EntertainmentSoap Ho...

Related Articles

EntertainmentSoap Biography

American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 13 September 1977 until 20 April 1981. The show was created as a night-time parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the shows story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping. The show was created, written, and executive produced by Susan Harris, and also executive produced by Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas. Each returning season was preceded by a 90-minute retrospective of the previous season. The show aired 85 episodes over the course of four seasons. Eight of these (including the final four) aired as one-hour episodes during the original run on ABC. These hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication. Like most sitcoms of the era, Soap was videotaped rather than filmed, but this coincidentally helped further its emulation of the daytime soap opera format, as most such productions were also videotaped. The show starred Katherine Helmond and Cathryn Damon as sisters/matriarchs of their own families. The cast also included three former soap opera actors. Robert Mandan (Chester Tate) had previously appeared on Search for Tomorrow as a leading man for Mary Stuart, and Donnelly Rhodes (Dutch Leitner) had played the first husband of Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless. Arthur Peterson Jr. ("The Major") played Rev. John Ruthledge in the radio version of Guiding Light. Soap won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Robert Guillaume) in 1979, and for Outstanding Art Direction in a Comedy Series in 1978. At the 1981 Golden Globe Awards, Katherine Helmond won Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series—Musical/Comedy. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less