Carla Gray
Carla Gray | |||||||||||
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One Life to Live character | |||||||||||
Portrayed by | Ellen Holly | ||||||||||
Duration |
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First appearance | Episode 61[1] October 7, 1968 | ||||||||||
Last appearance | December 16, 1985 | ||||||||||
Classification | Former, regular | ||||||||||
Created by | Agnes Nixon | ||||||||||
Introduced by |
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Carla Gray is a fictional character from the American soap opera One Life to Live, played by actress Ellen Holly. Carla appeared from October 1968[1] through December 1980, and from May 1983 through December 1985.[1][2] The role is recognized as the first Black lead character on a U.S. daytime soap opera.[3]
Carla was one of the original characters created for the show Nevertheless, the controversy attracted much attention and ratings shot up for the then-fledgling soap.
Storylines
1968–1974
At the series debut of One Life to Live in July 1968,
"A woman came to town with a mystery. Everybody knew she was important, because she was on almost every day of the week. So they knew that she was going to be some kind of major story but they couldn't figure out what she was gonna be, because she wasn't the usual blonde, blue-eyed leading female. She looked very...exotic. And she had this exotic name, Carla Benari."
—Ellen Holly on the beginnings of her One Life to Live character, Television Academy Foundation[5]
A few months into the series' run,
Carla soon strikes up a friendship with Anna herself. On a visit to the Wolek apartment, Carla runs into Sadie. It is abruptly revealed that "Carla Benari" is Clara Gray, who had not died but run away from home at an early age. Sadie was furious to learn that her daughter was pretending to be white, as Sadie knew about Carla's whereabouts prior to her arrival and instead let people think Clara was dead, as opposed to actively living with the shame of a daughter who denied her heritage.[8] Carla herself is mortified to know Sadie already knows the truth — but she's not mortified enough to end her ruse there and then. Although heartbroken after their first encounter in years, Sadie chooses not to reveal her daughter's secret.
"[In] the fifth month in which everybody's invested all their energy in learning about these people for these five months, that day, on a Friday — deliberately chosen for Friday — the cameras started following a whole bunch of people during their daily [routines], including Carla and Sadie...And at the end of the day, five minutes before that, Sadie and Carla Benari meet in front of Anna Wolek's door. [Sadie's] visiting her neighbor. [Carla's] going there for some other reason. They stand there and they look at each other and Sadie looks at me and says, "Clara!" And I say, "Mama!" Cut to black! Well, everybody got on the phone that week: "Did you see that on Friday? Clara, that dead girl, that was supposed to...?" ...The world checked in on Monday to get the backstory. The backstory was that she was an actress and she wanted to be a big star and she went to the bright lights of the big city and found out nobody could give a damn, and also it wasn't helpful to be Black, so she started passing for white, and that didn't do too well either, and she ended up on some lousy bus-and-truck tour that had come back to town."
—Ellen Holly on the five-month buildup and eventual payoff of the early "Carla Benari" storyline, Television Academy Foundation[5]
While Carla and Sadie try to work out their issues, Carla becomes embroiled in a love triangle. Her employer Jim Craig also falls in love with her, and she reciprocates his feelings. Carla divulges her secret to Jim. Not only is he fine with her true racial makeup, he asks her to marry him, allowing her a chance to continue publicly as "Carla Benari." The show found itself in another controversy when one ABC affiliate in Lubbock, Texas,[7] went so far as to temporarily drop One Life to Live from its daytime lineup as a result of this storyline.[6]
Carla briefly accepts the proposal but eventually returns Jim's ring, after realizing she would only be marrying him in order to keep perpetuating a lie. After breaking up with Jim, Carla comes clean to everyone in Llanview about her true heritage, including Price. Price is not in the least sympathetic to Carla's predicament. If anything, he is even angrier than Sadie at Carla's ruse. However, he does give her one more chance after she breaks up with Jim.[9] Price's mother ruins the relationship as she does not like Carla.[9] Price accepts a job overseas soon afterward and leaves Llanview at the end of 1970.[9] Carla is able to mend fences with her mother, who stresses that she must be proud of her heritage.[9] Taking her mother's advice to heart, Carla embraces being Black,[9] and changes her surname back to "Gray" while keeping the first name "Carla." (For her part, Sadie would continue to call Carla "Clara", signifying full and proud public recognition of her daughter after previously letting people believe she was dead, and as Carla had embraced her heritage, she would respond to "Clara" from Sadie.)
