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This article is about the history of As the World Turns (ATWT), the second longest-running American television soap opera.
1960 - 1969
As the show moved into the 1960s, Penny (Rosemary Prinz) found love with Jeff Baker (Mark Rydell), but he died in a horrible accident early in the new decade. Don married Janice Turner Whipple, but Nancy was strongly opposed to the marriage so he was forced to move away to Texas. Bob (who, by this time, was being played by Don Hastings) fell in love with schemer Lisa Miller (Eileen Fulton). Bob had become a doctor, and Lisa had no desire to stay home, waiting for her husband, so she had an affair, despite recently giving birth to a son. Bob divorced her, and Lisa became a pariah, as dictated by most of the town (headed by Nancy Hughes). She left for a two year span (her son, Tom, stayed with the Hughes family), and came back to Oakdale in 1966. By this time, she was newly rich, and was suddenly interested in her ex-husband when he found new love with Sandra McGuire (Dagne Crane).
The show owes a great deal of its early success to the fascination the tortured romance of Penny and Jeff held for viewers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were one of the first young couples to find broad support from daytime viewers. When Jeff was killed in a car crash (Mark Rydell wanted to move behind the camera; he would go on to become a major film director), CBS was flooded with grief-stricken telegrams, phone calls and letters. No less than TV Guide called the incident, "the car accident that shook the nation."
Another major story through the 60's was the baby drama of Ellen Lowell (Patricia Bruder). Ellen became pregnant out of wedlock and due to the societal pressures of the day, reluctnantly gave her child up for adoption. The loss haunted Ellen and several years later she tracked down her baby boy (Dan) living with a doctor named David Stewart (Henderson Forsythe). Desperate to get close to her son, Ellen took a job as Dan's nanny. Soon after, David's wife died and he began to fall for Ellen. Although there was considerable fallout when David and Dan learned Ellen was Dan's natural mother, Ellen and David eventually married and were happy for many years until David's death in 1991. Bruder would stay with the show until 1995, when a mass wave of casting cuts banished her reduced her to appearing only on the occasional holiday. She was later removed from the canvas completely, and hasn't been mentioned in dialogue for at least five years.
But as times changed, it was the character of Lisa Miller Hughes, however, who made the show a must-watch sensation through the 1960s. The role made Lisa's portrayer, Eileen Fulton, one of the first daytime actresses to be widely known outside the medium, and this success helped her to launch a successful singing career. Although Lisa's misdeeds seem tame now, behavior such as exploiting her pregnancy to duck household chores, attempting to drive Grandpa Hughes out of the family home, and paying a maid to clean her house (while claiming credit for the work) outraged housewives of the era. Lisa's machinations inspired such a degree of emotional involvement among fans that Fulton began to find herself accosted in public places by overzealous As the World Turns viewers eager to give her a piece of their mind over her infidelity to "Bob" and neglect of little "Tommy". While this may be a testimony both to Fulton's acting ability and Irna Phillips's careful, hyper-realistic storytelling, threats of physical assault prompted Fulton to hire the services of a bodyguard to accompany her around New York. In 1965, during the height of Lisa's fame, CBS (hoping to cash in on the success of ABC's nighttime soap Peyton Place), made Fulton the star of a short-lived nighttime As the World Turns spinoff entitled Our Private World.
While Lisa was a vixen during her formative years in Oakdale, eventually everyone (including Nancy Hughes) forgave her for her past transgressions, and she has reformed into a very valuable (albeit meddling) member of Oakdale society (she currently owns half the stake in a boutique, Fashions as well as a swanky restaurant, The Mona Lisa, and a hotel, The Lakeview.)
ATWT also gained a place in national history in November 1963 when CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite interrupted the program to announce that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
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