TV Guide
August 22, 1998
Life Preserver
At a time when Madison Avenue is pressuring soaps to go younger and younger and the networks are blindly, happily complying, it is a miracle that One Life to Live is bucking the system in such a big way. Oh, this 30-year old ABC show has cranked up its kiddie quotient as much as the competition has (three hormone-ravaged teens have been added this summer), but executive producer Jill Farren Phelps has also hired a slew of mature performers - all of them popular veterans of other soaps -- and tossed them into huge front-burner stories. In an age where demo is god, this is tantamount to heresy.
"There has long been this belief that young people are what the audience wants to see, but there is a continuing disintegration in the daytime ratings, and that says something," notes Phelps, "I don't diminish the importance of young faces - it's my job to appeal to the broadest audience possible - but I notice that the smart, high-tone hits of prime time, like ER and Frasier, don't fall victim to this. The Steven Bochocos and the David E. Kelleys are not telling you stories about teenagers. My philosophy is that good story is good story, good acting is good acting. Age shouldn't matter.
Phelps, who joined OLTL in late '97 after stints at Another World, Guiding Light and Santa Barbara, loves recruiting former cronies: Kale Brown, fired as AW's Michael last January (he was part of Proctor & Gamble's insensitive purging of older actors), is now a smash as OLTL's Sam Rappaport, a lawyer with uncustomary humor and heart. Phelps fired white-bread youngster Kevin Stapleton as news reporter Kevin Buchanan and replaced him with Tim Gibbs (formerly AW's Gary), who brings an older, razors-edge weariness that is dramatically invaluable. Her coup de theatre is the hiring of Catherine Hickland, a much loved, five-soap vet who, until Phelps cast her as Sam's gold-digging ex-wife Lindsay, never had a suds role worthy of her talent. In her new lease on Life, Hickland is steamy, funny, witchy, insecure, heart-breaking - everything we could want in a soap opera vixen. And she alone is reason enough to pick up the OLTL habit. Are there more midlifers on the way?
Phelps, who has stopped OLTLs' ratings decline and gradually increased its young-viewer demos, won't quit now. She says she has issued an open invitation to ex-SB star A Martinez (so far, no soap). But she declines to comment on reports that she's wooing six-time Emmy winner Justin Deas away from GL, where, as greasy-spoon owner Buzz Cooper, he is barely used. Nor will she discuss her disagreement with ABC over John Bolger (previously AW's Gabe), who is now having a recurring role on OLTL - and is doing marvelously - as police commissioner John Sykes. Word is, she wants the 40ish matinee idol under contract, and ABC Daytime (facing a major money crunch) does not. You win some, you loose some. But Phelps is fighting the good fight, and for more than that we cannot ask.
