Serial Stars

From my earliest days, I remember sitting at my mother’s feet while she did the ironing and watched her soaps.  I am a third generation CBS television soap watcher.  I have not watched for 20+ years, but I do know that when I see one of my old standards, many of the key players are still at it.  My mother and paternal grandmother watched Love is a Many Splendored Thing, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, Secret Storm, and The Edge of Night (which later moved to ABC). I, in turn, added Search for Tomorrow and The Young and the Restless to my daily watching fare in my later high school and college years.

 

So what does this have to do with movies? Last night, I was surfing YouTube© and joyously found the opening sequences for these shows and spent several minutes recounting those days, placing myself, once again, at my mother’s feet.

Once again, I ask, what does this have to do with movies?  Thinking about what I might write about this week, I decided to go away from my idea list and write about some of those daily actors and actresses who made it from the small screen to the big screen.  There are hundreds, if you even began an attempt at a complete list, but once in a while, there is a small handful that makes it into your memory.  Ever since Joan Crawford filled in for her daughter, Christina, on Secret Storm, there has been the movement for movie stars to grace the soaps, but that is a bit easier. Kathy Bates, Demi Moore, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Pitt, and the list goes on and on and on… are just the start of a mega-list of who started out on the small screen.

Many soap opera stars became stars in their own right.  They went on to do prime time series television and made for television movies.  That list would also be a ‘mile long.’  But since I watched the CBS line-up, here are a few of the ‘big cross-overs’ that still standout for me, (as I am sure that my toddler memory has ‘left the building’):

As the World Turns

William Fichtner

Ming Na

Julianne Moore

Meg Ryan

The Guiding Light

Kevin Bacon

And, already a star, the lovely Patricia Barry (of my blog 2-17-12)

A few old savings...

As always, this blog is to get your memory jogging, too.  It is not for telling my why your soaps were better than these and why you feel that way. It is to share memories. If you were ever a soap watcher, who do you remember before they ‘were stars’?