I am saddened to learn that the lovely, sophisticated Joan O’Brien passed away on May 5. She was one of the first actresses I ever interviewed and is included in my book, Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema. Joan was part of that cadre of Joan’s (the others being Joan Blackman, Joan Freeman, and Joan Staley) who graced both the big and small screens throughout the 1960s. All four were romanced by Elvis Presley and two of them clowned around with Jerry Lewis while the other two with Don Knotts. O’Brien, though, stood out because she had a charm and vivaciousness and when combined with her beauty and talent, always brightened up any scene she appeared in.
Joan began her career as a vocalist singing with bands, which led to her becoming a regular on Bob Crosby’s daytime variety music program in the mid-1950s. Joan’s beauty and poise caught the attention of Hollywood. She made her film debut in a small MGM programmer Handle with Care (1958) with Dean Jones.
Luck found her way after Tina Louise turned down a lead role opposite Cary Grant in the critically acclaimed, hit military service comedy, Operation Petticoat (1959) also starring Tony Curtis and Dina Merrill. Allegedly, Louise was bothered by the boob jokes, as her busty character had problems passing the seamen in the cramped corridors of a submarine. Joan jumped at the chance and remarked in my book. “I can’t even imagine a young actress at the stage of her career or mine at that particular time refusing a role opposite Cary Grant. First of all, I’ve never seen a bad Cary Grant film. The man had impeccable taste. Second, I was not concerned with the humor or the so-called ‘boob jokes’ in the film because it was all tastefully done. There was nothing vulgar about it and in fact the writers went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for their screenplay.”
Joan is quite amusing as the befuddled nurse causing all sorts of mayhem. New York Magazine described Joan as “luscious” while Variety commented, “O’Brien offers solid support.” On top of her fine notices, the film went on to become the second highest grossing movie of 1959 behind Ben-Hur.
Joan followed up in yet another huge, box office hit, John Wayne’s epic, all-star western The Alamo (1960), which he also directed. She had one of only two major female roles (the other played by Linda Cristal) in this male dominated action flick and, as the mother of a little girl played by John Wayne’s daughter Aissa, was one of the few survivors of the massacre. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Motion Picture and winning one Oscar for Best Sound.
Commenting on John Wayne, the director, Joan said, “John Wayne was just getting his feet wet … He knew how to stage scenes and what to do with the camera, the lighting, and positioning his actors. But he wasn’t very good getting an emotional draw from an actor. Which is unusual because when an actor directs, they usually handle other actors extremely well. I didn’t feel any frustration with him because I felt that my character was truly defined. He also seemed at times somewhat abrupt and impatient with some individuals. I think one of the reasons for that was The Alamo was a project of enormous magnitude. He not only starred in it but also produced and directed it. He had a lot riding on this film. And when you also have money invested in it sometimes it is very difficult to be charming. However, Wayne was never rude with me.”
Aissa liked Joan so much that she asked her father to cast her again as her mother in his very popular western The Comancheros (1961) co-starring Stuart Whitman and Ina Balin. This was Joan’s third huge box office hit in a row. Joan was also very active on TV during this period as well. Very versatile, she could be seen on westerns (Bronco, The Deputy, Bat Masterson, Wagon Train), dramas (M Squad, Markham, The Islanders, Adventures in Paradise, Surfside Six, Bus Stop), and sitcoms (Bringing Up Buddy, Bachelor Father, The Dick Van Dyke Show).
Back on the silver screen, she had a very busy 1962 appearing in the Philippines-set adventure film Samar with George Montgomery and Gilbert Roland; the western Six Black Horses with Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea; and the British comedy We Joined the Navy with Kenneth More.
She ended the year as Jerry Lewis’s leading lady in one of his better received comedies, It’s Only Money. She played a nurse to rich matron Mae Questal trying to help Jerry’s inept detective look for her missing heir. Guess who that turns out to be? Joan fondly recalled, “Jerry Lewis was totally off the wall and we had a lot of fun working on this film. He had me laughing so hard and so long during some scenes we had to stop and start over. We wasted a lot of time and money just cutting up and laughing. He was such a practical joker and had all of us including our director, Frank Tashlin, in stitches. You never knew what Jerry was going to do next.”
In 1963, she once again was cast as a gorgeous nurse who plays hard to get in the hit Elvis Presley musical, It Happened at the World’s Fair. She was the second Joan, after Joan Blackman twice, to be chosen as Elvis’s leading lady. Pilot Elvis loves a challenge and pursues Joan while babysitting a friend’s young daughter at the Fair.
Joan was immediately introduced to Elvis Mania and explained, “When I arrived at the World’s Fair, I saw Elvis whom I had never met before over the heads of all these people. You talk about crowds! It was unbelievable. People everywhere! After we finished the first morning’s sequences, they had an electric car for Elvis and me to use. They had to set up barricades and use hundreds of policemen to hold back the crowds just to get us out of there. We then went for lunch to some building that had this huge empty exhibition hall. They dropped us off, locked the door, and posted more policemen outside.” Joan got to know Elvis very well during the film’s shoot. He told her all about his stint in the service and his experiences in Europe. And he was still at the point where he hadn’t become disenchanted making movies.
