History of As the World Turns (1960-1969)

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History of As the World Turns
1956-1959
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1989
1990-1999
2000-present

This article is about the history of As the World Turns (ATWT), the second longest-running American television soap opera.

[edit] 1960 - 1969

As the show moved into the 1960s, Penny (Rosemary Prinz) found love with Jeff Baker (Mark Rydell), but he died in a horrible car accident early in the new decade. Don (played in the 1960s by Richard Holland, James Noble and Peter Brandon) married Janice Turner Whipple (played by first, Joyce Van Patten and then by Virginia Dwyer), but Nancy was strongly opposed to the marriage, because Janice was a divorced woman, so he was forced to move away to Texas. The couple would move back to Oakdale a few years later, but move away again when Janice's daughter, and Don's stepdaughter, Debbie (June Harding;Kimetha Laurie) started to become a teenaged terror. Don would move back to Oakdale in 1965 when it was revealed that Janice had died off-camera. A SORASed Bob (who, by this time, was being played by Don Hastings) fell in love with schemer Lisa Miller (Eileen Fulton). Bob had become a doctor, and Lisa had no desire to stay home, waiting for her husband, so she had an affair, despite recently giving birth to a son. Bob divorced her, and Lisa became a pariah, as dictated by most of the town (headed by Nancy Hughes). She left for a two year span (her son, Tom {played as a teen by Richard Thomas (actor) amongst others}, stayed with the Hughes family), and came back to Oakdale in 1966. By this time, she was newly rich, and was suddenly interested in her ex-husband when he found new love with Sandra McGuire (Dagne Crane).

The show owes a great deal of its early success to the fascination the tortured romance of Penny and Jeff held for viewers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were one of the first young couples to find broad support from daytime viewers. Viewers were mesmerized to watch this couple go through several trials and tribulations before they were married, including Jeff being falsely implicated and arrested in the first murder on the show, in 1958 (Al James; although Penny's brother Don was able to show the court that it wasn't Jeff), Jeff becoming an alcoholic, Jeff's interfering mother, Grace (Frances Reid), Jeff leaving town and assuming another name and reviving his interest in becoming a concert pianist, and Jeff and Penny reuniting and then marrying (with even Jeff's mother accepting the couple). When Jeff was killed in a car crash, in the fall of 1962, (Mark Rydell wanted to move behind the camera; he would go on to become a major film director), CBS was flooded with grief-stricken telegrams, phone calls and letters. No less than TV Guide called the incident, "the car accident that shook the nation." Penny remained the show's central heroine. Penny remarried to Neil Wade (Michael Lipton). Neil was a book store owner, but surprisingly saved Penny's grandfather's life, when he started choking on a piece of meat, at the Hughes' annual July 4th barbecue in 1963. Bob, who by now was now a young intern at Memorial Hospital rightly suspected that Neil was actually a doctor. As it would turn out Neil was indeed a doctor, he was the son of none other than Dr. Doug Cassen (Nat Pollen), the second husband of Ellen Lowell's mother, Claire English Lowell. Claire (played by this time by Barbara Berjer first rejected Doug's desire to want to form a bond with Neil (an illegitimate child he had with a nurse named, Judith Wade Stevens {Connie Lembecke}) back in medical school until Neil needed an urgent blood transfusion from Doug and Penny pled Neil's case to Claire). Neil would be killed off in 1967, after suffering from an embolism and Penny found herself being widowed again (she'd inherit the bookstore that she would later sell to her former sister-in-law, Lisa). But Rosemary Prinz (who reportedly had suffered nervous breakdowns due to the bullying nature of Irna Phillips) left in 1968, taking the character with her.

