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Search for Tomorrow

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Search for Tomorrow
File:Sft83.jpg
Series title card from December 23, 1981 to February 25, 1986
GenreSoap opera
Created byRoy Winsor
Narrated byDwight Weist (announcer)
ComposersDick Hyman
Tonya Pinkins
Country of originUnited States
Original languageTransclusion error: {{En}} is only for use in File namespace. Use {{langx|en}} or {{in lang|en}} instead.
No. of episodes9,130
Production
Camera setupMulti-camera
Running time15 minutes (1951–1968)
30 minutes (1968–1986)
Production companyProcter & Gamble Productions
Original release
NetworkCBS (1951–1982)
NBC (1982–1986)
ReleaseSeptember 3, 1951 (1951-09-03) –
December 26, 1986 (1986-12-26)

Search for Tomorrow is an American soap opera which premiered on September 3, 1951 on CBS. The show was moved from CBS to NBC on March 29, 1982. It continued on NBC until the final episode aired on December 26, 1986. At the time of its final broadcast it was the longest-running non-news program on television, lasting thirty-five years. However, this distinction was short-lived, as these records were soon eclipsed by Guiding Light, which premiered on television nine months later.

The show was created by Roy Winsor and was first written by Agnes Nixon (who was then known professionally as "Agnes Eckhardt") for thirteen weeks and, later, by Irving Vendig.

Transition to tape

Search aired as a fifteen-minute serial from its debut in 1951 until 1968. The show's initial sponsor was Procter & Gamble, the makers of Joy dishwashing liquid and Spic and Span household cleaner. As the show's ratings increased, other sponsors began buying commercial time. Both "Joy" and "Spic and Span" continued to be the primary products Procter & Gamble advertised on the show, well into the 1960s.

The show switched from live broadcasts to recorded telecasts in March 1967, went to color on September 11, 1967, and expanded to a half-hour on September 9, 1968 [1]. At the time, Search and its sister show Guiding Light, which had shared the same half-hour for sixteen years, were the last two fifteen-minute soap operas airing on television. (As a result of the expansion, Search gained the entire 12:30 pm ET timeslot and an expanded Guiding Light moved to 2:30 pm.)

In 1983, both the master copy and the backup of a Search episode were lost, and on August 4, the cast was forced to do a live show for the first time since the transition sixteen years before. After the event, NBC was accused of lying about the tape being misplaced in hopes that the noise generated by the accident would create a ratings jump for the show. It was thought that this situation mirrored a similar one in the 1982 movie Tootsie.

Title sequences

File:Sft51.jpg
Search for Tomorrow title card, first used in black-and-white from 1951-1967.

Throughout its entire thirty-five year run, Search's title sequence featured of a shot of clouds floating through the sky. In fact, they consisted entirely of that until 1981. The only noticeable change was the slightly altered "S" in "Search" upon switching to color. In 1981 they switched to a glitzy new videotaped opening sequence beginning with a shot of a seagull flying over the ocean, followed by a helicopter shot of the clouds in the midday sky. In the show's final months, the titles featured a montage of cast clips, bookended with sky shots.

The theme music for the early years sounded a little like "Beyond the Blue Horizon" to some, which would have seemed quite appropriate for this show given the sequence. Upon switching to color, a theme titled "Interchange" by Bill Meeder was used for the opening, and later on in 1974, a short-lived theme titled "Signature for Search for Tomorrow" by Ashley Miller (by then, it was still using in-studio organ accompaniment).

From October 7, 1974 to February 25, 1986, Search used a pop ballad theme: "We'll Search for Tomorrow" by Jon Silbermann, Jack Cortner, and John Barranco. This followed a trend initiated by The Young and the Restless for using pop ballads for soap theme tunes. Several arrangements were used during its 12-year run: the original version, a more orchestral version, a Latin disco-flavored version, and a vocal version for closing credits.

The sequence during the show's final months was accompanied by a new "techno-rock" theme by Bill Chinnock called "Somewhere in the Night".

Announcements

For much of the show's run on CBS, the announcer was Dwight Weist, who years earlier had narrated several short subjects for MGM. The common structure of his announcements went like this:

  • Black and white years and possibly early color years: "Search for Tomorrow"...Brought to you by (sponsor). The closing, on credit days, ran the credits (as flash credits) then Weist would say: "Search for Tomorrow is brought to you by (sponsor)." In two surviving 60's episodes available on video, a promo card for The Guiding Light was shown.

