An Interview with Lighting Director, Dennis Size, Part 2: 1980-81
©Tom Lisanti
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.”
To be continued…
Emmy Award winning set, Delia’s Crystal Palace ©Dennis Size/Courtesy of Dennis Size
Exterior shot of Delia (Randall Edwards) running down her ex-lover Barry Ryan (Richard Backus) outside his apartment building. ©Dennis Size/Courtesy of Dennis Size
Exterior shot of Delia (Randall Edwards) running down her ex-lover Barry Ryan (Richard Backus) outside his apartment building. ©Dennis Size/Courtesy of Dennis Size