My Exclusive Interview with BRIDGET DOBSON - Part Five

Bridget Dobson in the '80s

We’re coming to the fifth part of my interview with Bridget Dobson. If you have missed the previous parts, you can read them by clicking here. In this part she is going to tell about her Hollywood-star system’s vision. A very vitriolic painting. Then we will discuss the character of Sophia (Judith McConnell) and her disguise as Dominic in particular (1984).  She later will tell the whole truth behind the famous earthquake that in 1984 killed John Perkins (Robert Alan Browne) and shocked the audience and also the truth behind the frightening Carnation Killer’s storyline (Peter Flint - played by Stephen Meadows - systematically killed each blonde women he saw, thinking they were Kelly. After he murdered them, he left a white carnation by their side, thus becoming known as the Carnation Killer. His victims included Summer Blake and Veronica).  She will paint for us a beautiful portrait dedicated to Robin Wright; we will also discuss some soap operas clichés and she finally will tell us what she’s watching on TV. Enjoy! 

The identification with Mason is inevitable, I believe. But through which indicators do you realize that a character does not work, so that the audience has to struggle to identify with him? And how can you fix it?

Let's face it, there are those who have a gut instinct for drama and those who do not.  I count myself (and my husband) among the “haves”, and I count all (almost) network executives, studio heads, and sponsors as the “have-nots”.  I understand the arrogance of that statement.  But, the simple truth is, I know by my gut instinct when a character is working (the actor, the written word, the production, the chemistry, the timing are all in sync).  No problem. After all these years, I believe I have “an ear” for such things. But the “have-nots” generally don't trust that I know.  They need focus groups and ratings, they need graphs and charts, to clarify the dramatic answers and, to be honest, the answers they come up with are often wrong.

I cannot say we have never made a mistake.  Sometimes, it's a solution to recast, but that entails a dramatic “bump” for the audience.  Sometimes it is better to write out a character for a period of time (when that character is not critical to the immediate success of a storyline).  Sometimes, when it is clear to the haves that the character is a great one, it would be easier to shoot the executive who is having doubts, but, as of this writing, that hasn't happened, except in my fantasies.  I have a theory:  successful Hollywood suits haven't got a hope in Hell of having a trustworthy dramatic instinct, because they are immune to the values that make continuing drama work.  Love, romance, family, humor, caring, sensuality, morality, subtext, sexuality...those things, and many more, elude them. In a nutshell, kindness, in Hollywood, is a sign of weakness. So what is the solution?  Bricklaying.  Or plastics.

Or maybe they could disguise themselves as Dominic, if only they had a soul. The character of Sophia is the one who makes use of disguise more than any other on SB. She is introduced disguised as a man, Dominic. She is afraid of Lionel Lockridge, her lover. Believed to be dead, she returns to Santa Barbara disguised. But why as a man? I believe for two reasons: first, to protect herself: men in our imagination are strong, determined, brave. But, by hiding her female identity, Sophia gives up her motherhood and her chance to reunite with her family. In fact the first time that you revealed to the audience Sophia’s true face and identity, was during the earthquake, when Sophia was buried under the rubble a few feet from her daughter, Kelly. Thanks to a long monologue, Sophia finally expresses her desire to return to her family. The desire for revenge gives way to love. Sophia can now stop presenting herself as a strong, rigid male and express her motherhood. Through her weakness, Sophia becomes stronger because her female side is not removed, but expressed. (Do not forget an ancillary function of Sophia’s disguise: thanks to that almost no one noticed the recast of the character - Judith McConnell replaces Rosemary Forsyth). So can we say that “disguise” on SB is a powerful vehicle of dramatic and psychological meanings? What was your intention?

