SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
It's time now for some stories.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DAYS OF OUR LIVES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
SIMON: Mickey Horton has lost his memory. Will he ever find his way home? Bo Brady's father isn't Mr. Brady. He's not even Irish. Will Hope still love him? The evil Stefano DiMera is dead. Wait, no, he's alive. No, no, he's dead. Wait, wait, wrong. The Phoenix has risen again. Soap operas have kept viewers riveted for generations.
NATALIE MOORE, BYLINE: Channel 7, and my favorite was "All My Children."
SIMON: Can you do the theme?
MOORE: (Vocalizing). That sounds so bad.
SIMON: This is Natalie Moore, host and writer of the latest season of the WBEZ podcast Making. It's called Stories Without End, and it's all about the soaps - soap operas. Natalie, thanks very much for being with us.
MOORE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: You know, and like so many other great achievements of civilization - skyscrapers, splitting the atom and mustard-only on hot dogs - what we call soap operas got their start in Chicago, didn't they?
MOORE: They started on radio in 1930 on WGN, and some executives asked a woman named Irna Phillips if she would write a daily scripted series, and it was called "Painted Dreams."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PAINTED DREAMS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Daughter of Maida White Robert (ph) held on suspicion of murder. They don't say why.
MOORE: And then there's one soap that made the transition from radio to television, and that is the "Guiding Light" in 1952, and then it went off the air on CBS in 2009.
SIMON: Nowadays, of course, series are maybe, you know, eight episodes. There's a finite limit on it, and they take off the summer. That was not true of the soaps, was it?
MOORE: No. No, it wasn't. There are no reruns in soaps, and I think just because they started as serials, they just kept going.
SIMON: I mean, arguably, as much as figures like Jack Benny or Edward R. Murrow, they created network television.
MOORE: They did, and soaps have been looked down upon as this low-brow form of entertainment. And that's part of the reason they really haven't gotten their due. And I'm also making the argument that soaps have been much more ahead of its time on social issues than prime time. They got to do subversive story lines around abortion, around queer representation, around HIV and AIDS.
SIMON: Tell us about that. Let's take it one by one. Abortion, for example.
MOORE: This is my favorite one to talk about because so many people look to "Maude," the Norman Lear show, as being the first abortion on television in the 1970s. And there was an abortion on "Another World" in 1964. Also, Erica Kane had an abortion on "All My Children" in 1971. She was married, and she was a model, and she said, I don't want to be a mother. Agnes Nixon, who's also a soap legend and a protege of Irna Phillips, wrote that a lot of people were not happy in the pro-choice movement about Erica Kane as someone who had an abortion because she was a vixen. She didn't fit this ideal of a downtrodden woman who didn't have enough options.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ALL MY CHILDREN")
EDEN RIEGEL: (As Bianca Montgomery) Have you always loved me, Mom? Have you?
SUSAN LUCCI: (As Erica Kane) How could you even ask me a question like that?
SIMON: Let me ask you about a character in "All My Children," Erica's daughter Bianca Montgomery.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ALL MY CHILDREN")
RIEGEL: (As Bianca Montgomery) Do you love me now?
LUCCI: (As Erica Kane) Bianca.
RIEGEL: (As Bianca Montgomery) Do you?
LUCCI: (As Erica Kane) Yes.
RIEGEL: (As Bianca Montgomery) I'm gay.
SIMON: This was a line in the days when if somebody said, I'm gay, it was uttered below their breath, wasn't it?
MOORE: Yes, and what is really significant here is that Erica Kane's daughter, Bianca, was a member of the core family. The audience had seen Bianca be born on screen in 1988. You know, there's this really strong intergenerational quality of soaps. We grow to care about these characters. And the actress who played Bianca talked about a friend of hers coming out to his grandmother. And the grandmother - he was worried. The grandmother said, oh, like Bianca. That's great.
SIMON: Tell us about what I'll refer to as the storytelling arc that some of the soaps went through, portraying Black characters.
MOORE: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were on the "Guiding Light," and Irna Phillips said that she wanted to have storylines about segregation, but the network wouldn't go for it. Agnes Nixon decided to introduce a race storyline as one of the inaugural storylines on "One Life to Live" in 1968. Black characters have been on soaps for a long time, but there's also been this feeling that they have been sidekicks and not always front and center. "Young And The Restless" had really popular characters in the '90s that were front and center, and now we have not only a new soap opera on CBS, but it is about a Black core family - "Beyond The Gates."
SIMON: A gated community in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., right?
MOORE: Yes, I'm guessing that is Potomac, Maryland.
SIMON: Let me ask about some of the couples who have appeared on soaps before us - Luke and Laura, Angie and Jess, Victor and Nikki, Eden and Cruz, Marlena and Roman. But also, I mean, good twins, evil twins, baby swaps, amnesia, serial killers, clones, aliens, zombies. And that epic moment from "Days Of Our Lives" in the 1990s, and Marlena's possession by the Devil.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DAYS OF OUR LIVES")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As the Devil) I will use this body to destroy everyone in Salem.
SIMON: Now, was this jumping the shark, as they say, in the sitcom business?
MOORE: It actually wasn't (laughter). I'm making this heavy argument about the social significance, the financial significance of daytime soaps, but they're also campy, and they have to have worlds of drama and some absurdity. That's also a part of the genre. I interviewed Deidre Hall, who played Marlena, and even though it was over the top, they talked about really doing it with sensitivity and care, in that it wasn't a mockery. It was showing the kind of havoc that could be wreaked on this fictional town of Salem.
SIMON: Natalie, you're a very serious and respected news person. Do you still watch the soaps?
MOORE: Yeah, I do. This passion project stems from the love that I still have. And, you know, this morning, I was cooking dinner, getting ahead of the day, and I was able to have yesterday's episode of "General Hospital" on in the background.
SIMON: Well, thank you for making time for us, Natalie Moore. And I hope you don't get killed off by your evil twin brought back to life and led to be possessed by the devil.
MOORE: Thank you. I hope not, too.
SIMON: That's Natalie Moore, host and writer of the latest season of the WBEZ podcast Making. It's called Stories Without End, and it's all about soap operas. Natalie, thanks so much for being with us.
MOORE: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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