Soap operas (1 Viewer)

[tlc38tlc38]

Does anyone collect a certain soap or many soaps on DVD?

My favorite is "Days of our Lives". I have the complete years of 1995-2005 on DVD. also, most of November and December 1983.

Just curious to see if there are any soap collectors out there.

 

[bmasters9]

My favorite is "Days of our Lives". I have the complete years of 1995-2005 on DVD. also, most of November and December 1983.

That's impressive-- how did you get all those?

 

[tlc38tlc38]

^From a trader site that begins with iOf... I found an awesome trader/seller.

Each episode is labeled with a date and it's super easy to navigate. Each year has about 40-50 discs.

Also commercial free.

 

[bmasters9]

^From a trader site that begins with iOf... I found an awesome trader/seller.

Each episode is labeled with a date and it's super easy to navigate. Each year has about 40-50 discs.

Also commercial free.

Did not know that!

 

[Ron Lee Green]

Yes, I've been recording the old NBC soap, "The Doctors," since I FINALLY got the Retro TV channel in my area last November. They air two 30-minute episodes every Mon-Fri. They are currently airing episodes from 1975, but they've been airing the show for a couple years now starting with the 1968 shows.
It's fun to watch these episodes because I was just a little kid back then, so I never watched the show but I do remember the fashions and the ugly furniture. No cell phones here! I guess that's part of their charm! Some of the actors currently on the show now are future stars like, Gil Gerad, Armand Assante, and Julia Duffy. It's funny how easily I got hooked on the show, but they do move at a SNAIL'S pace. LOL
Plus, on weekends they have a mini-binge where they show 4 consecutive episodes from 1971 on Saturdays, and 4 episodes from 1968 on Sundays.
I also have several episodes of General Hospital from the Luke & Laura years that I got from recording special anniversary celebration marathons, or from fan trading. I wish they would rerun that soap again!
Retail-wise, other soap operas I own are: Dark Shadows Complete series coffin-shaped boxed set, and all 40 volumes of the Aussie soap opera, Prisoner: Cell Block H.

http://www.myretrotv.com/index.php/portfolioentry/the-doctors/

 

[JamesSmith]

Dear Ron Lee Green:

On "The Doctors," who did the narration on the opening theme? And who was the leading man again?
I also think Alex Baldwin was on the program. You said the show moved at a snails pace, remember they did a bit more dialogue back than compared to today's.


James

 

[EricSchulz]

I occasionally watch "Another World" on YouTube. That and DOOL were my mom's favorite soaps.

 

[Ron Lee Green]

Dear Ron Lee Green:

On "The Doctors," who did the narration on the opening theme? And who was the leading man again?
I also think Alex Baldwin was on the program. You said the show moved at a snails pace, remember they did a bit more dialogue back than compared to today's.
James

I'm not really an expert on the show, but I'll try to answer your question from what I've learned. The first question, I don't know who the narrator is. Second question: James Pritchett plays Dr. Matthew Powers. He gets top billing in the end credits, and stayed on the show til the end, so I guess that makes him the leading man, but I think of him more as the patriarch since he's the hospital’s Chief of Staff. I would consider Gerald Gordon a leading man because he was a bachelor doctor named Nick Bellini, and was involved in a lot of romantic storylines. He is very macho, has a hot temper and has a thick, New York (Bronx?) accent. He was on the show a long time, but he quit in 1975, and moved to Hollywood. Alec Baldwin comes on the show towards the end of the run, sometime in the 1980s. Yes, they did do a bit more dialogue back then. There is a lot of recapping. That is, characters sitting on the couch talking about the previous days events. I realize this was in the pre-VCR days, so they did this to keep viewers up-to-date in case they missed an episode. Another example of what I meant by snail's pace: one character is flying into town from Singapore. He's been on the plane for nearly 2 weeks!

 

[EricSchulz]

Ron Lee Green, that reminds me of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where Rhoda is unemployed and starts watching soaps again after a two year break. One of the main characters was STILL pregnant when she started watching again!

 

[TonyD]

I never collected any soaps but i have watched GH on tv as it aired nearly for it's entire run since the late 70's.

