a surfeit of stories about rape, some variations of which I explore in this section and the next, as well as ­later in this chapter. In such stories, the soaps 244  ·  chapter 7

returned to a path they had trod in the 1970s, when the e­ arlier pattern of the emotionally tortured hero raping a ­woman he loved out of passion and pain was largely supplanted by tales aligned with the period’s antirape movement. Yet the supercouple whose story headlined the peak of the network era soap craze, gh’s Luke and Laura, had begun their relationship in 1979 with the emotionally tortured Luke raping Laura, a story that seemed to many to be violating the lessons of second-­wave feminism, especially ­because gh and the industry more generally acted as if the rape had never happened once the supercouple became a popu­lar sensation.28 The industry-­wide supercouple trend depended on this denial; it was the dirty secret on which the soaps’ fantasy era was built. The rape stories of the 1990s would pry open that “hidden” past, reckoning with the very history that had enabled soap opera’s greatest ascendance. This reassessment of the past was addressed initially in 1988, when Santa Barbara told the story of (supercouple princess) Eden Castillo’s rape in her home by a masked man. The attack itself was represented violently, in a deliberate effort to portray rape “as what it r­ eally is,” according to head writer Chuck Pratt Jr., not only in opposition to previous repre­sen­ta­tions but also as a reengagement with “issue-­oriented drama.” Pratt described the story as rejecting the “erotic twist” he identified as typical of repre­sen­ta­tions of rape, deliberately targeting gh’s 1979 event.29 This overt response to the Luke and Laura plot made it into the story itself. A ­ fter the rape, Eden is motivated to help ­others and agrees to appear on a tv talk show alongside two soap opera actors who had portrayed a rapist and his victim who subsequently fell in love. As she tells her husband, Cruz, “­They’re known as Linc and Lau­ ere not enough, the acrie, lovers on General Clinic.” As if this reference w tors mention their producer, “Betty Bonty,” as they discuss their story line, a barely veiled reference to gh producer Gloria Monty. During the talk show, Eden offers a chilling recounting of her own attack as a way to “inject a ­little real­ity” into the actors’ discussion of their “Romeo and Juliet” story. That Eden’s rapist attacks another victim as she is watching the talk show reinforces Eden’s point about the horrors of the crime.30 While pitched as a critique of gh’s history and failure to address the “real­ity” of rape, the story of Eden’s rape was exploitative in its own way. The attack itself carried through a full episode, with high-­angle shots and stunt work depicting the vio­lence of the assault as Eden is beaten and nearly drowned.31 Sarah Projansky points out that graphic, violent, fictional repre­ sen­ta­tions of rape can challenge rape myths while nonetheless perpetuating a media culture of vio­lence against w ­ omen, and thus that even progressively Reckoning with the Past  ·  245

intended rape narratives can reproduce (symbolic) assaults on w ­ omen while 32 attempting to criticize their horrors. The identity of Eden’s rapist also gave the repre­sen­ta­tion sadistic overtones, as the rapist is eventually revealed to be Zach Kelton, the gynecologist who examines Eden ­after the attack. In an interview four years ­later, Eden’s portrayer, Marcy Walker, noted how problematic this choice was: “I thought it was kind of creepy. . . . ​The last ­thing I wanted was for any female member of our audience to feel unsure about ­going to her doctor.”33 The feeling of omnipresent danger the story suggested may have perpetuated rather than defied the psychological power of rape to intimidate ­women and silence their voices. Across the early 1990s, multiple soaps pursued rape stories. While she does not address daytime soaps, Projansky sees this era as especially significant for fictional, mediated rape plots b ­ ecause of the way such narratives imbricated rape within the tension between feminism and postfeminism, the discourse suggesting that society has moved past ­earlier conceptions of feminism as an activist social movement.34 Some of the soaps’ rape stories of the early postnetwork period ­were weighted more t­ oward feminist perspectives, such as t­ hose that critiqued the justice system and advocated for victims’ rights.35 ­Others ­were more exploitative, less oriented around po­liti­cal messaging, and thereby more in keeping with an individualized postfeminism that placed the need for activism in the past. nbc’s soaps in par­tic­u­lar perpetuated such exploitative plots, perhaps a result of their especially challenged ratings, the same context that generated the boundary-­pushing of dool’s possession story. This strategy was particularly noticeable late in 1990, when three of nbc’s four soaps aired rape stories. Several of ­these programs’ head writers noted the pressures the network placed on them to tell such tales. Another World head writer Donna Swajewski suggested that Jake Mackinnon’s rape of his ex-­ wife, Marley, was influenced by nbc: “We ­were told to play up the rape of Marley,” following a network logic that “­women want to see other ­women being victimized.”36 Days of Our Lives’ creative heads ­were told by nbc that stories of vio­lence against ­women resulted in increased ratings, logic that contributed to the tale of ingenue Jennifer Horton’s rape by Lawrence Alamain.37 nbc also used the rape stories liberally in its on-­air promotions, ­either by featuring female characters “screaming and cowering in fear” or by teasing a problematically ambiguous “he said/she said” that called into question the assertions of a character like Santa Barbara’s Julia Wainwright.38 ­After the episode in which Julia tells her ­sister she was raped, nbc promoted its “Soap Phone” pay-­per-­call ser­vice over the end 246  ·  chapter 7

figure 7.2 Soap Opera Weekly hinted at the exploitative nature of the rape plots on NBC’s soaps of the early 1990s with its November 6, 1990, headline, “Jennifer ­Violated.”

credits, teasing, “All right, Santa Barbara fans, is Eden g­ oing to die? And did Dash rape Julia?”39 Frequently in such stories, rape was used as an obstacle to a popu­lar c­ ouple. When dool’s Jennifer was raped, it was meant to complicate her relationship with the morally suspect Jack Devereaux, himself a reformed rapist (he had attacked his then-­wife, Kayla, in 1988). As writer Richard Allen explains, “Dramatically, it was ­going to be ­really in­ter­est­ing to see how [Jennifer] was ­going to respond to Jack,” given that she was now a victim of the same crime he had committed, and some of the resulting story did use this complication to interrogate the bonds of supercouplehood.40 Jennifer’s rape was not romanticized, but it seemed to many to be a manipulative plot device meant to disrupt Jennifer and Jack’s burgeoning romance in a way Reckoning with the Past  ·  247

that debased, rather than reflected on or revised, the supercouple formula. ­ iolated,” Soap Opera Weekly covered the story with the headline “Jennifer V an implicit critique that gave Allen “one of the worst days of [his] life.”41 He and producer Al Rabin saw themselves as supporters of feminism; they did not want to “violate” a supercouple heroine. The supercouple formula depended on ignoring this sort of “real­ity” to preserve the postfeminist fantasy space, but the ratings desperation of the postnetwork era led nbc to exploit rape stories in ways that offended audiences instead of inviting them to experience supercouple romance in new ways. Soap Opera Weekly’s story hinted at this sort of discomfort, but subsequent reactions from everyday viewers more distinctly articulated the ways the story failed at updating the supercouple for the new age of realism. Some fans lamented the disappearance of the fun, lighthearted sexiness of the e­ arlier supercouple path: “So cheap [is the soap] with the romantic scenes one would guess Days is paying t­hese actors by the kiss!”42 ­Others took offense at a treatment of rape as a plot device rather than a full-­fledged social issue tale with a feminist lesson: “They treat rape as such a joke!”; “If Days wants to get out of the rapists slump they better quit the hero-­rapist garbage”; and “This is another whitewash by Days, which is using the sexually abused ­women of Salem to make another one of their rapists look appealing.”43 Many fans connected their dis­plea­sure with the story of Jennifer’s rape with the broader mediated h ­ andling of the subject, pointing to the other soap stories, the exploitation of such stories in nbc’s promotions, and news coverage of real-­world rapes as equally problematic.44 Soap audiences ­were struggling with the relationship between romance and rape in the history of soap opera and its supercouple archetype, a position specific to this postfeminist, postnetwork period. The effort in such stories to emphasize the individual rather than the systemic dimensions of rape was a typically postfeminist perspective suggesting that deeply rooted societal misogyny could be relegated to the past.45 The postnetwork era industry miscalculated how uncomfortable soap viewers would be with such a focus.

Rethinking Rape, Revising the Supercouple At the center of many viewers’ discomfort with the place of rape in the history of soap opera and its stories of supercouples was the buried vio­lence at the start of Luke and Laura’s General Hospital romance. While Santa Bar­ bara was critical of this story as early as 1988, gh would wait another de­cade, 248  ·  chapter 7

­ ntil 1998, to revisit this legacy. This section uses gh’s 1998 reconsideration u of Luke and Laura’s history to examine another way in which the postnetwork soaps employed rape stories to rethink the past and reimagine the supercouple in a revised po­liti­cal climate. Unlike the more exploitative treatment of rape on nbc’s soaps, the 1998 gh plot sought to rectify the program’s past but did so within its own complex context, this time one that sought to reconcile feminist outlooks with the postfeminist logics that Projansky notes ­were especially significant for rape stories in this period.46 General Hospital’s return to Luke’s rape of Laura exemplified the tension between feminist and postfeminist sensibilities that was so pervasive in turn-­of-­the-­millennium popu­lar culture and in mediated narratives of rape in par­tic­u­lar. The late 1990s story was oriented around Luke and Laura’s teenage son, Lucky, finding out about his parents’ past. The narrative unequivocally condemned Luke’s actions; it made clear that the emotionally tortured hero expressing his pain through rape was no longer an acceptable characterization. It demonstrated an allegiance with feminist messaging by allowing rape victims to speak to their own experiences, respecting ­women’s agency and authority. But the story was also rife with the ideological patterns of the postfeminist culture. In a typical postfeminist turn, the impact of Luke’s attack on Laura nearly twenty years prior was largely visited upon the male characters, particularly Luke and his son, aligning with discourses of “male feminism.”47 The story thereby accepted the feminist premise that rape is criminal and violent, yet it did not address the ways in which “all men benefit from a system in which some men rape ­women”; it avoided this more systemic view. The narrative also suggested that some men’s opposition to rape and alignment with antirape princi­ples (most clearly represented in the teenage Lucky) was evidence that feminism had completed its work and was no longer needed.48 Lucky finds out about his parents’ past when Laura’s other son, Nikolas (whose ­father is not Luke), tells Lucky, seeking to hurt him.49 Lucky’s reaction is at the center of the story, but multiple other male characters also experience affective passages: Luke, of course, but also Nikolas and Nikolas’s ­uncle Stefan, who is in (unrequited) love with Laura. Some of this focus was circumstantial, in that Laura’s portrayer, Genie Francis, was on maternity leave and thus Laura was offscreen as the story began.50 But audiences noticed and ­were critical of the story’s male orientation, identifying its similarity to the focus on Jack’s feelings a­ fter Jennifer’s rape on dool in 1990: “Once again, this is a rape story about Luke and not the victim.”51 This surely seemed the case when Luke narrates the past events to Lucky over flashbacks Reckoning with the Past  ·  249

to the ­actual 1979 scene.52 The replay of this scene induced literal flashbacks to some fans’ 1970s viewing, the sense memory of the instrumental hit, “Rise” on the sound track as visceral for them as for Luke; indeed, it may have worked to align the viewer with Luke in remembering.53 In the retelling, Luke is horrified at his own be­hav­ior. He declares unambiguously that he raped Laura, a crucial corrective to the soap’s de­cades of denial, even as the construction of the story continues to privilege Luke’s perspective over Laura’s.54 The male orientation of the story continues when Lucky reveals that his greatest fear is that, like the f­ ather he has idolized, he too is capable of rape. Lucky makes this confession to his friend Elizabeth Webber, whom he has been helping to recover from her own rape by a stranger in the park. Parallel to the retelling of Luke and Laura’s origins is this origin story of Lucky and Elizabeth, who are falling in love as he helps her heal from her trauma. In the supercouple tradition, Elizabeth is the one to help Lucky heal his own pain, this fear of the harm he is capable of ­doing. When she assures him that he is not capable of rape, they are bonding through their mutual emotional support, but Elizabeth’s assurance also helps to reinforce the idea that rape is an action of errant individuals, not of gendered power relations as a ­whole.55 When she talks to Luke about Lucky’s feelings, her role further becomes one of helping to heal the men, despite her own suffering.56 The story may have foregrounded male pain, but it also gave voice to ­women’s experiences of rape, t­hose of the characters, the writers, and the viewers, who had “experienced” vari­ous rapes across gh’s history, as well as across soaps. General Hospital writer Michele Val Jean was widely recognized as the catalyst for the story. In writing it, she drew upon two aspects of her own experience—­that of being a gh viewer in 1979, never satisfied with the long-­term ­handling of Luke raping Laura, and that of being a rape victim herself during her 1960s youth: “I wanted to go through the journey with [the girl rape victim, Elizabeth] of recovering and coming to terms, ­because that’s what’s impor­tant.”57 Val Jean was then (and remains in 2019) one of the soap’s few black writers. The story she wrote narrated her own past through that of a white girl; Elizabeth’s racialized privilege surely made for a dif­fer­ent experience than Val Jean would have had. And yet the writer found common cause with her character, ­doing much the same work as that of the many black soap viewers, herself included, who have long made do with white characters’ ­trials as vehicles for their own emotional journeys. While the story was focused more on the individual characters than on a socially engaged critique, it did advance feminist interests by giving 250  ·  chapter 7

female characters and feminized knowledge space to speak. This happens through Elizabeth’s story, through Laura’s, and also through reference to an even ­earlier rape in the soap’s history, that of Elizabeth’s (step-)grand­ mother Audrey by her then husband, Tom Baldwin, in 1970. Audrey tells Elizabeth about her own rape when she realizes she must explain to her grand­daughter the odd way in which she is reacting to Elizabeth’s experience.58 Three generations of gh’s ­women characters, along with an audience who may have been watching alongside all three and a writer with a personal investment as a viewer and a victim, addressed surviving rape, a remarkably layered expression of ­women’s experiences, their long history implicitly acknowledging the systemic roots of gendered vio­lence, albeit not the ways such vio­lence may be differently racialized. Laura’s perspective had to negotiate the condemnation of rape with the character’s, and the audience’s, investment in the romance of Luke and Laura, the denial of which would have punished the soap’s viewers for their decades-­long involvement with the c­ ouple. Laura’s stance thus had to validate the rape as a real source of suffering and pain as well as validating the character’s and the audience’s decades-­long memories of her romance with Luke. When Francis returned to work, the story had Laura initially denying that what tran­spired between her and Luke was rape; she calls it “one bad night” and refuses to utter the word. She is most distraught that Lucky has found out, and that Luke had not told her e­ arlier of the pain both Lucky and Nikolas w ­ ere experiencing. Luke is shocked by this response. Laura is enraged, insisting, “I ­will not go back ­there! I ­will not relive it! Not for you, and not for Lucky, not for anyone!”59 Laura’s initial reaction might have reinforced the denial of the rape that had informed the narrative for so many years, but Luke’s insistence that it was rape keeps that from happening. As the plot proceeds and as Laura comes to understand what Elizabeth has gone through, her perspective changes. At first quietly and tentatively but then growing in volume and fury, Laura tells Luke, “Seeing this girl Elizabeth made me realize that you did hurt me. And it made me remember how badly. [She starts to cry.] I had no idea that could be so brutal. [Reaction shot of Luke, ashamed, with a cut back to Laura over Luke’s shoulder.] How could you do that to me?! How could you say that you loved me and call me your angel and then rape me?!” As Laura cries, we see another reaction shot of Luke’s shame before a fade-­out to commercial.60 Laura’s anger is the punctuation for the scene, encouraging the audience to feel the same. The scene continues a­ fter the break as Luke speaks of his warped thinking at the time. Laura remembers her attraction to him and her Reckoning with the Past  ·  251

figures 7.3 and 7.4 Laura (Genie Francis) confronts Luke (Anthony Geary) with the pain she felt when he raped her nearly twenty years ­earlier as Luke listens, remorseful and ashamed. General Hospital, abc, July 7, 1998.

efforts to get him to notice her, despite her being married to another man. Importantly, she declares, “It’s not an invitation to rape,” refuting the myth of the ­woman who “asks for it.” She acknowledges that she forgave him in the past, and urges him to forgive himself, suggesting that he has punished himself long enough. The two determine to move forward together.61 While one might see the exchange as excusing rape, or as reinforcing the idea that a rape victim can fall in love with her attacker, ignoring the nearly two de­cades of story and character exploration that came ­after the rape would have been its own violation of the audience’s investment of time and emotion. The growing precarity of soap opera meant that soaps could not afford to risk the investment of longtime viewers, viewers who well knew about Luke and Laura’s history. Laura’s perspective was crucial to making the audience’s negotiation of their feelings, their memories, and their con­ temporary attitudes ­toward rape cohere. The resolution to this part of the story necessarily emphasized the personal specificity of Luke and Laura’s relationship; it did not make a more politicized statement. But the re­spect the full arc paid to w ­ omen’s experiences, ­those of sexual vio­lence and ­those of soap viewing, was itself a po­liti­cal act in a culture that has too often denied the significance of feminized perspectives.

Reckoning with Race The revisiting of rape stories in the 1990s was a crucial way in which soap opera reworked itself for a postnetwork, postfeminist age. Intertwined with this revision, however, was also a growing awareness that the soaps’ ­limited racial diversity and their nearly non­ex­is­tent diversity of sexual identity ­were problematic in a period of declining ratings and an altered society wherein not only ideas about gender, sex, and vio­lence but also ­those that advocated for a multicultural embrace of racial and ethnic difference had made for a new environment. In the early 1980s, Robert C. Allen had argued that the soaps’ near exclusion of nonwhite characters was due to the prominence of kinship, romantic, and social relationships in soap narratives, relationships that ­were severely ­limited for nonwhite characters if interracial pairings w ­ ere socially forbidden.62 By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Allen’s claims held less weight, the changing society making interracial involvements less taboo. Nonwhite characters ­were integrated into soaps across this postnetwork era, though they often embodied the “color-­blind” status of dif­fer­ent f­ aces enacting characters and stories long Reckoning with the Past  ·  253

typical of the white-­oriented soaps; they carried no cultural specificity despite the superficial diversity they provided. The industry’s growing recognition of the value of an on-­screen world that was not exclusively white was part of the broader cultural attention to diversity and multiculturalism in corporate, government, and social contexts in the last de­cade of the twentieth ­century. As Ron Becker has argued: “In the early 1990s, American culture seemed unusually preoccupied with difference, specifically cultural difference. No longer something to be ignored or eradicated, difference was confronted and celebrated, marketed and consumed, managed and leveraged. Multiculturalism, tolerance, and diversity gained a new currency [within] a seemingly fragmenting society.”63 Becker sees this cultural shift applying both to racial/ethnic difference and to differences of sexual identity. In soaps, racial diversity would arrive first, with lgbt characters taking ­until the 2000s to be integrated on-­screen in any substantive way.64 Racial diversity may have seemed the more pressing concern for the soap industry in the 1990s, given the widespread awareness of the changing makeup of the US population. Demographic predictions noted that the number of US Hispanics was expected to exceed that of African Americans by 2020, and that non-­Hispanic white Americans w ­ ere expected 65 to become a minority by 2050. Pair t­ hese changing population demographics with the soaps’ declining ratings, the industry’s concerns about an aging viewership, and the well-­known popularity of soaps among black viewers and it is clear why soap o ­ wners, creators, and networks w ­ ere increasingly ­eager to diversify the on-­screen world. Even as some viewers of color w ­ ere devalued by some advertisers, as seen in chapter 6, this was an audience the soaps needed to retain and, ideally, attract anew. Paired with this was a recognition of the soaps’ poor history of racial diversity on-­screen, as well as a growing dissatisfaction with this state by their diverse audience. In this era, publications like Soap Opera Weekly featured letters and columns from fans who identified as black and lamented the insufficient number and range of nonwhite characters in the soaps they loved.66 Generations, nbc’s short-­lived soap with a black f­amily at its core, indicated the industry’s interest in diversified repre­sen­ta­tions, but its brief tenure demonstrated a lack of commitment to such a shift.67 As characters of color increasingly appeared in story worlds, they ­were often token figures, providing support to central white characters, and having few of the deep, familial ties impor­tant to soap communities.68 This pattern continued across the postnetwork era wherein even incidental characters of color tended to function as unidimensional archetypes. One such archetype was that of the 254  ·  chapter 7

“magical Negro,” which Krin Gabbard describes as a prominent repre­sen­ta­ tion of late twentieth-­century Hollywood film wherein “impossibly gifted black characters . . . ​want to put their special powers at the ser­vice of attractive white ­people,” offering white audiences a fantasy of race relations.69 In dool’s 1995 possession plot, Stefano’s sidekick, Celeste, one of the few black characters on-­screen, is the first to figure out, and warn against, the dev­il’s actions, thanks to the mystical insights she holds as a Creole outsider to the white characters’ world. Port Charles included a black “Tribal Chief ” character in 2001 whose otherworldly knowledge assists the white characters in their strug­gles, and in 2003 and 2004, atwt used the spiritual guidance of the Native American Hannah to bring together the white ­couple Jack and Carly. All ­were variations on the white fantasy of the “magical Negro.” ­There ­were a few exceptions to ­these second-­tier and ste­reo­typical roles, such as the foregrounding of a young, African American c­ ouple on y&r beginning in 1990. Like the white characters, Neil and Drucilla had families, backstories, and screen time. Yet the program faltered in its ability to tell their stories in wholly resonant and culturally specific ways, as Drucilla’s portrayer, Victoria Rowell, has pointed out. For instance, the program’s hairstylists ­were unskilled in styling black hair. Rowell found herself regularly revising lines in order to “make them genuine to my experience and ­those around me.” A lack of diversity or experience with it ­behind the scenes was a crucial limitation. As late as 2003, y&r’s producer acknowledged the difficulty the program had with scripting “the intricacies of certain ethnic cultures,” given that it had no writers of color.70 The soaps ­were seeing increments of change but did not have the racially diverse infrastructure needed to make a substantive difference. Across the 1990s and into the 2000s, the soaps continued to pursue racial diversity, but the limitations of t­hese efforts continued, as well. Unlike many of the soaps across the 1970s and 1980s, the daytime dramas debuting in the 1990s always included characters of color in their initial casts. The soaps’ most prominent African American star, Debbie Morgan, who established her c­ areer as amc’s Angie, was part of many new serials, including Generations, Loving’s 1995 reboot as The City, and Port Charles, the spin-­off of gh begun in 1997. The City was set in the “real melting pot” of New York and included Latinx and mixed-­race characters, as well as Morgan (reprising Angie) as a lead.71 Morgan’s presence across so many 1990s soaps was clearly intended as both an audience draw and a diversification strategy, but lesser-­known actors (or characters) of color also peopled new soaps. nbc’s Sunset Beach included an African American love triangle among its Reckoning with the Past  ·  255

most prominent stories during its short run between 1997 and 1999. Passions launched on nbc in 1999 with three core families, including the African American Russells and the Latinx/Irish Lopez-­Fitzgeralds. nbc promoted Passions as a sign of the ethnically diverse times. Executive Sheraton Kalouria heralded the network’s diversity through the post–­ civil rights logic typical of the early postnetwork age: “One of the strengths of a show like Passions is its diverse cast . . . . ​But race is ignored in the storytelling. That makes it of-­the-­moment and relevant to younger viewers.”72 The soap included rare moments that acknowledged the specificities of racialized experience, as when Luis Lopez-­Fitzgerald talks to Whitney Russell about how hard her African American f­ amily has had to work for their success, and how he sees his ­family in similar terms.73 Passions’ occasional nods to race adhered to this sort of re­spect for individual efforts to rise in social and economic stature. Any attention to systemic inequalities or other culturally specific experience remained unaddressed. The broader cultural imperative to multiculturalism was readily reduced to a bland color blindness in most soap storytelling.

Race, Rape, and Reproductive Drama in the Re­imagined Supercouple Post–­civil rights logic ­shaped most of the soaps’ postnetwork era attempts at racial diversity, but at least one instance made racial difference more substantively central to a re­imagined on-­screen world, including to a reimagining of the supercouple formula. This case—­the love story of the African American Noah Keefer and the Latina Julia Santos on the mid-1990s All My ­Children—­used long-­standing narrative developments including rape, unwanted pregnancy and abortion, “balanced” treatment of contentious issues, and fairy-­tale romance to construct a new version of the supercouple. Unlike many of the efforts at racial diversity in the postnetwork era soaps, amc wove nonwhite characters into e­ arlier patterns of narrative structure and gendered repre­sen­ta­tion in ways that both respected difference and reinforced pleasures that had long been trea­sured across diverse audiences. The growing presence of interracial ­couples was one of the soaps’ standard markers of postnetwork era colorblindness. One member of t­hese ­couples was typically white, a pattern from which Noah and Julia would vary. ­After the abandoned arc of dool’s David and Valerie in the late 1970s, interracial romance had returned gradually, first with Latinx characters paired with 256  ·  chapter 7

whites, inspired by the success of sb’s Cruz and Eden. By the late 1980s, white man/black w ­ oman ­couples reemerged, including Tom and Simone on gh, Duncan and Jessica on atwt, and Tom and Livia on amc, all of whom ­were second-­tier characters, thereby staying somewhat ­under the broader cultural radar and avoiding the displays of fantasy romance typical of the (almost exclusively white) 1980s supercouples.74 The industry may have seen pairing white men with black ­women as more appealing to black ­women viewers than the reverse. In any case, such stories allowed the soaps to avoid prejudices about black men as threats to white womanhood by keeping black male characters from romantic involvements with white ­women. ­These patterns w ­ ere upended in Noah and Julia’s love story of the mid1990s, wherein a black male character was paired with a Latina who was ­ ere sometimes described as white.75 Like the supercouples, Noah and Julia w distinctly gendered, but the intersectionality of their identities gave constructions of race and class a dif­fer­ent weight than such differences held for the 1980s supercouples, whose whiteness was unnamed and whose differences of class w ­ ere resolved as ultimately superficial. Julia was not the privileged princess typical of the supercouple heroine. Not only is she Latina and more a “bad girl” than a sexual innocent, but she and Noah meet when she has run away from her ­sister, Maria, and brother-­in-­law, Edmund. She had been staying in their lavish mansion but is uncomfortable with their wealth. Maria is trying to help Julia, who is rebelling against their parents’ traditional values, but Julia is further alienated from her f­amily ­after her face is scarred during a tornado. She flees, only to suffer an infection. Noah finds the ill Julia on the street and takes her to his ghetto apartment, believing she is a prostitute in need of rescue. Julia’s short, dark hair and olive skin make her a dif­fer­ent physical type than the typical, more elaborately coiffed heroines, plus she is weak and suffering when she meets Noah, hardly the imperious supercouple princess. Noah is an awkward fit with the supercouple hero, as well. As expected of the hero, Noah is kind and compassionate when it comes to Julia, and his downscale surroundings fit with the role of rebellious outsider. But he is a muscular black man, six feet, four inches tall, with dreadlocks falling down his back—no romantic lead on a soap had ever looked like him. Like many supercouples, he and Julia have relatively similar coloring (though she is lighter-­skinned), yet they are physical opposites: large versus small, long, “exotic” hair versus Julia’s short, casual cut.76 Their appearances already marked them as unlike the past de­cade’s supercouples, but so too did some of the obstacles they faced, as when Noah is injured in a drive-by shooting Reckoning with the Past  ·  257

figure 7.5 Noah (Keith Hamilton Cobb) initially appears to threaten Julia but is soon revealed to be acting out his own pain. All My ­Children, abc, August 10, 1994.

and is suspected of being involved with drugs. Many, including Julia’s f­ amily, think that he is guilty, in keeping with ste­reo­types of African American men, and Julia must assert her faith in his innocence.77 Julia both recognizes the impact of race on Noah’s life and refuses to see their raced and classed differences as insurmountable, a key way in which the story revised the supercouple formula. The ­couple’s altered mode of grappling with difference emerges early in their relationship. ­After nursing Julia back to health when they first meet, Noah finds out her true identity, her connection to wealth, and he is furious, believing that an impetuous rich girl has been using him. This was a common conflict for the e­ arlier supercouples, the less advantaged of the two (usually the man) challenging the other’s motives, often to hide his true, loving feelings. But Noah’s anger and Julia’s reaction to it are differently coded due to the way that race as well as class shape them. With a soap past largely devoid of black male romantic leads, Noah’s anger suggests more than the sexual tension of a burgeoning love story. It invokes the ste­reo­typical menace of the black man to the white ­woman. 258  ·  chapter 7

All My ­Children magnified the repre­sen­ta­tion of Noah as a physical threat, ending the August 10, 1994, episode with Noah’s fist raised, about to strike Julia. While this moment arguably exploits rather than explores such a ste­ reo­type, in the next episode Noah does not hit her. Instead, he lashes out verbally, referencing the racial dynamics that further complicate the class differences more typical of a young supercouple: “Who’s got time for a lying rich girl with a torn up face, slummin’ with a ­brother downtown to get back at the rich folks at home?”78 Over the coming months, Julia and the audience learn more about Noah, and about the racialized challenges he has faced as part of a black community. Hearing about the death of a young black man he knows, he laments, “Nothing ever changes, b ­ rothers just keep d ­ ying” as Julia seeks to comfort him.79 It was common for supercouples-­in-­the-­making to share their pain and find solace with one another, but Noah’s identity as black is a prominent part of his experience, expanding the pain of the “tortured hero” into the realm of the social rather than remaining at that of the individual. Julia’s Latina identity is less prominent, he even calls her a “lily-­ white rich girl,” and she takes on the role typical of the more advantaged member of the ­couple, insisting that their differences do not ­matter.80 This fantasy of love overcoming difference was a long-­standing supercouple appeal that accrued new meaning in this interracial context. Unlike the fantasy era supercouples, Noah and Julia’s relationship does not develop through a lighthearted adventure (although they do exist in the supercouple b ­ ubble of Noah’s apartment and go on the run l­ ater in their relationship).81 Instead, they bond through the renewed version of the social issue story line, this time a narrative centered on rape, unwanted pregnancy, and abortion. While such strug­gles had become increasingly common for soap characters by the 1990s “return to real­ity,” they ­were rarely combined with the evolution of a romance, nonetheless experienced by a nonwhite c­ ouple. ­These turns aligned the story with amc’s history of progressive politics as innovated by Agnes Nixon in the network era. While Nixon had stepped aside from the full-­time writing of amc by this point, she worked with and across two of her protégés, Megan McTavish and Lorraine Broderick, whose mid-1990s stints as amc head writers spanned Noah and Julia’s arc. Drug dealer Louie Greco rapes Julia while she is staying with Noah. In the story to follow, the serial emphasizes her suffering and Greco’s villainy. Noah again devotes himself to her care, all the more when Julia discovers she is pregnant from the attack. While this repre­sen­ta­tion of rape as a violent crime was not new for soaps or the culture more broadly, Julia’s decision Reckoning with the Past  ·  259

to get an abortion broke ground as a subject the soaps had barely touched since the 1970s.82 While the raced and classed dimensions of Noah and Julia’s relationship receive less direct attention at this point in their story, the soap did not abandon social relevance, applying the network era cultural forum model to an era of altered public discourse around abortion, revising yet another ele­ment of soap history, and of repre­sen­ta­tional politics more broadly. Typical to the soaps’ function as cultural forum, and especially for Nixon’s work, amc gave voice to a number of perspectives on abortion while asserting a liberal position.83 A range of likable characters express their opposition to the procedure, particularly from religious stances, a perspective with which the Catholic Nixon was well familiar. Nearly all prioritize compassion over their antiabortion views. Noah’s Aunt Grace, a religious ­woman and a rape survivor, tells Julia she understands if she chooses to abort the pregnancy, modeling this more moderate outlook.84 Julia’s ­family explic­itly opposes the abortion due to their Catholic convictions, and yet they remain loving to her.85 Her ­sister Maria aligns with the ­family but accompanies Julia to the clinic and listens attentively to a doctor explain the dangers ­women and c­ hildren face without access to the l­egal procedure.86 When Julia arrives at the clinic, antiabortion protesters attempt to restrain her, chanting, “Stop the murders, stop the killings!” But Pine Valley’s upstanding Catholic Tom Cudahy urges the crowd to be rational and nonviolent, offering a pro-­life perspective that re­spects the law and insists, “All life, all life, is precious and must be respected,” including Julia’s.87 Lastly, a young w ­ oman Julia meets at the clinic decides to forgo her own abortion, allowing the program to include a story of a w ­ oman making a choice dif­ fer­ent from Julia’s.88 The soap’s perspective is evenhanded to a fault, never questioning or punishing Julia for her actions while allowing many likable and respected characters to express their own opposition in mea­sured and caring ways. As well as offering a drastically dif­fer­ent perspective on religion than seen contemporaneously in dool’s possession plot, amc’s effort at “balance” speaks to the contentious nature of abortion politics by the 1990s. By this time, the issue had become so politicized and the opposition to it so extreme that Julia’s choice required greater justification than that of Erica Kane Martin in the early 1970s. The 1971 Erica arguing vociferously and convincingly for her own right to make decisions about her body was the product of a markedly dif­fer­ent context than that of Julia’s 1994 story. Abortion discourse became significantly more fractious, more po­liti­cally divisive, in the de­cades follow260  ·  chapter 7

figure 7.6 Julia (Sydney Penny) as Cinderella in her fairy-­tale wedding to Noah on All My ­Children in June 1996.

ing its legalization than in ­those leading up to and immediately following it, due largely to the rise of the New Right, the same religiously oriented po­liti­cal interests that dool’s “Satan in Salem” story seemed to invoke.89 By the mid-1990s, a narrative about ending a pregnancy resulting from rape was more potentially controversial, and required more delicate treatment on-­screen, than had been the tale of a married w ­ oman’s desire to abort a pregnancy conceived with her husband almost twenty-­five years e­ arlier. In both stories, the w ­ oman’s right to choose is upheld, but their contexts are dif­fer­ent enough to make Julia’s story the bolder intervention. The multiple ways in which Noah and Julia revised the supercouple formula and engaged with the contentious issue of abortion exemplify how postnetwork era soaps could reckon with the past in progressive ways while carefully engaging with a po­liti­cally fractious context. But Noah and Julia’s narrative unfolded amid the declining economic fortunes of soaps, making their story subject to the changing industrial context, as well. The c­ ouple’s racial makeup was part of the wider effort to appeal to young, diverse audiences. And their 1996 wedding was a direct product of new industrial conditions, namely, abc’s acquisition by Disney the previous year, even as the Reckoning with the Past  ·  261

presence of t­hese characters in a Cinderella-­style fairy-­tale wedding had transgressive power. The wedding was typical of the on-­screen synergies emerging across the Disney-­a bc empire at the time, a cele­bration of a classic Disney product through another of the conglomerate’s properties.90 Their ­family and friends surprise the two with a Cinderella-­themed wedding, tricking Julia into cleaning the ­house in order to gift her a voluminous wedding gown, paired with the perfect glass slippers. Meanwhile, the men take Noah to a cabin, suggesting ste­reo­typical bachelor revelry—­except that they watch the 1950s animated Disney film, teach Noah to waltz, and dress him in princely ­ ere typical of the 1980s supercouples, clothes.91 Elaborate fantasy weddings w but such an explicit connection to Disney was a new, baldly promotional development. So, too, however, was the racial embodiment of this fairy-­tale ­couple a markedly new twist, revising the histories of both the soaps’ own romance narratives and the Disney ideal. In multiple re­spects, Noah and Julia’s story exemplified some of the primary developments of the early postnetwork soaps, from altered industrial imperatives to new repre­sen­ta­tional possibilities.

Remaking Soap Families: Integrating LGBTQ Characters The soaps w ­ ere quicker to integrate nonwhite characters than they w ­ ere gays and lesbians, as was clear in the heterosexual focus of daytime’s aids stories. While the prime-­time world of the 1990s featured a stream of gay and lesbian characters and themes, which Becker has seen as part of a deliberate broadcast network strategy for attracting upscale audiences, daytime was more cautious, perhaps due to the ad industry discourses suggesting that the daytime audience was “not upscale” and thereby presumed to be unfriendly to the lgbtq world.92 Gay characters had made short-­term, peripheral appearances on soaps since the 1970s, but ­these w ­ ere intermittent at best, as in a 1992 oltl story about a gay teen friend of a core character.93 Assumptions about who was in the soap audience and which characters and stories might engage them ­were central to the industry’s reluctance to foreground gay characters in the 1990s, despite their presence in prime time. As Another World producer Michael Laibson told the soap press in 1993, “I tend to think t­ here are not enough [gay p ­ eople] watching soaps to make it worthwhile for the shows to do gay stories . . . ​what w ­ e’re trying to do is provide stories that ­women can hook into, and the key to that is romance 262  ·  chapter 7

between men and ­women. . . . ​I would love to educate the audience about the gay lifestyle, but I’m not sure t­ hey’d stay tuned for it.”94 This ­limited vision of soap viewers—as straight, as ­women, as only invested in heterosexual romance—­evidences the inadequacies of the systems of audience research that ­were growing prob­lems for the postnetwork industry. It was also a fundamentally heteronormative vision, failing to consider the queer pleasures audiences had long found in soaps. Laibson’s reference to educating t­hose assumed audiences about “the gay lifestyle” was in keeping with a history of treating repre­sen­ta­tions of potentially controversial material as “issues” about which the audience might be taught, a pattern that assumes the issue at hand does not affect the audience personally. It would take ­until the 2000s for soaps to more fully integrate gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters, as well as ­those with transgender or intersex identities. The most successful such cases w ­ ere integrated by connection to, and sometimes revision of, the heteronormative stories and families of the soap past, but o ­ thers tended to be more temporary figures, educating audiences about the “issue” they represented. Additionally, in one Passions story line in par­tic­u­lar, explored in the next section, bisexual and intersex characters ­were used more exploitatively, employed to shock and titillate. Given its history of socially progressive storytelling, it is perhaps unsur­ hildren was the first soap to make an lgbtq character prising that All My C central to its core and bring an accepting, invested audience along with it. Nixon had returned to the soap’s head writing duties in 1999 and worked with her co­writers to tell the story of Bianca Montgomery, Erica Kane’s teenage ­daughter, coming out as a lesbian in 2000.95 Scholar C. Lee Harrington notes that the contrast of “Erica’s celebrated heterosexuality against that of Bianca’s emergent homo­sexuality” was at the center of the tale.96 Connecting this story so intimately to Erica’s life, indeed to her very identity as a heterosexual ­woman oriented around her involvements with men, allowed the story to function as a reckoning with the centrality of (hetero)sexuality to Erica’s very self. At the same time, framing the story as a mother-­ daughter tale made it relatable and “safe” for an audience unaccustomed to nonstraight characters and likely invested in the soaps’ history of attention to ­family relationships.97 This was not only a story about Erica; Bianca, whom audiences had watched since birth, was herself crucial. Early on, the writers scripted some cultural specificity to Bianca’s identity, w ­ hether through reference to lesbian taste cultures (in m ­ usic, for example) or through chaste depictions of the attraction Bianca felt for vari­ous girls and then w ­ omen. But she was also Reckoning with the Past  ·  263

depicted in ways familiar to a straight audience. As Harrington describes, “This per­for­mance is of a gentle, sensitive, soft-­hearted, soft-­spoken, absolutely non-­butch, ste­reo­typically feminine teenage girl,” a typical soap heroine, apart from the objects of her desire.98 While her sexual identity elicited some disapproval from conservative constituencies, throughout her time on the show, Bianca would remain a character that audiences cared about and supported, a “tent pole” at the moral center of the program.99 That she was afflicted with the sufferings of many a soap lead—­rape, a subsequent pregnancy, the kidnapping of her baby—­may have helped to align audiences with her.100 Much as in Noah and Julia’s love story, Bianca’s arc was both in keeping with ­those of past tales and a crucial variation from them. Bianca’s difference from past heroines was most clear in her romantic story lines, where her queer sexuality was unavoidably front and center as she matured into a young adult. Although her pairings with cisgendered ­women ­were longer-­lasting, one of her relationships was with the transgender character, Zoe, whose transition amc narrated in relation to Bianca and in the program’s tradition of social issue storytelling. Zoe initially appeared on amc in 2006 as Zarf, an effeminate, eccentric, and presumably straight male rock star. Zarf is marked as dif­fer­ent from the program’s male leads. He has blond, long hair whereas the other men all have dark, spiky styles. Zarf ’s use of makeup and his flowing clothes are noticeably dif­fer­ent from markers of masculinity such as Zach’s cleft chin, Josh’s strong eyebrows, or Aidan’s square jaw. Zarf speaks ­gently as well, in strong contrast to a young male lead like JR Chandler, who often barks out angry diatribes.101 Although unsure as to why she is drawn to him, Bianca agrees to go on a date with Zarf, who appears at her door as Zoe, styled rather like Bianca herself in a low-­cut black dress, earrings, curled hair, and soft makeup.102 The audience is taught about transgender identity through the perspective of lesbian heroine Bianca. Although Zoe’s story fits the pattern of the “educating the audience about an issue” strategy of admitting repre­sen­ta­ tions with the potential for controversy, Bianca and Zoe’s bond is also one of the most overtly queer theretofore seen in soaps, not to mention in any other venue of the commercial media mainstream. In the early 2007 episodes to follow Zoe’s arrival at Bianca’s door, Bianca and the audience learn Zoe’s story: “I am a ­woman, Bianca. I am a ­woman who loves ­women. I am a lesbian and I love you.” Bianca is confused and hurt and pushes Zoe away initially, permitting the audience the same degree of discomfort.103 In the months to come, however, Bianca and Zoe are drawn back together as multiple characters express confusion or disapproval or ac­cep­tance of 264  ·  chapter 7

figure 7.7 Zoe (Jeffrey Carlson) comes out as trans to Bianca. All My ­Children, abc, December 29, 2006.

