Ryan's Hope

Wikipedia:

Ryan's Hope is an American soap opera created by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, originally aired for 13 years on ABC from July 7, 1975 to January 13, 1989. It revolved around the trials and tribulations within a large Irish-American family in the Riverside district of New York City.

Origins

In late 1974, ABC Daytime approached Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, the head writers of CBS' Love of Life, about creating a new soap opera similar to General Hospital. Labine and Mayer added a large Irish-American family — the Ryans — to what ABC was initially calling City Hospital. Another of the show's working titles was "A Rage to Love," however that was soon changed. A pub theme originated with Mayer's and Labine's work on the earlier soap Where The Heart Is: "On WTHI we had had a prolonged sequence with two characters who were having an affair... on the other side of town in a small Irish bar."

Ryan patriarch Johnny (Bernard Barrow) owned a bar, Ryan's, across from fictional Riverside Hospital in New York City. His wife, Maeve (Helen Gallagher), assisted him in his duties, as did their children; Frank, Patrick, Mary and Siobhan (the latter daughter being introduced in the series in 1978, having spent the first three years away from New York City). The Ryans and the wealthy Coleridges were the original core families of the show. The soap took the then-unusual approach of situating itself in an actual community—the Washington Heights neighborhood of Northern Manhattan. Maeve's parish sat in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, on 178th St. References were often made to Central Park (Delia's Crystal Palace restaurant), Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn (mob-owned fishing boats), and other localities to provide a sense of place: "We wanted to show how New York has communities," Labine said.

Labine and Mayer also served as the executive producers of the show at this point, with George Lefferts as the producer. Lefferts would soon be replaced by Robert Costello, who remained with the show until 1978. Nancy Ford co-wrote the first episode with Labine and Mayer.

The original cast consisted of Nancy Addison Altman, Bernard Barrow, Faith Catlin, Justin Deas, Michael Fairman, John Gabriel, Helen Gallagher, Michael Levin, Malcolm Groome, Rosalinda Guerra, Ron Hale, Michael Hawkins, Earl Hindman, Ilene Kristen, Frank Latimore, Kate Mulgrew, Hannibal Penney, Jr., and Diana van der Vlis.

The premise of the show for its first two years involved the blue-collar, immigrant, Catholic Ryans and the three of their 5 upwardly-mobile adult children still residing in NY: Frank, lawyer and aspiring local politician; Pat, physician at local Riverside Hospital; and Mary, aspiring journalist. The show contrasted the cultures of conservative parents with their more liberated, 70s-drenched children. Older mores about lifetime marriages, church-proscribed divorce, chastity outside of marital sanction were constantly being tested by New-World, New-Era urban values. Frank's political campaign for city council was challenged by a chain of events surrounding his paying off the Coleridge son who knew of the affair Frank was having with Jillian Coleridge while married to needy, frantic Delia. The political scandal angle would soon be reiterated with Frank's short tenure in the state senate. Delia would become involved with all three of Johnny Ryan's sons, Frank, Pat, and Dakota. The quasi-incestuous focus would be echoed in coming years by Frank's involvement with both Coleridge sisters, Jillian and Faith, and with Faith's involvement with Ryan brothers, Pat and Frank, and again with Jillian's involvement with half-brothers Frank and Dakota, and by Michael Pavel's involvement with a mother and her teen daughter. Mary became irresistibly attracted to a reporter exposing Frank's blackmailing scandal, the fiery Jack Fenelli, and eventually moved in with him without benefit of marriage.

These extramarital and premarital affairs, the attendant children out of wedlock, the careerist women, the assertion of abortion rights: the clash of generational values in the Ryan clan was interesting to viewers and there developed a passionate following for Kate Mulgrew portraying Mary Ryan. Mary's career and personal goals were given neurotic counterpoint in Delia's machinations with Mary's brothers.

