A friend of mine had an iconic role for a year on the soap opera Guiding Light. I asked him once, what it was like. "It's hard," he said. "Really, really hard. The hours are long, and it's difficult to do this kind of acting. There's no preparation — it's just 'action!' and then you've suddenly got to convincingly be the guy who killed his twin brother and stole his wife. Or whatever." Now, this is a super talented actor — I've seen him do all kinds of theatre — everything from The Sound Of Music to How I Learned To Drive. It was the first time I thought about soaps as something other than camp — though I watched them for years, off an on (I'm an AMC, OLTL, and GH, fan myself). Ever since then, soap operas have always impressed me. The amount of creative energy expended is breathtaking. Every day, a full hour of scheming, kidnapping, possession, passion(s), adultery, amnesia, millionaires (somehow no one is richer than millions), family legacies, heaving bosoms, raised eyebrows, and groundbreaking storylines. Imagine writing all that, let alone acting it. And watching it! Please — the first time I ran into a soap actor on the street in NYC, it was all I could do not to yell, "Edmund! Maddie is not Dmitri's baby!!"

All this is to say that the longest one of these bubbly marvels, Guiding Light (it was The Guiding Light prior to 1972), is ending its seventy-two year run in September. While it's too much to ask that the residents of Five Points, Selby Flats, and Springfield rest in peace — and why would we want them to? — here's hoping their final storylines are filled with the drama and delightful histrionics we've come to expect, and love. And please, listen to the clip from 1941 — that's right, NINETEEN FORTY ONE — we're talking BEFORE THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. And before Roger Thorpe.

Tags: Guiding Light