Zoe, offering the prototypical “balanced” discussion and seeking to teach ac­cep­tance.104 All My ­Children also taught viewers about trans identities by borrowing a strategy used by oltl in the early 1970s to inform the audience about an issue (then teen drug addiction). The 2007 soap featured an improvised support group for Zoe populated by transgender actors and led by activist and author Jenny Boylan.105 Unsurprisingly for this sort of educative story, Zoe exited town by spring 2007, parting amicably with Bianca. Some viewers argued that Bianca’s relationship with Zoe was a device to avoid putting her in a full-­fledged lesbian romance.106 That Zoe was played by a cisgendered man was also a potential point of critique for its repre­sen­ta­tional politics.107 Nonetheless, the soap’s effort to explore gender transition in relation to sexual identity represented a surprisingly queer experience that pushed Bianca’s story beyond that of the heteronormative ­family grappling with a lesbian ­daughter. The initial choice to integrate All My ­Children’s lesbian character via a parent-­child story became a model for other such plots, as in Passions’ 2005 Reckoning with the Past  ·  265

story of the coming out of Simone Russell, who would be the soaps’ first African American lesbian. The soap followed Simone’s strug­gle to get her ­family to accept her sexuality and included scenes that compared her experience to African Americans’ movement for civil rights, drawing a direct parallel between ­these realms of difference and the importance of ac­cep­tance for both.108 So too was the 2006 story of Luke Snyder’s coming out on As the World Turns as much about the parents as the gay teen. Luke was the teenage son of town supercouple Lily and Holden (Holden was Luke’s stepfather, but the two bonded as f­ather and son). Much as amc’s story allowed for a reflection on Erica’s past, so too did the atwt plot speak back to the soaps’ emphasis on heterosexual romance by connecting a nonstraight character directly to the “fairy-­tale” supercouple. Eventually, Luke embarked on his own romance plot in the summer of 2007; his pairing with Noah generated a substantial fan following, bringing new viewers to the fifty-­year-­old soap.109 The other case of the integration of lgbtq characters in ways that subtly revised assumptions about the conventional soap ­family came from Guiding Light, which paired the theretofore straight characters, Olivia and Natalia, across the soap’s final year on air. Their story began in 2008 with the two as rivals for Natalia’s eventual husband, Gus. When Gus is killed in April 2008, Natalia allows the ill Olivia to receive his heart via transplant, which draws them together. Both are ­mothers, and Natalia is a devout Catholic. ­These ­factors surely allowed for a more traditional soap audience to find them relatable, and for Natalia in par­tic­u­lar to be very slow to imagine romantic love with another w ­ oman. Indeed, part of the complication to their relationship is Natalia’s near marriage to a man and discovery that she is pregnant (to coincide with actress Jessica Leccia’s real-­life pregnancy; her maternity leave further disrupted the progression of the ­women’s romance). Amid ­these events, the two kiss in January 2009 and gradually admit their love. Given the disruptions of vari­ous story developments and extratextual ­factors, it was only at the serial’s end, in September 2009, that the two would move forward as a ­couple. Despite this, the entertainment press, soap press, and gay press, not to mention an invested fan base, heralded the story as an exciting and compelling innovation, one that re­imagined the soaps’ patterns of romance and ­family in potentially queer ways.110 ­Because of its concomitance with gl’s end, however, this new iteration of a soap love story was cut short. The soaps slowly moved lgbtq characters to the center of on-­screen communities across the postnetwork era, but many of the most prominent and most popu­lar such stories helped to make nonstraight sexuality familiar by connecting it to the familial. Amy Villarejo notes the centrality of ­family 266  ·  chapter 7

figure 7.8 The first kiss between Olivia (Crystal Chappell) and Natalia (Jessica Leccia) made explicit the romantic and sexual dimension of their relationship. Guiding Light, cbs, January 19, 2009.

life to American tele­vi­sion and identifies the 1970s as a period in which tele­ vi­sion “began to offer a more sustained meditation on queer attachment” in and through families.111 While such flickers of nonstraight relationality did indeed surface in 1970s daytime and prime time, the soaps would take ­until the 2000s to weave explic­itly queer characters into their continuing narrative worlds, to achieve the “duration” that Villarejo sees as influencing the 1970s repre­sen­ta­tions she considers.112 This path was informed by a straight culture seeking to assimilate difference without upsetting the heteronormative center, a center around which soap opera, and indeed American commercial tele­vi­sion as a w ­ hole, had been oriented across its history.113 In 1979, Tania Modleski noted that soap opera necessarily “ignored” “an issue like homo­sexuality” ­because it threated “to explode the ­family structure.”114 Lynne Joyrich points to the ways that this sort of “explosion” was gradually entertained across tv history, as in a 1994 Roseanne episode that comedically “explode[d] the . . . ​t v diegesis” by narrativizing a prank suggesting that Roseanne’s husband, Dan, is gay.115 The lgbtq soap stories of Reckoning with the Past  ·  267

the 2000s depicted this potential explosiveness by making the families’ efforts to contain queer disruption the very conflict around which the stories swirled. In such narratives, the f­ amily structure did remain intact, but it was also revised; lgbtq members became part of the soap ­family and part of the soap community, making the repre­sen­ta­tional shift more about inclusion than transformation. While this came ­after some of the high-­profile lgbtq narratives of prime time, and was far from a radical turn, it did begin to tread a new path for the serialized narration of nonstraight sexuality, one repeatedly abbreviated by the cancellations of so many of the soaps featuring such tales but suggesting that the soaps’ historically heteronormative stories of romance and ­family life might be able to take on new form.

Exploiting Difference Unlike most soaps’ strategy of integrating lgbtq characters into long-­ standing soap families, or of having them model altered versions of f­amily, one soap, nbc’s Passions, took a dif­fer­ ent tack, veering more t­oward ­exploitative treatment of characters and stories that did not fit a heteronormative mode. In line with the mid-1990s excesses of dool, Passions was the most outrageous and campy of the postnetwork era soaps, pushing generic bound­aries, injecting humor, and refusing to conform to the realism that grounded some of the more demanding suspensions of disbelief. Passions’ outrageousness built over time, although the program contained comedic and super­natural features from the start. Some of its stories adhered to more earnest, conventional soap narration, as in the 2005 story of Simone Russell coming out to her ­family and their gradual ac­cep­tance of her lesbianism. Begun in 1999 as part of nbc’s effort to resuscitate its struggling daytime schedule following the cancellations of Another World and the short-­lived Sunset Beach, Passions was created by James  E. Reilly, made infamous by his over-­the-­top dool plots of the mid-1990s, with whom nbc sought to stay in business, making him a con­sul­tant to Beach and then having him create Passions. Passions brought nbc the attention it was seeking in the challenged landscape of the postnetwork age. By 2001 it was the highest-­ rated soap on air among teen girls and also popu­lar with young adults. Its youthful appeal also gained it mainstream media attention, wherein writers who did not typically cover daytime called it an “emerging cult serial” and a “staggeringly psychotic blend of super­natural thriller, melodramatic soap opera and situation comedy.”116 While some read the style as honoring soap 268  ·  chapter 7

opera while poking fun at it, o ­ thers saw it as superior to soaps, as successful ­because it was “post-­soap,” leaving the past ­behind.117 Passions wavered between celebrating the traditional pleasures of soaps and disdaining them. Some viewers could point to the ways that the excessive ­trials of a heroine like Theresa Lopez-­Fitzgerald gave them strength to persevere amid their own, more everyday adversities, as had many a feisty soap heroine making questionable choices before her. Writer Ira Madison III connected with the working-­class, fatherless Latina as a character who taught him “how to survive” and “that you can always dream of a way to escape,” possibilities crucial to him as a young, gay, black man.118 As outlandish as many of her stories would be, Theresa’s narrative was mostly an exaggerated version of many a soap arc, this time embodied by a nonwhite heroine. This diversified revision of soap tendencies held ­great appeal for some audiences, such as queer viewers, who found many pleasures in Pas­ sions’ abundance of shirtless male leads and arch comedic style, described by one critic as “always high-­camp with a definite gay sensibility.”119 Yet Passions’ difference from traditional soap would also lead it down less resonant paths, acclimating young audiences in par­tic­u­lar to a conception of soap opera that could be more disdainful than appreciative of its long-­standing features, much as had been the case with Reilly’s devil story in dool. The embrace of Passions by young p ­ eople, millennials as they would soon be called, initially seemed to be the answer to continuing soaps into a new generation.120 By the l­ater 2000s, however, that promise had faded, as the program’s reliance on shocking developments wore thin and Passions’ ability to honor soap opera while ironically commenting on it became a more difficult line to walk. What began as clever, campy self-­reflection that welcomed characters and audiences other than the white and heteronormative turned increasingly to an exploitative take on difference. One of the more problematic narratives in Passions’ ­later years put lgbtq characters of color in particularly outrageous scenarios that veered into homophobia and racism, taking the program’s other­wise playful engagement with postracial, postgay excess to troubling extremes. Central to this was the character of Vincent Clarkson, a black tabloid reporter who turns out to be an intersex, bisexual murderer who also commits sexual assault. Vincent’s first place in the Passions narrative is through his 2007 affair with the biracial leading man, Chad Harris-­Crane, who is married to the virtuous young black ­woman, Whitney. Initially, this story seemed to be a social issue plot, as it referenced the sensational media phenomenon of real-­world black men “on the down low,” engaging in same-­sex acts while Reckoning with the Past  ·  269

other­wise presenting themselves as straight.121 Once Whitney and the other characters learn about Chad’s affair, the story initially follows the typical pattern of urging ac­cep­tance of nonstraight identities. Straight, white, male characters object to Chad betraying his wife but make clear that they have no prob­lem with gay sexuality.122 The soap set scenes in the local gay bar, where some (male) characters seem a bit uncomfortable but, importantly, not disrespectful.123 Whitney references Chad’s “deviant lifestyle” but leaves ambiguous ­whether she is referring to his lying and betrayal or to his nonstraight sexuality.124 ­These reactions allow the audience a range of perspectives on queer identities, but none are outright discriminatory or hateful, in keeping with the postgay culture and the postnetwork era soaps’ basic message of ac­cep­tance. Yet the soap nonetheless made choices that marked nonwhite, queer identities, practices, and bodies as Other, as foreign and fear-­inducing. Chad himself expresses homophobic attitudes, insisting many times over, as if horrified by the suggestion, “I am not gay!”125 Chad is ashamed of his desire for Vincent, treating the physically smaller man roughly and angrily and yet with g­ reat lust. Chad’s dialogue and be­hav­ior replicated damaging cultural myths about the sexual excesses of black men and the threat they pose to w ­ omen.126 Audiences found the repre­sen­ta­tion troubling for its adherence to ste­reo­types and its incompatibility with Chad’s previous characterization as a more conventional romantic hero; they ­were surely also uncomfortable with the story’s deviation from the more standard postgay ac­cep­tance narrative.127 The story might have been told differently had Chad verbalized his real feelings, but the viewer is never invited to understand the complexity of his desires; ­there is no campy plea­sure to be found in Chad’s self-­loathing. ­After Chad and Vincent’s affair comes to light, the focus of the story shifts to reveal (to the audience before the characters) that Vincent is actually the bizarrely costumed villain who has been terrorizing Harmony, whom the characters refer to as the Blackmailer. Vincent’s disguise is a gender-­ bifurcated outfit and a creepy painted-­face mask, also divided into gendered halves. Frightened and enraged by this figure’s crimes, the other characters refer to the disguised villain as “he/she,” “it,” “freak,” and “that ­thing,” all emphasizing their ­enemy’s deviance, even nonhumanity. That the masked figure has sex with female characters and is sexually aggressive with male characters suggests bisexuality as well as dual gendering, another marker of disturbing difference. The reveal that this villain is actually Vincent confirms his bisexuality, evidenced through his relationship with Chad, and further 270  ·  chapter 7

figure 7.9 “The Blackmailer”/Vincent (Phillip Jeanmarie) reveals himself as Eve and Julian’s son, and as intersex, while wearing the gender-­bifurcated costume in which he has been terrorizing the ­people of Harmony. Passions, nbc, July 12, 2007.

paints Chad’s sexual desires as errant—­not only may he be bisexual, but he is drawn to someone the audience knows to be evil, and who is ambiguously gendered, at least when in disguise. Vincent’s story is further developed when it is revealed in the summer of 2007 that he is not just villainous and bisexual but also intersex, which the costume purportedly represents. While in costume, the Blackmailer shares the pain he has experienced throughout his life, the ways in which he has been treated as a “monster” and a “freak,” to which some upstanding characters respond with compassion and kindness.128 The story thus offers moments of ac­cep­tance of intersex experience, but it never abandons the idea that Vincent is deeply damaged, keeping ambiguous ­whether his deviance is a product of his identity or of the social reaction to it. The soap also exploits the revelation of the Blackmailer’s intersex identity for shock and for comedy, but it loses any camp potential in the caricature of queer identities that ensues. The upstanding, African American Dr. Eve Russell first learns that her son, the Blackmailer, is intersex in a cartoonish “reveal” in which he Reckoning with the Past  ·  271

lifts up the skirt of his dual-­gendered costume and we see her shocked reaction.129 The lifting of the skirt reveal is repeated for Julian, Vincent’s f­ather, in a comedic sequence in which Eve keeps urging Julian to have a drink in anticipation of him receiving the news.130 Vincent’s body is clearly marked as freakish, which is further emphasized when the character gets pregnant and gives birth, thanks to his alternate, female identity having sex with Julian (yes, his own f­ ather). The juxtaposition of t­ hese extreme twists with the Christian pieties expressed by characters like Eve and the ethically corrupt Julian can be seen as a critique of discriminatory practices generated in the name of moral righ­teousness. But this gesture ­toward satire does not change the characterization of queer bodies and practices as absurd, if not horrific. Queer figures such as Vincent are given voice too sporadically and treated too ambiguously to allow for the kind of audience empathy crucial to the historic ­handling of morally compromised characters, nor does this characterization allow for any real plea­sure in Vincent’s disruptive potential. The questionable repre­sen­ta­tional politics of one soap need not have doomed soap opera’s pro­gress when it came to the incorporation of difference and the reimagining of the past. But the ­limited integration of nonwhite and lgbtq characters made any one instance stand out, each case, even one as transgressive as Vincent, carry­ing undue weight.131 Characterizing differences of gender, race, and sexuality as abnormal or abject placed barriers around the extent to which aty­pi­cal figures could become full-­fledged members of soap communities. Such repre­sen­ta­tions may have arisen out of a post­race, postgay, postfeminist context that sought to treat all identities as equal, but too often they reproduced inequalities by making t­hose characters already marked as dif­fer­ent especially Other, even deviant, outside the normative sphere of the daytime tv soap opera.

Violating the Past: Losing the Lessons of Soap History So many of the soaps’ postnetwork era story lines ­were overtly engaged with reimagining and recasting the past that it may have seemed as if allegiance to that past was at the forefront of creators’ efforts to sustain soap opera amid the altered industry and culture. Yet some strands of postnetwork era storytelling and repre­sen­ta­tion ­were more focused on repudiating their past than on revising it for a new age. Ele­ments of this can be seen in the exploitative efforts to represent social issues such as rape, or to poorly integrate nonwhite and nonstraight characters. Across the 1990s, audiences expressed 272  ·  chapter 7

discomfort with narrative variations they saw as too far removed from soap proper, such as Marlena’s possession or Reva’s cloning. So too did viewers react negatively to what they perceived to be further rejections of the soap past in the early twenty-­first ­century. While the altered cultural and economic context of the tv business caused the most proximate harm to the soaps over this period, the vari­ous ways in which audiences saw the soaps as betraying the very narrative and repre­sen­ta­tional histories they themselves had experienced ­were also quite damaging, in this case by alienating some long-­term viewers. The soap storytelling that rejected rather than re­imagined soap history occurred amid a growing sense of discomfort with the declining status of soap opera among industry professionals. As critic Lynn Liccardo observed of the period, “The idea that soap opera is something that needs to change in order not to be hated has become deeply embedded in daytime producers’ collective psyche.”132 Soap writer Sara Bibel agreed, describing an “inferiority complex” among soap producers, writers, and network executives: “During my ­career as a soap writer, I encountered ­people in positions of authority . . . ​ who used the word ‘soapy’ as a pejorative. In interviews, producers and head writers often tout changes they are making in the show as being ‘more like prime-­time,’ as if that’s automatically superior.”133 Th ­ ese attitudes developed amid the declines in ratings and ad revenues, as well as the disparagement of soap audiences in terms of race, class, and age explored in chapter 6. This section analyzes the ways such attitudes fed into early twenty-­first-­ century soap storytelling, focusing on the rejections and violations of the soap past that became increasingly prominent in the 2000s. The three most significant such trends ­were creators’ efforts to model their programs ­after prime-­time series, shifts in narrative emphasis t­oward masculinized features, and literal rewritings of iconic stories of the past, often in ways that invalidated significant moments in the arcs of female characters. ­These early twenty-­first-­century violations of audience expectations and trust held significant implications for the soaps’ gendered status. It was not merely that soap opera was changing but that it was changing in ways that seemed to abandon its historic address to and engagement with feminized interests, concerns, and perspectives. It would take the cancellations of six of ten soaps between 2003 and 2012 to disrupt ­these destructive patterns. One of the ways in which soap opera rejected its own past was in its efforts to become more like prime-­time tv, which was itself achieving an improved cultural status in the early twenty-­first ­century. The successes of daytime soap opera in the network era had encouraged the migration of some Reckoning with the Past  ·  273

of its features into prime-­time programming between the ­middle 1960s and the 1980s. By the postnetwork era, and particularly as of the twenty-­first ­century, serialized narration in prime time was again revived, this time in ways that accrued prestige as well as popularity to the form. ­Whether in the acclaim surrounding a premium cable series like The Sopranos (hbo, 1999–2007) or in the excitement attaching to a network sensation such as Lost (abc, 2004–10), continuing narratives that explored character interiority and relationships, and that drove plots through the suspenseful concealment and revelation of information led many critics, scholars, and industry workers to declare a “new golden age” for tv. ­Because daytime soap ratings and buzz had been steadily declining for more than a de­cade at this point, prime-­time creators ­were not seeking to capitalize on daytime as they had during the network era. Indeed, many creators and commentators sought to differentiate their prime-­time efforts from daytime’s dramas, denying the foundational work of daytime soaps in developing this narrative form.134 This was part of the context leading soap creators to see soap opera disparagingly. Their response was not to defend the form but instead to try to imitate prime time, to become more like the eve­ning series that ­were both mimicking and repudiating soap opera itself. Daytime creators sought to model their proj­ects on prime time in a number of ways, such as keying producing, writing, and directing credits over the first act of episodes and introducing credit sequences that identified actors by name.135 More significantly, instances of soap storytelling began to imitate prime-­time strategies to “manage” seriality by scripting stunt-­like events that told contained stories-­within-­the-­story over one or two weeks of episodes. In prime-­time serials such as 24 (Fox, 2004–10) or Lost, creators would often spend between one and three episodes on a plot that was a diversion of sorts from the central narrative, what one creator described as “­little lateral arabesques that ­aren’t on the spine of the story.”136 ­These incidences helped to stretch the narrative across a prime-­time season and gave creators a way to imagine their efforts as being more like “­little movies” than a never-­ending soap.137 Across the 2000s, the soaps themselves incorporated such structures into their narratives. Blogger Patrick Erwin described one such effort on ­ ere The Young and the Restless in 2007, in which a number of characters w trapped in a collapsed parking garage, as a “plot-­driven story that left no permanent marks on any character or story and created no new story for anyone.”138 Also in 2007, General Hospital ran a 24-­style story over a few weeks, holding a number of characters hostage in a ­hotel, the main 274  ·  chapter 7

consequence being the resulting death of a long-­standing patriarch, which many viewers saw as a particularly meaningless exit for a legacy character. Stunts like t­hese valued short-­term spectacle over longer-­term narrative development, suspenseful action over in-­depth characterization. Similar was the use of high-­profile guest stars, most notably feature film star James Franco’s recurring role on gh between 2009 and 2011. ­Eager for the publicity and cachet the actor would bring, the soap failed to weave the crazy-­ artist character Franco played into the narrative fabric of the serial. His appearances ­were stunt-­like in that the character had no organic ties to the diegetic community, making him more a distraction from story rather than a motivator of it.139 Franco’s character comes to Port Charles due to his obsession with Mafia hit man Jason Morgan; thus many of his appearances involve action-­oriented scenes with Jason. In this, the guest-­star turn was another key way in which early twenty-­first-­century soaps modeled themselves a­ fter prime time, ­here in a turn to the masculine as an attempt at differentiation from daytime’s usual feminization. General Hospital was the most prominent such case in that, across the 2000s, the soap focused heavi­ly on Jason and the mob boss for whom he worked, Sonny Corinthos. Sonny first appeared on gh in 1993. Across the nineties he developed into a prototypical tortured hero. Sonny may have been a mobster, but his stories focused on his emotional bonds, as during his departure from the story canvas in 1997, when he and his protégé, Jason, stare soulfully into one another’s eyes as they say their good-­byes and pro­cess Sonny’s choice to leave Brenda at the altar to protect her from his dangerous lifestyle.140 Beginning in 1996, Sonny also suffers from the occasional, mysterious emotional breakdown. He could be violent, but his pain is real (we learn he was abused as a child), and he is committed most of all to ­those he loves. In ­these ways, Sonny’s early character arc was in keeping with the soaps’ history of explorations of heterosexual masculinity that ­imagined a tender vulnerability at its core. In the 2000s, however, the emotional vulnerability that made the character such a compelling lead became a less prominent part of the gh landscape as Sonny and Jason’s Mafia business took center stage. Sonny’s “dark side” veered ­toward borderline abusive treatment of ­women, including shooting the ­mother of his child, Carly, in the head while she is giving birth!141 He was no longer conflicted about his life path, and he becomes more overtly violent, torturing and, years ­later, murdering another son’s biological ­father, who is a morally compromised character but not an outright villain.142 Many ­ ere offended that the violent male characters, Sonny and Jason, gh fans w Reckoning with the Past  ·  275

figures 7.10 and 7.11 In the 1990s, General Hospital told stories that highlighted the emotional pain of mobster/tortured hero Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard), as in the long, meaningful looks between Sonny and his friend Jason (Steve Burton) as they say good-­bye. abc, September 24, 1997.

­ ere upheld as the moral centers of the show when the more admirable w figures around them, such as Robin Scorpio, the legacy character living with hiv, ­were marginalized.143 General Hospital’s valorization of mobsters and masculinized concerns appeared alongside stories on other abc soaps that reversed or betrayed moments in the soaps’ pasts that had been especially significant to long-­term character trajectories and to the programs’ validation of feminized perspectives and ­women’s issues. In 2005 and 2006, amc “reversed” the abortion Erica Kane had so boldly pursued in 1971 by revealing that her doctor had transferred the to-­be-­aborted embryo to his own wife’s uterus. Critics and fans w ­ ere “100 ­percent outraged,” finding this to be an unacceptable rewrite of an iconic story; the scientific impossibility was almost beside the point for audiences used to suspending disbelief. Soap Opera Digest columnist Carolyn Hinsey pointed directly to the implications of this revision for ­women’s understanding of and investment in their reproductive lives: “You want to talk uterus? now ­you’ve got a fight on your hands.”144 Viewers specifically objected to the betrayal of both soap history and w ­ omen’s history: “As an in­ de­pen­dent ­woman, I was always so proud of amc’s story of Erica’s abortion. They showed that a ­woman had the right to make her own decision when it came to her body. With the current po­liti­cal climate, and the chance that a ­woman’s choice might actually be taken away, how could the writers change this in good conscience?”145 The “unabortion” plot allowed the masculinized power of science and medicine to triumph over a choice the character had made within distinctly feminized circumstances in a moment central to both US w ­ omen’s history and the history of soap opera. Its reversal was not a mere revision; it was a violation. Similarly, but oriented around rape, the other key gendered issue for postnetwork era soaps, was oltl’s 2008 story of amnesiac Marty Saybrooke’s sexual involvement with her rapist, Todd Manning. This story revisited a 1993 social issue plot in which Marty is gang-­raped, with Todd as the instigator. Unlike some of the more exploitative rape stories of the early postnetwork era, oltl’s narrative pointed ­toward the social structures that enable rape and avoided the explicit repre­sen­ta­tion of vio­lence while still depicting the event as horrific. The story directly engaged with and debunked rape myths, in that Marty deliberately dresses provocatively for the fraternity party where the attack occurs, and she drinks heavi­ly.146 Yet the soap refused to place blame on the less-­than-­virtuous character, instead pointing to the exclusionary, masculinist cultures of sports and fraternity life as the root of the vio­lence. Reckoning with the Past  ·  277

­ ese princi­ples pervade the 1993 story through dialogue in the aftermath Th of the attack and in the assault scene itself. The men trap and taunt Marty in a frat h ­ ouse bedroom, but the scene avoids the repre­sen­ta­tional assaults that Projansky argues w ­ ere typical of rape stories in this era by eschewing explicit depictions of vio­lence.147 Instead, the visual and sound style orients the viewer sympathetically around Marty’s perspective, which scholar Jennifer Hayward sees as notable for its difference from the more “objective” shooting style typical of soaps.148 For example, t­here is a minute-­long sequence of Marty’s dissociation, wherein her eyes fix upon a stuffed animal adorned with a cap bearing the fraternity’s Greek letters. This reminder of fraternity culture dissolves into a close-up of a similar stuffed animal from Marty’s childhood, placed atop a piano that the child-­Marty plays as her adoring parents look on. The s­ imple melody and peaceful scene take Marty, and the audience, momentarily away from the trauma. What we do see of the assault emphasizes the masculinized complicity of the attackers, as in close-­ups of the other men as the third attacks Marty offscreen.149 The rapists’ trial emphasizes the systemic ­causes of rape, deliberately resisting rape’s depiction as a “random,” individualized act, which was the more typical tendency in postfeminist media cultures.150 In the story’s aftermath, and even as the soap explored Todd’s psyche, finding some humanity therein, the creators swore that Todd and Marty would never be romantically paired, seeing that this would reverse the premise of the original narrative and its statement about the politics of rape.151 But soap stories and creators inevitably change over time, and the 2008 oltl revoked that past promise by putting the two into a romantic relationship. Marty gets involved with Todd not knowing about their past. Not only does she have amnesia (due to ­later events, unrelated to the rape), but Todd looks dif­fer­ent than he did fifteen years prior (diegetically, the character has had plastic surgery; offscreen, he had been recast). Even as Todd had been redeemed to some extent and now genuinely cares for Marty, the very narrative circumstances that bring them together also make her full consent impossible. abc’s on-­air promotions further exploited the scenario, treating it as a shocking twist rather than another rape. “It’s the story you never thought we’d show you,” the announcer intoned, promising, “What happens next ­will shock you!” over a shot of the two kissing passionately.152 To audiences, this was not an unexpected twist; it was, again, rape, this time without the critique of patriarchal institutions, indeed without an acknowl­edgment of any forces beyond the character’s feelings.153 As critic Nelson Branco wrote, “Rape is all about power. Todd has all the power, and 278  ·  chapter 7

Marty has none. Todd has raped Marty again, and in the worst pos­si­ble way.”154 Rather than offering them a shocking twist, the story left audiences feeling “betrayed, hurt, and disgusted” by this violation of their own experience as viewers, and as potential or a­ ctual survivors.155 The story disavowed the soap past in an especially egregious way, one all the more disturbing for its resonance with the masculinist turn across the 2000s (perhaps especially on abc). One critic compared its misogynist tone to “a sexually twisted and titillating video game,” something that might be ­imagined to appeal to a “new, young, and/or male audience” while offending the “core audience” for soaps.156 What was at stake was a fundamental re­orientation of a form that had been a space for the airing of feminized concerns. The violation of Marty in the 2008 oltl was a violation of the soaps’ own past, and of their contract with an audience that turned to soaps for an acknowl­edgment of feminized experience. Across the vari­ous ways in which the soaps of the 2000s rejected their own past was a sense among many viewers that the soaps ­were no longer speaking to their interests or needs. More than a spate of unpop­u­lar or in­ effec­tive stories, which any soap viewer knows are typical across a serial’s many years, t­hese par­tic­u­lar missteps felt like a more fundamental threat, one that surely drove some away for good. The wider context of the changing broadcast business was the most direct cause of the prob­lems the soaps faced in the first de­cade of the twenty-­first ­century, but the impact of that context on soap creatives and the stories they generated was also deeply damaging. The postnetwork era brought the soaps a reckoning, a decades-­long confrontation both with the economic structures that had ­shaped and built the business and with the narrative and repre­sen­ta­tional patterns that had ­limited the programs’ vision of humanity to a white, heteronormative center. That reckoning led to some instances of innovative experimentation with visual, sound, and narrative style, and to some reimagining of the pillars of romantic pairings and familial bonds that had sustained the soaps’ rise. When the postnetwork age allowed for this kind of revision, it held the potential to reposition soap opera for a society changed by de­cades of activism around gender, race, and sexuality. Too often, however, the postnetwork era soaps have exploited, ­violated, or ignored the progressive potential inherent in revisiting and reimagining the past. By the 2010s, the troubled impact of the postnetwork age would result in a further alteration of tele­vi­sion as a business and a cultural sphere, revising yet again the status of soap opera.

Reckoning with the Past  ·  279

E I G H T. C A N H E R S T O R I E S G O O N ? Soap Opera in a Digital Age

By the 2010s, the continuing story of the American daytime tele­vi­sion soap opera seemed to be concluding. Shifting conceptions of femininity and the cultural forms best suited to address feminine interests and concerns made soap opera seem to many a holdover from an e­ arlier era. Yet by early 2012, the wave of soap cancellations had quieted and four daytime soaps remained on air. They would survive at least the first eight years of their drastically reduced industry, establishing a “new normal” for the soap world through per­sis­tent bud­get tightening and their development of new efficiencies. In so ­doing, soap opera was turning to its long history of creative production amid significant economic and temporal constraints, reimagining the work of daily dramatic storytelling in an altered industrial context. The business of broadcast network daytime programming had become a much more precarious space, but the daytime tv soap had experienced that very uncertainty in the past, such as when it had transitioned from radio to the new ­ ouse­wives assumed medium of tv. Much like the feminized l­abor of the h historically to constitute the daytime audience, soap creation had long been a practice of intensive work with minimal external validation. This chapter concludes Her Stories by exploring the world of the daytime tv soap opera a­ fter the multiple cancellations of the late 2000s and early 2010s, a period during which broadcast tele­vi­sion became a more marginalized cultural sphere due to the ascendance of online, streaming tv. While this period continued a number of developments that had emerged

across the postnetwork age, the drastic reduction of the daytime soap world marked an especially definitive shift, one that paralleled, albeit in more extreme form, the economic and cultural disruption faced by network tv as a ­whole. This chapter details the major business, production, and storytelling changes that the soaps have experienced in the 2010s. I first outline the economic contraction of the industry and how it has affected network practices, the mechanics of daily production, and relationships with advertisers. Next, I explore the soaps’ ventures into the world of streaming video, from the failures of an early effort at original web production to the potential of the in­de­pen­dent sphere of “web soaps.” I also examine shifts in storytelling and repre­sen­ta­tion that hint at renewed approaches to diversity and reinvigorated reckoning with the soaps’ pasts. This is a story of loss but also of improbable survival, the path of the foundational, feminized form illuminating the limits and possibilities of American tele­vi­sion as a cultural sphere.

New Network Structures Across broadcast tv history, the networks’ daytime divisions ­were crucial spaces for accruing power. In the 1960s and 1970s in par­tic­u­lar, network executives frequently moved from positions in daytime to t­hose higher in the network hierarchy, the generous revenues of daytime burnishing their reputations. As chapter  3 documents, daytime was the economic foundation of the network business. Thus, the changes to daytime in the postnetwork age w ­ ere an especially telling signal of the networks’ growing fragility. The changes at abc are particularly revealing, given that its network-­owned soaps had once been the envy of the industry for their direct contributions to the bottom line. ­After the cancellation wave, in 2012, General Hospital was abc’s only remaining soap, and the only remaining soap to be owned by its network. ­ hildren and One Life to Live, abc Daytime With the cancellations of All My C president Brian Frons resigned, at which point abc’s daytime division was effectively dismantled. First, the network-­produced daytime programs, in­ ere bundled together with syndicated productions u ­ nder the cluding gh, w direction of an executive vice president who oversaw all current series and specials.1 Over the next years, unscripted network daytime shows, such as cooking show The Chew, ­were handled along with unscripted syndicated programming produced by abc-­Disney, while gh remained ­under the Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  281

current series mantle, grouped with prime-­time programs.2 Additional reorganizations further distributed responsibility for the vari­ous kinds of daytime content across divisions.3 As of 2016, ­there was no entity tasked with further network daytime development, and gh was an outlier—­still managed day-­to-­day by current series staff but operating u ­ nder an entirely dif­fer­ent model from the other, prime-­time series handled ­there. The soap also fell ­under the purview of the local station division, which now included “daytime,” a label that had come to signal the unscripted, syndicated programs local stations often used to fill daytime hours, programming fundamentally dif­fer­ent from soaps both eco­nom­ically and creatively.4 Soaps may never have had much in common with daytime genres such as talk and game shows, but their combination on network schedules had long been understood as vital to the network’s bottom line. In the 2010s at abc and also nbc, the tradition of this sort of daytime schedule was largely abandoned. As gh’s series man­ag­er Nathan Varni noted, “You can notice when three dif­fer­ent divisions oversee three dif­fer­ent shows. It’s just harder to get an identity brand g­ oing.”5 The resulting isolation of gh (as well as Days of Our Lives at nbc) may have reduced some of the hands-on meddling of executives that had been such a prominent part of the network era soap business; abc saw itself more as a “collaborative partner” to the show creators in the post-2012 model. But the soaps’ isolation also put them at some risk. At abc, one staffer worked to get realms like network promotion or digital studios to pay attention and provide support to gh.6 While gh may have had some degree of protection due to its shell of network owner­ship, dool regularly faced licensing renegotiations with nbc, its ­future perpetually precarious. Only cbs retained a more substantial daytime lineup in the 2010s, with two soaps, game and talk shows, and a dedicated se­nior vice president. Even absent its relationship with p&g, cbs, “The Network That In­ven­ted Daytime,” was the most secure home for soaps in the re­imagined industry.7

The Age of Austerity in Soap Production Alongside the marginalization of soap opera at abc and nbc, all soaps faced more drastic bud­get tightening in the 2010s. Th ­ ese reductions w ­ ere an elaborated extension of the business shifts that had affected soap bud­gets across the postnetwork age, most notably in the twenty-­first c­ entury, and that increasingly affected their on-­screen worlds. As early as 1991, a precariously positioned soap such as Santa Barbara faced bud­get reductions that 282  ·  chapter 8

figure 8.1 Guiding Light debuted its new production model on February 29, 2008, introducing audiences to outdoor locations, interior sets outside of conventional tv studios, and handheld cameras. The result included shots such as this one of Reva (Kim Zimmer) and her ­sister Cassie (Nicole Forester) from ­behind as they have an emotional conversation, which many viewers found off-­putting for its departure from conventional soap style.

pared down proj­ects such as location shoots; in 1994, the sparser funding of Another World showed in the deglamorized environment on-­screen.8 ­These shifts foreshadowed the more drastic contraction to come. By 2005, p&g was focused on “how we can maintain the quality but produce for less” through fewer sets, smaller casts, and reduced pay when it came time for actors’ contract renewals.9 Before the cancellation of Guiding Light in 2009, p&g’s production arm, Televest, drastically altered the soap’s production mode as a bud­get reduction strategy, revising in-­studio practices and regularizing location-­based shooting in a small New Jersey town. The production transitioned to portable, digital cameras that required less extensive lighting and accelerated the shooting pace. Permanent, four-­walled sets reduced the overnight set and lighting ­labor that had made up significant portions of the bud­get; the Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  283

consolidated outdoor shoots virtually eliminated ­those steps altogether, and handheld shooting produced a “real­ity tv” style. Th ­ ese changes reduced production costs by about 10 ­percent.10 Promotional coverage touted the affinity of the new style with prime-­time sensations such as real­ity tv and pitched the shifts as appealing to young audiences. But the under­lying logic was to produce the soap as inexpensively as pos­si­ble—­the only hope for p&g and cbs allowing gl to continue.11 The non-­p &g soaps on other networks also experienced significant bud­get cutbacks, their declining ratings paired with the overall financial downturn of the late 2000s. By 2008, even the biggest stars had taken pay reductions; amc’s Nixon, who had become a con­sul­tant to the soap, saw her pay diminished e­ very c­ ouple of years from 2006 on.12 The bud­getary restrictions at Days of Our Lives seemed especially draconian. In 2006, nbc reduced the program’s license fee by 30 ­percent. In 2008, the soap did not renew the contracts of lead performers Deidre Hall (Marlena) and Drake Hogestyn (John) while reducing the pay of all its contract performers by as much as 40 ­percent. At each of nbc’s short-­term renewals for the soap over ­these years, its license fee was further reduced.13 A key technique for managing ­these cuts was increasing the pace of production so as to shut the studio down a number of weeks per year. By 2013, dool was producing eight daily episodes in a five-­day week and shutting down production for a significant number of weeks.14 As executive producer Ken Corday explained, “We get way far ahead and [if] w ­ e’re not using the studio, we ­don’t have to pay studio overhead for 13 out of 52 weeks. That’s the only way we can make our nut.”15 This intensified production pace l­ imited the programs’ ability to respond to audience tastes or the broader social climate, long a benefit of the soaps’ production schedule. This became a prob­lem for dool in early 2017 when a new head writer’s promised move to lighter, more upbeat fare would not appear on air before the following fall and viewers ­were asked to keep watching through some darker, less popu­lar story amid the tension-­filled early months of the Donald Trump presidency.16 General Hospital developed a similarly tight schedule. Executive producer Frank Valentini had pioneered more streamlined production practices at oltl before its cancellation and was hired at gh in 2012 to transfer that model. By late 2015, gh was producing six episodes per five-­day week, and each day had a scheduled “out time” to meet or beat, a way to save costs on overtime for ­unionized ­labor.17 By 2018, that number was up to seven or eight episodes per week, with about fifteen “dark weeks” in which the studio was shut down entirely each year.18 This heightened production pace meant 284  ·  chapter 8

that scenes had almost no rehearsal time on set, moving from camera blocking to taping as quickly as pos­si­ble. The soap commonly shot scenes from multiple episodes in a single day to take advantage of having sets and actors available, a shift from the more typical practice of shooting a single episode per day in the late 1990s.19 This production pace affected the on-­screen world in multiple ways. For instance, the duration of scenes was shortened, making it more difficult to advance story or to develop characters and relationships. Yet shooting more scenes of briefer duration surely helped production days proceed more quickly. Actors had fewer lines to memorize for any one segment, and dialogue could be spread more widely across the cast. In the 2010s gh, the cast remained quite large, but a larger percentage of performers w ­ ere paid on a recurring, rather than contract, basis, meaning that the renewable thirteen-­ week contracts that guaranteed actors a minimum number of payment days per week, in place since the transition of gl from radio to tv in 1952, became less common. Th ­ ose recurring per­for­mances w ­ ere paid at a per-­episode rate low enough to have been “unheard of not that long ago,” another realm of cost savings.20 Shorter scene durations and large casts ­were paired with shorter episode lengths, as well, as an hour-­long daytime soap episode gradually shrunk across the 2000s to around thirty-­six minutes of program time per hour.21 Together t­hese ­factors made for less screen time for most story lines and a slower pace at which stories developed. For example, in the 2010s a popu­lar ­couple might develop a relationship over six months of episodes, short scenes—­some no longer than thirty seconds—­sprinkled throughout. In contrast, in the 1980s, the same amount of screen time would have aired across two months of episodes. The scenes would have been longer and the ­couple’s appearances more frequent. The stretched-­out storytelling of the 2010s, ­shaped by bud­getary constraints, made it more difficult for audiences to get deeply invested in character dynamics, which often lessened audience investment in the programs themselves.22 ­These ­factors also altered the sense of community across the on-­screen world. Characters ­were more isolated in their individual story lines, with less opportunity to interact across plots. This was especially the case for characters played by actors paid on a recurring basis, as it was bud­getarily inefficient to place performers paid per appearance in “extra” scenes. As well, actors only had access to script pages for scenes they w ­ ere in (to save on paper and reproduction costs), and might shoot scenes out of order, making it especially challenging for performers to track character and plot continuity or to understand the relationship of their scenes to ­those involving other, Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  285

connected characters.23 ­These restrictions kept soap worlds from achieving the feeling of interconnected community that was so crucial in the network era peak, when the adventures of the supercouples, for example, affected the situation of every­one in town. In the age of soap austerity, even major story events such as weddings and funerals could only feature a se­lection of the cast; the bud­get could not support “forty, fifty ­people [in a wedding scene].”24 Such mea­sures helped to keep the remaining soaps ­running, but they did so at a cost beyond the bud­getary. They “paid” by forgoing some of the most compelling features of soap storytelling. An additional impact of the constrained bud­getary climate hearkened back to an early period of broadcast history through product placements and integrations designed to generate additional revenue. Th ­ ere w ­ ere instances of this across the 2000s, as in abc’s deal with cosmetics com­pany Revlon, which was featured on All My ­Children as a competing brand to the com­pany run by central character Erica Kane.25 In the 2010s, General Hos­ pital was able to revive a special event begun on the soap in the 1990s, the Nurses’ Ball talent show/aids fund-­raiser, by finding “a sponsorship ­behind it to provide a l­ ittle bit of extra dollars” to help pay for m ­ usic rights in par­tic­ u­lar.26 While viewers ­were often cynical about product placements that they saw as awkwardly inserted into scenes, many also appreciated the revival of the Ball and its connection to gh history.27 Other gh product integrations have not funded an exact on-­screen event and have been viewed more suspiciously for their intrusions into the narrative or their ethical stakes.28 In each case, it has been clear that the bud­getary constraints of soap production in the 2010s have opened the door to forms of sponsorship that sit uncomfortably with twenty-­first-­century viewers. The bud­getary retrenchment that s­ haped so much of soap production in the 2010s did not evacuate the soaps of experimentation or creative expansion. General Hospital challenged its cast and crew by shooting special live episodes, repeating an experiment of Valentini’s at oltl in 2002. General Hospital also began to include exterior shoots in a park near the studio, while y&r incorporated location-­shot exteriors of its key sets as well as location-­ shot scenes. ­These efforts borrowed from the production innovations of the late Guiding Light but kept them to a small enough scale so as not to wholly alter the familiar visual style. cbs’s soaps ­were better off financially than ­those at nbc and abc, in part due to their substantial international distribution revenues. The Bold and the Beautiful, already more cost-­effective as a half-­hour show with a smaller cast, in the 2010s continued its history of producing location shoots around the world, further enhancing its global cachet, a source 286  ·  chapter 8

figure 8.2 General Hospital featured product integrations more frequently in the post-2012 restrictive bud­getary climate, such as when the fictional spokesperson for fast-­food purveyor kfc, Col­o­nel Sanders (George Hamilton), paid a visit to his “friend,” gh character Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms), abc, July 6, 2018.

of pride and status amid the other soaps’ austerity. As producer Bradley Bell noted of a 2017 Australian shoot, “We are preparing to film the most glamorous location shoot in soap opera history,” labeling it “an epic cele­bration for our fans around the world.”29 By the 2010s, the prob­lems of the soaps’ distribution model and of the network tv business explored in chapter 6 had directly ­shaped the fates of the remaining soaps, albeit to dif­fer­ent degrees.

The Streaming Soap The wave of soap cancellations that so drastically changed the industry at the dawn of the 2010s was not just a signal of the waning viability of the broadcast network model. It was also an early moment in the burgeoning business of the streaming distribution of tv over the internet, taking shape in this period as a system of “portals,” described by Amanda Lotz as “the internet equivalent of channels.”30 While the soaps’ twenty-­first-­century strug­gles might make them seem ill-­suited to this new sphere, their longer history of involvement in media change makes the place of soaps in the evolution of ­these portals a logical fit.31 Upon the cancellations of amc and oltl in 2011, the production com­pany Prospect Park licensed the soaps from abc, Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  287

planning to create original episodes as the launch content for a new digital platform, the Online Network. The events surrounding this effort make soap opera an especially early force in the world of long-­form scripted series produced for internet distribution, one that has already been forgotten amid the higher-­profile, more prestigious and culturally legitimated efforts that have come to signal the “firsts” of original streaming tv. In­de­pen­dently produced “web soaps” w ­ ere an early feature of the mid2000s “craze for streaming video,” which Aymar Jean Christian describes as a number of players seeking to “[harness] in­de­pen­dently produced and user-­generated content in ways friendly to advertisers” by offering the internet’s first original series.32 ­These early proj­ects would eventually develop into a robust in­de­pen­dent production sphere, but they also foretold the eventual turn to original streaming content by major Hollywood players, including Prospect Park’s amc and oltl. Prospect Park was a producer of conventional content such as the usa Network’s first-­run cable series, Royal Pains (2009–16), when it began to plan its Online Network. Feeding original content to internet distribution portals was emerging as the next digital frontier in 2011, as major players like YouTube touted their own partnerships with “Hollywood providers.”33 Prospect Park announced its plan to launch the Online Network with new, long-­form episodes of amc and oltl in July 2011, a time when the more established portals, such as Netflix or Hulu, had not yet debuted any original fare. Th ­ ese platforms functioned as secondary distribution sites, making off-­network and off-­cable series (as well as feature films) available via stream. Hulu would debut the first of the commercial ser­vices’ long-­form, original efforts, a documentary series, a few months ­later, and Netflix had recently licensed the new scripted series House of Cards (2013–18) from producer Media Rights Capital.34 As the less established of ­these portals, the Online Network strug­gled to get started; Prospect Park planned for the soaps to be the site’s debut content but had not grappled with the complicated l­abor and bud­getary issues involved.35 As a result, the proj­ect was canceled, then resurrected ­under more modest terms, with thirty-­minute rather than sixty-­minute episodes and two, rather than five, episodes per week. While the programs used experienced writing, producing, and acting talent from the broadcast soap world, they would be bud­geted even more tightly. Cost-­saving mea­sures included paying actors weekly rather than via the system of episode guarantees and producing both soaps at the same Connecticut studio, taking advantage of the tax breaks in that state.36 Crew members would be paid less than their standard daily rate as long as episode bud­gets stayed ­under a par­tic­u­lar threshold.37 288  ·  chapter 8

By the time t­ hese details w ­ ere figured out and the programs produced, it was 2013, the same year that Netflix debuted its first original series, making the online amc and oltl contemporaneous with higher-­profile content like House of Cards. Even as Prospect Park did get the online soaps into production, its Online Network never wholly launched. Instead, the streaming versions of amc and oltl each ran on Hulu for about forty episodes before Prospect Park ended them.38 The proj­ect was problematically conceived from the outset, but its l­imited success is also attributable to its positioning on Hulu, demonstrating the ways that the soaps’ associations with network broadcasting and advertiser sponsorship carried over into this new distribution space, despite their role as pioneers of original streaming fare. While Hulu began to rise in prestige in 2016, when it became a subscription-­ only platform, ­earlier in the 2010s it was the major portal most closely aligned with broadcast tv, and thereby lower in cultural status than competitors like Netflix. This surely contributed to the minimal recognition of the online amc and oltl. As one of the industry’s first efforts to engage with digital streaming, Hulu was owned by a partnership of broadcast networks and initially borrowed from the broadcast business’s long history of advertiser funding. Not only ­were Hulu’s major competitors ad-­free, but Netflix in par­tic­u­lar promoted itself as a prestigious and superior form of entertainment, a strategy borrowed from and in competition with the premium cable channel hbo, which had long differentiated itself from the broadcast world with the “It’s Not tv. It’s hbo” slogan.39 While Hulu’s association with broadcasting may have made it the logical place for t­hese soap continuations, the early evolution of streaming portals as prestige-­hungry spaces that strove to differentiate themselves from “tv” made a form of programming historically intertwined with commercial sponsorship, daytime scheduling, domestic viewing, and a feminized audience a poor fit for the competitive stakes of the 2010s streaming landscape.40 The failure of the online continuations of ­these soaps had multiple ­causes, but the economic foundations and cultural associations of the changing digital tv world may have doomed them from the start.