Show in Transition

After two years of growth and success, Ryan's Hope began encountering challenges. Michael Hawkins left the role of Frank Ryan in 1976, and subsequent replacements included Andrew Robinson (1976–1978), Daniel Hugh Kelly (1978–1981), Geoffrey Pierson (1983–1985), and John Sanderford (1985–1989). In late 1977, Kate Mulgrew announced she would be leaving in January 1978. Between January 1978 and December 1979, three different actresses played Mary (Mary Carney, Kathleen Ryan Tolan, Nicolette Goulet). Although Labine and Mayer wanted to kill her character, ABC refused. However, after ABC realized no one other than Mulgrew herself would be accepted in the role, they agreed to let Mary be killed off. Ryan sister Siobhan was brought to town to become romantically involved with a man, Joe Novak, who turned out to be a mobster, a storyline that offed Mary in a grisly bludgeoning murder when she and Jack were investigating the mafia ties of the fiance. Malcolm Groome chose to leave the role of Pat Ryan in 1978 and was replaced with John Blazo (1978–1979), Robert Finoccoli (1979), and Patrick James Clarke (1982–1983). All these recasts left the writers struggling to give a voice to any of the Ryan children and left the show's core family feeling unfamiliar to viewers.

Other characters not related to the Ryans were also recast. After Ilene Kristen left in January 1979, the role of Delia Reid was played by Robyn Millan (1979), Randall Edwards (1979–1982), and Robin Mattson (1984); Kristen returned to the show in the role from 1982-1983 (when she was fired due to weight gain) and 1986-1989. After Faith Catlin was dropped from the show as Faith Coleridge in May 1976, she was replaced with Nancy Barrett (1976), Catherine Hicks (1976–1978), and Karen Morris-Gowdy (1978–1983, 1989). Richard Muenz originated the role of Joe Novak in 1979, but was replaced by Roscoe Born (1981–1983, 1988), Michael Hennessy (1983–1984), and Walt Willey (1986–1987, with Joe initially under the guise of "Erik Brenner").

Of the major characters not related to the core characters, only Emmy Winner Louise Shaffer's Rae Woodard had any impact, seducing both Roger Coleridge and Frank Ryan. After her illegitimate daughter Kimberly (Kelli Maroney) was introduced, she became the focus of many storylines. Her character saw a shift in storyline when the wealthy Kirklands were brought in briefly to glamorize the show. After the Kirklands were written out, Rae became the instigator behind the brilliant Charlotte Greer storyline. When Shaffer's contract was not renewed, she remained on a recurring basis until hired by "Search For Tomorrow" to replace Maree Cheatham.

Production changes

Several things occurred behind the camera as well during the late 1970s to create a long, 10-year demise of the series. In 1979, Labine and Mayer sold the show to ABC due to skyrocketing production costs. There was speculation that ABC pushed for more action-adventure storylines, like the ones on their hit serial General Hospital. One of these included a gorilla who kidnapped Delia Reid Coleridge. Another included a search for lost Egyptian mummy Maatkare Hatchepsut. There were take-offs of Jaws, Manhattan, The Godfather, and The French Lieutenant's Woman. These were not the type of plots the show had previously been known for. Subsequent interviews with the headwriter Claire Labine, however, reveal that the network was not the driving force behind the surrealism: "Everyone always cites Prince Albert the ape story as a mistake. But I'd do that again. I loved those scenes. It was a story about alienation." Just as the King Kong plot captured Labine's imagination, so was the Raiders of the Lost Ark plot concerning a queen mummy inspired by Labine's vacation in Egypt at the time. None were considered plausible-- "the Raiders story... appears neither comfortable nor realistic," not told within a soap's context of real life, just as the King Kong and Jaws plots "were universally criticized."

At the beginning of 1982, ABC fired Labine and Mayer and replaced them with Mary Munisteri. During Munisteri's tenure as head writer, the focus began to move to the newly arrived wealthy Kirkland clan, which was headed by Hollis Kirkland III (Peter Haskell). It soon turned out that he was the father of Rae Woodard's daughter, Kimberly Harris (Kelli Maroney). As more and more Kirklands began to show up (including Christine Jones as Hollis' wife Catsy and Mary Page Keller and Ariane Munker as his daughter Amanda), less attention was paid to the Ryans and Coleridges. Various cast members at this time dubbed the show Kirkland's Hope.