Pierpaolo, you have correctly analyzed why we had Sophia disguised as a man.  (The fact that the character needed to be recast during the time of the disguise worked to our benefit, with little or no dramatic bump for the audience, but it was an accident.  It is rare to cast someone with the intention of recasting!)  I would add to your analysis that the audience is so smart we had to go to great lengths, gender changing, to hide Sophia - otherwise the audience would have been on to us immediately.  But the best characters - and, indeed, human beings - use disguise frequently. Of course, disguises are not always physical.  For example, a jocular “I hate you” may be a disguise for “I love you”, if a character doesn't want to reveal the extent of his or her feelings.  The subtext, the meaning beneath the text, is never a disguise.  But the text often is.  Subtext is not spoken, but the audience understands it intuitively.  My favorite kind of writing involves subtext - but so many writers "spell out" emotions directly.  I think this prevents the audience from “participating” and understanding a character. It prevents the, “Aha!  I know what he's really thinking.”   We all have huge emotions that we withhold from blatant exposure. P&G taught us, early on, to “play it, don't say it.”  It's great advice.

The earthquake episode is OUTSTANDING. Nowadays, series like “Desperate Housewives” have an episode with a disaster in every season. The humor was an intrinsic part of it, as it was of everything you wrote. Good and bad, light and dark, the sublime and the ridiculous in one throw of the dice. Frank Salisbury told me that he often thinks how, in many ways, it presaged 9/11. What purpose do you think the quake served in the show?

Plotting the earthquake didn't take a great deal of ingenuity or artistic skill.  It was a solution for a nasty problem.  We had a bunch of beautiful sets that were not properly built for 3-camera video-photography.  Being producers (and, thus, thinking about the budget) as well as writers, an earthquake seemed a two-pronged solution: it was a dramatic excuse to destroy expensive (but relatively useless) sets.  Such are the practicalities of television. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Maybe now I could ask you to debunk a myth, or to confirm it, if you can. Somewhere I read that the idea of the “Carnation Killer’s” storyline was born as a solution to remove an excess of blonde actresses on the show. Do you remember if this is true? And, in general, do you think that creating a storyline to solve practical needs (such as unnecessary sets or a too large cast) can stimulate creativity or vice versa constrain it?

Truth is, blondes are stamped out of a factory mold in Hollywood, and we had accidentally cast too many.  (How, you might ask, can you make a mistake like that?  Answer: when you are frantically busy, mistakes are made despite the best efforts. )  They were too beautiful and similar.  It was almost hard to distinguish between them. So we found a solution (and had a few laughs) as we devised the Carnation Killer storyline.  Sorry to say, but mistakes can be quite an impetus to creativity. It probably would have been better had we done it right the first time, but you never know.

In this case I really believe that a mistake was an impetus to creativity, as you said. The “Carnation Killer” storyline was pushed to the extreme: it made Robin Wright’s Kelly the first tragic heroine of the show. Then events led to the death of Joe Perkins and the main heroine of the show was replaced: ideally Kelly passed the baton to Eden. While Marcy Walker stands out because her strength, Wright conquered me with her natural weakness. You were the first to believe in her talent, even though she was inexperienced. Do you remember what struck you about her? Today what do you think about her path?

Robin Wright became a wonderful asset for Santa Barbara.  When we first cast her, she was very young and inexperienced as an actress, but there was a quality about her that indicated she had potential; she was more than just another pretty face.  She was curious about her character and its motivations, and we (mostly Jerry) spent many hours talking about individual scenes as well as the overall arc of drama.  We hired a drama coach to go over lines with her.  It was money well spent, both for her, personally, and for the show. She quickly became a multidimensional actress. I haven't followed her career closely, but when I have watched her on the "big screen", I have been impressed. I think she was (and probably still is) one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

Fallon's abduction
on The Colbys

Then she got the main role in “The Princess Bride”, a Rob Reiner movie. You were very generous in allowing her to do this, especially considering that you had to rewrite a good portion of the bible for that season. But again, what could have been a huge loss, was transformed by you into one of the most compelling storylines of the whole show: Kelly, accused of murder, escapes to Switzerland for several weeks (this justifies the absence of Robin Wright) and Gina has the videotape that exculpates Kelly… On the other shows generally, if the star is not available, the character leaves for a vacation, or dies and then resurrects, but rarely does his absence become the center of an entire storyline. Which other soap - clichés have you tried to avoid on SB?

I cringe at the thought of hysterical pregnancies ( I've never written that), rising from the dead (sometimes inevitable if the character is needed), and aliens ( I don't get it). If the characters are strong, cliches are less offensive.

