FLASHBACK: Tide Turns in Soaper Outlook 1963

Tide Turns in Soaper Outlook

By Cecil Smith
Los Angeles Times
April 1, 1963

Three new soap operas take the air today (no, no, this is NOT an April Fool joke on the nation!), and I was wondering if there were any major changes in the old soaper. So I dropped by NBC in Burbank where one of the new serials, BEN JERROD, was in rehearsal.

It was a nostalgic visit because this was the studio where the noblest experiment in daytime television history once held forth, the distinguished MATINEE THEATER. Actually JERROD and companion soaper out of New York, THE DOCTORS, are replacing another NBC daytime experiment, THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW, and attempte to bring "Tonight" out in the daylight. It was a pretty noble try, too - an intelligent, articulate, stimulating hour that the housewives conscientously avoided.

Joe Hardy, who produces JERROD for the Ben Winsor organization, a prolific maker of daytime serials (LOVE OF THE LIFE. SECRET STORM) said he thought Griffin's hour was a splendid daytime show. I asked why it failed.

Joe shrugged. "I think the daytime viewer needs a hook," he said. "She won't stop her work to watch just a show - no matter how good - but she will pause if she's involved in a story to see what happens, how the plot unfolds. Griffin had no hook."

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Hardy says there have been enormous changes in soap opera - particularly in the writing. "Check the scripts of LOVE OF LIFE in 1951. There's a world of differnce in the ones we do today. We don't write down to the audience - I don't think you can anymore. And we deal with serious adult and controversial themes.

"For instance, when all that fuss was raised last year when THE DEFENDERS did its abortion story ("The Benefactor"), we were doing an abortion story on LOVE OF LIFE. We didn't have a complaint."

First Color Soap Opera

BEN JERROD is the first soap opera to be done in color. Another - and more shocking - innovaation is that it has no organ music. It's musical bridges are handled (and quite effectively) by a guitar and percussion instruments. But a soap without that ever-lamenting organ! Times have changed.

The setting of BEN JERROD is a small New England town, to which Ben, a successful corporation lawyer, has returned because he wants to be closely involved with people, rather than faceless corporate bodies. He immediately gets invovled in a murder - these soaps don't fool arond, boy!

Playing Ben is a handsome lad from the New York stage, Michael Ryan; Jeanne Baird is his girl Agnes, and the inevitable father figure, elderly Judge Abbott, is played by the splendid character actor Addison Richards.

Although Hardy says name actors, or stars, are not important in serials - the audience identifies with the character, not the actor - at least one well-known performer seems to turn up in eveyr soaper. Fred Scollay, for example, is in THE DOCTORS, and John Beradino, the onetime ballplayer, is the central figure on ABC's new serial, GENERAL HOSPITAL.

Serial Appeal is Universal

The soap opera concept seems universal. In England, CORONATION STREET, a twice-a-week serial, is the top show on television - it is said that Queen Elizabeth is an avid fan. The Spanish station here, KMEX, does a daily serial produced in Mexico City. The difference is the Mexican stories end after eight or 10 weeks and a new story with a new cast begins.

"Actually, we do the same," said Hardy, "except tha tour central characters don't change. This murder story on JERROD will last about 10 weeks, then we'll pick up another story, a land fraud case. Then another, each one of a different kind of case."

The crews taping BEN JERROD are already deeply involved in the plot. They keep asking Hardy who the murderer is. But he won't tell.