Extremely obscure John Karlen credit

[Uncle Roger]

I was poking around on imdb and found a listing for Hidden Faces. Hidden Faces was a very short lived NBC soap that was on back in 1968/69. It attempted to recreate the mystery/detective story lines that Edge of Night. It was an early credit for both Linda Blair and Roy Scheider.

The male lead was played by Conard Fowkes. Betsy Durkin appeared on the show as well. And John Karlen was on there as well. Have no idea what his character did but he did have one of the oddest soap names ever. The character was named Sharkey Primrose!

[Lydia]

Oh, how frustrating.  I'd love to have a look at Hidden Faces - and all the tapes were probably destroyed over forty years ago.

But I daresay it would have disappointed me.  In all probability John Karlen's Sharkey Primrose did not wear primrose-colored pants the way Nathan Forbes did - and I do mean exactly the way Nathan Forbes did.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

 

What's also funny, but in a totally different way, is that I have several photos from Hidden Faces. (I saved them because Conard Fowkes is in them, and even though at the time I'd never even seen him on DS because I didn't start watching until September '67, I knew he had been on the show.) And some of them are cast photos. But John Karlen isn't in any of them.    And considering the show only lasted about six months and those six months were during a time that Karlen was on DS, I wonder if he simply moonlighted in a small role? It would seem odd for DC to have allowed that - but another bit of trivia is that Bob Cobert did the music for HF -  so there already was sort of a DS connection to it...

[Uncle Roger]

Karlen did several soaps during the '60's. He worked on Love is a Many Splendored Thing with Leslie Charleson, long before she began her run on General Hospital. I do remember catching him as Casey on Another World. Maybe he wasn't on contract on DS?

[Gothick]

A lot of the actors on DS worked without a contract.  I guess things were a lot more loose back in the Sixties. 

I would love to see episodes from Hidden Faces.  I bet it was a hoot.

G.

[Darren Gross]

Cobert did the music for Hidden Faces as well.  A couple of cues got re-worked and used in DS.  Mostly it was lighter background small ensemble soap stuff.  I'd love to see an episode.

What Gothick says is true about contracts, but actually that happens a lot on soaps of the last few years and the few remaining as well.  Many actors work for years in the ensemble hoping like heck to be "under contract" etc.  The guy that played Noah on As The World Turns was a regular for a couple of years and never was on contract.  Karlen has said how he happy he was working on DS without a contract.  It gave him a great deal of freedom to bounce around from theater show to TV show to DS etc. and those were very fertile years for him.

[Gothick]

Thanks for that info, Darren.  I seem to recall having read somewhere that Karlen was very happy with his status on DS.  As you said, it give him the freedom to pursue other projects in between bursts of very regular work on the series.

Fascinating to read that actors still to this day work on soaps without contracts.  I would have thought that union regs would no longer allow such a situation, but my knowledge of the current industry is practically nil.

G.

[michael c]

it would be interesting to know what DS actors were under contract and who was not.

karlen's characters would disappear for months at a time. there were extensive periods when angelique wasn't around. is it possible lara parker was without contract?

soap actors really made the rounds in those day. lots of DS actors ended up on 'the secret storm' and 'edge of night' as well.

[Gerard]

At the 2003 festival, Karlen commented on how he was hired and said:  "While almost everyone else got a contract, I got a handshake and twenty dollars from Dan Curtis."  He stated that it worked out for the better for him because not only was the pay good when he appeared on the show, but he did have the freedom to come and go and do other things.  Whenever he was finished with a project he was re-written back into DS so he was never short on work.

Gerard

[Sara Monster]

One little detail on this credit, the Karlenzine fanzine list the character of Sharkey Primrose as a 'gangster'.

[David]

only 127 eps, according to imdb. Rating was 3.3 according to wikipedia, around 4 million viewers--a major bomb for those days.
The show was created & written by Irving Vendig, the Edge of Night headwriter for many years.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

A big part of the problem may have been what it was up against. I don't remember what time it was on, but if it was opposite something like Another World, which was huge back then, it's no wonder it didn't survive. After all, there were no VCRs back then, so the only opportunity to watch it would have been when it was actually on.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Even worse than Another World! I found the daytime schedule for back then online and Hidden Faces was on opposite As The World Turns, which was far and away the #1 soap back then - and Let's Make A Deal, which was very big for ABC.

[David]

Regardless of whether it's 1960s standards or today's, 4 million viewers, which is what DS got pre-Barnabas, is still a lot of people---Hidden Faces hardly played to an empty house!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

According to the 30th Anniversary DS Almanac, DS was getting 9-10 million viewers in its first year.

But to put things into perspective ratings-wise, during the time Hidden Faces was on, DS was basically in its heyday and it had an overall 8.4 rating for the year. However, As The World Turns had a 13.8, which was not only huge, but 3 full ratings points higher than the soap at #2 (Search For Tomorrow) which had a 10.7. But all Hidden Faces could pull was a 3.3. And all I'm saying is that that's not surprising given it was on opposite the powerhouse that was ATWT in those days.