Chris Bernau as Alan Spaulding in 1978

That’s funny! Can I ask you to explain why you cringe at the thought of inserting into a script hysterical pregnancies and aliens?

Storylines with hysterical pregnancies and alien beings are laughable and so far fetched that no viewer can empathize.  The best stories and characters are those that are identifiable to almost all of us, especially when we sense the "truth" of what is dramatized on the screen.  I have sometimes been embarrassed by a poorly written script or an ungrammatical actor who distorts the language of a script.  Occasionally, I have even hoped that no one I respected was watching.  But I am mortified to the core for the writer who is so desperate to be “fresh” that he resorts to ridiculous plots and characters.

Yesterday, Jerry went into Starbucks to buy coffee.  He gave the checkout person $25.00.  His change was $19.78.  As he was given his change, the checkout woman said, “Ah....1978.  It was a good year for Alan Spaulding.”  (Alan Spaulding was a character on GUIDING LIGHT  in the l970s.) Jerry was stunned.  “You remember!”  She said, “I will remember forever.”

I can only conclude that when a viewer truly experiences the emotions he sees on the screen, it lasts in a meaningful way. 

I have noticed on SB the lack of other clichés. I would like to discuss with you a couple of these, one at a time: the so-called “Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome” (the practice of accelerating the aging of a television character - usually a child or teenager - in conflict with the timeline of a series). Maybe these guys are the result of hysterical pregnancies? How do you feel about this "tactic"?

I don't admire the "rapid aging" that sometimes occurs on soaps.  I sincerely hope we didn't do it on SB; I don't remember it if it happened (it never happened on SB - Editor's Note). As you suggest, the off-spring of hysterical pregnancies might be so misshapen they don't follow normal developmental stages.  What a lovely idea!  Would anybody watch?

I really do not know if anybody would watch. But nowadays people watch almost anything, even the most improbable show. I was just wondering what you watch on TV today and what are the shows that you like, if any…

I don't watch any dramatic television, nor any sit-coms. I haven't watched one show, not even one, since we left Hollywood.  I do watch news or history or biography.  I like some documentaries.  I go to movies and the theater.  But NO dramatic television.  I have written every situation (perhaps not as well as it is done now, but that is irrelevant).  I have been there, done that.  I would rather dig ditches than watch dramatic television.  I have over-dosed on it.

to be continued...

My Exclusive Interview with BRIDGET DOBSON - Part Four

We’re coming to the fourth part of my interview with Bridget Dobson. If you have missed the previous parts, you can read them by clicking here. Finally we have come to SANTA BARBARA. As Bridget Dobson recalls, “NBC-TV called to ask if we were to own a show, if we were to be in complete charge of every creative aspect of a show, from sets and costumes and hairstyles and music to every minute detail of the production, acting and writing, would we be willing to work again? Nobody in history had ever been asked this question.  Not before and not since. We were being offered total creative control of an hour a day television drama five days a week.” Ms. Dobson is about to tell us how SB was born, how they convinced Dame Judith Anderson to star on SB and everything about the birth of a series that has made ​ worldwide television’s history. Did you know that one of the four SB families was not part of the Dobsons’ original idea? Reading this interview is the only way to find out which family I’m talking about… Enjoy!

We finally come to the “mountain to climb”. When you and your husband conceived the idea of SB, what was your starting point – a particular character? A certain plot? How was Santa Barbara born?

The mountain was indeed in front of us, once the contract with NBC-TV was signed.  At that point in time, I had started to outline a novel, which Warner Books was interested in publishing, but we knew we couldn't do both the tv serial and the book.  It was an easy decision to use the basic structure of the book, two somewhat competitive (though quite different) families and an ethnic (Mexican) family, in the soap. The characters seemed indigenous to Santa Barbara: they were the people we saw in a daily way, and they were seemingly as one with the sunshine, the ocean, the architecture, the air.  They belonged to the land as much as the land belonged to them.  