In 1972, Carla finds herself in another love triangle, this time being courted by high-flying politico
However, the road to the altar is not an easy one. Ed blames himself for the death of his good friend
1975–1980, 1983–1985
By the mid-1970s, airtime for Carla, Ed, and Josh progressively diminished. Carla appears in a supporting capacity in the
Toward the end of the decade, Carla did get the spotlight in one more love triangle: she divorces Ed to marry Dr.
At the end of 1980, Carla tearfully begs Ed (who by this time was running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as
In September 1985, Carla accepts a job in
Impact and reception
Conception and casting
"Agnes Nixon is a genius. She isn't just a wonderful writer, she is a genius."
—Ellen Holly on the One Life to Live creator,
One Life to Live creator Agnes Nixon has said she was inspired to create the Carla Gray character after seeing singer Eartha Kitt in a television interview. Kitt expressed her own frustration at facing prejudice from both white and Black audiences because of her light-skinned complexion, and the feeling of not belonging to either group. (Even Carla's surname "Gray" reflects the in-between nature of the character, not "Black" or "white".)
According to actress Ellen Holly's memoir, One Life: An Autobiography of an African American Actress, Nixon based Carla's mother Sadie on a maid who worked for Nixon's family when she was growing up in
The character of Carla (despite debuting in episode 61,[1] broadcast on October 7, 1968,[14] months after the show's premiere)[1] was conceptualized in Agnes Nixon's original show Bible,[4] and as such is considered part of the story of Llanview from the beginning.[4] Nixon based Carla and Sadie's original story on the film Imitation of Life,[4] in which a light-skinned Black woman denies her heritage and her darker-complected mother, and enters white society by passing.
Ellen Holly was quickly cast in the role of Carla after Agnes Nixon read her op-ed piece[11][15] which ran in The New York Times on September 15, 1968, called "How Black Do You Have to Be?",[11][16] in which she decried press coverage of actor Percy Rodriguez allegedly not looking "black enough" to be an acceptable Black addition to the cast of Peyton Place, and detailed her struggles and views as a light-skinned Black actress who could pass for white and chooses not to because she was raised in the Black experience and identifies as Black.[16] A photograph of Holly ran alongside the op-ed with the caption "Ellen Holly — Not black enough?"[16]
Holly was initially hired to appear on One Life to Live for one year.[17] Holly originally had reservations about working on a soap opera, as the bulk of her acting roles up to that point had been in the New York theater scene,[17] but she took the job anyway, believing that her storyline with Lillian Hayman's Sadie Gray was very important and should be told on television,[17] while also not wanting to turn down one year's worth of work and steady pay.[17]
Holly was intrigued by Nixon's idea to examine this mother-daughter relationship, with which Nixon said she had "the luxury of time" in setting the scene and exploring the ideological motivations of each character involved.[18] These "ideological motivation" mini-case studies would manifest themselves in the story not just with Carla and Sadie, but also characters involved in the storyline, such as Anna Wolek, Jim Craig, Price Trainor, and even peripheral characters such as Karen Martin who served as friend to both Carla and Anna.[19] According to Holly, in Imitation of Life, the concept of passing "is never actually examined or illuminated but merely exploited for its surface melodrama", and as a result Holly was excited to see the fresh spin Nixon would bring to this age-old tale.[18]
Holly wrote a follow-up op-ed called "Living a White Life — For a While",[20] which was published in the Times on August 10, 1969;[20] in the op-ed Holly writes at length about her experiences as a lighter-skinned Black actress as well as her experiences after she was cast on One Life to Live.[20] Of note in the 1969 follow-up op-ed is Holly's (and also ABC's) insistence on using the term "Black" on-screen, as opposed to "Negro" which was still considered the correct way to refer to African Americans by many in the U.S. at this time.[20] Holly would go on to write seven more op-eds for The New York Times during her time on One Life to Live.[21]
Impact on daytime television
Before Carla Gray, there had been no African American lead characters on any daytime soap opera. Prior to creating One Life to Live, Agnes Nixon had worked as head writer on the soap operas
ABC as a network was already committed by the late 1960s to broadcasting programming produced by and for African Americans on their five owned-and-operated stations,[23] and the network's vision when One Life to Live was making its debut was to tell stories the other two networks did not. That particular concept — to tell stories other people hadn't told or wouldn't tell — was a hallmark of Agnes Nixon's storytelling.[12] Indeed, when ABC first promoted the series in the trade publication Variety in December 1967, the upcoming One Life to Live was heralded as the serial that would "take daytime out of WASP Valley".[24] One press account went as far as to label it a "Soap Opera About Negroes"[24] simply because multiple Black characters would be appearing on the serial.
