Where the Heart Is (1969 TV series)

Where the Heart Is is an American soap opera telecast on the CBS television network from September 8, 1969 to March 23, 1973. Created by Lou Scofield and Margaret DePriest, the program ran for 25 minutes, the remaining five minutes of its timeslot ceded to a CBS news break.

Scofield and DePriest were the original head writers. A year after the soap’s premiere, they were succeeded by Pat Falken Smith. In 1972, Smith was replaced by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer. The series was produced by Tom Donovan and directed by Richard Dunlap.

Storylines

Set in the fictional town of Northcross, Connecticut, Where the Heart Is focuses on the sexual and psychological intrigues of the dysfunctional Hathaway family. Although some believe that the serial was patterned after Grace Metalious’ scandalous novel Peyton Place, the serial was actually CBS’ attempt to create a psychosexual, family melodrama popularized by NBC’s Days of Our Lives. With such prurient themes as unabashed adultery, out-of-wedlock babies, and vaguely incestuous love triangles, the serial's irreverent, fast-paced stories were in contrast to the other serials on CBS which were staid and conservative.

The serial opened with the death of pious Hathaway family patriarch Judge Daniel Hathaway. Judge Hathaway had three adult children: Julian (James Mitchell), a professor of literature at the local university, Kate (Diana van der Vlis), a sympathetic but sexually repressed law student, and Allison (Louise Shaffer), the liberated black sheep of the family. In the first episode, Allison returned to Northcross for her father’s funeral, having left town years before with her sister’s fiancée Roy Archer (Stephen Joyce). Intrigued by the new family dynamic, Allison and Roy decided to settle down in the Hathaway mansion, much to the chagrin of Kate, Julian, and the family’s cantankerous housekeeper Stella O'Brien (Bibi Osterwald).

Having never gained his father’s love, Julian sought affection elsewhere, developing an unfortunate affinity for the many young women he taught at Northcross University. When the serial began, Julian had recently married nubile Mary (Diana Walker), his adult son Michael’s former girlfriend. Michael was pursued by the amoral Vicky Lucas (Robyn Millan), even though she knew he still carried a torch for Mary. Vicky, the daughter of Ed Lucas (Joseph Mascolo) the owner of a restaurant in Northcross, called the Starlight, managed to seduce Michael, and when she conveniently became pregnant, he married her.

Vicky attempted to become the sort of wife in which Michael could take pride, even getting lessons in “style” from his snobbish Aunt Allison. However, when Vicky overheard her husband profess his love for his stepmother, she angrily drove off in an ice storm. The car crashed, and she miscarried. Vicky exploited Michael and Mary’s guilt for weeks by faking paralysis, but when Mary accidentally discovered her standing, the two rivals had a fight at the top of a staircase. Mary, who was also pregnant, fell down the stairs and languished in coma. Undaunted, Vicky slipped into Mary’s hospital room and tried to unplug her respirator, but was caught. Vicky was confined to a state mental hospital, while Mary, now recuperated from the accident, gave birth to Julian’s son and Michael's half-brother, Daniel.

Julian’s hard-hearted sister Allison didn’t find success in love either. After her husband Roy died, Allison married Dr. Hugh Jessup (Rex Robbins and David Cryer), who had problems with commitment. Allison’s demanding nature sent him into the arms of confused, but sweet, Christine Cameron (Terry O'Connor and Delphi Harrington), a woman who was Kate Hathaway's best friend. When Christine became pregnant, Hugh filed for divorce and left stony Allison, who was aghast that Christine seemed to elicit sympathy from most of their family and friends. After giving birth to Hugh’s illegitimate daughter Katina, Christine became the target of harassing phone calls and insidious notes, and everyone believed that Allison was her rival’s stalker. It transpired that the real culprit was Christine’s kindly, old neighbor Will Watts (Robert Symonds), a deranged psychopath who had murdered his adulterous wife decades before. Envisioning Christine as his dead wife, Will spirited her away to an isolated cabin, where Hugh managed to rescue her just as Will was ready to kill her. Christine had a nervous collapse and had to be hospitalized. Meanwhile, a bored Hugh cheated on Christine with ex-wife Allison, who decided she wanted Hugh back. While she was in the hospital, the boutique that she owned, was run by Amy Snowden (Clarice Blackburn) who was a friendly woman, and was a friend to everyone in Northcross.