The following sequences were used in the 70's and possibly to the end of the series:

  • Title sequence: "This is Search for Tomorrow. This portion brought to you by (name and description of sponsor)".
  • Mid-program break #1: "This portion of Search for Tomorrow was brought to you by (name and description of sponsor). Our story will continue in just a moment."
  • Mid-program break #2: "And now, the second portion of Search for Tomorrow." On days when the second half was officially sponsored, the announcement continued, "...brought to you by (name and description of sponsor)."
  • Lead-in to next-to-last commercial break: "Our story will continue in just a moment!"
  • Closing sequence: "This portion of Search for Tomorrow has been brought to you by (name and description of sponsor)", or on non-sponsored days, either "Join us each weekday for Search for Tomorrow", or, if no time remained, "This has been Search for Tomorrow, this program was recorded." Before the title change in 1981, Weist would tell viewers to stay tuned for the next program, either As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, or The Guiding Light. TGL had a title card shown, while Y&R did not. Credits at this time were flash style, though they may have used a crawl for the full cast and crew. After 1981, credits were done in a crawl. The final episode had screen shots of the cast, and the production credits were done flash style. Mary Stuart got top billing at the start of the credits throughout the show's run.

When Weist retired to found his own public relations/casting company, former rock disc jockey Alison Steele assumed the announcing duties with similar announcements as above. Her job carried over into the first few years of NBC's run until Hal Simms (former announcer for The Edge of Night) took over in 1985, after which Don Pardo (announcer for Saturday Night Live) assumed duties for the remainder of the series. Both Simms' and Pardo's announcements were limited.

Show history

1950s

For the show's duration, Search was centered on a midwestern housewife named Joanne Gardner (played for the entire run by Mary Stuart) who lived in a fictional town called Henderson. In the earlier years, Joanne's friends and next-door neighbors, Stuart and Marge Bergman (played by Larry Haines and Melba Rae) received much screen time as they commiserated with Joanne, usually over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. At the beginning of the series, Stu and Marge had a young daughter named Janet (originally played by Ellen Spencer).

Most of Joanne's dilemmas in the early years were due to her dead husband Keith Barron's overbearing parents – they (most especially her mother in-law, Irene) never liked her and were quite content with seizing Joanne and Keith's daughter Patti (played longest by Lynn Loring) from the widow.

After Keith (played by John Sylvester White) died in 1952, Joanne started managing a hotel, The Motor Haven Inn. Local thugs in town saw Joanne as soft because she was a woman, and they attempted to take over the business as a front for Mafia dealings. Joanne's friend Rose Peabody (Lee Grant, Constance Ford, and Nita Talbot), who was selling information to the Mafia, tried to poison a pot of soup that Joanne made, so her credibility would be tarnished. In the end, the scheme did not work and it was Rose who perished. A man named Arthur Tate (Terry O'Sullivan) helped Joanne with financial backing for the Inn. Arthur's Aunt Cornelia gave him the inheritance money but insisted on meddling in his affairs as she hated Joanne. Eventually, Arthur and Jo fell in love and were married.

1960s

The show was one of the highest-rated soaps in the 1950s, but Search was losing out to newer soaps as the decade drew to a close. When the show was in a ratings slump in 1960, Western-themed drama writers Frank and Doris Hursley were hired to write the show. In 1963, with the ratings staying stagnant, the duo decided to write out Joanne's baby (written into the storyline a few years previous while she was pregnant with son Jeffrey) by having him run in front of a speeding truck and die upon impact. Miss Stuart was unhappy with the decision and, in the book All My Afternoons, Stuart was paraphrased as saying that she played the grief scenes with so much conviction that even the makeup lady could not bear to watch her to see if her makeup was right. In the end, the ratings did not rise, and Stuart threatened to quit the show unless the Hursleys were fired. The duo left the show and created the serial General Hospital for ABC the same year.

As the show progressed, Joanne's sister Eunice returned to town and seduced Joanne's second husband, Arthur Tate. When a woman named Marian Rand came to town and sued Arthur for paternity, the stress surrounding this dilemma, coupled with personal troubles and the guilt of sleeping with Eunice caused him to have a fatal heart attack.

Joanne's daughter Patti grew into a teenager and became involved with drug-dealing gang members (incorporating a scathing viewpoint regarding America's counter-culture of the day). Joanne's friend Sam Reynolds (who was, ironically, Arthur's archenemy) proved his worth to Joanne by saving Patti when she was held at knifepoint. They were going to be married, but alas, it was not to be. Actor Robert Mandan, who played Sam, did not renew his contract with the show.