Joan’s big screen career then ended abruptly after playing a hip professor who teaches her coeds (Mary Ann Mobley, Nancy Sinatra, and Chris Noel) the art of the Wah-Watusi in the teenage musical comedy, Get Yourself a College Girl (1964). Joan purposely slowed down after that. Four tumultuous marriages that produced two children, a suicide attempt, and other stresses took its toll. After making a few more TV appearances (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Perry Mason, Valentine’s Day), O’Brien retired from acting to concentrate on her singing career and went back to touring with the Harry James Orchestra.
Soon after, she gave that up as well and went into hotel management. She remarried a fifth time in 1979 and that proved to be a charm, as she was with her husband until his passing in 2004.
An Interview with Lighting Director, Dennis Size, Part 3: 1982-86
1982 began on a good note for you when the show received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Scenic Design and you were eligible for the award this year. In my book, I guessed that the show was chosen for the Egyptian Ball sequences.
Dennis Size: That is 100% correct. It was crazy doing those episodes and that Ball went on for days. We unfortunately did not win, and if I remember correctly a few years after that, the Emmy rules changed. It was no longer a single design award, and they broke them out into individual awards for scenic design, lighting design, and costume design.
There was a little gimmick that went on when the Emmy Awards nominations were submitted back then. It does not go on anymore because the Academy has changed the rules and regulations so many times. When you were a voting member of the Academy you had to vote for three different shows in the category or categories that you were eligible to vote in. Obviously, you are going to vote for yourself. To neutralize that, you had to also vote for 2 others. If you didn’t, your vote was disqualified. They figured that this was a fair way of doing it. The more people from your show that become members of the Academy is what guarantees the nomination. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee winning the award, but it will certainly get you nominated because it is how many people voted.
At ABC, the network used to buy memberships for the staff who worked on their soaps. For instance, if 150 people worked on Ryan’s Hope, they could have 150 voting members, if the staff were eligible. Producers would also suggest to you what two other shows you should vote for in your category. They would find out what shows had the most members voting and would suggest voting for the shows that had the least number of members. That way the vote would be nullified because no other votes came in to match what you voted for.
I have been nominated for Emmy Awards many times and won several, but it is such a scam. I no longer submit myself—haven’t for about 15 years – and let whomever I’m working for take care of that task if they feel the project was award worthy. NBC SPORTS submitted me for my work on the Super Bowl three years ago and I won.
Ryan’s Hope was infamous for its constant recasting of major roles, which hurt the show, and it happened once again. Blonde Ann Gillespie was out as Sioban Ryan after only a year and fiery, redheaded newcomer Marg Helgenberger stepped in. Any particular memories about Ann?
Dennis: I remember a scene in the Ryan kitchen between Annie and Helen Gallagher. Ann leaned back a little too far against the stove and the tera cloth bathrobe that she was wearing caught fire. As is the New York City law about special effects and all that, stoves have to have emergency measures. There has to be a stagehand right there with a fire extinguisher. There is a lot of protection that goes on especially from what I heard about Dark Shadows where they were burning things all of the time. So, after the bathrobe catches fire, the prop man ran right over and ripped it off of her. All she has on underneath is a pair of panties. We are all standing there with our mouths hanging on the floor. Annie just tossed it off and said, “Oh, well. That will teach me not to come to the set almost naked anymore.”
What was your impression of Marg?
Dennis: Marg was part an ABC talent initiative where they would hire young actors right out of school and give them jobs. It was essentially like the old studio system where there were contract players and then move on. Marg was stellar and had the chops to stand up to and work with the actresses on the show who were seasoned veterans.
[One of] her first days in the studio was quite a thing. She was in the shower. Roscoe Born played Joe, who I also loved, discovered someone in his home and didn’t know who it was. He enters the bathroom and you see this beautiful silhouette of a woman behind the shower. At that time Standards and Practices was very strong. Marg, of course, was in a body suit but they said you cannot have a naked woman on the show. They told them that she wasn’t naked and that you couldn’t see anything other than form through the steam and heavily frosted glass. One of the electricians on my crew, who also did special effects, was in the shower with her operating a fogger. It became such a big deal and they still insisted that it could not be shown that way because you saw her whole body. We said, “Why would anybody be in the shower with clothes on? Everybody knows she is naked.” I think Lela Swift directed the episode and they ended up doing closeups of her feet, then her legs, then her arms, then the back of her, etc. They didn’t want to reveal her until she came out of the shower.
Marg, though, would go out partying all night long and come into the studio the next day where you can tell she just rolled in from some dance club. She wasn’t the only one.