Penny's best friend, Ellen Lowell (now played by Patricia Bruder) had her own romantic troubles after her father's death. After she and Donald Hughes broke up, Ellen at first dated Jeff Baker, but Ellen soon realized that Jeff's heart belonged to Penny (for a short time a jealous Ellen refused to speak to Penny though). But Ellen would soon need Penny's help. Ellen married Dr. Tim Cole (William Redfield), but Tim soon died of leukemia. Soon after Tim's death, Ellen found herself pregnant and tried to keep the pregnancy a secret from her mother, but her grandfather soon found out. Her grandfather convinced her to give the child up for adoption (abortion was illegal in those days). The child was a boy, and for the first few hours she bonded with the child she named Jimmy (in honor of her deceased father). But Ellen soon realized her grandfather was right and gave the baby up for adoption, turning to Penny for strength to do this. Ellen then had uneventful relationships with Burt Stanton and Jim Norman, both of whom she did become engaged to. The second man, Jim Norman though turned out to still be married and for a time Ellen was named as a correspondent in a divorce suit filed by Jim's wife. (Jim then went back to his wife and broke the engagement). At this time Ellen felt very guilty about giving up her child, and went on a search for what happened to her son. But Ellen needed money for this, so her mother and grandfather wouldn't know what she was doing, and soon found employment working as a nanny for Dr. David Stewart (Henderson Forsythe) at Memorial Hospital. David was married to Betty Stewart (Patricia Benoit), and they had one biological son, Paul and another adopted child Daniel "Dan". During her investigation of what happened to her son, Ellen was shocked to learn that Dan was indeed Jimmy! Betty and David soon became surprised about how many opportunities the boys' nanny found to visit them and their sons (to not to raise suspicions brought over presents to both boys). Betty then died of pneumonia in New York City on New Year's Eve, 1962. David then started to rely on Ellen even more, and not just as a nanny. Soon David and Ellen fell in love and became engaged. But another woman also harbored romantic feelings for David, and that woman was none other than David's housekeeper, Franny Brennan. Franny was also suspicious of Ellen's closeness to the family and one day overheard Ellen call Dan her son, Jimmy. Franny started blackmailing Ellen to break off the engagement with David, which she did, but David was not to happy to hear Ellen do this and worked to win her back. Then one evening when Ellen and Franny were in the Stewart house by themselves, Franny tried to kill Ellen with a letter opener. Ellen though fought off Franny, but the letter opener plunged into Franny's chest killing her instantly. Ellen's former lover, Don Hughes agreed to represent her in court, but Ellen refused to offer any legal defense in fear off David calling off her engagement to her if he knew that she was Dan's biological mother and she had kept it from him. Don finally got Ellen to see that Franny's death was accidental and that Ellen was only trying to defend herself, and Ellen finally told David the truth about Dan being her biological son. But instead of David turning his back on her, David instead said he loved Ellen even more, and this gave Ellen the strength to help Don defend herself and Ellen was soon exonerated. David and Ellen then married, and agreed to raise both Paul and Dan as their children. They also later moved in with Judge Lowell and her mother, Claire, when the painful memories of Betty's and Franny's death became too much (the set for this house is still seen from time to time, as Dr. Susan Stewart and her daughters and Ellen's grandchildren, Emily Stewart and Allison Stewart still live there), and sometime later Ellen and David had two daughters, Carol Ann "Annie" Stewart and Dawn "Dee" Stewart. Although there was considerable fallout when an older Dan learned the truth, Ellen and David stayed happily married until 1981 (and would reunite in 1982 until David's death in 1991). Bruder would stay with the show until 1995, when a wave of casting cuts banished her to a reduced recurring status to appearing only occasionally for holidays and certain special events. She was later removed from the canvas completely (2001), and hasn't been mentioned in dialogue for at least the last five years.

But as times changed, it was the character of Lisa Miller Hughes, however, who made the show a must-watch sensation throughout the 1960s. The role made Lisa's portrayer, Eileen Fulton, one of the first daytime actresses to be widely known outside the medium, and this success helped her to launch a successful singing career. Although Lisa's misdeeds seem tame now, behavior such as exploiting her pregnancy to duck household chores, attempting to drive Grandpa Hughes out of the family home, and paying a maid to clean her house (while claiming credit for the work) outraged housewives of the era. Lisa's machinations inspired such a degree of emotional involvement among fans that Fulton began to find herself accosted in public places by overzealous As the World Turns viewers eager to give her a piece of their mind over her infidelity to "Bob" and neglect of little "Tommy". While this may be a testimony both to Fulton's acting ability and Irna Phillips's careful, hyper-realistic storytelling, threats of physical assault prompted Fulton to hire the services of a bodyguard to accompany her around New York. In 1965, during the height of Lisa's fame, CBS (hoping to cash in on the success of ABC's nighttime soap Peyton Place), made Fulton the star of a short-lived nighttime As the World Turns spinoff entitled Our Private World.

While Lisa was a vixen during her formative years in Oakdale, eventually everyone (including Nancy Hughes) forgave her for her past transgressions, and she has reformed into a very valuable (albeit meddling) member of Oakdale society (she currently owns half the stake in a boutique, Fashions as well as a swanky restaurant, The Mona Lisa, and a hotel, The Lakeview).

Another source of much of the storyline in the 1960s was Ellen's mother the widowed, Claire English Lowell. Claire would meet, fall in love with and marry Dr. Doug Cassen. Claire and Doug moved in with Jim's widowed father, Judge Lowell. But Claire also started to become addicted to sleeping pills and alcohol. And one night when Dr. Cassen was supposed to be at Memorial saving a patient's life, instead he was at the Lowell household trying to get Claire clean and sober. When the patient died, his wife tried to sue Doug Cassen. Judge Lowell tried to get Claire to lie that Doug and she were not in the house the night of the patient's death so Doug did not hear about the patient dying. But Claire got a pang of conscious and went to the court and told the truth. She also convinced the court that Doug was working as a doctor when she got her clean and sober, and the settlement Doug had to pay to the patient's widow was minimized by the judge in the case. Claire then went into drug and alcohol rehabilitation treatment, and when she was released she and Doug renewed their wedding vows.