1970s

In 1970, Joanne lost her eyesight, and Dr. Tony Vincente (Anthony George) helped her get it back. They fell in love and were married in 1972. In 1974, Mary-Ellis Bunim was appointed executive producer of Search for Tomorrow. As a result of Bunim wanting to take the show in a more youth-oriented direction, fewer stories involved Joanne. In 1975, Bunim was rumored to have the writers of Search for Tomorrow kill off Joanne (after the death of Tony), which ended up not happening after vocal dissent from Stuart in the press. While the ratings took a slight dip when the series focused on younger viewers, the impact wasn't as heavy as was expected. Despite the show moving in a more youth-oriented direction, the character of Joanne embarked on a long-running story when she earned a foe in the ambitious schemer Stephanie Wilkins (Maree Cheatham).

In 1971, Stu and Marge's daughter Janet returned to the series and served as a peer to which Joanne's daughter Patti could relate. Early in 1972, Marge's sudden death was written into the storyline (actress Melba Rae had died late the year before). Stu later married Ellie Harper (Billie Lou Watt) and helped Jo run the Hartford House, a modern incarnation of her old property, the Motor Haven Inn.

Examples of the "younger" stories included the maniacal Jennifer Pace (played by Morgan Fairchild); Jennifer shot and killed Joanne's sister Eunice after a vision of Eunice's husband John Wyatt (Val Dufour), whom Jennifer was having an affair with, told her to do the murderous deed. Another popular story on the show was the budding romance between the characters of Steve and Liza Kaslo (Michael Nouri and Meg Bennett).

1980s

After spending much of the previous decade near the top of the afternoon ratings (Search for Tomorrow consistently ranked #4 in soap ratings throughout most of the 1970s), CBS made the decision to move the show to 2:30 PM (Eastern Time) in 1981. The show had aired at 12:30 pm on CBS since its first episode thirty years before. P&G considered expanding Search for Tomorrow, reducing As the World Turns to 45 minutes in length (as they had made the expansion to 60 minutes six years earlier), and eliminating the time that most local stations aired newscasts. The final decision was to expand neither show and to move Search for Tomorrow to a later timeslot despite P&G's lack of enthusiasm for the switch. Although Search continued to attract viewers, its ratings dropped slightly in the 2:30pm slot, which prompted Procter and Gamble to insist that CBS return the show to its original timeslot. However, CBS decided to cancel Search for Tomorrow in 1982, instead of renewing it. Procter and Gamble was not willing to give up on the show yet, and began searching for another home for it.

Switch to NBC (1982-1986)

CBS' final episode of Search for Tomorrow aired on March 26, 1982, and the show moved to NBC the following Monday. The move to NBC also saw a return to the 12:30 PM time slot. However, as a result of the network and time slot switch, Search now found itself going up against the hit The Young and the Restless on CBS instead of being part of a lineup that included it. Furthermore, while the 12:30pm slot was not as prone to preemptions as the 12:00 pm slot would've been, affiliates televised other programs in the 12:30 slot. Thus, Search's ratings began to plummet even more so than they did when the show moved to 2:30 PM the year before. When Search first moved to 2:30 in 1981, the show continued to pull in fair ratings, enough to rank eighth in the season's final totals. In fact, when CBS cancelled Search, its ratings were at a 6.8, which was half a percentage point higher than they had been to end the previous season. The move to NBC resulted in the show becoming the second-lowest rated soap opera on television with a 3.4 rating. (A similar time slot switch plagued another former hit P&G produced serial, The Edge of Night, ten years earlier. Coincidentally, both shows were moved into the same 2:30 PM slot and both would end up leaving CBS for other networks; by this time ABC aired Edge in a late-afternoon slot.)

One scenario that never came to pass, as reported by TV Guide in June 1979, was Search moving to 3:30 pm (then used by daytime reruns of M*A*S*H); The Young and the Restless expanding to an hour in fall 1979 from 12:30-1:30, and As the World Turns and Guiding Light remaining at their 1:30 and 2:30 start times, respectively. Despite these plans, Search stayed put, Y&R simply expanded its 1:00 time slot to 1:30 on East Coast stations, and ATWT and GL were bumped back thirty minutes each.