In an editorial published in the industry journal Television Quarterly in 1972, Nixon wrote, "For any dramatic entertainment to be a success [in this day and age] it must be relevant...Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of "relevance" is the way it has permitted us to incorporate into our "soaps" many socially significant issues, to educate viewers while we are entertaining them... For almost two years we told the story of a young Negro woman of light pigmentation who passed as white. This sequence was done primarily because it furnished us with an intense, absorbing drama that attracted viewers. But the mail response substantiated our belief that it was absorbing because it was relevant and because it explained to viewers the sociological motivations for such a denial of heritage and race due to the rejections suffered by the young woman from both the black and white communities. The ultimate tragedy we were presenting was simply another instance of man's cruelty to man, instigated by ignorance and prejudice."[25]
As Carla's storyline played out on TV screens in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, viewers were watching the first non-white lead character to be featured in a front-burning, sustained storyline for several years on a soap opera.[3] To that end, One Life to Live became the most-watched daytime soap opera among African Americans,[11] followed closely behind by All My Children, also created by Agnes Nixon, the only other soap opera at the time to focus consistently on providing storylines for Black characters.[11] By the 1980s, it was estimated that 12% of all African American households watched soap operas,[26] twice the rate of white households,[26] for which actress Ellen Holly was given partial credit.[26] (In fact it was Nixon's sister soap All My Children that debuted daytime's second Black leading female character, Nancy Grant, played by Lisa Wilkinson, who arrived in Pine Valley in 1973 as the wife of John Danelle's character Frank Grant and stayed on the canvas for 11 years.[27] Black publications such as Jet[28] featured the two actors, who were married in real life,[28] in cover stories.)
"Who else could better empathize with Nixon's challenges in writing from Carla's perspective (Ms. Holly even wrote some parts of the script!)? Who else could appear white enough on a Friday to outrage fans that had watched her kiss a black character, yet black enough on the following Monday to outrage the same rapt bigots who are suddenly "offended" at the memory of her romantic relationship with a white character? And of course, who else had a theater resume that was as strong as hers, that could "justify" creation of the new role (instead of another white character) and then go on to succeed as the first black lead in daytime?"
