Facts You Might NOT Know About Soap
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Soap
SkipEastport — 11 years ago(June 21, 2014 11:57 PM)
In another thread we wondered about the original actress to play Mary and about Jessica's declaration that she had four kids when we only saw three. This got me started on some research, reading old newspaper and magazine articles from the 70s, and buying a history of Soap that was published last year. For all of you diehard, rabid Soap fans, I'm sharing below some facts that I've found out about the show that y'all might not know.
- Susan Harris didn't create Soap as a parody of daytime soaps, and it wasn't meant to be ABC's ripoff of Mary Hartman. Harris had written for traditional sitcoms and created one of her own called "Fay". She said it was really hard to write a complete story and resolve it in 22 minutes. She wanted to do a sitcom where the characters could grow and change and stories could arc over multiple episodes. Her ex husband Berkeley Harris was on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and Susan realized that the soap opera format would be the perfect form for her to tell stories the way she wanted to. She wasn't making fun of soaps at all but adapted that style and conventions of soaps to the sitcom genre. She called Soap a "comedic melodrama". She didn't see it as a parody or a satire.
- When Soap went to air and became an immediate hit, ABC considered running it in the same format they had used for Peyton Place in the 1960s: twice weekly running year round with no breaks. Harris resisted this because she wrote all the episodes herself in the beginning and didn't think she could keep up with that pace and maintain the quality.
- The original actress playing Mary was Salome Jens who coincidentally had played Mae Olinski on Mary Hartman. Katherine Helmond said that Jens was a very lovely person and excellent actress, but everyone thought that she was too ethereal, in a style similar to Helmond herself, and also too soft to play Mary. Harris decided that there was more humor in Mary and Jessica being completely dissimilar, and that the central relationship of the story was the two sisters so their casting was the most important.
Katherine Helmond was the first actor cast, but strangely the producers initially didn't want her to read for the part because she was known primarily as a dramatic actress. She found the audition difficult because she wasn't given any direction about the character or how they wanted it played. She based her portrayal of Jessica on a real life friend of her mother from Katherine's childhood. This lady was someone who never let anything in life bother her and always seemed to have an innocent almost childlike fascination with life that made her more of a playmate than an adult. Susan Harris didn't laugh or smile at all during the audition but told Helmond in a very serious tone, "that was funnyvery funny."
The hardest parts to cast were Chuck, Corinne, and Benson. Jennifer Salt was actually submitted for Corinne, but during the audition they asked her to read Eunice, too. With Chuck, they couldn't find an actor who could do ventriloquism adequately, so they almost cast one actor to play Chuck and then an offstage voice actor to read Bob's lines. The last two actors cast were Diana Canova and Robert Guillaume in that order. All of actors auditioning for Benson had played the part with either too much militance or too stereotypically obsequious. Diana got the part of Corinne because she dressed conservatively and didn't play Corinne as being sexy. Susan Harris thought that was perfect for Corinne because it made her seem like a nice girl the audience could like without thinking of her as being a slut. - Before the pilot was written and shot, Susan Harris wrote a series bible that detailed the story lines and characters over five seasons. Soap was sold to ABC with the general agreement that it would run for five years. Many of the stories and characters in the bible are we what we actually saw, including Danny being Chester's son, which wasn't even revealed until the last season.
- Some stories and characters either changed or never made it to air. For example, Jessica and Chester's eldest child was actually a son named David. David Tate had gone MIA five years before the action on Soap began. In Vietnam, David had been having an affair with an Asian girl named Noyen Nu. He went missing without knowing she was pregnant. She gave birth to his son Joey Nu Tate. Noyen and Joey were to have gone to Dunn's River to find the Tates. Eventually David would have made it back alive too. It would've turned out that Noyen's father was an opium baron. Meanwhile, Burt had a middle son named Michael who was a smuggler. He was to have kidnapped Joey Nu Tate and held him ransom in exchange for drugs from Noyen's father. David would've searched for them similar to Jody searching for Wendy after she was kidnapped by Carol.