Due to falling ratings, Labine and Mayer were asked back at the beginning of 1983. Ratings rose slightly with their return; however, it was not enough. By the end of 1983, they were replaced with General Hospital scribe Pat Falken Smith (with James E. Reilly joining as a staff writer). Smith, along with executive producer Joseph Hardy, once again shifted the focus from the Ryans. Numerous fan favorites, including Ilene Kristen, Louise Shaffer, and Karen Morris-Gowdy were either fired or left of their own accord during Smith's and Hardy's reign. The focus of the series was now centered on Greenberg's Deli, with Cali Timmins' Maggie Shelby and Scott Holmes' Dave Greenberg becoming two prominent characters.

In 1985, Smith was replaced with Millee Taggert and Tom King. The show began a shift back to its roots during this time. The show, which had been airing at 12:30 Eastern US/11:30 Central since 1977, had just been moved to the Noon Eastern US/11c time slot, beginning October 8, 1984. It appears that many of the cast members felt as though this was a very political move by ABC: since the daytime drama series Loving took over the former 12:30/11:30c Ryan's Hope slot, it allowed creator Agnes Nixon to use her clout with the network (from her lucrative soaps All My Children and One Life to Live) to get Loving a prime slot. This resulted in her new show commencing a block of back-to-back Nixon shows. Others felt that moving Ryan's Hope out of the 12:30 slot spared it competition from CBS mega-hit The Young and the Restless, and to a lesser degree, NBC's ailing Search For Tomorrow.

The final years

During the 1980s, there were numerous cast changes. Some of the more notable ones included the additions of Grant Show, Daniel Pilon, Gerit Quealy, Leslie Easterbrook, Tichina Arnold, Gloria DeHaven, Jimmy Wlcek, Maria Pitillo, Rosemary Prinz, Catherine Larson, and Christopher Durham. Durham arrived in October 1985 as Dakota Smith, who was brought to the Ryan family's attention following Johnny's admission of a tryst he'd had with a woman who stepped in as his caretaker while he was ill, and away from Maeve, in the 1950s. The long-ago weekend of intimacy produced Dakota, who arrived in New York to find out that Johnny was his father. Dakota soon became a rebel on the local scene, engaging in dirty dealings and becoming at odds with Frank, especially after he entered into a romance with Jill, Frank's beloved.

Recasts

In late 1984, Joseph Hardy and Felicia Minei Behr decided that the character of Ryan Fenelli would advance to being approximately 17 years old for new storyline prospects, from the 9 year old she was currently, as played by Jenny Rebecca Dweir. Newcomer Yasmine Bleeth was hired to become the teenage Ryan in early 1985, who started only a month or so after Dweir's last appearance in the role.

Initially, Bleeth's Ryan Fenelli shared many youth-oriented and high school themed plots with Grant Show's Rick Hyde and bad boy D.J. LaSalle, as played by up-and-coming actor Christian Slater. Rick joined the local police force after high school graduation, and eventually fell in love with Ryan, providing the show with its next adventurous supercouple. Jack Fenelli was unsupportive of his daughter dating Rick, who tended to live dangerously; in protest, Rick and Ryan ultimately rushed down to South Carolina in April 1986, where they eloped. Ryan was approached and assisted at the town hall ceremony by a woman, Maura (Kate Mulgrew), who bore more than a passing resemblance to Ryan's late mother, Mary Ryan Fenelli (it was suggested that this was Mary returning yet again in ghostly form). The two were followed and then found by Jack and Frank after the wedding and brought back home, and while Rick and Ryan moved in together, things became more rocky between Ryan and her family.