In an advertising campaign called "Follow the Search", the stars of the show wished for its loyal viewers to follow Search to NBC. However, CBS only allowed the advertisements if P&G did not name the network to which the show was moving in their advertisements; they also decreed such advertisements when The Edge of Night moved to ABC in 1975). At the end of the final CBS episode, veteran actors Mary Stuart and Larry Haines told the audience to start watching the show as it moved to "another network", and asked the viewers to locate the show and the network in their television listings.

Although Search had switched networks, it was still produced at the CBS Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th St. in Manhattan until August 1982. By September, NBC relocated the production to the Reeves/Teletape Studio on Broadway and West 81st St., the former home of Sesame Street (which themselves had relocated to the former WNET-TV studios at 9th Ave and 55th St.). However, in March 1985, production of the show moved to the former Edge of Night studios, the EUE/Screen Gems Studios at 222 East 44th St., where it remained for the rest of its run.

Search's ratings on NBC remained only half as high as they had been on CBS, even in the 2:30 slot. By this time, few viewers had interest in Joanne's final marriage to Martin Tourneur (John Aniston), which had taken place while the series still called CBS home, and critics panned the show for its preposterous storylines, including the birth of a child just three months after conception. Search finished second to last in the ratings again at the end of its first full television season on NBC, finishing ahead of the struggling The Doctors and actually finishing in a tie with Texas, which failed to make it through the year.

By 1984, the show mainly focused on two new families: the Kendalls and the McClearys. The McCleary family was headed by Malcolm McCleary (Patrick Tovatt), Kate McCleary (Jo Henderson, later Maeve McGuire), brothers Hogan McCleary (David Forsyth), Cagney McCleary (Matthew Ashford), Quinn McCleary (Jeffrey Meek), and sister Adair McCleary (Paige Hannah, later Susan Carey Lamn). The Kendall family was headed by Estelle Kendall (Domini Blythe), Lloyd Kendall (Peter Haskell, then by Joe Lambie, later Robert Reed), and Mike Kendall (Thomas Sullivan), brothers Alec Kendall (Robert Curtis Brown), Chase Kendall (Kevin Conroy, later Robert Wilson), Steven Kendall (Phillip Brown, Steve Lindquist), and sister Theresa Rebecca (T.R.) Kendall (Jane Krakowski).

In a newspaper interview during this period (Guy MacMillin's The Videot), Mary Stuart complained: "They have created a new program and they're calling it Search for Tomorrow." She said she believed she was being eased out by the Kate McCleary character. Regardless of the writers' intentions, at the end of the 1983-1984 television season, Search, which had been a solid top-five series for CBS just a decade before, hit bottom and finished last in the ratings with a 3.2. Search did climb out of the ratings cellar at the end of the following television season, but this was largely due to the continuing struggles of The Edge of Night (which ended on December 28, 1984), and Search returned to the bottom of the ratings list again with an anemic 2.9 rating for the 1985-1986 television season. NBC cancelled the show in 1986, but only after a memorable attempt to bring up the ratings: The whole town of Henderson was washed away in a flood, and in a display of reverence the only buildings left standing afterward were Joanne's residence and business.

On December 26, 1986, the final episode ended with senior characters Stu Bergman and Joanne Tourneur talking about the future. Stu asked Joanne what she was searching for, and she answered "Tomorrow, and I can't wait." This was followed by a taped piece in which the cast thanked the show's viewers for their loyalty over the past 35 years, ending with a slightly-tearful Mary Stuart saying "Thank you...thank you all. They were wonderful years." and saluting the audience goodbye. The show also ended with the song We'll Be Together Again by Lou Rawls. (Love of Life also closed out its run with the same song, but used a version by Tony Bennett.)

The series was replaced by the Tom Kennedy game show Wordplay, which aired until September 4, 1987. As had been the case in two of the previous three television seasons, Search ended its 35-year run last in ratings with a 2.5 at the time of its cancellation.

Location shooting

Like many other soap operas, Search featured segments of location shooting in the 1980s. In 1981 the show went to Hong Kong, and later that year, to Jamaica, to showcase a romantic rendezvous between the characters of Garth and Kathy. In 1982 prior to the switch to NBC, a storyline involving Travis Sentell took the show on location in St. Kitts. In 1984 the show did a lot of location shooting to show the wilds of Henderson. In the final months of the show in 1986, they went to Ireland to film a storyline with the McCleary brothers, who by that time occupied most of the storylines.

Ratings history

Search for Tomorrow was among the highest-rated soaps of the 1950s and 1960s, but by the early 1970s it had slipped to the middle of the pack. However, it would gain renewed popularity during that decade and peak at 4th in the ratings, a spot it last reached in 1976. Starting then, the show's popularity began to slide, but the show was still a solid top-ten soap.

