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The Guiding Light (TGL) (known since 1975 as Guiding Light) was a long-running American television soap opera.
Contents
Show development
In the 1970s, unlike in the 1960s after Agnes Nixon left to begin writing for Another World in 1966, there was less of a revolving doors of head writers and story line seemed to stabilize in only two directions, first what was aired from January 1, 1970 to near the end of October 1975 and then what was aired from near the beginning of November 1975 to the end of the decade on December 31, 1979. The first half of the decade was mainly dominated by the story lines that were written by the head writing married couple of Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer who wrote for the show from near the end of 1969 to the spring of 1973 and were long time and reliable soap scribes. And then the head writing team that replaced Soderberg and Sommer, James Gentile, Robert Cenedella and former The Guiding Light cast member James Lipton continued most of the stories in the same direction as started by Soderberg and Sommer from the spring of 1973 to near the end of October 1975.
Under Soderberg and Sommer, several memorable story lines either concluded in big ways or kept many viewers very riveted to the action in Springfield, which continued to remain the main locale for the show for this decade. They also created several memorable characters, two in particular one that would last until the show ended in September 2009 and another that would be one of the most talked about characters on all of daytime. In 1970, Soderberg and Sommer concluded the story line of Dr. Sara McIntyre being gaslighted by her first husband Lee Gantry and his housekeeper Miss Mildred Foss, with Foss meeting a gruesome end in January 1970 and Gantry one in August 1970. Soderberg and Sommer then moved on to setting up the killing of Stanley Norris, in November 1971, and great mystery for several months and a trial where heroine, Leslie Jackson Bauer Norris, who had married Stanley earlier that year, was accused of the crime and Soderberg and Sommer presented a very memorable last minute confession of the crime by another woman, who was the mother of one of the young women that Stanley was having an affair with, who would end up dying in the court from heart attack. Soderberg and Sommer also wrote most of the set-up to how both the characters of Katherine "Kit" Vestid and Charlotte Waring Bauer would become one of the most interesting pair of villainess seen on television up to that point, that would be concluded by the next writing regime.
On April 1, 1971, a new character was introduced, by Soderberg and Sommer, who would become one of the most major and remembered characters in daytime, Roger Thorpe, played by Michael Zaslow, originally a junior executive employee of Stanley Norris', off-an-on until the spring of 1997. (Thorpe would stay on the canvas until the spring of 1998, but at that time from the spring of 1997 with an unpopular recast. Roger Thorpe would die off-screen in the fall of 2004.) During the 1970s, into April 1, 1980, the character of Roger Thorpe became more and more of a villain, but a complicated, multi-faceted one. It seemed the more bad Roger became, the more the audience grew and wanted more of him. And Roger's on-and-off again tortured romance with another character started under Soderberg and Sommer, Holly Norris Bauer Thorpe, Stanley Norris' daughter (played by Lynn Deerfield and then more memorably by Maureen Garrett), who was supposedly the "love of Roger's life". became one of the most popular and riveting romances on television period. (Holly was the character that was created by Soderberg and Sommer who would last, on-and-off until the show's end in September 2009.)
Shortly before Soderberg and Somer's exit as head writers, long time cast member (on 24 years at the time, both on radio and television), Theo Goetz who played Papa Bauer, the patriarch of the Bauers, as well as most of the rest of the citizens of both Selby Flats and later Springfield, died on December 29, 1972 at the age of 78 years. Goetz had been considering retirement at age 75 in 1969, but was persuaded by then Executive Producer of The Guiding Light, Luci Ferri Rittenberg to stay on at the show as Papa Bauer. Soderberg and Somer wrote a fitting tribute episode, after having Papa die in his sleep, to both Goetz and Papa that aired on February 27, 1973, with a memorial service, with Mart Hulswit playing Dr. Ed Bauer, Papa's grandson, giving a very memorable eulogy and Don Stewart, playing Michael "Mike" Bauer, Papa's other grandson, singing one of Papa's favorite songs, I'll Walk With God.
Not that the writing of Soderberg and Sommer didn't have its critics, one being long time cast member, Charita Bauer. Under Soderberg and Sommer, to spice things up just a bit, the already airing romantic triangle between the two Bauer sons, Mike and Ed, and the character of Leslie Jackson Bauer Norris heated up, with Charita Bauer's character of Bert, who was the mother of both of the men, finding out about the romance (finally) in a most shocking way—during Leslie's trial, via a nosy television news reporter, for supposedly murdering Stanley Norris! This story line was criticized by Charita Bauer, whose role moved in time from Bauer matriarch to the beacon of support for the entire town. Bauer was quoted as saying, "Now [the show's producers] don't really care about the idea of the family anymore. That used to be the main theme of the show, but now it's gone."
Feeling pressure from newer, more youth-oriented serials such as The Young and the Restless and All My Children, Procter & Gamble hired head writers Bridget and Jerome Dobson in 1975. The Dobsons first started writing in November 1975 taking over from Gentile, Cenedella and Lipton. The married duo focused on core characters, giving Bert her first real story line in years when her husband Bill came back from the dead. The Dobsons also gave a last name to a character introduced near the end of the last writing regime, in September 1975. Under The Dobsons this character became one of the sexiest and most complicated "vixens" (The Dobsons are credited with making her a complicated "vixen") in the show's history when nurse Rita Stapleton arrived in Springfield and later was joined, in the summer of 1976, by her sweet sister Eve and mother Viola. The Dobsons also created two families that were to become prominent in story lines all the way to the show's end in September 2009, the Spauldings and the Marlers. A matter of fact, Ross Marler (introduced by The Dobsons on March 23, 1979) would remain part of the show's canvas, until later writers killed him off, in 2006 (the actor who played Ross, Jerry verDorn would stay with the show until the fall of 2005 which made him the longest running {consecutively} cast member, at that time, of all time 26 years and which only became second for all-time only eclipsed by Charita Bauer's record of 34 years that she set in the fall of 1984), and the character of Alan Spaulding (introduced by The Dobsons on November 7, 1977) would remain part of the show's canvas off-and-on until September 2009, although with two major recasts. Also the longest running recurring character began under The Dobsons, Cedars Hospital's OB-GYN Dr. Margaret Sedwick. Dr. Sedwick first made her appearance in September 1979 during Jackie Scott Marler Spaulding's difficult pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage. Dr. Sedwick and the actress who played her from the beginning, Margaret Gwenver (Sedwick was Gwenver's married name) would help many women characters through pregnancies and miscarriages through the years (as well as being a major part of Lillian Raines' diagnosis and recovery from breast cancer) and would last be seen in 2009 a few months before the show ended.