Later in 1985, Jadrien Steele departed from the role of 10-year-old Johnno Ryan. Instead of replacing him with another child actor, Hardy and Behr decided to advance Johnno's age to 19 for storyline purposes as well. After being called back home to New York by his relatives, following the accidental, near-fatal shooting of his father Frank by Rick Hyde, the suddenly grown-up John Reid Ryan surfaced in August 1986, and was portrayed for the rest of the show's run by Jason Adams. Johnno returned from attending college in the Pacific Northwest, complete with a baby son, Owen "Owney" Ryan. At first, despite prodding from Johnno's "second mother" Jill Coleridge and everyone else, details of Owney's mother and the circumstances surrounding his birth were seldom shared by Johnno, until the mother to which he was not married, Lizzie Ransome (Catherine Larson) arrived a while later. News of this latest unexpected arrival to the Ryan clan soon brought Ilene Kristen back to the show as Delia, to meet her grandson and to cause more upheaval. Her return on September 8, 1986, which proved to be permanent, opened with the revelation that she had been having financial difficulty - the number one indication that for once, she had not run off to marry another wealthy bachelor to advance her fortune. Delia's last husband, Matthew Crane (played by Harve Presnell in 1984 during Robin Mattson's brief stint as Delia), had died unexpectedly in the intervening period and left her destitute. She tried to conceal this fact from everyone, but Maggie Shelby successfully exposed her at a Coleridge family dinner. Delia moved in with Johnny, Maeve, and grandson Owney.

Lizzie came to protect John and Owney from her ruthless father, Harlan Ransome (Drew Snyder), who wanted to take the baby and sell it for his own purposes, since he disapproved of such a young couple raising a child. After much hostility towards John and Lizzie, and an attempt to rape Delia, Harlan was bludgeoned to death.

Final storylines

By early 1987, with ratings sinking ever further, and many ABC affiliates dropping the show altogether, ABC asked Claire Labine to return as head writer, with her daughter, Eleanor Labine, as co-head writer. The Labines revitalized the show. A year after Labine's return, executive producer Joseph Hardy was replaced with Felicia Minei Behr.

Lizzie and John found there there was true love in their relationship, and the young parents were now able to focus on parenthood without living in total sin. In March 1987, they were engaged. That same month, after successfully taking down Overlord, a local organized crime syndicate that had been terrorizing the Riverside area for almost a year, Siobhan and Joe announced they were leaving New York to seek their fortunes; along with their 3-year-old son Sean (Danny Tamberelli), they bid farewell to everyone at the Ryan's annual St. Patrick's Day celebration (aired March 17, 1987). The Novaks would return one last time, in October 1988. Jack, who had been wounded at the scene of the Overlord takedown, met a homeless teenage girl, Zena Brown (Tichina Arnold), while recovering at Riverside. Zena and Jack had a lot in common due to their history on the streets, and upon his release, Jack fought the authorities in order to get Zena placed in a good foster home. Zena spent two months in a foster home with an upwardly mobile black family, but after numerous attempts to get herself kicked out, Jack convinced the Ryans to take her in, which succeeded after Zena became very friendly with Maeve.

On the night of Maggie giving birth to daughter Olivia (Kelly Nevins and Melissa Nevins), in May 1987, her brother Ben Shelby (Jim Wlcek) arrived in town, blowing his cover of Ben Shelley when running into mother Bess (Gloria DeHaven) at a dinner party thrown by her. Lizzie, who had started working for Delia at her art gallery, had bought a painting from Ben, who under both his identities was a struggling artist who despised high society - the very explanation as to why he had been estranged from his family for some time. Ben caused friction with his family and their friends, but ultimately tried to prove himself a local hero when he was the first to witness John Reid Ryan's temporary infidelity to Lizzie. During the investigation of a recent murder at local Wellman College, which John Reid and Ryan were now attending, John fell into bed with Dr. Concetta D'Angelo (Lois Robbins), who had been helping him cover the case for Wellman's newspaper. John Reid and Concetta ended their tryst well before John Reid and Lizzie's wedding date approached, but Delia found out, and had a hard time forgiving her son.

