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Back when there were only five television channels – yes, only five – afternoon soap operas had millions and millions of viewers.
Donald May, the actor who played dashing Adam Drake on ‘The Edge of Night’, died a few weeks short of his 95th birthday. He was a big star of the day. He and Maeve McGuire played Adam and Nicole, the show’s hero and heroine. In the 70s, I was in my dorm when I heard a girl down the hall screaming. I ran down the hall. She said, “Nicole is alive!” The actress had taken a year off, now her character was back and reunited with her romantic starring role.
Donald May played Adam for years, was finally killed off when ‘Edge of Night’ moved from CBS to ABC. (May probably wanted an extra $10 a week. P&G wasn’t fun to work with.) He went on to play other characters on New York soap operas, particularly owned by Proctor and Gamble. But Adam Drake was his signature role. He was a lawyer and a crime solver. When McGuire took this leave, the series introduced Dixie Carter as a character to replace her in scenes with May. Carter was so successful that she went to “Designing Women.” But May and McGuire were the real stars.
And that was how it was when there were five channels, no cable, no streaming, no wifi. And somehow we lived.
