The Secret Storm, a very popular daytime drama about the Ames family of Woodbridge, made its debut on February 1,1954, and starred Peter Hobbs and Jean Mowry. Other featured players included Jada Rowland, who, when the drama was cancelled twenty years later, was the only original player still with the show. Many fine actors from stage and film joined the cast and Haila Stoddard, Russell Hicks, Marjorie Gateson, Robert Morse, Les Damon, Lori Marsh, Bibi Besch, Judy Lewis (Loretta Young's daughter) came aboard, as did Christina Crawford, Joans Crawford's daughter. She would later write the tell-all book about her life with Joan in "Mommy Dearest." Nicholas Coster and Troy Donahue, both well-known actors were also in the drama. Lori March's husband, Alexander Scourby, took on the role of Dr.Ian Northcote. The soap ended on February 8,1974.
The Young and the Restless
debuted on March 26,1973, and told a story about the folks in Genoa City, a small place which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, yet the inhabitants dressed in the latest fashions and were quite uninhibited sexually. A creation of William Bell, who learned all about soaps from Irna Phillips, it was a smashing success from the beginning. Robert Colbert and Dorothy Green were Stuart and Jennifer Brooks, a glamorous and wealthy couple with four young, and of course, beautiful daughters . William Gray Espy and Trish Stewart were in the cast as was Robert Clary (Hogan's Heroes), Jeanne Cooper, Donnelly Rhodes (Nine to Five) and Jeanne Cooper. David Hasselhoff took on the role of Snapper from William Gray Espy in 1975 and John McCook came aboard in 1976. The show is still running to huge audiences.
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman took a different road for daytime soaps insofar as it was comical and really rather weird. The characters, Mary and Tom, went through everything the writers could devise...hostage situations, mass murderers, sexual relations in a hospital bed, blackmail, homosexuality, alcoholism and whatever else the human mind can think of. The show came on in January, 1976, it starred Louise Lasser as Mary and Greg Mullavey as Tom, Mary Kay Place, Victor Kilian, Dody Goodman,and comedienne Dody Goodman. It featured a grandfather who exposed himself in the local schoolyard and a man who murdered a family of five and many other outlandish and ridiculous plots, including the one about a man who was killed when high-voltage TV set fell into his bathtub during the six o'clock news and killed him.
For further reading about soap operas see:
Source Ma Perkins to Mary Hartman, by Robert LaGuarda, Ballantine Books, 1977
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