As The World Once Turned: A Look Back At Barbara Berjer

Knute Berger has written a wonderful article about the career of his aunt, Barbara Berjer, for Crosscut.com. Berjer starred on several soaps including AS THE WORLD TURNS (Claire), ANOTHER WORK (Bridget), GUIDING LIGHT (Barbara), THE EDGE OF NIGHT (Irene), FROM THESE ROOTS (Lynn) and more.

My aunt was a wonderful actor, convincing in her roles, a mentor to people she worked with and, in later years, coached (like a young Anne Heche, an Another World cast member). But I was baffled about why she was in the soaps. It seemed so tacky. I got up the nerve to ask her once and she bristled at the suggestion that they were somehow beneath an actor. She told me that from the standpoint of craft, it was the hardest job in acting. Why? Well, there was the fact that you had to learn a new script each and every day and perform it live. This wasn't a stage show that was the same day after day during its run. But she said the main challenge was to play the same character every day and make her convincing. It's tough enough to be oneself everyday, let alone let a character inhabit you for years.

The impending death of As the World Turns in poignant, not just as a cultural shift, but a tectonic one. Adding to the poignancy for my family is the fact that the day before Thanksgiving, my cousin Michael Foley, Barbara's only child, died. Mike was the last of that branch of the family, my aunt having died in 2002. She'd moved back to Seattle by then, but her son remained behind, institutionalized in a home for people with severe cerebral palsy."

Mike was interviewed by a shrink who asked him about his mother. "My mother," he said, "is from another world." The shrink was baffled. "What did you say?" Mike reiterated, "My mother is from another world." The shrink was concerned about whether Mike had lost touch with reality, and insisted that Mike's mother was in fact from this world, planet earth. "No," an exasperated Mike insisted, "she's from ANOTHER WORLD," it was the TV show, he explained.