In March of 1982, the show introduced veteran actor Peter Haskell as powerful, real estate developer Hollis Kirkland. Then in July came Hollis’s fragile daughter Amanda (Mary Page Keller) followed by his pissed-off wife Catsy (Christine Jones). Some in the cast began dubbing the show “Kirkland’s Hope” because they felt the Ryan’s were now backburner (they were not!). Do you recall any cast resentment at the time?
Dennis: Hollis Kirkland turned out to be Kim’s father because Rae had a teenage romance with him. It got so convoluted and was absolutely crazy. The show was really about that Irish family and they kept getting away from it. Ron Hale always had something to say—much like Danny Hugh-Kelly—and was one of the most outspoken actors on the show. Actually, Michael Levin was more outspoken and was always complaining about something or other. He had such a temper on the set. I know he threw chairs. But he was a great actor. Michael and Ron were there from the beginning. Much like any family that has been together for years and all of a sudden somebody gets married into the family, there needs to be some adjustment time.
Just like what was said in your book that Helen Gallagher would not let Maeve serve Michael Pavel at the bar, she and Bernie Barrow maintained their characters off-set at the studio all of the time. I wonder how much of it was: “We can’t get close to this guy because we have to hate him in the storyline.” That is just me conjecturing.
1983 begins with Claire Labine and Paul Mayer back as head writers. They fired many of the actors connected to the Kirkland storyline and they immediately recast the dormant role of Frank Ryan with Geoff Pierson.
Dennis: I really liked Will Patton who played Ox and who was let go. He was a great actor and an Ellen Barrett discovery.I also really liked Danny Kelly as Frank. When Geoff came in as the new Frank, I had a hard time adjusting to him, even though he was probably a much better actor. But he wasn’t the hail-fellow-well-met jokester that Danny was.
However, it was [scenic designer] Sy Tomashoff’s firing that made the biggest impression on me. He was one of the first to go during this whole transition. He was gone before Joe Hardy started and was fired by Felicia Behr. She was like the Silver Surfer and the harbinger of doom. Sy was an incredible gentleman and such a nice guy. I sat next to him for almost two years. He helped mentor me and took care of me. He was self-effacing and we never know that he had a bronze star during WWII when he served as a rifleman under General Patton. I learned that after he died a few years ago.
Labine and Mayer’s big story was the introduction of Charlote Greer and then her vengeful Irish parents.
Dennis: This is one of my favorite storylines with the Irish rebellion and bringing in Roy Poole and Kathleen Widdoes [as Neil and Una MacCurtain who held a grudge against Maeve’s family in Ireland]. Everybody in the studio started using Irish brogues. It was dumb but fun.
The biggest change was the ousting of Ellen Barrett as producer and the arrival of Joe Hardy as executive producer. How did this effect you since he said in an interview the first thing he did on the job was to “turn on the lights.”
Dennis: The way soaps work, or any TV series, is that the minute a new executive producercomes in, the first thing they do is to fire the lighting designer. We always joke about this. The lighting is the easiest and fastest thing you can change on a show. You can change the lighting cues instantly, by making something darker or brighter, or high key or low key, or softer just the next day because you handle the lights daily. How you handle them and where you place them is going to determine how much highlights and shadow exists.
How did you learn about his dislike of your lighting design?
Dennis: We had been nominated for an Emmy, had a good team, and I thought the show looked great so the first thing this guy says in a public scenario in front of the whole cast and crew is that the lighting on the show was the worst of anything on television. John Connolly and I are standing there looking at each other like, “What the hell!? Where is this coming from?”
The show did become much brighter after Joe began producing.
Dennis: The concept of the show from the very beginning was very naturalistic. There were times like the shooting on the houseboat or scenes at the Coleridge beach house or exterior scenes or the hidden tomb of Merit Kara where you wanted it dark and mysterious and dramatic, Now, all of a sudden, if looks like when you open a refrigerator door and everything is lit. There was no sense of mystery. That is why they brought Joe Hardy in from LA even though he was a New York guy and a Tony Award winning producer and director.
What was your working relationship like with Joe?
Dennis: People with little children will especially understand this. You tell them to eat their green beans or your asparagus. When they won’t, you force them to eat them and then they make faces at you and then they throw it on the floor. They do whatever they have to do to let you know they hate every minute of what you are forcing them to do. That is how almost thirty-year-old Dennis acted working with Joe. Every day when I got some note from Joe about something my response was, shall we say, less than enthusiastic.
I obviously was not the same person emotionally when he took over. And I did not like the work I was doing. I thought the lighting we did prior to him was better and I thought the show was better. John Connolly and I talked about it. He said, “Yea, but the money that we are making—just look the other way.” But I didn’t want to do a job just because we got paid very well. I wanted to do a job where I am proud of the work. I am not proud of this work. It’s not the theatricality I like. The years I was doing the show early on I was very happy because it was work that came from my own personal artistic sensibility—if that makes sense.
Hell, Joe Hardy even stood by and let an unsympathetic ABC fire Ilene Kristen as Delia due to weight gain due to medication she was taking.
