Days of Our Lives: Complete Family Album, The - Softcover

Zenka, Lorraine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006098712X ISBN 13: 9780060987121

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1996

Synopsis

For three decades, Salem has been a second home to millions of devotees of Days of Our Lives, one of the most popular daytime dramas ever aired on television. Here, at last, is a richly detailed, lavishly illustrated appreciation of the beloved show, prepared in full cooperation with its producers. Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album traces the intricate life-paths of the many characters who have inhabited Salem and chronicles the show's many innovations, from the first episode of any soap opera to appear in color to the first exorcism of the Devil on daytime TV. Here is a commemorative collection of memories, facts and images that every Days fan will treasure always.

Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album includes:

• A dramatic account of Days' intricate plot line, from the '60s through the '90s
• Hundreds of photos and video images -- many never seen before -- from the producers' archives
• Profiles of all the leading characters and the actors who have played them
• Former cast members' reminiscences of their time in Salem
• Portraits of Days' most memorable couples, from Tom and Alice Horton to Bo and Hope
• Rare glimpses of what it's really like on the set and behind the scenes of Days
• In-depth interviews with executive producer Ken Corday and other backstage talents who have guided Days through its first 30 years

This beautiful keepsake volume gathers together the history, the people and the magic of Days of Our Lives. Anyone who has ever been touched by the magic will cherish this book.

About this title

About the Author

Lorraine Zenka is the author of the New York Times bestseller Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album. She is a West Coast editor of Soap Opera Update, and her work has also appeared in Mademoiselle, People, and Women's World.

From the Back Cover

For three decades, Salem has been a second home to millions of devotees of Days of Our Lives, one of the most popular daytime dramas ever aired on television. Here, at last, is a richly detailed, lavishly illustrated appreciation of the beloved show, prepared in full cooperation with its producers. Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album traces the intricate life-paths of the many characters who have inhabited Salem and chronicles the show's many innovations, from the first episode of any soap opera to appear in color to the first exorcism of the Devil on daytime TV. Here is a commemorative collection of memories, facts and images that every Days fan will treasure always.

Days of Our Lives: The Complete Family Album includes:

• A dramatic account of Days' intricate plot line, from the '60s through the '90s
• Hundreds of photos and video images -- many never seen before -- from the producers' archives
• Profiles of all the leading characters and the actors who have played them
• Former cast members' reminiscences of their time in Salem
• Portraits of Days' most memorable couples, from Tom and Alice Horton to Bo and Hope
• Rare glimpses of what it's really like on the set and behind the scenes of Days
• In-depth interviews with executive producer Ken Corday and other backstage talents who have guided Days through its first 30 years

This beautiful keepsake volume gathers together the history, the people and the magic of Days of Our Lives. Anyone who has ever been touched by the magic will cherish this book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Dedication

Ted and Betty Corday, in creating Days of Our Lives, produced more than a daytime drama. With Irna Phillips, they set into motion a living monument to family love, devotion, and traditional values.

Ted Corday began his career in the entertainment industry in the 1930s when he became a stage manager on Broadway. He later directed many theater productions there too, including Cabin in the Sky and Porgy & Bess. After being discharged from the Army Signal Corps as captain in 1945, Corday took his talent to the national radio networks, where he directed several major productions, including Gangbusters and The Shadow.

In the late forties and early fifties, Corday became a director for CBS radio and was the first to direct the new radio soap opera The Guiding Light. In 1952, Corday directed the same script daily on radio and at the CBS Television Center, where Guiding Light aired live on national television. It was during this time that he entered into a working relationship with Irna Phillips.

In 1956, Corday helped Phillips create and bring As the World Turns to CBS Television as a half-hour soap opera that he directed and produced. His daily working relationship with Phillips thrived throughout the next ten years. During this time he became acquainted with two of Phillips' brightest scriptwriters, Agnes Nixon and Bill Bell. Each was writing either Guiding Light or As the World Turns.

The original idea for Days of Our Lives was conceived in one of many informal discussions between the Cordays and Phillips on the porch of a Southampton, Long Island, home in the early sixties. At the time, Corday was producing As the World Turns. Phillips was head writer on that show and had created Guiding Light, Another World, and was co-creating Days of Our Lives. (Phillips has been gone twenty years, but one-third of the daytime dramas still on the air are ones she created.)

On November 8, 1965, Days debuted on NBC. It was the first soap opera to be broadcast in color, and the first set in the rural Midwest.

Ted Corday died in July 1966, leaving his legacy to his wife, Betty, who had been a producer of the radio soap operas Young Dr. Malone and Pepper Young's Family. Betty Corday ran the show from 1966 until she retired in 1985 and stayed with the show until she died in 1987.

Their son, Ken Corday, began working on the show after college in 1980. Today he is the executive producer.

Ted and Betty Corday received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Daytime Television from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences this year at the Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony held in New York City. Ken proudly accepted the award on their behalf.

Bill Bell, who was head writer for Days of Our Lives from 1966 to 1973, noted: "I worked with Ted and Betty, these extremely talented people, over a continuous span of sixteen years--nine with Ted on As the World Turns and seven years with Betty, who carried on for Ted on Days of Our Lives. These were very exciting years and Days became the top daytime show just four years after its inception.

"I knew Ted and Betty very well," Bell continued. "Ted was a superb producer and director whose unique rapport and sensitivity with actors is legendary. His ability to extract every ounce of drama and emotion from the written word was a writer's dream. Betty, partner of Ted, was an equally dedicated mother and writer and producer and a very powerful force in her own right. Each, the ultimate complement of the other. They were very precious to each other and to all of us who knew them. Betty and Ted, I will never forget you, not ever in all the days of my life."

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006098712X
• ISBN 13: 9780060987121
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288