Read Nelson Branco's Soap Opera Uncensored: Issue 37 Page 4

the sensational Peter Porte, who won rave reviews from fans and critics alike for his creepy yet fascinating portrayal of a son scorned. I spoke to Porte at the CBS Emmy party and he seemed in positive spirits despite his firing. “On to the next thing,” the newcomer said.

  It’s too bad — but not surprising — that Maria Arena Bell didn’t rewrite the Ricky storyline to keep someone of Porte’s abilities and looks around a bit longer. Considering Bell loves to compare herself to Bill Bell, you’d think she would’ve taken a page out of the Y&R creator’s book because he rewrote Cassandra Rawlins’ exit when Nina Averson took off in the middle of the storyline, among other breakout villains like Sheila Carter, Phyllis Romalotti and Michael Baldwin.

   

  SOAP OPERA MYSTERY HOUR

  This week’s hottest blind items

  • Which controversial actress is said to have bought her Twitter followers?  

  • Which winner lost a piece of jewelry that was lent out to her at the Daytime Emmy Awards?

  • Which actress had to be escorted out of the Emmys because she was high on meds again and could barely move?

  SOAP SYLLABUS

  Irna Phillips: How To Save Soaps!

  Jeanne Cooper, who? This past Sunday, the creator of daytime serial storytelling, the late, great Irna Phillips, would have turned 111 years old! In honour of Phillips’ birthday and as a reminder to all the soap hacks out there destroying daytime TV, here’s an essay she penned about the art form before her death:

  The modern soap opera is a living thing. It has a pace and pulse and, it sometimes seems, a will of its own. In AS THE WORLD TURNS, for example, the Hughes family is so well established in my mind and the minds of its audience that the family's behavior and responses are largely dictated by what has gone on before. The Hughes family believes in certain values, and it would be uncharacteristic - that is, dishonest - to tamper with those believes in the story. Contrary to popular opinion, the writer of a daytime serial cannot play God, manipulating characters as if they were puppets. The writer who hopes to have a successful series must think of characters as flesh-and-blood entities.