She has stared down a grizzly bear. Been sealed in a Hungarian crypt. Impersonated a nun. Faked amnesia. Overcome addiction. Orchestrated a prison breakout, complete with helicopter. And that’s not the half of it. Along the way, she has made an enemy of almost every woman in Pine Valley and seduced almost every man. She’s Erica Kane.
From high school vixen to deceitful young wife to disco proprietor, from supermodel to cosmetics CEO to national talk-show host, Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick has had it all. So too, it would seem, has the woman who has made a career out of portraying her, actress Susan Lucci. Reputedly the highest paid of daytime actors, Lucci has been working the role of a lifetime since “All My Children” made its debut on ABC in 1970. TV Guide recently declared Lucci one of its Top 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time, the only soap actor to make the list.
Yet, in spite of all the acclaim, Lucci is most famous for losing. Sixteen times. The saga continues Wednesday night, when she will vie yet again for the Outstanding Lead Actress trophy as the Daytime Emmy awards — honoring the best in soap operas, talk shows, game shows and children’s programming — air live from New York’s Radio City Music Hall at 7 o’clock on WLS-Ch. 7.
“I don’t know how she does it,” says Michael Logan, soap columnist for TV Guide. “Last year I was sitting three or four rows behind Susan, who was in the front row, and there was a mini-cam parked right under her nose the entire show. With every Lucci joke from the stage, and as the crowds were screaming `Lucci! Lucci! Lucci!’ like you’ve never heard before, they got her reaction. It’s merciless, the attention on this woman during this awards show.”
Will 17 be the charm for La Lucci? Don’t bank on it. But on Thursday, regardless of the outcome, the headlines in newspapers across America will all bear Lucci’s name. If she loses, again, bet on the name of the woman who trumped her to be tucked several paragraphs down.
Like “Who was Jack the Ripper?” and “Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?” the question “Why can’t Susan win?” has become a conundrum for the ages.
“It really is one of the great unsolved mysteries,” says Logan. And no insights are forthcoming from “All My Children” — two of Lucci’s Emmy-winning co-stars, as well as the show’s executive producer, declined to comment on Lucci’s losses, and the star herself was said to be too busy to be interviewed.
Last year was supposed to be the breakthrough for Lucci, because of her performances in a shattering story line that nearly destroyed the indomitable Erica. In the wake of a serious back injury, the diva plummeted into a prescription-painkiller addiction, and after a disastrous public bottoming-out — at, of all places, a media awards show — our heroine admitted her problem and sought help at the Betty Ford Clinic.
(How beloved is Lucci’s Erica Kane? Several concerned fans actually sent cards and flowers addressed to the fictional Ms. Kane in care of the clinic.)
The yearlong story elicited Lucci’s best work ever, demanding a vulnerability and range from the actress that most critics agreed they had never before seen. People in the industry were so convinced she would win, the Emmy producers allocated an extra two minutes near the end of the telecast for the anticipated thunderous ovation and her acceptance speech.
But the victor was Erika Slezak of “One Life to Live,” who had beaten Lucci four times previously — and, with last year’s addition, practically has an Emmy for each of her character’s multiple personalities. As the stunner was announced, the reaction shots revealed nothing but a stoic Susan.
Gracious loser
If only Lucci would throw a tantrum or even scowl a bit. Instead, she has elevated losing to an art form.
The sense of humor with which Lucci approaches her unparalleled streak — she has mocked herself as host of “Saturday Night Live” and in a joking TV commercial — has rocketed her into the greater stratosphere of American pop culture. The Chicago band Urge Overkill recorded an admiring rock tribute to Erica in 1993, whose first lyric is, nonetheless, “Erica Kane, another Emmy passed you by.” And Tribune columnist Clarence Page got into the act back in 1991 by coining a new word: “Luccied (pronounced LOO-cheed): To be passed over again and again.”
The woman is no mere actress; she’s an icon.
“Susan would not ever say this, because she desperately wants that thing and she’s certainly entitled to it, but this (annual defeat) is the best thing going,” Logan says.
“Had she won years ago, she would’ve been just another Emmy-honored actress. But today, everybody knows Susan Lucci is an Emmy loser. You don’t have to watch soap operas to know her plight. She’s as famous as you get in soaps; everybody knows her even if they don’t know `All My Children.’ This has brought her such notoriety, such fame, such interest, such sympathy, such curiosity that a performer would have never gotten otherwise.”
This year, Lucci will be co-hosting the awards with talk maven Regis Philbin. That suits the show’s producer, Al Schwartz, just fine, because he believes Lucci and her annual quest for Emmy gold are a ratings draw.
“As a producer, it’s great drama to have Susan in contention,” says Schwartz, a Chicago native. “It’s intriguing; it’s a curiosity, whether she’ll take the prize home this year, or ever. It’s better for her if she never takes the prize home, because once she wins, it will take the excitement of the show away.”
“Maybe that’s why she’s never won: They don’t want to break the losing streak,” speculates Mimi Torchin, editor-in-chief of Soap Opera Weekly.
“Actually, I don’t have an answer to why Susan never wins; I do have an answer to why she doesn’t win lots of times,” she says. “She used to be notoriously bad at picking tapes, selecting episodes that didn’t represent her work well.”
System works against her
And therein lies the root of the problem with Lucci and the Daytime Emmys: the system by which the winners are chosen. As with other industry awards, such as the Oscars, actors nominate actors, directors nominate directors, and so forth. So Lucci’s multiple nominations — she has been up for the award 16 times in the past 17 years — signify that she is respected and loved by her peers.
But unlike many other industry awards, where an entire academy selects the winners from the pool of nominees, the Daytime Emmys are awarded by a so-called Blue Ribbon Panel, which is really just an umbrella term for many small panels — two per category, one in New York City and one in Los Angeles — that meet to view two episodes of work for each nominee and then vote on the winner. The panel members change each year, and their identities are kept strictly confidential; in fact, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will not even divulge the number of people on the panels.
Schwartz, who has sat on panels for the prime-time Emmys, divulges that the number of panel members varies, but it’s less than 20. “The truth of the matter is, your fate’s in the hands of a very few people,” he says. “And it’s conceivable that one vote could make the difference.”
This process also flouts one of daytime drama’s main charms: its ability to tell a story in minute detail, over the course of weeks or even months.
“Soaps do something that no other branch of show business can do, and it’s a real shame that the awards overlook that,” says Logan. “They’re not honoring the real accomplishment — a yearlong arc of work — they’re honoring only two episodes. The voting winds up equalizing everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done this amazing yearlong story that took you from having a back injury to winding up in the Betty Ford Clinic; it matters what you’ve done in two episodes that are being viewed out of context.
“And Susan,” he adds, “has a reputation for sabotaging herself in her selection of the two episodes. She has, over the years, submitted a lot of comedy, and in comparison to other actresses’ heavy, meaty, chew-up-the-scenery stuff — like deathbed scenes with spouses or children, or rape story lines — it’s lightweight. I don’t think comedy is given its due.”
Will the mysterious Blue Ribbon Panel ever do the right thing by La Lucci?
“If she lives long enough,” says Torchin, “she will win that Daytime Emmy. Last year she had a really fabulous year, and I think someday she will again do the most amazing work that they won’t be able to ignore her. Or they’ll just say, `Let’s get this over with and give it to her.’ “
Then Torchin puts it all in perspective: “Look, she’s the best-known figure in the industry, she’s richer than God and she has a beautiful family. She has a beautiful life. Susan will always be a winner.”