Dennis: Yes, Ilene’s weight was up and down but who cares? I never understood that decision. What I liked about Ilene was that she was very natural as Delia and fit into that show. She was a hoot and a straight shooter. I used to be very tight with her now partner Gary Donatelli who was a cameraman at ABC. We worked a lot of events together.
This proves that the family vibe that existed for the first 7 years was now gone.
Dennis: True! Joe came in and there were a lot of people fired. Actually, Joe made the decisions and Felicia Behr was the hatchet woman who carried out everything he wanted. It became a running joke at the studio because they would always have a cake for them. Most people knew they were being fired—some people didn’t—and they would make an announcement: “Hey, everybody come down to the floor! Today is John Smith’s last day! Let’s all wish him well!” You’d stand there and everybody knows you just got fired. You’d eat a piece of cake and say, “Go to hell!” It was a very weird atmosphere and people stopped talking to each other and everybody was scared to death about their job.
Things got worse on the show when Pat Falken Smith replaced Claire and Paul as head writers in late 1983 and then she shifted the focus from Ryan’s Bar to Greenberg’s Deli populated by a bunch of uninteresting teenagers.
Dennis: I thought the whole concept of this was stupid—just stupid. Early Ryan’s Hope had extremely talented theatrical actresses like Helen Gallagher, Nancy Addison and Louise Shaffer. Later on, I remember the directors complaining it was like running school when Cali Timmins, Traci Linn, and those kids in the deli coming in with no training at all. They were merely pretty faces, as compared to a Marg Helgenberger who was brought in right out of Northwestern with a degree in acting. Sometimes we would see a really good actor like Marg come through and we would say, “Well, that person is not going to get it. They were too good!” We were serious and usually right.
Not only did they want actors who had that Hollywood look now but the sets, lighting, etc. had too as well. What made Ryan’s Hope special was that it started with a natural, realistic quality.
To add insult to injury they then blew up Ryan’s Bar!
Dennis: This was actually fun to design. We thought we would win an Emmy for those scenes as the characters roamed around the wreckage but we were not even nominated. [Guiding Light took home the prize over All My Children and General Hospital.]
What was your relationship like with the directors, Lela Swift and Jerry Evans during this period?
Dennis: On the days Lela Swift directed, they would put some special adapter on her microphone in the control room because her voice carried and she sounded liked the Wicked Witch of the West. And she never ever shut up—never. She and I never really hit it off unlike Jerry Evans. He was wonderful and just great to work with. He used to say over and over in the booth, “I am not being paid to be an acting coach here. I am here to direct a show. I am not here to tell these people how to do their job.” Actors liked that freedom.
I think my relationship with Lela really went south early on during the shooting of a hospital scene. A character (I do not recall who) was lying in a hospital bed. It went on for days and days. Lela was always trying to find interesting ways to shoot it. It is a guy in bed looking at the actress next to him. You can’t have the camera downstage because you have to shoot the guy and it has to be upstage. The actress at his bedside I think was Nancy Addison. Lela is trying to do some kind of different shot during dress rehearsal. The lights focused on Nancy—we always went out of our way to make sure the actresses looked as glamorous as possible—had to be adjusted. I am trying to set them right. I go back into the control room. Lela is yelling, “I can’t get my shot! I can’t get my shot! The lights are always in my way. I don’t know why they are in my way!”
I went back down to the floor and moved the light a little bit. I asked the stage manager, who had a direct headset link to Lela, to see if what I did was better. Lela barks back, “How do I know if it is better? You should be making it better and the lights should not be in my way!” I yelled back, “The director should know where the camera is going to go, so I know where to put the lights! If you do not know where the camera is going, how can I light it?” Dead silence in the studio and on the floor. She then comes stomping down from the booth and reads me the riot act. The only thing I remember from the final volley is Lela saying to me, “I have three Emmy Awards! How many Emmy Awards do you have?” I retorted, “Maybe you should have your credentials redone.” As that was coming out of my mouth, I thought, “Wow, I am really not long for this show.”
However, I think it’s also important to remember the context of the times those women of broadcasting — like Lela, Jackie Babbin, Gloria Monty, etc.—worked in. The “good ole TV boys” men’s club they had to cope with didn’t make it easy for them.
You left Ryan’s Hope in early 1986.
Dennis: I was fired by Joe Hardy. He and I were actually friendly outside of Ryan’s Hope. My ex-wife and I would go to his home for supper. Then, all of a sudden, I am being let go. It was very weird to me. Even when I had my cake that day, the technical director said to me, “Here is the knife, that we just took out of your back, for you to cut the cake.”
Candice Dunn was brought in to replace me and I had to train her. It is awkward when you have to do that sort of thing. That year Ryan’s Hope won the Emmy for Outstanding Lighting Design. John Connolly was livid, and threatened to walk off the show, because Joe refused to put my name on the nomination even though I had worked on it. Then the damn show won.
