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Soap Life: The Docu-film

"The wife of our executive producer, John Grossman, who owns the production company NYPS, is a big fan of GENERAL HOSPITAL, and her whole thing was, 'You have the ability, so let's do something to save the soaps,'" explains producer Matthew D'Amato of how it all began. "We started doing research, and we sat down with a few actors, producers and directors, and said, 'Is this is a good idea? Could this work? Should we pursue it?' And we looked it up online and didn't see anything like this, so we thought it would be important to get started."

And the main goal of the film, D'Amato explains, is to generate enough buzz about the possible end of soaps to possibly prevent it from happening. "Hopefully this will get enough attention to help the genre, because we don't want to see it fade away," he says, adding that it's tentatively scheduled for a June 2012 release date at film festivals and possibly on networks such as Showtime. "We do want to see it at festivals, and we do want to see it on networks [so] people who aren't soap fans can watch the film and kind of relate to it, hear the stories and maybe want to pick them up or maybe do something about the genre. We have contacts we can send it to in order to get it out there, so hopefully it will get bigger and bigger!"

For more information on the project, visit www.facebook.com/soaplifedoc. To see a video about the project, visit www.youtube.com/user/SoapLifeDoc.

In Memory Of

New Video Section

Doris Belack, Judge on TV’s ‘Law & Order,’ Dies at 85

Her death, which was confirmed by a family friend, Jason Watkins, came four months after the death of her husband, Philip Rose, the influential Broadway producer of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Purlie Victorious,” both considered breakthroughs for racial equality in American theater. The couple were married for 65 years.

Ms. Belack played many roles on Broadway, and worked steadily in television beginning in the early 1960s. She had parts in “The Patty Duke Show,” “The Defenders,” “Barney Miller,” “Family Ties” and “The Cosby Show,” and a recurring role in the soap opera “One Life to Live” from 1968 to 1977. She appeared as Judge Margaret Barry on “Law & Order” in the 1990s.

As the tough-minded TV producer in the 1982 film “Tootsie” (who unwittingly casts a disguised Dustin Hoffman in a woman’s role in a soap opera), Ms. Belack was praised for the comic lightness with which she reinforced the film’s feminist themes.

The authority-figure role she played in her later years tapped into one side of Ms. Belack: she expected dinner guests to arrive punctually and maintained an Old World sense of propriety that she occasionally enforced with an acerbic wit. But at her core, she once said, was the desire to act.

She considered it a calling. “You can’t act, you mustn’t act, you shouldn’t act,” she said in a 1979 interview with The New York Times, “unless it’s the only thing in the world you want to do.”

Doris Belack was born on Feb. 26, 1926, in New York City, the younger of two daughters of Isaac and Bertha Belack, Jewish immigrants from Russia. She joined a summer stock theater company immediately after graduating from high school, and within months she met Mr. Rose, then an actor and singer.

Ms. Belack and her husband shared convictions about race and civil rights that made them full partners in the unlikely success of Mr. Rose’s efforts, friends said, especially in bringing “A Raisin in the Sun” to Broadway in 1959.

Already considered a long shot for being a nonmusical drama about blacks written by a black playwright, it was the first play Mr. Rose had ever produced.

“But she not only supported the idea, she worked and supported them both while Philip went around raising money to produce ‘Raisin,’ ” said Elizabeth Perry, an actress, playwright and friend. “She was a strong liberal voice, and she had a lot of influence over his choices.”

In her last years, Ms. Belack continued working in commercials and as a voice actor. She went to auditions regularly until the week before she died. When a final bout of illness led her friends to urge her to go to the hospital a couple of Sundays ago, she brushed them off because she had an audition the next day.

She made it to the audition, and then went to the hospital.

“I saw her a few days later,” said Esther Margolis, a book publisher and longtime friend. “She told me: ‘Would you believe it? I got a callback.’ ”

Julianne Moore to Get Hooked on HBO's Dope?

Soap Icon Dies

Procter & Gamble moves from soap operas to tweets

Procter & Gamble Co., whose sponsorship and production of daytime TV dramas helped coin the term "soap operas," has pulled the plug after 77 years. Instead, the maker of Tide detergent, Ivory soap and Olay skincare is following its customers online with a big push on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

"The digital media has pretty much exploded," marketing chief Marc Pritchard said in an interview. "It's become very integrated with how we operate, it's become part of the way we do marketing."

