As The World Turns
ATWT Stars Recall Assassination of JFK And How It Interrupted Them Live On The Air!
Courtesy/NYTimesP&G
All this past week, America had been remembering the horrific events, and how the country changed because of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago on November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
But it was the beloved and iconic soap opera, As the World Turns that has a very special place in history! It was ATWT that was the only live network show going when Kennedy was shot. The episode was only ten minutes into it, when the voice of Walter Cronkite broke in with his CBS News bulletin on the shooting.
In this fascinating piece from the New York Times over the weekend they relate, “ATWT was the only regular program being broadcast nationally by a major network — specifically, throughout the Eastern and Central time zones. In Washington, the NBC and ABC affiliates were scheduled to present TV Beauty School and Divorce Court. In Dallas, a discussion of winter coats with hidden zippers was the focus of The Julie Benell Show, a local effort by the ABC affiliate WFAA. ”
Don Hastings, who played Bob Hughes related to NY Times on what went down that fatal day: “Phil Polansky, our cameraman, said, ‘Don’t tell the actors what? The president’s been shot?’ He had headphones on, and he was talking to the control room. We got our cue and we just kept going, because no one else knew what to do.” But the Times added that, “Mr. Hastings was unaware that the news was already blacking out the first half of his scene.”
Eileen Fulton, who played Lisa Hughes related her story in which she had no idea what was going on while she was performing her scene with her on-screen mom Elma (Ethel Remey): “I had a very emotional scene.“When we finished, my cameraman, Joe Hallahan, had tears running down his face. I said, ‘I’m good, but I didn’t know I was that good.’ ”
Later, when the cast got together on the Monday, to try to time and rehearse Tuesday’s live show, Don Hastings kept ducking into the control room to watch the funeral cortege. He said about rehearsals, “They kept coming to get me, because I was just destroyed at that point.”
But it was Rosemary Prinz, who played Penny that gave the most insightful news of all to NY Times! Prinz had hoped for some mention of the assassination of JFK on the next episode. But ATWT creator Irna Phillips, wanted nothing of the sort to happen to disrupt her fictional town of Oakdale and its citizens. Prinz stated, “She was the meanest bitch on the planet, and you can quote me!”
However, Prinz recalled how she got an opportunity to work it in on her own in a scene with Grandpa Hughes (Santos Ortega): “I was supposed to go on about Tom and his father,” she recalled, “and I said instead: ‘Oh, Grandpa, here we are talking about little Tom. My God, after what the country has gone through, it seems so out of proportion. But, of course, we have to go on.’ An infuriated production team promptly descended on Ms. Prinz. Prinz added. “I said, ‘I just went blank and said the first think I could think of, and then I got back to the script.’ Everyone knew I was full of it. But I made the point.”
So, what did you think about Prinz’ statement on Irna Phillips? The recollections of Don Hastings, Eileen Fulton and Prinz? We thought it was pretty terrific that the N.Y. Times remembered how historic ATWT was, and how it played into American history on that fateful day of November 22nd, 1963.
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That horrible tragic moment in history i still remember but its a little fuzzy: i was 3 years old at the time…my mother and i were at a local department store…many customers were near the tv sets including me and my mother when JFKs assasination was announced…i didnt clearly understand what really happened but i remember moms sad look on her face and gasping, ‘Oh, dear God, no!’ It would be a few years later when Robert Kennedy was killed when she told me what happened that day and where we were at when President Kennedy was shot…imo it seems are country slowly went downhill after that: before there were plenty of jobs and factories, and i lived on a treelined street that was a mix of middle class and poor but most neighbors were friendly and kept their yards clean, and you could keep your doors unlocked…there were some problems in and outside our house but things were still better then than now. By the 1970s to the present factories closed or moved to China, my old neighborhood is rundown with drugs and troublemakers, and people are more rude, violent and vulgar than ever before…we’ve become trashier and more anti family(its hard to sit down and find something the whole family can watch together…there is very few choices but not much plus kids and adults have too many distractions that seperate them…its hard to get everyone together. After the loss of Kennedy things were and never wil be the same again…meanwhile, anyone who hadnt seen the moment when ATWTs was interupted for JFKs assasination report can find it on youtube.
