Farewell, Pine Valley

I outed myself a few years ago as a follower of the goings-on in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, the fictional enclave that is the setting for “All My Children.” Yeah, I know. The ABC soap began airing in January 1970, when I was ten years old, and ended its run yesterday after almost 42 years. I watched off and on over the years but got hooked again recently following news of the show’s cancellation. I have no idea how the economics of such shows work—it’s clear that soap operas are remnants from a distant television past when the three networks ruled the airwaves and advertisers could expect huge non-fast-forwarding audiences for their endless commercials. Times have changed in the world, in television, and in Pine Valley, but whatever the numbers are, I still think ABC is crazy to throw away a four-decade-plus franchise that has such an insanely devoted fanbase. The show is being replaced by a cheap-to-produce talk show called “The Chew” that no one’s going to watch.

The final months of “All My Children” were built around a preposterous storyline in which we discovered that evil but brilliant Dr. David Hayward (Vincent Irizarry) had the power to bring dead people (i.e., fan favorites who could be coaxed back onto the show) back to life. These resurrections were absurd but the fans didn’t give a damn as long as they got to see their favorite stars back to say good-bye and their favorite couples reunited at last. Oy.

As I wrote several years ago, I blame my sister for my Pine Valley addiction. Just after college, when I was looking for a job, we found ourselves back at my dad’s house in Chicago. We’d eat lunch together, my sister glued to “All My Children” and me shrieking about how unbelievably stupid I thought the show was. I told her she was crazy to waste her time with such trash. The next thing I knew, I was foregoing calls to potential employers so I could find out if Erica Kane would be cleared of murder charges and could stop posing as a nun; whether beautiful Nina Cortlandt, who had no idea that her housekeeper was really her grandmother and that her best friend Monique was her long-lost mother, would find out that she wasn’t going blind but was being lied to by her scheming father Palmer so that she would end her relationship with Dr. Cliff Warner; if bad girl Liza Colby would learn that her boyfriend Tad the Cad Martin was having a tempestuous affair with her nymphomaniac mother, Marian; or whether blue-blooded matriarch Phoebe Tyler Wallingford would discover that her respectable husband Langley, supposedly a college professor, was actually a con-man and purse-snatcher named Lenny Wlasuk from the carny circuit.

And there was more, so much more. Women falling in love with their rapists, people becoming full-fledged doctors weeks after graduating from high school, sweet middle-aged ladies turning out to be the ruthless leaders of international drug cartels, kidnappings, babyswaps, epidemics of amnesia and multiple personality disorder, miraculous recoveries of wheelchair-bound invalids, the entire community drinking tainted punch and falling victim to Libidizone, a drug that removes all sexual inhibitions, and the endless parade of characters coming back from the dead on the very day that their spouse is walking down the aisle to marry their rival. Ah, Pine Valley, how I will miss you.

The reigning queen of “All My Children” was Erica Kane, played by Susan Lucci, the only original cast member who stayed with the show from 1970 to its final episode on Friday. When Lucci began, Erica was in high school. By the time I tuned in, she was the most famous supermodel in the world, despite the fact that she was 38 at the time and about 5-foot 2-inches tall! One of my favorite Erica lines occurred when she was being seduced by newcomer Mark Dalton. After weeks of flirtation, Erica suddenly announced, “I can’t make love to you. You’re my father’s bastard son!” Indeed, Erica had just found out that Mark was the product of an affair that her father, director Eric Kane, had in Hollywood. Who knew?

When she wasn’t busy hunting down terrorists in Bosnia, protecting herself from violent prison mate Kathy Bates, or facing off with grizzly bears (I kid you not), Erica spent much of her time planning her lavish weddings. She married 10 times, making her official name Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery. She had three children, but only remembered giving birth to one of them. Her daughter Kendall was the product of a rape when Erica was 14 years old that she forgot about until Kendall returned as a teenager. Her son Josh came back into her life as an adult. In 1973, a few months after Roe v. Wade, “All My Children” made television history when Erica became the very first television character to have a legal abortion. Imagine how surprised she was decades later when she found out that the doctor who had performed her abortion had actually taken the embryo and implanted it in his infertile wife and then raised the child as his own. In one of the creepiest and scientifically ridiculous plots in the history of the show, Erica’s son, Josh, became TV’s first living abortion. Eww. Perhaps sensing they had gone too far, the writers promptly had Josh murdered, with his heart donated to sister Kendall who was desperately in need of a transplant. Gulp.

Despite all the outrageous storylines, “All My Children” was also known for tackling serious social issues. In addition to Erica’s retroactively reversed abortion, the show was the first soap to deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome in Vietnam vets, the burgeoning women’s movement, interracial romances, eating disorders, spousal abuse, and homosexuality. Donna Pescow arrived in Pine Valley in 1983 playing openly gay doctor Lynn Carson. Years later, in 2000, Erica’s own daughter Bianca came out of the closet as a lesbian. Erica flipped out, fell off the wagon (despite the character’s previous stint at the Betty Ford Clinic), escaped to Las Vegas under an assumed name, and became Sin City’s most celebrated showgirl (in her late 50s!). Erica eventually came to her senses and accepted Bianca’s homosexuality.