—Kevin Mulcahy, Jr. of the industry blog We Love Soaps, who interviewed Ellen Holly in 2012.[29]
Throughout her fourteen-and-a-half years on the program, Holly was given varying degrees of autonomy in the sculpting of the character of Carla[10] and the storylines in which she would be involved.[10] Holly's input was solicited at first because there were no Black writers on the One Life to Live writing staff;[10] head writer Sam Hall eventually convinced ABC to hire a Black writer because he wanted to lend more authenticity to Carla's storyline.[10]
Ellen Holly's primary role on One Life to Live paved the way for more Black actors and actresses to be given prominent storylines on other daytime soaps. In 1968, the year Holly debuted on One Life to Live, only three Black actors were featured in a recurring status or higher on U.S. daytime soap operas;
When asked about the cultural impact of Black storylines which aired on One Life to Live, Holly said in a 1979 interview with Ebony magazine, "There are enormous stretches in this country where they don't know anything about Black people...Our viewers tend to regard us as neighbors. People at the supermarket, total strangers, will throw their arms around you and treat you as a neighbor...My mother on the show has been a domestic and is now head of the housekeeping staff at the hospital; my ex-husband on the show is a policeman, and Arthur [Burghardt] plays a brilliant heart surgeon...I think we've opened up our viewers' heads a little bit more to the variety that exists in the Black race. And the more that happens, the slower somebody will be — when they're confronted with any given Black person — to jump to conclusions about who and what that person is."[11]
Wedding of Ed and Carla Hall
Ed Hall and Carla Gray were initially supposed to marry in the summer of 1973. However, several news breaks chronicling the Watergate scandal were preempting daytime television. This forced One Life to Live to push the wedding into the fall. In its place the story of Lester Brock attempting to kill Carla on numerous occasions would test Carla and Ed's commitment to each other for a final time before they were to marry.
Famous pianist and jazz singer Hazel Scott made a deal with the show's head-writers to make an appearance on OLTL as well. She would play a famous aunt of Carla's who would sing a song to the newlyweds. Hazel Scott wrote the song herself and appeared in the October 3 and 4 episodes of 1973, in which Carla and Ed were to marry. The marriage ceremony itself was broadcast on October 5, 1973.[30] The wedding was also the first on-screen wedding of two African American characters on a U.S. daytime soap.[30]
In 2020, Candace Young and Charlie Mason from
Holly leaves One Life to Live for the first time
Unfortunately, Holly depicts a backstage story that diverges far from the ideal storyline shown on air. She claims that despite Carla Gray's storylines being major reasons for the series' early success (with One Life to Live having the highest number of non-white viewers),[11] she faced racist attitudes behind the camera. These included being paid less than white actresses on the program[3] (Holly was initially paid $300 per week as outlined in her 1968-69 contract, rising to only $325 per week in 1969-70 and $350 per week in 1970–71);[32] returning from the funeral of her nephew who died of glioblastoma only to find that in the elapsed time, her dressing room was given away to a white actress;[3] and discriminatory treatment while taking part in a feature and photoshoot on the history of One Life to Live for Daytime TV magazine[33] which Lillian Hayman was not present for as she was not invited to take part,[33] despite being a main cast member at the time.[33]
Holly became very attached to One Life to Live's first producer, Doris Quinlan, and was emotionally impacted when she left the program in 1977,[33] so much so that Holly and Al Freeman, Jr. wrote a letter to ABC executives on behalf of the show's cast which attempted to lobby to keep Quinlan's job safe,[33] but the duo were unsuccessful in their efforts.[33] Holly would later learn that Quinlan being replaced by Joseph Stuart was agreed upon by many higher-ups in the program's hierarchy,[33] including Agnes Nixon,[33] who considered both producers her protégés.[33] Quinlan's successor Stuart was tougher in critiquing Holly's acting than Quinlan had been.[33][34] This was partly due to Holly's letter to ABC executives, which Stuart knew about and saw as a direct personal attack.[35]
Holly also took umbrage with Stuart's handling of the love triangle storyline she devised,[36] particularly the hiring of Arthur Burghardt as she explicitly voiced her disapproval over the planned casting choice[36] and even had another actor in mind to play the role of Dr. Jack Scott,[36] who Stuart rejected after allowing Holly's preferred actor to audition.[36] Finally, Holly took issue with the prominence of Erika Slezak's character Victoria "Viki" Riley in Carla's 1979 wedding storyline;[37] Holly alleged that Slezak thought her participation as matron-of-honor in Carla's wedding was an attempt to "give luster" to the storyline.[37] Holly also alleged that the character of Viki Riley was placed into the storyline in an attempt to endear Viki more to the African American viewership demographic.[37] In the same interview series, when asked about this specific situation, Slezak briefly complimented Holly's ability as an actress and said that she was "strong-willed" and "intelligent".[37]