G ­ oing In­de­pen­dent: Web Soaps The early labeling of continuing, scripted series distributed online as “web soaps” launched a robust space of in­de­pen­dent production from at least the mid-2000s. By late in that de­cade and into the next, this indie sphere built more and more connection to the broadcast soap world, largely through creCan Her Stories Go On?  ·  289

ative personnel from the broadcast sphere initiating web-­based proj­ects. As so many legacy soaps ­were canceled, and as the remaining broadcast soaps faced evermore bud­getary constraints, individuals with l­ittle opportunity for creative control in the network world turned to the web. White w ­ omen, ­people of color, and gay men w ­ ere all involved in such series, many of whom ­were daytime soap fans, if not creative personnel. Actresses who had had long ­careers in daytime, some of whom continued to work on the remaining soaps, ­were an especially prominent driving force, working as writers, producers, and directors as well as on-­screen talent. The world of web-­distributed, scripted, serialized production is vast, but the influence of the daytime soap is evident throughout. For example, creator Anthony Anderson debuted his serialized narrative, Anacostia, in 2009 and has regularly described the drama as inspired by his history of soap viewing.41 Anacostia is set in a predominantly African American Washington, DC, neighborhood and tells stories of black and queer characters that mainstream soaps have never fully addressed, even as it borrows from the soaps’ storytelling style. Its connection to soap opera was explic­itly cemented when actor Martha Byrne joined the cast in 2011. Byrne had played supercouple princess turned maternal lead Lily Walsh Snyder on As the World Turns and was herself a creator in the web soap world. Other broadcast soap performers came to Anacostia in her wake, merging the worlds of in­de­pen­dent, black, and queer production with the legacy soaps’ icons of white femininity. Byrne is just one example of the soap talent that has been active in the web soap world of the 2010s. Guiding Light’s Crystal Chappell created her web soap, Venice the Series, in 2009, upon the cancellation of gl. Motivated to deliver on the promise of the romance between Chappell’s character, Olivia, and Jessica Leccia’s Natalia that the waning months of gl had begun but had not fully played out, Chappell and her partners in Open Book Productions crafted Venice around the love story of her character, Gina, and Leccia’s Ani.42 The first episode opens with the two kissing passionately in bed, their clothes, including two satiny bras, strewn on the floor.43 In its opening moments alone, Venice marked its difference from daytime soap, giving “Otalia” fans the sexy love scene that gl never delivered. The ­couple is pulled apart, but this allows the two to interact with, and to have romantic entanglements with, a host of other characters, nearly all portrayed by established broadcast soap actors. Audience investment in Venice encouraged its producer to participate in the creation of web soap Beacon Hill in 2014, showcasing amc’s Alicia Min290  ·  chapter 8

figure 8.3 Gina (Crystal Chappell) and Ani (Jessica Leccia) are a lesbian ­couple who have reignited their sexual relationship in the first episode of Venice the Series, released December 1, 2009. Depicting ­these two actresses in a love scene was a direct commentary on the desexualized relationship the actresses portrayed in the final year of Guiding Light.

shew and Sarah Brown, remembered for originating gh’s Carly, as lesbian exes dealing with familial and po­liti­cal drama, as well as creating The Grove, in which Chappell and Leccia again play a lesbian c­ ouple, this time a more established, longtime pair. The Grove launched with the ­couple’s wedding, offering another alternative to the ­limited repre­sen­ta­tion gl offered. The Grove’s pi­lot sets up a number of conventional soap narratives—­a large, extended f­ amily, a long-­standing business dispute, intergenerational conflict—­ and includes a full cast of familiar soap talent.44 Yet the serial, along with Venice and Beacon Hill, put a lesbian ­couple at the center, borrowing from the legacy soap world by bringing together familiar on-­screen talent while distinguishing itself from the l­ imited repre­sen­ta­tional diversity in that world. As much as Venice and other of the web soaps brought some new repre­ sen­ta­tional dynamics to the fore, they did not correct for all of the broadcast soaps’ post–network age failings. One of the higher-­profile serials to feature daytime soap talent, The Bay, initially relied on clichés such as feuds between ­women, sexually predatory men, and quick, unexplained plot turns, more a caricature of soap opera than its descendant. While soap actors had long populated The Bay’s on-­screen world, in the program’s third season former gh executive producer Wendy Riche joined the production team, bringing Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  291

more backstage soap expertise. The stories gradually shifted thereafter to reflect more feminized, conventional soap values; w ­ omen characters such as Janice Ramos and her ­daughter Lianna developed more supportive relationships with one another; love triangles, such as that between Janice, Peter, and Vivian, pulled audience allegiances in multiple directions; and ­family dynamics became more nuanced and tied to character history.45 As The Bay has evolved, it has increasingly maximized the program’s casting strengths, allowing vari­ous soap actors to play younger versions of one another, drawing upon the investment in character history within the serial and across the broader history of daytime soap storytelling. The evolution of the digital dramas’ narrative practices has proceeded alongside their greater economic stability and cultural reach. Prior to 2017, this type of content was typically distributed via once-­independent sites such as Blip.tv, user-­generated platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, or through the programs’ own websites. As the major streaming portals grew their content libraries, some of the “indie soaps” got distribution deals with them. The Bay and then Tainted Dreams, created by longtime daytime producer and director Sonia Blangiardo, in their l­ater seasons w ­ ere distributed on Amazon Prime via its Video Direct ser­vice. Ladies of the Lake, a digital soap based on the novel written by dool executive producer Ken Corday, was the first of the “web soaps” to be distributed through Amazon Prime from its start. Another such program, EastSiders, a serialized narrative featuring a central gay male ­couple, was first released in late 2012 on YouTube and was picked up in 2016 for distribution by Netflix.46 Along with the program’s continuing narrative and focus on interpersonal relationships, EastSiders’ connection to the daytime soap world was magnified through the casting of Van Hansis, the actor who had played atwt’s gay son-­of-­a-­supercouple, Luke Snyder, as half of its central ­couple. To their benefit and, potentially, their detriment, as the web soaps have gained access to higher-­profile distribution portals they have also further cemented their status in the soap industry by being included in the Daytime Emmy Awards. The National Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sciences created categories for such productions beginning in 2011 and has continuously changed the way they are labeled across the 2010s, settling on “digital daytime drama series” as of the 2016 awards. Their inclusion within the Daytime Emmys, rather than the Emmys proper, is technically the result of the two Emmy-­awarding bodies (the National Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sciences and the Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sciences) deciding “by genre” where a par­tic­u­lar program belongs. Even as the “digital daytime 292  ·  chapter 8

dramas” produce a number of episodes, divided into seasons, more akin to streaming series such as House of Cards than to daily, broadcast, daytime soap, they are classified as “daytime.” This classification surely awards t­ hese lower-­budget productions recognition that they are less likely to achieve in the “prime-­time” Emmy world. Yet the figuring of program categories along such lines in the streaming sphere, where conventional daypart scheduling cannot exist, demonstrates the fixity of the hierarchical categorization of tele­vi­sion programming in ways that make any association with broadcast daytime an indicator of “soap” status. The textual features of soap opera may be morph­ing in the streaming age, but soap opera’s second-­tier status persists, continuing an association with the feminized concerns and assumed audience that have marked the broadcast serial across its history.

Reevaluating the Past: Soap Storytelling in the 2010s As the number of soaps on air shrank to four, in the 2010s the remaining soaps reengaged with their own legacies, openly embracing their narrative histories in ways the soaps of the 2000s had often disavowed. Cancellation allowed some soaps to reflect meaningfully on their own pasts. One Life to Live concluded with a resurrection of the program’s soap-­within-­the-­soap, Fraternity Row, and an especially poignant speech from heroine Viki Buchanan about the connection between audiences and their soaps in the guise of the on-­screen community sending off their favorite serial.47 When oltl’s executive producer and head writer moved to gh in 2012, they carried over this reflective outlook, for example, in a 2015 sequence of newly created flashbacks to the Port Charles of 1963, the soap’s birth year. As part of a story of tortured hero Luke Spencer taking on a much darker persona, one more irredeemably villainous than romantically pained, the character visits his now-­abandoned childhood home and recalls an indelible f­ amily trauma, one never before revealed in the more than thirty-­five years Luke had circulated on the gh canvas. In sepia-­toned images, we see Luke’s ­father, Tim Spencer, drunk and abusive ­until the teenage Luke fatally strikes him with a baseball bat. This is not the only buried horror Luke has repressed—he accidentally, and fatally, strikes his loving ­mother, Lena, as well.48 The sequence recalled some of the aesthetic experimentation of the postnetwork age, but it also connected the gh past with its pre­sent, in that actors from the con­temporary gh played related or similar characters from the past, including Anthony Geary (Luke) as Tim; we come to understand that Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  293

figure 8.4 General Hospital marked fifty-­two years on air on April 1, 2015, with Luke Spencer flashing back to his own 1963 youth, remembering his ­family’s trauma when the teenage Luke (Joey Luthman) struck out at his abusive, alcoholic ­father, Tim Spencer (Anthony Geary), and accidentally killed his ­mother.

the sins of Luke’s f­ather have been revisited upon Luke in his recent dark turn. A scene set in the 1963 hospital reenacts the script of the debut episode, with Dr. Steve Hardy and Nurse Jessie Brewer discussing a distraught patient, the soap’s original moral tentpoles portrayed by the actors who, in 2015, play the upstanding Dr.  Patrick Drake and Nurse Elizabeth Webber (who is also Steve’s grand­daughter). Luke’s ­mother, Lena, is portrayed by Laura Wright, the actor who in 2015 plays the forceful heroine, Carly. Lena is Carly’s grand­mother, but shares ­little with her grand­daughter apart from love for their c­ hildren; other­wise, Lena is powerless whereas Carly is a bold, reformed villainess, the implication being that Carly’s strength is a familial legacy, inherited as compensation for Lena’s suffering. While the Spencer ­family was not part of the gh diegesis when the soap debuted in 1963, this reimagining embeds their drama, central to the soap’s narrative since the late 1970s, into a longer history of the fictional community. The sequence winds together dif­fer­ent periods in the soap’s history, and in viewers’ own 294  ·  chapter 8

trajectories as members of its audience, finding new narrative and repre­sen­ ta­tional value in the past by demonstrating its especially close connection to the pre­sent. The other soaps reconsidered their pasts, as well, as in dool’s fiftieth anniversary and its recall of the late 1970s plot of David and Valerie’s interracial relationship, re­imagined through the appearance of their retroactively scripted son, Eli. The inclusion of the biracial Eli on the dool canvas, where he was the newest member of the white, core f­amily, the Hortons, signaled another of the ways in which the soaps of the 2010s moved ­toward a reevaluation of the past, this time in terms of repre­sen­ta­tional expansion. Unlike in the network era, in the postnetwork age the soaps w ­ ere not often in the lead on ­matters of representing social issues or developing multidimensional characters outside the white, heteronormative, and cisgendered center. ­There ­were some exceptions, particularly when it came to white female characters grappling with “reproductive drama,” such as abortion or rape. Such ­matters received some unusually thoughtful and resonant treatment, as in the socially aware rape stories of the 1990s, or a plot about the teenage Lulu Spencer choosing to have an abortion on the 2006 gh. More typically, the repre­sen­ta­tional expansion reignited on the postnetwork soaps, especially as of the 2010s, appeared alongside or just ­behind that of the broader media culture, particularly given the rapid multiplication of tv production to feed the original programming needs of cable channels and streaming portals. The soaps’ repre­sen­ta­tional expansion of the 2010s was part of a broader such turn across the media landscape. General Hospital was following an explicit initiative of its owner, Disney, as it integrated a wider array of racially diverse ­faces in background and day player roles, even as much of the central, contract cast ­were still white.49 By midde­cade, however, even the especially homogeneous gh grew the place of African American characters and actors. Network policy emphasized a color-­blind approach to casting and writing, yet some more culturally specific ele­ments broke through. In one such instance in late 2016, Donnell Turner’s gh character, Curtis Ashford, using speech sprinkled with African American Vernacular En­glish, winkingly suggests that he is risking his life as he and (the white) Jason Morgan open a crypt as part of an investigation, referencing the ste­reo­type of token black characters as first to be killed in horror films. The cultural specificity of the character in this scene and more broadly was indebted to Turner’s creative involvement. The soap invited him to “tell our story, but use your words,” allowing him to make changes to his scripts, “form fitting Curtis for how [he, Turner] would speak.”50 The scaled-­down context of the 2010s has Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  295

opened such opportunities for participation, resulting in this instance in a more culturally resonant characterization. The Bold and the Beautiful also made some repre­sen­ta­tional strides through the story of black model Maya Avent coming out as transgender, having transitioned from her birth-­assigned gender to her identity as a ­woman in the years before her arrival on the soap canvas. While Maya ­faces some trauma as her past is outed publicly, the scenes in which she reveals her identity to her boyfriend, Rick Forrester, model ac­cep­tance, particularly in contrast with Maya’s more troubled relationship with her parents, who become part of the narrative through this story, as well.51 That Maya is black as well as trans, and that she is a front-­burner character throughout, was significant for a soap that has been especially thin on diversity across its history. While Maya was portrayed by cisgendered actress Kara Mosley, and offers an idealized embodiment of feminine beauty, the program nodded t­ oward more varied experience by casting a number of transgender actors in guest and recurring roles within this story line.52 While daytime had pushed some of its repre­sen­ta­tional par­ameters across the 1990s and 2000s, ­these more substantive shifts in the 2010s, especially in soaps that had long been more conservative in their repre­sen­ta­tional politics, suggested that the diminished world of the daytime tv soap might still have the potential to change, to engage with the world around it in ways more attuned to the diversity of the soap audience.

The End? The story of the US daytime tele­vi­sion soap opera from the vantage of 2020 comes closer to a conclusion than at any other point in its history. Culturally and industrially, the dominant narrative suggests that t­ here is ­little place for soap opera in a streaming tv world in which conventional broadcast networks have a diminished place and in which the ­house­wife, long ­imagined to be the natu­ral soap viewer, is no longer a feasible, or perhaps even desirable, identity for w ­ omen who by financial necessity or professional passion have become crucial participants in nondomestic worlds, t­ hose of the conventional workplace or the more flexible and precarious entrepreneurial endeavors of a neoliberal economy. Still, as of 2020, four daytime soaps continue to air daily on broadcast networks, and a growing industry of in­de­pen­dent web soaps is carving a space for soap opera in the business and culture of digital 296  ·  chapter 8

tv. As US daytime soap opera approaches its ninetieth birthday, it may yet have life to live. The influence of daytime tv soap opera on media culture is vast, as the proliferating forms of popu­lar culture in the twenty-­first c­ entury make evident. Feminized cultural spheres, such as the “docusoaps” of real­ity tele­vi­ sion, the magazines and blogs of celebrity gossip, and even the self-­fashioned life narratives of user-­generated social media, all demonstrate the per­sis­tent appeal of the interpersonal drama and serialized storytelling for which soap opera is our culture’s premier and most prolific practitioner. Our investments in characters both “real” and fictional who change (or d ­ on’t) over time, whose travails provide us insight into our own emotions and experiences and identities, whose pasts always shape their pre­sents, and whose ­faces and homes and wardrobes become intensely familiar to us as we follow them over days and years—­all are legacies of soap opera and the “feminine competencies” for which it has long trained and rewarded its viewers.53 Twenty-­first-­century media culture evidences ­these influences in nonfeminized spheres, as well. Indeed, it is arguable that the serialized prime-­ time dramas that have received our culture’s greatest approbation in this era are also deeply indebted to the traditions of soap opera storytelling, despite the sometimes vociferous efforts by their creators and audiences to refuse any articulation to a form so denigrated and feminized.54 The history of daytime tv soap opera in American media culture makes clear that it has influenced and been influenced by other cultural forms, including prime-­time tv, across its long life, the early twenty-­first ­century included.55 Indeed, it is a form that undergirds much of twenty-­first-­century tv storytelling and that has supported eco­nom­ically the network tv business across its most vital de­cades. Her Stories demonstrates that the history of soap opera is a central part of two other histories—­that of American broadcast network tele­vi­sion and of twentieth-­century American culture. ­These histories miss a central economic and creative engine when they fail to take daytime soap opera into account. Always representative of broader developments in the broadcasting industry and its creative practices, and often a leader in innovating ­those practices, the history of soap opera is the history of American broadcast network tele­vi­sion, and the history of American broadcast network tele­vi­sion is a key win­dow into twentieth-­century and twenty-­first-­century American culture. In foregrounding a marginalized sphere of our tele­vi­sion past, Her Stories places a feminized form at the center of our culture’s major mass Can Her Stories Go On?  ·  297

medium, demonstrating that her stories are our stories. For too long, American society and its media industries have ignored or dismissed daytime soap opera, failing to see that its variations over time can help us to understand how media participate in shaping our engagements with one another across private and public spheres. The story of the daytime tv soap narrates the story of American tele­vi­sion, its potential, its disappointments, its imbrication in a power­ful media culture. Soap operas have told stories of everyday lives, within the context of their audience’s everyday lives, across many de­ cades; understanding their history gives us greater insight into our own.

298  ·  chapter 8

notes

introduction 1 Jane Marsh journal, June 28, 1973, author’s personal collection. Marsh shared pages of her journal with me when I noticed her referencing it in her Twitter posts. I ­don’t know Marsh personally, but she has shared details of her personal history and her history as a soap viewer with me as a researcher. 2 Tweet from @jam6242, Jan. 21, 2017. 3 Tweets from @jam6242, Mar. 29 and July 5, 2017. 4 Tweet from @jam6242, June 29, 2017. 5 For example, see tweet from @jam6242, Apr. 20, 2017. 6 Ruth Rosen, “Search for Yesterday,” in Watching Tele­vi­sion, ed. Todd Gitlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 42–67. 7 Christopher Schemering, The Soap Opera Encyclopedia (New York: Random House, 1985). 8 Robert C. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 9 Elana Levine, “­Toward a Paradigm for Media Production Research: B ­ ehind the Scenes at General Hospital,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (Mar. 2001): 66–82. 10 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 13. 11 Allen, 4. 12 Allen, 61–62. 13 Allen, 4. 14 Horace Newcomb, tv: The Most Popu­lar Art (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974), 161–82. 15 Charlotte Brunsdon, “Crossroads: Notes on Soap Opera,” Screen 22, no. 4 (1981): 32–37; Dorothy Hobson, Crossroads: The Drama of a Soap Opera (London: Methuen, 1982); John Fiske, Tele­vi­sion Culture (London: Routledge, 1987). 16 The concept of the “male gaze” was developed in an influential 1975 essay by Laura Mulvey, “Visual Plea­sure and Narrative Cinema,” in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: nyu Press, 1998), 58–69. Some feminist scholarship that considered soap opera in relation to work on melodrama and the ­women’s film included Ellen Seiter, “Eco’s tv Guide: The Soaps,” Tabloid 5

17 18

19 20

21

22 23 24

25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

(1981): 35–43; Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-­Produced Fantasies for W ­ omen, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007). In 1984, Screen published two articles engaged with such questions: Jane Feuer, “Melodrama, Serial Form, and Tele­vi­sion ­Today,” Screen 25, no. 1 (1984): 4–17; and Annette Kuhn, “­Women’s Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera, and Theory,” Screen 25, no. 1 (1984): 18–28. Charlotte Brunsdon, The Feminist, the House­wife, and the Soap Opera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 217. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: bfi, 1999); Jason Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­ sion: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004). Elana Levine, “Melodrama and Soap Opera,” Feminist Media Histories 4, no. 2 (2018): 117–22. Christine Gledhill, “The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation,” in Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the ­Women’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: bfi, 1987), 5–42; Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from ­Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001); Linda Williams, On the Wire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). For example, see Lynn Spigel, Make Room for tv: Tele­vi­sion and the ­Family Ideal in Postwar Amer­ic­ a (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); and Lynne Joyrich, Reviewing Reception: Tele­vi­sion, Gender, and Post-­modern Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 6. Scott, 10. Lynn Spigel, “Detours in the Search for Tomorrow: Tania Modleski’s Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-­Produced Fantasies for W ­ omen,” Camera Obscura 5, nos. 1–2 (1985): 228. Scott notes that “her-­story” is a central practice of ­women’s history, but that it should be paired with a more critical engagement with the politics of existing histories in order to more fully rewrite history in ways that engage the “­silent and often hidden operations of gender.” Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 18–27. Jennifer Hayward, Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 1–2. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 3. “Soap Opera,” Fortune 33 (Mar. 1946): 120. Cynthia B. Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 103–29. In 1940, six manufacturers sponsored more than two-­thirds of all the network radio soaps. Merrill Denison, “Soap Opera,” Harper’s, Apr. 1940, 499. Jason Loviglio, Radio’s Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-­Mediated Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 73. Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 172.

300  ·  Notes to Introduction

33 Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 159–64; Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935–1947 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 119–21; Marilyn Lavin, “Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera,” Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (June 1995): 86. 34 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 18. 35 Allen, 25. 36 Herta Herzog, “What Do We ­Really Know about Daytime Serial Listeners?,” in Radio Research 1942–1943, ed. P. F. Lazarsfeld and F. N. Stanton (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1944), 3–33. 37 I examine the reasons for ­these gaps in “The Rise and Fall of Soap Opera,” in The Blackwell Companion to the History of American Broadcasting, ed. Aniko Bodroghkozy (Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2018), 301–20. 38 Elana Levine, Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Tele­ vi­sion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). For other examples, see Julie D’Acci, Defining ­Women: Tele­vi­sion and the Case of Cagney and Lacey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Michael Curtin, Redeeming the Wasteland: Tele­vi­sion Documentary and Cold War Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Aniko Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube: Sixties Tele­vi­ sion and the Youth Rebellion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 39 For example, see Anna McCarthy, Ambient Tele­vi­sion: Visual Culture and Public Space (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Victoria E. Johnson, Heart­ land tv: Prime Time Tele­vi­sion and the Strug­gle for US Identity (New York: nyu Press, 2008). 40 This is the label Elaine Tyler May uses to describe the culture of the post–­World War II period, including its constraining expectations of bifurcated gender roles and the connection between such expectations and the anx­ie­ ties of the Cold War. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2008). 41 Nina Leibman characterizes this period of film and tv history in ­these terms. Nina Leibman, Living Room Lectures: The Fifties ­Family in Film and Tele­vi­sion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). 42 I have watched all episodes of any soaps commercially available on vhs or dvd, rerun on now-­defunct cable channel Soapnet, or currently rerunning, namely, The Doctors on Retro TV. The only daytime soap available in full on commercially distributed dvd is Dark Shadows. ­There are select episode runs ofThe Bold and the Beautiful available commercially and, in the 2000s, bvdm Distribution released select episodes of Guiding Light and As the World Turns on dvd. ­Earlier, a handful of special-­episode collections of abc’s soaps and of Guiding Light ­were released on vhs. 43 Produced on videotape from its 1963 beginning, many of gh’s past episodes have been preserved. The ucla Film and Tele­vi­sion Archive has most episodes from 1963 to around 1970, although it lacks the resources to convert them all into Notes to Introduction  ·  301

viewable formats. The existence of 1970s episodes is less clear; if abc retained them, it has not made them publicly available. 44 Some of the longer or ongoing runs of individual soaps I have watched include contemporaneously viewing ­every episode of General Hospital since 1981, contemporaneous viewing of Port Charles for its first ­couple of years on air and subsequent viewing of several of its “books” from the early 2000s, all of Dark Shadows, all of Ryan’s Hope from its 1975 debut through 1981, and about one year of Another World from 1990 and 1991. I continue to watch all episodes of The Doctors from late 1967 on, as aired on Retro TV. I discuss my methods of viewing some of this content in “Digital Tools for Tele­vi­sion Historiography: Researching and Writing the History of US Daytime Soap Opera,” in The Arclight Guide to Media History and the Digital Humanities, ed. Charles Acland and Eric Hoyt, 2016, http://­projectarclight​.­org​/­book​/.

chapter 1. serials in transition 1 Portia ­Faces Life script, episode 1, Apr. 5, 1954, Kent, lab. While not widely acknowledged as racially charged language at the time, Portia’s reference to “scalping” demonstrates the presumed whiteness of soap characters and their audience. 2 Leonard Hole and Jini Boyd O’Connor, “Tele­vi­sion,” in Radio and Tele­vi­sion Writing, Revised and Enlarged, ed. Max Wylie (New York: Rinehart and Com­ pany, 1950), 423. 3 William Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion: The Industry and Its Critics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); and Spigel, Make Room for tv. 4 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 122–25. 5 Marsha Francis Cassidy, What ­Women Watched: Daytime Tele­vi­sion in the 1950s (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 3–4. 6 Jennifer Hyland Wang details the tensions between sponsors’ use of daytime radio serials and the turn to tv in the postwar period. “ ‘The Case of the Radio-­Active House­wife’: Relocating Radio in the Age of Tele­vi­sion,” in The Radio Reader, ed. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (New York: Routledge, 2002), 343–66. 7 This broadcast aired on the Chicago cbs affiliate. Jim Cox, The Daytime Serials of Tele­vi­sion, 1946–1960 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 25. 8 Hal Cooper and Wes Kenney, interviews, Archive of American Tele­vi­sion, http://­ www​.­emmytvlegends​.­org​/­. David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Tele­vi­sion (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 2004), 151, discusses Kenney’s history at DuMont. 9 “A Unique Twist to the Tele Soap Opera Given by Caples’ Man Lewis,” Televisor, Nov.–­Dec. 1946, 33; “Faraway Hill,” Televisor, Nov.–­Dec. 1946, 29. 10 Spigel, Make Room for tv; Mary Jane Higby, Tune in Tomorrow (New York: Cowles, 1968), 205; Mona Bruns Thomas, By Emily Possessed (New York: Exposition Press, 1973), 98–99; Cox, The Daytime Serials of Tele­vi­sion, 27–28. 302  ·  Notes to Introduction

11 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 123; Cassidy, What ­Women Watched, 4; Irna Phillips, “All My Worlds” autobiographical writing, 138–39, Box 12, Folder 3, Phillips additions, whs. 12 “­These Are My ­Children,” Variety, Feb. 9, 1949, 34. For examples of attention to visuals, see scripts in “­These Are My ­Children Correspondence . . . ​1948–53,” Box 54, Phillips, whs. 13 Shawn VanCour, “From Radio to Tele­vi­sion: Sound Style and Audio Technique in Early tv Anthology Dramas,” in The Routledge Companion to Screen ­Music and Sound, ed. Miguel Mera, Ronald Sadoff, and Ben Winters (New York: Routledge, 2017), 166–67. Contemporaneously Hole and O’Connor described tv as “the visual and the aural” in 1950 (“Tele­vi­sion,” 410). Phillips to Bill Ramsey, Sept. 7, 1948, “p&g Correspondence, 1937–49,” Box 62, Phillips, whs. 14 Phillips to Showerman, Jan. 14, 1949; Phillips to Ramsey, Mar. 8, 1949, “p&g Correspondence, 1937–49,” Box 62, Phillips, whs. 15 Norman Felton, “The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique,” Dec. 1, 1948, “­These Are My ­Children, 1–7,” Box 54, Phillips, whs. 16 Norman Felton, “The Daytime Serial of Tele­vi­sion,” Feb. 20, 1949, “­These Are My ­Children Correspondence,” Box 54, Phillips, whs; Kelly Brinker, “The Never-­ Ending Story,” American Cinematographer, Apr. 2018, 72. 17 Felton, “The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique.” 18 Ted Mills, “Addenda to ‘The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique,’ ” Dec. 6, 1948, “­These Are My ­Children, 1–7,” Box 54, Phillips, WHS. 19 Felton, “The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique.” Horace Newcomb describes the soap opera set as “an abstraction” in his 1974 take on the form. By that point, sets ­were more elaborate than in Felton’s day, but Newcomb is suggesting a similar princi­ple at work. Newcomb, tv: The Most Popu­lar Art, 165. 20 Mills, “Addenda to ‘The Basis for a Tele­vi­sion Production Technique.’ ” 21 On nbc’s attitude, see memo from Charles C. Bevis Jr. to Carlton D. Smith, Sept. 1, 1949, Box 589, Folder 11, nbc, whs. 22 Milton H. Biow, Butting In, an Adman Speaks Out (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 210–11. 23 Biow, 210–11; Allen (Speaking of Soap Operas, 122–23) describes p&g’s desire to expand into tv. 24 Wayne Oliver, “Ted Steele Follows Tough Schedule on Video and Radio,” Sunday Times Signal (Zanesville, OH)/ap, Dec. 3, 1950, 28. 25 Tele­vi­sion historians have not fully accounted for the visual style of early tv soaps, ­either. Spigel (Make Room for tv, 78), citing Allen, suggests that the “minimum of action and visual interest” in early soaps allowed ­house­wives to go about their work without closely watching the set. 26 sft, CBS, Sept. 3, 1951, ucla Film and tv. 27 Memo from Hummerts to Rosamond, Aug. 27, 1953, Box 26a, Folder “Scripts,” Hummert, ahc. Notes to Chapter 1  ·  303

28 The technique appears in feature films long before the emergence of tele­vi­sion, as in Stella Dallas (1937). Greg M. Smith, Film Structure and the Emotion System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 93. 29 Jonah Horwitz, “Visual Style in the ‘Golden Age’ Anthology Drama: The Case of cbs,” Cinemas 23, nos. 2–3 (Spring 2013): 50–51. 30 sft, Sept. 3, 1951. 31 Phillips to Lesan, July 5, 1952, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs; Memo from Hummerts to Rosamond, Aug. 27, 1953. 32 sft, Sept. 3, 1951; Mar. 27, 1953, ucla Film and tv. 33 sft, Mar. 27, 1953. 34 William Boddy, “The Amateur, the House­wife, and the Salesroom Floor: Promoting Postwar US Tele­vi­sion,” in Tele­vi­sion: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, vol. 1, ed. Toby Miller (London: Routledge, 2003), 91. Siepmann used daytime soap opera as a key example of the dominance of advertising in radio broadcasting, arguing that advertising was in fact the point of the programming. Charles Arthur Siepmann, Radio’s Second Chance (Boston: ­Little, Brown, 1946). 35 Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, 2nd ed. (New York: Rinehart, 1955), 214. The first edition of Wylie’s book was published in 1942. 36 Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 96. 37 John Crosby, “The Soaper Formula,” Eve­ning Review (East Liverpool, OH) (ap), Feb. 5, 1951, 11; “Prob­lems of a tv Soap Opera,” Sponsor, Nov. 29, 1951, 39; John Crosby, “Happy New Year,” Marion Daily Star (ap), Jan. 1, 1952, 11. 38 Ann Griffith to Ted Corday, Mar. 28, 1957, Box 2, “atwt Publicity, 1956–57,” p&g, whs. 39 Rans., “Kitty Foyle,” Variety, Jan. 22, 1958, 47. 40 John Taylor to Jane Crusinberry, Aug. 14, 1951, Box 1, Folder 6, Crusinberry, whs; Frank and Anne Hummert to Mr. Leonard and Lloyd Rosamond, Aug. 27, 1953, Box 26a, Folder “Scripts,” Hummert, ahc. 41 Lewis Titterton to Phillips, Apr. 30, 1951; Phillips to Titterton, Apr. 21, May 5, and Sept. 17, 1951, Box 38, Folder 1; Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 140–41, Box 12, Folder 3. 42 She discussed this with the gl producers at Compton Advertising. David Lesan to Phillips, June 4, 1951, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 43 She spoke to the Illinois Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs in 1949 about “the difference between audio and video.” Phillips to Felton, Feb. 9, 1949, “­These Are My ­Children #1–­#7 Final . . . ,” Box 54, Phillips, whs. 44 gl script, Episode 2, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 45 Phillips to Titterton, Aug. 10, 1951; Sept. 17, 1951; Untitled remarks, gl kinescopes, no date, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 46 Phillips to Lesan, Aug. 10, 1951. 47 Video for script #1112 and Video for script #1113, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 48 Irna Phillips, “gl—­Wednesday, July 2, 1952,” May 28, 1952, Box 39, Folder 7, Phillips, whs. See also Ellen Seiter, “­Women Writing Soap Opera: The ­Careers of Irna Phillips and Jane Crusinberry,” in Never-­Ending Stories: American Soap 304  ·  Notes to Chapter 1

49 50 51

52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65

Operas and the Cultural Production of Meaning, ed. Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-­Maria Warth (Trier: wvt, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1994), 43. David Lesan, “Simulcasting the Dramatic Serial,” pre­sen­ta­tion at American Association of Advertising Agencies, Nov. 23, 1953, Box 1, Lesan, ahc. “Is This tv/Radio’s Programming Pattern of the ­Future?,” Sponsor, Oct. 6, 1952, 29–31, 90. Revivals included Follow Your Heart, reprising When a Girl Marries; Valiant Lady, a revival in name only; and Portia ­Faces Life. Tele­vi­sion versions of still-­ running radio serials included The Brighter Day, following the gl model; and The Road of Life and One Man’s ­Family, each of which took up ­earlier moments in their respective stories than ­those ­running contemporaneously on radio. In 1956, creator Elaine Carrington proposed a tv version of her still-­running radio serial, Pepper Young’s ­Family, but with a shift in focus to the now-­adult Pepper and his teenage ­children, yet the show was never produced. Elaine Carrington and Betty Shea, “Pepper Young’s ­Family: Pre­sen­ta­tion of Tele­vi­sion Series,” Box 20, Folder 5, Carrington, nypl. In 1958, Kitty Foyle revived the long-­gone radio serial, and Young Doctor Malone, still ­running on radio, changed the setting and the focus from the radio version. Christopher Schemering, Guiding Light: A 50th Anniversary Cele­bration (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), 4. Golden Win­dows, nbc, multiple episodes, including July 5, 1954, Paley. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 153. “tv Switch ­Simple for Guiding Light,” publication and date unknown, Box 1, Folder IV, Lesan, ahc; Phillips to Lesan, July 18, 1952, Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. Mary Marlin tv scripts, Box 39, Folder 6, Crusinberry, whs. For example, see ­Woman with a Past script #13, Feb. 3, 1954, Kent, lab. John Crosby, “Soap Opera on Tele­vi­sion,” The Portsmouth Times (ap), Sept. 1, 1953, 24; “Video for script #1113,” Box 38, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 171. Concerning Miss Marlow sales brochure, Box 380, Folder 42, nbc, whs. An example of Portia being pulled between ­career and f­ amily is Portia ­Faces Life, nbc, July 7, 1954. “ ‘Daydrama’—­Rich After­noon Fare on nbc-­t v,” press release, Nov. 24, 1954, Box 145, Folder 59, nbc, whs; Miss Susan, NBC, Aug. 24, 1951, Paley. “Soap in Your Eyes,” Newsweek, Feb. 1, 1954, 74. They point to the early 1960s as the key moment for the ­wholesale arrival of the tv soap. Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 125; Cassidy, What W ­ omen Watched, 3–5. Pamela Wilson, “nbc Tele­vi­sion’s ‘Operation Frontal Lobes’: Cultural Hegemony and Fifties’ Program Planning,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Tele­vi­ sion 15, no. 1 (1995): 83–104. Inger L. Stole, “­There Is No Place Like Home: nbc’s Search for a Daytime Audience, 1954–1957,” Communications Review 2, no. 2 (1997): 135; Matthew Murray, Notes to Chapter 1  ·  305

66

67 68

69 70 71 72 73

74

75

76 77 78

79

80 81 82 83

“Matinee Theater: Difference, Compromise and the 1950s Daytime Audience,” in Small Screens, Big Ideas: Tele­vi­sion in the 1950s, ed. Janet Thumim (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 131–48; Cassidy, What ­Women Watched, 158. Memo from Fred Wile Jr. to Carleton D. Smith, et al., Oct. 13, 1950, Box 589, Folder 11; Memos from Frank Cleaver to Michael Dann, Apr. 20, 1954; Thomas McAvity to George McGarrett, July 29, 1954, Box 374, Folder 58, nbc, whs. Albert McCleery, “Memorandum on nbc Matinee Theater,” Sept. 12, 1955, Box 1, Folder 7, McCleery, ucla. Richard F. Bunbury to Roy C. Porteus, May 14, 1952, Box 137, Folder 25; Memo from Ben Park to John Herbert, Feb. 6, 1953, Box 369, Folder 3, nbc, whs; Alfred J. Jaffe, “Daytime tv: Where Is It Headed?,” Sponsor, May 18, 1953, 29. “­Those Bubbling cbs-­t v Soaps,” Variety, Feb. 10, 1954, 29. “nbc Slips on a Cake of Soap,” Variety, Mar. 31, 1954, 27. Oscar Schisgall, Eyes on Tomorrow: The Evolution of Procter & ­Gamble (Chicago: J.G. Ferguson, 1981), 193. Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 157. “nbc slips . . . ,” Memos from John H. Dodge to Matthew J. Culligan, Nov. 15, 1954; Clyde J. Clem to Messrs. Adams et al., Nov. 16, 1954; Clem to Basil Matthews, Nov. 18, 1954, Box 135, Folder 25. “ ‘Daydrama’ is new group title . . . ,” nbc Tele­vi­sion News Release, Nov. 19, 1954, Box 145, Folder 59; Memo from John B. Lanigan to all concerned, Dec. 29, 1955, Box 401, Folder 5, nbc, whs. In 1954, the size of the tv soap opera audience surpassed that of radio, and p&g’s ad bud­get for tv exceeded that for radio for the first time. “tv Audience for Soap Operas Now Tops Radio; Cheaper to Do Live,” Variety, Aug. 4, 1954, 23, 31. “900g Soap Opera Vidpix Sked for Procter,” Variety, Feb. 2, 1954, 22; “Sisson Sees Filmed Soapers as Staple for ­Future,” Variety, Nov. 3, 1954, 39; “tv Audience for Soap Operas Now Tops Radio”; “Mona Kent Soaper as Jamaica’s First,” “Chi Stakes Major Claim to Vidfilms Soaper Formula,” “Official Sets Juliet Jones Series in ‘1st with the Soaps’ Distrib Bid,” Variety, Dec. 29, 1954, 33. Storrs Haynes to Phillips, Dec. 2, 1954, Box 42, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. “Radio Relief at Last,” Kansas City Times, Sept. 28, 1955, 1. David Lesan, “Recommendation for programming of the 3:00 to 3:30 pm, nbc, Monday through Friday, Tele­vi­sion Time Period,” Mar. 20, 1958, Box 1, Folder VI, Lesan, ahc. Corday to Phillips, Nov. 29, 1954; Phillips to Haynes, Nov. 22, 1954, Dec. 27, 1954, Box 42, Folder 1; Titterton to Phillips, Apr. 30, 1948, Box 60, Folder 2, Phillips, whs; Memo from Samish to Sylvester Weaver, Oct. 2, 1953, Box 122, Folder 5, nbc, whs; “The Case for the Half Hour Serial,” Box 1, Folder IV, Lesan, ahc. Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 148. Phillips to Haynes, Nov. 22, 1954; Corday to Phillips, Nov. 29, 1954. Alfred J. Jaffe, “Daytime Tele­vi­sion’s Quiet ­Little Revolution,” Sponsor, Apr. 19, 1958, 39. Art Woodstone, “New Data Bares tv’s Whopping Success Story on Daytime Pull,” Variety, Sept. 12, 1956, 24.

