My Introduction to Soaps
I love soaps! I always have, and I probably always will. In fact, I'm something of a walking soap opera encyclopedia. I was introduced to soaps in the early 1970s by my babysitter: a woman my mother's age who watched a handful of daytime dramas while caring for several snot-nosed kids. I think Anne got ALL of us hooked on soaps at ages when NONE of us should have been watching them. My earliest memories of soaps are from around the age of four.
Anne was mostly an NBC gal. She loved Days of Our Lives, Another World, and The Doctors, but from time to time she also tuned in to All My Children, As the World Turns, Search for Tomorrow, and especially The Young and the Restless. Anne's daughter Sandy was partial to Dark Shadows, but since it featured vampires and werewolves, we didn't watch it often.
I got hooked on Days in 1973 when Mickey Horton forgot who he was, adopted the name Marty Hanson, and fell in love with a red-headed, crippled (as we called disabled people in those days) farm girl named Maggie Simmons. Mickey/Marty bought Maggie a pair of red dancing shoes and promised to take her dancing when she learned to walk again, which of course she did with Mickey/Marty's help. This all took place on Maggie's farm in Brookville. In the nearby big city of Salem was Mickey/Marty's family including wife Laura (played by my longtime crush, the amazing Susan Flannery), and Mike, Mickey's nephew, who everyone thought was Mickey's son. The story of Mike's paternity and Mickey's amnesia lasted seven years. It was riveting drama! Sometimes, unbeknownst to Anne, we kids would sneak downstairs from our naps to watch over her shoulder as this particular storyline played out.
The Horton family and the main characters from Anne's other soaps became like close friends or family to me. These were characters like Matt and Maggie Powers, Steve and Carolee Aldrich, and Althea Davis from The Doctors (although Althea, as played by Elizabeth Hubbard, scared me a little) and star-crossed lovers Steve Frame and Alice Matthews as well as millionaire Mac Cory from Another World. Mac had an Oedipal love triangle of sorts with his scheming daughter Iris and reformed bad-girl Rachel Davis, who initially was played by Robin Strasser (now Dorian Cramer Lord on One Live to Live). These characters kept a lonely childhood from becoming a much lonelier one. More on that in my next post.