The challenge was to make the characters fascinating (each in his own right) and the stories riveting.  To strengthen our own experience in drama, we turned to great examples of literature and theater. Day after day, little by little, we scoured and devoured most, if not all, of Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, early cinema, Tennessee Williams, among many others.  We gradually eschewed the examples of “typical” families we had experienced on other soaps.  Relationships were never simple, always complicated by all the rivulets of emotion that infiltrate much of classic literature. Inundated, we made background notes on our favorite dramatic and psychological themes. With this huge and intense spectrum of dramatic precedent which had survived through the ages, with the further understanding (reading Freud, Jung, and more) that these themes were still being repeated in every modern culture on this planet (not to mention our own lives), we began to mold our own drama around the Capwells, the Lockridges, and the Andrades. 

Dame Judith Anderson, a diminutive woman of towering ...even booming...personal strength, was a small but important part of the social fabric of our lives at the time.  We had attended a few of the same parties, barely spoken a few words to her. She was also a neighbour.  We jogged past her house every day.  Jerry and I had seen her performances in “Medea” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, and we, like most people, were utterly awed. Early on, before the show was fully formed, we knew we wanted to have her be part of SB. But how dare we?  It was a dream, that's all, a wish, a fantasy. This woman had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth for her abilities as an actress.  She was universally revered. Not only was the thought verboten, it was presumptuous beyond belief. Inviting her to be part of our regular cast would be like inviting Hoover Dam to dance.  And so it began.....

I felt a similar emotion when I dared to ask you for an interview, except that I am a humble fan. How did you manage to convince her to accept the role?

Fearful - indeed, practically certain - of rejection, Jerry and I flipped a coin to see who would be the unlucky one to visit “DJ” (Dame Judith) and speak to her about being a regular on our show.  I won.  Jerry had to go to her house.  He was gone a very long time. Hours and hours.  When he came home, his left hand was bleeding heavily and looked like a ball of ground beef.  He explained that DJ's much adored little dog had spent the entire interview on Jerry's lap, chewing on his flesh.  He didn't complain -not so much as a grimace or groan, and he didn't throw the little bitch out the window, which may have been his inclination - because he didn't want to do anything to irritate DJ.  He was successful.  Though he had a (temporarily) non-functioning left hand, with literally dozens of puncture wounds, and blood stained clothes, we had our first cast member. The only thing Jerry had to promise her, creatively, was that she could "still be sexy" and she could carry a riding crop (she wanted a whip, but he talked her out of it) at all times.

Next problem: her contract.  DJ had no agent or lawyer.  Jerry and I never negotiated contracts (other than our own).  So she negotiated on her own behalf with our attorney in NY.  (Our attorney was very impressed that this senior citizen - she lied about her age, said she was 74 - was tough and astute in every conversation he had with her.) They came to terms in a few weeks. Except for one major detail, which was a deal-breaker:  she wanted the services, in her own home, one day per week, of the Dobson's full-time maid.  Take it or leave it.  

In addition to the riding crop, she was allowed to change the name of her character, from Birdie to Minx, maybe not everybody knows that. However, casting the patriarch of the Capwells was more complicated. Lloyd Bochner, your first choice, suffered a heart attack a few days after the first shooting. So he was replaced by Peter M. Richman, then briefly  by Paul Burke, later by Charles Bateman and finally by Jed Allan. Why was it so difficult to find the right CC Capwell?

There are frequent casting complications on daytime dramas.  Actors become sick or pregnant or, perhaps, they aren't as good as they were first thought to be.  Sometimes an actor can't handle the volume of memorization required on a soap.  It is not unusual - certainly not unheard of - to make more than one change in the casting. Four different actors is not what anyone wants, but considering health problems, and the need to make rapid changes, and the outsized demands of a daily hour-long drama, I am not surprised.

At the beginning the show consisted of a representative microcosm – the wealthy Capwells, the eccentric Lockridges, the Mexican Andrades and, from the middle class, the Perkins. In addition, to balance the tension linked to the murder of Channing Junior, there were the young players (Ted, Laken, Danny and Jade) off to Hollywood, and also the pungent irony of Minx. Soon the Perkins, the Andrades and Minx began to appear less often. Was that just the normal adjustment of a new show or were there other reasons?