The Dobsons also are credited with writing, and then the producers presenting, the first ever marital rape story line in daytime, when by then married couple Roger Thorpe raped his wife, Holly Norris Bauer Thorpe on the March 5, 1979 episode of Guiding Light. And the rape was considered one of the most realistic looking rapes in daytime (a few months earlier, in October 1978, Roger had raped Rita Stapleton, with actor Michael Zaslow and actress Lenore Kasdorf both complaining that that rape was made to look like to the audience as though it was very romantic, instead of an act of violence.) This story line was considered one of the most controversial and most thought provoking story lines in daytime history (on ABC's General Hospital, the character of Luke had already raped the character of Laura, but those two characters were not yet married at that time, so Guiding Light's Roger raping Holly still holds as the first ever marital rape on a soap opera), with a very interesting follow-up of a major trial (where the then new character of attorney Ross Marler defended Roger), and then in June 1979 Holly would shoot Roger (with his gun), three times in the chest, when it looked like he was going to be acquitted, he threatened to take their daughter Chrissy out of the country and got into a fight with Holly's former husband (and Rita's current husband, Dr. Ed Bauer) and Ed was losing the fight. (This shooting would be one of the two events on the videotape presented to the Daytime Emmy Award voting panel in 1980 for the Guiding Light to win its first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Drama in May 1980.) Roger was secretly taken out of the country with the help of his boss Alan Spaulding and declared dead and Holly would become the first major female soap opera character to spend an appreciative amount of time (6 months) in a woman's prison for supposedly murdering her husband (until Mike Bauer had the body exhumed and it turned out not to be Roger's.)
The Dobsons though were criticized for two major story line moves. The first of those was their killing off of Leslie Jackson Bauer Norris Bauer, in June 1976 (by then part of what appeared to be a stable couple that could have made Leslie a tent pole character for many years later.) There is disagreements over what made The Dobsons kill off Leslie via a drunk driver, but many in the audience considered this move of killing off of a well-liked heroine the beginning of the end for the show. Another unpopular and to some of the audience odd move, and the direction the story took, by The Dobsons was the bringing back of Bill Bauer from the "dead" in the fall of 1977. This move was met with an unpopular backlash and thought of as odd, because much of the long time audience had remembered in September 1968, before Bill Bauer was supposedly killed off in an Alaskan plane crash in July 1969, that he was given only nine years to live post a heart transplant. Also it appeared to much of the audience that The Dobsons themselves seemed to lose interest in the coming back from the dead of Bill Bauer, when by May 1978, the character was gone out of story line, only to return for brief appearances in November 1978, April 1980, August 1983 (when the character was killed off) and November 1983 (in flashbacks of another character.)
In early 1974, the theme of the show and its background music was changed from acoustic organ-based to orchestra-based. The version of the opening and closing themes, "La Lumière," by Charles Paul, first used in 1968 (and scored for piano and organ), was re-scored by Mr. Paul in an orchestral version, and the billboards and titles, were changed as well. See https://www.youtube.com/soapluvva#play/all/uploads-all/0/3es3Yk2O4Zc for some recordings of the piano-organ version and
On November 5, 1975, the name was changed in the show's opening and closing visuals from The Guiding Light to Guiding Light in an attempt to modernize the show's image, and, at the same time, the show adopted the harp-and-string-laced "Ritournelle," by Charles Paul, as its theme song, accompanied by a somewhat abstracted visual of sunlight filtering through leaves on a tree. The serial was still called The Guiding Light by CBS (and the show's staff announcers, most notably Alan Berns who began his tenure with the program in 1969 and would last as show announcer until the spring of 1997) until fall 1981, when the "The" was completely dropped from references and a more upbeat musical theme was adopted.
On November 7, 1977, the show expanded to a full hour.
Although there had been one remote location shooting on The Guiding Light both in the summer of 1969 and the summer of 1970 in the English countryside of Great Britain, remote location shooting picked up speed in the last two years of the 1970s on Guiding Light starting with shooting of a pair of story lines, one that took place in Nassau, Bahamas in June 1978 and then Santo Domingo in July to September 1978. This was also another pressure that CBS and Proctor & Gamble put the Guiding Light under in the last two years of the 1970s due to the other more popular soaps doing the same. (Prior to 1975, when the last two soaps, As the World Turns and The Edge of Night went from airing live to tape, remote location shooting was considered rare in soaps and also too expensive for their budgets.) In the fall of 1978, the show would have some of the cast shoot outside the studios in New York City and also shoot in upstate New York at the same time. (Ed Bauer's mansion house and the Spaulding mansion house, had some of the location shooting done in upstate New York at the time, and that would be seen, again, in the 1980s and 1990s.) In 1979, there would be further remote location shooting for the show done in Saint Lucia, Puerto Rico, Florida and other parts of the Caribbean.
The pioneering new wave band Television paid tribute to the show in 1977 by including a song entitled "Guiding Light" on their debut album Marquee Moon.
The Bauers
The Norrises/Masons/Thorpes
The Stapletons/McFarrens
The Marlers
The Spauldings/Scotts
Other characters
Plot development
As the new year of 1970 began, what Dr. Sara McIntyre Gantry was experiencing at her husband Lee Gantry's farmhouse would start out the new decade with a bang, literally. The sounds that Sara continued to hear up on the roof continued with Lee and Miss Mildred Foss continuing to chalk them up to squirrels on the roof. One night in January 1970 with there being a lot of thunderstorms, while Lee was out of town, the sounds on the roof got particularly frightening to Sara and so she decided to go upstairs to the attic to investigate taking her gun with her. When Sara walked into the attic she saw a shadowy figure by the bay window and took a shot at it. The figure fell, and when Sara approached it, it ended up being the dead body of Miss Mildred Foss! Fortunately for Sara, the District Attorney's office ruled the incident an accident and dismissed any charges against Sara.
