How was born the fight between the Capwells and the Lockridges
By Joan Mac Trevor, Ciné Télé Revue, 1988	Home   Cette page en Français

In July, Santa Barbara will celebrate joyfully its fourth anniversary. Already four years that during the summer, at 3 p.m. (time of New York), Monday July 30, 1984, the afternoon televiewers discovered on the network NBC the generic of a new show, one of these  soap-operas American public like so much. Only American one ?... Apparently not because, today, the fame of Santa Barbara largely overflowed from the borders of the United States. It touched first France, Canada, Great Britain then Belgium, Luxembourg, Turkey, a little later Italy, Australia and Scandinavia. Nothing stops the amazing progression of the phenomenon Santa Barbara, immensely popular everywhere where it is aired. In France, nonglad to amply exceed scores of audience to which did not even dare to dream the programmers of the channel TF1, Santa Barbara gave to the televiewers the taste of soaps which, gradually, took a big place in the grids of programms.

Today, by the magic of television and the grace of a show, millions of people, at the four corners of the world, adopted in their daily vocabulary the name of Santa Barbara, a residential town of 80 000 people along the West coast, in the smart suburbs of Los Angeles... "My husband and I", explains Bridget Dobson, creator of the show, "had a house in Santa Barbara. And the idea of the show came to us while thinking that it would perhaps be amusing to reunite on a stage all the eccentric and completely extraordinary characters of who we were surrounded".

Bridget Dobson and her husband Jerry were not the new in the world of soap-operas. They already had a solid experiment of writers to have worked together during 27 years on the intrigues of General Hospital, Guiding Light (the oldest soap still currently aired) and As the World Turns. Curiously, creators of great soaps often work in couple : Richard and Esther Shapiro created Dynasty; Bridget and Jerry Dobson, Santa Barbara and the own parents of Bridget, Frank and Doris Hursley, were at the origin of famous General Hospital in the Sixties. Jerry Dobson, for his part, had begun a career in the army, then in the culture of nuts before coming to television. "I learned how to write scenarios of soaps while looking over the shoulder of my wife" smiles he.

There are "rules" in the development  of a televised success. "The first thing is to bring together captivating characters.Then, comes the story itself. It must create emotion on all levels and strike in the heart all the generations, so that each spectator finds itself and feels itself near to the characters. One thus needs this starting idea, and also the confidence of the network which must obligatorily believe in you without to have seen the finished product. Fortunately, for us part, the current vice-president of NBC had worked six years with us before occupying this function. We thus had a significant friend in the place. The agreement was only a formality. Then, we worked during one year to work out a central topic around of which were going to be articulated the various episodes, to develop the characters, to seek the actors. I first want an actor who can play, but it is quite as essential that he has sex-appeal. Sex is what motivates people. It is necessary to take care of it."

The confidence of the network was such that NBC made exclusively build for Santa Barbara the largest studio ever used by a daytime soap. The studio 11, where are shot the indoor scenes of the show, is however not located in Santa Barbara but at 140 kilometers from there, in Burbank, near to the immense buildings of NBC. It covers 1 800 m2, on several levels and cost 12 million dollars.

For a long time, Bridget and Jerry Dobson imagined themselves the intrigues and the plots of Santa Barbara. Imagination often nourishes from reality. "We often create a character on the basis of people we know. That astonishes me besides that nobody still prosecuted us ! From time to time, my husband recognizes in what I write a sentence that he said to me or a gesture he did one or two months before, at home, in our private life... I like to write a lot for Mason. He is a tormented character, who perhaps resembles to me by some sides. I made him say to his parents things that I would not ever be able to say to mines, but that I would have quite desired to say to them  !"

"Since January 1987, my husband and I let the work to other writers. There are permanently ten writers at the total disposal of the show : three who have to guide the story and to draw the great lines, seven or eight who fill the blanks and equip this skeleton." Each day, these writers provide to each actor until thirty pages of dialogues. Then, since three years in the United States, during one daily hour of spectacle, is progressively worked out the chequered story of the Capwells and the Lockridges... "Our challenge is to find writers and actors who can work at very fast intervals and keep a satisfying level of quality in the same time."

Among all the soap-operas aired by American television, Santa Barbara is the one which was created the most recently. It contains also some innovations compared to the traditional ones. The outside scenes are thus more numerous than in the majority of the other soaps, bringing a seal of authenticity.

The department of the investigations of NBC also regularly realizes surveys to know the public of Santa Barbara and its desires. "They are the characters, more than the story itself, that impassion the spectators", explains Bridget Dobson. "The public of Santa Barbara is mainly feminine and a good part of these televiewers did not until there ever faithfully followed a soap-opera. Santa Barbara attracted a new public for this kind of shows, thanks to elements which often missed in the other soaps : a touch of humour, a little more of audacity in the sex scenes and a peel of "glamour" from Hollywood".