Today in Soap Opera History (September 11)

On this date in...

1917: Actor Henderson Forsythe was born. He was best known to daytime fans as Ellen's husband, David Stewart, on AS THE WORLD TURNS. Forsythe died in April 2006 at age 88.

1967: CBS aired the first color broadcasts of SEARCH FOR TOMORROW and THE GUIDING LIGHT.

1972: THE EDGE OF NIGHT began airing at 2:30 p.m. ET, moving from its usual 3:30 p.m. timeslot where has been performing well in the ratings. CBS and Procter & Gamble made the decision to move the show to create blocks of P&G soaps that would not compete against each other on CBS and NBC. EDGE's ratings took a nose dive, and was eventually moved to ABC on December 1, 1975 to make room for the AS THE WORLD TURNS expansion to one hour.

1989: On AS THE WORLD TURNS, the investigation into the murder of James Stenbeck continued.



1990: Michael Sabatino debuted as Lawrence Alamain in DAYS OF OUR LIVES.

1996: On ANOTHER WORLD, Felicia and Morgan worried about the way Cass was dealing with Frankie’s death

2001: Former GUIDING LIGHT child actor T.J. Hargrave, who played Tim (T.J.) Werner, was working as a vice president of Cantor Fitzgerald at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center.  Cantor lost the most employees that day including Hargrave.  He was only 38.

Celebrating a birthday today are:
John Hawkes (ex-Sol, DEADWOOD) - 53
Virginia Madsen (ex-Catherine, THE EVENT) - 51
Laura Wright (Carly, GENERAL HOPSITAL; ex-Cassie, GUIDING LIGHT; ex-Ally, LOVING/THE CITY) - 42
Tyler Hoechlin (ex-Martin, 7TH HEAVEN) - 25

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you would like to submit a piece of soap opera history for this daily column, please email it to [email protected].