But that didn't mean things with Sara at the farmhouse were copacetic, because Lee Gantry was still after her money and continued alone the gaslighting actions set in motion by him and Miss Mildred Foss a year earlier on his own. Sara spent a brief amount of time "resting" in the mental ward at Cedars where her former boyfriend, Dr. Paul Fletcher was still sympathetic, but thought Sara was blowing things out of proportion that were going on at the farmhouse. But Dr. Joe Werner continued to expect otherwise. Although Joe was fighting off the attentions of both Charlotte Waring and Kit Vestid at this time, Joe's main romantic interest remained the married Sara Gantry. With that romantic interest of Joe's and Sara's continuing problems at the farmhouse, enter the returning Meta Bauer Banning who told Joe she remembered visiting, as a child, Lee's first wife, Alice Rawlings' rambling family estate just outside Springfield, Meta recalled playing games at the farm as a child with Alice. Joe also enlisted Mike Bauer to help investigate the strange going on's at the farm and was able to poke some holes into some of lies that Lee was telling regarding Sara enough where Joe informed a disbelieving Sara that, "Lee Gantry married you for your money." But Joe found out he needed to do a little more investigating in England at the Rawlings estate there and when he went in July 1970 to do so, he wasn't disappointed to discover more evidence that Lee was up to no good as both Miss Mildred Foss' boyfriend Tyler Meade and another English private detective Dusty McGuire (James Donnelly) both informed Joe that there had long been suspicions about Lee and that he murdered Alice, just because of him moving the English estate house over to the farm outside of Springfield. On the August 1970 day that Joe returned to Springfield, Sara remembered Meta mentioning one of the games she used to play with Alice revealed to Meta a loose brick in the chimney in the farmhouse barn that Lee had transferred into the new architect of the house, itself. Sara went up to the attic to investigate and sure enough found the loose brick and found behind it Alice's diary that came open and Sara found that Alice had written about her suspicions about Lee. At that moment Lee came home and discovered Sara upstairs reading the diary and tried to murder Sara with one of loose floor boards knocking her out and leaving her for dead, fortunately Joe showed up and accessing the situation got into a fight with Lee that he nearly lost when Lee got the better of Joe and started to choke him. Joe fought Lee off and pushed him hard backwards that made Lee going flying and then falling out of the glass of the bay window and three stories to his death! After Sara recovered at Cedars from her injuries, Sara was indeed grateful to Joe for saving her life and Joe was also exonerated in the death of Lee with it being ruled an accident and self-defense. And despite Kit and Charlotte wishing otherwise on New Year's Eve 1970 (December 31, 1970), Sara and Joe were married.
Nurse Leslie Jackson Bauer's marriage to Stanley Norris ended up being a somewhat not very funny joke, as Leslie attended to her and Ed's new son Frederick "Freddy" (later Rick) and Stanley continued to have affairs all over town. Then in September 1971, Stanley Norris was found in his office shot to death. There were many suspects to the murder in Springfield, as many people were identified as having threatened him. But put on trial for the murder of Stanley was his third wife, Leslie, who was discovered by an employee of Stanley's over his dead body. (Charles Eiler also told the police that while he was walking his dog out in the rain, he saw Leslie running through the park in the pouring rain, earlier that evening, crying and shouting, "I could kill that man!") Mike Bauer would defend Leslie (as he had Peggy almost two years earlier). In the end, Marion Conway would confess to shooting Stanley because she was deeply troubled that her daughter, Linell had fantasies about her boss, Stanley, divorcing Leslie and marrying her. Stanley treated Linell like garbage. After Marion's eleventh-hour confession, she would suffer a heart attack and die in the courtroom. After Leslie was acquitted of Norris' murder, Linell left Springfield to make a fresh start.
Through all of this, Mike's marriage to Charlotte continued to go down hill as all the stories that Mike was hearing from Hope and Bert about Charlotte being an awful stepmother to Hope were revealed to Mike to be true. During Leslie's trial, Charlotte also could tell that Mike was still very much in love with Leslie and Mike made no attempt to hide his true feelings for Leslie and that he wanted to divorce Charlotte and marry Leslie. But Charlotte was going to have none of that, she was growing accustomed to the life style of being a lawyer's wife. Charlotte became so jealous of Leslie and resentful of Mike's time with her, that she threw Mike's law books out in the pouring rain. And then she attempted to become pregnant by Mike. Unfortunately another party soon came into the picture, in the summer of 1972, Flip Malone escaped prison and then kidnapped Charlotte who had just told Bert that she was pregnant. Bert and Papa both got angry at Mike when they found out that he and Leslie had started back up their affair, and Bert forced Mike's hand that he needed to go and rescue Charlotte, which he did. Unfortunately while Flip Malone was holding her hostage, Charlotte had a miscarriage and lost the child (Flip ended up dead in a shoot out with Mike.) Mike and Leslie looked like they were going to be able to get married anyway, until unfortunately, for them, Charlotte picked up a very interesting new ally in her quest to stay married to Mike, Dr. Steve Jackson, who told Mike he better not cause a scandal for his daughter by divorcing Charlotte who had just suffered a miscarriage. Mike and Leslie were forced to wait when Steve exhibited signs of having another heart attack. Charlotte then claimed she was pregnant, again, but was really not and the court, in winter of 1973, granted Mike a divorce from Charlotte. But for a while, Steve still thought that Charlotte might be pregnant and kept up that he was not going to let Mike and Leslie marry. Eventually though Steve gave-in and in the late spring of 1973, Mike and Leslie were finally wed.
Although Johnny Fletcher was a good husband to Peggy and a good stepfather to Billy, Peggy and Johnny Fletcher's marriage hit the skids when he started to become overworked at Cedars with everyone telling Peggy that Johnny's work, as a doctor, was becoming erratic. (Peggy was surprised when she was confronted on that issue by a trio of Sara, her old nemesis Charlotte Waring Bauer and Dr. Steve Jackson.) Peggy was at wit ends, as Johnny became even more mentally unbalanced. Then in December 1972, Johnny just up and left town for parts unknown. For a long time Peggy had no idea what to do, to go ahead and have the marriage annulled or declare Johnny legally dead? For a while, Peggy just had to become the best both father and mother to Billy and work at Cedars as a nurse the best she could.
