WSJ Article: Life after 'Life' Is A Mystery

From The Wall Street Journal

Life After 'Life' Is a Mystery

By TRIPP WHETSELL

Last April, veteran daytime actress Ilene Kristen was finishing a yoga class near her Upper
West Side apartment when she received a frantic message on her cell phone. It was her agent
informing her that "One Life to Live," the ABC soap opera on which she'd portrayed Roxy
Balsom since 2001, had just been canceled along with its iconic suds sibling, "All My Children."

"Shock is the only word to describe it," said Ms. Kristen, who has also played minor parts

on "Law & Order," "The Sopranos" and on Broadway, and is probably best remembered as the
scheming Delia on "Ryan's Hope," the Emmy-nominated soap of the 1970s and '80s. "We'd
been hearing rumors about both shows for months, but until I got the call I didn't think it was
going to happen. I was dumbfounded."

Seven months later, she still is. So were many of her "One Life to Live" castmates last Thursday
as they gathered to tape the series's final episodes for television, which will be broadcast in
January after 11,096 shows and 43 years on the air. Talks are under way to relaunch "One
Life to Live" on the Internet through the production company Prospect Park, though similar
plans for "All My Children" were recently scrapped. Its weekday 2 p.m. slot will be filled by "The
Revolution," a health and lifestyle program from the producers of "The Biggest Loser."

Outside ABC's West 66th Street studios, fans stood with flowers for the fictional citizens of
Llanview. Three floors above, in the life-size doll house that is the "One Life to Live" set, Ms. Kristen, longtime regular Erika Slezak (who has played Vicki Lord since 1971), and onscreen
spouses Robert Woods (Bo) and Hillary B. Smith (Nora) struggled to remember their lines and
not break down.

"The hardest part is saying goodbye and realizing we may never see each other again," said Mr.
Woods, who joined the cast in 1979 and, as Bo, endured the deaths of two wives, a fiancée and
a son, was shot, and slept with his father's ex-mistress while time-traveling back to 1968. "We
work so closely here and it's like a family. I did a lot of other things over the years, like 'The
Waltons' and 'Police Story' and movies of the week, but this show was the job that gave me
recognition."

For many of the cast members, the show's consistency through the decades has allowed
for precisely the sort of security and comfort that their murdering, comatose, back-stabbing,
amnesiac, time-travelling characters always found so elusive.

"It provided me weekends and time with my children, and that you don't get in the theater," said
Ms. Smith, whose character survived a brain tumor, a stroke, blindness, and a kidnapping, only
to have her house burned down by a racist stalker. "It provided an opportunity for a normal life."

The final TV tapings of "One Life to Live," along with the recent departures of "All My
Children," "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light," have marked not just the death-knell of
four shows whose genre has been on the decline for more than a decade, but something more
significant for New York.

As the last remaining daytime drama based in the city, "One Life to Live" also represents the
foreseeable end of New York's once-thriving soap-opera business. A cottage industry since
the 1950s, in its heyday it produced more than half the daytime dramas on the air, where full-
time contract players could fetch upward of $200,000 a year and struggling actors, writers and
musicians could earn enough to avoid waiting tables.

Besides helping to launch the careers of Laurence Fishburne, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan
Phillipe, Hayden Panettiere, Phylicia Rashad and others, "One Life to Live" also offered steady
employment for thousands of technical staffers through the decades. But the format has been
all but devoured in recent years by the expanded cable universe and the advent of reality
television, where the plot lines are only slightly less believable.

Robert S. Woods and Hillary B. Smith, who have played married couple Bo and Nora Buchanan
on 'One Life to Live' for nearly two decades, at one of the final tapings.

"There were so many different factors," Ms. Smith said. "There was the advent of cable. There
was also that primetime started imitating daytime and being very successful at it. For some
reason, daytime thought they needed to imitate primetime and we became a poor imitation of
ourselves, a watered-down imitation of what we were."

Frank Valentini, the show's executive producer, said measures had been taken to reduce
overhead in recent years—including voluntary pay cuts for several principal cast members—but
acknowledged it may have come too late as ratings plummeted and production costs soared up
to $300,000 per episode.

"I think our leaving definitely shallows out every facet of the entertainment business in New York
because we keep so many people working at any given time," said Mr. Valentini, who's been
with "One Life to Live" for 26 years. "That includes not just our primary cast, but also people
who come on in short-term roles. Because we generate so many episodes, we make a lot of
money for the city, so this affects everyone, including the local vendors where we buy our props
and costumes."

Agnes Nixon, who created both "One Life to Live" and "All My Children" and was on-set for the
final taping, agreed. "There was nothing wrong with the story lines or the cast," she said. "It was
the cost and nobody could change that. But it's been 42 wonderful years, and how many people
have that? I can't complain too much."

As Thursday's shoot wound down, Ms. Kristen and her castmates paused to reflect on
the accomplishments of "One Life to Live" and plot their next moves, even as the online
reincarnation lingered on the horizon. On the rehearsal hall bulletin board hung an invitation to
the following night's wrap party at Capitale and a memo reminding everyone to clear out their
dressing rooms by Dec. 9.

"Of course I'm sad, but I'm not a depressive person and as an actor you're always back to
square one," Ms. Kristen said, choking back tears. "The one thing I know is that people stop
ironing when they see me, and they don't run to the refrigerator or put me on fast forward. That I
know. I could die as Roxy, and I hope we have the chance to continue it. I didn't think we'd have to say goodbye so quickly."