The Andrades

Successfully writing a soap requires constant adjustments.  It would be a very bad idea to plan a show in your office, not watch the show, and follow your blueprint to the letter. Instead, you watch and listen, and you are guided by your instincts.  What's working?  What isn't working?  Should the emphasis be here or there?   By fine tuning as you go along, you minimize “mistakes” and maximize the stories and characters that are creating the best drama.  This may happen more often on a new show, but it also happens, in a daily way, on an established show.  The writers who are emotionally tuned to the progress of the show, and who are most willing to adjust when the emotions are even slightly off kilter,  are the most successful writers; they are the ones who learn as they go along. Adjustments are normal; without them, a show will falter and fail.  Having said that, television writers are in a business, and sometimes politics seem to transcend the drama of the moment.  For example, a network executive may plead for, even insist on, a character or a storyline being included. This situation is also normal, and it can become a kind of wrestling match.  If the writer has enough experience to know that a “trial run” of the character or the story won't “kill” the show and will placate the executive, then it may be included, for a short period of time.  If  it works, hooray.  If it doesn't, with luck, the executive will learn from his errors.  I have yet to live long enough to see that happen. But I advance it to you as a hypothetical theory.

And here “subtext speaks louder than text”. When you wrote the stories, how did you decide on the right balance between drama and humor? Are there unwritten rules?

Lane Davies

I don't think there is a formula for the relationship of humor to drama. We learned the “serious drama” kind of soap writing primarily from P&G  (though I don't want to downplay the importance of studying creative writing at Stanford).  It had been well-established through the years on all the daytime shows.  But it felt a little somber, a little drab.  Our instincts were to trust our instincts: we felt the audience might  be more receptive, as we were, to drama laced with humor.  And though we had experimented with humor earlier, on GL and on ATWT (P&G was cautious of it at first, then accepting, then trusting), we had carte blanche to use it on SB.

Almost parenthetically, I need to say that humor is, quite naturally, a HUGE part of Jerry’s personality, our marriage, and our lifestyle. It is part of the air we breathe. SB, by extension, was known for its humor.  My paintings, according to more than one critic, look like Santa Barbara.  It's something that exists within each of us.  It can’t be added to or subtracted from either one of us.  We're blessed - or, more accurately, stuck - with it.

Back to the soap opera:  there can be humor both in plot and in character.  In my opinion, every character should have humorous qualities, but it always needs to be integrated with and intrinsic to the character. You wouldn't fall in love with each character, know what thrills and pains each character, if the tenor of humor were the same for each.  On SB, Mason's was the darkest, the most intellectual, the driest humor and it stemmed, in part, from pain he carried within. Though he may have joked about it, you know by his wry words that Mason was competitive with, or felt diminished by, CC.  Humor can intensify pathos. When he was inebriated, speaking to a fish, muttering “Alas, poor Yorick”, did you want to  laugh or cry or both? Did each emotion intensify the other?  It did for me, both writing it and watching it, until I almost thought I'd explode.  Thus, the arrogance of instinct and how it can (with luck) blindside an audience.

Shakespeare’s Yorick, like the fish, has never had a voice, he speaks through the voices of others. He is the fool, the voice of a different truth: MEMENTO MORI. This leads me to the function that I believe Mason has on the show: I believe that Mason personifies the Greek chorus. He was a much beloved character while being evil sometimes. In the Greek tragedy chorus has a precise function: to express the tragic poet’s feelings. But it expresses the feelings of the people, too, of the audience, to make them feel themselves as part of the story. I can see all of this in Mason’s character. Maybe we forgive Mason because we are Mason. Could it be so?

The character Mason was created to function as a kind of Greek chorus.  You are quite right.  It is the term we used when the show was first being conceptually delineated, long before his character was developed and melded into the storyline. And though we hoped the audience identified closely with him, we wished that the audience would also identify with each of the other characters.  I agree that Mason had a unique perspective, sometimes tragic, sometimes ironic, sometimes comedic.  To me, he was the most fascinating of all.

to be continued...

My Exclusive Interview with BRIDGET DOBSON - Part Three

We’re coming to the third part of my interview with Bridget Dobson. If you have missed the previous parts, you can read them by clicking here. After their experience as Headwriters on Guiding Light, in 1979 the Dobsons would later go on to become the head writers of As the World Turns where they created the infamous character of James Stenbeck and also paired the characters of Tom and Margo. Mrs. Dobson is going to tell us how this happened and why. And then, finally, we come to Santa Barbara or, in Ms. Dobson's words, to “the mountain to climb”...