A few years ago, in what was billed as a cost-cutting move, the production of “All My Children” was moved from New York to Los Angeles. I began seeing the residents of Pine Valley around town. I spotted Erica’s daughter Bianca (Eden Riegel) at the movies and Jackson Montgomery (Walt Willey) at my favorite coffee shop. I had a conversation with Greenlee Lavery (Rebecca Budig) at a bookstore, and just the other day saw both Jesse Hubbard (Darnell Williams) and Amanda Martin (Chrishell Stause) hiking in Runyon Canyon (they weren’t together). “All My Children” has been a training ground for countless actors, some of whom went on to great success elsewhere. Most famous on that list, besides actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, talk show host Kelly Ripa, and movie star/Fergie’s husband Josh Duhamel, is Oscar-winning actress Melissa Leo who began her career on “All My Children” as Cliff Warner’s disturbed sister.

My most memorable encounter with a resident of Pine Valley occurred many years ago. In 2005, “All My Children” lost one of its foremost citizens, Phoebe Tyler Wallingford, when actress Ruth Warrick died at the age of 90. Like Susan Lucci, Warrick had been on the show since the beginning. She was once a member of Orson Welles’ renowned rep company. Her first film was the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane” in which she played Orson Welles’ first wife, Emily Norton Kane, the niece of the President. The montage of their marital problems as shown through the ever-lengthening distance between Orson Welles and Ruth Warrick at the breakfast table, is one of the most iconic sequences in the history of the movies.

Back in the early 1980s, Ruth Warrick published a book, “The Confessions of Phoebe Tyler” and also recorded an LP as her feisty character. Somehow she got booked into a rock club in Chicago that was owned by my sister’s boyfriend at the time. I don’t remember much about the evening except the moment when Warrick, looking for a male volunteer, singled me out in the audience and brought me up on the stage. To the crowd’s delight, she sang a love song to me as Phoebe Tyler. I’m sure I turned as red as Fusion lipstick as Warrick caressed me while singing the lyrics: “I love you, yes I do, I love you. If you break my heart I'll die. So be sure that it's true, when you say ‘I love you,’ It’s a sin to tell a lie!” When it was over, she planted a lingering kiss firmly on my lips. Okay, I’ll say it. Ruth Warrick was in her late 60s and I was in my early 20s, but it was hot!

There is talk about an online version of “All My Children” starting up again in January, but so far Susan Lucci and many of the other actors have said they’re not interested. Pine Valley without Erica? I don’t think so. Good-bye to the Kanes, the Martins, the Chandlers, the Hubbards, and all the rest of the relics of this disappearing art form. We’ll miss you and your crazy lives.

Comments

[Maria]

All I want to know is...was it a happy ending for Zach?

[Danny]

Yes, he was resurrected from the dead (!) after a year and and got to be with his family.

[Neil]

I know many of your readers are going to laugh as you describe this silly soap opera, but we both know there is a certain sadness to this post, as we see something as endless as All My Children fades in the background. For those who watched in every day -- for decades -- it must be particularly difficult, as if a relative died. The final David Hayworth plotline was absolutely ridiculous, and the show was sucky for a couple of seasons now, but there were a few characters that, when they appeared on the screen, made the show shine -- Adam Chandler, JR, Opal, David... even Kendall grew on me.

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

I watched the last episode yesterday Danny...And because I was never hooked on ALL MY CHILDREN, I had a hard time following a lot of it---But...Lee M. has been on it (On & Off) for many years--replacing the retired Mary Fickett....And I knew she had taped two or so episodes a few weeks ago....Even though I was never a fan of AMC, I think it is very sad theat it is now History! And ONE LIFE TO LIVE, too...(I never watched that one either..)
The Soaps saved my life when I was nine years old and very very ill in the Hospital.(1941) It was "RADIO:...Remember Radio? They were 15 minutes each and I could lose myself in PORTIA FACES LIFE, and HELEN TRENT and the others, and be taken out of this place of fear and illness....
This happened once again alomst 20 years later---Now, on TV (1960)....Again, I was very ill, and turned on Daytime TV protesting I cannot watch Daytime TV---And, in three days I was hooked on 4 different Soaps....Again, A Life-Saver for me.
This love affair lasted---on and off for many years---YOUNG DR. MALONE, ANOTHERR WORLD, FROM THESE ROOTS, Etc., Etc....I finally kicked the Soap habit in the 1970's---except for an occassional "fix", here and there....But, the Love Affair was pretty much over completely, by the early 1980's....STILL, I think it is a shame that the 'powers that be' don't find these shows viable anymore, financially speaking. And it may be that part of the reason the audiences left had to do with how preposterous some of the storylines were--and still are, from what you say....Still, I think it is very sad that people would rather watch THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF____fill in any city, then scripted Soap Operas...Truly pitiful, in a way.