A combination of all the aforementioned examples contributed to Holly's decision to step away from One Life to Live in December 1980.[3] In a 2013 interview, Holly said of her decision to leave, "I fled the show because my health was literally going down the tubes. The first two years of One Life were thrilling. After that, it's just a question of being a fireplug that keeps getting pissed on by junkyard dogs."[38] Holly decided to start a theater workshop with the ultimate goal of producing Broadway and Off-Broadway plays with Joseph Papp.[39]
Joseph Stuart's eventual replacement, Jean Arley, was interested in bringing Carla back into the canvas in Llanview.[40] Holly's friend, casting director Mary Jo Slater,[40] informed Holly that Agnes Nixon had moved Stuart over to Loving, her new soap opera, to be its producer.[40] Once Slater arranged a lunch where Arley had the chance to meet Holly, Holly felt immediately at ease.[40] Jean Arley would bring Holly and the character of Carla back into the show in the spring of 1983.[34][40] Holly insisted on a salary of $150,000 per year,[40] twice the amount she made when she left in 1980,[40] despite knowing that other actors on the program were making more than $1 million at that time.[40] Even though ABC originally tried to negotiate,[40] the network paid Holly the amount she asked for.[40]
Treatment of Holly and Carla under Paul Rauch
A fifteenth anniversary celebration event was held in honor of One Life to Live at New York City's Tavern on the Green in the second half of 1983,[3][34] and Holly and Lillian Hayman were front-and-center at the festivities as the two actors had played some of Nixon's original One Life to Live characters.[3][34] Holly posits that, as a result of their primary role in the celebration while newer and perhaps more popular actors were sidelined,[3][34] ABC fired Jean Arley, the producer who brought her back to One Life to Live after a two-and-a-half-year absence and the person who organized the event, and replaced her with Paul Rauch.[3][34] In her book, Holly is vocal about her frustration at her character being pushed into the background to make way for new white characters, and about being summarily dismissed in 1985 by Rauch, who by that time had become executive producer and writing consultant. Rauch fired every Black lead or recurring character on the show during his 1984-91 tenure. (Rauch's eventual successor, Linda Gottlieb,[41] reintroduced Black characters into One Life to Live within six months of her July 1991 arrival.)[42]
In a 2018 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Holly said she had a feeling she would be fired from One Life to Live when new executive producer Rauch reprimanded Holly publicly for her choice of hairstyle in front of the crew and other actors, alleging that shoulder-length hair was "unprofessional" for an Assistant District Attorney. This dressing-down, in front of crew and actors, was something that had never happened to Holly while working on the program before.[34] Joseph Stuart had given Holly tough critiques toward the end of her first stint playing Carla, but those critiques always occurred privately, behind closed doors.[34] She also intuited that storyline options for the character of Carla promised to her by Arley, like one that would have involved Carla adopting children and raising them as a single mother, would not be going forward.[34]
According to Holly, Rauch would publicly reprimand her for the slightest infractions, or even perceived infractions. In one instance, Rauch ordered Holly take voice lessons because her voice was "an offense to the public that should be taken off the air."[34] After Holly consulted a voice coach who was similarly puzzled by Rauch's request to change Holly's voice, Rauch informed Holly that he "couldn't quite put [his] finger" on why he disliked her voice.[34] Holly believed that Rauch's pivot from material infractions to perceived infractions was his way of breaking her spirit,[34] as Holly immediately changed her hairstyle upon her first reprimand, but could not change her voice as she received no constructive feedback with which she could work.[34]
Holly was eventually fired by Rauch in late 1985:[34]
[When] my contract was almost over...7 a.m., this is how sadistic he was. He could have told me this at the end of the day. 7 a.m., he calls me out of makeup, I'm looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, with my hair all up in curlers...and I sit down in the chair, and he says, "When your contract's up, we're dropping you. You're just not worth keeping," and it's always a blow, but when I thought I could stand up and keep straight, I stood up. It took me a moment for me to be sure I wasn't going to fall down. I said, "I see. Thank you!" and I left. I wasn't about to give a sadist an orgasm by begging for my job!