After GL, in 1979 you and your husband moved to another Procter & Gamble’s production, ATWT. Can you tell me how that came about, please?

The years working for Procter and Gamble Productions were very happy ones. P&G taught us a great deal about writing and the structure of soap opera.  When our bosses, Bob Short and Ed Trach, and we didn't agree about a character or a storyline, we had long and healthy (informative and productive) arguments,  There was a climate of mutual respect and affection. We were always told we could do it our way (not theirs), and risk being fired if the ratings didn’t hold up.  So, in accordance with our philosophy that the writers’ will must prevail, we took that risk, and we were never fired. It was all very up front and forthright.   Unlike Hollywood, there was never the feeling that if we turned around we would be stabbed in the back.

 When we took over the helm at GL, Jerry was learning the business.  P&G was reluctant to accept him into the inner sanctum at first, because he had no experience, but it was only a matter of a few months before they realized that Jerry and I were a team, that we worked well together and were more creative as a twosome than separately.  Jerry’s brain worked in wondrous ways: he had tons of ideas, some of them very good, all of them original.  GL did well.  We liked the hour-a-day format.  Though it was twice the work, the show delved more deeply into character and storyline.  When we took over as headwriters, GL was ranked #7 of all the soaps. When we transferred to ATWT, five years later, GL was #1.

Jean Rouverol

While Jerry took over initiating plot ideas, on which I collaborated, I was writing almost all the dialogue myself.  (I think Jean Rouverol joined us for one script a week of dialogue only, but not at the very beginning.)  I loved doing it so much I wondered why they paid us. This wasn't work.  This was fun, exciting, exhilarating.  Sometimes the shows weren't good, but we were learning, and our batting average wasn’t bad.  We experimented with getting rid of non-essentials. No more: come in, may I take your coat? Would you like a cup of coffee? We cut to the drama as the scene started.  No wasted space.  We laced the drama with humor.  We learned that subtext spoke louder than text.  P&G said they learned about those things from us.  But that couldn’t be; we were learning from them.  It was unbelievably rewarding and stimulating - but I was getting tired. 

Very selectively, and gradually, we built a writing team.  We were always ultimately responsible for the content of the show, and we edited every word written by anybody else.  The associate writers provided a great relief of pressure for me.  But that is too simplistic. Besides trying to get into our heads, they brought their own freshness and originality to the canvas..  We grew to trust and treasure them. A good associate writer, director, actor or producer took the original dramatic concept and made it better.  When it worked, the creative juices were flowing everywhere.

Needless to say, P&G was happy to have GL the number one rated soap.  But there was a problem:  it was never anticipated that GL would or could be number one. ATWT was supposed to be #1 because of the way it was positioned in the line up, because of its time slot. It was to be the tent-pole, the lynch-pin. Years of research (and decades of storytelling) supported this.  Guiding Light was, at best, supposed to be #2, in part due to trickle-down ratings theory.  By bringing GL to #1 we had unwittingly sowed chaos in the corporate world.  And GL was #1 for months.  Executives were tearing their hair, but being careful not to let the Dobsons know of their concerns (except retrospectively).  We were popping champagne corks and they were drinking hemlock .  

Simultaneously, it was time for long term story projections (the bibles) to be written for both shows.  Jerry and I wrote the GL story projection, and our bosses loved it. The headwriter on ATWT wrote their story projection, and our bosses felt it was inadequate.  ATWT's headwriter and the Dobsons were asked to swap shows. (!)  They asked us to bring ATWT up to #1, where it had been for so long.

There were money issues.  And ego issues.  And loyalty issues.  Another complication was that the headwriter of ATWT was exhausted, didn't like the deal etc.

The upshot was that, after resolving all issues, the Dobsons took the helm of ATWT, the other headwriter took over GL - but he insisted on taking a month's vacation before he worked again. So, Jerry and I wrote both shows for one month. Two hours of dramatic air time a day, approximately sixty characters, an average of 200 pages a day, seven days a week. My head hasn’t stopped spinning yet.

