AT 35, SOAP OPERA 'SEARCH' TRIES TO ADJUST TO CHANGES
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: September 3, 1986
THIRTY-FIVE years ago today, in a 15-minute live broadcast from New York's Liederkranz Hall, ''Search for Tomorrow'' set out to make soap-opera history. It is now television's longest-running daytime drama, hardly missing a beat when it switched from CBS to NBC in 1982. The show's pivotal character is Joanne Tourneur, played by Mary Stuart since that very first day. Her neighbor and best friend is Stu Bergman, still portrayed by Larry Haines, who joined the cast two months after the premiere. In today's half-hour episode, on NBC at 12:30 P.M., Jo and Stu will browse nostalgically through an old photo album, offering viewers a well-intentioned but skimpy retrospective of ''landmark'' moments.
Arriving at Jo's place, already decorated for a party, Stu announces that his new girlfriend Wilma (Anita Gillette) seems to have fallen for another man. ''We've been through a lot together,'' says Jo sympathetically. They sure have. Stu's last wife, for instance, ran off with a flaky cook. Worse, early on in the serial, a son named Jimmy excused himself to take a nap and was never heard from again. Meanwhile, Jo has gone through several marriages and the progression of her husbands' last names - Barron, Tate, Vincente, Tourneur - is seen by some as a reflection of ethnic awareness in soap-opera's land of nondescripts. Her last mate was disposed of through a divorce, something that would have been unthinkable back in 1951.
''Search for Tomorrow'' began life as, in the words of a press release, ''the story of an American family dominated by the 'old-fashioned' elders, successful and secure.'' Like all of its successors and imitators, the show offered viewers, predominantly women, an enduring image of a tightly knit community at a time when such communities were fast disappearing. The serial, produced by Procter & Gamble, focuses on personal relationships while studiously avoiding more of the unpleasant sociological and political realities of the ''real'' world.
While basic soap-opera formulas have remained remarkably steady -aberrant behavior is still punished, amnesia is still rampant as a device for getting out of dead-end plot situations - the surfaces have been changing dramatically. The younger characters have been taking over, and are regularly seen in various stages of undress that evidently help the ratings. The traditional soaps were jolted out of their endemic propriety in the early 1970's by ''The Young and the Restless,'' which offered the kind of plots and characters that ad executives now like to call ''juicy.''
Trying to adjust to the new ways, ''Search for Tomorrow'' has been floundering in the ratings and has undergone a succession of changes in the hands of several executive producers. The latest, David Lawrence, is clearly embarked on a make-or-break policy. Last February, the show's fictional town of Henderson was hit by a flood that served as an excuse to order up completely new sets, the main one being a high-rise building with a nightclub and a roof-garden exercise area where the camera can catch the actors toning up their assorted muscles. New clothes and hair arrangements were ordered to make the women softer and the men more stylish. Mr. Lawrence wants glamour, and today on television that means a designer wardrobe with plenty of jewelry.
More significantly, the serial's focus will now be dominated by the McCleary brothers, Hogan (David Forsyth), Quinn (Jeff Meek) and Cagney (Matthew Ashford). All three are what the trade calls ''TV hunks,'' capable of triggering endless romantic complications. Somehow, they also manage to represent different social classes. Hogan is a sophisticated and well-off bachelor. Cagney, the youngest, is a working-class policeman with a family to support. Later this month, the show will be filmed in Ireland to discover some unsettling secrets about the McCleary family. Taking a cue from other soaps going on location, Mr. Lawrence believes it is important to give his audience an ''exotic change of scenery.''
Meanwhile, this morning, Jo and Stu will chuckle warmly about the past even as their own futures on the program seem undecided. But no matter how many shenanigans are devised for the younger folk, Jo and Stu will be needed to put everything in a perspective that is unfailingly comforting. Today, Stu puts his arm around his old friend and says, ''Love is not like it is in the movies, is it?'' No, says Jo, sadly but gamely, ''not when it's happening to you.'' That is precisely the kind of sweet babble that could keep ''Search for Tomorrow'' going for another 35 years.
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