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'Guiding Light' fades to black on Friday

CBS

'Guiding Light' started on radio in 1937 and moved to TV in 1952.

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By WALT BELCHER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 16, 2009

There may be a day in the not to distance future when the term "soap opera" will be meaningless to younger generations.

Daytime dramas, sponsored and often owned by soap manufacturing companies, are an endangered species.

Witness the demise of "Guiding Light" which closes a 72-year run on Friday. It airs at 3 p.m. on CBS (WTSP, Channel 10.) After more than more than 15,700 episodes, the lights will go out on the longest-running drama in TV and radio history.

Generations of mothers, daughters, and grand-daughters watched a continuing story that debuted on NBC radio in 1937 as a 15-minute serial. It came to CBS television on June 30, 1952.

The title refers to a lamp in the study of a kindly minister who was a major character when the series began.

"It's been reflecting American life back at America since before World War II," "Guiding Light" executive producer Ellen Wheeler told the Associated Press. "We are the history of so many people," added veteran leading lady Tina Sloan. "They watched it for so long."

Once there were a dozen daytime dramas. Now there will be seven. "Guiding Light" will be replaced by a new version of game show "Let's Make a Deal" beginning Oct. 5. Reruns of "The Price is Right" will fill the interim.

With the daytime audience dwindling and fragmented across the multi-channel universe, the economics of producing 250 episodes a year with large casts are not in the soaps' favor.

Among the "Light" alumni who have gone on to greater things are Kevin Bacon, JoBeth Williams, James Earl Jones, Allison Janney, Hayden Panettiere, Melina Kanakaredes, Paul Wesley (of the new "Vampire Diaries") and Tampa native Brittany Snow.

As "Guiding Light" comes to an end, Tampa Theatre organist Rosa Rio recalls playing the theme music for all the NBC radio soap operas in the 1940s.

Rio, still performing at age 107, says she was staff organist for the NBC radio network where she provided organ accompaniment for 24 soap operas and radio dramas, often dashing from studio to studio.

And shortly before live in-house music was dropped by the networks in the early 1950s, Rio played the organ on some daytime TV series, including "As the World Turns," and "The Guiding Light" and even Saturday morning kids' shows.

"I wasn't a fan of the soaps," she says. "But what I found fascinating was that none of the actors looked like the characters they were playing. There would be a big fat woman doing the voice of a little girl or an old man barking as a dog."

"But characters always looked different in the mind of each listener," she says. "The magic of radio was that you had to use your imagination. When television came along, the images were provided for you."

She says that she often teamed up with the sound effects man because her Hammond organ could mimic a lot of sounds.

Clearwater native Crystal Hunt, 24, a more recent alumnus of "Guiding Light," says she is sorry to see it end. "It meant a lot to all those people who followed it," says Hunt who joined ABC's "One Life to Live" earlier this year.

From 2003 to 2006, Hunt played Lizzie Spaulding, one of the show's most popular and troubled characters. Six different actresses have played the character. Hunt was nominated for an Emmy for the role in 2005.

"The show means a lot to me personally because I was a high school teenager when I got the role and grew up on the show," she says. "I learned a lot from the actors. Some of them had been with the show for years."

"I have a lot of good memories from being on the set," says Hunt who played Lizzie during the character's rebellious teen years.

Brittany Snow, 23, was 12 years old when she joined the cast as troubled teen Susan "Daisy" Lemay. She and her mother, Cynthia, commuted between Tampa and New York during her three-years on the series (1998-2001).

"I can't believe that it ["Guiding Light"] is going to be over but I guess all good things come to an end," she says. "It was a wonderful learning experience for me because I got to play this bratty devil of a child that was so unlike what I was in real life."

Her character got drunk, nearly overdosed on cough syrup, and was a big headache for her mother Harley Cooper Aitoro (played by Beth Ehlers). "We were always fighting because my character had been given up for adoption and came back," Snow says.

"I learned so much from the adult actors on the show who had been there for years, like Kim Zimmer who played my grandmother," she says.

Snow, who went on to co-star in NBC's "America Dreams" and the film "Hairspray," says acting in soap operas is a challenge. "We shot a lot of pages of dialogue each day and there was little time for rehearsal," she recalls. "If you forgot your lines or made a mistake, another actor might jump in and keep the scene going. There wasn't always time to do it over."

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813) 259-7654.

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