I love reading about what Ms Prinz said live on the air that acknowledged the grief the country was going thru. Good for her. Too bad Irna Phillips did not want to acknowledge what happened. Glad that Rosemary Prinz ignored her wishes to keep reality out of Oakdale!
Love it!!
Good for Rosemary Prinz! I know nothing about Irna Phillips, but i’d say from what i read above, Ms. Prinz is probably right. I think bringing in what the country was feeling could only have helped the viewers feel better about their soap. I agree this was a terrific that the NYT included ATWT in their coverage of that horrible time in our history.
I was a 16 year old HS student in November 1963 and my HS Social Studies teacher had the same reaction as Irna Phillips. As soon as we took our seats for our first class after the assassination he announced we were not going to discuss it. How sad!
This assassination was a terrible turning point in our country’s history. Rosemary Prinz did the right thing!
Irna was so “into” her shows that she apparently insisted on referring to the actors by their character names, rather than their own names, when she spoke to them.
She must have been a creative genius, to have been largely responsible, single-handedly, for creating and evolving the soap genre, but from everything I’ve seen, she was pretty much certifiable.
I know that Rosemary Prinz had serious ongoing issues with Phillips and the other PTB practically the whole time she was playing Penny. This is a particularly telling anecdote in regard to what Phillips was like to work for–and that quote is just priceless!
I think Lisa’s (long-suffering, with a daughter like that) mother was “Alma,” not “Elma.”
What a great article, and it’s so nice to hear news about the ATWT vets. I miss them and ATWT (even as dreadful as it was for the last five years or so of its run).
Back in 1986, I attended the 30th anniversary party for ATWT at the Palladium in NYC as the guest of Joe Rothenberger, a former ATWT executive producer. While chatting with Helen Wagner (Nancy Hughes), I recalled my mother telling me that she was watching ATWT when the show was interrupted with news of President Kennedy’s shooting. I asked Ms. Wagner about this and she recounted that she was in the middle of a live scene with Santos Ortega (Grandpa Hughes) when the announcement was aired. The actors continued on, finding out a few minutes later that the President had been shot. Ms. Wagner was a gracious lady and will always remain an icon of daytime television.
I also got to meet Helen Wagner, but much later. I met her in June 2009 after she returned to the show after her husband died in real life. She was the most gracious woman I had ever met. I was on the set as part of an undergraduate school project that the National Braodcasting Museum and my school set up. She was by far my favorite interview. I also got to ask her about that fateful day in 1963 and her incredible scenes a decade earlier with Mac suffering from Alzheimer’s. Her actual scenes that day with actors Billy and Marnie were spot on!
I think it’s terrific that the NYT called upon the ATWT stars for their piece. It was a significant part of the nation’s context for that terrible tragedy; more so than we can realize today with a million channels to watch.
I loved Ms. Prinz’s comments about Irna Phillips. It reflects the strong color of the early days of television. What fascinating stories these stars must have to tell!
I adore Rosemary Prinz! She’s always been so starkly honest about everything — this, and her calling out Agnes Nixon for taking credit for All My Children’s Amy Tyler being a peace activist (the actress herself insisted on this when she agreed to sign a short-term contract to help launch AMC). Ms Prinz doesn’t go along to get along — I love that about her!
A.T.W.T. one of the best soaps ever.
Real stories, about real life, without the need
for Dracula’s, people coming back from the dead, etc.
Just great story lines performed by wonderfully talented actors.
All My Children
ABC and PEOPLE’s ‘The Story of Soaps’: What Was Your Review Of It?
