Test your soap literacy. What is GL? GH? AMC? OLTL? SFT?
Pencils down.
If you answered ”Guiding Light,” ”General Hospital,” ”All My Children,” ”One Life to Live” and ”Search for Tomorrow,` chances are you`ve been curling up on the sofa frequently with SOD.
SOD–as those in the know call Soap Opera Digest–is the encyclopedia of the soap opera set, its small pages chockablock with jutting jaws, moussed hair, come-hither looks, names like Cricket and Dakota and, best of all, late- breaking gossip on TV`s convoluted tales of love and cleavage.
Confused about which heroes and villains have been married, killed, kidnaped, stricken by amnesia or roused from the dead lately? ”Ask Us!”
invites one popular SOD feature.
Q–What is Donna`s full name on ”All My Children,” what was her baby`s name and what happened to him?
— K.C.,
Midwest City, Okla.
A–Her complete name is Donna Beck Tyler Cortlandt Sago because of her marriages to Chuck Tyler, Palmer Cortlandt and Benny Sago. Donna`s son was named Palmer John. The boy was fathered by Chuck while Donna was married to Palmer. The baby died in a fire.
Q–Who kidnaped Jeff and Fallon`s baby a few years back on ”Dynasty?”
— K.W.,
Reedsville, Fla.
A–Dr. Nick Toscani engineered the baby-napping in order to get revenge on Blake. Toscani had Alfred Grime, the cemetary caretaker, carry out the plot. The child was returned, safe and sound, to his parents.
Q–Do people really care about this stuff?
A–At least 840,732 of them (almost 90 percent of them are women) care enough to buy SOD, making it more popular than the New Yorker, Business Week or Esquire magazines.
Meredith Brown cares, too, though admitting it at Manhattan soirees can make for some testy conversations.
”People come up to me and say, `You work for Soap Opera Digest? Ha, ha, ha.”`
She gives such snoots a look that would curl the toes of their Gucci loafers. ”So you`re a stockbroker,” she says. ”So what? So you`re in advertising, so you`re making your money selling the world Nabisco cookies. So what?”
Besides, the snoots are apt to follow their yuck-yucks with an earnest
”So what`s happening on `General Hospital?` ”
Brown, 30, stopped by recently during a visit to Chicago to talk about trying to run a respectable magazine for a television genre that`s notoriously short on respect. She is SOD`s unofficial promoter as well as its editor, and with her carefully tousled hair and sleek sophistication she embodies the style she hopes to impart to the magazine.
A 1976 graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Brown took a $15,000-a-year writing job at SOD in 1979 because she was broke and tired of writing freelance science stories. She now rules a staff of nine women and ”one man who had the courage to join us.”
When she became editor in 1982, six years after Soap Opera Digest`s founding, her mission was to turn the magazine into something that she wouldn`t be embarrassed to read in public.
In the new, improved SOD, the one you`d be proud to be reading at your office desk when the boss walks by, covers have headlines like ”Love Connection? What It`s Like to Date a Soap Star”, ”What It`s Like Being Married to a Soap Star!”, ”It`s Good-Bye to Nina and Cliff!” and
”Cliffhangers: What Will Happen?” In SOD literary style, a headline without an exclamation point or a question mark is as worthless as a soap without sex.
Despite its twitchy punctuation, SOD is surprisingly readable, a spiritual cousin to the novels of Sidney Sheldon. To the soap aficionado, reading SOD`s chatty articles is like going to the clubhouse to exchange jokes and gossip and eye the latest lust objects. It is full of first-names: Did Kay do it? Who is hiding in Erica`s house? More trouble for Val? The line between the actors and the characters they play is fuzzy, as are many of the photos of the stars nuzzling each other at cocktail parties and charity benefits.
Like all good club members, SOD`s readers root for their favorites to graduate to even better things, meaning prime time or the movies. The magazine predicts which soap stars are headed for wider fame and looks back fondly on those like Kathleen Turner (formerly of ”The Doctors”) and Christopher Reeve (formerly of ”Love of Life”) who have made the jump.
SOD is so campy that it manages to be entertaining even to the occasional reader who doesn`t know a GH from a GL.