Though they deeply loved each other, Sara and Joe's marriage became strained and Joe began having an affair with Sara's nemesis Charlotte Waring. Joe soon confessed the affair to Sara, but in the meantime, in August 1973, Charlotte was rushed to Cedars after suffering an apparent heart attack. Joe tried to save her life, but she did not pull through, and he was blamed for her death, which caused Cedars to deny him privileges and he was fired as a doctor which catapulted him into a self-destructive affair with the unstable Kit Vested, who'd had an obsession with Joe for some time. Joe made plans with Kit to leave Springfield. It would later come out that Kit had caused Charlotte's death by poisoning her tea, and, in an attempt to get her out of the way so she could be with Joe, she later poisoned Sara, poisoning her coffee. Fortunately, Joe got word of Kit's plans at the airport and was able to make it to Sara to get her to the hospital in time. Unfortunately Joe discovered that Kit was still in the house and Kit pointed a gun at Sara's head. Joe tried to talk Kit into giving him the gun, but they ended up in a struggle for the gun. During the struggle Kit was shot dead instead in April 1974, and Joe was shot and injured. When it was revealed to all that Kit had killed Charlotte, Joe was exonerated of Charlotte's death and was reinstated at Cedars. After Kit's death, Sara and Joe tried to resume their relationship, adopting a son, Timothy "T.J.". But Joe had a developed a heart condition, due to his being shot by Kit, and eventually had a heart attack in December 1976, while in India, and Sara was once again a widow.
Papa Bauer died in his sleep in February 1973, a few months after Goetz died in December 1972.
Religious matters gave way to cementing the bonds of family. In the 1970s, Bert Bauer's two sons fought over the lovely Leslie. Though Leslie loved Ed, her marriage to him didn't work, due to his alcoholism, and she became involved with his brother Mike. When things seemed to have finally resolved and she was happy with Mike, Leslie was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident in June 1976, leaving behind her and Ed's young son Freddie (known in later years as "Rick").
Mike and Leslie had overall an idyllic marriage (with the only two problems, besides Leslie's being put on trial falsely for Stanley's murder, being that Leslie would find out that Roy Mill's and not Dr. Steve Jackson was her biological father, and Mike being somewhat unsatisfied with Leslie wanting to better herself education wise). However, the lives of Ed, and Barbara and Stanley's children, Ken and Holly, took some rather interesting twists and turns.
In December 1969, Ed had returned to Springfield after having learned of his father's presumed death in a plane crash, and Janet soon followed. Unfortunately, Janet was to learn that Ed was still in love with Leslie. Then Janet's father, Grove Mason also showed up in Springfield. When Grove discovered that Ed had been unfaithful to Leslie with his daughter, Grove confronted Ed at Cedars hospital and collapsed and died from a heart attack. Leslie would then grant Ed a divorce and married, first Stanley and later, Mike. Ed would be pursued by several women, but Janet cooled things off, still upset about her father's death.
For a while, Ken Norris started a relationship with his former stepmother, Kit Vestid, but later would be attracted to the now available Janet Mason. It was a shock when Ken, who was Mike Bauer's law partner, ended up marrying Janet, because Ken was known to be somewhat mentally unstable. Janet seemed to love the man despite this knowledge.
Meanwhile, Holly ended up in Cedars after nearly being run into by a car, and Ed became her physician. After having a series of uneventful relationships, the now 30-year-old Ed was wowed by Holly and, in late 1973, agreed to go to Las Vegas with her. Holly, not realizing that Ed was an alcoholic, got him drunk and then got married to him. When Holly and Ed returned to Springfield everyone was also shocked, none more than Ed's aunt Meta, who vehemently took a dislike to Holly. Meta's third husband Bruce Banning and Bert tried to tell Meta to not interfere, but Holly heard what Meta felt about her and was concerned that Ed might leave her at any moment. For his part, Ed, who felt somewhat remorseful over how he'd treated Leslie during their marriage, resolved to make his marriage to Holly work, despite the circumstances of their union.
Janet found out that her mother, Ellen Mason had become an alcoholic after her husband's death. Janet asked Ed to help get her mother into Alcoholics Anonymous, and Ken seeing the two of them together started to become pathologically and violently jealous. While Kit was going after Joe and Sara Werner, Ken started to become violent with Janet, forcing her to have sex with him so she would get pregnant, which she did. She gave birth to a daughter named Emily. After the birth of Emily, Ellen started to go to AA, Janet developed back problems due to the difficult delivery of Emily, and Ken started to seem more mentally stable after Janet forced Ken to see a psychiatrist. Then he truly became loving and devoted to both Janet and Emily. But one evening when Ellen had an alcoholic relapse, Ken caught Janet and Ed talking privately to each other and Ken became even more jealous and stopped going to see his psychiatrist and stopped taking his medications. Ken did not tell Janet or his partner Mike about this. A few evenings later, while he and Janet were out on a date, Ken drove the car into a tree. Ken and Janet were taken to Cedars emergency room, and although bruised Janet seemed fine, Ken appeared to be blind. But none of the doctors could see any reason for Ken's blindness. Of course, Ken was faking his blindness. When Janet desperately started clinging more closely to Ed, Ken became even more jealous. Ken also talked his then pregnant sister, Holly, into believing the worst about Ed and Janet's renewed closeness, with their mother Barbara scolding both of them about how they were treating their spouses. Although Holly seemed to agree with her mother, secretly Ken did not. Then one evening, in April 1975, things came to ahead when Ken (who had secretly bought a revolver) went to Holly and Ed's house and waited outside in the bushes in front of the house. When Ed came home with Janet, Ken came out of the bushes and shot Ed in his right hand.
Ed was taken to Cedars, and it would be learned that he could no longer perform surgery with his right hand. Ken was taken to a mental hospital and would not be seen again until 1998. Janet left town with Emily and Ellen, and relocated to San Francisco,although from time to time throughout the remainder of the 1970s, Barbara was said to be visiting them.Emily and Ellen remained living in San Diego with Ellen dying in 1995 prior to Barbara Norris returning to Springfield. Ken Norris was said to be living near his daughter Emily in 1999 after he too left Springfield again.
After Joe Werner's untimely death in December 1976, Sara started dating Joe's former cardiologist Justin Marler, but decided to take things more slowly when Justin's first wife, the former Jacqueline "Jackie" Scott showed up in town and Sara could tell there was still feelings between Justin and Jackie despite protesting to the contrary. Jackie also started a dalliance with the now available Mike Bauer after she hired him as her attorney. Although Mike would later break up with Jackie partly because Mike thought Jackie was too wild for his taste. Sara would ultimately end things with Justin in 1977, when she learned that he'd had a one-night stand with an ex-girlfriend, Brandy Shelloe, a writer visiting Springfield to gather information for an article she was working on.