306  ·  Notes to Chapter 1

84 nbc Research, Audience Mea­sure­ment Division, “Daytime tv Primer,” Dec. 1961, Box 195, Folder 14, nbc, whs. 85 “Daytime Network tv: W­here the Action Is,” Tele­vi­sion Age, Sept. 25, 1967, 71. 86 “The Network That In­ven­ted Daytime,” Tele­vi­sion, May 1957, 3. 87 “Soap Still 99 44/100% Safe: Daytime Weepers Are No Sad Segs,” Variety, Dec. 3, 1958, 27. 88 “cbs-­t v Daytime $77,000,000: Top Six Shows All Weepers,” Variety, July 27, 1960, 25. 89 Val Adams, “Networks Cancel Two Soap Operas,” New York Times, Sept. 5, 1962, 60; cbs Daytime ad, Variety, Oct. 14, 1964, 36–37. 90 John Crosby, “Daytime Soap Opera Star Fed Up with His Role,” Lowell Sun (ap), May 15, 1960, 19; “Peggy McCay’s ‘No Soap’ on Love of Life tv’er Despite Enviable Status,” Variety, Sept. 21, 1955, 29. 91 Cynthia Lowry, “Death of Soap Opera Heroine Triggers Calls,” Stevens Point Daily Journal/ap, Feb. 28, 1961, 5; John Crosby, “The Genesis of Agony; Soap Opera Version,” Lowell Sun/ap, Mar. 12, 1961, 19; Cynthia Lowry, “Death in Soap Opera Disturbs Faithful Viewers,” Brainerd Daily Dispatch/ap, Oct. 9, 1962, 7. 92 See, for example, atwt, CBS, Mar. 20, 1958; LoL, CBS, Nov. 11, 1963, ucla Film and TV. 93 Fisher to Phillips, July 11, 1957, Box 3, “Correspondence 1957,” p&g, whs; atwt, Mar. 25, 1958, ucla Film and TV. 94 atwt, cbs, Mar. 20 and 25, 1958, ucla Film and TV. 95 Concerning Miss Marlowe, NBC, undated, Paley. 96 From ­These Roots, nbc, undated episode, 1959–61, Paley. 97 Nick Hall, “Zoomar: Frank G. Back and the Postwar Tele­vi­sion Zoom Lens,” Technology and Culture 57 (Apr. 2016): 364–71. 98 Nick Hall notes a similar, ­limited use in select live anthology dramas of the same period, wherein the shot was used to “emphasize the dramatic peaks of the teleplays.” Nick Hall, The Zoom: Drama at the Touch of a Lever (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 92. 99 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 70. 100 Memo from Imelda Jones to Fisher, Nov. 2, 1956, Box 2, “atwt Production, 1956–57,” p&g, whs; atwt, cbs, Feb. 6, 1959, ucla Film and TV. 101 Harold Stern, “Jazz Recording ­Will Be Based on Soap Opera,” Post Standard, Feb. 25, 1961, 17; George C. White to Lucy Ferri, Nov. 18, 1963, Box 8, Folder 8, p&g, whs. 102 Ferri to Ray Dillon, Jan. 14, 1960, Box 9, Folder 4, p&g, whs. 103 H. C. Meier to William Vallee, June 21, 1956, Box 2, “atwt Production 1956–57,” p&g, whs. 104 Walter Gorman to Titterton, Mar. 27, 1958, Box 1, “Correspondence,” Lesan, ahc. 105 Zachary Campbell, “When Video Was New: From Technology to Medium, 1956–1965” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2015). Notes to Chapter 1  ·  307

106 Gorman to Titterton, Mar. 27, 1958, Box 1, “Correspondence,” Lesan, ahc; Gorman to Bert Mulligan, Aug. 16, 1960; Memo from Ferri to Mulligan, Aug. 22, 1960; Ferri to David Lawrence, Sept. 8, 1960; Alfred Markim to Ferri, Sept. 13, 1960, Box 8, Folder 13, p&g, whs; Memo from Gwen Gerhard to Ferri, Sept. 16, 1960; Mulligan to Paul Rauch, Apr. 17, 1962, Box 8, Folder 13, p&g, whs. 107 “An opportunity for Procter & ­Gamble to participate in residuals” is the one point made briefly in Gorman’s 1958 pitch to Titterton. Gorman to Titterton, Mar. 27, 1958. In the pitch from nta Telestudios to Ferri in 1960, Markim mentions a proposed biweekly erasure of videotapes for subsequent reuse, although he notes that tapes could be preserved for an additional fee “in the case of potential re-­run.” Markim to Ferri, Sept. 13, 1960. 108 Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion; Derek Kompare, Rerun Nation: How Repeats In­ven­ted American Tele­vi­sion (New York: Routledge, 2005); Campbell, “When Video Was New.” 109 In 1962, three soaps ­were produced for a brief time on videotape: The Brighter Day and The Clear Horizon each had brief periods of production in Los Angeles, on tape. ­There is some evidence that Young Doctor Malone was shot on tape for a time in 1962 as well. Thomas, By Emily Possessed, 130, 135; Cecil Smith, “Soap Opera Not Washed Up Yet,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 23, 1962, c14; “Young Dr. Malone First U.S. Soaper into International tv,” Variety, Oct. 24, 1962, 35. 110 Barbara Klinger, Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 71–84. 111 Klinger, Melodrama and Meaning, 82–83; Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 18–29. 112 Hursleys to Potter, Aug. 8, 1959, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs. 113 Ferri to Bell, Aug. 26, 1957, Box 144, “gl Correspondence,” Bell, ucla. 114 Lesan to Short, Sept. 21, 1957, Box 1, Folder IV, Lesan, ahc. 115 Klinger, Melodrama and Meaning, 75. Citation is of Moira Walsh, Amer­i­ca, Sept. 27, 1958, 637. 116 Samuel Grafton, “The Tearful World of Soap Operas,” tv Guide, Aug. 12, 1961, 10. 117 Memo reproduced in Max Wylie, Writing for Tele­vi­sion (New York: Cowles Book Com­pany, 1970), 405. 118 Tele­gram from Potter to Leonard Reeg, Oct. 4, 1960, Box 66, Folder 5, Dobson, whs. 119 Tele­gram from Potter to Reeg, May 16, 1960, Box 66, Folder 5, Dobson, whs. 120 Frank and Doris Hursley, “Story Projection for Search for Tomorrow,” Box 66, Folder 1, Dobson, whs. 121 Frank and Doris Hursley. The Hursleys also noted that they ­were contractually obligated to use Mary Stuart, Joanne’s portrayer, four times per week. Stuart remembered the Hursleys as ­doing a disser­vice to the character, seeking to displace her with a younger actress playing the part of a psychiatrist. Mary Stuart, Both of Me (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 123. My evidence suggests that the Hursleys valued the character more than did Leonard Reeg, the show’s producer at its new agency, Leo Burnett. Reeg suggested that the show consider 308  ·  Notes to Chapter 1

killing Joanne, or making her a “Ma Perkins,” exactly what the Hursleys had argued against. Reeg to Potter, July 8, 1959, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs. 122 On the role of community in soap opera narrative, see Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 57, 70. abc understood how significant community was to gh from the outset, urging the writers to create links between characters and story lines as much as pos­si­ble. Memo from Dunn to Gene Banks and James Young, Apr. 4, 1963, Box 21, “Comments from abc,” Hursley, ahc. 123 “General Directions,” n.d., Box 1, “Production Files 1971–73, liamst General,” Marcus, ahc.

chapter 2. daytime therapy 1 Irna Phillips, “Projected Storyline for atwt,” Oct. 11, 1956, Box 2, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56–’57,” p&g, whs. 2 Irna Phillips, untitled notes, Box 2, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56-’57,” p&g, whs. 3 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1963), 28–29. 4 Eve Moskowitz, “ ‘It’s Good to Blow Your Top’: ­Women’s Magazines and a Discourse of Discontent, 1945–1965,” Journal of ­Women’s History 8, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 66–98; Jackie Byars, All That Hollywood Allows: Re-­reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Joanne Meyero­witz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946–1958,” in Not June Cleaver: ­Women and Gender in Postwar Amer­ i­ca, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyero­witz (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 1994), 229–62. 5 This insight is inspired by Leigh Goldstein’s analy­sis of the public affairs programs that appeared in daytime tele­vi­sion in the late 1950s and early 1960s as being marked by a “therapeutic address.” Leigh Goldstein, “Designing ­Woman! Space, Affect and Femininity in Postwar American Public Affairs tv,” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion 9, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 42, 46–50. 6 Spigel, Make Room for tv, 75–76; Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 20. 7 Richard P. McDonagh, “Tele­vi­sion Writing Prob­lems,” in Tele­vi­sion Production Prob­lems, ed. John F. Royal (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1948), 39. 8 Sam Cuff, quoted in “Tele­vi­sion as an Advertising Medium,” Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Radio and Business, ed. D. E. Moser (New York: City College of New York, 1946), 121. 9 Irna Phillips to Irving K. Showerman, Jan. 14, 1949, “­These Are My ­Children 1–7,” Box 54, Phillips, whs. 10 Oscar Katz and Ernest Dichter, Tele­vi­sion Audience Research (New York: Columbia Broadcasting Com­pany, 1945), 6. 11 Advertest Research, May 1951, Box 193, Folder 16, nbc, whs. 12 “tv in the Daytime,” Sponsor, Feb. 28, 1949, 26; “Daytime tv,” Broadcasting/ Telecasting, Dec. 11, 1950, 74; “Why Soap Opera Sponsors Stay Put 52 Weeks,” Sponsor, Apr. 4, 1951, 60+. Notes to chapter 2  ·  309

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29

30 31 32

33

Spigel, Make Room for tv, 83–85. Weinstein, The Forgotten Network, 51–58. Weinstein, 54. Phillips to Richard Davis, Dec. 4, 1948, “­These Are My ­Children Correspondence,” Box 54, Phillips, whs. See Wang (“ ‘The Case of the Radio-­Active House­wife’,”) for more on the gendered unease with which daytime tv was greeted. Cassidy, What ­Women Watched, 59, 75; “Daytime tv: Network Programming,” Sponsor, Jan. 22, 1951, 44+; “tv Stars in the After­noon,” Variety, Oct. 3, 1951, 29. Advertest Research, “The Daytime Audience,” Mar. 1949, Box 193, Folder 2, nbc, whs. Jules Nathan, “Who’ll Watch Daytime tv?,” Sales Management, Apr. 1, 1949, 46; “All Day Long,” Newsweek, Sept. 24, 1951, 57. Cassidy (What ­Women Watched) notes the widely assumed virtues of hosts such as Kate Smith and Garry Moore. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, M.D., Modern ­Woman: The Lost Sex (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1947), 106. Lundberg and Farnham, 364. ­These authors argue for a revaluation of ­woman’s domestic and caregiving duties, seeing ­these as her “instinctive desire.” “Sobs and Suds,” tv Guide, June 5, 1953, 8. Look Magazine, The Decline of the American Male (New York: Random House, 1958), 7. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for ­Mother: The Ironies of House­hold Technol­ ogy from the Open Hearth to the Micro­wave (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 201, 199. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study in the Changing American Character (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950); Lundberg and Farnham, Modern ­Woman. Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psy­chol­ogy: Po­liti­cal Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 291. Daniel Horo­witz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 1998), 206. Daniel Horo­witz, The Anx­i­eties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 2004), 56–58. Katz and Dichter, Tele­vi­sion Audience Research. Horo­witz, The Anx­i­eties of Affluence, 123. On Dichter, mr, and ­women consumers, see Shelley Nickles, “More Is Better: Mass Consumption, Gender, and Class Identity in Postwar Amer­ic­ a,” American Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Dec. 2002): 581–622; and Lawrence R. Samuel, Freud on Madison Ave­nue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Lizabeth Cohen, “The Class Experience of Mass Consumption: Workers as Consumers in Interwar Amer­i­ca,” in The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in

310  ·  Notes to chapter 2

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59

American History, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 195. Lee Rainwater, Workingman’s Wife: Her Personality, World and Life Style (New York: Oceana Publications, 1959), 181. Andrea Tone, The Age of Anxiety: A History of Amer­i­ca’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers (New York: Basic Books, 2009). “Personality Plus,” nbc brochure, 1961, Box 195, Folder 14, nbc, whs. Miles Nervine ad, atwt, cbs, Feb. 2, 1959, ucla Film and TV. “Personality Plus.” “Daytime at cbs-­t v,” Broadcasting, June 27, 1960, 84. “Drama by Daylight,” Variety, Aug. 16, 1961, 33. Goldstein, “Designing ­Woman!,” 39–53. “You Are the Critic,” San Mateo Times tv Week, Aug. 27, 1960, 59. Zelda Feig, “Why I Like Soap Operas,” Sunday News, June 14, 1959, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs. Mrs. Thomas Bender to tv Guide, Jan. 31, 1964, Box 62, Folder 759, Friedan, Harvard. Among o ­ thers, see C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby, Soap Fans: Pursuing Plea­sure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 1995). Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: ­Women, Patriarchy, and Popu­lar Lit­er­a­ ture, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Mrs. Joe Skinner to tv Guide, Feb. 5, 1964, Box 62, Folder 761, Friedan, Harvard. Mrs. Robert Roth to tv Guide, Jan. 31, 1964, Box 62, Folder 759, Friedan, Harvard. Mrs. Leo G. Stegnell to Columbia Broadcasting Co., Mar. 25, 1957; Mrs. Archie B. Muse to The Guiding Light, Mar. 26, 1957, Box 8, “Format, 1956–1973,” p&g, whs. Vera Cordo to tv Guide, Jan. 30, 1964, Box 62, Folder 758, Friedan, Harvard. Shirley Costa to tv Guide, Feb. 12, 1964, Box 62, Folder 764, Friedan, Harvard. Wanda G. Gebhart to tv Guide, Feb. 11, 1964, Box 62, Folder 763, Friedan, Harvard. Mrs. Melvin Voltzke to tv Guide, Feb. 11, 1964, Box 62, Folder 763, Friedan, Harvard. John Crosby, “Soap Opera on Tele­vi­sion,” Portsmouth Times/ap, Sept. 1, 1953, 24. Frances Kish, “For the Ladies,” tv/Radio Mirror, May 1959, 68+; Jo Ranson, “78 Years Go Down the Drain in Killing Off Four Tearful Soapers,” Variety, Feb. 4, 1959, 52. “Soap Opera Wails and Woes,” Life, Apr. 5, 1954, 119–20. Phillips, “Suggested Storyline for The Guiding Light,” Apr. 16, 1955, Box 43, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre En­glish, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to ­Women (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1978). Lundberg and Farnham exemplified this perspective in Modern ­Woman. Samuels, Freud on Madison Ave­nue, 146–47. Notes to chapter 2  ·  311

60 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 69; Herman, The Romance of American Psy­chol­ ogy, 291. 61 Irna Phillips, “­Every ­Woman’s Life Is a Soap Opera,” McCall’s, Mar. 1965, 117; Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 180, Box 12, Folder 3. 62 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 64, Box 12, Folder 2, and 146, Box 12, Folder 3, Phillips, WHS; Phillips, “­Every ­Woman’s Life Is a Soap Opera,” 168. 63 Phillips, “­Every ­Woman’s Life Is a Soap Opera,” 168. 64 Phillips, “Projected Storyline for atwt.” 65 Fisher to Edward Herp, “Story Synopsis—­April to June,” June 24, 1957, Box 3, “Correspondence 1957,” p&g, whs. 66 Ramsey to Phillips, Mar. 1, 1949, Box 62, Folder 3, Phillips, whs; Untitled document, Box 2, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56–’57,” p&g, whs. 67 As told to MaryJo Adams. MaryJo Adams, “An American Soap Opera: As the World Turns 1956–1978” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1980), 107. 68 Phillips, untitled notes, Box 2, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56–’57,” p&g, whs. 69 Phillips, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56–’57” 70 Phillips, “Fisher atwt Storylines ’56–’57.” 71 Phillips to Guiding Light Kids, Oct. 2, 1954, Box 89, Folder 13, Phillips, whs. 72 Phillips to Lucy, David, and Bob, Feb. 28, 1955, Box 89, Folder 13, Phillips, whs. 73 Remarriage does not solve all of Claire’s prob­lems, however, as she falls into another depression while married to Doug. 74 Phillips, “Suggested Storyline for The Guiding Light,” Apr. 16, 1955. 75 Phillips, “Suggested Storyline for The Guiding Light.” 76 May, Homeward Bound, 178, 182. 77 Miriam G. Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 163. 78 Feuer, “Melodrama, Serial Form, and Tele­vi­sion ­Today,” 12. 79 Jessica Weiss, To Have and to Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 228. 80 Russell Nye argues that “serials about marriage, especially the pain of it, exceeded all ­others.” Russell B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popu­lar Arts in Amer­i­ca (New York: Dial Press, 1970), 401. 81 First Love promo script, Aug. 25, 1954, Box 133, Folder 65, nbc, whs. 82 Portia ­Faces Life, cbs, 1954 episode; Portia ­Faces Life script, #2, Apr. 6, 1954, Kent, lab. 83 For example, see Portia ­Faces Life script, #4, Apr. 8, 1954, Kent, lab. 84 “A Blue Print for the Relationship of Joanne and Arthur as of March 5,” Box 66, Folder 3, Dobson, whs. 85 Hursleys, “sft Story Projection,” Box 65, Folder 37, Dobson, whs. 86 D. Hursley to Potter, July 7, 1959, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs; “A Blue Print for the Relationship.” 87 “A Blue Print for the Relationship.” 88 Kristin Celello, Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-­Century United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 93–94. 312  ·  Notes to chapter 2

89 Hursleys, “Story Projection for sft,” Box 66, Folder 1; D. Hursley to Potter, July 7, 1959, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs. 90 Celello, Making Marriage Work, 77–83, 89–95, analyzes a range of 1950s media seeking overtly to teach ­women how to save their marriages. 91 For instance, see Lundberg and Farnham, Modern ­Woman, 20. 92 Lesan to Short, Sept. 21, 1957. Similarly, analysts such as Lundberg and Farnham presented their ideas as specific to “modern” womanhood, a periodization meant to come ­after such developments as the Industrial Revolution, (first wave) feminism, and the sexual revolution (of the 1920s). 93 Kristen Hatch, “Selling Soap: Post-­war Tele­vi­sion Soap Opera and the American House­wife,” in Small Screens, Big Ideas: Tele­vi­sion in the 1950s, ed. Janet Thumin (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 40; Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 168–69. 94 atwt, cbs, Dec. 7, 1962, ucla Film and TV. 95 gl, cbs, circa 1952. 96 Bill would return to Springfield in the late 1970s, having faked his death ten years prior. He and Bert did not reconcile, and he died (for good) in the early 1980s. 97 sft, cbs, Oct. 6, 1952, ucla Film and TV. 98 Coined by P. Wylie, the term and its implications spread amid the focus on psychoanalysis in postwar culture. Rebecca Jo Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern Amer­i­ca (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 19–54, 188n7. 99 Phillips, “Suggested Storyline for The Guiding Light,” Apr. 16, 1955; Phillips, “Outline for The Guiding Light,” July 6, 1954, Box 42, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 100 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 147–48, Box 12, Folder 3. 101 atwt, cbs, May 21, 1958, ucla Film and TV. 102 Even this was a significant change for the sponsor given that in 1940 the com­ pany warned that it would “accept no suggestion of illegitimacy” for a pregnancy story on Phillips’s Road of Life. Ken Robinson to Phillips, Jan. 17, 1940, Box 62, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 103 Leibman, Living Room Lectures, 97–103. 104 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 162–65, Box 12, Folder 3. 105 Leibman, Living Room Lectures, 103. 106 ATWT, cbs, Apr. 21, 1961. 107 atwt script, Jan. 14, 1969, Box 9, Folder 7, Phillips additions, whs. 108 atwt script, Mar. 26, 1969, Box 9, Folder 9, Phillips additions, whs. 109 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 165, Box 12, Folder 3. 110 tv Guide Awards, nbc, Mar. 25, 1960.

chapter 3. building network power 1 Jack Hellman, “abc-­t v to Roll Its Own Pix,” Daily Variety, July 19, 1960, 1, 12, Box 4, “News Clippings/Mr. Seligman,” Seligman, ahc.

Notes to Chapter 3  ·  313

2 The Doctors debuted as an episodic, rather than serialized, drama but would become serialized within a year. Ben Jerrod was a ­lawyer drama produced on the West Coast, like gh, but it lasted less than a year. Reviews for The Doctors, Ben Jerrod, gh, Variety, Apr. 3, 1963, 55; Cecil Smith, “Tide Turns in Soaper Outlook,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 1, 1963, c20; Jerry Layton, “Daytime tv Far Cry from Tears,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 3, 1964, c20. 3 Phillips and her collaborators actually retained owner­ship of aw for its first few years before p&g bought them out. “Property Rights Agreement,” May 4, 1964; “Purchase Agreement,” Apr. 10, 1967, Box 130, “aw,” Bell, ucla; Ken Corday, The Days of Our Lives (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2011), 39. 4 Leonard Goldberg interview, Dark Shadows Collection dvd 8, Disc 1. Curtis had worked in tv sports, but he brought in a writer, Art Wallace, who had written for prime time, and a producer, Robert Costello, who had a soap background. Rick DuBrow, “Dark Only Suspense in New Soap Opera,” Los Angeles Times/upi, June 29, 1966, d19; Joan Barthel, “Out in Detergent Land: A Hard Day’s Fright,” New York Times, July 30, 1967, 85. 5 Goldberg interview; Dan Curtis interview, Dark Shadows Collection dvd 11, Disc 67. 6 “Network Daytime: More of a Horse Race,” tv/Radio Age, Sept. 8, 1969, 28–29+. 7 “cbs-­t v Wants More Daylight vs. nbc-­t v,” Variety, Sept. 3, 1969, 44. For example, the stiff competition nbc’s The Doctors offered to cbs’s The Guiding Light led p&g and Compton Advertising to fret over gl’s ratings. Richard Mumma to Short, Oct. 10, 1968; Memos from Graham Hay to J. Moss et al., Nov. 1, 1968; Hay to Mumma, Jan. 29, 1969, Box 8, Folder 16, p&g, whs. 8 “gh Spin-­off 1971/72,” Box 23, Folder 44, Dobson, whs. 9 Joan Walker, “Meanwhile, Folks, Back in Soap City . . . ,” New York Times, Apr. 4, 1970, 107; Les Brown, “Daytime’s Cheerful Tearful,” Variety, Oct. 29, 1969, 35. 10 The first fan magazines focused on soap opera began in the early 1970s. Dark Shadows demonstrated the merchandising potential in daytime drama by the late 1960s. Harry M. Benshoff, Dark Shadows (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 85–90. One volume even identifies ds as the progenitor of transmedia extensions. Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott, tv Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 204. 11 Titterton to Short, Oct. 8, 1963, Box 8, Folder 14, p&g, whs. Appearances in the 1970s included The David Frost Show in 1972 and a week of episodes on The Mike Douglas Show in 1974. 12 For example, see a late-­night special on abc in 1975 (Bob Martin, “Soaps, Sob, and Sex Special ­Will Salute Daytime Serials,” Press-­Telegram [Long Beach], June 26, 1975, 44); and one on cbs Daytime in 1977 (“­After Hours Daytime Special,” Soap Opera Digest, July 1977, 84). abc’s “Love in the After­noon” promo campaign launched in 1978. 13 Steps ­toward this included some prime-­time series with two-­part episodes and a five-­part continuing story on Lassie. Rick DuBrow, “Soap Operas on tv Screens,” Pasadena Star-­News/upi, Sept. 4, 1964, 8; Bob Foster, “tv Screening,” 314  ·  Notes to Chapter 3

14

15

16 17

18 19 20 21

22

23 24

25 26

San Mateo Times, May 21, 1964, 26. The Hursleys had a contract with Screen Gems in 1966 that included provisions for their creation to be ­either a daytime or a prime-­time entry. Allan L. Rice to Barry Lipton, Aug. 30, 1966, Box 10, Folder 8, Dobson, whs. Richard Douglas for the Defense: A Night-­time Tele­vi­sion Serial Proposal, 1962,” Box 5, Folder 41, Dobson, whs; “Proposal,” 1964, Box 21, “Night time version of the daytime serial gh,” Hursley, ahc. Compton Advertising explored the possibility of a prime-­time serial for p&g in 1962. Memo from David Lesan to Lewis Titterton, Apr. 25, 1962; Titterton to Robert E. Short, June 6, 1962, Lesan, Box 1, ahc. In 1963, p&g had a dif­fer­ent agency, Young & Rubicam, develop a prime-­time serial. “p&g Experiments with Prime Time tv Version of Soaper,” Advertising Age, Jan. 7, 1963, 2. “Irna Phillips Pacted as abc-­t v Con­sul­tant,” Variety, Apr. 15, 1964, 28. Monash was quite resistant to Phillips’s influence and sought to differentiate Place from daytime. Paul Monash to Douglas S. Cramer, Apr. 28, 1964, Box 18, “Correspondence-­Letters 1964,” Monash, ahc; Caryn Murphy, “Selling the Continuing Story of Peyton Place: Negotiating the Content of the Primetime Serial,” Historical Journal of Radio, Tele­vi­sion, and Film 33, no. 1 (May 2013): 120–21. Alan Patureau, “Peyton Place to Spread Woe,” Newsday, Jan. 14, 1965, 5c; George Rosen, “tv’s ‘Mainstream of Morality,’ ” Variety, Sept. 23, 1964, 80. George Rosen, “Tele­vi­sion’s Changing Value,” Variety, Sept. 30, 1964, 29; Aleene MacMinn, “Happy ‘Days’ for Carey,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1966, l4; amc proposal, Box 130, “amc ­binder,” Bell, ucla. Val Adams, “nbc Plans to Make Dr. Kildare into a Serial,” New York Times, Mar. 6, 1965, 53. Caryn Murphy, “The Continuing Story: Experiments with Serial Narrative in 1960s Prime-­Time Tele­vi­sion,” Journal of Screenwriting 5, no. 3 (2014): 388–89. Murphy, “Selling the Continuing Story of Peyton Place,” 124. “ ‘Soap Opera’ Are Bad Words at cbs,” Oakland Tribune, Mar. 15, 1965, 10; Richard Oulahan and William Lambert, “The Tyrant’s Fall That Rocked the tv World,” Life, Sept. 10, 1965, 90–92+. Murphy, “Selling the Continuing Story of Peyton Place,” 125. Scripts discussed ways to save money by re-­dressing sets. Episode 16 script, Box 66, Folder 4, Phillips, whs. Unsigned memo, n.d., Box 142, Folder 15-21, Bell, ucla. Cecil Smith, “Writers See Soap Operas as Therapy,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 7, 1970. In the early 1980s, ds’s Dan Curtis would produce the miniseries Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Jay Sharbutt, “All in the ­Family Daytime Reruns to ­Battle Soap Opera,” Chilli­ cothe Constitution Tribune/ap, Nov. 12, 1975, 9. “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: Satirical, Split-­Level Humor . . . ​But Is It Soap Opera?,” Soap Opera Digest, Apr. 1976, 15–17; “Our Readers Write about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” Soap Opera Digest, May 1976, 76–77; Kathleen Madigan Solmo, “It’s a ­Matter of Opinion,” Soap Opera Digest, Nov. 1976, 67. Notes to Chapter 3  ·  315

27 Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion, 166–71. 28 Al Haas, “­Will tv and Soap Opera Live Happily Ever ­After?,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 5, 1976, 3e. 29 Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Conver­ gence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), 82–89. 30 Quoted in Stephen Zito, “Prime-­Time Soap Opera,” American Film, Feb. 1, 1977, 24. 31 Zito, 24. 32 Michael Mashon, “nbc, J. Walter Thompson, and the Evolution of Prime-­Time Tele­vi­sion Programming and Sponsorship, 1946–1958” (PhD diss., University of Maryland–­College Park, 1996). 33 Herman Land, “The Procter & ­Gamble Story,” Sponsor, June 13, 1955, 35, 119. 34 “p&g’s Cutback on cbs-­t v soaps,” Variety, May 1, 1957, 33. 35 Of course, they could not sell ad slots to p&g competitors. Memo from Mr. Barbour to Charles Fisher, Sept. 26, 1956, Box 2, “atwt Public Ser­vice 1956–57, Sustaining,” p&g, whs. As late as 1972, it remained a challenge to differentiate between p&g’s ads and ­those of other advertisers. The former brands ­were identified as “presenting the program,” while the latter ­were described on air as “sponsoring” it. Memo from Leslie Rossinoff to Charlotte Savitz and Patricia Ahern, Oct. 23, 1972, Box 8, “Format 1956–1973,” p&g, whs. 36 Tele­gram from Fisher to Short, Apr. 17, 1956, and Memos from Fisher to Paul Benson et al., May 17, 1956; Benson to Fisher, May 21, 1956, Box 2, “atwt Correspondence 1956–57, Fisher,” p&g, whs. 37 “News of Advertising and Marketing,” New York Times, Mar. 21, 1956, 58. 38 For example, Compton, producer of gl, took issue with Leo Burnett, producer of sft, when the soaps ­were planning similar story lines. Memo from Haynes to Lesan et al., Nov. 5, 1954, Box 1, Folder IV, Lesan, ahc. 39 Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor, 111–21. 40 “New ab-­p t Program Subsidiary,” Broadcasting, July 25, 1960, 73. On abc prime time’s deals with Hollywood studios, see Christopher Anderson, Hollywood tv: The Studio System in the Fifties (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994). 41 “Agnes Nixon as Solo Serialist,” Variety, Dec. 6, 1967, 24; Dan Wakefield, All Her ­Children (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 115. 42 Bill Greeley, “nbc’s No Soap for Goliaths,” Variety, Sept. 15, 1965, 35; Corday, The Days of Our Lives, 44. This came ­after the network had tried a Canadian import, Moment of Truth, which was set to run concurrently on nbc and the Canadian Broadcasting Com­pany, as well as being sold to the United Kingdom, in 1964. “nbc Innovation: Coast-­Originating tv Soap Operas,” Variety, Sept. 16, 1964, 25, 46. 43 George Swisshelm, “Home (cbs) Is Where the Heart Is in tv Web’s New Lease on Sudsers from Sponsor,” Variety, June 11, 1969, 50; “Changes at cbs tv Casting,” Backstage, July 25, 1969, 17; “tv Soap Operas Move from Agencies to Nets,” Backstage, Sept. 19, 1969, 1. 44 Untitled documents, Box 130, “New show,” Bell, ucla. 316  ·  Notes to Chapter 3

45 “Fred Silverman’s New cbs Braid Keyed to Spurring N.Y. Production,” Variety, Feb. 4, 1970, 35. 46 “Irna Phillips Ends p&g Longtermer but ­Will Aid ­Daughter on New Serial,” Variety, Mar. 25, 1970, 34. 47 Paul Roberts to Bill Bell, Jan. 3, 1974, Box 128, “Paul Roberts material,” Bell, ucla; Ed Trach to Michael Brockman, June 6, 1974, Box 35, Folder 36, Dobson, whs; James Doussard, “Ryan’s Hope Is the Hope of Its Kentucky Creator, Too,” Courier-­Journal & Times, July 13, 1975, h1+. abc did pick up p&g’s The Edge of Night from cbs in 1975, but this was the only sponsor-­owned soap on its schedule. 48 Wakefield, All Her ­Children, 115. The Nixons found that the small increases in the network’s license fee included in their contract ­were insufficient to the growing costs of producing successful soaps, particularly the costs of talent, and de­cided to leave the soap owner­ship business. 49 Bob Knight, “abc’s Daytime Strategy,” Variety, Dec. 28, 1977, 34. 50 Mara Einstein, Media Diversity: Economics, Owner­ship, and the fcc (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), details the rise and fall of this policy but does not consider the place of daytime programming. For the policy itself, see US Federal Communications Commission, “Amendment of Part 73 of the Commission’s Rules and Regulations with Re­spect to Competition and Responsibility in Network Tele­ vi­sion Broadcasting,” Report and Order, 23 fcc 2d 382–429 (May 4, 1970). 51 US vs. American Broadcasting Com­pany, Inc., Civ. No. 74-3600-­r jk (C.D.CA Aug. 22, 1980), reprinted in Federal Register 45, no. 172 (Sept. 3, 1980): 58,449. 52 US vs. American Broadcasting Com­pany, Inc., 58,447. 53 J. Fred MacDonald calls the Fin-­Syn Rules “the most damaging attack against the network tv mono­poly in fcc history,” and the network consent decrees “a striking development,” even as he notes their ten-­year limit. J. Fred McDonald, One Nation ­under Tele­vi­sion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 185, 186–87. 54 Leonard Sloane, “Networks Produce More tv Soap Operas,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 1969, f12. ­These advantages may not have applied as much to cbs taking control of American Home Products’ two soaps, as they ­were technically still sponsor-­owned. Swisshelm, “Home (cbs) Is Where the Heart Is.” 55 Marilyn Edmondson and David Rounds, The Soaps: Daytime Serials of Radio and tv (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), 197. 56 “Daytime Network tv: Where the Action Is,” Tele­vi­sion Age, Sept. 25, 1967, 27. 57 “Daytime Network tv,” 26; “Daytime: A Seller’s Market,” Television Age, Jan. 29, 1968, 23. Advertisers’ interest in younger, more affluent audiences was shaping prime time, as well. Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 64–66, 199–204. 58 “Soap Opera Still Mom’s tv Choice,” Advertising Age, Apr. 22, 1968, 85; Brown, “Daytime’s Cheerful Tearful,” 35; “Daytime Network tv: Where the Action Is,” 26–27; Joan Barthel, “The World Has Turned More than 3,200 Times . . . ,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 1968, 142. 59 “Network Daytime War, Getting Hotter ­Every Year, Acts as Catalyst to New tv Soap Development,” tv/Radio Age, June 15, 1970, 68–69. Notes to Chapter 3  ·  317

60 Memo from M. Propper to B. Cox, Dec. 5, 1973, Box 8, Folder 14, p&g, whs; “Real Drama in Daytime,” Broadcasting, July 2, 1973, 19; “Daytime: A Seller’s Market,” 55. 61 Benshoff, Dark Shadows, 85–89; George De Pue, “Vampires, Mods, and ­Giants Could Mean Merchandise Windfall for abc,” Variety, Sept. 4, 1968, 53; “abc Daytimer Does Well in Moving Merchandise,” Broadcasting, Aug. 25, 1969, 55. 62 Benshoff, Dark Shadows, 107–14. 63 Data compiled and compared from Edmondson and Rounds, The Soaps, 197; “Real Drama in Daytime,” 17; “60 Minute Soaps Help nbc in Fight for Daytime Ratings,” Broadcasting, Aug. 11, 1975, 32; “Daytime tv Ad Bud­gets Grow,” tv/ Radio Age, July 18, 1977, 31. 64 “Daytime: A Seller’s Market,” 22. 65 “Daytime: A Seller’s Market,” 22, 55. 66 “Daytime Soap Operas: $538,000,000 Cliff-­Hanger,” Media Decisions, Nov. 1977, 114, 110. While ­these figures indicate a profit margin over 300 ­percent, in 1978, tv Guide listed the soaps’ profit margin at 250 ­percent. Ellen Torgerson, “Heartache, Illness, and Crime Do Pay,” tv Guide, July 8, 1978, 11. 67 “$340,000 Price of One Hour’s Action in tv Land Nowadays,” Winnipeg ­Free Press/Chicago Daily News, June 9, 1976, 31. 68 On network-­producer relations in the network era, see Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1985). 69 Wakefield, All Her ­Children, 16. 70 Jerry Buck, “Three New Soap Operas Off to a Blazing Start,” Lowell Sun/ap, Mar. 31, 1970, 58. 71 Ad agency Young & Rubicam saw possibility in the proj­ect for its client, Lever Bros., and for abc, but worried about protests from p&g, given that the agency was already producing a p&g soap and the Hursleys ­were writing another. Leadley to D. Hursley, Sept. 3, 1958, Box 10, Folder 44, Dobson, whs. 72 Phillips to Short, July 2, 1955, Box 43, Folder 1; Phillips to Potter, July 11, 1956, Box 44, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. 73 D. Hursley to Potter, Apr. 2, 1960, Box 66, Folder 6, Dobson, whs. 74 Richard Dunn to Armand Grant, Feb. 5, 1963, Box 21, “Comments from abc,” Hursley, ahc. 75 Memo from Dunn to Banks and Young. 76 Memo from Michael E. Pakalik to Irwin Moss (with margin notes by Fred Silverman), May 9, 1967, Box 9, Folder 5, Donovan, whs. 77 “cbs-­t v Wants More Daylight”; Brown, “Daytime’s Cheerful Tearful,” 52. 78 Phillips told this story on The David Frost Show, Mar. 7, 1972, Nixon, Northwestern. 79 Phillips to Lesan, Box 3, “atwt-1973,” Lesan, ahc. 80 Ann Marcus to John Conboy, n.d., Box 1, “Production Files, 1971–73—­General liamst,” Marcus, ahc. 81 Tom Donovan to Fred Silverman, July 5, 1972, Box 11, Folder 10, Donovan, whs. 82 R. Marian Rose, “Soap Spinners,” Soap Opera Serials, Jan. 1977, 12. 318  ·  Notes to Chapter 3

83 Maureen Russell, Days of Our Lives: A Complete History of the Long-­Running Soap Opera (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1995), 20. 84 Russell, 20. 85 Wes Kenney to Bell, Sept. 17, 1968, Box 1, “Correspondence 1967–77,” Bell, ahc. 86 Bell to Betty Corday, Oct. 29, 1969, Box 1, “Correspondence 1967–77,” Bell, ahc. 87 “gh Sets,” Apr. 1963, Box 21, “Sets for gh,” Hursley, ahc. 88 gh, abc, episode 93, May 1965, ucla Film and TV. 89 gh, abc, episode 90, May 1965, ucla Film and TV. 90 ds, abc, episode 384, December 14, 1967. 91 The Doctors, nbc, Jan. 21, 1971. 92 Harding Lemay, Eight Years in Another World (New York: Atheneum, 1981), 116–17. Rauch confirmed this. Paul Rauch, interview with author, Oct. 25, 2007. 93 “60 Minute Soaps Help nbc,” 31–32. 94 Wakefield, All Her ­Children, 118. 95 Ruth J. Gordon, “For Outstanding Achievement . . . ​In the World of Daytime Drama,” Soap Opera Digest, Dec. 1977, 30. 96 Michael Maloney and Lee Phillip Bell, The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2012), 89–90. 97 Annie Gilbert, All My After­noons (New York: a&w Publishers, 1979), 71. 98 Bill Bell, “State of the Union—­d ool,” Box 1, “1977 Correspondences,” Bell, ahc. 99 On the soap’s new production values in the 1970s, see Deborah Neumann, Mary Cassata, and Thomas Skill, “Setting the Mood: Soap Opera Settings and Fashions,” in Life on Daytime Tele­vi­sion: Tuning-­In American Serial Drama, ed. Mary B. Cassata and Thomas Skill (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1983), 125–35. 100 “A New Dramatic Serial for Daytime,” Sept. 25, 1972, Box 2, “Proposal 1972,” Bell, ahc. 101 “y&r,” Variety, Apr. 4, 1973, 50. Timberg notes the stylistic distinctness of y&r in the 1970s. Bernard Timberg, “The Rhe­toric of the Camera in Tele­vi­sion Soap Opera,” in Tele­vi­sion: The Critical View, 4th ed., ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 177n4. y&r was the most extreme case, but production values increased across the soaps in the 1970s. 102 David Houston, “John Conboy: A Perfectionist in the Demanding World of Daytime Drama,” tv Showpeople, 1975, 54–58. 103 y&r, cbs, episode 624, 1975, ucla Film and TV. 104 “A New Dramatic Serial for Daytime.” 105 aw excerpts, abc, 1973–74, ucla Film and TV. 106 “amc Projection,” Oct. 3, 1974, Box 15, Folder 9, Nixon, Northwestern. 107 Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 92, drawing on Dennis Porter, “Soap Time: Thoughts on a Commodity Art Form,” College En­glish 38, no. 8 (1977): 786. 108 Jennifer Hayward, “ ‘Day ­after Tomorrow’: Audience Interaction and Soap Opera Production,” Cultural Critique 23 (Winter 1992–93): 93. 109 Alex Ward, “How As the World Turns Turns: Two Days in the Life of a Soap Opera,” Journal of the American Film Institute (1974): 31. As of 1972, at least seven Notes to Chapter 3  ·  319

110

111 112 113

114

115 116 117 118 119 120 121

122 123

1 24 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133

soaps ­were still using organists. Debbie Sherwood, “All About Money-­Counting: ­Music and Other Soap-­Opera Tunes,” tv Guide, Feb. 26, 1972, 42–43. “Doctor Dramas Tandem Taping,” Variety, Mar. 27, 1963, 26. p&g turned down the same option for its soaps. George C. White to Lucy Ferri, Nov. 18, 1963, Box 8, Folder 8, p&g, whs. Jane Hall, “Carey Gold,” tv Guide, July 26, 1975, 8–9. Irving Robbin to Harry Sosnik, Oct. 30, 1970, Box 10, Folder 9, Donovan, whs. Ron Rodman, Tuning In: American Narrative Tele­vi­sion ­Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191–99; Robynn J. Stilwell, “It May Look Like a Living Room . . .: ​The Musical Number and the Sitcom,” Echo 5, no. 1 (Spring 2003): http://­www​.­echo​.­ucla​.­edu​/­Volume5​-­issue1​/­stilwell​/­index​.­html; Lindsey Giggey, “Teen Dreams Machine” (unpublished paper). Rodman, Tuning In, 204–5; Timothy D. Taylor, The Sounds of Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 150–58; Jeff Smith, The Sounds of Com­ merce: Marketing Popu­lar Film ­Music (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 154–85. aw script, episode 86, Sept. 2, 1964, Box 64, Folder 5, Phillips, whs. aw script, episode 195, Feb. 12, 1965, Box 65, Folder 3, Phillips, whs. Never Too Young, abc, June 24, 1966, ucla Film and TV. liamst script, episode 5, Sept. 22, 1967, Box 66, Folder 1, Phillips, whs. liamst script, episode 12, Oct. 3, 1967, Box 66, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. amc script, episode 8, Jan. 14, 1970, Box 15, Folder 4, Nixon, Northwestern. Silverman, Cassata, and Skill, “Setting the Mood.” Fans loved the on-­screen per­ for­mances of sft. Milton Slater, “Audience Commentary—­s ft April 16–­May 15, 1975,” Box 13, “Correspondence 1975,” Marcus, ahc. “Somerset–­General Comments,” Box 11, Folder 12, Dobson, whs. They would begin Bright Promise in the ­later 1960s, also set on a college campus, and surely a revised version of the ­earlier proj­ect, Time to Live. Frank and Doris Hursley, proposal draft, The Precious Hour, Box 6, Folder 24; Time to Live proposal, Box 8, Folder 4, Dobson, whs; “Notes on a medical daytime serial,” Oct. 1962, Box 21, “Original Proposal for Series,” Hursley, ahc. D. Hursley to Julian Bercovici, July 7, 1964, Box 10, Folder 15, Dobson, whs. George Fox, “Can a 172-­Year-­Old Vampire Find Love and Happiness in a Typical New ­England Town?,” Saturday Eve­ning Post, Nov. 30, 1968, 41. gh, abc, July 16, 1964, ucla Film and TV. The Doctors, nbc, Nov. 6, 1968. Knight, “abc’s Daytime Strategy.” Jerry Buck, “The Guiding Writers,” Sarasota Herald-­Tribune/ap, Jan. 14, 1979, 27. Memo from Ann Howard to Tom Dunkerton, Oct. 17, 1972, Box 8, Folder 17, p&g, whs. Ron Sproat interview, ds Beginnings dvd Collection 5. Notes on script, amc, ep. 17, Jan. 27, 1970, Box 15, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern; Barthel, “The World Has Turned More Than 3,200 Times . . . ,” 152. “amc Projection,” Oct. 3, 1974.

