#Guiding light soap opera series

Many examples, some of the most famous include Holly as Archie, Ed as Betty and Roger as Veronica.

Some examples include Josh as the Archie, with Reva and Annie, and later Olivia filling the roles of Betty and Veronica.

However she found herself falling in love and eventually they wed.

Becoming the Mask: In 1992, Blake began to seduce Ross to get revenge against her mother Holly.

She miscarried and framed his ex Reva for manslaughter by making it look like she'd pushed her down the stairs.

The Baby Trap: Desperate to hang onto husband Josh, Annie slashed her diaphragm, only for it to backfire on her-Josh had told her he wanted to wait to have kids and her deception was the last straw.

The title was later retooled to reference the town's lighthouse, which was also featured as part of the Credits Montage for many years and became a plot point in a number of episodes. Over time, that plot point was dropped, but the title remained.

Artifact Title: The title referred to a lamp in the preacher's study.

Guiding Light includes the following tropes:

#Guiding light soap opera series

Not much survived from either the radio years or the first 25 years or so of the TV series what does exist is in the form of kinescopes, home video recordings, and (in the case of the radio years) vinyls.įor a far more detailed look at the entire run of the series, the Other Wiki has you covered. Since Guiding Light was a daytime Soap Opera, not all of the material that makes up the exhaustive narrative is known to exist. Despite fan outcry and the outright revolt of one actor, the show eventually did come back to earth, if just so it could tidy everything up with a bow for the Grand Finale. The new millennium was now upon us, along with rapes, mobsters, psychics, and ghosts galore. Ed Bauer), were retconned into accessories to a murder that happened way back into the 1970s, when they were still straight-laced young men. Four of the veteran players, including the oldest living Bauer (Dr. The last years of the show's life were rocky, despite an extensive retool and modernization of the Springfield sets. About the craziest thing to happen on Guiding Light was a multiple-personality diagnosis. Like most soap operas during that period, the storylines got a bit more tangled and outrageous, though nothing anywhere near the realm of Days of Our Lives' cloak-and-dagger intrigue. The 1980s were.more tumultuous (complete with a disco intro sequence - in 1981): The aging Bauer clan and the working-class Reardons took a backseat to a younger, hornier cast, though they would make a comeback in the 1990s. Nothing so earth-shattering occurred over the course of the 1970s, apart from the show's patriarch, Bill Bauer, being very thoroughly killed off and then mysteriously resurrected.

Without any fanfare, the show returned to the midwest, with 'Los Angeles' retconned into 'Springfield, U.S.A' - your standard, all-purpose midwest locale (which should be familiar to anyone who has watched American soaps). The 1960s brought forth a couple of minority actors (including a pre-fame Billy Dee Williams) and a host of contemporary issues. The Bauer family would eventually become the tentpoles of the series from here on out. Filling in for cranky Ellis Smith is Bertha 'Bert' Miller, a materialistic harridan who opposes the Bauers' work ethic at every turn. The 1950s (and the transition to television) saw the families move to the Los Angeles area, where the focus shifted to the Bauers, a clan of German immigrants who believed staunchly in the American dream.

Succeeding preachers, all with the Ruthledge name, have carried on the work of their progenitor. Inspired by creator Irna Phillips' nights listening to a radio preacher, The Guiding Light began as a character study of Chicago-based Reverend John Ruthledge and his foil, the pessimistic Ellis Smith. Recapping that is not going to be an easy task, but damned if we won't try. With all that said, you may be curious as to what the show is about. If you wanted to experience the entire show from beginning to end, and you could do so on a 24-hours-a-day schedule with no breaks, you would need around eighteen months to get through it all. The single most important thing about Guiding Light is this: it may be the longest recorded continuous narrative in the entire history of mankind. The show ended on the 18th of September 2009 - after 18,262 episodes. Originally titled The Guiding Light, it was shortened to Guiding Light in 1975. Guiding Light was a Soap Opera that began on NBC radio on the 25th of January 1937, moved to CBS radio in 1947, then to television in 1952.