As an aside: Personally, I thought Susan Lucci was a terrible actress, and still is....She is one very lucky woman---and it's great that she is so beloved. But there were good reasons she never won the Emmy for so many many years--sorry to say.

[Danny]

Naomi, I loved that Lee was on the last few episodes, she was very poignant as Ruth Martin. Ironically, our pal Barbara Rush also played Tad Martin's mother years ago for a while but that was when he had amnesia and thought he was wealthy Napa vineyard owner, Ted Orsini (don't ask!). At the risk of treason, I can't say I disagree with your assessment of Ms. Lucci.

Neil, don't forget my favorite, Angie Hubbard. Debbi Morgan could so out-act anyone on that show that her scenes always stood out, up to the last day. She is a superb actress. Adam (David Canary) was also excellent and I had a real soft spot for Brooke (Julia Barr).

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

I wanted to say, too, Danny, that there were soooo very many really WONDERFUL actressses and Actors on Daytime---Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's Joyce VP was on YOUNG DR. MALONE....Joan Coapland, (Arthur Miller's sister) was on FROM THESE ROOTS---She was absolutely fantastic...She was so good in fact, that they created a "mean" twin sister for her---which she played too, of course....I must say, that was the beginning of the end for me and for FROM THESE ROOTS...it became not as believable. Though by today's standards, it would be considered Boring....lol!
Another ground-breaking Soap was THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS....They changed the face of Soap Opers---They brought Sex, Glamour, Fasahion, Music, Beautiful Settings, etc., to 'Daytime', and, ALL the others followed after that....Ahhhh, the Good Old Days.

I didn't realize Barbara was on AMC, too....She has done just about everything, hasn't she. I hope she is writing her Memoirs!

[Anne]

Back in the summer of '92, I was looking for a teaching job for the coming school year, in the midst of a divorce and was mom to a 1 year old. I found myself giving my son his lunch and putting him in for a nap and tuning in to AMC. Escaping to Pine Valley that summer helped me through stressful days!

[Laurie]

The soap operas are a disappearing art form, but there is something very lovable about a continuing story that you tune in to day after day. I was hooked on General Hospital in the 80s. I was glued to Luke and Laura's wedding with everyone else. I have not watch the soaps since then, but I am still sad to see them go.

[Barbara]

I clearly remember spending lunchtime in 5th grade with my friend Carla, who couldn’t wait to get home to watch AMC. I was baffled. My grandmother watched soaps – why weren’t we watching ‘Bozo’ like normal kids? Despite my silent protest, I was hooked within 3 days, when I could finally distinguish Jeff Martin from Phil Brent.

I’d never kissed a Pine Valley resident, but I once made eye contact with David Canary at O’Hare, having flown home for a visit from London. After more than 25 years of faithful AMC viewing, I hadn’t seen it in a while, but my move to the UK meant I no longer had the option. But even though it has been quite some time, it is still sad to say a fond farewell to Pine Valley. Thanks for this post, Danny.

[Julie R.]

As a former on-again, off-again AMC fan, I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for the memories!

[Jennifer]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this. I tend to feel almost ashamed with my longtime devotion to the soaps although it certainly seems like a pretty harmless guilty pleasure. I had the pleasure of running into Cameron Mathison studying his lines at a NYC Starbucks some years back and he couldn't have been more gracious. Watching these last episodes has been like saying goodbye to old friends. Somehow I thought Erica Kane would outlast us all...

[Judith Brodhead]

I read your post out loud to my husband and laughed so hard tears ran down my face reading your list of plot twists (my favorite is Libidizone drunk by the whole town). The popularity of soaps shows the power of storytelling....who doesn't love a good story with characters we can love and hate?

[Pam G]

Danny, I had no idea you were a soap watcher! When I worked at Filmland in the TV division I did a lot with the soap actors (in the late 1970s) and always have found most of them to be gracious and hard-working people. I interviewed Ruth Warrick on her book tour and seem to recall her being drunk during her Pittsburgh appearance at a posh downtown dept. store (now long gone). I still record Y & R every day and watch it each evening after dinner. Haven't seen any of the other shows in years, though, I do keep in touch with some people who work in this end of the business. If you follow the entertainment news for this segment, you'll see that putting AMC and OLTL online is a very viable option with many actors, directors, etc. signing on for both shows as of this writing. Some of it, including Lucci, is still under negotiation but it looks like the soaps will continue to be trailblazers in moving content to the Net. I think the big networks will be relics of the past as much as the "traditional" soap opera in the future, maybe sooner rather than later.

[Angela Cimmino]

Wow, I watched Susan Lucci my whole life and now I use her skin care. In some ways, her talent and beauty will always be with us!