My last hurrah at Ryan’s Hope was designing the lighting for the studio they moved into on 53rd Street. I believe the episodes that they won the Emmy for came from this new studio that had more space and scenic elements with a lot more technology behind them. After I finished setting up the new studio, I was off the show. I maintained friendships with everybody including Candice. John Connolly, who was like 35 years older than me, was my best friend until the day he died. I worked on a lot of shows and I watched as people turned and soured. You must have even felt that when you talked with actors and crew who were on the show for a long time. They felt the change from what was a great family atmosphere to a very sour one that Joe Hardy brought to the show.
What soap did you work on post-Ryan’s Hope?
Dennis: After I was canned from Ryan’s Hope, One Life to Live snagged me. I was there for about a year and a half to two years. I look at that period of my career as penance for everything I ever did wrong in my entire life. If you were writing about One Life to Live, I can guarantee you I don’t remember anything other than just how nasty most people on that show were and that Paul Rauch, who was the executive producer, was one of the most toxic individuals that I ever met. He was a nutjob.
Frank Valentini, I believe, got his start on soap operas there and he was a production assistant or a gopher for lack of a better term. Rauch would come into the control room and say to him, “Peel me a banana, you asshole.” He would say shit like that. Rauch would sit up in the back row, put his feet up on the counter, like most executive producers did, but would take his shoes off with his smelly socks. He would give the shoes to the kid and say, “Hey, go polish these!” People today talk about toxicity and appropriate workplace behavior. They had no idea what the soaps were like. Most of them were governed by women. But going to One Life to Live, with Rauch the madman and womanizer, was a shocker. He also used to fondle the actresses on the set. This was not a good period for this soap. There were a few nice people there, though, like Erika Slezak, who I had a friendship with for several years, and Andrea Evans, who played Tina. She was very close friends with my ex-wife so we would hang out a lot. The rest—not so nice.
Did you continue working on soaps?
Dennis: Yes. After I left One Life to Live, I went in and out of Loving for a bit covering vacations for their LD. It was such a dumb show. Then I got All My Children. I worked on it for about two years. And I won an Emmy Award there. After Ryan’s Hope went off the air [in January 1989], they brought in Felicia Behr as a producer and she fired me. I asked why. She said, “You know we have a history and I don’t’ want you around.” That is when I decided I had it with the entertainment division and I went into special events. Other than Susan Lucci, I really never established a rapport with any of the actors I worked with as compared to my early years on Ryan’s Hope.
Flash forward to [sometime in the 1990s] where I am now working for the Lighting Design Group [where is still works as an Executive VP of Design]. Our head of operations calls me and says that I have to go over to As the World Turns. They asked me to cover the show and to set up a brand-new studio for them. I was shocked because I knew that it was executive produced by Felicia Behr. The operations manager said she was the one who called me. I go out to the Brooklyn studio where they are shooting to meet with her. I said, “Felicia, you hate me. Why are you asking me to redesign your show?” She replied, “Because you are really very good at what you do. I just don’t like you personally. And after you finish, I would like you to come in and out and cover my LDs when they go on vacation but I really don’t want you around.” I thought, “This is a stupid, fucked up business.”
How was it working as the official Lighting Director on Ryan’s Hope?
Dennis Size: I am doing the job in John Connolly’s absence for a couple of weeks when ABC’s human resources department called me and said, “You need to come up and apply for this job.” I replied, “What are you talking about?” She then told me that I had to apply for the position so they could hire me. Meanwhile, I have been doing the show every day for weeks. John took a number of months off to get his head together. I think he returned sometime in the spring of 1981. It was long enough that the Emmy Awards happened and Ryan’s Hope won the Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Design Excellence for a Drama Series.
In my book, Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap from Citadel Press/Kensington Books, I presumed the show won the Emmy Award for the Crystal Palace opening and scenes?
Dennis: Yes, that is correct. The reason I know this is because I was not eligible for the Emmy. At that time, the Academy rules stipulated that you had to be on any soap or series for 40% of the season. I was not there that long. At that time, there was no individual awards for scenic design or lighting design or costume design. It was the design Emmy and all three divisions were all considered as one award. And it was all based on one episode. The one that was submitted, which was one of the Crystal Palace episodes, happened to be one that I lit while John was gone.
After coordinating the lighting for a set in the studio, what did you do during taping?
Dennis: First, where Ryan’s Hope taped wasn’t even a studio. It was a lumber yard with a paint store next door that ABC had converted into a temporary studio for Dark Shadows. When that show went away, they put Ryan’s in there. It was always an interim, thrown together studio. During the taping, I would be in this very small, beat-up, old control room. In the front row you had five people: assistant directors Suellen Goldstein or Laura Rakowitz, only one was there at the same time; Lela Swift or Jerry Evans, depending who was directing; George Whitaker, the technical director; Sy Tomashoff, the scenic designer; and me. In the back row was Nancy Horwich, Ellen Barrett, and whoever the unit manager was at the time. It was very cramped.
They all talked about things they did together in the past. Ellen would say, “This isn’t the way Bob Costello would have done it.” It was always that sort of—I don’t want to say snarky—but it was snarky with love, if that makes sense. Although, sometimes Lela Swift could be a nasty person. She would something like: “I know Claire did not write this! Who wrote this?”
