Emmy-Winning Daytime Legend Dead at 85
She was not on the list.
The sun is shining less brightly over Santa Barbara today. On January 3, the much-missed NBC soap’s co-creator Bridget Dobson died at age 85, reported Santa Barbara blogger Pierpaolo Dongiovanni on his Facebook page. Fellow co-creator “Jerome Dobson told me that his beloved wife Bridget passed away three days ago,” Dongiovanni wrote on the 6th. “They spent a lifetime together… co-produced and beautifully co-wrote Santa Barbara, among other things.
“She gave me friendship, love, fun, hope and was pure inspiration to me,” he added, “even when I was sick a couple of years ago.”
Dobson, the daughter of General Hospital creators Frank and Doris Hursley, began her soap career as an associate writer on the ABC soap. She and her better half went on to become headwriters of General Hospital, Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
In 1984, the couple unveiled what would become their crown jewel, Santa Barbara, a drama so rich in depth and wit that it’s no wonder it won the Best Show Daytime Emmy three years in a row. (Revisit highlights of its run in this photo gallery.) Alas, not all of the intrigue remained on screen. At one point, distributor New World Television balked at the Dobsons’ attempt to fire headwriter Anne Howard Bailey. So when Santa Barbara won its first statuette, Bridget gave a speech that lives on in infamy. “Though New World Television locked me out of the studio, they couldn’t lock me out of the Emmys,” she said.
A lawsuit between the Dobsons and New World was resolved in 1991, two years before executive producer Paul Rauch and headwriter Pamela K. Long steered Santa Barbara into the daytime graveyard.
No comments:
Post a Comment