In November 1977, Alan Spaulding arrived at the long vacated Spaulding summer estate with his emotionally distant wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth doted on young Phillip, whom she believed to be her son. In reality, her baby had been stillborn, and Alan had obtained Phillip from an unknown woman. That woman would turn out to be none other than, Jackie Marler! Although Jackie was still in love with Justin Marler, she married Alan after he and Elizabeth divorced in 1978 to make sure she was close to her son. (Justin had no idea he was a father; Alan had no idea Jackie was Phillip's mother.)
Through all of this, Alan also carried on an affair with hard-boiled Diane Ballard. Originally Phillip's governess, Elizabeth fired Diane when she sensed inappropriate interactions between her and Alan; almost immediately, Alan then hired her as his personal assistant at Spaulding Enterprises. Diane, a sometime vindictive but shrewd businesswoman, harbored fantasies of being the next Mrs. Spaulding, but would continually be let down when Alan married two other women.
Also brought to town for a while was Alan's personal attorney, the smooth talking Dean Blackford. Dean met the widowed Dr. Sara McIntyre, whom he romanced and married in Hawaii. Sara had attempted to romance Justin, but Justin was in over his head dealing with trashy journalist Brandy Shelloe, who had broken up his and Jackie's marriage eight years earlier. Mike Bauer tried to warn Sara that Dean was a shady character, and indeed Dean was. He tried to win sole custody of Phillip for Alan by paying off a man named Ramon de Vilar to falsely testify that Elizabeth had had an affair with him. This ploy did work for a while, and Alan was awarded sole custody after he married Jackie.
Later it would be learned that Dean would have kept the de Vilar affidavits, that de Vilar had lied in court, and Dean would start being threatened. De Vilar threatened Dean that he'd admit that he had perjured himself, and Alan told Dean to deal with it as Dean saw fit. Dean then ended up shooting and killing de Vilar. Sara started having suspicions about her third husband, and Dean tried to do away with her on their honeymoon in January 1979, but Mike showed up and Dean ended falling to his death from a cliff. Elizabeth fell in love with Mike Bauer. However, she ultimately could not marry him because, thanks to Alan, Phillip blamed Mike for his parents' breakup and hated him as a result.
In September 1975 a new nurse, Rita Stapleton, arrived in Springfield and began working at Cedars. Beautiful, but a bit of a social climber, Rita came from a modest upbringing in West Virginia, but was motivated to make a better life for herself. She briefly dated hotshot surgeon Tim Ryan, but didn't pursue a relationship with him, when she realized how much her friend and coworker, Cedars employee and unwed mother Pam Chandler loved him (and she even went so far as to push Tim in Pam's direction). Soon after breaking things off with Tim, Rita caught the eye of the recently separated Dr. Ed Bauer. On the rebound from neurotic Holly Norris, and depressed over his inability to perform surgery due to his hand injury, Ed had begun drinking heavily again, but he became infatuated with Rita, and was able to become sober with her help. Rita also apparently had a secret romantic past with Ed's nemesis, Roger Thorpe. Pam Chandler left Springfield, in the summer of 1976, after her former boyfriend and the father of her daughter returned to her. Tim was left without another fall back to Rita for love and pressured her to marry him. But despite her past with Roger and Tim's pressure, Rita had one man on her mind, Ed! And Ed, getting closer to divorcing Holly, was definitely willing to pursue Rita. Ed and Rita became even closer when Rita's younger sister Eve arrived in Springfield with their elderly mother Viola, who'd just suffered a stroke. Eve for a while ended up being wooed by Tim Ryan, until Eve found out that he and Rita had earlier been involved and for a few months, and blamed Rita when Tim left her and left town. Ed recruited stroke specialist Dr. Emmett Scott (Jackie Marler's father), and the two were able to help Viola make a complete recovery, and she and Eve decided to remain in Springfield. Unfortunately for Rita, a newly reformed Holly started to realize her mistakes in letting Ed and their marriage get away from her. But the divorce decree, with Holly's signature, from Mike and Holly's lawyer was about to hit Ed's desk at Cedars and Holly made one more phone call attempt at getting Ed back. But Rita discovered the phone message left in his apartment, by Holly, for Ed and ended up throwing the tape out into the garbage with Ed never hearing the message (Barbara would suspect that Rita did this and would continue to hold a grudge against Rita for the rest of the time the two were on the show.)
During this time, 1975–76, Hope came back to town all grown-up and a somewhat naive college student. While at college in nearby Bay City, Hope had developed a relationship with one of her professors, Alex McDaniels. Mike was livid when he found out that Professor McDaniels was married! Bert tried to tell her son not to get involved in her granddaughter's love-life (as she had done with his in the previous decade), but Mike refused to listen. Eventually Mike went to San Francisco to confront McDaniels, and he showed up in Springfield to dump a confused and angry at her father when she found out why, Hope. Hope even moved out on Mike and Leslie and got her own apartment and a job at Roger Thorpe's night club, The Metro. A little later in 1976, Hope became infatuated with artist Ben McFarren who originally dated Pam Chandler, before she left town (Pam had also worked at The Metro when Sara had to let her go due to the rough economy. Pam told Ben she didn't feel any love for him as she did Tim Ryan.) When Hope told Mike she was over Alex McDaniels and was now seeing a much better man, Mike was happy and relieved, at first. Then Mike found out who the young man was, Ben McFarren, who Mike had defended in a robbery at a Deli several months earlier! Mike was now livid, and tried to get Hope to stop seeing this troubled young man. Although at first hesitant, Ben who was still paying restitution for the robbery, told Mike it was his younger brother Jerry who he was covering for and had actually committed the robbery. Mike then started to respect Ben for being willing to help his younger brother, as Mike had done for Ed on several occasions. But then Ben wanted Hope to pose in the nude, and Mike and Hope were both disturbed by this. Hope refused to do so, but then found one of Ben's painting was a nude of her, that Ben had painted from memory. This time, it was Mike who tried to tell Hope to have patience for Ben, but Hope refused to listen and dumped Ben and then decided to leave town to attend a design school.