Does anything from the control booth early on stand out for you?
Dennis: I don’t know what the deal was with Lela Swift and Kate Mulgrew but Kate, when referred to, was a little bit above the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was astonishing in regard to the respect and the acclaim the higher echelon had for her. During a break or something, Lela would go on and on about how wonderful Kate Mulgrew was and that they don’t have actresses like her anymore. One day, I turned around to one of my electricians on the floor who worked there for years and say, “Wow, Kate Mulgrew must have been something.” He replied, “Nah, she was a b*#ch!”
What did you think of Claire Labine and Paul Mayer? Were they on set for tapings?
Dennis: I very seldom had any contact with them. By the time I started on the show, Paul and Claire were not a presence in the control room. They were always a presence in the building. The only times I met them were when we were doing auditions. By that, I mean when they got to having screentests for the final 5 actors for a role. That is the only instance when I really saw them in the studio. And it was never the two of them. It was usually just Claire. But I would see them together at the annual Christmas party.
Do any early episodes that you worked on standout for you?
Dennis: Yes, it was when Delia framed the drunk Faith for running over Barry Ryan out in the street. The challenge for me was that we did this maybe during my first or second month there. I had never done an exterior scene before. All of the car scenes when Delia is driving was done in the studio with a green screen set. I had to light the green screen—actually this was 1981 technology and it was chromakey. They bring the car into the studio and they jam it into the corner. It was a small studio and there was no room. The green screen is probably 3 feet away from the car and they were boxed together, as opposed to green screens that we do these days are on film sets where the car could be 10 or 20 feet away from the screen. The car they brought in was silver with chrome all over it. The silver and the chrome was picking up the green and bouncing it all over the windows and the car. I’m having no end of problems trying to key the car because the car is accepting all the green from the screen.
Then Randall Edwards comes down to do the scene in the studio and she is wearing a blue-green dress! I was like, “What the hell is going on here!?” They ultimately called the film studio next door and asked for some green screen guidance. It wasn’t so much a lighting issue, but we had to key out the color and the switcher in the control room didn’t have the ability. They wound up renting an Altermat, which is a finer version of green screen technology and they were able to tweak out all of the green pollution that was all over the car. This took forever to shoot.
What was it like shooting the exterior portion of the scene?
Dennis: Once we finished with the green screen, we then go right outside onto the street—they literally pushed the car down the loading dock. It is now around 9 or 10 o’clock at night. We shot it right outside the front of the studio. They shut the street down as they want to do. It was a shitty part of town in Hell’s Kitchen. At that time, it was populated by old, dilapidated brownstones, most of which were boarded up. For the couple of buildings that were in the background of the shots Sy Tomashoff had to put in real windows with curtains to make it look legit. They also brought in trees and extra prop cars to put on the street. Basically, the stunt person who was there only drove the car no more than 10 feet at the most. We were lighting the whole setup with stand lights.
The standout moment for me is when Delia flees the scene with her high heels clickety-clacking on the pavement.
Dennis: To shoot that Sy put fake trees out there. We put lights in the trees cross lighting the street so it would look like Delia was running through the streetlights that were occasionally going up and down the street, if that makes sense.
Regarding the sound, surprisingly, there was nothing on the street and nothing going on. Because it was so empty, her running echoed all the way down the street. I still have that sound in my memory. Similarly, as I put lights down the street that she ran through, the audio department put microphones every twenty or thirsty feet. It picked up the natural echo although I am sure they sweetened it a bit in post-production.
You were about twenty-five years old and in the same age range of many of the cast. Did you become friendly with any of them?
Dennis: I did but they all kind of hung together. They were all very cliquish. But we all knew each other and had a rapport. I really liked Roscoe Born and we kept in touch for several years. I had a serious crush on Randall Edwards but, like many of them, she left the business.
Were you aware that it was alleged that some of the actors were not happy that Michael Corbett was getting too much publicity during this time? Daniel Hugh-Kelly is one name that was dropped.
Dennis: No, I wasn’t aware but that would not surprise me. I liked Danny a lot and he was one of the people I kind of hung out with. He was easy-going, talked with everybody, and always had a joke. He left to do Hardcastle and McCormick. If it was him, I would not be shocked by it.
We used to joke in the control room among the crew, and not with Ellen or any of the producers, wondering who the hell Michael Corbett knew because he went from day player for one or two shows to all of a sudden getting a contract. We kept hearing how his audience quotient was very high and that the viewers were responding very well to him. Although he was a good-looking guy, he was by no means an experienced actor then.
Another standout in 1981 was the “Midnight Murder” on Michael Pavel’s houseboat.
Dennis: I lit this set as well. If I recall, Kim shot Michael but it was a mobster [Sal Brooks] who did the kill shot, as we called it. I can’t remember exactly how we did that because they also had the Coleridge beach house on the water. We did a lot on that set. We had special effect pans made to simulate water ripples and moonlight that we would bring out when they were there or anywhere there was water. But with the Midnight Murder, I think that there may have been a green screen outside the houseboat’s windows that they just fed video footage to.
