The Secret Storm
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| The Secret Storm | |
|---|---|
 Title card for The Secret Storm, 1960 |
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| Genre | soap opera |
| Running time | 15 (later 30) minutes |
| Creator(s) | Roy Winsor |
| Starring | Peter Hobbs Jada Rowland Marla Adams et al |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | February 1, 1954–February 8, 1974 |
| No. of episodes | 5195 |
| IMDb profile | |
The Secret Storm was a soap opera which aired on CBS from February 1, 1954 to February 8, 1974.
The Secret Storm was created by Roy Winsor, the man responsible for the long-running soaps Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life. Gloria Monty of General Hospital fame was a longtime director of the series.
For most of its run, The Secret Storm aired at either 4 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. (Eastern Time), and was usually the final soap in CBS's afternoon bloc.
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[edit] Plot
At the soap's center was the Ames family, a prominent clan in the fictional Northeastern town of Woodbridge (eventually located in New York). The Ames family consisted of Peter, his wife Ellen, and their three children: Susan, Jerry and Amy. The mother Ellen was killed off in the first episode and subsequent stories focused on the widower Peter raising his three children. Lending a hand, however dubiously, was Peter's former fiancee/sister in-law, Pauline Rysdale.
An interesting fact to note is the character of Amy was allowed to age in real time and not to be subjected to rapid aging as most soaps do. Jada Rowland played the character, minus a few breaks, for the length of the show's run.
One of the most unforgettable villains of the time was Belle Clemens. Belle was played by Marla Adams, up to the show's end and was the main source of trouble for Woodbridge, taking up where Aunt Pauline, who was the show's original villainess, left off.
Among the show's other stars were Robert Morse, Bibi Beesch, Roy Scheider, Conard Fowkes, Nicholas Coster, Dan Hamilton, the late Joel Crothers, Linda DeCoff, writers Leslie Bethel and Stephanie Braxton, Linda Purl, Mary K. Wells, Rosemary Murphy, Jane Rose, Lori March, director Gordon Rigsby, Jeffrey Lynn, Terry Kiser, Judi Rolin, Peter White, Clarice Blackburn, Dianna Millay, Diane Ladd, and Alexander Scorby.
Troy Donahue played Keifer, an old lover of Belle's, in 1970.
Actress/writer Stephanie Braxton and actor Dan Hamilton met while performing on the show. They later married in real life. Lori March, who played Valerie Hill Ames for many years, later played the wife of her real-life husband Alexander Scorby.
[edit] The Crawfords
Thirty years after the show's cancellation, the show is most famous for, arguably, the most shocking case of stunt casting in soap history. When Christina Crawford suddenly fell ill with an ovarian cyst, her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford, filled in for her, even though she was thirty years older than the character. She was a major embarrassment to Christina as it was evident that she was drunk on the live episode transmission. Christina's character was written out soon after. Christina's illness, her tenure on the soap and her battles with her mother are well chronicled in her book Mommie Dearest, a tell-all book of her life with her famous mother. While Christina does not draw an explicit parallel, she implies that her character, a bitchy persona named Joan, is somewhat based on the stories she told of her mother.
[edit] Demise
The main reason for the show's demise was CBS's choice to buy the show from the original sponsor/producer, American Home Products, in 1969. The show suffered from numerous changes in head writers and producers, as well. In September 1973, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, KPIX, stopped airing The Secret Storm without warning, replacing it with The Mike Douglas Show. According to Bob MacKenzie of TV Guide, KPIX's switchboards received 400 calls that afternoon, and one woman in Oakland wrote, "We all are wondering what Belle is up to and what Amy is doing and how Brian is coping with his problems." Another viewer wrote to TV Guide, "I am addicted to it, and they simply cut it off in the middle of a fascinating plot. This is not fair! Onions to the station!" In November, higher-ups at CBS were convinced to cancel the serial entirely.
When the show was canceled abruptly in 1974, CBS executives replaced the show in its timeslot with Tattletales, a game show hosted by Bert Convy. It would prove to be lucrative for the network and it ran for many years.
[edit] Title sequences
The series had three distinctive opening visuals. The first was a shot of a tree with windblown branches. The second was a shortlived shot of a town with shots of people walking about similar to Peyton Place. The third, perhaps the most remembered one, had shots of the surf at high tide, crashing against the rocks in the opening titles similar to that of Dark Shadows (the ABC television show which aired opposite The Secret Storm and certainly contributed to its demise). The in-house organist was Charles Paul. Carey Gold provided the music during the show's last years.