Kate, Julian, and Allison’s sensible sister, married stalwart Steve Prescott (Lawrence Luckinbill, Ron Harper) after a long courtship. Steve quickly developed amnesia and became involved with single mother Ellie Jardin (Zohra Lampert). Eventually, Steve’s memory returned, and when Ellie was murdered, he and Kate adopted Ellie’s mute son Peter (Michael Bersell). Peter’s muteness was psychosomatic, having developed after he witnessed a deadly fire involving his Aunt Margaret Jardin (Rue McClanahan), who had an incestuous attachment to her brother Robert (Keith Charles), Peter’s father. When Robert failed to return his sister’s feelings, she ran him down with a car and killed him. Peter also died in a tragic accident, and Kate, unable to cope with all the tragedy around her, began to display increasingly erratic behavior, hearing voices and acting lewdly. Kate feared that she was dying from the same brain aneurysm that claimed the life of her mother, but in reality, she had developed a truculent split personality called “Betty”.

In the show’s final year, Julian fell into a steamy affair with conniving student Liz Harris Rainey (Tracy Brooks Swope). After he rejected her, Liz, secretly pregnant with his child, married Michael. Now ensconced in the Hathaway home, Liz tortured Julian, constantly threatening to tell Mary and Michael about their affair. She also instigated vicious rumors on the university campus that Julian and Mary were engaged in a ménage à trois with Loretta Jardin (Alice Drummond), Peter’s aunt, a recovering alcoholic high school teacher. Meanwhile, Liz’s father John Rainey (Peter MacLean) became involved with Christine Cameron, who was caught in a court battle with Hugh and Allison for custody of Katina. Christine sought therapy with psychiatrist Dr. Adrienne Harris (Priscilla Pointer), unaware that she was John’s estranged wife. Desperate for reconciliation with John, Adrienne subtly manipulated Christine into having a complete nervous breakdown, forcing her to be institutionalized.

During the serial’s last week, all of Liz and Adrienne’s machinations were exposed, and they decided to move in together to rebuild their lives, without Michael and John. Mary, who left Julian after discovering that Liz was pregnant with his child, forgave him. Christine was released from the psychiatric hospital, reunited with John, and happily learned that Hugh and Allison agreed to share custody of Katina with her. Kate realized that her psychological problems stemmed from the repressive moral code inflicted upon her for so long by the late Judge Hathaway. Before she entered intensive therapy, Steve promised to whisk her away for a long, relaxing vacation in the Caribbean. Julian, who had always blamed Michael for his mother’s death in childbirth, went to visit Michael, who was falling in love with the now reformed Vicky (now played by Lisa Richards), the new proprietor of a country health food store called Back to Nature. Father and son agreed to put the past behind them and concentrate on the future. They were left in a warm embrace as the scene faded to black for the last time.

Broadcast history

CBS' Daytime division, which produced the serial in-house, made the strategic error of scheduling the show in the 12 Noon/11:00 AM Central timeslot, moving ahead the previous occupant, Love of Life, one half hour. It was the final addition to what would be, for two-and-a-half years, a daytime lineup on CBS consisting of eight soap operas and no game shows. Where the Heart Is had a struggle on two fronts: Jeopardy!, one of daytime’s most popular shows, aired on NBC against it; and because of its rather strong prurience and intimations of taboos such as incest, some affiliates (primarily in the Midwest and South) refused to clear the show. Late in the show’s run, other markets (where the show was tape-delayed an hour to run in the 1:00 PM/12 Noon access slot) saw Where the Heart Is air against ABC's up-and-coming All My Children.