Ed asked Rita to marry him, but on the same day he proposed she was arrested and charged with murder. Rita, as it turned out, had a sordid past with bad boy Roger Thorpe which, unfortunately for her, came out during her ensuing murder trial. Rita was accused of murdering Cyrus Granger, an elderly rich rancher from Waco, Texas, for whom she'd worked as a private duty nurse a year earlier, as well as his son Malcolm Granger, who'd followed Rita to Springfield, and was admitted to Cedars after suffering a heart attack, where he later died under mysterious circumstances. During the lengthy trial, it was revealed that Rita could not have murdered Cyrus, as she was engaged in a sexual tryst with Roger at the time; with a solid alibi and no motive for wanting Malcolm dead, the jury also found her not guilty of his murder.
The events taking place in Waco happened off-camera in 1974 and early 1975, prior to Rita's arrival in Springfield, and during a three-month-long period where Zaslow was absent from the show, so the story was told largely in flashbacks. Rita was exonerated, but at the cost of her budding relationship with Ed, who already hated Roger for his affair with Holly during their brief marriage. (Roger was, in fact the biological father of the child Holly had while married to Ed, Christina, who was born in July 1975; the truth about this came out when Chrissy needed a blood transfusion and Holly couldn't provide it because she had had hepatitis as a child. Roger had also at one point attempted to rape Holly's sister-in-law, Janet Mason Norris).
On the rebound from Ed, Rita briefly dated Dr. Peter Chapman, but things did not progress when she realized that he was much more attracted to her nemesis Holly Norris Bauer. For a time, Rita was a subject of a stalker who pushed her down a flight of stairs, tampered with her brakes and set her apartment on fire (while her blind sister Eve was inside; she barely escaped). The stalker turned out to be Cyrus' mentally deranged daughter-in-law, Georgene Belmont Granger, who, regardless of the verdict, still blamed Rita for the deaths of her father-in-law, and her husband. While holding Rita and Eve at gunpoint in their apartment building laundry room in March 1978, Georgene would confess to being the real murderer of Cyrus, as well as being responsible for her husband Malcolm's death. Georgene had killed Cyrus for fear that he would change his will to leave the bulk of his fortune to Rita, unaware that he had, in fact, already done so; her husband Malcolm, admitted to Cedars following a heart attack in late 1976, died as result of a second, fatal heart attack, suffered in the midst of an argument with Georgene (who'd secretly followed him to Springfield), in which she incorrectly accused him of having had an affair with Rita. Ed and Springfield Police Chief Larry Wyatt were hiding outside the laundry room and overheard the confession, and so were able to overtake Georgene. She was arrested and Rita was then finally able to put the ordeal behind her. (Wanting no further connection to the Grangers, Rita donated the inheritance left to her by Cyrus to Cedars for construction of their proposed new pediatric wing.)
Around the same time, a strange man started appearing around Springfield, following various members of the Bauer family around. A short while later, it was revealed that he was the father of Hillary Kincaid, a student nurse who'd recently moved to Springfield to do her internship at Cedars. However, Hillary became mystified when her father refused to meet any of her friends or colleagues from Cedars (particularly Ed and Rita). Shortly after this, Mike was honored as Man of the Year by the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. Rita attended the ceremony, but decided to watch from backstage so as not to run into Ed (from whom she was still estranged), and from where she was standing, she saw this same man, tearful, watching Mike receive his honor. Remembering having seen him around town, Rita followed him out and demanded to know who he was and what he was doing in Springfield. The man, "Bill Morrey", confessed to Rita that he was, in fact, Bill Bauer, Ed and Mike's presumed-dead father. He explained that during his last few years with Bert, he had also been having an affair with another woman, Simone Kincaid, in Vancouver. Though the plane he was to have been on eight years earlier had indeed crashed, Bill had actually missed the flight. In a drunken stupor, and tortured over his double life, he did not contact Bert to tell her he was alive; eventually he made his way to Simone, who got him sober, and he had remained with her ever since.
Eventually he did reveal himself, first to Mike and then to Ed and then to Bert. Though he did not remain in Springfield, he was able to make peace with the Bauers. Ed and Mike also accepted Hillary as their half-sister. Bert, though, had to pay back the expenses on the life insurance payout that had happened back in 1969 when Bill had been thought of as dying in the plane crash.
Roger Thorpe had been on the show and in a self-destructive relationship with Holly since 1971, but only when the Dobsons arrived did the character become truly malevolent. The meaner he got, the more popular he became with viewers. For a while, though, Roger seemed to be an upstanding citizen and even became involved with Peggy. Roger eventually even made Peggy see that it was time to have Johnny Fletcher declared legally dead. But during this time, in 1974, not everything was rosy for Peggy and Roger. Roger decided to open up a night club, The Metro, but borrowed heavily from loan sharks. Eventually he took back up with Holly, who he had been involved with off and on since his arrival on April 1, 1971. And Holly ended up bailing him out with the loan sharks (paying off the loan), after Roger was beaten-up and was afraid to go to Peggy. Holly and Roger ended up having an affair while she was married to Ed (who didn't know that he and Holly had never consummated their marriage, because he had been too drunk the night of their honeymoon and then too busy to be with her.) Holly, of course, found out she was pregnant with Chrissy and then lied to everyone that she was Ed's child (of course that would all come out after Chrissy needed a blood transfusion when she came down with hepatitis.) During all of this, Roger never told Peggy about the affair with Holly or about Chrissy. But out of a sense of guilt, not wanting to hurt Peggy or Billy, he told her anyway and then she told Ed! That is what led up to Ed and Holly's divorce. Peggy for a while kept her distance from Roger, but after Adam and Roger talked to her, she gave in and agreed to marry him with them marrying in the spring of 1976 with only Adam and Bert in attendance. Adam and Barbara's marriage though suffered through all of this, and they ended up getting a divorce when Barbara's "migraines" became too much and she blurted how angry she was at Roger and as to why (Chrissy's true parentage that Adam didn't know about up to that point.) During Rita Stapleton's trial and just before Roger made his last minute confession of their one-night stand in Waco, Roger found out that Jerry McFarren, who he had briefly hired at The Metro, had taken out his own loan against The Metro and needed to pay off loan sharks. When Jerry skipped town to let his older brother Ben take the blame in a robbery at a Deli, Roger was left to deal with loan sharks and came home to Peggy and Billy beaten up. Then Roger started to become verbally abusive to Peggy. And then when it came out about the one-night stand (Peggy expressed she could feel sympathy for Rita who was going through a similar ordeal in her trial as Peggy had eight years earlier), Peggy finally told Roger that their marriage was over! Peggy took Billy to live in Boise, Idaho. (Although in November 1977, Peggy returned to town, but left Billy in a Boise boarding school. Peggy would remain in town and working at Cedars until November 1979, but had very little interaction with Roger, and mainly was a support to all of her friends at Cedars. Peggy would end up moving back to Boise, Idaho and living with Billy.)
