TV Trivia
by Michael Karol
& Craig Hamrick

All My Children

By Michael Karol
Originally posted 09.01.06

Series:All My Children Aired: 1970-Present Stars: This cast of hundreds has included former movie stars Ruth Warrick and Barbara Rush, everyone's favorite vixen Susan Lucci (pictured, left), stage veterans Louis Edmonds and Eileen Herlie, and TV veterans Lynn Thigpen and Antonio Fargas. Premise: Pine Valley, Pa. is a deceptively bucolic landscape; its inhabitants are anything but country — except for Opal — and try to lead exemplary lives, but greed, lust and family generally get in the way.

Created by Agnes Nixon in 1970, All My Children initially followed the exploits of the Martin and Tyler families, and, indeed, characters from both clans (or their descendents/relatives) remain central to this family-oriented soap. Taking place in the fictional bucolic town of Pine valley, a mere stone’s throw from Center City (meant to be main-line Philadelphia, although exteriors were filmed in Connecticut, including the now rarely seen Cortlandt Manor, really the Waveny Mansion in New Canaan), AMC packs more violence, murder, intrigue and romance into one small town than is humanly possible. But that’s what keeps us coming back for more, innit it? Some Pine Valley tidbits follow.

The Ratings Race
In the early 1950s and 1960s, soaps like Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns would routinely grab anywhere from 13 to 16 million viewers. By the time AMC debuted, soaps audiences had shrunk several million, to where the highest-rated show had anywhere from 10 to 14 million viewers, with the scale weighted toward lower numbers.
           As the new kid on the block, AMC remained at the bottom of a (then-much-larger) heap of about 19 shows. Three years into its run, AMC’s rating was 5.7 and the show was dead last out of 17. And then, through the 1970s, viewers caught on and began watching haughty Phoebe Tyler and bitch-goddess Erica Kane, and the show began a slow rise to the top of the pack, culminating in the 1977-1978 season, when AMC was the number one watched soap, with nine million regular viewers.
            AMC held on to the number 2 spot (behind General Hospital) for the next six years (through 1984-85); it’s highest rating was 9.4 million viewers, in 1982-83. Then, it slowly began dropping down the list, and by the 1990s, with audiences leaving soaps for other targeted programming, AMC found itself smack in the middle of the pack.
           Now, with a total soap audience of about 28.5 million, Young and the Restless is number one (with about 4.8 million weekly viewers), and AMC remains in the middle of the pack, reaching a mere 3 million or so households a week. Blame the audience erosion on cable, VCRs, DVDs, satellite and pay-per-view programs, and digital TV, all of which allow for hundreds more channels and viewing choices.
           Still, don’t write off AMC, or the eight other daytime soaps left as of this writing, just yet. As cable networks fractured the viewing market, network execs have claimed that a show’s demographics (i.e., who is watching) are more important than the total number of viewers. So as long as AMC continues to reach the fabled "women 18-49 years of age demo," we’ll still be able to call Pine Valley our second home. And now, some AMC tidbits.

In 1994, when the soap celebrated its 25th anniversary, creator Nixon estimated it had shot 6,500 episodes. Almost 10 years later, that figure has topped 8,500. Each year, AMC shoots roughly 260 episodes.

AMC was the first soap, in 1996, to offer viewers a recap of previous scenes at the start of the show, and to end with a preview of coming attractions. The other ABC soaps (One Life to Live and General Hospital) adopted the practice soon after.

Soaps have a history of disappearing characters, characters that return from the dead, and basically characters that do anything the writers want them to do to facilitate the often convoluted plots. This kind of behavior would never be tolerated in prime time, but soap audiences are always open to a favorite character making a miraculous return.
            One such incident became a running joke to AMC fans. Bobby Martin, the younger Martin son, was seen briefly in 1970, the show’s first year. He went to camp one summer, never returned, and was never mentioned again by his parents, Ruth and Joe, or his brother, Tad. Until…
           About 20 years later Opal Gardner Purdy (soon to add Cortlandt to her name), Tad’s real mother, came to town and stayed with the Martins for a bit. At one point, she got locked in the attic, where, bored and looking around, she found a skeleton wearing a cap that had "Bobby" written on it. Don’t laugh — that’s more closure than many soap characters get!

The outdoor shots for Pine Valley University were shot at Princeton University in New Jersey.

It’s pretty hard to picture country gal Opal on the runways of Paris, but her current portrayer, Jill Larson (1989-present) lived in Paris for a while, and modeled in such magazines as Mademoiselle and Marie Claire. Jill can also legally officiate at marriages, and did so for her sister.

Sorry, you didn’t get the part: The more famous celebrities who auditioned for AMC but were not cast include Julianna Margulies (she auditioned for the role of Dr. Maria Santos, which eventually went to Eva La Rue); Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) who went for the part of Brian Bodine, Hayley’s first love (eventually played by Gregory Gordon in 1990-91; his replacement, Matt Borlenghi, popularized the role from 1991-93); and Julia Roberts , who tried out for the role of Cliff Warner’s sister Linda, which eventually went to Melissa Leo (Homicide) in 1984-'85.

The show’s oldest set, the Martin house, was destroyed by plot machinations: a huge tornado hit Pine Valley in 1994, impacting many different plots; Tad Martin was knocked unconscious and visited his dead sister Jenny (played by original Kim Delaney) in heaven.

James Patrick Stuart played the nefarious Will Cortlandt from 1989-1992; his father is Chad Stuart, the Chad of Chad and Jeremy, a popular folk duo of the 1960s ("Yesterday’s Gone," "Distant Shores").

One of many AMC alumna who went on to even greater fame, Amanda Bearse, who played Amanda Cousins from 1982-84, became a prime-time staple for a decade as the neurotic neighbor to the Bundy family, Marcy D’Arcy, on Married with Children (1987-1997).

Marj Dusay (Vanessa Cortlandt, 1999-2002) stole Spock’s brain on the original Star Trek episode that aired September 20, 1968. Dusay has appeared in literally dozens of classic TV shows — she played Blair’s mom on Facts of Life — and is currently mixing things up on The Guiding Light.

This might explain why David Canary (Adam and Stuart Chandler, 1983-present) plays a dual role so well: his father and uncle are identical twins.

Canary is a descendent of Calamity Jane (born Martha Jane Canary). Ruth Warrick, who plays the wealthy and connected Phoebe Wallingford (one of the show’s few original characters still in the cast) is related to Daniel Boone and can trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower.

AMC’s famous fans include Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett, both of whom have appeared on the show.