The last P&G-produced soap opera, "As The World Turns," went off the air in September. The show was the leading daytime soap for decades, but had lost some two-thirds of its audience at the end.

Over the years, P&G produced 20 soap operas for radio and TV. But ratings for daytime dramas have been sinking for years, as women, their target audience, increasingly moved into the workplace, switched to talk and reality shows, and spent more time using online media and social networking sites.

P&G, the world's biggest advertiser, still buys individual commercials on daytime dramas. But the dollar amount has shrunk. P&G won't say by how much.

Dori Molitor, whose WomanWise LLC agency specializes in marketing brands to women, says big companies are realizing that social media is an efficient way to connect with customers.

"Social media has become mass media, and for women especially," she said. "I think for all marketers, these one-way, 30-second (TV) spots are very expensive, and are less effective for the way that women make decisions."

Marketing experts say the biggest companies were generally slow to adapt to the rapid rise of social networks, but that beverage rivals Coca-Cola Co. and Pepsico Inc., and P&G and fellow consumer products makers Unilever PLC and Johnson & Johnson are among those quickly making up for lost time.

In recent months, P&G began selling Pampers diapers on Facebook, offering an iPhone application for Always feminine products that allows women to track menstrual cycles and ask experts questions, and using social media to turn a campaign for the venerable Old Spice brand into a pop-culture icon.

The "Smell like a Man, Man" commercials starring hunky former football player Isaiah Mustafa became a YouTube sensation, drawing tens of millions of views and spawning parodies such as one with Sesame Street's Grover, and generated another round of attention with Twitter questions that Mustafa answered in videos — such as on ABC's Good Morning America when he suggested that President Barack Obama could improve standing with female voters by wearing only a towel and beginning speeches with "Hello, Ladies!"

The echo effect gives P&G a bigger bang for its nearly 9 billion bucks a year spent on advertising.

"It is such an effective advertising campaign that we are getting impressions that we did not pay for," CEO Bob McDonald told investors recently, recounting that he saw an editorial cartoon showing Obama on horseback, a takeoff on Mustafa's "I'm on a horse" Old Spice catch-phrase.

For a company known for measuring just about everything, P&G touts big numbers from Old Spice tracking:

• Number of impressions (people who saw, read, or heard about commercials): 1.8 billion.

• Number of YouTube views for Old Spice and related videos: 140 million and counting.

• Increase in Twitter followers for Old Spice: 2,700 percent.

P&G also said Old Spice sales are growing at double digits, taking more of the market for body washes and deodorant.

Just 20 months ago, P&G hosted "digital night" at its Cincinnati headquarters by inviting Google, Facebook, Twitter and other online experts to help test ways online and digital media could be used in marketing. By the Vancouver Winter Olympics last February, P&G was coordinating TV commercials with Facebook messages and tracking instant reactions to new commercials on Twitter.

P&G, which sponsored Team USA, unveiled sentimental "Thank you, Mom!" commercials at the Olympics that it estimates added $100 million in sales. The campaign has included Facebook essay contests and e-Cards for mothers.

P&G says it's still exploring new uses for social media.

"It's kind of the oldest form of marketing — word of mouth — with the newest form of technology," Pritchard said.

Old Proctor & Gamble Soaps Are Now Online

Facts

1. On December 1, 1975, The Edge of Night was the first soap to jump networks (CBS to ABC). It premiered on CBS on April 2, 1956 (the same day as ATWT). With the change in networks, Edge also became the last soap to be broadcast live on a daily basis.

2. Working title of the show was The Edge of Darkness

3. The show was originally conceived as the daytime television version of Perry Mason

4. During most of the show's run, the show's fans were treated to an announcer enthusiastically and energetically announcing the show's title, "Theee Edge...of Night!". Bob Dixon was the first announcer in 1956, followed by Herbert Duncan. The two voices most synonymous with the show, however, were those of Harry Kramer (1957–1972) and Hal Simms who announced the show until the series ended in 1984.

5. The Edge of Night was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

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