Sundry Daytime Soaps

[ClassyCo]

I figured we needed a thread to discuss the daytime soap operas more freely. My first experience with daytime soaps was The Young and the Restless, which I use to watch with my mother everyday. My memory is a little hazy, but I recall the story primarily revolving around Lily and this guy spending a lot of time on the beach. Maybe it had something to do with Lily disappearing, and didn't she suddenly reappear being played by a different actress? No shock there. That's typical of these daytime dramas.

Now that I'm working at the bank during the day, I don't ever get to watch those few soaps still airing every weekday. Back when my maternal grandmother was still living, I briefly got back into The Bold and the Beautiful, and I even recorded it for a couple of weeks. It starting cluttering the DVR and I deleted the timer.

I bought this Soap Opera History book like four years ago, and I really l like it. I've been looking at it a lot here lately. I wish there was a updated edition of this book, and it could include newer soaps in it.

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[ClassyCo]

Everyone that's followed me here on SC knows that I'm a major fan of classic Hollywood, its stars, its movies, its everything. I dive right in and I can't seem to get enough. Well, here lately, I've been into soap operas again, and not anyone in particular, but the genre itself.

Classic Hollywood and the exciting world of daytime dramas collide.

One of my favorite stories involving soap operas has to do with Christina Crawford and her adopted mother, film legend Joan Crawford. Christina accepted the role of Joan Borman Kane on the CBS daytime soap opera The Secret Storm in 1968. Christina was hospitalized for an emergency operation in October 1968. Since her absence rendered her unable to fulfill her commitments to a daily television series, Joan called upon the producers and volunteered to fill-in for Christina. They readily expected her offer, naturally because they knew that Joan's name alone would draw viewers the series did not previously have. Christina was apparently oblivious to the fact that her adopted mother Joan had stepped into her role until a nurse came into her hospital room and turned on the television. Christina was stunned at her mother, who was then sixty-four, playing her twenty-four-year-old character. She was also horrified that Joan appeared to be drunk during the episodes.

Joan ended up doing just four episodes of The Secret Storm just before Halloween 1968. They aired on October 25, 28, 29, and 30. No footage is known to exist of Joan's episodes, but there are audio videos on YouTube accompanied by pictures of Joan in character. Joan was paid $585 for her work, and she apparently donated all the money to her hairdresser. After she recovered from her surgery, Christina returned to her role, but she was eventually let go from the soap in 1969. Christina felt that Joan's interference had manipulated her chances of staying with the soap longer. The producers, however, stated that Christina's character and her story line had simply ran their course.

Joan Crawford on The Secret Storm as her adopted daughter Christina's stand-in.


Side-by-side photographs of Joan and Christina both in character as Joan Borman Kane.
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[Daniel Avery]

The Secret Storm was very likely still done live back then, so CC's emergency did kind of leave the show in the lurch because they couldn't just film around her and drop stuff into the episodes once she returned. Still, the producers should have known better than to take JC up on such a bizarre offer. Granted, from everything I've read about Storm, this was just the sort of ridiculousness they embraced (and not in a "fun" way). Someone at the show likely took pity on Christina and made sure nothing from Joan's 'guest appearance' survived via kinescope, since it was embarrassing for everyone involved.

In the old days of soaps going out live, I'm actually surprised more emergencies like that didn't happen. In the early 1970s Search for Tomorrow was one of the highest-rated shows. Mary Stuart's Joanne was of course the main star of the show, but her best friends Stu and Marge Bergman (played by Larry Haines and Melba Rae) were also very popular. During a commercial break during a live episode, Melba Rae had a cerebral hemorrhage and (it was said) she died right there on set, waiting for her cue. Of course pandemonium broke out and when the show came back from break, some other actors played a scene and they never went back to Stu and Marge. How the other actors managed to finish the episode, I can't imagine, but the show had to hastily rewrite Marge "being called out of town" and eventually killing the character off. I found out much later on that Rae's son is Fox News Channel anchorman Eric Shawn.

