Love of Life

Love of Life
Image:Loveoflife1979.jpg The Love of Life title card from 1977-1980.
Genre	live action, soap opera
Creator(s)	Roy Winsor
Starring	Audrey Peters Ron Tomme et al
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	Approximately 7500
Production
Running time	15 minutes (1951-1958) 25 minutes (1958-1980)
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	September 24, 1951 – February 1, 1980

Love of Life was an American soap opera which aired on CBS from September 24, 1951 to February 1, 1980.

Production

Love of Life was taped at several studios in New York City, but primarily at the CBS Production Center on West 57th Street and CBS's Studio 52 behind the Ed Sullivan Theatre. In 1975, the studio was moved to make room for a nightclub that would eventually become known as Studio 54. Until 1980, Love of Life was taped in the same studio as another CBS soap opera, Search for Tomorrow.

Format

Unlike most other soap operas, Love of Life was originally not split up into segments dictated by commercial breaks. Because the show was owned by packaged-goods giant American Home Products, and merely licensed to CBS, all commercials were for AHP brands, and occurred before or after the show. In the 1960s, one commercial break was allotted around the middle of the program, but this was mostly to allow affiliates to reconnect with the feed after airing local commercials. Love of Life adopted the five segments-per-half hour standard in the 1970s.

In 1958 the show moved from 15 minutes to 25 minutes, a departure from the norm in which soap operas were expanding to a half-hour. The last five minutes in the half-hour timeslot (a timeslot that generally led into the noon hour in most areas) were reserved for a CBS News update.

Ratings history

As a CBS soap, Love of Life was generally among the top six rated soaps in the 1950s and 1960s. However, a timeslot move from 12 p.m. to 11:30 a.m. in 1969 brought a marked decline, and the cancellation of fellow CBS soap The Secret Storm in 1974 was a factor in the show sinking to the bottom of the ratings chart.

A brief rise in ratings in the mid-1970s was not sustained (it had climbed as high as 9th, above General Hospital and One Life to Live in 1975-76); so that Love of Life was at the bottom tier of the ratings when it was cancelled in 1980.

Titles and theme tunes

B/W years

• In the early 1950s, a typical episode began with announcer Don Hancock saying, "Good afternoon. Don Hancock speaking. Welcome to Love of Life," over a shot of the fountain outside New York's Plaza Hotel with the show's title appearing diagonally across the screen in elegant sweeping calligraphy. After a brief commercial was the main title sequence, where Charles Mountain said over this visual, "Love of Life, the exciting story of Vanessa Dale and her search for human dignity." This was followed by some credits. The theme song was done by organist John Gart.
• In 1957, the show changed visuals twice. The show briefly used a time-lapse shot of a flower, with announcer Herbert Duncan saying "To live each day for whatever life may bring . . . this is Love of Life" over it. This was changed to a shot of a starry sky, as seen in the accompanying picture. By the early 1960s, the opening narration had been shortened to simply, "This is... Love of Life," with Ken Roberts (father of actor Tony Roberts) at the microphone.

And Then It Happened

• In spring 1967, the show switched to color, and a picture of sunlit flowers by a window for its titles. This visual lasted about ten years, and was accompanied with two different themes: "And Then It Happened" by Charles Paul (1967-1973) and "The Life That You Live" by Carey Gold (1973-1977).

The final years

• In 1977 (at the latest), the show used as its theme a pop-style ballad composed by Hagood Hardy. The main title visuals were set against a black background and had the show's new logo, designed by Lou Dorfsman, on at the bottom and a series of head shot profiles of the main characters on the top.

Plot

Beginning years

The original story was a morality play of good versus evil, illustrated by the interactions between two sisters, Vanessa Dale (originally Peggy McCay) and Meg Dale (originally Jean McBride). Vanessa (often referred to as "Van" for short) was "the good girl." She stood up for what was right in life and in her community. Meg was the schemer and all-around "bad" girl. While Van disapproved of Meg's actions, she still loved her and taught the audience the value of forgiveness. The show was painted black-and-white in this regard, which was evident in the tagline recited at the beginning of each of the earlier episodes: "Love of Life: The exciting story of Vanessa Dale and her courageous struggle for human dignity."

The show changed directions when the character of Meg was phased out and the show changed locales (first set in the fictional town of Barrowsville, it moved to Rosehill, where it would remain for the rest of the show's run).

During this time, the actress who originated the role of Van (Peggy McCay) left the show and was replaced with actress Bonnie Bartlett. Bartlett was subsequently replaced by Audrey Peters, who played Van for the rest of the run, from 1959 until 1980. Peters had an unusual debut; Bartlett had played the role of Vanessa up to Vanessa's wedding day. The next day, when Vanessa walked down the aisle, Bruce Sterling raised Vanessa's veil, and revealed Audrey Peters. Peters admitted that, during the wedding reception scenes afterward, she didn't know the names of all the characters that were interacting with Vanessa, so she called everyone "dear."

In the 1960s, most of the drama was focused on Van and her new marriage to Bruce Sterling (played by Ron Tomme). The late '60s involved attempts to shake up the somewhat staid atmosphere through campus unrest and a return of Vanessa's first husband, who had been killed off in the mid '50s. Vanessa divorced Bruce to reunite with her first husband, outraging many in the audience who could not accept their heroine getting a divorce.

The other major story of the late '60s involved Tess Krakauer and Bill Prentiss, played by real-life couple Toni Bull Bua and Gene Bua. Tess and Bill had the perfunctory tortured love story, including separations, children, and murder trials, until Bill was killed in 1972 and Tess left town in 1973.

The final years

As ratings began to slide in the 1970s, Meg (now played by Tudi Wiggins) and her son Ben were brought back to the show (Ben, now an adult, was most notably played by Christopher Reeve). Under the reins of critically acclaimed daytime writers Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer the show returned to the original "good Vanessa, bad Meg" theme. Meg broke new ground for daytime when she called her son a "bastard", the first time profanity was spoken on daytime TV.

However, after Labine and Mayer left, the show lost focus. The grittier storylines that took over the show (one story implied that while Ben was in prison, he had been sodomized) were not warmly received by the audience, and the ratings dropped. The show also was challenged by its fringe timeslot: since the beginning, Love of Life had aired in the very late morning, and few soaps had been successful airing before noon. The show's ratings had been middling in the 1950s and 1960s, but had dropped sharply as the show entered the 1970s.

On April 23, 1979, Love of Life switched timeslots (the show was moved from its traditional 11:30 AM slot to 4 PM). At that time, the show had early soap opera writer, Jean Holloway as the head writer, and her storylines, which were almost from the early days, had not caught on with the audience, and had been considered one of the factors leading up to the end. Love of Life ended its run abruptly on February 1, 1980, with a cliffhanger: after testifying in a trial, heroine Betsy Crawford (Elizabeth Kemp) collapsed as she was leaving the stand. No one knew what happened to her as the show was not picked up by another network. The final scene of the series was longtime director Larry Auerbach walking through the empty sets, as Tony Bennett's "We'll Be Together Again" played in the background.

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