Love is a Many Splendored Thing

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Liamsttitle.jpg

Love Is a Many Splendored Thing was a soap opera which aired on CBS from September 18, 1967 to March 23, 1973.

Contents

[edit]

Beginnings and controversy

The show was a spin off from the original 1955 20th Century Fox movie. The title of the show was sans the hyphen used in the movie's title.

The show focused on lives and loves in San Francisco. The opening sequence of the show, in fact, was the title of the show superimposed over a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, with a slightly reworked organ music rendition of the movie's signature hit. Soap writer and creator Irna Phillips was hired to adapt the movie for television, picking up the story some years after the end of the film.

In the beginning, the star of the show was Nancy Hsueh, but since her character was deemed too controversial, she was phased out within the first year.

CBS censors balked at an interracial love story between a white man, Paul Bradley (and later, Dr. Jim Abbott) and an Amerasian woman (Mia Elliott, played by Hsueh). Phillips explained to censors that such a story would be necessary as the Mia Elliott character was the daughter of Korean War veteran Mark Elliott and Dr. Han Suyin, born out of their love affair from the original movie. When they still refused, Phillips quit the show.

This is not to say that the serial did not court controversy after Phillips' departure. One of the characters, Sister Laura Donnelly (played by Donna Mills), tried to fight off carnal desires she had for a man, a move that proved to be very controversial and ended up necessitating the woman to leave the church due to this conflict. Mills and Leslie Charleson played sisters and their conflict over the character portrayed by David Birney brought the show strong fan devotion as well as a spike in ratings. Other actors who appeared on the series and would go on to greater fame in daytime or primetime included Beverlee McKinsey, David Groh, Ron Hale and Paul Michael Glaser.

[edit]

Downfall

As happened to many other soaps, the lead characters were recast multiple times. Within a few years, star players Charleson, Birney and Mills were all gone, and even the recasts were then recast several more times. Talented replacements such as Bibi Besch and Michael Zaslow could not make up for a sense of fatigue that the constant casting changes wrought. The program shifted towards other characters, such as the strong-willed Betsy Chernak (Andrea Marcovicci), and complex storylines involving politics and blackmail, but the show was not recovering ratings quickly enough for CBS.

When Love Is a Many Splendored Thing was canceled in early 1973 to make room on the schedule for The Young and the Restless, the writers of the serial did something rare for the genre: all of the ongoing storylines were wrapped up and resolved in the final episodes. The final sequence featured original cast member Judson Laire (Dr. Will Donnelly) thanking the audience for their loyalty. "I hope that you remember us fondly."

[edit]

Legacy

The show's greatest legacy is not from its storytelling or cast, but from the strong focus on young, fresh faces. Few soaps had ever made attempts to aggressively focus on attractive young people, and those that did had not fared well with the traditional daytime audience. Love did, at least for a while, and was a direct precursor to Young & the Restless and other "youth" soaps.

[edit]

Surviving episodes

Only a handful of episodes of the serial are said to still exist, albeit in kinescope form. In August 2004, the website The World of Soap Themes, which has been dedicated to showing classic daytime material which, for the most part, has not been seen in decades, uploaded one of the Love Is a Many Splendored Thing episodes known to survive; the episode first aired in April 1970. Another 1970 episode was added in November 2004.

[edit]

Awards

Prior to its cancellation this show was nominated for four Emmy Awards:

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Love_is_a_Many_Splendored_Thing"