And finally we are coming to SB. How did you move from Oakdale to Santa Barbara?

Oakdale to Santa Barbara?  That's easy.  We had moved to Santa Barbara for personal reasons.  We thought it one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and we were in a position to describe it accurately.  But I think your question goes beyond that, so I will answer why it happened that we created SB. 

After three years headwriting ATWT, after having brought the show back up to #1, the Dobsons were exhausted.  Our last contract with P&G (beginning at the end of our stint with GL) was for three years.  We had fulfilled it, and accomplished what we'd hoped to accomplish.  P&G was happy and wanted us to continue.  We loved what we were doing in many ways.  Basically, we were proud of the shows.  However, for all the joys of creating, there were some clear negatives.  The worst problem was that we had almost no other life. Our heads were locked, 24 hours a day, into a fictional show.  We never looked at a newspaper.  We never went to the movies.  We didn't have time to read much of anything.  We had no room in our lives for friends and very little for family. The simplest things - playing a game of tennis or searching shops for just the right new dress - were out of reach to me.  I hadn't gone to a grocery store in 15 years (and now I don't want to go!). When our daughter Mary  applied to colleges, she had, literally,  to make appointments with me to get me to take the time to read her applications.  This was not how life was meant to be. We told P&G it was not a matter of money.  It was a matter of reclaiming our lives.

Within 48 hours, we got many offers for other writing positions, not just with soaps but with night time dramas.  We turned them all down. I can’t speak for Jerry, but secretly I was a little thrilled and surprised that we were so “hot.”

One of the offers that came within a few days of our new “retirement” was stunning:  NBC-TV called to ask if we were to own a show, if we were to be in complete charge of every creative aspect of a show, from sets and costumes and hairstyles and music to every minute detail of the production, acting and writing, would we be willing to work again? Nobody in history had ever been asked this question.  Not before and not since. We were being offered total creative control of an hour a day television drama five days a week.  We were floored.  And enticed. And terrified.  It had never been attempted and never achieved, not starting from zero - nothing - a blank page - to an hour a day, every day, five days per week, no seasons, no holidays, no respite...with total control in the hands of two individuals, not in the hands of a corporation or a network. 

So it was that Jerry and I came out of retirement and climbed what seemed to be an extremely steep creative mountain, clinging to sheer granite, our pen was our pick, no path, no trail, no rope or safety net.  We'd done our writing push-ups in the years leading up to this moment, but there was no way to properly prepare. What if we died?  Nobody even thought of that.

So in less than ten years of career, someone not only paid you to write, but someone even paid you to create your own show, giving you full control on it. This must have been also a great satisfaction with regard to your parents’ attitude…

My parents never accepted that I was a success on my own.  (My mother apparently was furious to learn that our bosses at P&G were talking to Jerry and me about shows, not to them.  This is according to my sister, who was visiting them at the time of an hysterical outburst.)  They never watched any of my shows.  When they were asked why not, they said, “Because we want to be proud of Bridget. That's why we don't watch.”  Eventually it didn't matter to me. I went to a shrink (a psychiatrist) who helped me understand what I couldn't on my own.  I am, generally, proud of our work and I feel sorry for my parents that they never knew what I could create (which was, in part, because of the gift of their tutelage).  It's their loss.

But accepting this opportunity maybe meant giving up a “normal life.”. And you said you were tired. How did you expect to cope with this new even more demanding commitment?

Accepting the challenge from NBC to create a new show meant that we would postpone having a normal life. We were certainly aware of that.  In balance, we thought it was worth it.  I was tired.  So was Jerry.  But we were filled with energy and enthusiasm and fear, and that seemed to keep us going. (Why do you climb a mountain?  Because it's there. )

Did you have some “escape hatch”?

I am trying to think of our “escape hatches.”  We exercised religiously, jogging in the early morning darkness, wherever we were.  Jerry believed - and I now grudgingly agree - that being in top physical shape was necessary to get the most out of our minds and spirits. Further, it acted as a release of stress and tension.  I have continued to exercise every day, but don't ask me to say I like it.  Other escape hatches?  Humor.  Fury. Unrelenting imagination.  Sleep.  Ours was not a tranquil life.

to be continued...