In 1981, CBS wanted its newer serial, The Young and the Restless, to lead off the afternoon soap lineup. That move caused a shift in much of CBS's daytime schedule. Y&R which had been airing at 1:00 pm ET, was moved back to its previous Noon ET/11AM CT slot, but a second feed was added to allow stations in the Eastern time zone to air local news at Noon with Y&R at 12:30pm ET. Search was moved to 2:30 ET, which necessitated a move of As the World Turns back to its previous 1:30 ET time slot. Search still got decent ratings; in fact, at the time it was canceled, Search's ratings were half a point higher than the end of the previous television season (6.8 vs. 6.3). However, P&G wanted the show back at 12:30 pm. In March 1982, P&G moved the show to NBC at 12:30 (bumping the network's low-rated soap The Doctors to Noon), which resulted in disastrous ratings. Search left CBS with a 6.8 rating, ranking eighth in the daytime ratings. However, by the end of the year, Search ranked 14th in the ratings, just .1 ahead of where The Doctors would finish the year. In fact, Search's ratings had dropped by half in its first nine months on NBC, falling from the 6.8 rating it achieved in its last year on CBS to a 3.4 by the end of the year.

Part of the reason for the slip was that many NBC affiliates already preempted The Doctors, which previously aired at 12:30, and continued to do so when Search moved into the slot – which meant that, in some instances, Search would disappear altogether from some markets when it left CBS for NBC. As a result of the network and time slot switches, Search would now go up against Y&R instead of being its lead-in program in markets that did air the show.

To complicate matters further, even in markets where NBC affiliates didn't air newscasts in the 12:00 time slot, Search didn't have a strong lead-in like As the World Turns in its final months on CBS. Instead, NBC placed Search in an hour with sitcom reruns and low-rated game shows such as Go, The New Battlestars, Just Men!, and Hot Potato between March 29, 1982 and September 24, 1984. The only show to share the hour with Search that was at least a steady hit was Super Password. (As part of Search's move to NBC, Super Password's predecessor, Password Plus, was canceled so The Doctors could move to its noon slot.)

Search's ratings continued to drop as the show went on. The following season, the show finished with a 2.7 rating, tied with outgoing NBC soap Texas for twelfth in the ratings. In three out of its remaining four seasons, the show finished dead last in the daytime ratings, but it finished second to last in the 1984–1985 television season. The equally ratings-challenged veteran The Edge of Night finished behind it during that season, which would turn out to be its final year on ABC.

Finally, Search was canceled in 1986, and finished with a 2.5 rating. Its last episode aired on December 26, 1986, putting an end to its then-record 35-year run on television. NBC would not give the 12:30 slot, or the 12:00 hour for that matter, back to the local affiliates until 1991, and would also take back the hour for five months in 1993.

Search was immediately succeeded by the Tom Kennedy-hosted game show Wordplay in the 12:30 pm timeslot, but that series was canceled after nine months. Following the cancellation of that series, the hit game show Scrabble, which had been telecast at 11:30 am since its 1984 premiere, moved into the slot and remained there until March 24, 1989, after which it was replaced by a new soap opera, Generations. The final NBC network program to air in Search's timeslot was Scattergories, a Dick Clark-hosted game show that premiered as part of NBC's takeover of the noon hour in 1993. Of the four shows that followed Search in its 12:30 time slot, Scrabble was the only one that wasn't removed due to ratings trouble, as it moved back to the mornings following the debut of Generations.

Besides Scrabble, Generations was the only series to last longer than a year at 12:30, ultimately ending its run in January 1991 – two months shy of its second anniversary.

Capitol, CBS's replacement for Search, ended its run nearly three months after Search came to an end; its finale aired on March 20, 1987, nine days away from its fifth anniversary, and it was replaced the following Monday by The Bold and the Beautiful.

Notable guest stars

Many well-known film and television actors appeared on Search during its 35 year run:

Reruns

From 1987 until summer 1989, reruns aired in late night on the USA Network. The network aired episodes from the first three years of the NBC run.

In 2006, P&G began making several of its soap operas available, a few episodes at a time, through America Online's AOL Video service, downloadable free of charge. Reruns of Search for Tomorrow episodes began with the October 5, 1984 show and ceased with the January 13, 1986 episode after AOL discontinued the P&G Soaps Channel on December 31, 2008.

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