OT: The Edge of Night

[Joeytrom]

This was also an unusual soap opera in that it was about crime and was actually filmed live, not live on tape.
I have only seen the last years when it was done on videotape and toned down considerably.

Was this a scary, suspenseful show?  I know the theme song had a eerie ring to it.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I loved The Edge of Night. It was definitely scary and suspenseful when I watched it back in the late '60s and into the '70s. Unfortunately, though, I never got to see the last 5 or so years because the ABC affiliate in my area dropped the show, so I can't really say if it had been toned down. And as much as I enjoyed Joel Crothers on the show, to me the Donald May/Maeve McGuire Adam/Nicole Drake years were the best. That would have been about '68 through '77. (Michael Stroka was also on the show during the latter part of that period.)

[Gerard]

I remember seeing a few episodes as a wee-widdo-kid (shortly before I started watching DS from the start) and I remember two scenes that scared the you-know-what out of me.  One was of three women driving in a car, two in the front seat and one in back.  The two in the front were in what could be called a cold, uncaring stance, their faces registering nothing, as the driver was heading the car for a plummetting off of a cliff and the woman in the back seat screaming hysterically as they did so.  In another scene, a girl (babysitter maybe?) was alone in a house trying to use a phone that was not working while a hand was turning a doorknob to get in.  It was definitely spooky stuff.

Gerard

[Joeytrom]

In one of the last episodes, it seemed to be veering to a Parallel Time type of story where a woman character was on the wharf and came upon a street and then a minute of so later, the street wasn't there but the ocean was.

[David]

 

I watched the ABC years of Edge. Joel Crothers was SO handsome. We also got to years of Michael Stroka & two years of Robert Gerringer. DS director John Sedwick was Edge's primary director.
The show was different from others soaps to be sure, kinda like a Hitchcock film done in serial format, though I heard that it was closer in tone to Perry Mason during it early years.

I remember one horrifying scene when Nicole, a TV newscaster by the 1980s, died live on the air: she was murdered by a poisonous chemical in her stage make-up!

I just read that a company called Broadway Digital World bought the rerun rights to all P & G soaps including Edge. Stay tuned.....

[Sandor]

My little girlfriend's mother always watched it when I came home from school with her - it must have been a 3:30 show out on the West Coast (it tipped me off that DS was coming up next on ABC, and I'd better grab a cookie and go home to catch Barnabas). The mom wasn't big on DS: "Too violent" she said, yet on The Edge of Night, someone was getting shot, stabbed, kidnapped, blackmailed, poisoned, hypnotized or pushed from a high altitude on a daily basis - though not necessarily the same character. This was around late 1969. DS was going into the Leviathan phase, and "The Edge Of Night" was definitely scary and suspenseful around then. With DS, we the viewers normally knew who the bad guys were up front and throughout, but on "Edge", there was always a plot twist that catapulted an unassuming back-burner character into the spotlight: as the "real" psychotic, murderous villain or villainess you hadn't suspected. The casting was great, just like on DS. The actors playing the killers or would-be killers on "Edge" made those characters indelible in our minds.  I remember a scene with a psychotic blonde woman named Stephanie slapping a man in the face and hissing "You filth!" I missed how he triggered that response. Days later she had a knife in her back. It could get you hooked if the storyline was good.