 

[ClassyCo]

The Secret Storm was very likely still done live back then, so CC's emergency did kind of leave the show in the lurch because they couldn't just film around her and drop stuff into the episodes once she returned. Still, the producers should have known better than to take JC up on such a bizarre offer. Granted, from everything I've read about Storm, this was just the sort of ridiculousness they embraced (and not in a "fun" way). Someone at the show likely took pity on Christina and made sure nothing from Joan's 'guest appearance' survived via kinescope, since it was embarrassing for everyone involved.

In the old days of soaps going out live, I'm actually surprised more emergencies like that didn't happen. In the early 1970s Search for Tomorrow was one of the highest-rated shows. Mary Stuart's Joanne was of course the main star of the show, but her best friends Stu and Marge Bergman (played by Larry Haines and Melba Rae) were also very popular. During a commercial break during a live episode, Melba Rae had a cerebral hemorrhage and (it was said) she died right there on set, waiting for her cue. Of course pandemonium broke out and when the show came back from break, some other actors played a scene and they never went back to Stu and Marge. How the other actors managed to finish the episode, I can't imagine, but the show had to hastily rewrite Marge "being called out of town" and eventually killing the character off. I found out much later on that Rae's son is Fox News Channel anchorman Eric Shawn.

I read somewhere that when Joan stepped in for Christina that The Secret Storm was being videotaped. But I think somebody involved in the production had to take sympathy on Christina because the episodes immediately following her exit were hastily and quickly rewritten so that Joan, filling in as a stand-in, was only given five major scenes in four episodes. After that, "their" character of Joan was written out of the show to allow Christina time to recover and return to the soap "sometime after November 11" of 1968. She came back within the next couple of weeks, and she stayed with the show until September 1969.

 

[Toni]

All I have to say after knowing this fact from that wicked movie that was "Mommie Dearest" for the last 40something years, is...how could Christina look that old at her age?

 

[Daniel Avery]

how could Christina look that old at her age?

It's an odd phenomenon I see in many films of the 1960s. Teenaged girls (who were actual teens...not the 'adults playing teens' like we see in TV shows today) wore dowdy hairdos and old-lady clothes. Then it struck me that the teenaged girls of the 1960s are now actual old ladies, so maybe part of the problem is that their fashion choices back then are pretty much their fashion choices today. Why 1960s teen girls wanted to dress like their mothers, I have no idea. These days it's the mothers trying to dress like their teens. @Willie Oleson used a GIF from A Summer Place (1959) in one of the Soapland Battles which featured Constance Ford* (the mother) slapping the taste out of Sandra Dee (the daughter)'s mouth and people commented on 'that old woman' being slapped, since Sandra Dee (all of 16 yrs.) had the old-lady hairdo and bland overcoat on.



* Constance Ford (a force of nature in that film) later played a much more approachable (and less violent) force of nature named Ada Hobson on Another World.

 

[Willie Oleson]

@Willie Oleson used a GIF from A Summer Place (1959) in one of the Soapland Battles

Actually it was Richard, but I do love that scene!

 

[Toni]

It's an odd phenomenon I see in many films of the 1960s. Teenaged girls (who were actual teens...not the 'adults playing teens' like we see in TV shows today) wore dowdy hairdos and old-lady clothes. Then it struck me that the teenaged girls of the 1960s are now actual old ladies, so maybe part of the problem is that their fashion choices back then are pretty much their fashion choices today. Why 1960s teen girls wanted to dress like their mothers, I have no idea. These days it's the mothers trying to dress like their teens. @Willie Oleson used a GIF from A Summer Place (1959) in one of the Soapland Battles which featured Constance Ford* (the mother) slapping the taste out of Sandra Dee (the daughter)'s mouth and people commented on 'that old woman' being slapped, since Sandra Dee (all of 16 yrs.) had the old-lady hairdo and bland overcoat on.



* Constance Ford (a force of nature in that film) later played a much more approachable (and less violent) force of nature named Ada Hobson on Another World.

Thanks for the info!! Now that I come to think of it, I always supposed that Donna Reed was 60 years old permanently, until she starred on "Dallas", when she just looked 90!! Travilla didn´t become her!!