”What was the stupidest scene you ever saw on a soap?” the magazine recently asked its readers. ”When Erica Kane on `All My Children` said to the bear, `You can`t touch me, I`m Erica Kane!` ” replied one reader. Another wrote: ”On `Days of Our Lives` when Eugene found his `mermaid` on the bottom of the docks after writing her a note in a bottle. And on `Santa Barbara` when Mason tried to get Gina pregnant in the back of an ambulance.”
A few issues back, inspired by an article in Esquire, Brown sent an SOD writer on dates with three soap-opera hunks. The writer reported that David Forsyth, who plays Hogan McCleary on ”Search for Tomorrow,” provided a good time and even called in the morning to say thanks. Guy Davis, Josh Hall on
”One Life to Live,” was awkward and close-mouthed, though he did share some insights on honesty and love and admitted it was hard for him to trust others. Mark Lewis, who plays Kurt Corday on ”Guiding Light,” confessed that he was shy with women and fell asleep in the middle of a play.
”By and large, the book is irreverent,” Brown said. ”We like the subject, but we know it`s not real serious. We`re not writing about rockets.” Brown became hooked on soaps as a 12-year-old, when she spent a year in bed with meningitis. ”There was all this sex going on, all these great-looking guys,” she said, raising an eyebrow. She particularly remembers
”Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” with Donna Mills, who went on to become Abby Ewing, the witchy blond on one of Brown`s current favorites,
”Knot`s Landing.”
The soaps have changed a lot since Brown`s childhood. The half-hour soap is dying, primarily, Brown believes, because viewers have become accustomed to nighttime`s hour programs.
What`s more, she said, ”The image of organ music and a story that lasts two years is gone. Now the music is rock. The daytime shows have picked up nighttime`s snap and adventure. They deal with big issues. I`m not saying they always deal with them well, but they`ve dealt with wife abuse and child abuse. There was a lesbian story on `All My Children` and an interracial couple on
`Ryan`s Hope.` ”
All the snap, crackle, pop and social relevance that modern TV can muster doesn`t make a successful soap, however. Only romance can do that. ”There have to be several characters that you want–want either for yourself or you want them to get together,” Brown said. ”There has to be a good villain. You want to see people longing for each other. I say romance is where it`s at. And strong family relations.”
The essence of soaps, Brown said, is an incongrous mix of reality and absurdity. ”They portray relationships in a real way but they fall back on things like amnesia and successful sluts, women who go from prostitution to riches.”
Brown said that nighttime soaps are in trouble, eclipsed by comedy shows. ”The Colbys” might not survive the season, she said; ”Dynasty” will never be as strong as it was two years ago and ”Falcon Crest” faces a tough contest against ”L.A. Law,” the new offering from the creator of ”Hill Street Blues.” ”Dallas,” on the other hand, will be stronger this year than last and the popular ”Knot`s Landing” promises to win even more viewers.
Soaps thrive on the cult of personality, and Brown plays right along. She writes a column in each issue of SOD, complete with a photo that makes her look as glamorous as the stars she writes about.
As one of the literary powers of the soap universe, Brown hovers between two worlds, that of the magazine and the one occupied by the actors and actresses. As a rule, she said, she avoids close relationships with soap stars. ”You begin wondering whether they like you for you or if they`re looking for a way to get their picture in the book.”
She has made exceptions. She dated a soap star for a while but now her lip curls when he comes on the screen. Deidre Hall (formerly Marlena on ”Days of Our Lives”) took her to a psychic in the Bronx for her birthday last November. The psychic promised that she would be married within 18 months, would have two kids and that every writing project she touched would turn to gold.
That wasn`t the case with the one soap script she has written, which was for ”Days of Our Lives.” She said even she didn`t like it. ”Writing for soaps is one of the most political jobs on TV,” she said. ”The ratings drop a point and the writer`s fired. I`m just not that political.”
For the moment she remains content to channel her literary impulses into SOD, dreaming up offbeat stories like a recent one on the soaps` biggest wimps.
Surprisingly, she doesn`t often watch the soaps these days. She doesn`t have time. Nonetheless, she said, ”There are days when I`m upset and can`t work. I`ll lie down in my office, take off my shoes and watch. And I don`t have to feel guilty, because it`s part of my job.”
