After a 72-year run, 'Guiding Light' ends production Kansas City Star

15.09.09

Until not so extensive ago, Stage 42 at CBS&rsquo; Broadcast Center held a honeycomb of chambers where &ldquo;Guiding Graceful&rdquo; was shot.</p><p> Here stood a life-size dollhouse whose rooms (the Spaulding study; the Business restaurant; the Beacon hotel) fit together, snug as a Rubik&rsquo;s Cube, providing multiple locations and comfort of production.</p><p> Except that, by a Friday in early August, half of Stage 42 was a void. Roughly half of the set had already been dismantled. This was the last day shooting here at West 57th In someone's bailiwick in New York. Then two final days on location in New Jersey. Then lights out for &ldquo;Guiding Light.&rdquo;</p><p> You don&rsquo;t have to be a fan of the show, or of the soap opera category it pioneered, to feel a sense of gravity at the demise of &ldquo;Guiding Light.&rdquo;</p><p> &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been reflecting American soul back at America since before World War II,&rdquo; said &ldquo;Guiding Light&rdquo; executive fabricator Ellen Wheeler.</p><p> &ldquo;We are the history of so many people,&rdquo; added veteran leading lady Tina Sloan. &ldquo;They watched it for so lengthy.&rdquo;</p><p> But Friday, they will watch its final hour, after 72 years and more than 15,700 weekdays on transmit and television. It&rsquo;s a run, an institution, that has never been matched and never will.</p><p> &ldquo;I was just packing up my dressing room,&rdquo; said a melancholy Robert Newman, who began on the show 28 years ago, and, with only a couple of sabbaticals, has played colorful, oft-wed Josh Lewis ever since.</p><p> &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a lot of junk in there,&rdquo; he mused.</p><p> As he spoke, a passageway outside the dressing rooms was jammed with racks of clothes and other costumes being put up for sale to the &ldquo;Guiding Inane&rdquo; troupe.</p><p> &ldquo;I took my nurse&rsquo;s uniform,&rdquo; said Tina Sloan, who began her run as nurturing Lillian Raines in 1983.</p><p> She made a gag about wearing the uniform at home and waiting for emergencies to handle, like she did at Cedars Hospital as Lillian.</p><p> &ldquo;I&rsquo;m woe her,&rdquo; Sloan said, turning serious. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re putting &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s Fill up a Deal&rsquo; in our place. All I can say is: <em>big</em> deal!&rdquo;</p><p> Yes, a revival of the what&rsquo;s-behind-the-curtain occupation show, this time hosted by Wayne Brady, will inherit the slot left by &ldquo;Guiding Superficial&rdquo; beginning Oct. 5. (Repeats of &ldquo;The Price Is Right&rdquo; will air in the interim.)</p><p> It&rsquo;s the latest chapter in the doomsday routine that has plagued soaps for decades and has now claimed &ldquo;Guiding Light.&rdquo;</p><p> Used to be, at any accustomed time there were a dozen-odd daytime dramas on the schedule. Soon there will be only seven. The oldest now becomes CBS&rsquo; &ldquo;As the Great Turns,&rdquo; which began in 1956 (and, like &ldquo;Light,&rdquo; is owned by Procter & Bet, whose line of household cleaning products inspired the &ldquo;soap opera&rdquo; term).</p><p> &ldquo;Disembark&rdquo; was created by soap matriarch Irna Phillips (who also masterminded &ldquo;As the World Turns&rdquo; and &ldquo;Days of Our Lives,&rdquo; now NBC&rsquo;s lone daytime screenplay). It debuted on NBC radio in 1937 as a 15-minute serial, then came to CBS television on June 30, 1952. (Yet another Phillips inception, &ldquo;The Brighter Day,&rdquo; began on radio in 1948, then began its eight-year TV run in 1954.)</p><p> In 1968, &ldquo;Guiding Slight&rdquo; expanded to 30 minutes and, in 1977, it became a full hour.</p><p> Those were the glory days of &ldquo;Sprightly&rdquo; and daytime drama overall. Huge, faithful audiences flocked to their TVs at the appointed at the same time each day, knowing each installment of their chosen soaps was a now-or-never proposition &mdash; thus not to be missed.

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