Tuesday’s night airing of ABC and PEOPLE’s two-hour special The Story of Soaps featured many notable daytime and primetime soap stars, past and present, clips from backstage to classic memorable moments, and some participants who were providing commentary on the erosion of the daytime soaps in our culture. Still others, maintained and realized that everything today is serialized from the news we watch, to some of Netflix’s most binge-watchable series, and of course, the birth of reality-programming.
Throughout the airing of the special, The Story of Soaps was trending on Twitter and social media either at the #2, #3 or #4 spots for the entire duration of the broadcast presentation, and the cancelled and beloved All My Children was also at one point trending.
However, known soap writers, journalists, ardent fans, and actors of the genre, were all on Twitter last night live-tweeting their thoughts as the special went down, and there was definitely mixed reactions and reviews, when all was said and done.
What the special did not shy away from, but tackled, was Luke’s rape of Laura at the campus disco on General Hospital. and how that moment now, as Genie Francis (Laura), so eloquently put, would be considered as ‘date rape’ in our culture. The series even included a pivotal moment where Laura addresses Luke (Tony Geary) about the rape years later, after helping Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst) through her rape ordeal.
John Stamos (Ex-Blackie Parrish, GH) got a bevy of “Right On’s!” for his comment that the soaps do not get the credit that they deserve and clearly came through as one of the soaps greatest supporters, as did former The Doctors and Knots Landing star, Alec Baldwin.
However, throughout the two-hours, Andy Cohen’s commentary was thread throughout; mostly citing soap’s demise and the creation of reality-programming and his “Real Housewives” franchise, that the special touted as the new soap operas. It continued on the narrative that people preferred to see real-life drama then made-up drama on a fictional soap. And while, that has been a trend in American culture for decades, the commentary came off as often out of place in a celebration of the soaps; and bringing in a lot of negativity to the special that soap fans were tired of hearing.
In a lighting rod moment, Cohen stated: “I know Susan Lucci doesn’t agree with me, but I think that the Housewives have replaced soap operas because truth is stranger than fiction. Soaps became kind of unnecessary because you could do it with real people, and they’re writing the drama themselves.”
The special did also address the cancellations of All My Children and One Life to Live, (which many were not sure they were going to do – given this special was airing on ABC), where One Life’s leading lady and six-time Daytime Emmy winner, Erika Slezak (Ex-Viki) said what we all wanted to sa ywhen the ax fell on the towns of Llanview and Pine Valley, “People were horrified”.
Clearly, OJ Simpson and his murder trial and reality-programming were also given a chunk of time to show where the once mighty landscape of daytime soaps which once had 13 shows on the air, dwindled town to 4. But, it would have been nice to see more time spent on how in this day and age, the people in this current landscape of the genre work so hard to get episodes done at an unbelievable pace, and how in that climate the performers still deliver gut-wrenching performances.
Photo: ABC
Former Loving, OLTL and Breaking Bad star, Bryan Cranston, did point out how the once powerful soaps, just don’t have the dollars they used to, and need to, to help with production costs and their taping schedule.
Viewers were reminded of soaps’ socially relevant storylines including hankie-inducing moments from: Robin (Kimberly McCullough) and Stone’s (Michael Sutton) HIV/AIDS storyline on General Hospital, to Billy Douglas being a gay teen coming out on One Life to Live, played by a young Ryan Phillippe.
There also did not seem time spent on the contributions of William J. Bell; one of the most prominent writers of the soap genre of all-time.
For many commenting on social media last night, there seemed to be a feeling of some glaring omissions of participants who could speak on this genre, who have been in the trenches as soap producers, soap writers, pundits, actors, and more, who were not included in the special.
So, what was your review of The Story of Soaps? How would you grade it? Do you feel it accurately reflected the history of the genre? Were you happily surprised, or when it came to the end where you over it, or somewhere in between? Sound off in the comment section below. Below are some tweets from notables who have worked as an actor, a writer, and a journalist in the soaps.