— Ellen Holly[34]
See also
Bibliography
- Warner, Gary. One Life to Live: Thirty Years of Memories. ISBN 0786863676)
- Holly, Ellen. One Life: An Autobiography of an African American Actress. Kodansha America, 1998 (ISBN 1568361971)
References
- ^ a b c d e "Episode #61". BuddyTV. 7 October 1968. Archived from the original on 2 October 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
- ISBN 0-345-32459-5.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Lynch, Hillary (21 July 2020). "The Box: Looking Back At Daytime's First Black Leading Actress Ellen Holly". A Hot Set.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-451-49825-0.
- ^ a b c d "Ellen Holly on the importance of her early "One Life to Live" storyline" – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ ISBN 9781401323097.
- ^ a b "Agnes Nixon Interview Part 3 of 5 - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ Levine, Elana (2020). Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. Duke University Press. p. 118.
- ^ a b c d e Weeks, Sandy. "Storyline Evolution: 1968 to 1977". One Life to Live - The History Pages.
- ^ ISBN 9781492385646.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Company, Johnson Publishing (October 26, 1979). "Ebony". Johnson Publishing Company – via Google Books.
- ^ Archive of American Television. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 2018. Retrieved September 24, 2018.
- ^ "Services held in NY for 'One Life to Live' actress Lillian Hayman, 72, who died of heart attack". Jet. 1995-01-09. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
- ^ "Five Things That Happened On October 7 In Soap History". Soap Opera Digest. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
- ^ "Happy Birthday to White Plains' Ellen Holly". White Plains Daily Voice. January 16, 2014.
- ^ a b c Holly, Ellen (September 15, 1968). "How Black Do You Have To Be?; How Black Do You Have To Be?". The New York Times.
- ^ a b c d "Ellen Holly on getting cast as "Carla Benari" on "One Life to Live" - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ a b Levine, Elana (2020). Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. Duke University Press. p. 120.
- ^ Levine, Elana (2020). Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. Duke University Press. p. 119.
- ^ a b c d "Living a White Life -- for a While". The New York Times.
- ^ "Ellen Holly on her New York Times article "How Black Do You Have to Be?" - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ISBN 978-0-8103-9177-2. Retrieved February 21, 2020.
- ^ "Television Quarterly, Volume VIII, Number 2" (PDF). Television Quarterly. National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the School of Public Communication at Boston University. 1969. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
- ^ a b Levine, Elana (2020). Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. Duke University Press. p. 117.
- ^ "Television Quarterly, Volume X, Number 1" (PDF). Television Quarterly. National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the School of Public Communication at Boston University. 1972. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f Company, Johnson Publishing (November 1, 1988). "Ebony". Johnson Publishing Company – via Google Books.
- ^ Passalacqua, Connie (March 17, 1984). "Soap loses distinguished character". Lee Enterprises – via Google News.
- ^ a b Company, Johnson Publishing (February 22, 1979). "Jet". Johnson Publishing Company – via Google Books.
- ^ "Ellen Holly, ONE LIFE TO LIVE, Racism & The Soap Opera, Part 2: "India has its Untouchables, America had its Uncastables"". We Love Soaps. 2012. Retrieved March 1, 2022.
- ^ a b "Five Things That Happened On October 5 In Soap History". October 5, 2021.
- She Media. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
- ^ "Ellen Holly on her contract negotiations on "One Life to Live" in the late '60s and early '70s - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Ellen Holly on Doris Quinlan's exit from "One Life to Live" - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Ellen Holly on leaving "One Life to Live" a second time - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews" – via www.youtube.com.
- ISBN 9781492385646.
- ^ ISBN 9781492385646.
- ^ ISBN 9781492385646.
- ISBN 9781492385646.
- ^ Company, Johnson Publishing (December 18, 1980). "Jet". Johnson Publishing Company – via Google Books.
- ^ ISBN 9781492385646.
- ^ Weinraub, Judith (February 7, 1992). "When Soap Gets In Your Eyes". The Washington Post.
- ^ Seli Groves (2 February 1992). "Soap Updates". Portsmouth Daily Times. Retrieved 2 July 2012.