The Soap Suds Subside

The on-screen death this week of Stephanie Forrester, the matriarch of CBS Television’s daytime-drama, “The Bold and the Beautiful,” is just the latest bell to toll signaling the end of the viability and popularity of “soap operas” a one-time staple on all of the networks.

Susan Flannery has played Stephanie since the beginning of the number two, in popularity, drama in 1987. For her role she has been the recipient three times of the Daytime Emmy as Best Actress. Flannery previously won another Emmy for her role as Laura Horton on “Days of our Lives” in the 1960s and 70s, and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the big-screen disaster film, “The Towering Inferno.” After toiling for 46 years in the fields of daytime, alternating with some major film roles and primetime television, she clearly sees the writing on the wall and has chosen to exit with a storyline that will probably garner her yet another Emmy.

In the past two years or so, several other daytime dramas have bid farewell including “As The World Turns,” “Guiding Light,” “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” The combined total years these four shows ran are something around 200 years. Where once upon a time there were a dozen or so “soaps” being watched daily by tens of millions of viewers, today there are only four remaining on the networks – “The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “General Hospital” and “Days of Our Lives.”

For what seemed like forever, dating back to radio in the 1920s and 30s, the public loved to tune in to the ongoing stories about families in fictional towns across America. It was escape, pure and simple, and earned the name “soaps” because initially most of them were sponsored by companies that produced soap and other cleaning products.

While evening variations of soap operas such as “Dynasty,” “Dallas,” “Knots Landing” and “Falcon Crest” were enormously popular, these shows aired once a week for about 26-28 weeks before showing re-runs. The popular daytime dramas, on the other hand, aired five days a week, 52 weeks a year with no re-runs. It wasn’t surprising that the characters that peopled these daily shows became ingrained in popular consciousness as though they were real people. Even non-addicts knew who Luke and Laura were or Erica Kane.

When I worked at Blue Cross and Blue Shield when they were on Pillsbury Street, I remember clearly in the early 1980s how packed the Employee Lounge would be at lunchtime as every available space was taken – standing room only – by avid fans of “General Hospital” who were following the exploits and eventual wedding of Luke and Laura.

While soaps were subject to ridicule and satire in some quarters – Carol Burnett on her hit variety show spoofed the shows to hilarious effect - still they prospered and were staples of daytime programming.

Ten years ago, I brought one of those legendary “Soap Queens” and a good friend of mine to Concord to perform in a benefit for a non-profit I worked for.

Eileen Fulton had played the multi-married Lisa on “As The World Turns” since 1960 and would remain with the show until its demise in 2010. She was television’s first “bitch” and her on-screen behavior had made it necessary in the 1970s for her to hire a bodyguard after she was attacked in an upscale New York department store by a fan who was irate over the way she was treating her television son. The woman had confused the actress with her character, which was not uncommon.

The Courtyard by Marriott’s Grappone Center was packed with hundreds of fans, some who came from as far away as Delaware, to see their favorite in person. The evening was called “Dinner with a Diva” and after a lush dinner, Fulton performed her famous nightclub act to the enthralled masses.

In the early 1990s, when I was working in CBS Television City in Los Angeles, I daily had to walk past the soundstages on which “Y & R” and “B & B” as the shows were affectionately known were filmed.

There seemed to be an energy and excitement that filled the area I walked through as the hundreds of workers affiliated with the shows went about their work, knowing that more than 25 million people would be watching the programs each day. They were creating a magic and a special kind of escape from the realities of everyday life.

Today, apparently, reality shows fill that void for many but in a far less entertaining manner.

Some trace the beginning of the end for soaps to the O.J. Simpson Trial that pre-empted some of the daytime favorites and kept millions glued to their television screens. There may be some logic to that explanation, however there is much more to it than that.

In retrospect, despite the sometimes steamy storylines that involved just about every “sin,” the daytime dramas now seem to have been almost quaint in their storytelling, making the towns of Pine Valley, Genoa City and Oakdale seem to be real as opposed to reel.

We watched families grow, fall in love, divorce, marry – multiple times – suffer, die and find ways of overcoming life’s obstacles. On a soap, you could even bring someone back from the dead – with a new face.

Perhaps in today’s hectic world there is enough drama in everyone’s life and there is no longer the time to invest in the fictional exploits of the characters that filled our lives for so many years. To anyone who was a fan, however, the memories of hours spent rooting for a favorite or hating the town’s brazen hussy will forever seem etched in memory as time well spent.