320  ·  Notes to Chapter 3

1 34 atwt background material, Jan. 1972, Box 3, Lesan, ahc. 135 “Disagree on ­Whether ‘Substitute’ Writing Is Hurting Network Soaps,” Variety, June 13, 1973, 28. 136 “Somerset–­General Comments.” 137 “amc Projection,” Oct. 3, 1974. 138 Jerome and Bridget Dobson, “gl Story Projection,” Aug. 1978, Box 35, Folder 12, Dobson, whs. Even atwt moved more quickly between scenes with the expansion to the hour. Marcelle Clements, “cbs Pre­sents the New Studio 52,” publication unknown, Jan. 21, 1979, Box 4, “atwt Background Publicity,” p&g, whs. 139 Barthel, “The World Has Turned More Than 3,200 Times . . . ,” 152–53. 140 “Agnes Nixon as Solo Serialist,” 24, 34. 141 oltl scripts, episodes 1, 2, and 4, July 15, 16, and 18, 1968, Nixon, Penn. 142 amc outline, ep. 11, Jan. 19, 1970, Box 15, Folder 7, Nixon, Northwestern. 143 Agnes Nixon, My Life to Live (New York: Crown Archetype, 2017), 176. 144 “Sex and Suffering in the After­noon,” Time, Jan. 12, 1976, 49+. 145 dool, nbc, episode 2740, Oct. 1, 1976, ucla Film and TV; Russell, Days of Our Lives, 78; Rita Keith Richards, “The Wedding You Demanded: Julie and Doug Take Their Vows!,” Daily tv Serials, Jan. 1977, 34–37.

chapter 4. turning to relevance 1 “Six Months Story Summary,” Box 2, “gh Story at Script 125, Sept. 1963,” Hursley, ahc. 2 gh, abc, July 14, 1964, ucla Film and TV. 3 Curtin, Redeeming the Wasteland; Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin, eds., The Revolution ­Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Tele­vi­sion and Social Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2013); Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube; Gitlin, Inside Prime Time. 4 Gitlin, Inside Prime Time, 74. 5 Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch, “Tele­vi­sion as a Cultural Forum,” in Tele­vi­sion: The Critical View, 4th ed., ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 461 (emphasis in original). 6 Gitlin, Inside Prime Time, 203–20; Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 64–66, 201–8. 7 Barthel, “The World Has Turned More Than 3,200 Times . . . ,” 142. 8 Bodroghkozy, Groove Tube, 6. 9 Bodroghkozy, 31. 10 aw script, ep. 31, June 15, 1964, Box 64, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. 11 aw script, ep. 76, Aug. 19, 1964, Box 64, Folder 4, Phillips, whs. 12 Irene S. Haag to aw, Jan. 11, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 13 Mary H. Roberts to Allen Potter, Feb. 7, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 14 Connie Lynn Blackwell to aw, Jan. 28, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 15 Jeanne Logan to aw, Jan. 26, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 16 “liamst Proposal,” Box 130, Bell, ucla. Notes to Chapter 4  ·  321

17 liamst scripts, episode 5, Sept. 22, 1967, and ep. 20, Oct. 13, 1967, Box 66, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. 18 liamst scripts, ep. 18, Oct. 11, 1967, and ep. 20, Oct. 13, 1967, Box 66, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. 19 liamst script, ep. 20, Oct. 13, 1967. 20 liamst script, ep. 13, Oct. 4, 1967. 21 amc outline, ep. 13, Jan. 21, 1970, Box 15, Folder 7, Nixon, Northwestern. 22 “amc Pre­sen­ta­tion,” Box 130, Bell, ucla. Nixon describes her desire to “get progressive story lines on the air” in both general and specific instances in My Life to Live, 127. 23 Nixon, My Life to Live, 182. 24 amc script, ep. 3, Jan. 7, 1970, Box 15, Folder 2, Nixon, Northwestern. 25 “abc Daytime: The Now Soap Opera,” Variety, Mar. 25, 1970, 34; Agnes Nixon, conversation with author, Oct. 20, 2015; amc Production Notes for episode 6, Box 15, Folder 7; amc script, ep. 12, Jan. 20, 1970, Box 15, Folder 4, Nixon, Northwestern. 26 amc outline, ep. 12, Jan. 20, 1970, Box 15, Folder 7, Nixon, Northwestern. 27 amc script, ep. 12, Jan. 20, 1970, Box, 15, Folder 4; amc script, ep. 2, Jan. 6, 1970, Box 15, Folder 2, Nixon, Northwestern. 28 amc script, ep. 5, Jan. 9, 1970, Box 15, Folder 3, Nixon, Northwestern. 29 My point sees the emphasis on the personal in soap opera, at least in this period and stories like Amy’s, somewhat differently than how Seiter characterizes soap opera as a ­whole: “This failure to relate ­women’s prob­lems to a shared, social context is what most seriously limits the soap opera world.” Ellen Seiter, “Promise and Contradiction: The Daytime Tele­vi­sion Serial,” Film Reader 5 (Winter 1982): 162. Nixon experienced the story as both po­liti­cal and personal, her antiwar perspective generated in part by the loss of her first love in World War II. Nixon, My Life to Live, 183. 30 He turns out only to have been missing in action; he returns to town eventually. 31 amc script, ep. 585, Apr. 3, 1972, Nixon, Penn. 32 She sought to explore “­whether many of the world’s prob­lems ­were caused not only by the emotions of one person but by outside circumstances.” Nixon, My Life to Live, 136. 33 Frances Foster to Phillips, June 2, 1965, Box 46, Folder 7, Phillips, whs. 34 “abc Steps Up Integration on Daytime Soapers,” Variety, Apr. 14, 1965, 1, 70. 35 “abc Steps Up Integration,” 70. 36 “Irna’s ‘Unhappy’ p&g Script,” Variety, May 12, 1965, 166. 37 R. C. Martin Jr. to gl, Sept. 26, 1963; Margaret Marshall to gl, Oct. 30, 1963, Box 2, Folder 7, Nixon, Northwestern. 38 Harry Belafonte, “Belafonte: ‘Look, They Tell Me, D ­ on’t Rock the Boat,’ ” New York Times, Apr. 21, 1968, d21. 39 Bob Shayne, “Negroes in tv: Breakdown or Breakthrough?,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 1968, c1+; Richard K. Doan, “How Tele­vi­sion Is Waging a Summer Campaign for Racial Understanding,” tv Guide, Aug. 17, 1968, 9–11. 322  ·  Notes to Chapter 4

40 Paul Denis, “The Story of cbs-­t v’s Love of Life,” Daytime tv, Apr. 1974, 22. 41 Ernest Kinoy and Rita Morley, May 15, 1970, Box 8, Folder 15, p&g, whs; Simon B. Siegel to Donovan et al., Jan. 5, 1970, Box 11, Folder 1, Donovan, whs. 42 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 74–75. 43 Aniko Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Tele­vi­sion and the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012). 44 “liamst Review,” Variety, Sept. 27, 1967, 39; cbs Tele­vi­sion Network, “liamst Makes Debut Sept. 18,” June 15, 1967, Box 9, Folder 5, Donovan, whs. 45 liamst scripts, ep. 20, Oct. 13, 1967; ep. 21, Oct. 16, 1967, Box 66, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. 46 “Agnes Nixon as Solo Serialist,” 34. 47 “Now a Soap Opera about Negroes,” The Ada Eve­ning News/ap Sept. 26, 1968, 5. 48 oltl script, ep. 123, Jan. 3, 1969, Nixon, Penn. 49 oltl script, ep. 136, Jan. 20, 1969, Nixon, Penn. 50 oltl script, ep. 142, Jan. 28, 1969, Nixon, Penn. 51 oltl scripts, ep. 153, Feb. 12, 1969; ep. 160, Feb. 21, 1969; ep. 163, Feb. 26, 1969, Nixon, Penn. 52 oltl scripts, ep. 170, Mar. 7, 1969; ep. 176, Mar. 17, 1969, Nixon, Penn. 53 Marina Heung, “ ‘What’s the ­Matter with Sarah Jane?’ D ­ aughters and M ­ others in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life,” in Imitation of Life, ed. Lucy Fischer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 321, 313. 54 Nixon, My Life to Live, 155. 55 Ellen Holly, One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress (New York: Kodansha International, 1996), 127. Nixon insisted that the soap cast a black actress as Carla, rejecting abc’s suggestion to cast “a dark-­skinned Latino or Italian ­woman.” Nixon, My Life to Live, 159. 56 Among such treatments w ­ ere episodes of The Defenders (“The Benefactor,” cbs, Apr. 28, 1962), Ben Casey, M.D. (“Fire in a Sacred Fruit Tree,” abc, Nov. 20, 1963), Dr. Kildare (“Four Feet in the Morning,” nbc, Nov. 21, 1963), and The Doctors and the Nurses (“The Suspect,” cbs, Sept. 29 and Oct. 6, 1964). Thanks to Caryn Murphy for directing me to ­these episodes. 57 aw scripts, ep. 55, July 21, 1964; ep. 63, July 31, 1964, Box 64, Folder 3, Phillips, whs. 58 aw scripts, ep. 108, Oct. 2, 1964; ep. 122, Oct. 29, 1964, Box 64, Folder 6, Phillips, whs. 59 nbc Broadcast Standards Report, aw, Nov. 16–20, 1964, Box 14, Folder 5, Nixon, Northwestern. 60 nbc Broadcast Standards Report, aw, Nov. 30–­Dec. 4, 1964, Box 14, Folder 5, Nixon, Northwestern. 61 nbc Broadcast Standards Report, aw, Feb. 15–19, 1965, Box 14, Folder 5, Nixon, Northwestern. 62 Vari­ous scholars have noted the ideological flexibility of this generic openness, e.g., Seiter, “Eco’s tv Guide,” 42. 63 “Pat Matthews’ Other World,” Banner, Feb. 19, 1965, Box 9, Folder 1, Donovan, whs. Notes to Chapter 4  ·  323

64 Laura Ferrughelli to aw, Jan. 28, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 65 “Your Anxious California Viewers” to Phillips and Bell, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. 66 Lemay, Eight Years in Another World, 75–76. 67 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 28–44, Box 12, Folder 1. 68 Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 79–83, Box 12, Folder 2. 69 Phillips believed Skilken would not marry her ­because she could not have ­children. Phillips, “All My Worlds,” 44–45, Box 12, Folder 1. 70 Rosemary Nossiff, Before Roe: Abortion Policy in the States (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 2001), 5, 11n12. 71 Nossiff, 2. 72 Catherine E. Rymph, Republican ­Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 190, 211, 230. 73 Nixon was raised Catholic but was pro-­choice. Nixon, My Life to Live, 188. 74 amc script, ep. 317, Mar. 30, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 75 amc scripts, ep. 328, Apr. 7, 1971; ep. 329, Apr. 8, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 76 For example, see amc scripts, ep. 339, Apr. 8, 1971; ep. 340, Apr. 9, 1971; ep. 343, Apr. 27, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 77 amc script, ep. 320, Apr. 2, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 78 amc script, ep. 340, Apr. 23, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 79 amc scripts, ep. 345, Apr. 30, 1971; ep. 343, Apr. 27, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 80 amc script, ep. 345, Apr. 30, 1971. 81 Nixon, conversation with author. 82 amc script, ep. 350, May 7, 1971, Nixon, Penn. Nixon was well aware of Pat’s story, having written for aw soon ­after the abortion plot aired. 83 Nossiff, Before Roe, 107, 113. 84 amc script, ep. 351, May 10, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 85 amc script, ep. 357, May 18, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 86 amc script, ep. 368, June 2, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 87 amc script, ep. 369, June 3, 1971, Nixon, Penn. 88 Weiss, To Have and to Hold, 50. 89 Weiss, To Have and to Hold, 63. 90 Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1962). 91 In contrast, sft’s Joanne laments the time away from her ­children when she goes to work part-­time in the late 1950s. “sft Story,” Box 66, Folder 1, Dobson, whs. 92 “Overview, aw Characters,” Box 130, “Another World,” Bell, ucla. 93 The Doctors, nbc, Dec. 7, 1967. 94 Key episodes of The Doctors in ­these story lines include Dec. 18 and 19, 1967; Feb. 22, 1968; and Aug. 12, 1968. 95 The Doctors, nbc, Aug. 14, 1968. 96 Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (New York: Pocket Books, 1964). For a discussion of the popu­lar press coverage of single w ­ omen in the workplace, see 324  ·  Notes to Chapter 4

97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

118 119 120

Katherine J. Lehman, ­Those Girls: Single ­Women in Sixties and Seventies Popu­lar Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 68–82. Moya Luckett suggests that the emphasis on singleness in ­these discourses may have been more a fantasy construction of ­women’s autonomy than a reflection of most ­women’s real­ity. Luckett, “A Moral Crisis in Prime Time: Peyton Place and the Rise of the Single Girl,” in Tele­vi­sion, History, and American Culture, ed. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 88–89. Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 128–25; Lehman, ­Those Girls, 122–29. Ryan’s Hope, abc, ep. 818, Aug. 29, 1978. rh, abc, ep. 820, Aug. 31, 1978. Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 130–57; Lehman, ­Those Girls, 169–208. Frances Kish, “Mary Stuart vs. the S­ imple Life,” tv/Radio Mirror, Apr. 1961, 6, 76. “Soap Opera Hits 2000th Telecast,” Daily Review, May 5, 1959, 20. “I ­Don’t Want to Become a Full-­Time House­wife,” Daytime tv, July 1974, 33. “My ­Daughter Is Not Just ­Mother’s Baby—­She’s Our Baby,” Daytime tv, Apr. 1971, 60–61. For other examples, see “Delphi Harrington,” Daytime tv, Apr. 1972, 17; and Harvey Pack, “Soap Opera ­Career Is Satisfying to Actress, Wife, ­Mother of Four,” Shreveport Journal, Feb. 2, 1970, 12d. Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies (New York: ­Free Press, 2001), 292n11. Flashback to aw, ep. 20, May 29, 1964, in aw script, ep. 29, June 11, 1964, Box 64, Folder 2, Phillips, whs. William H. Masters and V ­ irginia E. Johnson, ­Human Sexual Response (New York: ­Little, Brown, 1966). Jacqueline Susann, The Valley of the Dolls (New York: Bantam, 1966). Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” in Notes from the Second Year: ­Women’s Liberation, ed. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt (New York: New American Library, 1970). Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, Re-­making Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Anchor Books, 1986), 71. Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs, 32–38. “A viewer” to gl writer, Dec. 3, 1965, Box 2, Folder 7, Nixon, Northwestern. “Girls from Forest Hills” and Mrs. A. Shamah to aw, Feb. 4, 1966, Box 2, Folder 8, Nixon, Northwestern. Barthel, “Out in Detergent Land.” ds, abc, ep. 170, Feb. 17, 1967; ep. 591, Sept. 30, 1968; ep. 783, June 26, 1969. B. Corday to Bell, Nov. 11, 1969, Box 1, “1969 Correspondence,” Bell, ahc. bp proposal, Aug. 21, 1969, Box 13, Folder 19; Mrs. H. R. Garber to bp, no date, Box 13, Folder 46; Carolyn Lee to Susan Brown, Aug. 26, 1970, Box 13, Folder 47; Memo from Lenore Cantor to Bud Grant, Aug. 5, 1970, Box 13, Folder 33, Dobson, whs. “Laura-­Mark-­John,” Box 1, “Production Files 1969–73,” Marcus, ahc. The Doctors, nbc, Aug. 19, 1968. The Doctors, nbc, Sept. 17, 1968. Notes to Chapter 4  ·  325

121 122 123 124

125 126

127

128 129 130 131 132 133

134

135 136 137 138 139 140 141

1 42 143 144

htsam, nbc, Apr. 26, 1974, ucla Film and TV. htsam, nbc, Apr. 29, 1974, ucla Film and TV. Gilbert, All My After­noons, 12. That prime time’s most developed gay character to date appeared on a program that borrowed directly from daytime serials suggests that daytime was understood as a space where such exploration was pos­si­ble. The program’s attention to ­women as sexual agents similarly responds to the same trend in daytime soaps. Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 186–90, 200–202. J. M. Kibler, “Sharon Duval,” Box 1, “Correspondence 1967–77, J. M. Kibler 1976–77,” Bell, ahc. Jon-­Michael Reed, “Controversy Surrounds Daytime Romances,” Lawton Con­ stitution/Synd., June 26, 1977, 89; Anon. to dool, June 25, 1977, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–78, dool Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. Andrew J. Owens, “Coming Out of the Coffin: Queer Historicity and Occult Sexualities on abc’s Dark Shadows,” Tele­vi­sion and New Media 17, no. 4 (2016): 350–65. Anon. to dool, June 25, 1977. For example, see Steve Walles to sb, Sept. 5, 1984, Box 44, Folder 2, Dobson, whs. Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 90. opw script, ep. 17, June 30, 1965, Box 66, Folder 4, Phillips, whs. opw script, ep. 27, Aug. 4, 1965, Box 66, Folder 6, Phillips, whs. Murphy, “Selling the Continuing Story of Peyton Place,” 118–19; Rick DuBrow, “As World Turns ­Going Nights,” In­de­pen­dent Press-­Telegram/upi, Feb. 28, 1965, 119. Contemporaneous observers noted that daytime tended to be racier than prime time, despite the salacious reputation acquired by Peyton Place in par­tic­u­ lar. Cynthia Lowry, “Critics Need to Look at Daytime Serials for Spicy, Daring Theme,” Daily News-­Times/ap, Jan. 20, 1965, 3. Eileen Fulton, As My World Still Turns (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 110. Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 87. Bell to B. Corday, Nov. 4, 1969, Box 1, “1969 Correspondence,” Bell, ahc. Russell, Days of Our Lives, 57. Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 88, 89, 85–86. Modleski, 90. Ellen Seiter, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-­Maria Warth, “ ‘­Don’t Treat Us Like ­We’re So Stupid and Naïve’: T ­ oward an Ethnography of Soap Opera Viewers,” in Remote Control: Tele­vi­sion, Audiences and Cultural Power, ed. Ellen Seiter, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-­Maria Warth (New York: Routledge, 1991), 239. Ed Trach to Michael Brockman, June 6, 1974, Box 35, Folder 36, Dobson, whs. Lemay, Eight Years in Another World, 48–49. For example, see R. Hankins, “Letters to the Editor,” Daytime tv, Oct. 1975, 48–49.

326  ·  Notes to Chapter 4

145 Lemay, Eight Years in Another World, 89, 120, 131–34. 146 For example, see Elizabeth Bartlett, “Letters to the Editor,” Daytime tv, Oct. 1975, 49. 147 “Some Notes on the Characters,” Box 13, Production Files 1974–75, sft, Marcus, ahc. 148 Comments in Milton Slater, “Audience Commentary, sft,” Nov. 16–­Dec. 15, 1974, Box 13, “Correspondence 1975, sft Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. 149 “Notes on a medical daytime serial,” Oct. 1962, Box 21, “Original Proposal for Serial,” Hursley, ahc. The connection to the prime-­time medical series and their leads is mine; the Hursleys do not explic­itly make this claim in this proposal but do describe their program as combining “au­then­tic and documentary treatment of medical ­matters” with “building serial interest.” 150 “Analy­sis of gh,” Apr. 10, 1963, Box 21, “Pi­lot Script for gh,” Hursley, ahc. 151 Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983), 14–28, 88–98. 152 Ehrenreich, 88–98. 153 For example, see Dark Shadows, abc, ep. 286, July 31, 1967. 154 Benshoff, Dark Shadows, 27. 155 ds, abc, ep. 341, Oct. 16, 1967. 156 Jowett and Abbott, tv Horror, 203. 157 Jowett and Abbott, 206; ds, abc, ep. 710, Mar. 14, 1969. 158 Rick Worland, “Dark Shadows 1970: Industry, Anxiety, and Adaptation,” Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion 40, no. 4 (2012): 173; Owens, “Coming Out of the Coffin,” 8–10. 159 Bill was first “killed” in a plane crash in 1969, returned alive in 1977, and was killed again in 1983. 160 “Story Projection,” Mar. 1, 1973, Box 22, Folder 11, Dobson, whs. 161 The Doctors, nbc, Feb. 13, 1969. 162 The Doctors, nbc, Feb. 11, 1969. 163 Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance; Radway, Reading the Romance. 164 Radway, Reading the Romance, 33. 165 Radway, 128–29. 166 Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 213–18. 167 The Doctors, nbc, Nov. 21, 1969. 168 Phil Brewer rapes his wife, Jessie, in 1965, frustrated that she is so distant; Tom Baldwin reacts similarly to his wife, Audrey, in 1970. gh script, July 2, 1965, Box 57, #111–15, Hursley, ahc; gh outline, ep. 155, July 31, 1970, Box 22, Folder 20, Dobson, whs. In 1972, Phil also rapes Diana Taylor. Dealing with a period of impotency, he finds himself aroused by Diana, ­mother of his child, and is overcome with passion. He ­later tells her “how happy she’s made him by giving him back his manhood.” gh outline, Jan. 5, 1973, Box 22, Folder 21, Dobson, whs. The same pattern was in place with two other midsixties rapes: Mike Bauer raped his wife, Julie, on gl in 1964, and Danny Fargo raped his wife, Missy, on aw in 1966. Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 214–17, 291n22. Notes to Chapter 4  ·  327

169 Seiter points to the “time-­bomb theory of male sexuality,” the idea that men’s sexual potency cannot be contained, as applicable to such stories. Seiter, “Promise and Contradiction,” 154. 170 Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 208–51. 171 Schulman, The Seventies, 178; Herb Goldberg, The ­Hazards of Being Male: Surviv­ ing the Myth of Masculine Privilege (New York: New American Library, 1977); Warren Farrell, The Liberated Man: Beyond Masculinity; Freeing Men and Their Relationships with ­Women (New York: Random House, 1974). 172 Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 117–43. 173 y&r, cbs, Mar. 26, 1973. 174 Milton Slater, “Audience Commentary sft,” Apr. 16–­May 15, 1975, Box 13, “Correspondence 1975,” Marcus, ahc. 175 Fergus M. Bordewich, “Why Are College Kids in a Lather over tv Soap Operas?,” New York Times, Oct. 20, 1974, 157. 176 “If ­You’ve Got Something to Say . . . ​Say It!,” After­noon tv, May 1970, 9. 177 “Letters to the Editor,” Daytime tv, Apr. 1971, 82. 178 “Letters to the Editor,” Daytime tv, Jan. 1974, 45. 179 Bordewich, “Why Are College Kids in a Lather over tv Soap Operas?”; “Sex and Suffering in the After­noon”; Al Haas, “­Will tv and Soap Opera Live Happily Ever A ­ fter?,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 5, 1976, e1+; William Barry Furlong, “You Have to Give the Soaps Credit,” tv Guide, May 14, 1977, 20+; Robert Lindsey, “Soap Operas: Men Are Tuning In,” New York Times, Feb. 21, 1979, c1+; Barry Siegel, “Daytime tv: Faith, Fervor, Fanatic Fans,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1979, a1+. 180 “Sounding Board,” Soap Opera Digest, Dec. 1977, 2–3. 181 dool, nbc, ep. 2708, Aug. 18, 1976; ep. 2740, Oct. 1, 1976, ucla Film and TV; Bell, “State of the Union-­d ool.” 182 dool Fan Mail Reports, Sept. 1, Nov. 24, Dec. 10, Dec. 17, 1976, Jan. 4, Jan. 21, 1977, Box 2, “Reports 1968–80,” Bell, ahc. 183 Memo from Lenore Cantor to Madeline David, no date, Box 18, “Production Files 1977–78, dool,” Marcus, ahc. 184 “dool summary May 9–­June 10, 1977,” Soap Opera Digest, Aug. 1977, 43–51. 185 dool’s Brooke Hamilton (also impregnated by David Banning!) had an abortion with ­little recrimination in 1976. 186 The abortion is ultimately justified on-­screen by Trish wanting to avoid giving birth to a sixteen-­week-­old fetus, which she is told is the only way to end the pregnancy. Memo from B. Corday to Bell and Pat Falken Smith, Jan. 21, 1977, Box 1, “1977 Correspondence,” Bell, ahc. “dool summary May 9–­June 10, 1977.” 187 “Wesley Eure: Taking a Bull by the Horns!,” Soap Opera Digest, Jan. 1978, 26–27; “Patty Weaver . . . ​No One’s Seen This Side of Me,” Soap Opera Digest, Jan. 1978, 61. 188 Edwina L. Rankin, “­Behind the Scenes with tv’s Controversial Interracial ­Couple,” Jet, Aug. 18, 1977, 60–63. 328  ·  Notes to Chapter 4

189 William K. Knoedelseder, “Interracial tv Romance Goes Pffft,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1977, g1+; Mrs. Kawfriar to dool, May 31, 1977, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–78, dool Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. 190 Fan to Marcus, June 29, 1977, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–78, dool Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. 191 Mrs. Brenda Ray to dool, June 24, 1977; Gladys Barnett, Carol Godfrey, and Selika Conover to Wes Kenney, May 25, 1977, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–78, dool Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. 192 That Eli is in his twenties when he should, by the de­cades passed, be close to forty years old is assumed to be acceptable to an audience used to illogical aging (and de-­aging!) of its characters.

chapter 5. love in the after­n oon 1 Leslie Berger, “The Bar of Soaps,” Washington Post, Aug. 3, 1981, c1. 2 Berger. abc’s ­lawyers put a stop to ­these events, asserting that they ­violated the network’s owner­ship rights to the program. 3 “Daytime Doldrums for Networks,” Broadcasting, Oct. 10, 1988, 43. 4 John C. Given, “Daytime ‘Soap’ Lathering Up Bar Profits,” Syracuse Post-­ Standard/ap, May 7, 1981, b10. 5 On legitimation in American tele­vi­sion, see Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion. 6 Mary Alice Kellogg, “High Noon for Soaps,” tv Guide, Feb. 26, 1983, 6. 7 Peter J. Boyer, “abc Hopes Its Daytime ­Bubble W ­ on’t Burst,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 19, 1983, h1. 8 Michael James Intintoli, Taking Soaps Seriously: The World of Guiding Light (New York: Praeger, 1984), 69. 9 Linda Hersch, “Daytime Network tv,” tv/Radio Age, June 20, 1983, 68. abc continued to dominate demographically across this period. Les Luchter, “Comedy Challenges Soaper Dominance in Daytime Network,” tv/Radio Age, Jan. 20, 1986, 34. 10 Jack Loftus, “abc Keeps on Packin’ Daytime Dynamite,” Variety, Dec. 30, 1981, 29; Kellogg, “High Noon for Soaps,” 6. 11 Fred Rothenberg, “Soap Sponsors: Long in the Tooth,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1982, k21. 12 Ellen Farley, “General Hospital at 20,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 1, 1983, e2. 13 Hersch, “Daytime Network tv,” 70; Dan Rustin, “Day tv Web Scene Appears Quiet but Subtle Shifts Are Occurring,” tv/Radio Age, May 18, 1981, 76. 14 On the development of serialization in prime time, see Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 82–89. 15 “Next Season ­Will Shower Screen with Soaps,” Broadcasting, Apr. 28, 1980, 72. 16 Lee Margulies, “tv Syndicators Awash in Soap Opera Pitches,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 15, 1982, g1. Notes to Chapter 5  ·  329

17 Margaret LeRoux, “Reaping the Benefits of tv’s Daytime Affairs,” Advertising Age, Oct. 25, 1982, m11, m16. 18 LeRoy Pope, “Merchandisers Bring Out Soap Opera Wares,” Sunday Herald/upi, Nov. 15, 1981, 8; Farley, “General Hospital at 20,” e2. 19 Lee Margulies, “Daytime Soaps ­Won’t Be Blacked Out,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 8, 1983, 18. 20 A. James Liska, “Lurid and Torrid, Daytime Soaps Keep Webs Rich,” tv/Radio Age, Sept. 14, 1987, 55. 21 Georgia Dullea, “As Gloria Monty’s World Turns,” New York Times, July 11, 1986, a26; Nancy Mills, “When Gloria Monty Talks, abc-­t v Listens,” Los Ange­ les Times, Apr. 7, 1986, d1; Debbie Hanson, “Sunset Strip,” Soap Opera Stars, Mar. 1983, 9. 22 Michael Hofferber, “Soap Opera Primer for Actors,” Back Stage, July 18, 1986, 1+. This and multiple other issues of Back Stage, a trade publication focused on casting, regularly featured ads for soap acting classes in the 1980s. 23 Mike Duffy, “Interest in Soaps Is Bubbling,” Detroit F ­ ree Press, Aug. 23, 1981, c1. 24 For example, Duffy; William H. Pritchard, “One Man’s Soap,” Channels of Commu­ nication, Apr.–­May 1981, 82–83+; Marion Long, “How Sexy Are the Soaps?,” Daily Intelligencer, Nov. 28, 1982, 5–6; “Luke Is My Idol!,” Daytime tv, Oct. 1981, 46–47. 25 P. Bosworth, “How to Be a Soap Opera Writer,” Working W ­ oman, May 1981, 150. 26 For example, see Dafna Lemish, “Soap Opera Viewing in College: A Naturalistic Inquiry,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 29, no. 3 (Summer 1985): 275–93; Ardyth Stimson, “All the ­Really Cool Kids Are Crazy about the Soaps . . . ,” Daytime tv, Oct. 1981, 50–51+. abc’s Social Research Department conducted a survey of college student viewers in March 1982, discussed in Thomas D. Skill, “Segmenting the Soap Opera Audience” (PhD diss., suny-­ Buffalo, 1984). 27 For example, see Alison Tepper, “Stop Scoffing at the Soaps!,” Seventeen, July 1981, 24; Stimson, “All the ­Really Cool Kids Are Crazy about the Soaps . . .” abc’s 1982 survey found that 79.7 ­percent of college students watched soaps with at least one other person. Skill, “Segmenting the Soap Opera Audience,” 55. 28 Rod Townley, “Are the Soaps New and Improved?,” tv Guide, Dec. 13, 1980, 8. Intintoli details the explicit strategy of gl to increase its percentage of young characters and “youthful stories” to compete with gh in the early 1980s. Intintoli, Taking Soaps Seriously, 228. 29 A. Nixon, “Tad/Dottie/Andrew: Summer Adventures in New York City,” Apr. 12, 1985, Box 16, Folder 13, Nixon, Northwestern. 30 Memo from Mary-­Ellis Bunim to Dobsons et al., Dec. 11, 1981, Box 12, Folder 21, Dobson, whs. 31 This was a valued target market across media in this period. D’Acci, Defining ­Women, 67–73. 32 Thomas H. Allen, “Daytime Net tv Sales Begin to Level ­after Boom,” tv/Radio Age, July 21, 1975, 19; Barbara Trecker, “Soap Opera Lib,” New York Post, Apr. 13, 1974, 24. 330  ·  Notes to Chapter 5

33 Berger, “The Bar of Soaps,” c2. 34 For example, see Frank Baginski, “Which Serial Watcher Are You??????,” After­ noon tv, Summer 1970, 6; Paul Denis, “Serial Watching Can Be An Addiction . . . ​And an Art,” Daylight tv, Jan. 1977, 30–31+; “Dear Ruth Gordon,” Soap Opera Digest, Feb. 1976, 4; “Letters to the Editor,” Soap Opera Digest, Feb. 1978, 2. 35 Quoted in Memorandum from Milton Slater, July 16–­Aug. 15, 1975, Box 13, “Correspondence 1975—­S FT Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc; The ibm Girls and Xerox Girls to Santa Barbara, Sept. 6, 1984, Box 44, Folder 2, Dobson, whs. 36 Trecker, “Soap Opera Lib,” 24. 37 Ellen Seiter, “The Promise of Melodrama: Recent ­Women’s Films and Soap Operas” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1981), 61; Schulman, The Seventies, 292n11. 38 Hersch, “Daytime Network tv,” 70 (emphasis added). 39 Monica Langley, “tv: The Soap for the Yup-­and-­Coming,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 18, 1985, 28. 40 For example, see Brian Puckett, interview with author, Sept. 21, 2007; “Keep Sudsing,” Daily Review, Oct. 19, 1975, 90; Barry Siegel, “Soap Opera Buff Tells How He Got That Way,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1979, 12; Tamra Pica to B. Dobson, Dec. 1984, Box 44, Folder 3, Dobson, whs. 41 Charles Bricker, “Bryna Digests Soap Operas by the Month,” In­de­pen­dent, Nov. 27, 1973, 20. 42 Maryanne Latimer to Marcus, Mar. 21, 1978, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–78, dool fan mail,” Marcus, ahc. 43 Jerry Buck, “The Guiding Writers,” Sarasota Herald-­Tribune/ap, Jan. 14, 1979, 27; “ ‘He Made Me Do It and I’m Glad,’ ” Daytime tv, Oct. 1981, 47. 44 Mary Pavlovich, “The Agony of the Missed Soap Episode—­Here’s How to Prevent It!,” Daytime Stars, Nov. 1981, 38. 45 David Crook, “Soaps Make a Big Splash with Home Video Tapers,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1984, g1; “Getting a Fix on How ­They’re Using All ­Those vcrs,” Broadcasting, May 7, 1984, 74–75; Diane Haithman, “Soap Writers Rule Daytime tv with Godlike Hand,” Detroit F ­ ree Press, Nov. 25, 1984, 1g; Betsy Frank, “Tuning into vcr Usage,” Marketing and Media Decisions, May 1985, 120. 46 Judith Waldrop and Diane Crispell, “Daytime Dramas Demographic Dreams,” American Demographics, Oct. 1988, 30. 47 Kellogg, “High Noon for Soaps,” 11; Diane Haithman, “The Reselling of Daytime Tele­vi­sion,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 31, 1989, 1+. 48 Haithman, “The Reselling of Daytime Television.” 49 Isobel Silden, “Taking Soaps for Real­ity,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1985, aa2+. 50 Jennifer Seder, “Soaps: Clothes for Constant Crisis,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5, 1980, d9. 51 Soapdish (1991) gave soap actors cameo roles, while Delirious (1991) made Emma Samms, formerly of gh and prime time’s Dynasty, a supporting player. 52 Elaine Showalter, “Critical Cross-­Dressing: Male Feminists and the ­Woman of the Year,” Raritan 3, no. 2 (1983–84): 138; Frank P. Tomasulo, “Masculine/FemiNotes to Chapter 5  ·  331

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69

70 71

72

73 74 75 76

nine: The ‘New Masculinity’ in Tootsie (1982),” Cinema Journal 38 (Fall 1996): 4–13. Stuart, Both of Me, 16–18; Seder, “Soaps,” 9. Seder, “Soaps,” 8–9. William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, “Rags,” Jan. 1986, Box 644, “Rags,” Bell, ucla. b&b, cbs, ep. 1, Mar. 23, 1987. Joanne Dennis, “Soap Opera Fashion Should be Worn More Than Once,” Syra­ cuse Herald-­Journal, June 23, 1981, b5. Neumann, Cassata, and Skill, “Setting the Mood,” 132. Intintoli, Taking Soaps Seriously, 228. “nbc Takes the Plunge with a New Soap,” Broadcasting, Aug. 6, 1984, 58. Westing­house Broadcasting, “The Making of Santa Barbara,” 1984, ucla Film and TV. sb, nbc, ep. 1, July 30, 1984, ucla Film and TV. Memo from Dobsons to Brian Frons et al., Sept. 19, 1984, Box 43, Folder 29, Dobson, whs. Steve Somer and Brian Frons, “Santa Barbara Update” video, Dec. 1984, ucla Film and TV. Dan Knapp, “One Life to Look at Young Addicts,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1970, g21. rh, abc, Oct. 20, 1978; Jan. 9, 1979. rh, abc, ep. 638, Dec. 21, 1977. Linda Susman, “Location Shooting . . . ​A Soap Could Visit Your Home Town,” Soap Box, Mar. 1979, WeLoveSoaps​.­net, Sept. 27, 2015, http://­www​.­welovesoaps​ .­net​/­2015​/­09​/­location​-­shooting​-­1​.h ­ tml. The serial opened with young heroine Mary Ryan walking through the city and arriving at Ryan’s Bar; episode 3 featured Mary and reporter Jack Fenelli wandering the city, launching their romance. rh, abc, July 7 and 9, 1975. rh, abc, ep. 412, Feb. 8, 1977. Promo, Texas, nbc, Aug. 4, 1980, ep. 1, ucla Film and TV; Jon-­Michael Reed, “Something New in Soapland,” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1980, x12a; “A Real ‘Capitol’ Gain!,” Daytime tv, May 1982, 12. In the program’s final months on cbs, it traveled to Hong Kong, and to Ireland in its final months on nbc. Terry Ann Knopf, “­Will Search Run Out of Tomorrows?,” Boston Globe, Oct. 30, 1981, 1; Linda Susman, “Kudos & Criticism,” Soap Opera Magazine, Apr. 1982, 28; SFT Electronic Press Kit, 1984, ucla Film and TV; “Search Is Over; No Tomorrow for Longest-­Running Soap,” Gazette (Montreal), Nov. 5, 1986, c7. gl, cbs, Apr. 1, 1980. Mike Bauer was aged upward over the years such that his birth year was revised to 1940. “Tom-­Margo Adventure Story,” Box 12, Folder 9, Dobsons, whs. atwt, cbs, Summer 1982.

332  ·  Notes to Chapter 5

77 Farley, “General Hospital at 20,” e3. 78 dool, nbc, May 31, 1984, ucla Film and TV. The song became an anthem for Bo and Hope, playing during the episode in which they got married, as well, May 23, 1985, ucla Film and TV. 79 sb, nbc, July 30, 1984, ucla Film and TV. 80 “amc Story Updates and Additions,” May 8, 1981, Box 16, Folder 4, Nixon, Northwestern. 81 For example, see amc, abc, Apr. 1983 (two episodes), ucla Film and TV. 82 gh, abc, summer 1980. 83 gh, abc, fall 1984. 84 dool, nbc, May 31, 1984. 85 gl, cbs, Dec. 1983. 86 rh, abc, Sept. 1981; Jon-­Michael Reed, “A Satirical Look through the Tube,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 11, 1981, h17. 87 See oltl, abc, June 19, 1989, ucla Film and TV, for an example. 88 Generations, nbc, ep. 1, Mar. 27, 1989. Gardner’s leading man in the soap within the soap was played by John Gabriel, who had been involved in the rh soap within a soap plot as Seneca Beaulac, initiating another layer of comedic intertextuality. 89 Linda T. Denison, “Bridget Dobson: Second to None,” Soap Opera Magazine, Dec. 1984, 46. 90 “sb: Where It’s Been, Where It Is, Where It’s ­Going . . . ,” Soap Opera now!, July 14, 1986, 4. 91 Libby Slate, “Low-­Rated Santa Barbara Soap That Takes Chances That Pay Off,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1988, G1. 92 For example, see Alexandra Einhart to B. Dobson, June 15, 1986, Box 44, Folder 3, Dobson, whs. 93 Levine, Wallowing in Sex. 94 “How to Survive a Marriage,” Variety, Jan. 23, 1974, 36. 95 John D. Haggart to Bell, May 27, 1971, Box 1, “1971 Correspondence,” Bell, ahc. 96 Memo from Lenore Canter to Lin Bolen, Sept. 28, 1973, Box 1, “1973–4 Correspondence,” Bell, ahc. 97 Marlena de Lacroix, “When Days of Our Lives Was Sex Ed 101,” Soap Opera Weekly, Nov. 13, 1990, 23. 98 Marilyn Skinner to Marcus, Mar. 29, 1978, Box 18, “Correspondence 1977–8, dool Fan Mail,” Marcus, ahc. 99 Memo from Lenore Cantor to Madeline David, no date, Box 18, Production Files 1977–78, dool, Marcus, ahc. 100 “Veleka Advises,” Soap Opera Digest, June 1978, 13. 101 Levine, Wallowing in Sex. 102 Levine, 239. 103 Radway, Reading the Romance, 141–44; Molly Haskell, “The 2,000 Year Old Misunderstanding: Rape Fantasy,” Ms., Nov. 1976, 84–86+. Notes to Chapter 5  ·  333

104 Intintoli, Taking Soaps Seriously, 109–10; Dobsons, “Story Projection,” Box 12, Folder 11, Dobson, whs. 105 Westing­house, “The Making of sb.” 106 Corday, The Days of Our Lives, 132. 107 gh, abc, Dec. 6, 1985. 108 dool, nbc, #5499, June 5, 1987, ucla Film and TV. 109 On sex in 1970s prime time, see Levine, Wallowing in Sex. 110 gl, “Nola’s fantasies,” cbs, 1980–85, ucla Film and TV. 111 “Flashback Episodes Period Piece,” Apr. 1982, Box 12, Folder 7; atwt Story Projection, 1982–83, Box 12, Folder 11, Dobson, whs. For a sample episode, see atwt, cbs, Mar. 10, 1982. 112 atwt Story Projection, 1982–83; “You the Viewer,” Daytime tv, Mar. 1983, 30–31. Some fans ­were captivated by Barbara and Gunnar’s romance. “The Letter Box,” Soap Opera Stars, Mar. 1983, 30. 113 b&b, cbs, episodes 9 and 10, 1987. 114 b&b, cbs, Sept. 27, 1988, ucla Film and TV. 115 amc, abc, Sept. 3, 1980. 116 gl, cbs, Aug. 18, 1981; gh, abc, Nov. 17, 1981. 117 dool, nbc, May 23, 1985, ucla Film and TV. 118 Einhart to B. Dobson; Christine Brown to B. Dobson, Aug. 20, 1986, Box 44, Folder 3, Dobson, whs. 119 Nixon’s newest soap, Loving, begun in 1983, told stories oriented around the suffering of a Vietnam veteran and father-­daughter sexual abuse, while Bell’s y&r featured an abortion story in 1986. ­Here, the w ­ oman who chooses to have the abortion, Ashley Abbott, is traumatized by her action and ends up in a m ­ ental institution. In this case, the “social issue” story does not have the more progressive bent found in the abortion plots of the 1970s. 120 Rymph, Republican ­Women, 190, 212–13. 121 Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive ­Woman (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1977). 122 Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Prince­ ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001), 242–43. 123 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 160. 124 gh, abc, summer 1980. 125 Nochimson reads Luke and Laura’s early story as a narrative of Laura’s embrace of her own eroticism. Martha Nochimson, No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 78–85. 126 gh, abc, summer 1980. 127 gh, abc, Sept. 11, 1984. 128 gh, abc, Sept. 9, 1985. 129 dool, nbc, July 14, 1986. 130 dool, nbc, Dec. 31, 1983. 334  ·  Notes to Chapter 5

131 Dobsons, “Santa Barbara, The Bible: The First Year, Part I,” Dec. 12, 1983, Box 43, Folder 21; Celia P. Gonzalez to sb; Oscar Alvarez to Dobsons, Sept. 21, 1984; Salvador Padilla to Dobsons, Sept. 26, 1984, Box 44, Folder 2, Dobson, whs. 132 Chris ­MacLeod, “Marcy Walker Reveals Her Greatest Passion!,” After­noon tv, Aug. 1985, 36. 133 nbc’s audience research regularly reported that Cruz and Eden ­were fan favorites. For example, see “sb Serial Monitor Report,” Jan. 21, 1985; Feb. 13, 1986; Apr. 7, 1986, Box 43, Folder 28, Dobson, whs. 134 Judy Atkins to Dobsons, June 20, 1986, Box 44, Folder 3, Dobson, whs. 135 “amc Story Projection,” Oct. 15, 1981, Box 16, Folder 5, Nixon, Northwestern. 136 See, for example, the episode featuring Jesse and Angie’s second wedding, which foregrounds the suspenseful situation of ­whether or not Greg ­will receive a letter from Jenny declaring her love for him in time for him to stop her marriage to Tony. This story has a greater sense of urgency and more screen time than does Jesse and Angie’s ceremony. amc, abc, Dec. 19, 1983. 137 “Jenny/Jesse/Liza/Greg/Ray,” no date, Box 16, Folder 6 and “Jesse/Angie/Eugene,” Feb. 25, 1985, Box 16, Folder 13, Nixon, Northwestern. 138 “amc Story Projection,” Oct. 15, 1981. 139 “amc Story Projection,” Apr. 1982, Box 16, Folder 6, Nixon, Northwestern. 140 atwt, cbs, Oct. 16, 1985. 141 dool, nbc, May 31 and June 1, 1984. 142 “sb Serial Monitor Report,” July 29, 1987, Box 11, Folder 18; Dottie Rooker to Dobsons, Dec. 18, year unknown; Alexandra Einhart to B. Dobson, June 15, 1986, Box 44, Folder 3; “sb Program Test Report,” Feb. 13, 1986, Box 43, Folder 28, Dobson, whs. 143 ­Couples with opposite coloring w ­ ere an alternate to this trend, as seen in the cases of sb’s Cruz and Eden and atwt’s Steve and Betsy. In each case, the more darkly complexioned hero was also ethnic in contrast to the heroine’s blonde whiteness. 144 Bobbie had abandoned her villainess status by this point and was more of a den ­mother to the brownstone’s residents. 145 gl, cbs, June 20, 1983. 146 gh, abc, Aug. 11, 1981. 147 atwt, cbs, Nov. 11, 1986. 148 dool, nbc, May 25, 1982, June 1, 1982, ucla Film and TV. 149 atwt, cbs, Nov. 6, 1987. 150 gl, cbs, Apr. 1, 1980. 151 amc included a sympathetic lesbian character for a few months in 1983, and Santa Barbara identified a dead character as having been bisexual in 1985 flashbacks. Santa Barbara also featured daytime’s first aids story in 1985—­the sufferer was a seventy-­five-­year-­old nun. B. Dobson to Brian Frons and Susan Lee, Sept. 17, 1985, Box 43, Folder 17, Dobson, whs. atwt introduced the gay Hank Elliott in 1988, but his term was also ­limited. 152 Waldrop and Crispell, “Daytime Dramas Demographic Dreams,” 30. Notes to Chapter 5  ·  335

153 The large gay male audience was noted by Brian Puckett, founder of the World of Soap Themes soap history website. Interview with author. 154 Hollis Griffin, “Soap Slash: Gay Men Rewrite the World of Daytime Tele­vi­sion Drama,” Spectator 25, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 27. 155 Bebe Moore Campbell, “Hooked on Soaps,” Essence, Nov. 1978, 100+. 156 Waldrop and Crispell, “Daytime Dramas Demographic Dreams,” 30. 157 Mimi Torchin, “Black ­Family Shares Spotlight in New Soap Opera,” New York Times, Mar. 26, 1989, a27. 158 Ron Becker, Gay tv and Straight Amer­ic­ a (New Brunswisck, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 159 “New Daytime Drama, Talk and Magazine Shows on nbc’s horizon,” Broadcast­ ing, Jan. 30, 1989, 31. 160 Torchin, “Black ­Family Shares Spotlight”; Diane Haithman, “Generations in Black and White,” Los Angeles Times Mar. 27, 1989, 8. 161 Generations, nbc, Mar. 27, 1989. 162 Sharon Bern­stein, “First Black Soap Opera Garners High Praise but Low Ratings,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 26, 1990, f11. 163 Haithman, “Generations in Black and White,” 8. 164 Scott Williams, “ ‘Generations’ ­Under the Soap Gun,” Austin American Statesman, July 8, 1990, 46.

