A Flame in the Wind

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A Flame in the Wind
Genre	Soap Opera
Written by	Gordon Russell
Directed by	Alan Pultz
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	515
Production
Running time	30 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	December 28th, 1964 – December 16th, 1966
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

A Flame in the Wind (also called A Time for Us) was a soap opera that aired on ABC from December 28th, 1964 to December 16th, 1966. The show focused on the community of Haviland and it's citizens. The main families were the Skerba, Reynolds, Austen and Farrell families.

When the series began, Haviland's richest citizen, widowed Kate Austen (Kathleen Maguire) wrote a novel, in the same manner as Main Street, which showed Haviland's citizens in a less than perfect light. After the novel was stopped by her publisher, she and her son, Chris, (Richard Thomas) left Haviland, never to return. Her former mother in-Law, Louise Austen (Josephine Nichols) remained in town to become a friend to Jason Farrell (Walter Coy), who had marital troubles with his wife, Leslie (Rita Lloyd); Kate's place as town gossip was taken by Miriam Bentley (Lesley Woods).

The later stories were focused on young love, embodied by the two Skerba sisters, Linda (Barbara Rodell; Jane Elliot) and Jane (Beverly Hayes; Margaret Ladd), battling over the same young man, Steve Reynolds, the son of Kate's former book publisher, Craig Reynolds (Frank Schofield). Linda, who eventually went to New York, to become an actress, dated her director, Paul Davis (Conard Fowkes); and sensible Jane remained behind in Haviland and married Steve Reynolds (Gordon Gray; Tom Fielding). However, later on, Linda and wealthy Roxanne Farrell Reynolds (Margaret Hayes) vied for the same guy, Doug Colton (Ion Berger), who eventually married Roxanne for her money.

When the show's title was changed to A Time For Us,(the title which it became better known) the Skerba family (Besides Jane and Linda, the family included their father Al (Roy Poole), a construction foreman; and Martha (Lenka Peterson), the sympathetic mother) underwent a name change as well.

Since the name, Skerba, was considered somewhat ethnic for the time, it was changed to the more Americanized name of Driscoll. Which was successful in that it eliminated the class conflict that had been part of the show's first year, and put the Driscolls on the same social footing as the other families of Haviland.

The series is notable for beginning many actors careers. A Time For Us marked the first ever appearance of actress Leslie Charleson, who played a minor character named Pam. She eventually went on to play Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital.

Actress Jane Elliot, who played the second Linda, also later appeared on General Hospital as Monica's nasty sister in-law, Tracy Quartermaine; (Which allowed Leslie Charleson and Jane Elliot to work together again) while actress Margaret Ladd, who played the second Jane, later played Jane Wyman's younger daughter, Emma Channing on Falcon Crest.