Since you were in the control room, did they ever talk about who made the boneheaded decision to kill off Michael Pavel?
Dennis: We didn’t talk about things like that in the control booth. There was never any resolution and sometimes mostly with Lela Swift who was one of the most outspoken people you could ever imagine, she would yell, “This is the dumbest thing ever! I don’t know what the hell ABC is thinking and doing about this!” With a lot of decisions, you never knew where it came from.
But I do know that even on the floor when we were doing camera blocking, in between takes the actors would be talking amongst themselves. Someone would say to me, “Do you believe this Dennis? This is the stupidest storyline ever.” It used to make me wonder how the actors themselves never even had any input on their own storylines. I could remember vividly times when Helen Gallagher would change the script. She would come right out and say, “Maeve Ryan would not say this! This is what and how she would say it.” It would turn into a big argument because script changes were look askance at. Helen always took a stand on her character. Most of the other actors really didn’t give a shit, frankly.
As 1981 ended, we have a storyline I hated the soap-within-a-soap and one about Egyptian queen Merit Kara with the hunt for her tomb highlighted by a glamorous Egyptian themed party at the Crystal Palace.
Dennis: I loved Karen Morris-Gowdy [Faith Coleridge] in this and kept in touch with her over the years. I worked for her husband Curt Gowdy a lot. I used to joke with him and say, “If you guys ever break up, please tell Karen to call me.”
When I was writing my book about Ryan’s Hope, I knew I had to keep my manuscript to no more than 400 pages per my publisher, Citadel Press/Kensington Books, instructions. With that said, I concentrated on reaching out to the actors, producers, writers, and directors who worked on the show. I did not actively pursue crew members. I stumbled upon two from Facebook and several others either found me or were recommended to me to interview.
Dennis Size worked on Ryan’s Hope from mid-1980 to early 1986 as a lighting director. His daughter gave him my book, Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap, for Christmas. Afterward, he contacted me to say how much he enjoyed it. We corresponded and he shared with me a pic of his Ryan’s Hope jacket and sent me Ryan’s Hope pencils from the show. I was bummed that we did not make contact earlier, but he graciously agreed to do a post-book interview.
Dennis Size: I read your book a year ago and I was transported back forty-five years ago. I have done a lot of work in my life. I have done thousands of episodes of soaps for various people. For the past 25 years, I have done Emmy and Tony Award shows, news shows, and other similar kinds of programs. I never gave my early career much thought until I read your book. I realized that they were probably the happiest years of my career. Of course, you do not know that while you are experiencing it, especially since I was the youngest designer that ABC ever hired.
Did you go to school to become a lighting director?
Dennis: Yes, I was going for and got my BFA in scenery and lighting design at Penn State University. While I was there, I was asked to supervise a guy named Bill Tracy from the electrical engineering department who was doing his thesis on discotheques. He was told he had to take a couple of courses in the theater program so he could understand the theatricality in lighting a disco other than just the electrical engineering. We became friends. Bill had to work a couple of stage shows and as a grad assistant I supervised the shows. He graduated and I still had a year to go.
How did you begin working at ABC-TV?
Dennis: After I left Penn in 1979, I started a teaching program at the University of Scranton. I then got a phone call from Bill: “I’m on staff at ABC-TV in New York right now. I’ve been put in charge of supervising lighting, rigging, and the lighting directors at the network. They have a program here called Vacation Relief in Broadcast, Operations, and Engineering [BO&E].” This program was to train people in various jobs so they could cover sound directors, lighting directors, etc. on the soaps and other network programs when they took time off. You can’t get somebody out of left field to cover because they don’t know the show.
Knowing my background and experience working in broadcast and stage while at Penn State, Bill thought I would be perfect to be a fill-in at Ryan’s Hope because they wanted the lighting to look very natural and realistic. He said they also wanted someone young and savvy. I was always a bit of an eager beaver and an overachiever. I was hired in June of 1980 as a vacation relief lighting director [LD] for John Connolly, the only lighting director on the show. All the other soaps had two LDs who would alternate days. My plan was always to eventually move to New York and work on stage shows and redesign them for broadcast, like with what PBS was doing with some of their shows like Dance in America.
What was it like being this swing lighting director?
Dennis: I had to learn every lighting element of the show. It had to be a seamless transition so the producers and network people would not see any difference. The LD is the longest, hardest position on a soap. On All My Children, the LDs would go in at midnight and would not leave until the last scene was taped and that could be as late at 10 or 11 o’clock p.m. That was not uncommon on the hour shows. It was terrible. After working those long hours, you cannot come in the next day so your alternate day was a production prep day. You would go through your shooting script for the next day’s show. You would meet with the director and figure out all the blocking. You would rent any lighting gear you would need. You would book the crew you would need. That prep day would be four hours at the most, so you would have one short day then one long day.