chapter 6. strug­g les for survival 1 “Daytime Doldrums for Networks,” Broadcasting, Oct. 10, 1988, 43. 2 Kim McAvoy, “The Crying Game,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 31, 1999, 22. 3 David Kissinger, “Nets Prescribe Dose of Real­ity for Ailing Daytime Ratings,” Variety, Nov. 26, 1990, 23. 4 Ginia Bellafante, “Soap Operas: The Old and the Desperate,” Time, May 29, 1995, 73+; “Simpson Case Draws Viewers,” Oregonian/New York Daily News Ser­vice, July 3, 1994, a27. 5 Steve Weinstein, “Soap Operas Are Bubbling, Bouncing Back from OJ,” Los Angeles Times, Dec, 21, 1995, 2. 6 Jeremy J. Murphy, “Closing Up Shop,” Augusta Chronicle, June 24, 1999, b1. 7 Jonathan Berr, “The Season the Soap ­Bubble Burst,” Toronto Star/Bloomberg News, May 5, 2005, c3. 8 John Consoli, “Sun Setting on Key Daytime Demos,” Mediaweek, Nov. 14, 2005, 4. 9 Brian Steinberg, “Who Dropped the Soap on Daytime tv?,” Advertising Age, Aug. 9, 2010, 6. 10 Eileen Meehan, “Why We ­Don’t Count: The Commodity Audience,” in Logics of Tele­vi­sion, ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 132. 11 Hersch, “Daytime Network tv,” 68. 336  ·  Notes to Chapter 5

12 “Getting a Fix on How Th ­ ey’re Using all Th ­ ose VCR’s,” Broadcasting, May 7, 1984, 74–75; David Crook, “Soaps Make a Big Splash with Home Video Tapers,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1984, g1. 13 Ronald Alsop, “Advertisers Go beyond Soaps to Reach Daytime Audience,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 19, 1985, 1. 14 “Networks’ Competitive Fever Rises in Daytime,” Advertising Age, Sept. 9, 1985, 96. 15 Marianne Paskowski, “As the Daytime Turns,” Marketing & Media Decisions, June 1986, 30. 16 “Devaluation in tv’s Daytime,” Broadcasting, June 23, 1986, 35–36. 17 Other aspects of the market also made advertisers less satisfied. In 1983, the networks had begun selling fifteen-­second commercial spots in daytime, which brought in new advertisers and grew ad revenues. Diane Haithman, “The Reselling of Daytime Tele­vi­sion,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 31, 1989, 1+. But within a few years, industry research suggested that shorter spots ­were less effective. Advertisers ­were especially worried about the clutter of daytime, given its greater number of commercial minutes per hour on top of the shorter ads. S. J. Paul, “Network Daytime Cheapened by Influx of 15-­Second Commercials,” tv/Radio Age, July 11, 1988, 8; Paskowski, “As the Daytime Turns,” 34. 18 “Daytime Ad Sales Down,” Broadcasting, July 18, 1988, 64, 66. 19 David Kissinger, “cbs Hopes Soaps Wash at College,” Variety, Sept. 3, 1990, 100. dool writer Richard J. Allen recalls nbc president Warren Littlefield admitting the network’s lack of information about vcr viewing in the early 1990s. Allen, interview with author. 20 “Survey Finds Wider Daytime tv Audience,” Seattle Times, July 6, 1989, c3; Haithman, “The Reselling of Daytime Tele­vi­sion”; “Soap Viewers ­Will Stand Up and Be Counted,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 8, 1992, 9. 21 Kellogg, “High Noon for Soaps,” 11. 22 “The Scheherazade of Soaps,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 30, 1999, 28. 23 Lisa Backus, “Generations Honored,” Soap Opera Weekly, Nov. 6, 1990, 7. 24 One fan wrote to the Dobsons in 1984, “Thank God for vcrs.” Kimberly Roberston to Dobsons, Sept. 6, 1984, Box 44, Folder 2, Dobson, whs. 25 Scott Donaton, “K-­III’s Soap Opera Digest Moving to Weekly Format,” Ad­ vertising Age, Mar. 3, 1997, 2; Rebecca Finkel, “Soap Opera Digest: Passion in the After­noon,” Medialife Magazine, July 1999, http:1​/w ­ ww​.m ­ edIaIIfemagazlne​ .­comInews1999​/j­ uly99​/n ­ ews4706​.h ­ tmI. 26 “tv Tickler,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 4, 1990, 20. 27 Becky Ebenkamp, “Jacinda Cannon,” Brandweek, Apr. 12, 2004, 27. 28 Alsop, “Advertisers Go beyond Soaps,” 1. 29 Daniel Howard Cerone, “­Will a ‘Summit’ Help Soaps Give Up Sex?,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 22, 1994, 14. 30 Lynn Liccardo, “Who R ­ eally Watches the Daytime Soaps?,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 30, 1996, 36–38. 31 On the most desirable target markets of the 1990s, see Becker, Gay tv and Straight Amer­i­ca. Notes to Chapter 6  ·  337

32 Liccardo, “Who ­Really Watches the Daytime Soaps?” 33 On the history of a pedagogical focus in daytime soap opera, see Ellen Seiter, “ ‘To Teach and to Sell’: Irna Phillips and Her Sponsors, 1930–1954,” Journal of Film and Video 41, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 21–35. 34 Susanne Ault, “Who Watches Daytime?,” Broadcasting & Cable, Jan. 21, 2001, 74–75. 35 Paige Albiniak, “Where the Upscale Viewers Are,” Broadcasting & Cable, Aug. 4, 2003, 7. 36 Stuart Elliott, “abc Goes in Search of a Younger Audience for Its Soap Operas,” New York Times, May 19, 2000, c6. 37 Paula Bern­stein, “Soap B ­ ubble Bursts,” Variety, June 12, 2001, 17. 38 Pamela Paul, “Soap Operas ­Battle the Suds,” American Demographics 24, no. 1 (Jan. 2002): 26–28. 39 ­These industrial shifts match the broader elevation of affluent, youthful whiteness in the postfeminist culture scholars have identified as expanding across the 1990s and 2000s. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, eds., Interrogating Postfemi­ nism: Gender and the Politics of Popu­lar Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 40 John Consoli, “What ­Women D ­ on’t Want? Soap Operas,” Adweek, Nov. 1, 2004, 6. 41 abc Daytime president Brian Frons made this claim in a lecture at Pepperdine University, Aug. 22, 2008, https://­www​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­5TR00pfm​__­​ 0 ­ . 42 See Meehan, “Why We D ­ on’t Count,” on the concept of the “commodity audience.” 43 Meg James, “­After Oprah Leaves, Daytime tv May Never Be the Same Again,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2011, http://­lat​.­ms​/­21DZcQQ. 44 Gloria Goodale, “Is Daytime tv in Decline, or Just Getting Ready for the Next ‘Big ­Thing’?,” Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2011, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2m0Cy6q. 45 Seiter, “­Women Writing Soap Opera,” 46. 46 Quote comes from ABC’s Brian Frons. James, “­After Oprah Leaves, Daytime tv May Never Be the Same Again.” 47 From Brian Frons. James. 48 Maureen E. Ryan, Lifestyle Media in American Culture: Gender, Class, and the Politics of Ordinariness (New York: Routledge, 2018). 49 This historical development is the subject of the work of feminist thinkers such as Nancy Fraser, “Contradictions of Capital and Care,” New Left Review 100 (July–­Aug. 2016), https://­newleftreview​.­org​/­II​/­100​/­nancy​-­fraser​-­contradictions​ -­of​-­capital​-­and​-­care. 50 Jaime Weinman, “­Women’s After­noon tv: rip,” Maclean’s, May 24, 2011, http://­ bit​.l­ y​/2­ 1E1zDe. 51 Jack Loftus, “abc Keeps on Packin’ Daytime Dynamite,” Variety, Dec. 30, 1981, 29. 52 Kellogg, “High Noon,” 9. 53 Intintoli, Taking Soaps Seriously, 228. 338  ·  Notes to Chapter 6

54 Intintoli, 124; Jean Rouverol, Writing for the Soaps (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1984), 27. 55 Dan Rustin, “Switch of Search for Tomorrow to nbc-­t v Leads to Speculation about Other p&g Daytime Soaps,” tv/Radio Age, Mar. 22, 1982, 42. 56 “For cbs’s Brand New Soap, Getting Beverlee McKinsey Would Be a Real Capitol Gain!,” Daytime tv, May 1982, 12; Jerry Buck, “Writers Stephen, Elinor Karpf Believe Time for Soaps Is Now,” Associated Press, Mar. 27, 1982, http://­www​ .­welovesoaps​.­net​/­2013​/­03​/­capitol​-­soap​-o ­ pera​-1­ 982​.h ­ tml. 57 Rustin, “Switch of Search for Tomorrow,” 42. 58 nbc had actually taken owner­ship of The Doctors from Colgate-­Palmolive in 1980, but the sponsor continued to purchase the majority of the program’s ad spots, making it akin to sponsor-­owned programs. 59 For example, see Jerry Dobson to Frons, Oct. 8, 1984, Box 43, Folder 38, Dobson, whs. 60 Gerald Ament to Richard A. Kurshner, Jan. 21, 1986, Box 45, Folder 3; “A Sampling of Jerry’s Frame of Mind . . . ,” no date, Box 11, Folder 8; Bridget Dobson, Declaration, New World Tele­vi­sion vs. Dobson Productions and Dobson Productions vs. New World Tele­vi­sion, 1987, Box 11, Folder 18, Dobson, whs. 61 Giada Da Ros, “Writer Patrick Mulcahey on Changes in Soap Opera Writing Contracts,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 31–32. 62 B. Dobson to Bert, Sept. 25, 1987; B. Dobson to Bert and Sol, Oct. 23, 1987, Box 11, Folder 18, Dobson, whs. 63 See “­Don’t Take Another World Away!,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 4, 1993, 44. 64 Mimi Torchin, “Speaking My Mind,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 25, 1990, 4. 65 Candace Lyle Hogan, “A Head Writer with a Novel Approach,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 24, 1992, 14–15; “Public Opinion,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 31, 1992, 41–42. 66 Marnie Winston-­Macauley, “Major Contract Shake-­Up at abc,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 26, 1991, 3. Marnie Winston-­Macauley, “A Close Look at the abc Contract Crisis,” Soap Opera Weekly, July 2, 1991, 32–34. 67 “Changing of the Guard on p&g Soaps,” Soap Opera Weekly, Feb. 22, 1994, 9; Dana Canedy, “p&g Is Seeking to Revive Soaps,” New York Times, Mar. 11, 1997, d1. 68 Joe Flint and Gary Levin, “Sony, p&g Lather Up,” Variety, Mar. 12, 1997, 1. 69 Edward Lewine, “Soaps on the Ropes: Part of tv Industry Scrambles,” New York Times, Mar. 15, 1998, cy4. 70 Paula Bern­stein, “abc Writers Do Soap Opera Swap,” Variety, Feb. 26, 2001, 32. 71 Pamela McClintock, “Sudsers Go for the Kill,” Variety, Feb. 23, 2004, 26. 72 Creative control is Bell’s main concern in his notes on the proposed agreement with Screen Gems to launch “The Young and Restless Years” in 1972, Sept. 6, 1972, Box 130, “New Show,” Bell, ucla. 73 Bell Jr. was also instrumental in the ­family’s in­de­pen­dently owned com­pany securing a greater proportion of the financial owner­ship of y&r in negotiations Notes to Chapter 6  ·  339

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82

83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90

91

92

with Columbia in the late 1980s. Maloney and Bell, The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell, 224. Maloney and Bell, 249–50. Canedy, “p&g Is Seeking to Revive Soaps.” Allen, interview with author. Paul Rauch, interview with author, Oct. 25, 2007. Rauch, interview with author. Gary Levin, “Webs Finding Soaps Are a Slippery Slope,” Variety, Dec. 2, 1996, 1. Barbara Vancheri, “This World Comes to an End ­after 35 Years,” Pittsburgh Post-­Gazette, June 23, 1999, e1; LS, “If nbc Adds Another Soap, It’s Goodbye to Another World,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 30, 1993, 7; B. Dobson to Bert, Sept. 25, 1987; B. Dobson to Bert and Sol, Oct. 23, 1987. On the implications of this, see Ken Auletta, Three Blind Mice (New York: Vintage Books, 1992). “Stranger Than Fiction,” New York Times, May 5, 2005, e30; Bernard Weinraub, “Love Fest for Soap Opera Fans, in Two Languages,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 2004, e1; Bill Car­ter, “New Cable Channel to Pre­sent cbs’s Top-­Rated Soap Opera,” New York Times, Aug. 21, 1999, c3. Anne Becker, “Disney-­a bc Owns the Day,” Broadcasting & Cable, Mar. 31, 2008, 11. Anne Becker, “abc’s Sun King,” Broadcasting & Cable, July 28, 2008, no page. Becker, “Disney-­a bc Owns the Day.” Rajendra S. Sisodia, “A Goofy Deal,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 4, 1995, a8. Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave, The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies (New York: Portfolio, 2009), 210, 245–46. Tino Balio, Hollywood in the New Millennium (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Robert Fulford, “Synergy Another Word for Catastrophe,” Globe and Mail, Aug. 16, 1995. Peter Andrews to Bob Peterson, Oct. 9, 1967; Memos from David L. White to cbs production personnel, Mar. 13, 1969, Box 9, Folder 5, p&g, whs; and Michael S. Brockman to abc production personnel, June 5, 1970, Box 11, Folder 1, Donovan, whs. One source claims that tapes of atwt ­were still being erased in 1978. Adams, “An American Soap Opera,” 140. Bell to B. Corday, Nov. 10, 1968, Box 129, “Screen Gems Contract,” Bell, ucla. In contrast, the sponsor-­owners seem to have paid l­ittle or no attention to international distribution beyond Canada. In the 1964 agreement between Phillips, Bell, their cocreators of Another World and p&g/Young & Rubicam (giving the sponsor distribution rights in the period before it outright purchased the program in 1967), only distribution to the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico ­were mentioned. “Property Rights Agreement,” May 4, 1964, Box 130, Bell, ucla. Draft agreement between Screen Gems and Bell-­Phillip Tele­vi­sion Productions, Inc., Sept. 6, 1972, Box 130, “New show,” Bell, ucla.

340  ·  Notes to Chapter 6

93 Al DeLugach, “Hollywood Finds a Gold Mine in Foreign Markets,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 1988, 2. 94 William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, “Proposal: Rags,” Jan. 1986, Box 644, Folder “Rags,” Bell, ucla. 95 Maloney and Bell, The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell, 135. 96 James T. Jones IV, “Daytime Soaps Make a Splash Overseas,” USA ­Today, Apr. 7, 1988, 3d. 97 Maloney and Bell, The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell, 135. 98 Sol Rosenthal to Andrew M. White and B. Dobson, Feb. 8, 1991, Box 43, Folder 31, Dobson, whs. 99 Linda Susman, “nbc’s Susan Lee: ‘­We’re Trying to Save Santa Barbara,’ ” Soap Opera Weekly, Sept. 1, 1992, 3. 100 Levin, “Webs Finding Soaps Are a Slippery Slope,” 1. 101 Flint and Levin, “Sony, p&g Lather Up,” 1. 102 Margulies, “tv Syndicators Awash in Soap Opera Pitches”; Ron Krueger, “Ritu­ als Set to Air on 100 US tv Stations, 15 Territories,” Screen International, Sept. 22, 1984, 22. 103 Lilana Novakovich, “Lilana’s Diary,” Toronto Star, Dec. 8, 1990, s86; Deirdre Martin, “Daytime’s Teens,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 18, 1990, 21. Generations was rerun on the cable channel bet. 104 “Cable Soapers More ‘Realistic,’ ” Advertising Age, Oct. 12, 1981, 74; Mark N. Grant, “A Christian Soap Opera—­Is It Ordained by God?,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 1981, n6; Jack Loftus, “Old Time Religion Lathers Up tv Soap,” Variety, Nov. 25, 1981, 69, 81. 105 A. James Liska, “Lurid and Torrid, Daytime Soaps Keep Webs Rich,” TV/Radio Age, Sept. 14, 1987, 56; Tom Moran, “Late Night with . . . ​a bc Daytime?” Soap Opera Weekly, May 21, 1991, 7. 106 Gene Accas to Nixon, Jason Rabinowitz, and Cy Schneider, Jan. 9, 1989, Box 2, Folder 4, Nixon, Northwestern; Barbara J. Irwin, “An Oral History of a Piece of Americana: The Soap Opera Experience” (PhD diss., suny Buffalo, 1990), 199; Joe Flint, “Liberty to Launch Soap Opera Channel,” Variety, May 15, 1995, 252; Steve McClellan, “abc ­Faces Affiliates, Prob­lems Head On,” Broadcasting & Cable, June 10, 1996, 8. 107 Steve McClellan, “abc’s Fili-­Krushel,” Broadcasting & Cable, Dec. 21, 1998, 22. 108 Lynette Rice, “Jon Feltheimer: Leading Tele­vi­sion’s Prolific Producer,” Broadcast­ ing & Cable, May 26, 1997, 24. 109 John Dempsey and Josef Adalian, “ctth Lathers Up Soaps Network,” Variety, May 10, 1999, 136. 110 Joe Schlosser, “Columbia Dishes Up Soap Net,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 10, 1999, 8, 10; Joe Schlosser, “cbs, ColTriStar in Soap Deal,” Broadcasting & Cable, Aug. 23, 1999, 7. 111 Jon-­Michael Reed, “Doctors Given 6 Months to Live,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 8, 1982, h14; Pat H. Broeske, “Why Soaps Are Cancelled,” Soap Opera Digest, Dec. 3, 1985, 138–41; “Search Ends: tv’s Se­nior Soap to Go ­after 35 Years,” Broad­ Notes to Chapter 6  ·  341

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123

124 125

126 127 128 129 130 131 132

133 134 135

casting, Nov. 10, 1986, 74–75; Nancy M. Reichardt, “Hope Runs Out for Ryan’s Hope Soaper,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 23, 1988, h19; “nbc Evaluating Popularity of Soap Opera,” Newsday/Associated Press, Sept. 27, 1990, no page; Linda Susman, “nbc’s John Miller,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 12, 1993, 9; “­Don’t Take Another World Away!,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 4, 1993, 44. Auletta, Three Blind Mice, 366–73. “Daytime Doldrums for Networks,” Broadcasting, Oct. 10, 1988, 43–44. “Santa Barbara Update,” Dec. 1984, ucla Film and TV; John Dempsey, “nbc Promises to Wash Out Talk with Soap,” Variety, Nov. 4, 1996, 104. Kim McAvoy, “The Crying Game,” Broadcasting & Cable, May 31, 1999, 23. Steve Coe, “The Days and Nights of Warren Littlefield,” Broadcasting & Cable, Nov. 9, 1992, 38. Kyle Pope, “As the Ratings Turn,” Pittsburgh Post-­Gazette/Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23, 1998, g2. Steve McClellan, “abc Spreading Its Soaps,” Broadcasting & Cable, June 8, 1998, 6. John Dempsey, “Big Four vs. Cable Ops,” Variety, Mar. 13, 2000, 35; John Dempsey, “Soap ­Bubbles Disney,” Variety, Apr. 9, 2001, 14. John Thornton Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Tele­vi­sion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 5. Caldwell, 11. Caldwell, 18. The soaps’ stylistic innovations grew most noticeably across the 1990s and 2000s and so may not have been especially vis­i­ble to Caldwell before the 1995 publication of his book. Valentina I. Valentini, “FilmLook at 25: Com­pany Evolves from Mimics to Maestros,” Variety, Apr. 17, 2014, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2jWdwnW. Peter Lambert, “Faux Film Is Emmy Winner, Bud­get Saver,” Broadcasting, June 29, 1992, 23; Lara De Losh, “Movie Look for Days,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 26, 1993, 4; Janet Di Lauro, “Days Goes Prime Time . . . ​The Sequel,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 2, 1993, 3. Valentini, “FilmLook at 25”; Lynette Rice, “nbc Selling Soap in Tucson,” Broad­ casting, Nov. 3, 1997, 32, 34. Hall, The Zoom, 153, 162. aw, nbc, Feb. 13, 1992. gl, cbs, Nov. 3, 1992. For example, see aw, “Murder on the Honeymoon Express,” nbc, May 20, 1993. Beach, nbc, Aug. 12, Dec. 29, 1998. Beach, nbc, Apr. 5, 1999. Similarly, in a Friends (nbc, 1994–2004)-­themed dream in the spring of 1999, Sara is cast as the “Pitiful Loser” drenched in the fountain whose umbrella ­won’t open as her friends frolic gleefully. Beach, nbc, Apr. 27, 1999. oltl, abc, June 15, 18–20, 2007, and May 14, 17–18, 2010. Passions, nbc, June 21, 2002.

342  ·  Notes to Chapter 6

1 36 Passions, nbc, June 27, 2003, June 29, 2007, Jan. 27, 2006. 137 “­Behind the Scenes of Passions’s Homage to Wicked,” Soap Opera Digest, July 2, 2007, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2kRFCjl. 138 Passions, nbc, July 9, 1999. 139 Passions, nbc, Aug. 9, 1999. 140 For an overview of the form and cultural functions of the telenovela in Latin Amer­i­ca, see Ana M. Lopez, “Our Welcomed Guests: Telenovelas in Latin Amer­ i­ca,” in To Be Continued: Soap Operas around the World, ed. Robert C. Allen (New York: Routledge, 1995), 256–75. 141 Paula Bern­stein, “Soap B ­ ubble Bursts,” Variety, June 12, 2001, 17. 142 Ed Martin, “It’s Not a Novela, It’s nbc,” Broadcasting & Cable, Sept. 13, 2004, 25; Bernard Weinraub, “Love Fest for Soap Opera Fans, in Two Languages,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 2004, e1. 143 Passions, DirecTV, Jan. 9, 2008. 144 Dana Calvo, “Soap Opera Seeks to Speak to Latinos,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 29, 2001, d6. 145 This is best exemplified in pc, abc, July 30, 2001. 146 Schlosser, “Columbia Dishes Up Soap Net,” 10. 147 Richard Tedesco, “Sitcom Preludes, Movie Prequels,” Broadcasting & Cable, Mar. 27, 2000, 54. 148 Jon Healey, “Soaps Online May Appeal to Young but Not Restless,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26, 2003, c1. 149 Elana Levine, “ ‘What the Hell Does tiic Mean?’ Online Content and the Strug­ gle to Save the Soaps,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 201–18. 150 Meyers, “ ‘­Don’t Cry B ­ ecause It’s Over,’ ” 342. 151 Levine, “ ‘What the Hell Does tiic Mean?’ ” 152 Levine. 153 Satellite provider DirecTV licensed Passions ­after its nbc cancellation, continuing new episodes on its proprietary “101” channel. But even this alternative distribution model proved unsustainable, perhaps an innovation in distribution that came too late. 154 Steinberg, “Who Dropped the Soap on Daytime tv?” 155 Complications with the launch of Disney Ju­nior kept Soapnet ­running on some cable and satellite systems ­until the end of 2013.

chapter 7. reckoning with the past 1 David Kissinger, “Nets Prescribe Dose of Real­ity for Ailing Daytime Ratings,” Variety, Nov. 26, 1990, 78. Audience letters to the editor printed in fan magazines echoed ­these sentiments. “What Fans Want in the ’90s,” Soap Opera Update, May 7, 1990, 10. Notes to Chapter 7  ·  343

2 Marlena De Lacroix, “The Tragedy of One Life to Live,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 25, 1990, 18; John Kelly Genovese, “The Destruction of One Life to Live,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 13, 1990, 39. 3 oltl, abc, Feb. 7, 1992, ucla Film and TV. 4 Such a story not only changed ­things up narratively but allowed the program to identify itself as offering an educational public ser­vice, a way in which soaps had justified their existence as far back as radio. Dorothy Vine, “Jessica Tuck and Her Lupus Storyline,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 7, 1992, 10; Seiter, “ ‘To Teach and to Sell.’ ” 5 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Lit­er­at­ ure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 132–34. Ron Becker understands this shift as key to the growing presence of gay characters and themes in 1990s prime time. Becker, Gay tv and Straight Amer­i­ca. 6 Joy V. Fuqua, “ ‘­There’s a Queer in My Soap!’ The Homophobia/aids Storyline of One Life to Live,” in To Be Continued, ed. Robert C. Allen (New York: Routledge, 1995), 202; Marlena De Lacroix, “aids: Daytime’s Evasive History,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 6, 1995, 18. 7 Marlena De Lacroix, “Honorable (?) Mention,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 30, 1992, 34. 8 abc was reluctant to have Robin infected, but head writer Claire Labine saw this as the point of the ­whole story; her goal was long-­term social relevance, only pos­si­ble by affecting a continuing character. Damon L. Jacobs, “Soap’s Hope: The Claire Labine Interview, Part Three,” We Love Soaps, Nov. 5, 2009, http://­www​.­welovesoaps​.­net​/­2009​/­11​/­soaps​-­hope​-­claire​-­labine​-­interview​-­part​ _­05​.­html. 9 It was recognized as such in the soap press. Mimi Torchin, “Speaking My Mind,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 2, 1995, 4. 10 For an exploration of the impact of this context on media culture, see Jennifer Hyland Wang, “ ‘A Strug­gle of Contending Stories’: Race, Gender, and Po­liti­cal Memory in Forrest Gump,” Cinema Journal 39, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 92–115. 11 As described by police chief Abe Carver. dool, nbc, Dec. 21, 1994. 12 dool, nbc, Feb. 13, 1995. 13 The program’s endorsement of conventional religiosity was widespread, including in the parallel plot of the ­couple Bo and Billie, who are thwarted in their efforts to get married in the Catholic Church. When they eventually do marry, their ceremony offers a religious mission statement for the thirty-­year-­old soap. As Bo notes in his vows, “We feel God’s presence to­night in this rebuilt church,” and then promises to Billie, “To love and honor and to cherish you all the rest of the days of our lives.” Heterosexual marital love, God, the Church, and the soap itself are aligned and celebrated. Dool, nbc, Feb. 27, 1995. 14 dool, nbc, Jan. 12, 1995. 15 Marlena has only a few moments of agency across the eight-­month story line, as when she resists the devil ­because her c­ hildren are threatened. dool, nbc, May 2 and 3, 1995. 16 dool, nbc, Dec. 28, 1994. 344  ·  Notes to Chapter 7

17 For example, see dool, nbc, Apr. 3, 1995. Kristen would not herself become a deranged villainess ­until a­ fter this story. 18 Colleen McDannell, “Catholic Horror: The Exorcist (1973),” in Catholics in the Movies, ed. Colleen McDannell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 197–225; Andrew Scahill, The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 57–78. 19 Marlena De Lacroix, “Swept Away by Sweeps,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 4, 1995, 19. 20 “Mail Call,” Soap Opera Weekly, Feb. 21, 1995, 41; “Days’ Fantastic Storyline,” Daytime tv, July 1995, 92. 21 “Days’ Fantastic Storyline,” 22–23. 22 Janet Di Lauro, “The Devil Made Her Do It!,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 3, 1995, 3. 23 M. Longer, “Days’ Doc Strikes Gold,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 27, 1995, 10. 24 B. Martin, “Is the Devil Playing Cupid?,” Soap Opera Weekly, Feb. 21, 1995, 42. 25 Terry Bryce, “The Salem Scene,” Daytime tv, Nov. 1995, 29. 26 V. Caldwell Gomez, “Clone Story a Hit,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 12, 1998, 34. More audience negotiations with the story ­were discussed in the same issue’s “Mail Call,” 35. 27 Cari D. Burstein, “Top Ten Reasons the Reva Clone Story Sucked,” Guiding Light Online, no date, https://­www​.­anybrowser​.­org​/­soaps​/­gl​/­topten​.­shtml. 28 Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 208–51. 29 Mark McGarry, “Eden’s Rape on sb,” Soap Opera Weekly, Sept. 22, 1992, 19; sb, nbc, Sept. 15, 1988. 30 sb, nbc, Sept. 29, 1988. This critique is not wholly altruistic; indeed, it has an ele­ment of spite about it, as in Eden suggesting that Linc and Laurie’s portrayers despise each other in real life, speaking to gossipy rumors about a rift between Geary and Francis. The insularity of the soaps’ creative world also made the critique rather disingenuous. One of the sb head writers, Anne Howard Bailey, had written for gh just a few years ­earlier, including some of Luke and Laura’s story. Pratt, Bailey’s writing partner at sb, and Jill Farren Phelps, their executive producer, would work together at gh in the 2000s, during a period in which the show was often critiqued for its vio­lence and sexism. 31 sb, nbc, Sept. 15, 1988. 32 Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Tele­vi­sion in Postfeminist Culture (New York: nyu Press, 2001), 96. 33 McGarry, “Eden’s Rape on sb.” 34 Projansky, Watching Rape. 35 y&r’s 1989 story of Cricket Blair becoming a victim of date rape illustrated the challenges victims face in working through a largely unsympathetic justice system. Mark McGarry, “y&r Tackles Date Rape,” Soap Opera Weekly, July 5, 1994, 20; Joanne Douglas, “Rape in the After­noon,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 21, 1991, 35; Mimi Torchin, “Speaking My Mind,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 1, 1991, 4. 36 Douglas, “Rape in the After­noon,” 35. 37 Richard J. Allen, interview with author, July 1, 2016. Notes to Chapter 7  ·  345

38 M. Livak, “Days Disgrace,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 21, 1991, 41. 39 sb, nbc, Dec. 7, 1990. 40 Allen, interview with author. One fan blog offers a more appreciative analy­ sis of the way the aftermath of the rape allowed for an exploration of the bonds of vari­ous supercouples. “Jennifer’s Rape,” Spoiler ­Free Days, July 12, 2016, https://­nospoilerdays​.­wordpress​.­com​/­category​/­past​-­storylines​/j­ ennifers​ -­rape​/­. 41 “Jennifer’s Rape”; KW, “Jennifer ­Violated,” Soap Opera Weekly, Nov. 6, 1990, 3. 42 Sue Dresner, “Paradise Lost,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 23, 1991, 32. See also J. Pigago, “No More Days ­These Days,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 4, 1990, 22. 43 D. Thomas, “Unrealistic Mourning,” Soap Opera Weekly, Jan. 8, 1991, 21; J. M., “Boycotts and Bad Press,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 18, 1991, 41; “On Rapist Redemption,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 23, 1991, 40–41. 44 Livak, “Days Disgrace”; P. D’Amico, “No Go for Days Storyline,” Soap Opera Weekly, Nov. 27, 1990, 18–19. 45 Projansky, Watching Rape, 109. 46 Projansky. 47 Creators described the story as seeking to “create a rift between Luke and Lucky.” Janet DiLauro, “Heal Thyself,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 30, 1998, 14; Projansky, Watching Rape, 84–86; Tania Modleski, Feminism without ­Women: Culture and Criticism in a “Postfeminist” Age (New York: Routledge, 1991). 48 Modleski, Feminism without ­Women, 166–67n18; Projansky, Watching Rape. 49 gh, abc, Mar. 3, 1998. 50 Irene S. Keene, “gh’s Genie Francis Returns in May,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 5, 1998, 5. 51 D. M. Diana, “Assaulting Viewer Intelligence,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 14, 1998, 23. 52 gh, abc, Mar. 16, 1998. 53 C. Ravazini, “Rising to the Occasion,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 14, 1998, 34. 54 In the aftermath of the original rape, in late 1979 through the first half of 1980, Luke was also haunted by his actions, shameful and full of remorse. In the summer of 1980, however, the scripting changed such that the event was forgotten diegetically (once Luke and Laura go “on the run” as a supercouple). Levine, Wallowing in Sex, 241–42. 55 gh, abc, June 1, 1998. 56 gh, abc, Mar. 23, 1998. 57 DiLauro, “Heal Thyself,” 14. 58 gh, abc, Mar. 25, 1998. Tom rapes Audrey on the July 31, 1970, episode. gh script, Box 22, Folder 20, Dobson, whs. 59 gh, abc, June 1, 1998. 60 gh, abc, July 7, 1998. 61 gh, abc, July 7, 1998. 62 Allen, Speaking of Soap Operas, 74–75. 63 Allen, 113. 346  ·  Notes to Chapter 7

64 Arguably, this is true as well of prime time, where the first series featuring nonstraight leads did not emerge ­until the late 1990s with the coming out of the character Ellen on Ellen (abc, 1994–98; the character first comes out as a lesbian in 1997) and with the debut of ­Will & Grace (nbc, 1998–2005, 2017–). As Becker explores, most of the attention to gay and lesbian identities in prime-­time entertainment before this point was oriented around nonstraight peripheral characters or guest stars, or around comedies of mistaken sexual identity. On the ­whole, he argues, ­these repre­sen­ta­tions ­were more about straight Americans trying into make sense of sexuality than they ­were a full-­fledged repre­sen­ta­tion of lgbt experience. Becker, Gay tv and Straight Amer­i­ca. 65 Becker, 27. 66 B. Williams, “Kudos and Congratulations,” Soap Opera Weekly, June 18, 1991, 41; Scottie Ross, “Enough Is Enough,” Soap Opera Weekly, Apr. 23, 1991, 20; A. Grey Le Cuyer, “Generations: Why the Show Must Go On,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 18, 1990, 36–38; Marcella Oliver-­Weeks, “It’s a Whitewash on nbc Daytime,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 24, 1992, 19. 67 For example, see Williams, “Kudos and Congratulations.” This was made especially clear when Generations’ final episode aired alongside an episode of b&b in which white matriarch Stephanie Forrester finds herself in a “seedy part of town,” confronting “the mortal danger faced by a defenseless white ­woman at the hands of a brutal black man, and the ‘noble savage’ (also black) who risks all to protect same defenseless white ­woman.” Ross, “Enough Is Enough,” 20; b&b, cbs, ep. 965, Jan. 25, 1991. 68 As one of daytime’s few black writers noted, more than the ­simple inclusion of black characters, the soaps were failing at “writing fully fleshed stories with African American actors . . . ​­there should be some effort made to capture dialects, understand vernacular, turn of phrase.” Miki Turner, “White Shadow,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 12, 1998, 30–31. 69 Krin Gabbard, Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 143–44. 70 Kathy Williamson, “African Americans, Daytime Drama, and Diversity,” Los Angeles Sentinel, Aug. 14–20, 2003, b3. 71 Carey Goldberg, “Goodbye Corinth, Hello New York,” New York Times, Nov. 26, 1995, 44. The City also included a secondary, fashion model character, Azure C, who is revealed to be a “transsexual,” a ­woman who had transitioned from her assigned gender, but her story line was mainly oriented around this reveal, and the character was written out shortly thereafter. 72 T. L. Stanley, “Soap Operas Look for Ways to Rekindle the Romance,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 24, 2000, f25. 73 Passions, nbc, ep. 22, Aug. 3, 1999. 74 Some white ­couples still got such treatment in the early 1990s before the soaps faced greater bud­get reductions. For example, aw sent the white Marley and Jamie on a French location shoot with ample use of pop ­music montage sequences. Drucilla and Neil, the black ­couple from y&r, did have an on-­location Notes to Chapter 7  ·  347

75

76

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82

83

84 85

86 87 88 89

90

honeymoon in 1993, albeit one planned at the last minute when the actors w ­ ere traveling to Antigua for personal appearances and the show de­cided to use the opportunity to shoot romantic montages. David Johnson, “How y&r’s Dru and Neil Got Their Ca­rib­bean Honeymoon,” Soap Opera Weekly, Mar. 30, 1993, 7. Julia’s portrayer, Sydney Penny, is not Latina, nor is Lindsay Hartley, the actor who played Passions’ Theresa Lopez-­Fitzgerald. That the soaps’ young Latina heroines ­were often portrayed by actors of other ethnic backgrounds suggests that Latinx identities have been seen as more closely aligned with whiteness to soap creators than have other racial and ethnic differences. Noah’s portrayer, Keith Hamilton Cobb, noted that his longer dreads classified him as an “exotic” romantic lead, a status for which he did not qualify as a black man with shorter hair, typed as “ethnic,” which he argues is code for “you might stab somebody.” “Keith Hamilton Cobb—­Actor/Playwright/Producer,” Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room podcast, May 2, 2016, http://­directory​.­libsyn​.­com​ /­episode​/­index​/­id​/­4333836. amc, abc, Mar. 1 and 3, 1995. amc, abc, Aug. 11, 1994. amc, abc, Sept. 13, 1994. amc, abc, Sept. 13, 1994. In this re­spect, Noah and Julia may have offered an updated, requited version of the never-­a-­couple supercouple of African American Jesse Hubbard and the dark-­haired, white Jenny Gardner spending the summer of 1982 in a New York City apartment, alone together against the world. y&r’s story of Ashley Abbott’s abortion in 1986 and atwt’s story of Ellie Snyder’s abortion in 1992 are the only plots of which I am aware between the 1970s soaps and this amc story. Modleski argues that this voicing of multiple perspectives was a central feature of soap opera, but I argue that its use in social issue story lines unfolds in distinct ways in dif­fer­ent periods of soap history. Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 85–86. amc, abc, Dec. 2, 1994. Julia’s parents tell her afterward, “­We’ll never approve of what you did, but what ­really ­matters is the love that holds together the Santos ­family.” amc, abc, Dec. 20, 1994. amc, abc, mid-­Dec. 1994. amc, abc, mid-­Dec. 1994. amc, abc, mid-­Dec. 1994. On the extreme antiabortion activism of the 1980s and 1990s, see Faye D. Ginsburg, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), xi. Head writer Megan McTavish noted the divisive po­liti­cal climate, as well. Jennifer Lenhart, “The Last Taboo,” SoapOperaDigest​.­com, Aug. 6, 2007. Elana Levine, “Fractured Fairy Tales and Fragmented Markets: Disney’s Wed­ dings of a Lifetime and the Cultural Politics of Media Conglomeration,” Tele­vi­ sion and New Media 6, no. 1 (Feb. 2005): 71–88.

348  ·  Notes to Chapter 7

91 amc, abc, June 7, 1996. 92 Becker, Gay tv and Straight Amer­ic­ a; Albiniak, “Where the Upscale Viewers Are.” 93 abc rejected writer Michael Malone’s plan to make core character Joey Buchanan gay, leading him to create Joey’s friend, Billy Douglas, who ran on the show for just one year. Fuqua, “ ‘­There’s a Queer in My Soap!,’ ” 205, 209. 94 Joanne Douglas Lampe, “The Daytime Closet: How Homophobic Is the Soap Opera Industry?,” Soap Opera Weekly, Aug. 3, 1993, 13. 95 amc, abc, Oct. 30, 2000. 96 C. Lee Harrington, “Homo­sexuality on All My ­Children: Transforming the Daytime Landscape,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 47, no. 2 (June 2003): 224–25. 97 C. Lee Harrington, “Conditions of Represent-­ability: Homo­sexuality on All My ­Children,” Grant Report for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (glaad), Sept. 30, 2001, 21–22n11. 98 C. Lee Harrington, “Lesbian(s) on Daytime Tele­vi­sion: The Bianca Narrative on All My ­Children,” Feminist Media Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 215–16. 99 Harrington, 220–22. 100 Patrick D. Healy, “­After Coming Out, A Soap Heroine Moves On,” New York Times, Feb. 24, 2005, 3. 101 The male leads are also united against Zarf b ­ ecause they suspect he is the murderer who has been attacking the community’s young ­women. The audience is left to won­der ­whether Zarf is in fact dangerous or just dif­fer­ent from the other men, but the suggestion is that ­these cisgendered characters find Zarf ’s difference threatening. 102 amc, abc, Dec. 29, 2006. 103 amc, abc, Jan. 2, 3, and 5, 2007. 104 All of Pine Valley eventually comes to accept Zoe, the only exception being the evil character Barbara, Bianca’s stepmother, whom we are urged to see as prejudiced. 105 amc, abc, Mar. 8, 2007. One Life to Live included scenes of the character Cathy Craig interacting with real-­world teens on location at the Odyssey House addiction treatment center. 106 One study found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual viewers w ­ ere not opposed to Zoe but ­were unhappy with her as a romantic partner for Bianca. Eleanor G. Morrison, “Transgender as Ingroup or Outgroup? Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Viewers Respond to a Transgender Character in Daytime Tele­vi­sion,” Journal of Homo­sexuality 57, no. 5 (2010): 657. 107 Victoria A. Brownworth, “Homophobia: Live and In Color,” San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, republished at www​.­nationalview​.­org, Jan. 25, 2007, http://­ nationalview​.­org​/­Newsletter07​/­newsletter​_­012507​.­htm. 108 Despite this message of ac­cep­tance, the program failed to give Simone a stable lesbian romance and made her girlfriend Rae a murder victim. For a critique of this story, see Sarah Warn, “Passions Goes Boldly, and Badly, Where No Soap Notes to Chapter 7  ·  349

109

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113

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117

Has Gone Before,” Sept. 22, 2005, AfterEllen, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2kZ8gQH. Parallels between queer identities and racialized identities w ­ ere typical of the coming-­out narratives of postnetwork tv, as Anna McCarthy demonstrates regarding the coming out of Ellen’s eponymous lead. McCarthy, “Ellen: Making Queer Tele­vi­ sion History,” glq: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 7, no. 4 (Oct. 2001): 607. The program’s tentative treatment of the romance initiated activist campaigns among a co­ali­tion of straight female and gay male fans. Roger Newcomb, “As the World Turns’ Luke and Noah and Fan Activism,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 293–99. Tiffany D’Emidio, “Tele­vi­sion: Is Guiding Light Coming Out of the Closet?” Eclipse Magazine, Feb. 9, 2009, http://­eclipsemagazine​.­com​/­television​-­is​-­guiding​ -­light​-­coming​-­out​-­of​-­the​-­closet​/­; Destini, “On Otalia,” We Love Soaps, Feb. 18, 2009, http://­www​.­welovesoaps​.­net​/­2009​/­02​/­guest​-­column​-­on​-­otalia​.­html; Trish Bendix, “Olivia and Natalia Kiss on Guiding Light,” Afterellen​.c­ om, Jan. 19, 2009, http://­www​.­afterellen​.­com​/­tv​/­43490​-­olivia​-­and​-­natalia​-­kiss​-­on​-­guiding​-­light; Cabenson, “Seasons of Love: The Story of Olivia Spencer and Natalia Rivera,” Passion & Perfection, no date, http://­www​.­ralst​.­com​/­ON​_­GL​_­Manifesto​.­HTM. Amy Villarejo, Ethereal Queer: Tele­vi­sion, Historicity, Desire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 82, 85. Villarejo appropriately understands the influence of daytime soap opera on the growing serialization of prime time in the 1970s but does not acknowledge the heteronormativity of the soaps amid that influence. Villarejo, 22. In contrast, McCarthy notes that a main trope across the growing serialization of the sitcom has been “hetero privilege,” as in the development of serialized romance plots, such as that of Sam and Diane on Cheers (nbc, 1982–93). McCarthy, “Ellen,” 599. Lynne Joyrich acknowledges the more constrained functions of queerness in the history of soap opera by recognizing an early queer character such as amc’s Dr. Lynn Carson, who in 1983 served primarily to “enlighten” the sexuality of ­others, in this case to assure a young ­woman that she is in fact straight. Joyrich, “Epistemology of the Console,” Critical Inquiry 27, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 454–55n31. McCarthy sees the 1997 coming out of the eponymous lead on Ellen in similar terms, as depending on a generic history of heteronormative logic. McCarthy, “Ellen,” 599–600. Tania Modleski, “The Search for Tomorrow in ­Today’s Soap Operas: Notes on a Feminine Narrative Form,” Film Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Aug. 1979): 15. Fuqua makes this claim, as well. Fuqua, “ ‘­There’s a Queer in My Soap!,’ ” 201–2. Joyrich, “Epistemology of the Console,” 439–40. Nicholas Fonesca, “As the Under-­World Turns,” Entertainment Weekly, June 15, 2001, 42; Craig Tomashoff, “A Soap Opera That Goes to Hell, among Other Places,” New York Times, Apr. 8, 2001, ar32. As actor Ben Masters conspiratorially told a reporter of the program, “God forbid if this ­were a soap soap opera.” Fonesca, “As the Under-­World Turns,” 45.

