All the secrets of the new Santa Barbara !
By Joan Mac Trevor, Ciné Télé Revue, 1988	Home   Cette page en Français

In Burbank, in the studios of NBC, Santa Barbara, hardly shaken these last weeks, sets the head off. To the fall of the ratings (the soap-opera is at the thirteenth place) followed the dismissal of Bridget Dobson, the creator of the show, who, during four years, put a lot of herself in the adventure to help it to conquer, on a difficult ground, the one of soap-operas where many dead-born. For those who became the Capwells and the Lockridges, Bridget was quite as a second mom. Severe but just. The affair is now between the hands of the lawyers of the two parts.

But life continues. And, on screen, it must even continue as if nothing had occurred, so that the televiewers still dream and live of passions, at the rhythm of the love stories of Cruz, Eden, Ted. At the same moment, the show must also overcome the departure of Robin Wright, one of the central pieces, tired of her role and tempted by the  cinema adventure. Robin left, but the character of Kelly is always here, retaken by another actress, Kimberly McArthur. How the public, which made of Robin a princess of the little screen, will accept it ? Joan Mac Trevor went on the stage of Santa Barbara to know what occurred there. She tells how the show tries to surmount the difficult fix that it crosses, how he furbishes its weapons and prepares the counter-attack. For the greatest pleasure of the televiewer.

After the storm, there is always a break. During weeks, the actors of Santa Barbara forced themselves to be optimistic and to believe in the future. Today, on the faces are redrawing smiles. Eden, Cruz, Kelly and the others await the verdict of the public, but they are trustful. For them, the first sunbeam shone at the ceremony of the Daytime Emmy : by winning the Emmy of the best daytime soap of American television, they knew that they were not on the wrong way.

"We understood that we were loved, that we were still loved", repeats Marcy Walker, sparkling in a yellow tailor, the color of the returned sun ? "We needed to be reassured, to receive this green fire for our new ideas. This reward does not mean that the other soaps are bad, but that Santa Barbara must live ! At a certain moment, I started to doubt : was the wedding of Cruz and Eden (her character) really a good thing ? This love story was an accident. It was born only because characters disappeared and that a kind of magic brought us closer. But public claimed it so much. We could not refuse it any more."

Today, the new ideas, the new intrigues, the new characters are there. Justin Deas (he also won an Emmy), who interprets judge Keith Timmons, plays a scene with his young wife, Gina (Robin Mattson replaced Linda Gibboney in the role). She wears linen underwears which makes her very sexy. A little later, it is towards a young nun that all the looks converge. She is called Sarah, she makes signs with her hands and her fingers to make herself comprehensible : she is indeed a deaf and dumb actress, Phyllis Frelich, who plays her. The disturbed nights of Sarah will reveal at her a heart of murderer.

But the owners of the show direct today Santa Barbara on other roads, the ones of humour and a more modern tone. "The story of Eden and Cruz is based on old stereotypes", they explain. "With Keith and Gina, the "bad ones" of the show, the relations will be more vigorous. They will send tarts and mud to their face." "When we discovered this scenario in the early morning", adds Robin Mattson, "we looked ourselves while saying : "They want us to play that ?!" Some actors would not have been very comfortable by repeating this incisive text, but I am persuaded that the result can only be gaining."

To captivate a new public, so that the show finds its second breath, Santa Barbara wants to take risks. The words of Bridget and Jerry Dobson, who have created it, often return to the memory of the actors : "If we do not dare, we will die like others soaps !"

In addition to the young people (a great action is currently taken to make them return to the show), Santa Barbara wants to reconquer the televiewers with a faster rhythm. "Our show goes much more faster than a few months ago, it occurs there much more events" explains the executive producer Jill Farren Phelps. "More and more, our stories begin and finish the same day. The televiewers will not have to always wait the following day to know what occurs ! We want Santa Barbara to be the most modern soap of television. We simplified the dialogue and created a new musical gamut, so it will not always be the sempiternal violins and organs which returns."

The modernization of the show is well the key-element of this charm-offensive. The compositer-supervisor Dominic Messinger, also prize winner of the Daytime Emmy, even imagined, with his colleagues Rick Rhodes and Liz Lachman, specific musical topics for each character. And for the wedding of Keith and Gina, he even recorded a wedding march with synthetizer. But for a scene of pursuit, he preferred a composition signed Beethoven !

At the studio 11 of NBC in Burbank, Santa Barbara arrived at a turning. Its leaders engaged a daring bet. A complete recasting of which one of the bases is also a young woman who will not be long in making speak a lot of her : Kimberly McArthur, the substitute of Robin Wright in the role of Kelly. "This succession is very hard", recognizes this young 25 years old actress, blond and thin like Robin Wright. But will that be enough ? "After each scene, the same questions return to me : "Will they like what I do ? Will they adopt me like Robin ?" I do not want her to be forgotten as if she had never existed. The character of Kelly is as a child whom one collects and whom it is necessary to help to grow well."

Dancer and singer of formation, Kimberly makes her first steps in the job of actress. She recently shot the mini-series Elvis and Me inspired by the book of Priscilla Presley, also some episodes of Magnum and of Highway to Heaven with Michael Landon, but it is first via advertisement (in particular in spots for Kleenex) that she revealed herself. In any case, France is in advance on the other countries and already knows her : in 1986, Kimberly was part of a review of music-hall in tour in Monte-Carlo ! "I am impatient to know the verdict of French people", she says (but we will not see her here before several months). "I know that it is them who made the show as it is in Europe."

The new destiny of Kelly will besides not pass unperceived. Her wedding with Jeffrey Conrad (Ross Kettle) celebrated, another man will gradually involve himself in her life : the beautiful T.J. who plays Chip Mayer. A torturer of hearts because, in the future episodes of Santa Barbara, he will be the lover of Sophia Capwell (Judith McConnell).

In spite of the arrival in force of humour (the preparations of the wedding of Gina are a caricature of the tasty movie Moonstruck with Cher), the feelings and the romanticism will be always very present. Anne Howard Bailey, writer, reveals : "Cruz had formerly a child of another woman, who was drugged. Eden cannot admit it. How will her finish to accept it ? As for the character of Cain (played by Scott Jaeck), he is a Vietnam veteran and he will find his daughter, an Eurasian girl. A situation that several American families lived after the Vietnam war."

Thanks to a mobilization of all instants, the purveyors of dream of Santa Barbara already succeeded the impossible thing : to pass above the strike of writers which currently affects a lot Hollywood. Nobody wants to say from where come all these scenarios which will constitute the episodes to come, but to see the enthusiasm of the actors, anybody, either, cannot hide the truth : thanks to the efforts of everyone, another Santa Barbara is being born. A stronger show and better armed in the future against the blows dealt by fate which always emerge at the time when one waits them the less...