During their wedding day that August, Lizzie was set to marry John, but was whisked away from the church by Ben, who ultimately told her, in private, the truth about John's cheating on her. John and Lizzie tried to reconcile, but Lizzie had a hard time forgiving John, and then admitted that she was falling for Ben. In the aftermath, the couple went back to their respective new love interests. Rick and Ryan's marriage, which had seen its ups and downs for the year and a half they had been united, took a turn for the worse when Ryan walked into a trap at Wellman College, where she was attacked by thugs from a local chemical company. After she miscarried as a result of her injuries, Rick blamed Ryan for the death of their child, packed his bags, and left New York. Wellman reporter Chaz Saybrook (Brian McGovern), and Concetta's brother Mark D'Angelo (Peter Love) were among the many eligible bachelors who vied for Ryan's affection. In September, Dakota started a run for Riverside district leader, with Delia as his campaign manager. To help with finances, Delia contacted influential politician Malachy Malone (played by none other than Regis Philbin), who agreed to back Dakota. Dee and Malachy's professional, and at times personal liaison lasted throughout the entire campaign. Dakota won in November, but once in office, engaged in several bribes that could have threatened his leadership. One of these bribes, in which he helped retireve EKG scans of mobster Augie Price, who had just died after being targeted as an accomplice in the Meredith Drake Company scandal, actually enhanced his career. Jack and Pat took the scans to court, which prevented the case from going to trial.

Since the spring 1987, Jack had found himself in a blossoming affair with Commissioner Emily Hall (Cynthia Dozier), who had been Zena's official social worker. As their relationship evolved, Emily was pursued by politician Richard Rowan, who was married. Emily fought to keep Richard away in order to not jeopardize her devotion to Jack, but ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time when she walked into Richard's apartment just as he was lying dead on the floor. She was then cited a suspect in his murder. Emily hired a very pregnant Jill to represent her. Jill also had her hands full, focusing on her new baby with Frank, and counsuling a determined Ryan to accept the fact that Rick was through with marriage so a divorce could proceed. In early December, she gave birth to a girl, whom bore the name of Mary Ryan, in an essence making the family dynamic complete again in the late Mary's honor.

However, the end was already in sight; ABC announced Ryan's Hope's cancellation in October 1988. As Bernard Barrow told Good Morning America on January 10, 1989, the show's Nielsen numbers were still openly revealed to cast and crew until Ryan's Hope fell to dead last in the daytime ratings during the 1987-1988 TV season. Thereafter, "a lid was tightened" according to Barrow, and the show's now-12th (13th the following year) place ranking was harder to obtain from the insiders. The final episode (#3515) on January 13, 1989, concluded with Helen Gallagher's Maeve singing "Danny Boy", as she had for many previous Ryan celebrations. For the final episodes, numerous cast members who had been on the show in previous years returned.

Soon after the show's end, the then-current and last version of the Ryan's Bar set was modified and then used on One Life to Live, where it was used for the next few years as a bar/club in Llanview. Coincidentally, both Ryan's Hope and One Life to Live would later share a series finale date, as OLTL concluded a 43-year run on January 13, 2012, twenty-three years to the day that Ryan's Hope aired its final episode.

Broadcast history

See: List of US daytime soap opera ratings

When Ryan's Hope premiered on July 7, 1975, ABC scheduled it at 1:00 p.m./12 Noon Central, a timeslot previously occupied by All My Children (pushing that soap to the 12:30 p.m./11:30 a.m. slot). The network reasoned that Ryan's Hope stood best chances of gaining an audience by programming it in the 1:00 slot that was free of soap competition on the other networks, and by having ABC's number one soap as a lead-in. The show's audience grew from a 5.7 rating in 1975 (a rating is "the percentage of TV homes in the US that is tuned in" ) to a 7.3 in 1976. This placed Ryan's Hope in second place on the ABC roster, with All My Children at an 8.2 rating, ahead of General Hospital at a 7.1 rating and One Life To Live at a 6.8 rating.

