The Edge of Night
| The Edge of Night | |
|---|---|
 title card from 1956-1967. | |
| Created by | Irving Vendig |
| Starring | Ann Flood Forrest Compton Joel Crothers Lois Kibbee Sharon Gabet |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of episodes | 7,420 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 Minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS (1956-1975) ABC (1975-1984) |
| Release | April 2 1956 – December 28 1984 |
The Edge of Night is a long-running American television soap opera produced by Procter & Gamble. It debuted on CBS on April 2 1956 and ran on that network until November 28 1975; the series then aired on ABC from December 1 1975 until December 28 1984. 7420 episodes were produced, with some 1800 available for syndication.
Format
The Edge of Night, along with Procter and Gamble's As the World Turns, which premiered the same day, were the first two half-hour-long soap operas (previously soap operas had been fifteen minutes in length). These two programs remained the last two American soap operas generally to be aired live, which they were into the 1970s and which also accounts for why only about one-fourth of the episodes of The Edge of Night are available for syndication.
The last live episode aired just prior to its change of networks in 1975, and the concluding CBS episode on November 28, 1975 ended with the discovery that Nicole Travis Drake was alive, after she had been presumed dead in an explosion eighteen months earlier while on a boating trip with her husband Adam Drake. On December 1 1975, ABC aired a special 90-minute episode which picked up where the final CBS episode left off, with Geraldine Whitney still in a coma from an attempted murder by her daughter-in-law Tiffany's second husband Noel Douglas; Nicole, with the help of Geraldine's adopted "son" Kevin Jamison, remembered who she was after suffering from amnesia since the explosion; the final scene of that day's episode was an exciting climax in which Serena Faraday, in her "Josie" split-personality, shot her husband on the steps of the courthouse.
The show was originally conceived as the daytime version of Perry Mason, which was popular in novel and radio formats at the time. Erle Stanley Gardner was to create and write the show, but a last-minute tiff between him and the network caused Gardner to pull his support from the idea. A writer from the Perry Mason radio show, Irving Vendig, created a retooled idea and the show as we know it was born. Gardner would eventually patch up his differences with CBS and Perry Mason would debut in prime time the next year. Unlike Mason, whose adventures took place in Southern California, Monticello, the city of The Edge of Night, was somewhere in a generic state in the Midwest — a state so generic that its capital city was "Capital City". It was admitted that the city skyline seen in the opening credits until 1980 was that of Cincinnati, Ohio, where the show's sponsor, Procter & Gamble, was based.
The Edge of Night was unique among daytime soap operas in that it focused on crime, rather than domestic and romantic matters. The police, district attorneys and medical examiners of fictional Monticello, USA, dealt with a steady onslaught of gangsters, drug dealers, blackmailers, cultists, international spies, corrupt politicians, psychopaths and murderous debutantes while coping with more usual soap opera problems such as courtship, marriage, divorce, child custody battles and amnesia. The show's particular focus on crime was recognized in 1980, when, in honor of its 25 years on the air, The Edge of Night was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
The series hired many revered stage performers. Among those who appeared on the show in the 1960s and early 1970s were Kay Campbell, Tony Roberts, Keith Charles, Milette Alexander, Larry Hagman, Lester Rawlins, Irene Dailey, Anne Revere, John Cullum, Scott Glenn, Richard Thomas, James Mitchell, Barbara Berjer, Dan Resin, Ernest Graves, Jane White and Kate Wilkinson.
Among its stars on ABC were Tony Craig, Terry Davis, Frances Fisher, Joel Crothers, Dennis Parker, Charles Flohe, Lori Loughlin, Irving Allen Lee, Denny Albee, Lori Cardille, David Froman, Lee Godart, Holland Taylor, Marcia Cross, and Kiel Martin — who were helped by guest stars Kim Hunter, Farley Granger, Alfred Drake, Frank Gorshin, Amanda Blake and stage director Jerry Zaks. Schuyler Whitney (Larkin Malloy) and his indefatigable wife Raven (Sharon Gabet) became private detectives and were the new hero and heroine of the show. The Edge of Night also provided Dixie Carter with one of her first significant TV roles, playing strong-willed assistant district attorney Brandy Henderson from 1974-1976.
