Where the Heart Is (1969 TV series)
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For the film see Where the Heart Is (2000 film).
Where the Heart Is was a soap opera which aired on the CBS television network from September 8, 1969 to March 23, 1973.
Set in the fictional town of Northcross, Connecticut, the show revolved around the Hathaway family and their romantic intrigues. Everyone in the family was cheating on their respective spouses and this provided the basis of much, if not all, of the story each weekday. Some believe the show was patterned after the 1960
The leads were Diana Walker and James Mitchell, who played Mary and Julian Hathaway, one of the richest and most powerful families in Northcross. Other notable cast members included Gregory Abels as Michael Hathaway, Julian's son, who was in love with his stepmother, Mary; Diana van der Vlis as Kate Hathaway Prescott, Julian's level-headed sister; Terry O'Connor and Delphi Harrington as Christine Cameron, Louise Shaffer as Allison Hathaway Archer Jessup, Julian and Kate's other sister; Robyn Millan and Lisa Richards as Vicky Lucas Hathaway, who was twice married to Michael Hathaway; Tracy Brooks Swope as conniving Liz Rainey Hathaway, who was married to Michael between his marriages to Vicky; and Laurence Luckinbill and Ron Harper as Steve Prescott, who married Kate. The Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan played Loretta Jardin at one time during the show's history.
As played by Robyn Millan, Vicky was an amoral woman, and when Lisa Richards took over the role, she became sympathetic, and had changed enough for Michael to divorce Liz and remarry her.
The show was created by Margaret DePriest and Lou Schofield; the pair were the show's original head writers. CBS replaced them a year after the show's premiere with the team of Paul Avila Mayer and Pat Falken Smith; Smith was later replaced with Claire Labine.
CBS, which produced WtHI in-house, placed the show in the 12 Noon/11 a.m. Central timeslot, moving ahead the previous occupant, Love of Life. It had a struggle on two fronts: first, one of daytime's most popular games, Jeopardy!, aired on NBC against it, and, second, because of its rather strong prurience and intimations of former taboos such as incest, some affiliates, primarily in the South, refused to clear the show. Late in its run, other markets (where the show was tape-delayed an hour to run in the 1 p.m./12 Noon access slot) saw Where the Heart Is air against ABC's up-and-coming All My Children (where WtHI leading man Mitchell resurfaced years later, as Palmer Cortlandt). Where the Heart Is was one of the earliest soaps to have a young demographic, along with sister show Love is a Many Splendored Thing.
This was not enough for the network, and CBS decided to cancel WtHI to make way for a new soap called The Young and the Restless. Unlike Where the Heart Is, Y&R would dislodge Jeopardy and become an institution in its own right, attaining first-place Nielsen standing in 1988.
