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.
To be continued…
