{"id":10538,"date":"2022-10-31T16:06:19","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T16:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10538"},"modified":"2022-11-02T15:25:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T15:25:21","slug":"recalling-a-fun-afternoon-with-deidre-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10538","title":{"rendered":"Recalling … a great afternoon with Deidre Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 One of the true \u00a0queens of the soaps, ‘Days of Our Lives’ star Deidre Hall, who turns 75 today, sent me a very nice note after I interviewed her in 1981 for a cover story in Canadian TV Guide.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Dear Ray, I\u2019m very proud of our \u201cproduct\u201d. It\u2019s not surprising that a story that fine would come out of an interview that fine. Love, Deidre.\u2019<\/p>\n

I interviewed many stars of daytime dramas for the magazine but Hall, warm, friendly and candid, was one of the most enjoyable. We spent a lovely afternoon at her pretty home in Studio City where she lived alone between marriages.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Having appeared on \u2018The Young and the Restless\u2019, Hall had joined \u2018Days of Our Lives\u2019 in 1976 as Dr. Marlena Evans, love interest for Salem\u2019s eligible bachelor, Don Craig played by Jed Allan. They introduced humour for the first time in a soap-opera romance. They teased each other, rolled around in bed joking and had pillow fights. The fans loved it and Allan told me, \u2018Deidre makes it so easy and she kisses so well.\u2019<\/p>\n

When Marlena took a new lover, policeman Roman Brady played by Wayne Northrop (pictured with Hall below), the fun continued although Hall admitted to me that making love scenes convincing was not easy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Doing public appearances, I\u2019m always asked if I\u2019m having an affair with my leading man,\u2019 she said. \u2018They\u2019re not shy of that at all. I tell them the truth, that he\u2019s married. They say, yeah, but I hadn\u2019t answered the question. No I\u2019m not! I think it\u2019s that, in their fantasy, they would like to imagine they\u2019re seeing more than they\u2019re seeing, that they\u2019re seeing the real stuff.\u2019<\/p>\n

Wayne Northrop assured me that having three cameramen, two sound-men, stage hands and assorted crew members and extras around took any romance out of those scenes. \u2018Dee\u2019s sense of humour makes it easy for me,\u2019 he said. \u2018She\u2019s very natural and we get along.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was easy to see but Hall said it was something she\u2019d had to overcome. \u2018You put yourself in a position where you want to be believed but you don\u2019t want to be believed. It\u2019s a very difficult choice to make. You\u2019ve got to commit one way or the other. You can\u2019t ride that middle ground. I have made that commitment to my performance and they\u2019re writing pretty steamy bedroom scenes for Wayne and me.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Marlena Evans has been in plenty of steamy situations over the forty-five years Hall has played her with critics citing \u2018Days of Our Lives\u2019 as the most daring of the afternoon soaps.<\/p>\n

At the time we met, there had been a huge furore because Marlena appeared to have been murdered by the Salem Strangler. Viewers wrote letters, the NBC switchboard had a meltdown and pickets at the Burbank studio carried signs such as \u2018If Marlena dies, the show will die. Let Marlena live!\u2019<\/p>\n

Three days later, Marlena rose from the dead, not a hair on her lovely blonde head had been touched. It was her twin sister, Samantha, who had been bumped off. Samantha was played by Deidre Hall\u2019s real twin sister Andrea Hall-Lovell, a teacher who had not acted before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pair went on talk shows and manned phone lines to explain what had happened in TV\u2019s biggest rumpus since the \u2018Dallas\u2019 puzzle of who shot J.R. \u2018There was a tremendous outcry,\u2019 Hall said.\u2019People were on hold for two hours from all over thc country. I wouldn\u2019t do that for anybody.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hall has stayed with the show through more than five thousand stormy episodes although she did take a couple of breaks from the sands of time. She appeared in primetime shows such as \u2018Hotel\u2019, \u2019Columbo\u2019 and \u2018Murder, She Wrote\u2019 and spent two seasons starring with Wilford Brimley and Shannen Doherty in the late eighties drama series \u2018Our House\u2019.<\/p>\n

This year, NBC took \u2018Days of Our Time\u2019 off the network\u2019s afternoon schedule and moved it to the streaming platform Peacock, which is available in the U.K. on Sky Glass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 One of the true \u00a0queens of the soaps, ‘Days of Our Lives’ star Deidre Hall, who turns 75 today, sent me a very nice note after I interviewed her in 1981 for a cover story … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[5248,5252,5247,5249,5250,5251],"class_list":["post-10538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-days-of-our-lives","tag-canadian-tv-guide","tag-deidre-hall","tag-dr-marlena-evans","tag-salem-strangler","tag-wayne-northrop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10538"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10563,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538\/revisions\/10563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}