Roger took up briefly with Hillary Kincaid Bauer, who was still vulnerable from having learned of her father's double life. Rita, who had grown close to Hillary and felt protective of her, saw that Roger was merely seeing Hillary to get to Ed and Mike (since she had been revealed to be their half-sister). On October 9, 1978, Rita confronted Roger about his misguided relationship with Hillary. Roger became enraged, blaming Rita for his own failed marriage to Peggy (due to his providing Rita an alibi during her murder trial) and raped Rita. By this time, she had patched things up with Ed and they were engaged. Rita, afraid to tell Ed for fear that he wouldn't believe her (given her and Roger's history), remained silent and they were married in November 1978. Roger also was involved with Dean Blackford, after Roger discovered the de Vilar affidavits. Dean tried to run down Roger with his car, in the Spaulding garage, but Dean didn't succeed. After Dean died, Roger stole the affidavits and would blackmail his then-boss, Alan, with them. Roger also bought a revolver, for protection, and stayed briefly in Katie and Hillary's apartment to investigate the hit-and-run (Roger assumed it was Rita wanting revenge for the rape, until he stumbled upon evidence pointing to Dean), until he wooed Holly into marrying him. (This would cause Hillary to break-up with Roger, despite the fact at the time she was working briefly at Spaulding Enterprises and had to continue to see him at work.) Holly would get mad at Roger for having a gun in the house, and Roger took it and put it in his desk drawer at Spaulding Enterprises.
Zaslow was unhappy with his earlier rape scenes with Rita, which he felt came across as a seduction. The Dobsons crafted a full-fledged marital rape (at the time this was not considered a crime) in a March 1979 episode involving Roger and Holly who had married in January 1979. This rape scene was a counterattack against rival network NBC's soap opera Another World, whose much ballyhooed expansion to 90-minute telecasts (complete with the death of a major character) happened that same day.
Holly bravely took Roger to court, but Justin's sleazy lawyer brother Ross, hired by Alan, got Roger acquitted. (Ross would quickly reform and became a core character, remaining on the show for the next twenty-five years.) In June 1979, when it looked as though Roger was going to be acquitted, Rita could no longer bear the guilt and came forward to confess to Ed that Roger had also raped her. Upon learning of Rita's rape, Ed angrily stormed off to confront Roger in his office at Spaulding. Meanwhile, as this was happening, Holly learned that Roger had told Chrissy (within earshot of Barbara) that he planned to take her out of the country, and also headed to Roger's office at Spaulding, walking in on Ed and Roger engaged in a fist fight. Holly pulled the gun out of Roger's desk and pointed it at Roger telling him to "Stop!" Afraid that he would be acquitted and terrified that he would take their daughter Christina out of the country, and also flashing back to the rape, Holly shot Roger three times! (The sequence of events of the shooting was the first set of scenes that were submitted that would help the show win its first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Drama in May 1980.) Roger was taken to Cedars, and then taken by Alan to a specialist out of the country and was declared legally dead. Holly was convicted, despite the extenuating circumstances and sent to prison (she'd had flashed back to the rape).
While Holly was in prison, Ed and Rita raised Christina. Rita felt an enormous sense of guilt at not having come forward when Roger raped her, and felt that Ed also blamed her for Holly's troubles. To make matters worse, Ed seemed to be more concerned for Holly, and later Elaine "Lainie" Marler, Justin and Ross' younger sister (who had been a victim of a hit-and-run while training for a marathon), making Rita feel all the more neglected. She started having an affair with a former boyfriend from high school, Dr. Greg Fairbanks, who had just relocated to Springfield. Fairbanks was also dating Rita's younger sister Eve at the time, though neither sister initially knew that he was seeing the other. (Eve had just divorced her husband, artist Ben McFarren.) When Rita later found out she was pregnant, she wasn't sure if the baby was Ed's or Greg's; she initially planned to abort the pregnancy, but after discussing her situation with her mother, Viola (who offered to raise the baby herself, if Rita would go through with the pregnancy), she decided to have the baby.
Shortly before Christmas 1979, Holly was released from prison when Sara and Mike showed the court that Holly had indeed flashed back to the rape the day she shot and "killed" Roger and Roger's "body" was exhumed and it turned out not to be Roger in the grave. Roger was very much alive and moved to Paris, France trying to get a woman doctor named Renee DuBois to give him, going by the name of Arthur Green, a face lift. (Renee gave him only surface face changes, realizing that Arthur Green was a suspicious character.) Then in February 1980, Roger attempted to abduct Christina from a charity carnival for Cedars at a nearby park, but instead, in an Emmy-winning sequence (the second set of scenes submitted), circumstances led to his chasing a pregnant Rita through a hall-of-mirrors as the Donna Summer/Barbra Streisand hit "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)" played in the background. Roger kidnapped Rita, holding her captive in the Bauer cabin for several days. When in haste to escape Mike and Ed who were closing in, he knocked over a kerosene lantern, setting the cabin on fire. Ed and Mike were able to rescue Rita, but the baby did not survive the ordeal. (The baby would turn out to be a boy and be Ed's son—not Greg's as Rita had feared.) Kasdorf was also pregnant in real life at the time and later said that she found the emotional scenes were tough to play; the actress would take several months of maternity leave shortly after filming the miscarriage scenes. (It was explained that Rita returned with her mother, Viola, for a visit to West Virginia.) Roger would later attempt to kidnap Christina, in Santo Domingo but ended up kidnapping Holly, leading her into the Island of Lost Soul's jungle with Ed and Mike in pursuit.
Roger would also be responsible for the death of Dr. Renee DuBois, who had arrived in town to testify at some future point that Arthur Green was indeed Roger. Renee in her short time in Springfield developed romantic feelings for Mike Bauer (he did as well back), but one evening at her hotel Roger got into her hotel room and shocked her. As a scared Renee was backing out away from him she ended up falling backwards to her death, dying in Mike's arms.