I skip it for a few years every now and then but always end up back at it.

 

[Neil Brock]

I can tell you that there are plans to release The Doctors on DVD. Only about 5000 episodes!

 

[TonyD]

Every episode of Dark Shadows is up on Amazon prime video

 

[Charles Ellis]

The major problem is that a lot of the major shows (particularly the Procter & Gamble shows) weren't archived for posterity. The Edge of Night and As the World Turns aired live until 1975, and there's not that much from either show on tape prior to 1978. That year seems also to be the beginning of the continuous ABC archives for All My Children and One Life to Live. General Hospital's first seven years (1963-70) were all archived on B/W kinescope which is in the UCLA collection. But GH went to color in 1967, so the earliest existing color tape in the ABC archives is from- you guessed it, 1978! Aside from the apparently missing 1970-78 years (though some kinescopes and off-TV recordings from 1976-78 are on YouTube), GH has roughly 47 out of 55 years of episodes (to date) archived in one form or another. Some independent producers were smart to save the tapes. Dan Curtis got his start in syndication sales at NBC, so he saved Dark Shadows for future syndication. Also, Colgate-Palmolive saved The Doctors, and Labine/Mayer Productions saved Ryan's Hope - by the time they sold the series to ABC in 1981, the network was already archiving their soaps. One reason why soaps weren't archived had to do with the expense of videotape in the 60s and 70s: once technology improved and videotape became cheaper, that's when the episodes began to be saved. Until then, tapes were wiped and reused. Now the good news: some other vintage soaps were archived intact, like Strange Paradise, Bright Promise, and the later shows like Texas, Santa Barbara, Loving, and Capitol. Both Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless are produced through Columbia/Sony's TV division, and everything from both shows has been archived on color videotape from the start, Y&R in 1973, Days all the way back to 1965! Here's an unbelievably recent (and true) anecdote: someone asked Days executive producer Ken Corday (whose parents created the show) about releasing classic episodes of the show on DVD or syndication, and he replied "Why on earth for?" How about the MONEY???

 

[bmasters9]

Both Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless are produced through Columbia/Sony's TV division

And have been ever since the 60s (Days) and 70s (Y&R), IINM (Days since '65, Y&R since '73), and each through all of the 80s and 90s ownerships of CPT (Coca-Cola, Columbia Pictures Entertainment, and Sony Pictures Entertainment), and now, as you said, through Sony Pictures Television.

 

[sjbradford]

I saw the premier episode of DOOL a few years back. It was pristine quality, in color from 1965 as you said. What a same that other shows were saved the same way. The classic years of Another World, when it was one of the top rated soaps, are mostly gone from what I understand. There are some really grainy kinescope around of late 60s/early 70s episodes, but wouldn’t it be great if it was available in color on video?

 

[MatthewA]

Y&R and DAYS being made by Columbia probably ensured their greater long-term survival than the P&G shows. It's ironic a Colgate-sponsored soap, The Doctors, is more complete.

My mom watched As the World Turns and Guiding Light until almost around the time they went off the air. Very little prior to the late 1970s still exists, and as for the early 1970s, they found this:



Whatever exists in kinescopes could be run through the LiveFeed process. They already worked some miracles with what they did do.

 

[tlc38tlc38]

Officially, I'm not sure exactly how far back DAYS goes with what's available but among traders, 1984 is pretty much as far back as it goes.

There are a few months available from 1983 and select scattered episodes from 1965, 1966, 1976, & 1979.

 

[EricSchulz]

ABC released some compilation VHS tapes back in the 90's, I believe. I found these...

 

[Ethan Riley]

...And one scene from the mid 70s, because they happened to show a DOOL clip in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

 

[Lord Dalek]

WCBS (aka CBS Broadcasting Center) was pretty wipe happy in the mid-70s. As such very little is believed to exist of Love of Life and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of The Secret Storm post 1967 on top of the Proctor and Gamble shows. They also didn't save most of the game shows produced in NY either hence the only studio masters of 10,000 Pyramid intact are the three weeks they made at Television City in 1973.