If you probe deep enough, it seems that almost every mystery and murder in Salem can be connected to André DiMera. While being a plague on the residents of Salem, André usually pins all of the blame on his identical cousin, Tony DiMera (both characters played by Thaao Penghlis, who also appeared in daytime’s Santa Barbara and General Hospital).
André first appeared on Days of Our Lives in 1983, when Stefano summoned him to Salem to undergo plastic surgery and replace his son, Tony, and be the perfect evil henchman. For over 20 years, André masqueraded as Tony and orchestrated some of the most memorable storylines, including the Salem Stalker, Aremid, the Salem Strangler, Melaswen, and a major part of the Brady-DiMera Feud.
SoapCentral is home to a more in depth history of the character.
Suds and Duds will be an occasional feature profiling defunct soap operas
Texas, a spin-off of NBC’s Another World, aired for a little over two years beginning in August of 1980. The main original focus of Texas was Iris, Beverley McKinsey’s character from Another World, who moved from Bay City to Houston. However, McKinsey parted the show half-way through its run in 1981. Initially, the Iris spin-off concept was to be named Reunion, but network executives wanted a name that would tie it to popular prime-time weekly soap opera, Dallas.
McKinsey as Iris on the cover of Starweek magazine
Mac, a long time Another World favorite played by Douglass Watson, appeared as a guest star early in Texas’s run.
In addition to many crossover guest stars from Another World. Texas also featured cameo appearances from current Country and Western music acts (including Johnny Paycheck) and politicians, Governor Nigh of Oklahoma and William Hobby, Jr. Lt Gov of Texas.
Ultimately, it was cancelled due to poor ratings, partly because it aired opposite General Hospital whose popularity was at an all-time high. In the end, the spin-off wasn’t as successful as the previous Another World spin-off, Somerset, from the 1970’s, and it wasn’t as controversial and groundbreaking as its parent show.
It was always a battle. In 1968 we wrote a story line that had one of our characters, Tommy Horton, return from Vietnam with amnesia and post-traumatic stress disorder. War was completely raging at the time, and the network wouldn’t let us mention it in any way whatsoever. They said, “No, let’s just say that he came back from Korea.” We said, “Wait, Korea was 1950 … this is 1968!” But they insisted that we couldn’t talk about Vietnam. So he came back from Korea. -Ken Corday
In a 2011 interview with Mental Floss magazine titled “Sex & Death in the Afternoon,” Ken Corday, Days of Our Lives producer (and son of DOOL creators, Betty and Ted Corday), mentioned that soap writers and producers always had to deal with interference from the networks. Even though soap operas were looked down on as an unsophisticated, low-brow medium, soaps dealt with controversial topics and current events.
photo: Tom (Tommy) Horton, jr – portrayed by John Lupton
Sister Colleen ministers to an injured Santo DiMera
During the Summer of 2007, Days of Our Lives featured an extended flashback series focusing on Colleen Brady and Santo DiMera. The storyline depicted the beginning of the Brady/DiMera Feud, and it paralleled the story of contemporary characters, E.J. DiMera and Sami Brady (the characters were also portrayed by E.J. and Sami actors James Scott and Allison Sweeny).
After Santo was injured in a pub brawl in Galway, Ireland. A novice nun named Colleen Brady treated his injuries. We find that Santo is a business man with a son, Stefano, and wife that live in Italy.
Santo and Colleen, who believed that Santo’s wife had died, fell in love and had an affair. When the truth comes out, according to Stefano, Colleen committed suicide by jumping from a cliff that overlooked the ocean (similar to Widow’s Hill storyline in Dark Shadows original series). Santo blamed Colleen’s death on her family, the Bradys, and swore to get vengeance for the loss of the love of his life.
However, Colleen had not died. She went to South America where she gave birth to Santo’s son, John Black. The baby is adopted by the Alamain family.
On his deathbed, Santo learns that the Brady family is living in Salem. He sends word to Stefano to renew the vendetta. This must have been before Stefano’s first appearance in Salem on the January 18, 1982 episode of Days of Our Lives.
Hogan Sheffer created Santo and Colleen during his stint as Head Writer of Days of Our Lives (October 5, 2006 – January 24, 2008). Sheffer also won four Daytime Emmys and was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for his work on As the World Turns.
Suds and Duds will be an occasional feature profiling defunct soap operas
Port Charles was a spin-off of General Hospital that aired from June of 1997 until October of 2003. Unlike traditional open ended soap opera stories, Port Charles was divided into “books” that lasted 13 weeks each. Unlike General Hospital, Port Charles had heavy supernatural themes.
Caleb Morley, Port Charles Vampire
Father Michael Morley (Michael Easton) was introduced to Port Charles during the “Time in a Bottle” story. Eventually, Caleb, the vampire persona was introduced. Like other “Draculas,” Caleb was intense and obsessed. The object of his obsession was Livvie Locke (Kelly Monaco). She looked like his long lost love Olivia (very similar to Dracula and Dark Shadows storylines).
Caleb was apparently killed in several story-arcs, but he kept returning as a main character until Port Charles was cancelled in 2003. During the “Naked Eyes” story arc, Caleb returned to Port Charles under the guise of a rock star named Stephen Clay.
Port Charles even had its own Slayer, Lucy Coe (Lynn Herring). She discovered her family history and some long lost relatives in Transylvania. Lucy, who was descended from a long line of Vampire Slayers, was able to stop Caleb and free Livvie from his dark influence. Lucy was a long time General Hospital character that made the move to the Port Charles spin-off.
Most people know that Barnabas wasn’t in the first episodes of Dark Shadows, but there were no mentions of ghosts, vampires, or other supernatural aspects in the original Dark Shadows proposal. It was nearly six months into the broadcast before the first “ghost” story aired, and over 200 episodes in before Barnabas Collins arrives.