The Bauers' and the Spauldings' lives grew ever-more complicated as Alan married Mike's daughter Hope, against the wishes of her father. (Mike still resented Alan for sabotaging his relationship with ex-wife Elizabeth Spaulding, by poisoning his son Philip against Mike, and also because he felt certain that Alan was involved in criminal activity, possibly working with Roger.) Upon Rita's return to Springfield during the summer of 1980, she and Ed tried to resume their marriage, but were forced to admit that they'd grown too far apart; Rita and Alan became close during this time, and eventually, their relationship evolved into an ongoing affair (despite the fact that Rita was, by marriage, Hope's aunt). When the affair finally was exposed by blackmailer Andy Norris in June 1981, Rita left town for good.
In 1977, the character Nurse Katie Parker was introduced around the same time that Roger's first wife (and longtime Bauer friend) Nurse Peggy Scott Dilman Fletcher Thorpe (still played by Fran Myers) left town with her teenage son Billy Fletcher, after learning about the tryst Roger had had with Rita. (Peggy and Myers though did make a return to the show from November 1978 to November 1979 when she came for Ed and Rita's wedding and stayed on staff at Cedars while others were busy with several other activities.) Kind natured, though somewhat insecure and weight-conscious, Katie became roommates with Hillary Bauer and, for a time, struck up a romance with Dr. Mark Hamilton who kept putting off marrying Katie. Hillary was also not bereft of suitors after her nasty break up with Roger Thorpe. Katie's rough-edged younger brother, Floyd Parker, showed up on Katie and Hillary's doorstep in March 1979 and took an instant shine to Hillary. Hillary though found Floyd not to be to her liking and still felt gun shy to get involved in relationship post her break-up with Roger. Floyd also found himself falling for Justin and Ross' younger sister, Lainie Marler, who had to learn to walk again (let alone run track and field as she had done before) after being run into by a van. Lainie briefly became enamored of both Ed and Mark while in recovery at Cedars. Katie for a time became a television personality involved with a children's show and later learned that Mark was two-timing her with other women and dumped him. Lainie briefly worked for Mike and another attorney, Derek Colby introduced in 1980, after Ann Jeffers left for another job offer. Lainie would later get involved with Chicago art gallery owner Carter Bowden and would marry him in February 1981 and they would move to Chicago. Lainie was briefly seen in June and July 1982.
Mike got Holly's friend and former prison inmate, Clara Jones (played by Anna Maria Horsford) released from prison. Horsford was one of the first African-American characters on the show to be given a substantial story line. Mike proved that Clara had not shot her husband, but that he was killed by drug dealers with whom he had gotten involved (the same ones that had driven the van that hit Lainie Marler.)
Hillary, though, would turn down both Floyd. During 1979 and early 1980, Hillary, Floyd, Katie and Mark provided much of the comic relief on the show.
In July 1978, Lucille Wexler and her daughter Amanda Wexler were introduced via Eve Stapleton and her husband, artist Ben McFarren. Ben had originally been romantically involved with Mike's daughter, Hope, back in 1976. But when Hope found out that Mike and Ben were covering up crimes involving Ben's younger brother, Jerry McFarren, Hope dumped him and left Springfield for a while, until she returned in 1979. (Hope and Jerry did make a brief visit to Springfield for Ed and Rita's wedding in November 1978.) Unfortunately, as she left town, Eve caught sight of Ben kissing Hope (not realizing they were saying goodbye), and ran out in the pouring rain, tripped and fell. This was the onset of a disease that had an 80% chance of leaving Eve blind. Not wanting to be a burden to Ben and against his strenuous objections, Eve insisted on canceling their November 24, 1977 wedding. Eventually, the couple found their way back to one another. Eve was still blind when she and Ben were married on May 26, 1978.
Later, a risky surgery helped regain Eve's eyesight. After they returned to Springfield from a second honeymoon, Ben and Eve moved into the Wexler Estate's small guest cottage. Lucille, an insecure, controlling woman, disapproved of Eve and her friends and family's rather liberal ways, and started becoming suspicious of the McFarrens. Lucille was harboring a secret that confused both Amanda and Amanda's first husband, architect Gordon Middleton, who Amanda left on her honeymoon when she couldn't be intimate with him.
Later, Eve would find out from Gordon that the reason for Amanda's lack of intimacy stemmed from watching Lucille being raped by a man, when Amanda was a young girl. But Lucille was apparently harboring more secrets than that, because when Ben tried to show his art work at the Binnoker art gallery to raise funds to send Eve to college to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher (as her mother had been), Lucille secretly burned down the gallery. With no funds to send Eve to school, Lucille hired Ben and Eve to do various odd jobs around the main house at the Wexler Estate, and Ben got a job at Spaulding Enterprises as a graphic artist. Eve and Ben became virtual slaves to Lucille.
Ben also met up with the wild Diane Ballard, who, in her loneliness waiting for Alan, seduced Ben and they had an affair. At the same time Ben got Amanda to put away her dolls and stop acting like a child, and restart her dream of becoming a concert pianist. Amanda herself was falling for the worldly Ben, and Lucille started becoming nervous that Ben was going to find out all her secrets. She started to find ways to get Ben in trouble, and even kill him. The first thing Lucille did was make sure that in a visit to the Wexler Estate by Diane, Amanda found out about Ben and Diane's affair. A livid Amanda told Eve, which caused Eve to leave Ben, and move out on her own. Eve would first start a relationship with Dr. Greg Fairbanks (who was simultaneously having an affair with her sister Rita) and then surprisingly, with Ross Marler. Ross would be hired by Lucille as her attorney, and Ross would fall for Amanda, creating a very interesting quadrangle between Eve-Ben-Amanda-Ross. Amanda also helped Ben get a gallery showing of his art work at Carter Bowden's Chicago gallery.
Meanwhile, Lucille continued to look for ways to kill Ben, even though Lucille apparently had a debilitating stroke. Then in the November 1979, Lucille was summoned by Alan Spaulding's father, Brandon Spaulding to his "death" bed, and the audience would learn the startling secret that Lucille was hiding: that Amanda was actually the product of an affair between Alan and a woman that Alan had known when he was younger, Jane Marie Stafford. When Ben started to become suspicious of Lucille's involvement in Brandon's "death", Lucille continued to find even more bizarre ways to kill her nemesis, Ben McFarren. Of course Lucille couldn't stop Ben and Amanda from eventually marrying in March 1980.