Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: All My Afternoons

This entry is about the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman chapter of All My Afternoons, a 1979 by Annie Gilbert on soap operas.

Unlikes every other chapter in the book, this focuses on a soap opera parody created by Norman Lear, the prolific television producer, which aired in most of the country in late night five days a week. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was a cult show that lasted about two years as a syndicated program. It spawned some spinoffs, Forever Fernwood, Fernwood 2-Night (later America 2-Night). Fernwood 2-Night was a talk show satire set in the same town as Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, while America 2-Night took place in California. The hosts of that show were the same, and real Hollywood stars would be interviewed. (This is background information I'm sharing and wasn't in the book itself.)

This chapter begins with a reference to the story of how Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser) goes to visit her sick neighbor Leroy and his wife Blanche. Leroy ends up dying as he drowned in a bowl of chicken soup. The author talks about hearing about this story, and eventually asking others what they were talking about as they heard it in the background while half asleep. Within a week of finding out what it was, Annie Gilbert was a fan. Then the book goes into more story summation and also has some dialogue. To the audiences of that era it may have seemed extremely outrageous.

One interesting factoid was in San Diego, it ran during the day against Search for Tomorrow and was getting a 49 share. In Richmond, VA a mothers' group protested and the show was taken off the air, in Des Moines, Iowa it was moved to 2:30 so kids wouldn't be home from school. Even within soap circles it was controversial, Bryna Laub (Daytime Serial Newsletter) thought it was insulting and made people believe actual soap operas were like this program. Barbara Michels (Soap Opera Review, a publication I've never heard of) said while it was comedic, it still made you care.

Getting back to Norman Lear, according to the book, he wanted to do something in the soap opera form for years. Al Burton speaks about what Lear wanted out of the show, which was a show where the characters were blue-collar and not "beautifully coiffed". He also wanted a show that made you laugh, but the characters weren't supposed to be laughed at, but with them as you sympathized with their struggles, so it looked like Michels understood what Lear was trying to do.

Gail Parent was the original head writer, but she had to drop out of the project. There was a famous paragraph that people were given when trying out for that job. Here goes: "Mary's grandfather is found to be the Fernwood Flasher, there's a mass murder on the cul-de-sac right next to their street where five people, two goats, and eight chickens are killed, and there's a strike about to be called at the plant." Ann Marcus got the job as she was the first to hear the paragraph and just continue the story. At that point, Ann Marcus had worked as the head writer for both Search for Tomorrow and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. When this book was being written, she was the head writer of Days of Our Lives.

How Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman ended up being syndicated is also in this chapter. Ben Stein, (yes that Ben Stein) wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about the show, as he saw the pilots at an academic and TV critic event in Aspen, Colorado. After reading that article, other newspaper people wanted to see the show and after receiving copies wrote about it as well. Norman Lear even did showings on his lawn trying to get people interested. The person who bit was Al Flanagan of Denver, who had seven stations. Once one person bought, many others did as well.

The book talks about Lear's process of taping meetings, and how transcripts are given to everyone. At the time, Marcus was seen as a renegade in soaps, but she came up with stories that were "disarmingly ordinary and completely unorthodox." Lear though decided to dump her after the first year, and write the show via committee. The ratings went down, the magic was lost and people were unhappy dropping the show. It wasn't really a serial anymore and seemed like a situation comedy even when they did hire new writers. Other than the situation comedy part, that sounds a lot like what happened with some daytime soaps in their later years.

This was the last chapter of All My Afternoons. If someone is interested in soaps from over 30 years ago, and can find a copy of this book at a reasonable price, they should buy it. While the photos aren't in color it gives a lot of insight into what soaps used to be like and how things were done behind the scenes.