By Joan Mac Trevor, Ciné Télé Revue, 1987

It was the festival, July 29, on the stage of Santa Barbara : one celebrated the third birthday of the famous show which impassions from now on Europe as much that America. Launched in July 1984, this daytime soap was the first to adopt the one hour duration daily (in France, TF1 diffuses just half an hour only per day). All the daytime soaps lasted, until there, only half an hour.

Produced by Bridget Dobson, a specialist of it, Santa Barbara will gain Italy, Scandinavia and Australia as of the re-entry of autumn. The whole world will thus be impassioned for the battles of interests between Capwells and Lockridges and the beautiful story of love which links the police officer Cruz with the "golden girl" Eden. Let us guarantee this third anniversary precedes a lot of others! Santa Barbara is the bigest success of the history of television since Dallas.

 By Isabelle Caron, Télé 7 Jours, 1987

"Eden tightens me a share of a delicious blue chocolate cake, decorated with waves of sand out of sugar, Cruz, a cup of Californian champagne, but however, I have not been hired to play in Santa Barbara. Marcy Walker and A Martinez are simply like me the guests of Bridget and Jerome Dobson, the creator-producers, for the third anniversary of the show. Eden has a good memory and she needs it to learn every day the fifteen pages of her role : "The first episode has been aired on the network NBC on July 30, 1984, and since we did not stop shooting any more. Our more great reward, it is mail. We receive kilos of letters from Canada, England, Luxembourg, Turkey, but the French are the most faithful, are impassioned, as much as the Americans. Unfortunately, I cannot answer everyone."

Bridget Dobson smiles. The happy producer of Santa Barbara hired a translator to read and reply to all your letters : "More than one thousand per day, addressed to stage 11 of the NBC Studio in Los Angeles. Without counting those which Télé 7 Jours transmits to us. So your readers have to be patient. We would need a dozen secretaries to satisfy them, but we do not have a sufficient budget. Or then, it would be at the detriment of the shootings. Richard Eden, in other words Brick Wallace, one of the seducers of Santa Barbara, approaches, and takes me tenderly by the neck : "I keep each letter preciously, he says, because I am always unmarried and who knows if I will not fall in love with a Frenchwoman..."

In Martinez is not agree : "Despite all the articles already published in France, they believe that I am also unmarried and I receive very serious marriage askings. Suitors even join their photo, sometimes quite stripped. However, I have repeated it, I am married with Leslie for five years and we are happy with our son, Dakota Lee, who is ten months. But I use to that. Here in Los Angeles, when I walk with Leslie, I am always asked where is Eden. It is true that she became my best friend."

Marcy WaIker besides hopes to shoot soon the TV movie A Martinez wrote for her : "Me too, she says, I am married. Billy Warlock is even more famous than me in the United States. He has a very significant role in a soap, unknown in France, Days of Our Lives. He is 25 and me 29. We do not have children, but a cat. We live a house in north Hollywood where on Sunday, our day of rest, we receive our friends from Santa Barbara. All the actors, from the smallest to the greatest role, are very intimate. Nothing to do with the competitions of Dallas. We have fun, we make jokes, the producers and the directors understand it well. To laugh is necessary after having played scenarios evoking only murders, rapes, affairs with lovers or mistresses, or diseases. It is enough that A Martinez forgets that he is Cruz Castillo and begins to make faces and it is the common laughter."

A big absent at the Santa Barbara birthday : Robin Wright who plays the role of Kelly Capwell. As opposed to what some journalists announced, she leaves the show : "I had signed a three year contract. It was thus completed in July and I do not renew it, in spite of very interesting financial offers. I already shot The Princess Bride, a film where I am the main character, which will be released in August in the United States. And with my fiancé, the actor Dane Witherspoon, who left Santa Barbara for a long time, we have TV movies projects."

Many actors approach the cake whose initials Santa Barbara will be soon nothing more but crumbs. Many are unknown for you, like the lovely Susan Marie Snyder, who plays the role of Laken Lockridge replacing Julie Ronnie : "In the United States, explains Bridget Dobson, the producer, if an actor leaves a show even successful because he appears worse than he was believed, because he has other contracts or he is immobilized, we do not hesitate to replace him and the televiewers do not protest, even if the face is not completely the same one."

What would occur then if Marcy Walker was not able to play the role of Eden anymore whereas, like the majority of the heroes of Santa Barbara, she has just signed a new three year contract ? "We would be obliged, answers Bridget Dobson, to choose another actress, despite all the friendship we have for her. We thus discussed a lot with Robin Wright so that she remains with us, but she refused. It is a pity for her many fans who let it known to us in their letters. The French adore her."

While chattering with Bridget Dobson, I also learned that the love-story between Eden and Cruz was born from one of your letters : "One of your readers explained us, at the very beginning of the show, that he would well see an idyll between this rich and blond Californian and the playboy police officer. The writers began to work on it and here is the result." Without betraying the suspense, let me reveal to you some other secrecies gleaned during this birthday which finished while dancing and singing. Eden who was believed to be dead in a terrible accident suddenly returns the time of an episode and surprises Cruz in Eleanor's arms. C.C. Capwell may lose all his fortune because the serum developed in his laboratories, but commercialized too early, is responsible for the dead of more than fifteen people.

For Bridget Dobson, Santa Barbara can very well continue for an eternity : "Our writers are never short of ideas and the actors themselves give ideas of situations and dialogues. But the readers of Télé 7 Jours must still write to us. Their suggestions are welcome and we well hope to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Santa Barbara next year in France, with them."