What started as a love letter kinda dissolved into a lover kicking you out of bed.
Ummm ok well I guess I appreciate the effort. But that definitely took a turn.🤷🏻♀️😬🤪 #TheStoryofSoaps— Chrishell (@Chrishell7) May 20, 2020
OMG so I’m still watching/catching up on #TheStoryofSoaps. Why does it suddenly feel like a death knell for the genre?! Why can’t it be a celebration? We’re hanging tough with no new episodes IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKING PANDEMIC! Why not celebrate our resilience? I’m done!
— Michele Val Jean (@MicheleValJean) May 20, 2020
Here’s the thing: The reason we’re down to 4 soaps is because network execs messed with time slots, cut budgets and interfered with storytelling. ABC can’t admit that so they have to get @Andy to trash them. But #TheStoryofSoaps was still a fun watch. Long live #AMC, #OLTL & #GH! https://t.co/pqR0Gx3cnf
— Carolyn Hinsey (@CarolynHinsey) May 20, 2020
As The World Turns
Don Hastings and Kathryn Hays Together Again For Upcoming ATWT Virtual Chat
Got to love Oakdale’s enduring favorites Bob and Kim Hughes! And now, although As the World Turns has been off our screens for back on September 17th, 2010, the love for the soap is still as strong today to its ardent fans.
So with that said, on You Tube’s The Locher Room, former soap publicist and host Alan Locher is bringing together Don Hastings (Bob) and Kathryn Hays (Kim) for a very special virtual chat on Friday May 15th beginning at 2. p. m. EST/11 a, m. PST.
Make sure to log on here to view the conversation.
Make sure to let us know in the comment section below your favorite Bob and Kim moments over the years!
As The World Turns
Mark Collier Added To ATWT Reunion Line-Up For Friday
Everyone needs a little Mike Kasnoff in their lives, right? Well, news today from The Locher Room has that for the scheduled As the World Turns virtual chat tomorrow, Mark Collier will be joining the funfest.
Now look for the updated line-up to include former As the World Turns cast members: Jennifer Ferrin (Jennifer Munson Donovan), Jennifer Landon (Gwen Munson), Colleen Zenk (Barbara Ryan) and Collier.
They will join former ATWT and GL show publicist, Alan Locher as he hosts the reunion on his You Tube Channel beginning on Friday May 8th starting at 2 p.m EST/11 a.m.PST. You can watch the livestream here.
Collier played the role of Oakdale’s Mark Kasnoff from 2002-2007, and then returned for a time in 2009. The role has originally been played by Shawn Christian from 1994-1997
Will you be watching this ATWT reunion? Remember Mark as Oakdale’s Mike? Comment beloe.
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Breaking NewsMay 15, 2020The Bold and the Beautiful Projected To Resume Production In June; Although Situation Remains Fluid
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Breaking NewsMay 20, 2020Andy Cohen On His ‘Story of Soaps’ Backlash: “I Went To The Interview As A Soap Fan Prepped To Talk Soaps & They Asked About Reality TV … Sue Me!”
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Breaking NewsMay 16, 2020ABC’s “The Story of Soaps” Two-Hour Special Shifts Time Slot to 9 p. m. EST/PST
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All My ChildrenMay 20, 2020ABC and PEOPLE’s ‘The Story of Soaps’: What Was Your Review Of It?
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Breaking NewsMay 21, 202047th Annual Daytime Emmy Nominations Announced: GH Scores Most Nods, DAYS Follows
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General HospitalMay 19, 2020Dominic Zamprogna Reveals He’s Ready to Come Home to General Hospital
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InterviewsMay 20, 2020OLTL Icon, Erika Slezak Talks On Her 42-Year Run As Viki, Her Llanview Co-Stars & Husbands, and Life Now
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General HospitalMay 24, 2020GH’s Steve Burton and Maurice Benard Deliver “The Power Performance of the Week”