Storylines
For the show's entire duration, the stories either revolved around or had much to do with Monticello lawyer Mike Karr. As the show began, Mike Karr's relationship with Sara Lane essentially reproduced the radio serial's Perry Mason/Della Street relationship. The added complication for Mike Karr was that Sara's family was involved in organized crime; her younger brother (Don Hastings) slowly being drawn into the criminal world in the early years of the show through corrupt uncle Harry Lane. Nevertheless, Mike and Sara eventually married. Their happiness was shortlived, however, when Sara was written out of the show as being killed as she saved the life of their daughter Laurie Ann, who had run into the street into the path of an automobile. By the 1960s, Laurie Ann was a teenager, supplying many plots for the show, and a young wife and mother by the 1970s.
Mike later married Nancy Pollock who was a journalist and helped in many of his cases. Other important characters were Police Chief Bill Marceau, who was one of Karr's best friends and with whom was shared a tremendous mutual respect, rare between a defense attorney and a chief of police, Marceau's wife Martha, fellow lawyer Adam Drake, television personality Nicole Travis, and wealthy socialite Geraldine Whitney, whose fall down a flight of stairs (which put her into a coma for several months) provided one of the show's more memorable mysteries. Nancy had two siblings: Lee, who eventually married Geri McGrath, and Elaine "Cookie."
Nicole had the most interesting history, as she was married to Adam Drake, feared dead in a boating accident, came back to life, and when her marriage to Adam was finished for good after Adam was murdered (in one of the foremost startling moments in this television serial's history), the character was replaced with a new actress and was subsequently de-aged a decade, a rarity for an adult character in the genre. Now younger and more vibrant, Nicole was suitable for a relationship with young doctor Miles Cavanaugh. She was eventually killed off when her makeup powder was poisoned.
Another important relationship was that between Nancy and her younger sister Cookie, who was married first to Malcom Thomas and later to Ron Christopher, whose dealings with loan sharks affected Mike's good friends Louise and Philip Capice. In the show's later years, the Karrs' beautiful daughter Laurie Ann, by now a young adult, was an important character. Her relationship with Jonah Lockwood, a sociopath, almost cost her her life, but he was revealed to be an alternate persona of Keith Whitney, scion of the wealthy Whitney family, nemesis of the Karrs and Marceau! One of the later major story arcs was about a train wreck and a prisoner, Draper Scott, who had been unjustly convicted of murder, escaping from the train accident, much in the style of Richard Kimble of The Fugitive. Although in Draper's case, he also had amnesia, for quite a few months! There was also an interesting storyline in the mid-1970s involving a troubled woman who would change her personality as she donned a frizzy, black wig.
Ratings & Scheduling History
See: Ratings: 1956-1984
Unlike most soap operas which build a solid audience slowly over many years, The Edge of Night was an instant hit with daytime viewers, amassing an audience of nine million viewers its first year, in some respects because the public did in fact perceive it as a daytime Perry Mason, as the producers had intended. Through the 1960s, the show continued to flourish, consistently ranking as one of the top six rated soap operas, alongside the rest of CBS' daytime lineup. It peaked at #2 in the 1966-1967 season and came in at #2 between 1969 and 1971.
Due to the show's crime format, and its late start time of 4:30 p.m. ET/3:30 CT, The Edge of Night had an audience which was estimated, at one time, to be more than 50% male. In July 1963, the show was moved to the 3:30/2:30 p.m. time period, which it dominated, even over otherwise hit programs like NBC's You Don't Say and ABC's Dark Shadows and One Life to Live. When the show moved to 2:30/1:30 p.m. in 1972 at Procter and Gamble's insistence, the show slid from a solid #2 in the Nielsen ratings to near the bottom of the pack, and it has been hypothesized that this drop was due to the exodus of many male viewers and teenagers who could not make it home from work or school earlier in the afternoon to watch.
