The Edge of Night
The Edge of Night
The Edge of Night, one of the top ten longest running soap operas in daytime television history, debuted on April 2, 1956 on CBS, along with As the World Turns. The two shows were the first soaps to air for a full half-hour on a major television network, and the enthusiastic audience response marked a new trend in the orientation of popular television. The Edge of Night's original time slot, 4:30 p.m., inspired the show's title, but the title reflected the content, which was at times graphically violent. While some television critics, including the redoubtable TV Guide, have argued that The Edge of Night was technically a serialized melodrama rather than a soap opera, over its almost three-decade run the show turned to themes most commonly associated with soap opera drama: sex, romance, and family turmoil.
Set in Monticello, a turbulent midwestern town, The Edge of Night revolved around the criminal investigations of Mike Karr and his sometimes unorthodox detective work and courtroom tactics. After the first couple of seasons, Karr married his devoted assistant, Sara Lane, though the writers had her run over by a bus on the February 17, 1961 episode. Lane was the first major soap character to be killed off, and the high realism of the accident—the show was broadcast live until 1975—sent the audience into shock. Thousands of letters and phone calls deluged the network and prompted a televised announcement by Teal Ames and John Larkin, the actors who played Sara and Mike, explaining that Ames was fine in real life and had left the show to pursue other opportunities.
Over the years Mike Karr was played by three different actors—John Larkin from 1956 to 1961; Laurence Hugo from 1962-1971; and Forrest Compton from 1971-1984. Exemplifying a paradox that television audiences have simply come to accept, the three replacements were neither announced nor explained, but did nothing to disturb the sense of realism so central to The Edge of Night's success. By the 1970s, however, the show's writers perhaps did push the limits of believability in the popular Adam-Nicole love story. Nicole (Maeve McGuire; later Jayne Bentzen and Lisa Sloan) had been killed off in a drowning during the explosion of a yacht, only to rejoin the show two years later when it was discovered that in fact she had survived the drowning, joined a gang in France, and suffered a long bout of amnesia before returning to Monticello.
After the show's sponsor, Procter and Gamble, requested a time change in the 1970s, The Edge of Night experienced a ratings slump from which it never recovered. The show moved to ABC on December 1, 1975, the first daytime serial to change networks, but was canceled on December 28, 1984. A few years later it enjoyed a short-lived cult revival in syndication on the USA cable network. Among the sophisticated luminaries who had early on enjoyed some of its 7,420 episodes were Cole Porter, P. G. Wodehouse, Tallulah Bankhead, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
—Michele S. Shauf
Further Reading:
Hyatt, Wesley. The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television. New York, Billboard Books, 1997.
McNeil, Alex. Total Television. New York, Penguin Books, 1996.