Yesterday, I received my copy of the Days of our Lives 45 Years a Celebration in Photos by Greg Meng and Eddie Campbell. I was able to purchase it new with discounts for under $10, which included shipping. What follows are my thoughts on the book.
While I enjoyed looking through this book at the pictures, I am relieved I didn’t spend the cover price of $29.99 on it. That is a lot of money for 250 pages of primarily photos with very little text, but as it is a photo book that is to be expected. Considering how much money I spend in a calendar year on soap things any cash saved can be used to purchase other items like the Days novels with off canvas characters that are coming out for the anniversary.
I think the book tried to balance out the present day and the past, but it is difficult to do, as some readers won’t know the old stuff, while others will be buying it mainly for that reason. I did appreciate that in choosing and taking pictures they did it around the time, the program was honoring Frances Reid’s memory by having Alice Horton be laid to rest. Recent pictures of former cast members who visited for the funeral were included in the publication. So people reading the book whom weren’t watching years ago, and saw those episodes were able to have a place of reference for those characters and actors.
The photos and drawings of some of the particular sets are interesting as well as some of the Richard Bloore costume drawings. I could have had pages of that. I loved seeing the photo of Tom and Alice’s bedroom in the 1960s, which had two separate beds and clearer pictures of the ornaments. Of course, that would have been made even better if they had photos of the actors who played the particular roles who belonged to the ornaments. There were also “hunk shots” and couple pictures. They didn’t have a gallery of cast group photos over the years, but if other Days books have a good number of them.
The biggest downside to me about the book is that not every picture is marked. It took me a few minutes to figure out it was Susan Flannery in a photo with MacDonald Carey and Susan Seaforth Hayes. I know what Susan Flannery looks like today, but a caption would have been extremely helpful and someone who doesn’t know Days history may have not even made the connection even with the help of the index except if they went line by line by page number. I appreciated the index, but it does no good for group shots with behind the scenes people as I may know some of the names, but can’t put a face to any of them. I wish this information while not in the book was made available online. This book had a lot of different actors focused upon, but some popular actors of the past are not included like Wayne Northrop (who originated the role of Roman Brady), and I couldn’t find photos of past characters like Belle, Shawn or Mike for example. I was also stunned that there were no archival photos of Ken Corday’s mother Betty at the studio. All of these things did not ruin my enjoyment of the book, but felt they should be mentioned. I must admit this may be critical, and I can only imagine how much work went into the book, but I wanted to get this out of my system. When you have a show that aired for so many years and a limited number of pages, including everyone is going to be impossible. If the book was 500 pages and done chronologically perhaps there would be less chance for any major oversights, but it is doubtful a book like that would ever get published.
Getting back to what was in the book, some of the photos are in such focus birthmarks and other imperfections are noticeable, which I felt was cool. Some were silly, and some were serious. Hair and makeup weren’t perfect in every one, which is nice for a change. If you love Days and enjoy looking at photos, you should check this book out at your local bookseller. Seeing it online doesn’t do it justice and if you like it enough to want to get a copy look for a deal from a web source. Happy reading!
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