While CBS decided to cancel The Edge of Night in 1975, due both to the ratings slide, and because As the World Turns was expanding to an hour in length (thus necessitating the freeing up of a half-hour of time in its afternoon schedule, since all its other daytime serials performed better than The Edge of Night), ABC, the only network at the time that did not have a Procter & Gamble property, picked the show up. CBS wanted to offer its affiliates a different half-hour for local programming, but the affiliates rejected its proposal. CBS at first planned to have the hour-long As the World Turns premiere in September 1975. However, ABC still had a contractual obligation to its programs, meaning The Edge of Night would have had to take a two-month hiatus, something P&G desperately did not want to happen. Therefore, P&G made a deal with both networks, for CBS to postpone the As the World Turns expansion and ABC to begin airing The Edge of Night immediately after departing CBS in late November.
Initially, Edge showed promise when it changed networks, the first serial to do so, on December 1, 1975 in a late afternoon time slot (4/3 p.m.). At first, Edge's overall ratings declined because fewer homes had access to it, a situation caused by ABC affiliates who had, for years, opted for local or syndicated programs at the 4/3 slot instead of the network feed and decided not to abandon the practice. Still others tape-delayed the program for broadcast in morning slots, anywhere from one day to two weeks later. Nevertheless, Edge was typically either first (or a close second) in its timeslot for markets that cleared it in its network feed of 4/3 p.m., due mainly to the weakness of competing programs on CBS and NBC. Also, Edge's demographics were significantly better on ABC; thus, the network was actually able to charge higher ad rates for it than several more popular series with higher audience ratings.
Although it never recovered the ground it lost from its CBS days, during the period from 1980 to 1982 Edge held down 10th or 11th place in the Nielsens, averaging about seven million viewers daily. This put it above Another World, Texas and The Doctors (the first two also P&G-packaged serials) at that stage. However, from 1982, ratings would fall even further as even more affiliates dropped the show altogether, largely due to its 4/3 p.m. timeslot, a popular one for stations to place more lucrative syndicated programming in, instead of network offerings. This caused P&G to lose more money on the program with each passing year. In May 1983, P&G replaced the show's veteran headwriter Henry Slesar, whose 15-year stint with the soap was, at that time, the longest in daytime serial history. New headwriter Lee Sheldon accelerated the pace of the plot, focused on younger characters, and added humor in efforts to capture a new audience for the ailing serial. However, more and more ABC affiliates continued to drop the show.
By the fall of 1984, Edge was airing on less than 62% of ABC's affiliates, and over two dozen more had announced their intention to drop the series in the first quarter of 1985. Although ABC was committed to continuing Edge, even offering to move it to a mid-morning timeslot, P&G could no longer afford to produce the show. On October 26, 1984, ABC and P&G made a joint announcement that Edge's December 28th broadcast would be its finale. After Edge ended its 28-year run on December 28, 1984, ABC returned the 4/3 p.m. timeslot to its affiliates, something NBC had done back in 1979; CBS would do so in 1986.
Surviving episodes
Beginning August 5, 1985, just eight short months after Edge's demise, reruns aired in a daily late-night timeslot on cable's USA Network, transmitting episodes from June 1981 up to the series finale. Edge completed its syndicated run on the USA Network January 19, 1989.
In August 2006, Procter & Gamble made several of its classic soap operas available, a few episodes at a time, through AOL Video Service, downloadable free of charge. AOL downloads of The Edge of Night commenced with episode #6051 from July 17, 1979.
External links
- American television soap operas
- CBS network shows
- American Broadcasting Company network shows
- 1956 television program debuts
- 1984 television program series endings
- 1950s American television series
- 1960s American television series
- 1970s American television series
- 1980s American television series
- Television series by Procter & Gamble Productions
- USA Network shows
- Edgar Award winning works