A soap opera, daytime drama, or soap for short, is typically a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by "horse opera", a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns.
Guiding Light is an American radio and television soap opera. Guiding Light aired on CBS for 57 years between June 30, 1952, and September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio between January 25, 1937, and June 29, 1956. With 72 years of radio and television runs, Guiding Light is the longest-running soap opera, ahead of General Hospital, and is the fifth-longest-running program in all of broadcast history; only the American country music radio program Grand Ole Opry, the BBC religious program The Daily Service (1928), the CBS religious program Music and the Spoken Word (1929), and the Norwegian children's radio program Lørdagsbarnetimen (1924–2010) have been on the air longer.
Irna Phillips was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent and actress. She is best remembered for pioneering a format of the daytime soap opera in the United States geared specifically toward women. Phillips created, produced, and wrote several radio and television daytime serials throughout her career, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the American daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon, William J. Bell and Ted Corday.
Deidre Hall is an American actress and model. She is best known for her portrayal of Marlena Evans on the NBC/Peacock daytime drama Days of Our Lives, whom she has played for over 45 years.
Frances Reid was an American dramatic actress. Reid acted on television for nearly all of the second half of the 20th century. Her career continued into the early 2000s.
General Hospital is an American daytime television soap opera. It is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running American soap opera in production, and the second in American history after Guiding Light. Concurrently, it is the world's third longest-running scripted drama series in production after British serials The Archers and Coronation Street, as well as the world's second-longest-running televised soap opera still in production. General Hospital premiered on the ABC television network on April 1, 1963. General Hospital is the longest-running serial produced in Hollywood, and the longest-running entertainment program in ABC television history. It holds the record for most Daytime Emmy Awards for Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, with 14 wins.
Portia Faces Life is an American soap opera first broadcast as a radio series from 1940 to 1953, and then on television for a single season in the mid-1950s. It began in syndication on April 1, 1940, and was broadcast on some stations that carried NBC programs, although it does not seem to have been an official part of that network's programming. The original title was Portia Blake Faces Life.
Donald Francis Michael Hastings is an American actor, singer, and writer. He is best known for his 50-year role as Dr. Robert "Bob" Hughes on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. For his work on As the World Turns, Hastings received an Editor's Award at the Soap Opera Digest Awards in 1998 and a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. In the 1940s, he appeared on Broadway in I Remember Mama, On Whitman Avenue, A Young Man's Fancy, and Summer and Smoke. He also starred as the Video Ranger on DuMont's Captain Video and His Video Rangers and as Jack Lane on the CBS soap opera The Edge of Night.
The Brighter Day is an American daytime soap opera which aired on CBS from January 4, 1954, to September 28, 1962. Originally created for NBC Radio by Irna Phillips in 1948, the radio and television versions ran simultaneously from 1954–56. Set in New Hope, Wisconsin, the series revolved around Reverend Richard Dennis and his four children, Althea, Patsy, Babby and Grayling.
Kathleen Noone is an American actress. She began her career as a singer in nightclubs and performed in musicals off-Broadway before making her television debut in the CBS daytime soap opera, As the World Turns (1975–1976).
Carlton Errol Morse was a Louisiana-born producer/journalist best known for his creation of the radio serial One Man's Family, which debuted in 1932 and ran until 1959 as one of the most popular as well as long-running radio soap operas of the time. He also was responsible for the radio serial I Love a Mystery. A radio legend, he experimented with television and published three novels. Morse is considered by many to be one of the best radio scriptwriters.
Hawkins Falls, Population 6200 is an American television soap opera that was broadcast in the 1950s, live from Chicago. Though it was not the first original (non-radio-derived) soap opera on American TV, it was the first to be successful, running for more than five years.
Daytime television is the general term for television programs produced for broadcast during the daytime hours on weekdays; programs broadcast in the daypart historically have been programmed to appeal to a female audience.
Melville Brandt was an actor and NBC staff announcer.
Roy William Winsor was an American soap opera writer, creator, producer and mystery novelist. He created three of the longest running soap operas in US television history.
John Larkin was an American actor whose nearly 30-year career was capped by his 1950s portrayal of two fictional criminal attorneys – Perry Mason on radio and Mike Karr on television daytime drama The Edge of Night. After having acted in an estimated 7,500 dramatic shows on radio, he devoted his final decade to television and, from April 1962 to January 1965, was a key member of the supporting cast in two prime-time series and made at least twenty major guest-starring appearances in many of the top drama series of the period.
Days of Our Lives is an American television soap opera that aired on the network NBC from 1965 to 2022 and currently streams new episodes on Peacock. The soap is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday since November 8, 1965. A co-production of Corday Productions and Sony Pictures Television, the series was created by husband-and-wife team Ted Corday and Betty Corday. During Days of Our Lives' early years, Irna Phillips served as a story editor for the program and many of the show's earliest storylines were written by William J. Bell, who would depart the series in 1975 to focus full-time on The Young and the Restless, which he created for CBS in 1973. Following the 2007 cancellation of Passions, Days of Our Lives remained the only soap opera airing on NBC. On August 3, 2022, NBCUniversal announced that it would relocate the series exclusively to its Peacock streaming service beginning September 12 after 57 years on the network and leaving NBC as the only Big Three network without a daytime serial.
Michael Raffetto was an American radio actor who starred as Paul Barbour (1932–1956) in the NBC Radio series One Man's Family and as Jack Packard in I Love a Mystery during the heyday of radio in the 1930s and 1940s.
Kitty Foyle is an American old-time radio and television soap opera originally aired during the 1940s and 1950s that was based on the 1940 film of the same name starring Ginger Rogers. Kitty Foyle was created by soap opera mogul Irna Phillips of Guiding Light fame and produced by daytime radio monarchs Frank and Anne Hummert of Helen Trent recognition. The program originally starred Julie Stevens in the title role of Kitty Foyle on radio. On television, the title role was portrayed by Kathleen Murray.