In 1967, a few months after his son, Neil Wade, died, Dr. Doug Cassen was also killed off when a patient named Ted Rogers threw him against a wall and Doug suffered massive internal bleeding in his head. Doug's widow, Claire, was attracted to a man named Dr. Michael Shea (played by Jay Lanin and Roy Shuman). Claire's former father-in-law, Judge Lowell, who Claire was still living with thought Dr. Shea was nothing but a playboy, but Claire refused to listen and she married Shea. Unfortunately the judge was proven right and Dr. Shea started having an affair with several of his female patients, one of them happening to be none other than town pariah, Lisa. About this same time, Lisa's SORASed son, Tom developed a drug addiction problem and at one point was talked into by a friend to steal prescription drugs from a pharmacy. Tom realizing he had a problem and condemning the establishment by condemning the lifestye of such women as his mother, and Claire, told his great-grandfather he was going to go join the Army and fight in the Vietnam War. When he returned a year later, 1969, Tom (played at this time by Peter Link and Peter Galman) was shocked and livid that his mother had married Dr. Michael Shea, who had abandoned then divorced, Claire! (When Claire first found out that Shea was going to leave her for Lisa, Claire tried to shoot and kill him, but she only wounded him; with Claire issuing this immortal line, "I killed him.") Lisa then gave birth to a son, Chuckie, that Lisa spent more time with than she did with Tom (while Shea himself continued to have affairs with other women patients of his), and with Claire and her friend Nancy hating Lisa for what she had done in stealing Shea away from Claire. Tom returned to his dependency on prescription drugs when he had trouble sleeping and with his college studies of pre-law. His best friend who had convinced him more than a year earlier to rob a pharmacy, now convinced Tom to steal medicine from his stepdad, Dr. Michael Shea. Tom did so, but one evening was caught by Shea stealing the medicine and came down hard on both Lisa and Tom for Lisa's neglect of the boy. Shea though was neglecting Chuckie, and then Tom discovered that Shea was having an affair with young airline stewardess, Karen Adams (Doe Lang), that Tom had taken a shine too. Tom started blackmailing his stepdad for more drugs. Then one evening in the spring of 1970, Shea was discovered murdered in his office, after arguments with Tom, Lisa and Karen Adams. Karen was immediately taken off the suspect list, and Tom was certain that his mother had killed him. Tom decided to say he was the murderer, but Bob didn't believe him. But it looked increasingly as though Tom was going to go to prison. But one night Bob found evidence in Dr. Shea's office that neither Tom nor Lisa could have murdered Shea, because Shea's favorite drink (a dry "Rob Roy" had not been made, a fact told to him by Claire and Judge Lowell). Instead Shea's drink left on his office desk was a wet "Rob Roy". When Claire told Bob she had known only one woman that Shea had an affair with who drank a wet "Rob Roy", Miss Thompson (Jacqueline Brookes), Bob finally figured out who had indeed murdered Shea. Tom was exonerated, went into rehabilitation for his drug addiction, and soon became an outstanding member of Oakdale society as a lawyer working in his grandfather and Judge Lowell's firm.

A short time after Dr. Shea's murder, another plot point which would come into play many years later was the death of Ellen's mother, Claire English Lowell Cassen Shea. Claire's grandson, Dan (SORASed, now a doctor at Memorial and being played by John Colenback), found out the truth about his parentage, in 1969, and at first banished not only Ellen and David out of his life, but also Claire. Shortly thereafter, though, Dan had second thoughts and tried to make amends to all three, with Ellen and David doing so, but Claire was still angry about Dan's behavior and refused to accept his apology. That was until he almost was about to leave the Lowell house, in January 1971. Claire was then unceremoniously run over while crossing the street, while chasing after Dan to accept his apology (she died from massive internal bleeding, at Memorial, where she'd get the chance to make amends with Dan before she died). Eileen Fulton, wary of similar treatment, demanded that a "grandmother" clause be put into her contract stipulating Lisa never have a grandchild. When Lisa's son Tom and daughter-in-law Margo suffered through a miscarriage in the mid 1980s, Fulton was flooded with hate mail, although she had dropped the clause years before the storyline occurred.

ATWT also gained a place in national history on November 22, 1963 when CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite interrupted the program to announce that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. An hour later, Cronkite announced that Kennedy had died. For the next 3 days, CBS preempted regular programming, like the other two major networks, ABC & NBC to cover the assassination of JFK and the transition of power to LBJ.