The premiere episode begins with Victoria Winters arriving by train. She comes to Collinsport, Maine to take a position as governess and tutor to David Collins. Victoria hopes to find clues to her identity in Collinsport. As a baby, she was dropped off in a box on the steps of Hammond Foundling Home in New York with a note that said “Her name is Victoria, I can’t take care of her.”
Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) and Vicky Winters (Alexandra Moltke) at the Collinsport Inn coffee shop.
David and Valerie from DOOL was daytime TV’s first interracial couple
Days of Our Lives started to break new ground in the 1976-1977 storyline involving David Banning and Valerie Grant (played by Richard Guthrie and Tina Andrews). However, the producers unfortunately backed away from the story after receiving negative feedback. Some reports even said that Andrews received death threats from racist viewers.
David Banning was the son of longtime DOOL chracter, Julie Olsen Williams. Dr. Tom Horton convinced her to put David up for adoption after the death of his biological father, David Martin. David and Valerie fell in love and got engaged after her family took care of him following a car accident. They later broke off their engagement after David had an affair with Trish Clayton.
Excerpt from a May 24, 1977Los Angeles Times article by by William K. Knoedelseder:
The latest from NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” is that the chaste, year-long engagement of David Banning and Valerie Grant, daytime’s only interracial couple, is kaput. According to the script, the reason for the rift is David’s infidelity. But according to the actors, the reason is real-life racism.
“They’re breaking us up because the storyline is unpopular,” said actor Richard Guthrie (David). “The studio has been getting a lot of hate mail from people threatening to stop watching the show.” “When they get enough of those letters, they respond,” said actress Tina Andrews (Valerie). “One letter said: ‘I hope you’re not going to let that ****** marry that white boy.’ Apparently, they are not. I’m being canned.”
Andrews pointed out that her television parents, Ketty Lester and Lawrence Cook, already have been written out of the script. With both the black storyline and the interracial romance ended, she said, Valerie is expendable.
Spokesmen for NBC in Burbank and the show’s co-executive producer, Wes Kenney, confirmed the couple’s imminent breakup but denied the split was a reaction to unfavorable mail. Kenney said that although mail is read, analyzed, studied for trends in viewer response and discussed with the show’s writers, public reaction has not affected the long-term plans for the romance. “This breakup has been planned from the very beginning. There has been change of direction.”
Kenney said that while “Days” Nielsen ratings have fallen in the last year, from its perennial position in the top three to a current number 7 in a field of 14, the mail reflects a 50/50 split on the subject of David and Valerie.
Guthrie said his personal fan mail ran 50/50 during the “just friends” stage but grew increasingly negative as the relationship warmed up. Currently, he said, his fans are 70% opposed to the romance continuing.
“There’s a logic to the whole thing,” said Kenney. The logic, according to Andrews, is that Salem loses its last black character, daytime TV loses its only major black storyline and interracial romance, and she loses her job. She says she doesn’t need the soap financially. Her main complaint is the way David and Valerie’s story has been presented. What others have called a “delicate and tasteful” handling of the romance, she calls racism, written into the script and practiced on the set.
Six months after the couple became engaged, Andrews asked a writer why David could not kiss Valerie. “I was told it was some kind of policy. I went home that night and thought to myself ‘Kissing can’t be the problem. All the other couples in love on the show kiss. And David had kissed other female characters. What’s wrong with Valerie that would cause such a policy to be put into effect.”
“The problem is that Valerie is black. Well, so is Tina Andrews, black all the time, on screen and off. When you say Davod can’t kiss Valerie because she’s black, you’re saying Richard can’t kiss Tina for the same reason. That’s an insult to everyone concerned.”
“The kissing became a big thing on the set”, Guthrie said. “I remember the day Wes Kenney came back from a meeting with NBC and announced ‘You can kiss!’ It was like the earth shook.” The new permissiveness didn’t last long (three or four kisses over a period of a few months). Both Guthrie and Andrews said the mail was overwhelmingly negative and kissing quickly disappeared from the script.
“After that, we weren’t even allowed to touch,” said Guthrie. “Whenever we inadvertently worked it in, we were told to stop from the control booth. It was ridiculous.” Andrews said: “They would always say ‘Richard, don’t touch her’, never the other way around. Pretty soon we started getting scripts with stage directions like ‘They look at each other warmly, but they do not touch’, underlined five times so we wouldn’t miss it. That offended me as an actress, as a woman, and as a black person.”
Kenney admits the physical aspects of the relationship had been played down in the past, but said the couple had again been allowed to kiss in more recent episodes. Referring to the “no touching” remonstratives, he said if he had seen such directions in the script, he would have taken them out. As co-executive producer, Kenney often edits the scripts before they are given to the actors.
Former head writer Pat Falken Smith, the creator of the interracial romance, disagreed with the young actors’ assessment of the situation. The kissing and touching was played down as a matter of storytelling. “In daytime programming, the drama is much stronger when you don’t show intimate love scenes. If Richard and Tina thought it was unrealistic that a young engaged couple didn’t kiss, that’s tough. It was my story and gratuitous kissing was not part of it. And no actor re-writes me on the set, ever.”
Hopefully, the current producers won’t repeat history by backing away from the 2012-2013 Will Horton and Sonny Kiriakis storyline.
( Image from http://www.jason47.com/ The only image I could find of David and Valerie together, if you have images or video of this “controversial” and history making couple, then please share a link in the comments)
EDIT: Soap Opera Historian reader, Jane, shared a link to this footage of David and Valerie- it should be queued to start at approximately the 9:00min mark
Soap Opera Historian 