Although Where the Heart Is achieved fairly healthy ratings, averaging a 6.7 and 26% share for its three-and-a half year run, it was typically the lowest-rated soap on CBS’ daytime schedule. Advertisers weren’t thrilled with the show, either, because demographics suggested the serial's attempt to attract a younger, less desirable cult audience. In February 1973, CBS found itself locked in a battle with NBC for daytime ratings supremacy, and went on to cancel Where the Heart Is and another “underachiever,” Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, in a bid to bring up the daypart’s overall rating. As one industry insider revealed about the cancellations: "It was a matter of pride, CBS didn't like being third in the ratings. So, rather than struggle to improve the quality of these shows, it just canceled them."^[1]

Cast

Where the Heart Is boasted a large cast of performers, many of whom later appeared on Ryan’s Hope, which was created by Where the Heart Is‍ '​ final head writers Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer. These included: Louise Shaffer (Allison Hathaway Archer Jessup; who would go on to play Rae Woodard), Bernard Barrow (Earl Dana, who would later headline Ryan's Hope as patriarch Johnny Ryan); Diana van der Vlis (Kate Hathaway Prescott; who would eventually play Dr. Nell Beaulac/Sherry Rowan), Robyn Millan (Vicky Lucas Hathaway #1; who would play Delia Reid Ryan Coleridge #2), Roy Poole (Neil MacCurtain), Gregory Abels (Michael Hathaway), and Keith Charles (Robert Jardin, he would later play Homer Dowd). On the production side, many who worked on Where the Heart Is were later responsible for finally making a major success out of the long-running ABC serial General Hospital. Both Margaret DePriest and Pat Falken Smith were members of GH’s writing staff, as well as those who helmed it, in various periods during its glory years of the late 1970s and 1980s. Claire Labine would later be a GH head writer during the show's renaissance era in the 1990s. The connection of Where the Heart Is to Ryan's Hope continues with the fact that Pat Falken Smith, in between her stints at General Hospital, served as RH's head writer from 1983 to 1985.

Heart’s most prominent daytime alumnus was the late James Mitchell, (Julian Hathaway) who in 2008 celebrated twenty-nine years as All My Children’s Palmer Cortlandt. Another famous alumna was the late Rue McClanahan, (Margaret Jardin) who went on to bigger fame in Maude and The Golden Girls, where she played the lusty Blanche Devereaux. Joseph Mascolo (Ed Lucas #3, the father of Vicky) would later achieve fame as Stefano DiMera on Days of Our Lives and as Massimo Marone on The Bold and the Beautiful. Greek actress Despo Diamantidou had a stint on the show in 1972 as Athena Stefanaopolis. Another alumna was actress Priscilla Pointer (Adrienne Harris Rainey) who went on to play Rebecca Wentworth on the long-running television series Dallas. After the show went off the air, Bibi Osterwald, who played the Hathaway family's cranky housekeeper, Stella O'Brien, played David Birney's mother, Sophie Steinberg on the short-lived sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie.

Surviving episodes

All 907 episodes of Where the Heart Is were recorded on videotape at the CBS Broadcast Center Studio #44 in New York. Like most soap operas of the late 60s/early 70s, it fell victim to the industry practice of wiping tapes for re-use. Although the master tapes for Where the Heart Is were erased, some rare kinescopes of the series remain in the possession of private collectors.

Only seven videotapes of the soap are confirmed to exist. These are non-circulating copies stored at the UCLA Television Archives. The archived episodes were telecast: March 8, 16, and 24, 1971, April 1 and 9, 1971, and March 12 and 20, 1973.

References

1. LaGuardia, Robert. The Wonderful World of TV Soap Operas. "The War of the Daytime Networks" (1974).

Footnotes

External links

• Where the Heart Is at the Internet Movie Database