350  ·  Notes to Chapter 7

118 Ira Madison III, “How a Soap Diva Taught Me Survival,” Buzzfeed, May 20, 2015, http://­bzfd​.­it​/­21MGLt7. 119 Drew Rowsome, “A Passion for Passions III: Vincent and Chad, or, The Gay Stuff,” drewrowsome​.­blogspot​.­com, Sept. 23, 2014, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2j24pF7. 120 Susanne Ault, “Soaps on the Ropes in Daytime,” Variety, Jan. 24, 2000, 36; Pamela Paul, “Soap Operas ­Battle the Suds,” American Demographics, Jan. 2002, 24; Fonesca, “As the Under-­World Turns,” 43. 121 Ta-­Nehisi Coates, “A Low-­Down Crying Shame,” Slate, Mar. 9, 2007, http://­slate​ .­me​/­2koUWrM. 122 See the reaction of Noah Bennett, May 18, 2007, and Ethan Winthrop, May 29, 2007, both Passions, nbc. 123 Chad meets Vincent in a gay bar; Noah and Paloma accompany Chad to the bar, Passions, nbc, May 23 and 24, 2007; and Whitney and Theresa go ­there (and discover Chad with Vincent), May 27 and 28, 2007. 124 See, for example, Passions, nbc, July 20, 2007. 125 Whitney describes Chad as homophobic just before she discovers him having sex with Vincent, Passions, nbc, May 27 and 28, 2007. 126 Even ­those viewers who found Passions to be quite gay-­friendly often took issue with this story. For example, see Rowsome, “A Passion for Passions III.” 127 For example, see “Passions’ New Controversy,” Soaps​.c­ om, Mar. 9, 2007, http://­bit​ .­ly​/­2kpcF1Y. 128 The Blackmailer bonds with Ethan Winthrop on July 9, 2007, and with Eve Russell, his long-­lost biological ­mother, on July 12, 13, and 16, 2007. 129 Passions, nbc, July 12, 2007. 130 Passions, nbc, July 27, 2007. 131 Another such case that preceded Passions appeared on nbc’s Sunset Beach in 1998 and featured an African American love triangle in which the villainess assaults her rival by artificially inseminating her with a turkey baster. Alongside the disturbing implications of one black ­woman raping another was the lighthearted way in which the soap treated the crime, including frequent turkey baster jokes. For example, see Beach, nbc, Nov. 27, 1998. One critic described it as “the weirdest, grossest, most ill-­conceived story” of Beach’s many outlandish tales, its exploitative Othering along lines of gender, race, and sexuality especially egregious. Ira Madison III, “Forget ‘The Red Wedding,’ the Craziest Th ­ ing to Ever Happen on Tele­vi­sion Was on Sunset Beach,” Buzzfeed Community, June 8, 2013, http://­bzfd​.­it​/­214SXX9. 132 Lynn Liccardo, “The Ironic and Convoluted Relationship between Daytime and Prime Time Soap Operas,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 119–29. 133 Sara A. Bibel, “Deep Soap: Low Self-Esteem,” Fancast​.­com, May 27, 2008, http://­my​.­xfinity​.­com​/­blogs​/­tv​/­2008​/­05​/­27​/­deep​-­soap​-­low​-­self​-­esteem​/­. 134 Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion. 135 Previously, credits appeared only at the end of episodes, if at all. Notes to Chapter 7  ·  351

136 Quote from 24 showrunner Joel Surnow; quoted in Newman and Levine, Legiti­ mating Tele­vi­sion, 94. 137 David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, has discussed par­tic­u­lar episodes as “­little movies.” Quoted in Newman and Levine, 94. 138 Patrick Erwin, “The Young & the Restless: How Latham Tried but Failed to Reinvent the Wheel,” Marlena De Lacroix, Mar. 20, 2008, http://­marlenadelacroix​ .­com​/?­​ ­p​=6­ 8. 139 Elana Levine, “Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: The Striving Soap Opera,” Western Hu­ manities Review 70, no. 3 (Fall 2016) 99–118. 140 gh, abc, Sept. 24, 1997. 141 gh, abc, November 2003. Sonny is aiming to shoot his ­enemy Lorenzo Alcazar and hits Carly by ­mistake. Given that Alcazar is trying to help Carly as she ­labors, and is no more morally corrupt than Sonny himself, this reads as disturbingly violent. 142 gh, abc, Sept. 19, 2001. Sonny also tricks the alcoholic AJ into thinking he has gotten drunk, leading him back to drinking. 143 Levine, “ ‘What the Hell Does tiic Mean?,’ ” 201–18. In 2006, Sonny’s emotional upheavals are diagnosed as bipolar disorder, allowing the soap to do an educational story about ­mental health treatment. Sonny’s portrayer, Maurice Benard, is himself bipolar and has used his fame admirably as a ­mental health advocate, but the story may have also worked to locate Sonny’s history of vio­lence in his illness rather than in his masculinity. 144 Carolyn Hinsey, “It’s Only My Opinion,” Soap Opera Digest, Mar. 21, 2006, 36. 145 Jeannette, “It’s Only Your Opinion,” Soap Opera Digest, Mar. 28, 2006, 37. 146 oltl, abc, May 10 and 11, 1993. 147 Projansky, Watching Rape. 148 Hayward, Consuming Pleasures, 159. 149 oltl, abc, May 11, 1993. 150 Mark McGarry, “The Accused,” Soap Opera Weekly, July 27, 1993, 3; Candace Lyle Hogan, “The Girl Who Cried Rape,” Soap Opera Weekly, Sept. 28, 1993, 18. 151 Todd’s humanization was not fully accepted by viewers, though the fact that he was not wholly redeemed made the situation more acceptable for some. Laurie Stone, “Coming Clean,” Village Voice, Aug. 16, 1994, 38, 41; “More Todd Fodder,” Soap Opera Weekly, July 26, 1994, 42; N. Pietrafesa, “Manning’s Mystique,” Soap Opera Weekly, Dec. 13, 1994, 42. 152 oltl promo, abc, week of Sept. 1, 2008. 153 Ed Martin, “ ‘One Life to Live’ Ignites New Rape Controversy,” MediaVillage​.c­ om, Nov. 13, 2008, https://­www​.­mediavillage​.­com​/­article​/­one​-­life​-­to​-­live​-­ignites​-­new​ -­rape​-­controversy​/­. 154 Nelson Branco, “Soap Malfunction Currently in Pro­gress,” TV Guide Canada, Sept. 29, 2008, http://­tvguide​.­ca​/­Soaps​/­Nelson​_­Ratings​/­Articles​/­080929​_­ratings​ _­nelson​_­NB. 155 Branco. 352  ·  Notes to Chapter 7

156 Connie Passalacqua Hayman, “An Open Letter to Anne Sweeney, Co-­chair, Disney Media Networks and President, Disney-­a bc Tele­vi­sion Group,” Marlena De Lacroix, Nov. 20, 2008, http://­bit​.­ly​/­213fF3i.

chapter 8. can her stories go on? 1 Marisa Guthrie, “abc Daytime President Brian Frons Steps Down,” Hollywood Reporter, Dec. 2, 2011, http://­bit​.­ly​/­21CtnHE. 2 Nellie Andreeva, “Lisa Hackner Joins abc as evp Daytime & Syndicated Programming,” Deadline Hollywood, Oct. 25, 2013, http://­bit​.­ly​/­21nN6j3; Nathan Varni, interview with author, Nov. 3, 2015. 3 Eventually the talk show The View was positioned within the news division, further segmenting the management of the scant daytime schedule. Ramin Setoodeh, “abc News Takes Over ‘The View’ as Ratings Dwindle,” Variety, Oct. 30, 2014, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2mnkypn. 4 Harry A. Jessell, “Campbell to Oversee Daytime for abc,” TVNewsCheck, Feb. 24, 2016, http://­bit​.­ly​/­1R4p8gq; Nathan Varni, correspondence with author, Mar. 2, 2017. 5 Varni, interview with author. 6 Varni, interview with author. 7 As the network declared in its display ad, Tele­vi­sion, May 1957, 3–4. 8 Linda Susman, “To (& from) Rus­sia with Love,” Soap Opera Weekly, Oct. 22, 1992, 2–3; Marlena De Lacroix, “Another World at 30: Still a Contender,” Soap Opera Weekly, May 3, 1994, 19. 9 Paige Albiniak, “The Place to Place a Product,” Broadcasting & Cable, Feb. 14, 2005, 18. 10 Brian Steinberg, “p&g Comes to Rescue of Soaps on the Ropes,” Advertising Age, Jan. 28, 2008, 3, 41; Lauren Mechling, “Guiding Light,” New York Magazine, Aug. 10, 2008, http://­nymag​.­com​/­arts​/­tv​/­features​/­49119​/­index1​.­html; Patrick Erwin, “Guiding Light: Relevance and Renewal in a Changing Genre,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 183. 11 Lauren Mechling, “Guiding Light,” New York Magazine, Aug. 18, 2008; Daniel Holloway, “Turn Out the Light,” Backstage, Sept. 17, 2009, 4. 12 Claude Brodesser-­Akner, “How to Save the Soap Opera? Buy a Car,” Advertising Age, Dec. 1, 2008, 3, 28; Sara A. Bibel, “Daytime Bud­get Cuts,” in The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era, ed. Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 41. 13 Corday, The Days of Our Lives, 226–40; Brodesser-­Akner, “How to Save the Soap Opera?” 14 “The Push to Recapture the Soap Audience,” Bloomberg tv, Sept. 23, 2013, http://­ www​.­bloomberg​.­com​/­news​/­videos​/­b​/­d64e5094–7df8–4a0a​-­a9c1–462cc97fce00. Notes to Chapter 8  ·  353

15 “icymi: Ken Corday Interview,” Soap Opera Digest, Feb. 27, 2017, http://­bit​.­ly​ /­2mPpJM7. 16 “icymi: Ken Corday Interview.” 17 Frank Valentini, interview with author, Nov. 3, 2015. 18 Michael Maloney, “General Hospital Turns 55: Faster Pace Production, Modern Stories and Beloved Character Types,” Variety, Mar. 29, 2018, https://­bit​.­ly​ /­2mKTDm2. 19 Levine, “­Toward a Paradigm for Media Production Research”; “No Lobster for You!,” Stone Cold and the Jackal podcast, Oct. 17, 2018. 20 “Secrets of the Set,” Soap Opera Digest, Mar. 7, 2016, 33. 21 Fan archivists have carefully documented t­ hese changed episode and scene durations over time. Hour-­long soaps tended to have about forty-­three minutes of program time in the 1980s. Ad “clutter” per hour became more pronounced in the early 2000s and grew alongside shrinking ad rates across postnetwork era broadcast tv. John Consoli, “Ad Clutter Reaches All-­Time High in Some Dayparts,” Adweek, Feb. 14, 2002, https://­www​.­adweek​.­com​/­brand​-­marketing​/­ad​ -­clutter​-­reaches​-­all​-­time​-­high​-­some​-­dayparts​-­54605​/­. 22 I thank the participants in a July 15, 2018, Facebook discussion on the page of a fan archivist for sharing some of ­these details and insights. In 2018, ­there was some promise that this may be changing, at least on the better-­budgeted cbs soaps. Mal Young, head writer and executive producer for The Young and the Restless, began to introduce longer-­duration scenes, and b&b’s daily half-­hour slot and smaller cast allowed for story to move more quickly. See discussion of ­these developments on “y&r’s Sharon Case . . . ,” Dishing with Digest podcast, Oct. 5, 2018; “Elizabeth Hendrickson Weighs In . . . ,” Dishing with Digest podcast, Oct. 19, 2018. 23 Max Gail, interview with author, Sept. 29, 2018; “No Lobster for You!,” Stone Cold and the Jackal podcast. 24 Valentini, interview with author. 25 Joe Flint and Emily Nelson, “All My ­Children Gets Revlon Twist,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 15, 2002, b1. 26 Varni, interview with author. 27 For an example of audience critique, see “Heavy Meta,” Serial Drama, May 8, 2014, http://­bit​.­ly​/­21EXCCD; and comments on “gh Recap: The Joke Is On Me,” Soaps​.c­ om, May 13, 2014, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2m3TAQb. Valentini spoke about fan gratitude for the revival of the Ball in an interview with author. 28 One integration promoted a drug treatment for a rare blood cancer, seemingly generating an entire story line around educating the audience, which some in the medical community found unethical for its hidden promotion of a single com­pany’s drug. Sham Mailankody and Vinay Prasad, “Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Marketing for Rare Diseases,” Journal of the American Medical Association 317, no. 24 (2017): 2479–80, https://­bit​.­ly​/­2rbDdY5. Another, for kfc, read as uncomfortably forced. Ed Martin, “General Hospital and kfc Bite the Bound­aries of Ad Integration,” Media Village, July 10, 2018, https://­bit​.­ly​/­2qiWbcP. 354  ·  Notes to Chapter 8

29 Kambra Clifford, “b&b to Film in Australia for ‘The Most Glamorous Shoot in Soap Opera History,’ ” Soapcentral​.c­ om, Jan. 27, 2017, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2narvaQ. 30 Amanda D. Lotz, Portals: A Treatise on Internet-­Distributed Tele­vi­sion (Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, 2017), loc. 238, 251. 31 Meyers, “ ‘­Don’t Cry ­Because It’s Over,’ ” speaks to this pattern, as well. 32 Aymar Jean Christian, “Beyond Big Video: The Instability of In­de­pen­dent Networks in a New Media Market,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 26, no. 1 (Feb. 2012): 74. 33 Paul Bond and Georg Szalai, “YouTube Announces tv Initiative with 100 Niche Channels,” HollywoodReporter​.­com, Oct. 27, 2011. 34 Paul Bond, “Hulu Makes First Foray into Long-­Form Original Programming,” HollywoodReporter​.­com, Aug. 3, 2011; Patrick Seitz, “Netflix vs. hbo and Showtime Might be Ready for Prime Time,” Investor’s Business Daily, Mar. 17, 2011, a4. 35 The sets and production studios owned by abc ­were no longer available once the Prospect Park deal began to move forward. Daniel Holloway, “aftra Soaps Up,” Backstage, July 28, 2011, 3; Maria Elena Fernandez, “Why All My ­Children and One Life to Live Are Dead,” Newsweek Web Exclusives, Nov. 23, 2011. 36 Alex Ben Block, “Soaps Using Innovative Marketing for Online Revivals,” Holly­ woodReporter​.­com, Apr. 29, 2013. 37 Stephanie Guerilus, “All My ­Children, One Life to Live News,” EnStars​.c­ om, June 6, 2013. 38 Erin Meyers argues that the failures of the Prospect Park proj­ect ­were more indicative of the tv business’s prob­lems with navigating digital convergence than with the viability of soap opera. “ ‘­Don’t Cry B ­ ecause It’s Over,’ ” 12–13. 39 On the Netflix promotional strategy, see Chuck Tryon, “tv Got Better: Netflix’s Original Programming Strategies and Binge Viewing,” Media Industries Journal 2, no. 2 (2015): 110. 40 Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion. 41 Vanessa Williams, “Washington Native’s Web Soap Opera Anacostia Has Loyal Fan Base,” Washington Post, Nov. 3, 2011, http://­wapo​.­st​/­2pCN401. 42 Lisa Bernhard, “Love That Dares to Tweet Its Name Sparks Web Series,” New York Times, Aug. 25, 2009, c1. 43 Venice the Series, season 1, episode 1, Dec. 4, 2009. 44 The Grove the Series, pi­lot, Jan. 1, 2013. 45 ­These shifts are well represented in “A New Beginning,” The Bay the Series, season 2, episode 14 (Amazon version), Nov. 29, 2016, Amazon​.­com. Another example of ­these shifts is when patriarch Jack Madison is led by the ghost of his deceased wife, Karen, through a tour of his past misdeeds. Through ­these episodes, we learn about his complicated relationships with vari­ous ­women characters and with each of his ­children. “Jack’s Road to Redemption, Parts 1 and 2,” The Bay the Series, season 2, episodes 11 and 12 (Amazon version), Nov. 29, 2016, Amazon​.c­ om. 46 Kit Williamson, “ ‘How I Sold My Web Series to Netflix’: The Director of EastSid­ ers Explains His Secret,” Indiewire, July 1, 2016, https://­bit​.­ly​/­20ZNinh. Notes to Chapter 8  ·  355

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55

oltl, abc, Jan. 12, 2012. GH, abc, Apr. 1, 2015. Varni, interview with author. As explained by Donnell Turner in “Real Talk with Donnell Turner!,” Stone Cold and the Jackal podcast, Nov. 14, 2018. Maya tells Rick about her identity on b&b, cbs, May 15 and 18, 2015. Mitch Kellaway, “The Bold and the Beautiful’s Scott Turner Schofield Speaks Transgender Truth to 30 Million,” Advocate, July 15, 2015, http://­bit​.­ly​/­2qvVKxF. The relationship between soap opera and “feminine competencies” is discussed by Brunsdon, “Crossroads,” 36. For analyses of the transformations in the feminized media products that engage with such competencies, see Elana Levine, ed., Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popu­lar Culture in the Early 21st ­Century (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015). Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 80–99. Elana Levine, “Historicizing the Influence of Soap Opera,” Velvet Light Trap 79 (Spring 2017): 105–9.

356  ·  Notes to Chapter 8

bibliography

archival resources American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming (ahc) William J. Bell Papers Anne and Frank Hummert Scripts Frank and Doris Hursley Papers David E. Lesan Papers Ann Marcus Papers Paul Monash Papers Selig J. Seligman Papers Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Agnes Nixon Script Collection Library of American Broadcasting, University of Mary­land, College Park (lab) Papers of Mona Kent New York Public Library (nypl) Elaine Sterne Carrington Papers Northwestern University Libraries (Northwestern) Agnes Nixon Papers Paley Center for Media, New York (Paley) Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (Harvard) Betty Friedan Papers University of California, Los Angeles Film and Tele­vi­sion Archive (ucla Film and tv) Special Collections (ucla) William and Lee Bell Collection of Scripts for Tele­vi­sion Soap Operas Albert McCleery Papers Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI (whs) Jane Crusinberry Papers Bridget and Jerome Dobson Papers Tom Donovan Papers National Broadcasting Com­pany Rec­ords (nbc) Irna Phillips Papers Procter & ­Gamble Tele­vi­sion Script Collection (p&g)

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Index

24, 274–75 28 Days, 232 abc (American Broadcasting Com­pany), 32, 35, 76, 100, 261, 301n42; amc and, 94; beginnings in daytime, 75–76, 79–80; business of, 82–84, 161; daytime division of, 281–82, 353n3; dominance of, 155–57; executives of, 78, 87, 212; gh and, 87, 164, 309n122; international distribution and, 218; masculinization and, 275–79; program owner­ship of, 79–82, 210–12, 317n47, 329n2; promotion and, 231–32, 233, 278, 314n12; racial integration and, 116; soap cancelations of, 207–9, 235; Soapnet and, 219–221 abortion: aw and, 98–99, 111; opposition to, 125, 179–80, 348n85; prime time and, 323n56; restrictions on representing, 67, 108; stories about, 109, 120–28, 138, 150, 180, 237, 256, 259–62, 277, 295, 328n185–186, 334n119, 348n82 Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sciences, 292–93 acting, 29, 157, 330n22 action adventure: location shooting and, 165– 67; prime time and, 86; soap storytelling and, 153–55, 171; supercouples and, 173–74, 175, 191–92, 259; turn away from, 238 actors, 76, 293–94; bud­geting of, 285; compensation of, 284, 288, 317n48; contracts of, 36, 157, 212, 283–85; costuming of, 163–64; feature films and, 161–62, 331n51; residuals for, 219; tv vs. radio and, 29, 36; web soaps and, 290–92; working ­women as, 131–32. See also casting adoption, 68, 120, 121

advertisers, 32–33, 78, 85, 163, 200, 280; critique of soap audience by, 203–6; networks and, 337n17; multiculturalism and, 195, 254; participation, 78–9; range of, 155–56; ­women and, 110, 161. See also sponsors advertising: clutter, 337n17, 354n21; funding of tele­vi­sion through, 11, 108, 201; online, 288; participation, 80, 83–84, 316n35; radio and, 304n34; rates, 85, 94, 202, 203; revenue from, 34–35, 85, 104, 108, 153, 155–57, 163, 200, 202, 216, 273 advertising agencies, 7–8, 33, 36, 39, 40, 48, 79, 86, 158–59, 202; critique of soap audience and, 203–6; funding of streaming tv through, 289 aesthetics: changes in, 95–100, 199; experimentation with 12, 201, 221–32, 236, 279, 286–87, 293–94; tele­vi­sion and, 6, 11, 16, 43 affect. See emotion affiliate stations: abc daytime and, 75, 87; networks and, 217, 220–21; radio and, 33. See also local stations African Americans: activism of, 203; queer identities and, 265; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 115–20, 149–52, 194, 254–56, 290, 295–96, 347n68, 351n131; soap audience as, 150–51, 195, 205–6, 269; ste­reo­types of, 257–59; supercouple stories and, 187–89, 194, 256–62, 347–48n74, 348n76; US population and, 194, 254; web soaps and, 289–92. See also black ­women; race age (of audience), 203–6, 209, 254, 273. See also college students; teen­agers aids, 194, 239–40, 244, 262, 335n151, 340n8

alcoholism, 28, 53, 65–66, 69, 123, 144, 294, 352n142 Allen, Richard J., 213, 247–48, 253, 337n19. See also dool All My ­Children, 80, 81, 82, 94, 98, 100, 165; abortion story of, 125–28, 277, 324n82, 348n85; antiwar story of, 112–15; bud­geting of, 284; cancelation of, 206–7, 235, 281, 287; comedy and, 168–69; lgbtq stories of, 236, 263–65, 335n151, 349n101, 349n104, 350n112; online version of, 287–89; owner­ship of, 210, 317n48; pacing of, 103; product placement and, 286; racial identity and, 187–89, 191, 236, 256–62, 335n136, 348nn75–76, 348n81; visual style of, 96, 224; weddings and, 177. See also Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt Ally McBeal, 227 Amazon Video Direct, 292 American Home Products, 80, 82, 317n54 Anacostia, 290 Anderson, Anthony, 290 Andrews, Tina, 150–51. See also dool; interracial relationships announcers, 22, 30, 64 Another Life, 219 Another World, 75, 262, 302n44; abortion story of, 121–24; bud­get reductions of, 283; cancelation of, 234, 268; expansion of, 94; fans of, 123, 134; generational conflict in, 110–11; ­music and, 98–99, 222–23; narrative variations of, 224–25; owner­ship of, 81, 211–14, 314n3, 340n91; prime time special, 223; rape stories in, 246, 327n168; spin-­off of, 76; villains of, 193; visual style of, 96–97, 347–48n74; ­women in, 128–29, 133–34, 139–41 anthology drama, 25 anti-­war activism, 70, 99, 107, 108, 113–15 archetypes: characters of color as, 254–55; network era and, 109; supercouples as, 171–72, 180, 181–86, 189–90, 248; tortured hero as, 142–48; turn away from, 240, 257–58; villainous characters as, 126, 128, 138–42, 192–93 archive: of soap opera, 14–15, nbc and, 32 As the World Turns, 27–28, 34, 38, 108, 110, 144, 158; 290, 301n42; ad revenue from, 84; cancelation of, 206, 235; characters of

370  ·  index

color in, 255, 257; downloads of, 233; fantasy sequences and, 176; gay repre­sen­ta­tion in, 236, 265, 335n151, 350n109; intergenerational relations in, 64, 67–69, 142; location shooting and, 167–68; marriage in, 44–45, 57–58, 106, 312n73; ­mental health in, 57–58, 312n73; ­music in, 98; network involvement in, 88; pacing of, 102, 321n138; podcasts of, 233; production of, 36–37, 39, 79, 94–5; sex in, 174–75; supercouples and, 189, 192, 290, 292, 335n143; unwed pregnancy in, 67–69, 108, 124, 348n82; villainous characters of, 139, 192–93 Aubrey, James, 77 audiences: African Americans as, 150–51, 194–95, 254, 269, 273; class status of, 262, 273; critiques by, 88–89, 102–3, 111, 141–42, 149–51, 272–73, 277–79; decline of, 200, 237, 243–44, 279; diversity of, 261, 262–63, 296; early tv, 21, 22, 23, 31–32, 306n74; fragmentation of, 12; growth of, 148–49, 153–56, 157–59, 163, 208; industry construction of, 45–46, 74, 129, 138, 201, 203–6, 235; male, 84, 109, 143, 148–49, 153, 157, 194, 206, 269, 279; mea­sure­ment systems, 200–206, 216, 233, 235, 263; queerness and, 137–38; racial integration and, 116; radio serials and, 8–9, 22, 27, 33; reliability of, 73, 74; sex scenes and, 172–73, 175; soap opera, 6, 11, 12, 13, 16, 40, 43, 47, 54–55, 70, 95, 138, 294–95; supercouples and, 187, 191, 250–51, 253; research on, 101, 140, 149, 157, 187, 330n26; sexual desire and, 134, 137, 139–40, 143, 148; ­women as, 128, 153, 157–59, 202, 205–9; young, 84, 109, 143, 148–49, 157, 171, 177, 200, 268–69; youthful appeal of, 84, 108–9, 157–158, 222–23, 236, 273, 279, 284 audio. See sound audio taping, 160 austerity, 12, 282–87 baby boom generation, 44–45, 110–11 backstory, 102–3. See also flashbacks Bailey, Anne Howard, 345n30 Baker, Jeff, 36–37, 38 Banning, David, 105, 127, 149–52, 256, 295, 328nn185–86. See also dool, interracial relationships

Barron, Joanne. See Tate, Joanne Bauer, Bert, 64–66, 106, 134, 166–67, 193, 313n96. See also gl Bauer, Bill, 28, 64–66, 106, 142, 144, 166–67, 313n96, 327n159. See also gl Bauer, Charita, 210. See also gl Bauer, Michael, 56, 66–67, 166–67, 193, 327n168, 332n74. See also gl Bay, The, 291–92, 355n45 Beacon Hill, 290–91 beauty shot, 90–91 Bell, Bradley, 213, 287. See also b&b Bell, Lee Phillip, 163–64. See also Bell, William J. Bell-­Phillip Tele­vi­sion Productions, 213, 217–18, 339n73 Bell, William J., 112, 178, 213; aw and, 110–11, 128–29; b&b and, 163–64; dool and, 89, 95, 136, 139–40, 149, 172; gl and, 41; Our Private World and, 77; y&r and, 94, 95–96, 159, 213, 217, 334n119, 339n72 Bellini, Nick, 2, 101, 129–30, 144–45. See also Doctors, The; tortured hero Ben Casey, M.D. 100, 323n56 Ben Jerrod, 314n2 Benton & Bowles, 79 Big ­Sister, 22 Bing Crosby Productions, 80, 81 Bird’s Nest, The, 56 Biow Com­pany, 24 birth control, 120, 124, 204 bisexuality, 263, 269–72, 335n151 black Americans. See African Americans Black, John, 236, 241–44, 284. See also dool black ­women: hair and, 255; industry assumptions of, 257; rape and, 250, 351n131; repre­ sen­ta­tion of, 11, 116–20, 149–52, 269–70, 323n55; soap audience as, 194–95, 250 Blackett-­Sample-­Hummert, 7 Blangiardo, Sonia, 292 Blip.tv, 292 blogs, 14, 297 Blue Denim, 67 Bold and the Beautiful, The, 163–64, 213, 301n42, 347n67; fantasy sequences and, 177; international distribution of 217–18, 235, 286–87; transgender identity and, 296 Bolen, Lin, 89, 93. See also nbc

Bollywood, 228 Boylen, Jenny, 265 Brady, Bo and Hope, 168–70, 177–78, 184–85, 186, 187, 189, 344n13. See also dool, supercouples Brent, Philip, 99, 103, 112–15, 165, 322n30. See also amc Brewer, Jessie and Phil, 91, 92, 106–7, 294, 327n168. See also gh Brighter Day, The, 56, 305n51, 308n109 Bright Promise, 76, 80, 81, 136, 320n123. See also Hursley, Frank and Doris British cultural studies, 4 Broderick, Lorraine, 259. See also amc Brown, Helen Gurley, 128 Buchanan, Viki, 103, 293. See also oltl bud­gets: austerity in, 280, 282–87; casting, 192; online production, 288; soap production, 13, 23, 28, 36, 40, 90, 94, 105, 156, 163–64 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 227 Bunim, Mary-­Ellis, 158 Bureau of Applied Social Research, 8 Burnett, Carol, 170 Byrne, Martha, 290. See also Anacostia; atwt; supercouples cable tv, 202, 203, 209, 219–21, 295 camerawork: blocking and, 285; digital, 283–284; early tv soaps and, 25, 37–38; videotaped soaps and, 90–92 camp reading: Dark Shadows and, 84; devil possession story and, 242–44; Passions and, 229, 268–69, 270, 27 Canadian Broadcasting Com­pany, 316n42 cancellations, 200, 206–9, 211–12, 232, 234–35, 238, 273, 280, 283; and affiliate clearances, 220 Capitol, 165, 210–11 Carrington, Elaine, 305n51 casting, 323n55. See also actors Castillo, Eden and Cruz, 177, 187–88, 194, 256–57, 335n143; fan response to, 335n133; rape story and, 245–246, 345n30. See also sb; supercouples Catholicism, 240–41, 243, 260, 266, 344n13 cbs: broadband channel, 233; cancelations of, 235, 284; daytime division of, 34–35, 282; early tv soaps and, 25, 32, 33; executives of,

index  · 371

cbs (cont.) 77, 82, 87–88, 94; liamst and, 117; marketing strategies of, 53; motivational research of, 52; network competition and, 75–76; program owner­ship and, 80, 81, 88; radio, 7; SoapCity and, 220; soap revenue of, 84, 155; sponsor-­owners and, 80–81, 210–11, 316n35, 317n54; studios of, 39; writers and, 94 Chappell, Crystal, 267, 290–91. See also gl; Otalia characters, 22, 23; changes in, 74, 109–10, 138–48, 297; of color, 73, 237, 253–62, 269–72; legacy, 275, 277; lgbtq identities of, 262–68, 269–72; memories of, 78; “tentpole,” 64, 264, 294; value of, 40–42; ­women, 273. See also archetypes; heroine; tortured hero Cheers, 350n112 Chew, The, 207–8, 281. See also abc; Frons, Brian Chicago, IL, 227 Christian Broadcasting Network, 219 Chris­tian­ity, 240–44, 271 City, The, 223–24, 255, 347n71 Civil Rights Act, 116 civil rights movement, 115–17, 237, 256 Clarkson, Vincent, 269–72, 351nn123–128. See also Passions class status: audience and, 13, 52–53, 140–41, 204–5, 209, 269, 273; historical change and, 5–6; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 44, 103, 118–19, 155; supercouples and, 179, 181, 186–87, 189–90, 257–59 Clear Horizon, The, 308n109 cliffhangers, 102 close-­ups: early tv soaps and, 24, 25–27, 37–8; 1970s soaps and, 96–98; supercouples and, 174–75 Clinton, Bill, 239, 240–41 Colgate-­Palmolive, 39, 81, 211, 339n58 college students: soap audience as, 84, 109, 133, 140–41, 148–49, 154, 157–58, 202, 330n27; soap characters as, 99, 121, 125 Collins, Barnabas, 92–93, 100–101, 134–35, 140, 142–43; queerness and, 137. See also ds Collins, Quentin, 135, 142–43. See also ds Columbia Pictures, 80, 81, 82, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218; SoapCity and, 219–21. See also Screen Gems; Sony

372  ·  index

comedy, 101, 154, 158, 168–71, 232, 333n88; Passions and, 229, 268, 271–72; screwball, 170–71; soap-­themed film and, 161–63; supercouples and, 173, 187 commercials: critiques of, 54–55; dispersal of, 79; integration of, 48; length of, 85; minutes per hour of, 85–86; pop ­music in, 98; production of, 79, 90 commercialism: daytime programming and, 47–48; radio and, 27, 304n34; streaming tv and, 289; tele­vi­sion and, 6 commodity audience, 201, 206 community: bud­get reductions and, 285–86; soap operas and, 42–43, 268, 309n122; supercouples and, 185, 190–93; threats to, 240–41, 272 Compton Advertising, 33, 34, 39, 63, 86–87, 314n7, 315n14, 316n38 Conboy, John, 96, 210–11 Concerning Miss Marlowe, 31, 37 conglomeration, 210, 214–16, 235, 261–62. See also synergy Congress for Racial Equality, 116 consent decrees, 82–83, 317n53 conservatism, 125, 179–81, 240–41, 244, 264 consumer goods industry, 7, 45, 48–49 consumerism, 11, 16, 19, 45–46, 48–49 containment culture, 11, 301n40 contracts, 25, 29, 36, 284. See also actors convergence, 9, 12, 20–21 Cooper, Hal, 22 copyright, 14 Corday, Betty, 89, 136. See also dool Corday, Ken, 174–75, 284, 290. See also dool Corday, Ted, 27, 34, 75, 138. See also atwt; dool Corinthos, Carly, 275, 294. See also gh Corinthos, Sonny, 275–77, 352nn141–143. See also gh Cory, Rachel. See Davis, Rachel Cosby, Bill, 116 Cosby Show, The, 195 Costello, Robert, 314n4 costs. See bud­get costumes, 95, 184. See also wardrobe Cramer, Douglas, 76 creative control, 79, 201, 210–16. See also networks

Creative Horizons, 80, 81, 82. See also Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt creative workers: early tv and, 21, 27; experimentation and, 221–32; market value of, 156–57; new generation of, 109, 118; soap opera and, 10–12, 13, 14, 36, 74, 108; web soaps and, 289–92 Crusinberry, Jane, 30 cultural forum, 12, 108–9, 120, 127–28, 138, 148, 150–52, 181; postnetwork age and, 260–62 cultural status (of soaps), 273–75, 279, 350n117; prime time serialization and, 297; streaming portals and, 289; web soaps and, 292–93. See also legitimation Curtis, Dan/Curtis Productions, 75, 81, 84, 217, 314n4, 315n24. See also ds cutting. See editing Dallas, 156, 179, 230 Dark Shadows, 23, 75, 80–81, 87, 156, 301n42, 302n44, 314n4; campiness of, 242; generic innovation of, 100–101, 171, 229, 232; location shooting and, 164; male repre­sen­ta­tion and, 143–44; merchandise and, 84, 314n10; owner­ship of, 211; pacing of, 102; queerness and, 137, 144; secondary distribution of, 217; visual style of, 92–93; ­women’s sexual desire and, 134–35, 140; youth audience of, 84 David Frost Show, The, 314n11 Davis, Althea, 92–93, 101, 129–30, 136, 144–45. See also Doctors, The Davis, Rachel, 139–41. See also aw Days of Our Lives, 1–2, 99, 104–5, 137, 160; abortion stories in, 127, 328nn185–86; bud­ get reductions of, 284; community in, 192, 193; devil possession story of, 236, 240–44, 255, 260–61, 268–69, 273, 344n13, 344n15; DirecTV and, 220; international distribution of, 217; nbc and, 89, 213–14, 282; origins of, 75, 77, 80–81; owner­ship of, 212, 214, 215; prime time special, 223; production of, 86, 90, 94, 164; racial repre­sen­ta­tion in, 149–52, 295; rape stories in, 145, 246–48, 249, 346n40; sex scenes in, 172, 174–75; Soapnet and, 219; supercouples of, 168–70, 177–78, 184–85, 333n78; villainess in, 139–40; writing of, 95 daytime division, 34, 87–88, 281–82. See also networks

Daytime Emmy Awards, 292–93 daytime programming, 20, 22, 31–35, 47–49, 52, 73; ad revenues of, 85; competition within, 75–76; radio and, 28; regulation of, 82–83; style of, 25, 39 Decline of the American Male, The, 49–50 Deep Throat, 172 Defenders, The, 323n56 Delirious, 331n51 demographics, 84, 155, 163, 202; soap audience and, 194–95, 205–6; US population and, 254 deregulation, 217, 220 dialogue: early tv soaps and, 23, 37; location shooting and, 164–65; recapping and, 102; shortened scenes and, 285; social issues stories and, 109, 123, 125–27, 278; supercouples, and 182 Dichter, Ernest, 52, 56 Dickens, Charles, 103 digital expansions, 232–34 DiMera, Stefano, 193, 240–42, 255. See also dool directing, 22, 23 DirecTV, 220–21, 343n153 Disney: abc and, 214–16, 261–62, 281–82; diversity policies of, 295; Soapnet and, 219–21, 343n155. See also abc distribution: international, 33, 216–18, 235, 286–87, 340n91; off-­network, 216–17; online, 12, 232; satellite channel, 343n153; secondary, 39, 216–21, 288, 308n107; tele­vi­sion and, 11, 201 diversity: approaches to, 281; racial repre­sen­ta­ tion and, 115–16, 253–56; soap creators and, 255. See also race divorce, 44–45, 57–58, 62–64, 116. See also marriage Dr. Kildare, 23, 77, 100, 142, 323n56 Dobson, Bridget and Jerome, 101, 102, 103, 164, 168, 170–71, 176, 218; as head writers, 211–12; sb and, 177, 187–88, 213; sex scenes and, 174–75. See also Santa Barbara Doctors, The, 1–2, 15, 38–39, 172, 301n42, 302n44, 314n2; black characters in, 116–17; cancelation of, 211; comedy and, 101; men in, 144–45; ­music in, 98; owner­ship of, 81, 339n58; ratings of, 314n7; visuals of, 91–93; ­women in, 129–30, 136; workplace setting of, 128; wardrobe in, 164

index  · 373

Doctors and the Nurses, The, 323n56 Donahue, Phil, 146 Donovan, Tom, 88–89 domesticity: ideals of, 44–45; ­labor and, 46–50, 52; radio serials and, 9; tele­vi­sion and, 6, 19 Douglas, Annie, 225–27. See also Sunset Beach DuMont Network, 22, 32, 48 Dunn, Richard, 87 dvd, 217, 301n42 Dynasty, 156, 179, 230 Eastsiders, 292 Eckhardt, Agnes. See Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt Edge of Night, The, 34, 100, 133, 211, 317n47 editing, 24, 90, 95, 98, 103 education: diversity as, 117, 195, 263–65, 350n112; product placement and, 354n28; soaps as providing, 239, 338n33, 344n4; status of soap viewers, 204–5; therapeutic value of, 66 Eliot, Brad, 146–47. See also y&r Ellen, 347n64, 349–50n108, 350n113 Elliott, Mark, 111–12, 117, 145. See also liamst Elliott, Mia, 88, 111–12, 117. See also liamst emotion: close-­ups and, 96–97; fans and, 84; health and, 11; impact of soaps’ on, 51–53; male characters and, 142–48, 184–85, 275–76; maturity and, 63; realism and, 40–43, 44–46; soap storytelling and, 23–24, 55–60, 70, 102 ensemble drama, 42–43 Equal Rights Amendment, 179–80 ethnicity, 118, 335n143 Eu­ro­pean tv market, 217–18 Evans, Josh Ryan, 229. See also Passions Evans, Marlena, 137, 160, 172, 192, 284; devil possession story and, 236, 240–44, 273, 344n15. See also dool; heroine Exorcist, The, 243 experimentation, 195–96; character address as, 30–31; early tv production and, 21–22, 35, 36; postnetwork era and, 201, 221–32 exteriors, 23 Fabray, Nanette, 70 fairy tale, 74, 154, 177, 256, 261–62, 265

374  ·  index

­family: African American, 195; lgbtq identities and, 238, 263–68; melodrama and, 11, 68; nuclear ideal of, 46–47, 57, 60; postwar soaps and, 44–46, 60, 110; prob­lems and, 68–70, 103; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 12, 16, 20, 43, 279, 293–94; sequences, 175–77; supercouples and, 189–90, 192–93; web soaps and, 291–92 fan magazines, 1, 2, 14, 76, 77, 131–33, 148–49, 156, 158; growth of, 203; origins of, 314n10 fan mail, 149–51, 158, 160, 177, 203; black viewers and, 194–95; supercouples and, 187 fans: as archivists, 14, 15; of Dark Shadows, 84, 134; market of, 14; responses of, 111, 123; sexual desire and, 134; soap opera, 13, 105, 154; as web soap creators, 289–92 fantasy: aesthetic experimentation and, 223, 225–28, 342n132; location shooting and, 165–66; realism and, 237–38, 240–44; soap storytelling and, 74, 145, 153–55, 158, 163, 178; supercouples and, 189–90, 194, 245, 259 Faraway Hill, 22 Federal Communication Commission (fcc), 82 Felton, Norman, 22–24, 25, 77 Feminine Mystique, The, 45–46, 51, 129 feminism: abortion politics, and, 124–25, 127; backlash against, 179–80; film studies and, 4; media studies and, 6; men and, 146; rape stories and, 246–53; responses to, 237; sexuality and, 134; soap characters and, 130–31; soap actresses and, 131–32; supercouples and, 180–84, 189–90, 194, 245. See also postfeminist culture; ­women’s liberation movement femininity: anger and, 138, 141–42, 251–52; changing characterizations of, 126–42, 280; competencies of, 297; constructions of soap audience and, 202–6; cultural construction of, 5–7, 9, 11, 16; historical change and, 5–6; lgbtq characters and, 264, 296; maternal, 113–15, 344n15; “mystique” of, 54–55, 57; as performative, 118–19, 241; postwar repre­ sen­ta­tion of, 58–59, 63–64; reproductive, 110; sexualization of, 241; soap storytelling and, 109; supercouple heroine and, 181–84, 189–90, 290 feminization: of audiences, 209; of desire, 175; of mass culture, 40–41; of perspective, 251,

253, 273, 277–79; of soap audience, 12–13, 201; of soap opera, 16, 40–41, 154, 160, 161, 275, 281, 289, 292–93; of tele­vi­sion, 6 Fenelli, Jack, 131, 146. See also rh Fenelli, Mary. See Ryan, Mary Ferri, Lucy, 41 Fili-­Krushel, Pat, 219 film: distinguished from tele­vi­sion, 20, 98; feature, 11, 25, 40–41, 43, 45, 98, 223, 304n28; influence on soaps of, 73–74, 168, 186, 189; noir, 225; online distribution of, 288; production, 23, 33, 39–40, 80, 90; racial repre­sen­ta­tion and, 255; repre­sen­ta­tion of soaps in, 161–63 Filmlook, 223–24 film studies, 4–5 Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, 82, 317n50, 317n53 First Hundred Years, The, 25, 61 First Love, 61 Fisher, Charles, 58 Flame and the Flower, The, 145 Flame in the Wind, A, 81 flashbacks, 69, 89, 103, 243 Follow Your Heart, 305n51 Footloose, 168 Forsyte Sage, The, 77 Frame, Steve, 140–41. See also aw Francis, Genie, 183, 249, 251–52, 345n30. See also gh; Spencer, Luke and Laura Franco, James, 275. See also gh Frandor, Inc., 80, 81 Freudianism, 52, 54, 56, 134, 136, 143, 313n98 Friedan, Betty, 45, 51–52, 54–55, 56–57 fringe period, 82–83 From ­These Roots, 37–38 Frons, Brian, 195, 207–9, 211–12, 215–16, 235, 281. See also abc; Disney; nbc Fulton, Eileen, 139. See also atwt; Hughes, Lisa game shows, 5, 48, 53, 84, 90, 109, 282 Gardner, Jenny, 168, 187–89, 191, 348n81. See also amc Garry Moore Show, The, 48, 310n21 gay men: aids and, 194, 239; attitudes ­toward, 270; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 335n151, 349n93; soap fans as, 137, 143, 194–95, 269, 336n153;

web soap production and, 289–92. See also queerness; sexuality gay rights movement, 237 Geary, Anthony, 161, 163, 252, 293–94, 345n30. See also gh; Spencer, Luke and Laura Geiger, Milton, 64 General Hospital, 1, 2, 3, 15, 75, 153, 218, 235, 281–82, 301–2n43, 302n44, 309n122; aids story of, 236, 239–40, 244; comedy and, 101, 170; fantasy stories of, 238; imitation of prime time and, 274–75; interracial relationships in, 257; location shooting of, 166; masculinization and, 275–77, 352nn141–43; men in, 142–43; opening credits of, 23; owner­ship of, 80, 81, 210; production of, 163–64, 284–86; product placement and, 286–87; rape stories in, 145, 245, 248–53, 345n30, 346n47, 346n54; sex and, 173–75; spin-­offs of, 76, 224; success of, 155–57, 158, 161–62; supercouples of, 181–85, 191–92; videotape production of, 90–92; West Coast production of, 40, 314n2; workplace setting of, 43, 90–91, 100, 106–7, 128, 327n149; writers, 87 Generations, 254, 255; cancellation of, 203, 347n67; debut of, 195–96, 211–12; self-­ reflexivity of, 170, 293–94; syndication of, 219 Generation of Vipers, 27 gender: changing repre­sen­ta­tions of, 74, 106– 8, 109, 133–42, 148, 194; as characteristic of soap opera, 4, 138, 237, 273, 275–77; critiques of broadcasting and, 27–28; deviance and, 270–72; difference, 155, 189–90; equality, 70, 129; historical change and, 5–6, 138, 237, 279; housewife-­viewer and, 45, 49–51; intersections with, 256–62; market research and, 56–57; marriage and, 61–66; ­mental health and, 56–60; postfeminist era soaps and, 178–81, 199–200, 238, 240–44; postwar soaps and, 44–45, 57–64, 124; radio serials and, 31; soap audience and, 203–9; social construction of, 11, 43; traditional roles of, 179–80; workplace and, 128–33 generation gap, 107, 109. See also intergenerational tension genre, 5, 108, 154; daytime tv and, 21; hybridity, 12, 74, 95, 100–101, 102, 135, 154, 163, 168–71, 175, 227–32, 234, 268

index  · 375

glamour, 163–64, 175, 178, 283, 287 Goldberg, Leonard, 87 Golden Win­dows, 30, 31 Gorman, Walter, 39 Gottleib, Linda, 212. See also oltl Gradu­ate, The, 136 Grant, Eli, 151–52, 295, 329n192. See also dool Grant, Valerie, 105, 149–52, 256, 295. See also dool; interracial relationships Greatest Gift, The, 31 Greenberg, Bradley, 204–5 Grey, Carla, 118–20. See also Holly, Ellen; oltl Grove, The, 291 guest stars, 275 Guiding Light, 3, 9, 28–30, 33, 34, 41, 42, 142, 144, 174, 185, 301n42, 330n28; audience response to, 55, 84, 134, 314n7; cancellation of, 206, 235, 266, 283; clone plot of, 244, 273; comedy and, 101, 170; creative conflict over, 86–87, 213; fantasy and, 171; intergenerational relations in, 64–67; lgbtq characters in, 265–67, 290–91; marriage in, 106, 313n96; narrative variations in, 225; pacing of, 103; podcasts of, 233; production of, 164, 165, 166–67, 283–84, 286, 305n51; psychological distress in, 56, 58–60; revenues of, 155; supercouples of, 191; transition to tele­vi­sion of, 285; villains of, 192–93; weddings and, 177 Guthrie, Arlo, 99 Guthrie, Richard, 150–51. See also Banning, David; dool; interracial relationships hair, 177, 183, 255, 348n76 Hall Deidre, 242, 284. See also dool; Evans, Marlena Hardy, Audrey, 92, 192, 251, 327n168, 346n58. See also gh; rape Hardy, Steve, 91, 142–43, 144, 192, 294. See also gh Harris-­Crane, Chad, 269–71, 351nn123–26. See also Passions Hawkins Falls, 32 ­Hazards of Being Male, The, 146 hbo, 289 health, 238–40 hero (supercouple), 184–86, 189–90, 241, 257–58; deviation from, 270–71; drifter as, 148, 180. See also masculinity

