Days of Their Lives Filled With Soaps : Dedicated Followers of Serials Mingle With Stars at Convention

Kathy Buckman, a nurse from Las Vegas, admits she used to make fun of television soap operas. That was before she began peeking at the shows out of curiosity.

Now a soap opera devotee, Buckman joined 30 other fans at Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City on a recent weekend for a two-day convention that included a meeting with their favorite stars.

Tribute to Hollywood

The event was sponsored by Tribute to Hollywood, a nonprofit organization that stages similar gatherings, and featured question-and-answer sessions with actors from five daytime soaps, an awards banquet and fan club booths that carried literature and autographed photos of soap stars.

The fans munched hors d’oeuvres and hovered around their favorite stars between panel sessions. The stars themselves appeared relaxed, posing for photos and chatting with fans at their tables.

The convention lacked publicity and was sparsely attended in comparison to other soap opera events, fans said. But, they said, the small turnout made for a pleasant, informal gathering.

For enthusiasts like Buckman--who travel many miles for a chance to meet their favorite actors--the soaps offer an escape from reality.

“If you’ve had a bad day, you watch their problems and yours seem less,” said Marlene Weinberg, who also flew from Las Vegas for the convention. Weinberg tapes “Days of Our Lives” and watches it at night after work.

Some soap watchers write love letters to their favorite actors and actresses and send them homemade birthday gifts, such as needlepoint and cookies. Others critique character development and discuss plots involving teen-age pregnancy with their children.

Widespread Phenomenon

The phenomenon of soap opera addiction crosses ethnic, financial and professional lines. And although not all fans have time or money to fly to conventions, most need the same daily dose.

John Jake, a lanky 19-year-old Los Angeles Valley College student and football player, said he watches soaps because they portray believable situations.

“It’s like the regular way of life on the streets . . . the sneakiness and the scheming that goes on behind people’s backs,” he said.

Each weekday afternoon around 2, Jake and his football teammates hunker down in front of a black-and-white TV set in the campus recreation center and watch “General Hospital.”

Often, say soap fans, getting hooked is a slow, insidious process. Some start watching as children and continue as adults. Others are introduced by spouses, children or co-workers.

Soaps for Lunch

Pat Modugno, a businessman and former San Fernando city councilman, said he started watching soaps in his 20s, when he worked at an office and went home each day for lunch.

Now in his 40s, Modugno keeps track of the soaps so he can take part in dinner conversations with his mother-in-law, wife and two daughters, who all follow the same soap opera.

Although he doesn’t consider himself a soap addict, Modugno admits that “you get wrapped up in the story line. It’s like a good book; you can’t put it down until you reach the conclusion.”

Sometimes, the followers of soap opera stars don’t distinguish between the actors and the characters they portray on TV--who often bear WASP-ish, patrician names such as Charles Shaughnessy and Felicia Cummings.

Kathy Hudson, who managed soap opera fan clubs for 15 years, said viewers write letters propositioning and proposing to their favorite stars. Others request nude, autographed photos. Some ask for money.

Children Named for Stars

Peggy McCay, who plays Caroline Brady on “Days of Our Lives,” said she answers all of her mail, and recalled that fans would name their children after one of her characters, Vanessa. One new mother sent a letter to McCay along with the hospital bill for the baby’s delivery, McCay said.

Another time, a fan was nearly killed when she ran across Madison Avenue in New York to tell McCay that her character was being duped by an unscrupulous character on the show, the actress said.

“Some of the people we meet are unbalanced,” McCay noted dryly to Buckman and Weinberg, who gathered around the actress during the convention. Both of the women expressed their disapproval of such excesses.

During a question-and-answer panel, actors attempted to explain what makes some fans overzealous.

‘You’re in Their House’

David Lewis, who plays Edward Quartermain on “General Hospital,” said: “They feel closer to you than you do to them. You’re in their house every day.”

About 50 soap opera magazines help foster this feeling of closeness, according to Irene Krause, who is managing editor of the bimonthly magazine Soap Opera Stars.

Owned by New York-based Sterling Publishing Co., Soap Opera Stars has a circulation of about 200,000, and 85% of its subscribers are women, according to Krause.

Soap opera magazines are popular because they give viewers a glimpse into the lives of the stars, Krause said. She said her publication offers exclusive photos of real-life and screen weddings, photo layouts of actors’ homes and chatty interviews with the stars.

But Krause, who describes her magazine as “good-natured gossip,” is quick to add that “we want to remain good friends with the performers. If we start hinting around and saying ‘guess who lives with so-and-so,’ we’d lose our good reputation with them.”

‘Ultimate Genre’

Those who watch soaps--so named because soap companies originally sponsored the shows--say that long-running daytime shows allow scriptwriters to spin three-dimensional tales, unfold subplots and develop characters over a period of months.

“It’s the ultimate genre,” said 21-year-old Alisa Levien of Westwood, a fan and aspiring soap opera screenwriter.

Levien and her roommate, Juliet Reiter, 20, both worked as unpaid convention volunteers in exchange for an opportunity to meet the stars and learn more about the business.

Reiter, who does paid work for a fan club, said it is often difficult to separate her job from her personal feelings about the actors.

“You want to appear as someone in the business, yet you’re a fan,” she said.

Shadowy Land

Reiter’s predicament is echoed by countless others who inhabit a shadowy land somewhere between fans and employees, Levien said. These people--mostly women--can be found at soap opera fund-raisers, publicity events and studio sets working as gofers, answering fan mail and herding along the more star-struck fans.

Felice Viggers, 38, of Granada Hills, said she and her 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl, volunteer for all the charity events sponsored by “Days of Our Lives.”

Cheryl belongs to six fan clubs, receives three fan magazines a week and writes faithfully to her favorite actors, her mother said proudly. Both mother and daughter have given actors cards and stuffed animals as birthday gifts.

Watching soaps “might have made her grow up a little faster,” Viggers said of her daughter, who “looks and acts 20.” Cheryl “finds the boys in her school immature compared to the men on the soap operas,” her mother said.

Day Versus Night

Dr. Alexandria French, an associate professor of psychology and communication at UCLA who has taught classes analyzing the content of soap operas, said her research showed that women are portrayed less favorably on daytime soaps than at night.

During the day, women are more often victims and failures, French said. In nighttime soaps, women have larger roles, are more successful and do the “dishing out.”

French said she believes daytime soaps fill an important need for people who lack a socially supportive environment.

“Soaps give people a wired-in type of society,” she said. “As society gets more impersonal . . . soaps are useful to pick up the slack.”