In 1976, ABC joined the other networks in planning to expand its soaps to an hour-long format. Labine and Mayer declined expanding Ryan's Hope, which was moved to the 12:30 Eastern US timeslot in January 1977 to allow All My Children, and then General Hospital and One Life to Live, to shift to hour-long episodes. The time change put it in competition with another soap for the first time, CBS' Search For Tomorrow. The ratings slipped a bit (7.0 in the 1977-78 season) against a 7.5 rating for Search for Tomorrow; ultimately, Ryan's Hope would never exceed its peak 1976 achievement. By 1978, all the other ABC-developed soaps had stronger ratings than RH. In 1979, All My Children was the number one daytime soap on TV, with a 9.0 rating, supplanted in 1980 by General Hospital with a 9.9 rating. While ABC otherwise flourished, Ryan's Hope struggled with its recasting and surreal storylines, and saw its ratings again at 7.0.

In 1981, CBS moved its ascendant The Young And The Restless to the same slot Ryan's Hope occupied, 12:30 Eastern US. The CBS soap garnered a 7.4 rating to a 6.9 for Ryan's Hope. By the following year, CBS earned an 8.0 for the timeslot while Ryan's Hope slid to a 5.6. ABC fared better against the second half of The Young and the Restless, as All My Children had ratings of 9.4 for 1982-83. The ratings continued to decline for Ryan's Hope and ABC realized it couldn't perform apace its other soaps. Ryan's Hope was moved to the noon Eastern US timeslot in October 1984 with the thought that if it had built an audience in a soap-free timeslot in its first 18 months, perhaps it could do so again.

Unfortunately, the ratings for Ryan's Hope never stopped eroding. ABC continued to air the show for years even though after 1984 it never had a rating higher than 3.4, about a third of what the top-rated soaps were earning. One exacerbating factor was that although the noon timeslot relieved Ryan's Hope of soap competition, some ABC affiliates were intent on airing 12 p.m. newscasts. They did not run Ryan's Hope, which meant it was not available in some communities, further diminishing the households tuned in. ABC finally canceled the show in October 1988, with the final episode airing Friday, January 13, 1989.

Nielsen Rating

Title sequence

Awards

Ryan's Hope won sixteen Daytime Emmy Awards. Among the cast who received multiple nominations: Helen Gallagher had three wins for Best Actress (1976, 77, 88) from 5 nominations; Michael Levin received 3 nominations for Best Actor (78, 79, 80); Nancy Addison received two nominations for Best Actress (77, 79); Ron Hale received two nominations for Supporting Actor (79, 80).

Actors and actresses nominated for their work on Ryan's Hope included film legend Joan Fontaine (in a 1980 guest role), Tichina Arnold, Richard Backus, Bernard Barrow, Randall Edwards, John Gabriel, Andrew Robinson, and Grant Show.

Ryan's Hope won 12 Writers Guild of America writing awards. Year indicates date of award presentation, for work the prior year.

In America and overseas

In 2000, SOAPnet picked up reruns of Ryan's Hope, which was one of the few daytime dramas from before 1978 which saved all of its episodes. They aired the July 1975 through December 1981 episodes from 2000 to 2003. While reruns were originally abundant (airing daily in one-hour installments every six hours starting at noon, with two marathons of the week's episodes on weekends), by 2005 the show was only aired one hour per weekdays, and for a brief time, one hour a week. Currently, reruns are broadcast daily at 5 am EST. In September 2011, Soapnet stopped showing Ryan's Hope in the 5am timeslot in favor of old episodes of All My Children. Soapnet itself will go off the air sometime in 2012.

Ryan's Hope has also run on RTÉ 2 in Ireland and has previously aired in Australia. On January 3, 1994, a soap opera, Onderweg naar morgen (which literally means On the way to tomorrow), debuted on Dutch television; the Dutch writers based their show on story bibles originally written by Labine and Mayer.

Crew

Before they were stars

Many primetime stars got their start on Ryan's Hope, including Tichina Arnold, Catherine Hicks, Yasmine Bleeth, Grant Show, Nell Carter, Corbin Bernsen, Marg Helgenberger, Christian Slater (who's Michael Hawkins' son in real life), Dominic Chianese, and Kate Mulgrew. Earl Hindman, Delia's long-suffering brother Bob Reid, went on to co-star for eight years on Home Improvement, as the Taylor's over-the-fence neighbor Wilson, whose face was always partially hidden behind his fence.

Deceased cast members