- Chester had three sisters: Meta, Hezza, and Adja (LOL!) - I'm not making this up.
- Benson had previously lived in New Orleans where he produced a daughter named Ruby
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stuffic — 11 years ago(July 06, 2014 09:49 PM)
Very interesting, thank you!
Sorry to hear about #12 because I always loved their scenes together.
As for #11, I always wondered why Chuck and Bob were not one (two? lol) of the 5 suspects at the end of season 1 - it made perfect sense that Chuck would be jealous of his older, handsome, brother who could have any woman he wanted. Always considered Benson and Jody's inclusion in the 5 suspects list as filler since they didn't have any motive
One other thing that was never explained: why Benson completely ignored Eunice in the first season. Seemed like it was another storyline that never made it to air.
Thanks again, I loved the trivia.
"I don't want to make trouble. All I want is a drink." -
taralgansert — 11 years ago(October 12, 2014 01:25 PM)
Very interesting thanks for posting! I vaguely remember watching Soap reruns as a kid, I have a vivid memory of Billy Crystal dressed as grapes I want to say for a raisin bran commercial? I have been watching all day in between laundry, cleaning & errands. I love seeing all the stars that I'm so familiar with from other shows. Some I recollect being on Soap some not. My sister & I always go to Chiller Theater & the 1 in 2 weeks Diana Canova is scheduled to appear at a& soon as I saw her name I said. She had a demon baby with Father Tim
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taralgansert — 11 years ago(October 12, 2014 04:16 PM)
Ooooh ok, I do not know why after all these years that stuck in my head. I forgot Chuck & Bob until they came on. How I don't know. Am I correct was Chuck (I don't know his real name) the guy on Real People?
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tomtkh — 11 years ago(January 18, 2015 11:26 PM)
thanks for all the cool info about soap, I own the first two seasons on DVD.one thing I always wondered is what else was Ingrid Svenson (Corinne's natural mother) going to do to the Tates & Campbells after her return appearance in season 2? I read that the producers were so impressed by her return performance that they recast her as the German character in the spin-off Bensonwhich is why she never appeared on soap again after this.I always loved the character Ingrid because she was so funny, so it was disappointing that she never returned.
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jcraig44443976 — 11 years ago(February 27, 2015 05:28 AM)
When you put all the facts together, Soap was an AMAZING SHOW that was way ahead of it's timeIt definitely was groundbreaking, leading the way for other shows of it's kind to be created Love this show
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rocknrelics — 10 years ago(December 11, 2015 06:09 AM)
Thanks for this fascinating info!!
Number 14 certainly explains the soft picture quality on the DVD set.It used to look great on a 24" colour TV back in the late 70's,but on my 55" 4K set,the picture looks really soft to say the least.
Number 12 is sad,you always want to think that people get on,so the fact two of the main characters were seen as difficult is a shame. -
melco92 — 9 years ago(May 04, 2016 05:34 PM)
I'd love to get a copy of that "bible". I hate that this show ended on a whole bunch of cliffhangers, and it would probably explain what would have happened in season five, and how it would have ended.
Reportin' live for Black TV: White folks are dead, we gettin' the f*@# outta here! -
fiero-49251 — 9 years ago(May 26, 2016 12:35 PM)
Nice info! Saved it to my blog! Thanks! Some of it I knew like Chuck & Bob were supposed to be the original murderers of Peter, how detached Mary was from the cast, and how difficult Burt was to work with! ;-/
https://fiero4251.blogspot.com/2016/04/whats-up-topic-19-entries-from-516-on.html
http://www.childrenofrassilon.com/fiero425.html
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SkipEastport — 4 years ago(May 06, 2021 03:20 AM)
Since I wrote this nearly 7 years ago, another fact came to light. Two pilots were taped for Soap before the final cast was assembled. As I posted previously, Salome Jens was the original Mary Campbell. She was replaced in the second pilot by actress Sally Kemp. Kemp was later remembered by actor Ted Wass, who played Danny.