The show that makes California shaking

 By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1985

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The show Santa Barbara made its way. And just like the Americans, the French fell in love with it. Just like its producers who received a real "warning from the nature" the day they thought of modifying its production.

The story deserves to be told in detail. As it is known, as soon as "the quotation" of a famous soap drops a little on the other side of the Atlantic, its producers invent a process to inject a little fresh blood in the scenario. Thus in October 1984 the producers of Santa Barbara thought of the ways of replacing some actors in the show. Those of Dynasty had invented a massacre by some terrorists to renew a part of their distribution. On the side of Santa Barbara, one thought that the more probable in California where happens the action was to provoke a fatal earthquake. And the scenario has been modified in this way !

But it is there that the ground really spoke. During the day and the hour the fatal episode was aired on television, a authentic earthquake shook California. This coincidence, instead of frightening the televiewers, made on the contrary an enormous publicity to Santa Barbara which however did not need it. At the origin of the formidable success of this small daytime show, become a show star, two names, those of Jerry and Bridget Dobson, the scenario writers of Santa Barbara. They were not totally beginner in this very particular literary style, since the Bridget's mother had herself collaborated to the scenario of General Hospital, a show which knows success for... twenty three years in the United States !

As opposed to what may have been read in some French magazines, Santa Barbara has never be shot in the town of the same name located at one hundred and sixty kilometers from North of Los Angeles, where the president Reagan ownes a ranch and John Travolta a country house. Actually, for the shooting, the network NBC built in Hollywood the bigger television studio of the United States, the studio 11, where are annually spent from four hundred to six hundred millions dollars to make Santa Barbara.

In last July, the historical authors of the show, Jerry and Bridget Dobson, sell to a company named New World all their rights on Santa Barbara. The total they obtained is so colossal that until now it still remains secret. In July also, an immense festival celebrated the first anniversary of the show in the famous villa of Hugh Heffner, the owner of Playboy. And that day, Kathy Shower, one of the prettiest models of the magazine received as a gift a significant role in Santa Barbara. I saw her and I can tell you that there may have another shaking in California the first day Kathy will play.