What this the routine for Ryan’s Hope too?
Dennis: No, because, since it was a half-hour show, they weren’t working the long days that the one-hour shows were working. That is why John Connolly was the only LD on the show. However, it was getting tougher and tougher for him. When he started, the show was owned by Labine-Mayer. ABC took the show over in late 1979, just before I started. Once that happened all the production values changed. On the show, prior, the Ryan Bar set never came down. Also, Ryan’s kitchen and the hospital nurse’s station sets never came down. All these basic sets stayed up and only one or two swing sets came in that had to be lit each day. By the time I started on the show, they were now taking down more sets and they were even starting to put a swing set within the Ryan Bar set. The booths and the dividers would push out of the way so you could put a set within the bar. That meant the lighting in the bar had to be scrapped because you had to re-light the new set, which was usually something small like a hospital room or hotel suite, something like that. This disrupted the lighting that had never changed in the Ryan Bar. The next time the Ryan Bar came back, you had to relight the bar. So instead of going in at 5 in the morning, John Connolly was now having to go in around 3 in the morning.
What was the shooting day like?
Dennis:Ryan’s Hope did, what no other soap did. It had one extra rehearsal every day. They did a tech rehearsal before the dress rehearsal. It wasn’t a long day for the camera guys, about eight or nine hours, but if you were the LD coming in at 3 in the morning and didn’t get out to 5 in the afternoon, it wore thin.
Do you recall your introduction to working on the show?
Dennis: When I started, they had just finished that dumb King Kong storyline. I remember the crew talking about the idiocy of that. They had just launched Delia’s Crystal Palace. This set was too big to keep up all the time so it had to come down. Sy Tomashoff was brilliant in designing sets that could be separated. Delia’s office with the beaded curtain was a small set that could be put within another set. When I came on, they had also just hired Michael Corbett to play Michael Pavel. He eventually worked as a bartender at the Crystal Palace restaurant, so we would put that bar set up by itself a lot because it became a place for the characters to gather. We didn’t have to put up the two connecting sets [the dining room and the outdoor patio]. The production values got to be higher under ABC control.
John Connolly had been at ABC-TV for years so he had accumulated 7 or 8 weeks of vacation. He would take the whole month of June off and September off. I would be covering the show alone in his absence. Ryan’s was one of the only shows that would go on hiatus. We’d have three weeks off in August. We would do what was called a six-pack. We would shoot six shows a week in five days so we could have that time off in the summer. We would also do that in a year when there was a special event like the Olympics or presidential election. ABC was not going to hire new crews to work on them, so they would six-pack all of the soaps. Then the camera people and others could go off and work the other jobs.
How did you become a permanent lighting director on the show?
Dennis: I covered John Connolly’s vacations. Sometime after he came back, ABC sent me out to light the announcer booth for the series of games between the Phillies and Padres in San Diego. When that ended, I came back and went to the scheduling department at ABC to get my paycheck. They had just gotten a call from the LD at All My Children calling in sick and they could not find the show’s other LD at all. Since I was standing there, they said, “Hey! You are a soap opera LD. Can you go over and do All My Children tomorrow?” I didn’t even know where the studio was and never even saw the show. I went over and was the lighting director. Everybody there was flabbergasted because this dumb ass kid just walked into the studio without knowing anything and lit the show. It kind of sealed my security, shall we say, in the job. I became the relief LD for Ryan’s Hope, All My Children, and One Life to Live. I was basically on a part-time deal and they would freelance me in to cover vacations. My term came to an end in November. I went off to work with a Delaware theater company. While there, I get a phone call from ABC: “John Connolly is sick and the producers want you to come back and cover him.”
They were sending in staff LDs, but Ellen Barrett, the executive producer, wanted me. Well, actually she was only the producer. She never got the official title of executive producer and we never knew why. The political machinations that went on were fascinating. When I first started there, I was sent to Ellen ‘s office and Nancy Horwich, who was the associate producer, was there. Nancy was a bit of a bitch, actually. Ellen, however, was a straight shooter. We hit it off immediately. Ellen worked previously with producer Robert Costello on The Adams Chronicles. Many in production or crew came through Bob either from Adams Chronicles or Dark Shadows. That’s what happens. These families develop and they keep hiring people who they know and liked.
On my first day back, I walked into the studio and the LD who was covering John said to me, “Thank God you are here. I’m outta here.” He gave me all the paperwork for the day and left. I thought, “Jesuse Christ, I wonder what the hell happened here?” Later on, I talked with Ellen and she said, “John Connolly had a nervous breakdown and is not coming back so that is why we hired you.” I replied, “What are you talking about?” She said, “He is tired of doing the show alone. He is worn out. He can’t handle it. And he wasn’t you to come back as his partner.” I felt honored and thought it was great. Ellen and Sy liked me. They gave the thumbs up and I wound up with a permanent job. ABC didn’t even tell me I was hired. Ellen was the one who delivered the news.