376  ·  index

heroine: new repre­sen­ta­tions of, 138–42, 243, 257–58, 263, 294; suffering of, 269; supercouples and, 180, 181–84, 189–90, 241. See also princess heteronormativity, 6, 11, 138, 142, 148–49, 181, 186; challenge to, 264–65, 268–69; of soap audience, 262–63; of soap opera, 195, 242–43, 267, 279; of tele­vi­sion, 267, 350nn112–13 heterosexuality, 109, 127, 136, 146, 155, 181, 194; aids and, 239–40, 262; questioning of, 263–64; sex scenes and, 172–75. See also sexuality High School Musical, 227 Hill Street Blues, 156, 195 Hispanic identity. See Latinx identity historiography: feminism and, 6; gender, 6, 300n25; radio, 7; soap opera, 4–5, 9, 14–16, 32, 301n42, 301–2n43, 302n44, 303n25; tele­ vi­sion, 6, 10 hiv, 277. See also aids Hogestyn, Drake, 284. See also Black, John; dool Holly, Ellen, 119–20, 323n55. See also Gray, Carla; oltl Hollywood, 33, 168; studios of, 75, 80, 104. See also film homemaking, 11, 208; comedy about, 70; disparagement of, 49–51; validation of, 130 homophobia, 269–72 homo­sexuality, 137, 267. See also lgbtq identity; queerness horror, 227, 229, 231–32, 243 Horton, Jennifer, 246–48, 249. See also dool House of Cards, 288–89, 293 house­wives: daytime tv and, 52–55; disinterest in soaps of, 207–8; domestic ­labor of, 47–51, 55, 140, 280, 303n25; feminine mystique and, 45–46; radio serial audience as, 4, 207–8; radio-­to-­t v transition and, 9, 21, 22, 25, 31; repre­sen­ta­tions of, 19, 44–46, 57–58, 70, 130; soap actresses as, 131–32; soap audience as, 13, 45–51, 74, 133, 138, 139–40, 148, 159–61, 207–9, 296; “young” as target audience, 84, 109 How to Survive a Marriage, 81, 89, 136–37, 172 Hseuh, Nancy, 117. See also Elliot, Mia; liamst Hubbard, Jesse and Angie, 187–89, 191, 194, 255, 335n136, 348n81. See also amc

Hughes, Lisa, 77, 139. See also atwt; Our Private World Hughes, Nancy, 44, 57, 59, 64, 139. See also atwt Hughes, Penny, 36–37, 38, 44, 67, 112. See also atwt Hughes, Tom and Margo, 167–68, 192. See also atwt; supercouples Hulu, 288–89 ­Human Sexual Response, 134 Hummert, Frank and Anne, 7, 25, 26, 79 Hursley, Frank and Doris, 41–43, 100, 136, 318n71, 320n123; prime time and, 315n13; sft and, 61–64, 142, 308–9n121; sponsors and, 86–87. See also Bright Promise; gh; sft Hyperion Books, 214–15 ideology, 11; passing narratives and, 120; postfeminist culture and, 249; tele­vi­sion and, 108, 121, 150, 236 Imitation of Life, 120 in­de­pen­dent production, 73, 81, 83 in-­depth staging, 25–26, 92 industrialization, 50 instructional programming, 48–49, 207–9 intergenerational tension: postwar soaps and, 64–69; social issue stories and, 110–15; web soaps and, 291–92 internet: soaps and, 12, 201, 232–34; tv distribution and, 287–89. See also streaming tv integration (racial), 116–18 interracial relationships, 105, 117, 149–52, 253, 295; postnetwork era and, 256–62; supercouples and, 187–89, 191, 194, 348n81 intersectionality, 11, 118–20 intersex identity, 263, 269, 271–72 I Spy, 116 iTunes, 233 Jane Eyre, 145 Johnson, Steve “Patch” and Kayla, 175, 185. See also dool, supercouples Jones, Frisco and Felicia, 170, 174–75, 183–85, 191. See also gh, supercouples Kalouria, Sheraton, 216, 256. See also nbc Kane, Erica, 125–28, 180, 260, 263–64, 277, 286. See also abortion; amc Kate Smith Hour, The, 32, 48, 310n21

Katz, Oscar, 34, 87 Keefer, Noah, 236, 256–62, 264, 348n76, 348n81. See also amc Kenney, Wes, 22 Kent, Mona, 30 Kerner Commission, 116 kinescopes, 14, 33 Kitty Foyle, 28, 305n51 Knots Landing, 156 Labine, Claire, 344n8 Labine-­Mayer Productions, 81, 82 ­labor: costs of ­unionized, 284, 288; domestic, 47–50, 52, 63, 130, 208; entrepreneurial, 296; production, 22, 280 Ladies of the Lake, 292 Laibson, Michael, 262–63. See also aw Lassie, 314–15n13 Latinx identity: actors and, 348n75; audiences and, 230, 269; repre­sen­ta­tions of, 187, 230, 255–56; revised supercouple and, 256–262; US population and, 254 Laub, Bryna, 160 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 8 Lear, Norman, 77 Leccia, Jessica, 266, 290–91. See also gl, Otalia, Venice the Series legitimation: aesthetics and, 224; audience expansion and, 153–54, 156–58; decline in, 273; designation as “trash” and, 158; prime time and, 273–75; self-­reflexivity and, 170–71; tv soaps and, 41–43, 53, 268–69, 351n135; streaming tv and, 288–89; vcrs and, 159–61. See also cultural status Lemay, Harding, 94, 123; 140–41. See also aw Leo Burnett, 308–9n121, 316n38 Lesan, David, 33, 34, 41, 63–64, 88 lesbians: repre­sen­ta­tions of, 137, 263–66, 268, 290–91, 335n151, 349n106, 349n108; soap fans as, 137 Lever Bros., 32, 318n71 lgbtq identity: activism around, 237; exploitation of, 268–72; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 238, 244, 253, 262–68, 290–91, 326n124, 347n64, 349n106. See also gay men, lesbians, queerness, transgender identity liberalism, 12, 108, 113 Liberated Man, The, 146

index  · 377

Liccardo, Lynn, 205, 273 license fees, 83, 86, 317n48; nbc and, 89, 211, 214, 218, 284 lighting, 95, 283–84 Littlefield, Warren, 337n19. See also nbc liveness, 14, 98, 162; and early tele­vi­sion, 20, 21, 33; and production practices, 35, 40, 80, 89–90, 92, 95, 163; as special episodes, 286 Lizzie, 56 local stations, 282. See also affiliate stations location shooting, 105, 164–68, 169, 171, 175, 177, 189, 190, 287–88, 332n69, 332n72, 347–48n74, 349n105 logic of safety, 108 Long Hot Summer, The, 77 Lopez-­Fitzgerald, Theresa, 228, 230, 236, 269, 348n75. See also Latinx identity; Passions Lord, Viki. See Buchanan, Viki Los Angeles, CA, 40, 80, 91, 308n109, 314n2. See also Hollywood Lost, 274 Love Is a Many Splendored ­Thing, 80, 81, 88, 98; intergenerational tension and, 111–12; popu­ lar ­music and, 99; racial repre­sen­ta­tion in, 117; rape story in, 145; as remake, 111; sexuality in, 136. See also cbs; Phillips, Irna Lovelace, Linda, 172 Love of Life, 25, 54, 80, 98, 116, 132, 173 love triangle, 44, 57–58; African American, 255–56; web soaps and, 292 Loving, 224, 255, 334n119. See also Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt Lowell, Ellen. See Stewart, Ellen Lowell Lowell, Jim and Claire, 44–45, 57–59, 67–69, 106, 312n73. See also atwt Luper, Zoe, 236, 264–65. See also amc; transgender identity Mafia, 274–77 magazines: celebrity gossip, 297; gay, 266; mainstream, 104, 130; soap fan, 76, 131–33, 156, 314n10; ­women’s, 45, 62 make-up, 177, 183 male gaze, 4, 299n16 Malone, Michael, 212, 349n93 Manning, Todd, 277–79, 352n151. See also oltl March, Audrey. See Hardy, Audrey

378  ·  index

Marcus, Ann, 43, 77, 88, 136, 160; and sft, 141–42 market research, 51–53 Marland, Douglas, 174, 176 marriage: advice, 62; discussion of, 121; postwar soaps and, 43, 44–46, 57–58, 60–64, 70, 312n80; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 20, 106–7, 166; supercouples and, 189–90 Martin, Erica. See Kane, Erica Martin, Ruth, 112–15, 187. See also amc Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, 77 Mary Tyler Moore Show, The, 130 masculinity: historical change and, 5, 146; ­mental health and, 58–60, 312n73; new characterizations of, 138, 142–48; repre­ sen­ta­tions of, 58–60, 62–66, 109, 128, 194; queerness and, 269–72; soap-­themed feature film and, 162–63; supercouple hero and, 184–85, 189–90; transgender identity and, 264; vulnerability and, 275–76 masculinization, 273, 275–79 Masters, William and ­Virginia Johnson, 134 matriarch, 241 Matthews, Pat, 98–99, 111, 121–24, 126–27, 133–34. See also abortion; aw Matinee Theater, 32 McCleery, Albert, 32 McLaughlin, Don, 59, 95 McTavish, Megan, 259, 348n89. See also amc media planning, 84 Media Rights Capital, 288 medical series, 77, 106–7, 142, 327n149 melodrama, 171, 299–300n16; devil possession story and, 241–242; Hollywood film and, 4, 5, 68, 120; postwar era of, 11; postwar soaps and, 40–43, 46; radio serials and, 7; telenovelas and, 230 men: soap viewers, 84, 109, 133, 137, 148–49, 160; abortion stories and, 120; changing repre­sen­ta­tions of, 142–48; rape stories and, 249–52; social constructions of, 138. See also gay men; masculinity, tortured hero ­mental health, 11, 44, 51, 55–60, 69. See also psy­chol­ogy merchandising, 76, 84, 154, 156, 314n10 Miami Vice, 167 Mike Douglas Show, The, 314n11 Miles Nervine, 53

millennials, 269 Mills, Ted, 23–24. See also nbc mini-­series, 77, 78, 95, 315n24 miscegenation. See interracial relationships mise-­en-­scène, 36 misogyny, 248, 279 Miss Susan, 31 Moment of Truth, 316n42 momism, 66, 313n98 Monash, Paul, 76, 315n15. See also Peyton Place Montgomery, Bianca, 263–65. See also amc; lesbians; lgbtq identity Monty, Gloria, 157, 245. See also gh Moonlighting, 225 morality: audience value of, 111; Mafia stories and, 275, 277, 352n141; soap characters and, 192–93; soap stories and, 45, 111–12, 121–23, 129, 14; social standards of, 68–69 Morgan, Debbie, 255. See also amc; City, The Morgan, Jason, 275–76, 295. See also gh Morning Star, 80–81 ­mother, 112–15, 138, 207. See also femininity Motivational Research (mr), 52, 54 Moulin Rouge, 227 movies: classical Hollywood, 5, 45, 61, 67, 98, 167–68, 170, 176, 186, 190, 255; prime time tv and, 274. See also film mtv, 168, 222–23 multiculturalism, 195, 253–54, 256 musical episodes, 227–28 ­music: network involvement in, 87; organ, 38, 98, 319–20n109; pop, 175; scene transitions and, 103; scoring, 37–38, 95–96, 98–99, 101; singing of, 96, 99–100; supercouples and, 155, 167–68, 177, 189, 190, 333n78; video, 154, 167–68, 222–23 naacp, 203 narrative: changing practices of, 40–43, 74, 100–103; early tv soaps and, 21, 23–24, 38; experimentation with, 279; mode, 5; soap opera and, 6–7, 10, 11; tele­vi­sion and, 4. See also storytelling narrator. See announcer National Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts and Sciences, 292–93 nbc (National Broadcasting Com­pany), 7, 19, 23, 33, 150; affiliate relations of, 220–21; aw

and, 211–12; Broadcast Standards, 121–23; cancellations of, 234; creative meddling of, 213–14; daytime programming, 35, 75, 104, 282; early tv soaps of, 24–25, 32, 33, 34; episode length and, 94; episode streaming of, 233; executives of, 89; exploitative stories of, 246–48, 249, 268–72; Generations and, 195–96, 211–12; network competition and, 53, 75–76; racial diversity and, 256; sb and, 164, 187, 211–12; studio production and, 80, 81, 89; Telemundo and, 230; wardrobe bud­gets of, 163 Netflix, 288–89, 292 neoconservatism, 179–80. See also conservatism; New Right neoliberalism, 209, 284 network era, 11–12, 70, 73–105, 106–52, 259–60, 286; changing politics of, 178–81; character types, 181–86; decline of, 154, 193–96, 199– 201, 220, 222; limitations of, 74; production shifts across, 163–68 networks: 9, 10, 36; ad revenues of, 34–35, 85–86, 155–56; archival documentation of, 14; audience research of, 202–3; commercial integration and, 48; conglomerate owner­ ship of, 214; control of, 27, 39, 74, 83, 86–89, 108, 210, 212; decline of, 12, 199–201, 220, 235, 237, 280–81, 296; early tv soap and, 31–32; executives of, 212–13, 281–82; Hulu and, 289; power of, 13, 73–75, 79, 83, 108, 155–57; program owner­ship and, 73, 80, 86, 87–8; radio broadcasting, 7, 8, 33; regulation of, 82–83; studios of, 39 Never Too Young, 99, 165 New Right, 125, 179–80, 260–61. See also Chris­tian­ity; conservatism news programming, 90, 107, 248 New World Tele­vi­sion, 211, 217–18 New York City: ­Human Rights Commission, 116; location shooting in, 165–66; production of soaps in, 33, 39–40, 76, 80, 90–91, 164 Nielsen ratings. See ratings Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt, 26, 94, 96, 157, 284; abortion story and, 120, 125–28, 259–62, 324n82; antiwar stories of, 99, 112–15, 334n119; comedy and, 168–69; interracial relationships and, 187–89; lgbtq stories and,

index  · 379

Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt (cont.) 263–65; personal life, 322n29, 324n73; production com­pany of, 80, 82, 210–11, 317n48; racial passing story and, 118–20, 323n55; ratings and, 203; social issues and, 109, 112, 115, 118, 128, 178, 259–60, 322n22, 322n32; story pacing and, 102–3; villainess and, 139. See also amc; Loving; oltl Northern Exposure, 225 Nouri, Michael, 146–47. See also sft novels, 53. See also romance novels Nurses, The, 100 Ogiens, Michael, 78 Olson, Julie. See Williams, Doug and Julie oligopoly, 7, 82, 214–16 One Day at a Time, 78 One Life to Live, 80, 81, 82, 98, 212, 265, 284, 287; cancellation of, 206–7, 235, 281, 287; fantasy stories and, 238; lgbtq characters and, 262, 349n93; location shooting and, 164, 349n105; musical episodes, 227–28; online version of, 287–89; owner­ship of, 210; pacing of, 103; racial identity and, 118–20; rape stories and, 277–79, 352n151; self-­reflexivity and, 170, 293; synergy and, 214–15; western setting and, 171. See also Nixon, Agnes Eckhardt One Man’s ­Family, 305n51 Online Network, The, 288. See also Prospect Park Orbach’s Department Store, 163 Orientalism, 117 Otalia, 266, 290–91. See also Chappell, Crystal; gl; Venice the Series Our Private World, 77, 139. See also Bell, William J.; cbs; Hughes, Lisa; Phillips, Irna out-­of-­home viewing, 202–3. See also audience; ratings owner­ship: creator, 164, 213; network, 281; of soap opera, 73–74, 75, 79–80, 108, 118, 201, 210–16; sponsor, 79, 83, 86–88. See also sponsors pacing, 100, 101–3 Paramount Studios, 80, 212 passing (racial), 118–20

380  ·  index

Passions, 214, 215, 227–29, 244, 350n117; cancellation of, 234, 343n153; exploitation stories of, 268–72, 351n126, 351n128; online promotion and, 233; queer identity and, 236, 263, 265–66, 268, 349n108, 351n123, 351n125; racial diversity and, 256, 348n75; telenovelas and, 230. See also nbc Patriarch, 94, 275; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 64, 110, 142–43, 195 Patriarchy, 11, 19, 45, 50, 155; critique of, 278; postwar soap opera and, 11, 60 Pepper Young’s ­Family, 305n51 Peyton Place, 76, 139, 315n15, 315n22, 326n134 Phelps, Jill Farren, 345n30 Phillips, Irna: aw and, 98–99, 110–11, 121–24, 127, 128–29, 314n3; atwt and, 44–45, 67–69; commercial integration and, 48; as con­sul­tant, 76–77, 315n15; as creator of tv soaps, 75, 304n43; early tv soaps and, 21, 22–24, 26, 28–31, 32, 33–34, 36; liamst and, 111–12, 117; as mentor, 102, 112, 126; networks and, 87–8; Our Private World and, 77, 139; personal life of, 57–58, 123–24, 324n69; Procter & ­Gamble and, 82, 86–87, 210; repre­sen­ta­tion of ­mental health and, 57–95; repre­sen­ta­tions of ­women and, 47, 66, 139; as writer, 102. See also aw, atwt, gl Phillips, Katherine, 82 podcasts, 209, 233 politics: of repre­sen­ta­tion, 199–200, 221, 236–38, 240–43, 256–62; soap storytelling and, 107, 112, 148; turn away from, 154–55, 178 Population Control International, 204–5 pornography, 172 Port Charles, 224, 234, 255, 302n44; narrative structure of, 231–32; telenovela influence on, 231–32 Portia ­Faces Life, 19–20, 31, 61, 305n51 postfeminist culture, 155, 179–81, 237, 338n39; rape stories and, 246–53, 277–79; ­women audiences and, 207–9 postnetwork age, 12, 199–235; storytelling in, 236–78 postwar period, 10–11, 139; containment culture and, 11; gender roles and, 19–20, 43, 44–46, 124; psy­chol­ogy and, 51–52 Potter, Allen, 89

Potter, Stanley, 41–42. See also Procter & ­Gamble Power of the Positive ­Woman, The, 179 Powers, Matt and Maggie, 129–30, 136, 144–45, 172. See also Doctors, The Pratt, Jr., Chuck, 245, 345n30 pregnancy: teen (repre­sen­ta­tions of), 67–69; outside of marriage, 108, 113, 123–24, 129, 150, 271, 313n102; rape and, 259–62, 264; unplanned (repre­sen­ta­tions of), 67–69, 98–99, 120–28, 150, 256, 266; villainess and, 140 prime time, 16, 22, 314n4; abortion stories in, 121, 323n55; aesthetic experimentation and, 222, 225; aspirations ­toward, 273–75; daytime subsidization of, 73, 86, 155–57; Emmys and, 292–93; Eu­ro­pean, 217–18; influenced by daytime, 74, 76, 155–57, 160, 199, 235, 297, 314–15nn13–14, 326n124, 350n112; influence on daytime, 73–74, 142, 195, 224, 273–74, 284, 351n135; lgbtq characters in, 137, 262, 267–68, 347n64; musical per­for­mance in, 99; networks and, 281–82; production practices of, 80, 86, 90; racial integration of, 116, 119; rejection of daytime and, 274, 297, 315n15; schedule of, 82–3; sex and, 172, 175; soaps, 74, 76–77, 230; special episodes in, 223; style in early tv, 25–26; turn to relevance in, 107–9, 148, 317n57; ­women’s roles in, 130, 131 princess (supercouple), 148, 180, 181–84, 257; turn away from, 240 Prinz, Rosemary, 113–14. See also amc; atwt Procter & ­Gamble: aw and, 75, 81, 94, 314n3; bud­get reduction of, 283–84; changing practices of, 78–79, 306n74; creative control of, 210–11; early tv soaps and, 25, 32–34, 303n23; end of daytime dramas of, 235, 282; executives of, 41–42, 76, 82, 212; hiring and, 116; influence on stories of, 58, 67–69, 108, 124, 140, 213; international distribution and, 218, 221; market research and, 56; policies of, 76, 127, 313n102, 316n35; prime time serials and, 315n14; radio serials and, 28; sponsor-­ownership and, 81, 86–87, 314n7, 316n38, 318n71 product placement, 286–87, 354n28. See also advertising

Production Code (Hollywood), 67–68 production: changing modes of 89–95; costs, 34, 36, 73, 83, 86, 89, 156; early tv, 22; new developments in, 163–68, 175, 177, 199, 281, 282–87, 319n101; pace of, 286–88; practices of soap opera, 10, 13, 14, 25, 35, 39, 74–75, 87, 201; studios, 39, 87, 89; tele­vi­sion, 11, 21; videotape, 39–40 profitability, 11, 34; soap opera and, 73–74, 86, 155–57, 200, 202 promotion, 12, 76, 156, 282, 284, 314n12; archive of, 14; online, 232, 233–34; Port Charles and, 231–32; rape stories and, 246–48, 278 props, 25, 89, 164 proscenium, 90. See also theatricality Prospect Park, 287–89, 355n35, 355n38 psyches: of soap audiences, 45–46, 51; of troubled soap characters, 66–67, 70, 107, 110, 129, 180, 278; of ­women, 49. See also Freudianism; psy­chol­ogy psychoanalysis. See Freudianism psy­chol­ogy: of characters, 46, 107; daytime tele­vi­sion and, 11, 49, 54, 207–9; fantasy sequences and, 175–77; postwar culture and, 51–52; soap stories and, 45–64, 55–64, 66, 129, 137 public affairs programming, 53–54, 309n5 public sphere, 7–8 queerness: character appeal and, 143–44; devil possession story and, 243–44; lgbtq stories and, 264–72, 349–50n108, 350n112; soap audience and, 137–38; soaps and, 194, 263, 269; web soaps and, 290–92. See also gay men; intersex identity; lesbians; lgbtq identity; transgender identity quiz shows. See game shows Rabin, Al, 247 race: colorblind treatment of, 195, 253–56, 295; historical change and, 5–6, 109, 237, 279; in­equality and, 155; soap audience and, 203–6, 209, 273; soaps’ ­limited diversity of, 194, 253, 272, 348n75; soaps’ repre­sen­ta­tion of, 11, 12, 70, 110, 115–20, 149–52, 195–96, 199–200, 237–38, 244, 253–56, 269, 295, 347n67; tv and, 107, 108, 349–50n108;

index  · 381

race (cont.) supercouples and, 179, 181, 187–89, 256–62. See also African Americans; Latinx identity racism, 150, 269–72, 302n1; activism against, 237. See also civil rights movement radio: commercialism of, 27, 304n34; serials of, 4, 7–8, 20–22, 25, 27, 31, 33, 40, 53, 64, 78, 79; distinguished from tv, 27, 33–34, 40–43, 98; marriage in, 61; repre­sen­ta­tions of w ­ omen in, 57, 124; sponsors in, 210, 300n30; transition to tele­vi­sion from, 9, 10, 11, 20–22, 27–31, 33, 38, 40–43, 46, 74, 79, 80, 167, 190, 208, 280, 285, 302n6, 305n51; ­women audiences and, 7–9, 47, 51, 207–8 Raines, Beth, 170, 185, 191. See also gl rape: activism against, 145; exploitation of, 240–44, 272, 345n30, 351n131; postfeminist culture and, 246–53, 264, 277–79, 346n47; reimagining of, 237, 277–79, 295, 345n35; supercouples and, 173–74, 182, 186, 248–53, 259–60, 346n40, 346n54; tortured hero and, 145–46, 327n168, 328n169, 346n58 ratings, 13; changes in, 200–206; critiques of, 55, 202–3; declines in, 212, 273; demographics and, 200; soap opera and, 34, 155–57, 158; sweeps period, 164, 165 Rauch, Paul, 82, 94, 213 reaction shot, 24, 26, 251–52 Reagan, Ronald, 179, 186–87. See also conservatism, New Right realism: atwt and, 44–45; cultural valuing of, 40–43; Dark Shadows and, 100–101; turn away from, 186–87, 237, 268; tv soaps and, 22, 46, 154, 164, 343–44n1 real­ity tv, 209, 284, 297 Reardon, Nola, 171, 176. See also fantasy; gl recapping, 22, 101–3 Reeg, Leonard, 308–9n121 regulation, 52, 82. See also consent decrees; deregulation; Financial Interest and Syndication Rules rehearsal, 228, 285 Reilly, James E., 240, 243–44, 268–69. See also dool; Passions; Sunset Beach relevance (in soap storytelling), 100, 105, 106–52, 154; return to, 237, 344n8; turn away from, 175–77, 178, 194. See also social issues

382  ·  index

religion, 260. See also Catholicism; Chris­tian­ity repre­sen­ta­tion: expanded diversity of, 255–66, 281, 290–91, 295–96; historical patterns of, 272–73, 278, 279. See also politics reproduction, 11, 109, 120–28. See also abortion; pregnancy Republican Party, 124–25, 239. See also conservatism; New Right reruns, 203, 217, 219–21, 308n107 Retro tv, 2, 301n42, 302n44 revenue: advertising, 34, 35, 79, 85–86, 104, 153, 200, 273; international distribution, 217–18; merchandising, 76, 84; radio, 7, 28; soaps (to networks), 83–84, 86, 214–16; syndication, 39–40 Revlon, 286 Revolution, The, 207–8 Riche, Wendy, 291–92 Rituals, 219 Road of Life, The, 305n51, 313n102 Roe v. Wade, 124 Rolling Stones, The, 99, 111–12, 156 romance, 16, 75, 96–98, 103, 171–75; aids and, 239–40; fantasy sequences and, 175–77; male characters and, 142–48; narrative structure of, 285; rape and, 247–53; reimagining of, 237, 256–62, 279; sexual desire and, 133–34; supercouples and, 168, 171, 173–75, 178–81 romance novels, 54, 145, 173, 186 Roseanne, 267 Rowell, Victoria, 255. See also y&r Royal Pains, 288 Ryan’s Hope, 15, 81, 82, 302n44; location shooting and, 165–66, 332n69; men in, 146; self-­ reflexivity and, 170; ­women in, 130–31, 140 Ryan, Frank, 165–66. See also rh Ryan, Mary, 130–31, 146, 165, 332n69. See also rh Samish, Adrian, 34 Santa Barbara, 158, 164–65, 220, 335n151; bud­get cuts and, 282–83; comedy and, 101, 170–71; international distribution of, 217–18; owner­ship of, 211–12; rape stories and, 245–46, 345n30; sex scenes and, 174; supercouples of, 168, 177, 185, 187–88, 189, 194. See also Dobson, Bridget and Jerome Santa Cruz, 232–33

Santos, Julia, 236, 256–62, 264, 348n75, 348n81, 348n85. See also abortion; amc; interacial relationships satire, 271 Saybrooke, Marty, 277–79. See also oltl; rape scene design, 23 Schlafly, Phyllis, 179 science fiction, 153–54, 168, 171, 173, 244 scoring, 38. See also ­music Scorpio, Robin, 239–40, 277, 344n8. See also aids; gh; hiv Screen Gems, 80, 89, 213, 217, 315n13, 340n91. See also Columbia Pictures Search for Tomorrow, 25–27, 32, 41–43, 100, 131–32, 158, 165, 320n121; intergenerational conflict in, 65; location shooting and, 332n72; marriage in, 61–64, 106, 142; men in, 61–63, 142, 146–47; network shift of, 210–11; sponsorship of, 78; ­women in, 141–42, 324n91. See also Hursleys, Frank and Doris; Tate, Joanne Barron; Winsor, Roy Secret Storm, The, 80, 98 self-­reflexivity, 170, 199–200, 225–28, 242–43, 333n88, 342n132 Selmur Productions, 75 serialization, 7, 314n2; historical roots of, 103; prime time and, 74, 76–78, 156–57, 160, 274–75, 314–15n13–14, 350n112. See also prime time sets: bud­gets for, 89, 283, 285, 315n22; early tv soaps and, 23–24, 28, 36–37, 303n19; gh and, 90–92, 164; increase in number of, 190; supercouples and, 191; y&r and, 95 setting: supercouples and, 191; workplace, 39, 43, 74, 90–91, 100, 143, 190. See also location shooting sex: changing repre­sen­ta­tions of, 75, 120, 133–34, 171–75, 326n134; scenes, 96, 136–37, 172–75; symbols of (prime time), 131; teens and, 67–68 Sex and the Office, 130 Sex and the Single Girl, 128, 130 sexism, 345n30 sexual assault, 269. See also rape sexual desire: audience and, 137, 148; deviance and, 270–71; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 231–32; ­women characters and, 133–38, 172, 175, 326n124

sexuality: activism and, 237; black men and, 269–71; diversity of repre­sen­ta­tion and, 253; historical change and, 5–6, 237, 279; innocence and, 181–84; non-­straight, 238, 264–65, 267–72; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 74, 133–38, 199–200, 238; sexualization and, 241; soap opera and, 12, 109; social inequalities of, 155. See also heterosexuality; lgbtq identity sexual revolution, 134 Shayne, Reva, 213, 244, 273. See also gl shot scale, 37–38. See also close-up Silverman, Fred, 87–88, 213. See also abc; cbs; networks Simpson, O. J., 200, 240 Sirk, Douglas, 40 Snyder, Holden, 185. See also atwt Snyder, Luke, 236, 265, 292. See also atwt, Eastsiders Soap, 77, 326n124 SoapCity, 215, 219–21, 232–33 Soapdish, 331n51 Soapnet, 203, 219–21, 301n42; end of, 235, 343n155 social difference, 237–38, 244, 253–54; exploitation of, 268–72. See also lgbtq identity; multiculturalism; race social in­equality, 205–6, 237; economics and, 155, 187; race and, 116 social issues: exploitation of, 238, 272; as individual strug­gles, 239; return to, 237–40, 259–62; soap storytelling and, 73–74, 99, 100, 105, 106–38, 148–52, 154, 178, 256, 269–70, 334n119; turn away from, 179–81, 186–87, 190, 194, 240. See also prime time, relevance social media, 209, 297 social movements, 108, 237. See also civil rights movement; feminism Somerset, 81, 100, 102 Sony, 216; acquisition of Columbia by, 214; SoapCity and, 215, 219–21, 232 soap producing and, 214. See also Columbia Pictures Sopranos, The, 274 sound: changing practices of, 74, 95, 98–99; early tv and, 21, 23, 25; early tv soaps and, 36, 37–38, 43; experimentation with, 279;

index  · 383

sound (cont.) location shoots and, 165, 167–68; social critique and, 278. See also m ­ usic Spaul­ding, Phillip, 170, 184–85, 191. See also gl special effects, 26–27, 100 spectator, 138, 140. See also audience Spelling, Aaron, 213–14, 218. See also Sunset Beach Spencer, Bobbie, 181–82, 191, 335n144. See also gh Spencer, Luke and Laura, 2, 153–54, 157, 168, 171, 175, 185; ­family of, 293–94; rape story of, 173–174, 182, 245, 248–53, 346n47, 346n54; screwball comedy of, 170; supercouple romance of, 181–83, 187, 189, 191; wedding of, 177. See also gh; rape; supercouples spin-­offs, 76 sponsors: archival documentation of, 14; changing practices of, 74, 82; early tele­vi­ sion and, 21, 31–33, 47, 48; nbc and, 24–25; participation, 79, 316n35; power of, 27; program owner­ship and, 7–8, 10, 39, 73, 79, 80–3, 86–88, 104, 108, 164, 210, 212; radio model of, 78, 300n30, 302n6; sports, 37, 90, 156, 314n4. See also advertisers; Procter & ­Gamble Steadicam, 224 Stella Dallas, 304n28 Stenbeck, James, 192–93. See also atwt; villains Stewart, Ellen Lowell, 44, 67–69, 108, 124. See also atwt; pregnancy Stoddard, Brandon, 78 Story of Mary Marlin, The, 30 storytelling: early tv and, 35–36; new character types and, 138–48; pacing and, 285, 354nn21–22; the past and, 246–78; radio to tv transition and, 20; serialized, 297; structural changes in, 231–32; stunts, 274–75; tv soaps and, 40–43, 100–103. See also narrative; writers streaming tv, 217, 233–34, 280–81, 287–89, 295, 296 structure of feeling, 239 Stuart, Mary, 131–32, 142, 308–9n121. See also sft; Tate, Joanne Barron studios: early tv soap production and, 23; expansion of, 94; Hollywood system of,

384  ·  index

210; network era and, 74; tensions over, 87–88; West Coast and, 91–92. See also Hollywood Sunset Beach, 213–24, 218, 220, 224, 244, 268; exploitation and, 351n131; fantasy sequences of, 225–27, 342n142; racial diversity of, 255–56 supercouples, 12, 74, 98, 105, 139, 148, 153–55, 157; “­bubble” of 191, 194, 259; communities of, 192–93, 240–41, 286; formula of, 231–32, 240–41, 256, 347–48n74; identity and, 186–90, 194, 257, 335n136; origins of, 171–75; pop ­music and, 168, 333n78; postfeminist culture and, 178–81; rape stories and, 245–53, 346n40, 346n54; reimagining of, 237, 238, 239–40, 256–62, 348n81; turn away from, 239, 241–44; weddings of, 177 super­natural stories, 227, 228–29, 231–32, 268; dool and, 240–44 Susann, Jacqueline, 134 Sussman, Sally, 195. See also Generations Swajewski, Donna, 246. See also aw Swanson, Dennis, 212 Sweeney, Anne, 215 syndication: competition to soaps from, 202; first-­run, 156, 219; network structure and, 281–82; regulation of, 82–83; of soap opera, 33, 77, 217; of tele­vi­sion, 39–40, 86. See also distribution synergy, 214–16, 232–33, 261–62. See also conglomeration Tainted Dreams, 292 talent, 10. See also actors; casting talk shows, 76, 156, 244, 245, 282 target market, 205, 209. See also audience; demographics Tate, Joanne Barron, 25, 42, 61–64, 65, 100, 106, 141–42, 308–9n121, 324n91. See also sft technology, 6, 35, 74, 89, 94, 171, 200, 233, 235–37; audiences and, 153, 158–60, 201–2; ­house­hold, 50, 209; production, 39, 90, 95, 103, 105, 222, 223. See also internet, vcrs, videotape teen­agers: repre­sen­ta­tion of, 44, 67–69, 99, 125–28, 134, 174, 191, 227, 239–40, 249–51, 264, 265, 295; soap audience as, 1–3, 84, 109, 133, 143, 148–49, 157, 177, 268; vcrs and, 160 Telemundo, 215, 230

telenovela, 227, 230–31 televangelism, 241 Televest, 283. See also Procter & ­Gamble tele­vi­sion studies, 4, 6 televisuality, 222 Texas, 165, 211 theater, 11, 20; cultural status of, 41, 43, 53; production of, 23 theatricality, 22; early tv soaps and, 25, 37; turn away from, 37–38 therapy: consumption as, 52; postwar soap families and, 60, 64, 66, 129; soap opera as, 11, 43, 45–46, 51–55, 69, 208; soap replacements as, 208; tele­vi­sion as, 46, 52–54; turn away from, 74. See also Freudianism; ­mental health; psy­chol­ogy ­These Are My ­Children, 22–24, 28, 48, 77. See also Felton, Norman; nbc; Phillips, Irna thirtysomething, 225 Thorn Birds, The, 243 Thorpe, Roger, 166, 192–93. See also gl; villains Three ­Faces of Eve, 56 time shifting, 202–3. See also ratings, vcrs time travel, 101, 171 ­Today Is Ours, 39 To­night Show, The, 89 Tootsie, 161–63 tortured hero, 109–10, 128, 138, 142–48, 180, 185, 259, 275–76; rape stories and, 245, 249; villain as, 192–93. See also hero; masculinity; rape Trach, Edward, 212. See also Procter & ­Gamble tranquilizers, 52, 53 transgender identity, 263, 264–65, 296, 347n71, 349n101, 349n104, 349n106, 355n51 transmedia properties, 234, 314n10 Tribes, 219 Trump, Donald, 2, 284 Trustman, Susan, 122–23. See also abortion, aw Turner, Donnell, 295. See also gh tv Guide Awards, 70 Twentieth ­Century Fox, 80, 157 Tyler, Amy, 112–15, 322n29. See also amc; Prinz, Rosemary ucla Film and Tele­v i­s ion archive, 15, 301–2n43

United Kingdom, 4 USA Network, 288 Valentini, Frank, 284–86, 287. See also gh Valiant Lady, 305n51 Val Jean, Michele, 250. See also gh; rape; writers Valley of the Dolls, 134 variety shows, 48–49 Varni, Nathan, 282. See also abc, gh Venice the Series, 290–91. See also Chappell, Crystal; gl; Otalia vertical integration, 214. See also conglomeration video games, 279 videotape, 14, 308n107, editing, 94, 102, 105; effecting look of, 223–24; flashbacks and, 103; preservation of, 340n90; production, 39–40, 80, 89–91, 105, 163, 217, 222, 308n109, 320n110 View, The, 353n3 viewers. See audience; fans Vietnam War, 109, 110–15, 117, 334n119. See also antiwar movement villainess, 109–10, 126, 128, 143, 181, 345n17; Bobbie Spencer as, 181–82; devil possession story and, 241; introduction of, 138–42; reformation of, 294, 335n144; villains vs., 192 villains, 192–93, 259, 270–72, 275 Vimeo, 292 vio­lence: African American men and, 257–59; Mafia stories and, 275, 277, 345n30, 352n141– 43; repre­sen­ta­tions of, 245–46, 248–51, 253, 259, 277–78. See also rape visual style: changing practices of, 74, 91–92, 95–98, 222–24; domestic ­labor and, 47; early tv and, 21; early tv soaps and, 22–23, 25–28, 36–39, 43, 303n25; experimentation with, 225–32, 279, 286–87; soap storytelling and, 37–38, 58, 65; social critique and, 278 vcr (video cassette recorder), 2, 153, 158, 159–61, 163, 202; ratings and, 203, 337n19 Voting Rights Act, 116 Walker, Marcy, 187, 246. See also rape; sb; supercouples Wallace, Art, 314n4

index  · 385

Walsh, Lily, 185, 189, 265, 290. See also atwt; lgbtq identity; supercouples wardrobe, 163–64, 177 Watergate, 1–2, 125 Weaver, Sylvester Pat, 32 Webber, Elizabeth, 250–53, 294. See also gh; rape web soaps, 12–13, 232–33, 281, 288, 289–93, 296 weddings, 105, 154, 160, 168, 177–78, 181, 183; bud­get reductions and, 286; characters of color and, 187, 335n136; class status and, 186; conglomerates and, 261–62. See also supercouples West Coast. See Los Angeles, CA westerns, 168 When a Girl Marries, 305n51 Where the Heart Is, 80, 81, 88 whiteness: as presumed universal, 115, 138, 146, 148, 195, 209, 302n1; soap audiences and, 13, 206, 269; soap opera and, 11, 137, 148–49, 194–95, 255, 279; supercouples and, 155, 194, 257. See also race Wicked, 228 ­Will and Grace, 347n64 Williams, Doug and Julie, 99, 104–5, 137, 139, 152, 172. See also dool Winsor, Roy, 24–25, 41–42, 80, 82. See also sft wnbq, 24 Worldvision, 218 ­woman’s film, 5 ­Woman with a Past, 30 ­Woman to Remember, A, 22 ­women, 6, 237; disinterest in soap opera of, 206–9, 296; domestic ­labor and, 47, 63, 310n23; history of, 6, 277, 300n25; issues of, 121, 277–79; perspective on rape of, 250–53; popu­lar culture of, 4, 45; psyches of, 49, 51; radio audience as, 7–9, 27; repre­sen­ta­tion of, 11, 20, 21, 43, 109, 120, 138–42, 213; soap opera audience as, 11, 16, 20, 40, 43, 45–46, 54–55, 84, 110, 143; vcrs and, 159–61; web soap production and, 289–92; workplace

386  ·  index

and, 70, 109, 118–19, 128–33, 138, 158–59, 202–3, 296, 324–25n96; World War II and, 8. See also femininity ­women’s liberation movement, 107, 109, 124, 155; attention to, 130–31, 133, 179; impact on tv industry of, 130, 178–79; sex and, 134. See also feminism World Apart, A, 81, 82, 98. See also Phillips, Irna Wood, Robert D., 86 World War II, 8, 10, 115 Wright, Laura, 294. See also gh writers: creative control of, 211–12; diversity of, 195, 250–51, 255, 347n68; program owner­ ship of, 164, 210; sponsor-­owner system and, 210–11; upheaval in, 212–13. See also creative control; Bell, William J., Dobson, Bridget and Jerome; Hursleys, Frank and Doris; Nixon, Agnes; Phillips, Irna Young & Rubicam, 315n14, 318n71 Young and the Restless, The, 23, 81, 82, 94, 137, 140, 159; African American characters on, 255, 347–48n74; creative autonomy of, 213, 339n72; downloads of, 233; imitation of prime time and, 274; international distribution of, 217–18, 235; masculinity in, 146–47; owner­ship of, 212, 213, 214, 339n73; sex scenes in, 172; social issues stories in, 334n119, 345n35, 348n82 Sony and, 215, 219; style of, 95–96, 98, 163, 210, 286, 319n101. See also Bell, William J. Young Doctor Malone, 33, 38, 305n51, 308n109 Young Doctors in Love, 161–62 Young Marrieds, The, 81 youth: social movements of, 110–13; value as audience, 157–58. See also college students; teen­agers YouTube, 233, 288, 292 Yuppies, 159 zoom lens, 37–38, 90, 91, 98, 307n98

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