No Love Lost : TV Show Ignores Pair’s Message of Friendship for Exes

Maybe it was the chance to further the cause. Maybe it was the chance to feed the ego. Maybe it was a chance at that 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised everybody.

Whatever the reason, when daytime TV beckoned, sociologist Myron Orleans and his ex-wife, attorney Royce Orleans Hurst, got into a car and drove to Hollywood.

The show was “Love Stories,” a half-hour trying to wedge into the daytime lineup of Ericas cheating on their husbands and Geraldos exposing the heartbreak of cross-dressing. It was to be “real-life stories told by real-life people in their own words,” according to its producer, Terry Laughlin..

“We’re not into sensationalism,” she said. “We’re offering a show that’s informative: how you get into relationships, how you keep them, and once you break up, how you heal yourself and go on.”

That last part sounded good to Orleans and Hurst; it was exactly what they wanted to tell the world, they said. They wanted to say that 14 years after their breakup, ‘they are still close friends, that even their new families are close friends. Their divorce has created one big, happy, extended family.

They remain “like sister and brother,” Orleans said. “And she’s a type of aunt to my children (by his present wife) and her husband is a type of uncle, and there’s almost a grandparenting relationship with my ex-in-laws and my kids. That’s the way it is. We see each other quite often.

“I’d like this to be understood as a model for the way people might be when they’re divorced.”

Orleans, 48, longtime professor of sociology at Cal State Fullerton, had been studying divorce for five years. It had become his academic and personal cause: ridding divorce of its combativeness and vindictiveness.

He teaches it: Sociology 459, “The Sociology of Marital Dissolution.” He practices it: three marriages and two divorces. And he preaches it, but so far only in academic journals.

So too with Hurst, 44, a former divorce lawyer now practicing personal-injury defense law in Orange. She tried to build a practice mediating friendly divorces but was frustrated by the lack of clients.

“It’s a concept I strongly believe in--having a friendly divorce, especially when you have children,” she said. “The whole divorce process is so acrimonious, it just tears people apart.

“We recognize that our personal situation is unusual, but we also recognize it could happen much more often with people if they’d just give it half a chance. And most people, they really don’t try.”

This is not ivory tower stuff, Orleans insisted. “It’s a matter of mass education.” Now they were getting a public forum.

Only Hurst’s husband, Jim, expressed skepticism about a daytime TV show taking this cause very seriously. “We expected it to be something totally different,” Hurst said. “We didn’t think this was going to be like it was.”

So last May, the couple drove to Hollywood to be individually interviewed and videotaped. Their interviews would be spliced to tell the story of their romance and breakup, producers said.

And last week, Orleans settled into the sofa at his Anaheim Hills home to watch the result.

Announcer: “He was a professor, and she was a student in his class. And it wasn’t long before they both knew she was destined to be teacher’s pet.”

(Orleans: “Oh, God.”)

Announcer: “There was only one thing keeping them apart--Myron was married.”

(Orleans: “Oh, God!” )

The screen dissolved to Orleans:

“I took up jogging, but not really. I bought myself some jogging shoes and some shorts and a T-shirt and I left the house and would go and, uh, be with, uh, Royce in a car and have some enjoyment and then come home. And I remember my wife at that time saying, ‘You don’t seem very sweated.’ . . .

“(Royce) sat in the front row and sat in a very endearing sort of way, if I might say.”

Dissolve to Hurst: “There was one time I can specifically remember where we had gotten ourselves, um, somewhat passionately involved in the faculty lounge on the couch when some other professors in the school walked in on us. . . .

“His office was not even the kind of office where he was the only holder of the key. I mean, there were other people who used that office, and so we never could get involved in positions that we couldn’t get out of.”

More stories.

About living in her parents’ home before they were married: Her father “caught me there with my pants down and, I think, Royce under the bed. And I was a little embarrassed and chagrined at that point.”

About the marriage going stale as the excitement drained away.

About the day she moved out: “There was a football game on, and I had brought all my stuff out to the car except for the television, which he was watching. He was watching the football game on the television. And I walked over to him and said, ‘I’m taking the TV.’ And he said, ‘There’s another quarter to go. Could you take the refrigerator instead?’ ”

The credits rolled, and Orleans turned off the TV. Final score: Daytime TV 1, Righteous Cause 0.

“What they left out was this minor thing of the whole motivation for me to do this,” Orleans said. “They just cut out the whole thing that I said.

“Throughout the whole interview, they were interested in where we screwed and some of the humorous sidelines to it. All they wanted was ‘The Lewd Professor.’ I asked them if I could say a statement, and I thought I gave a very articulate and moving point, but they decided that it just doesn’t sell.

“It’s a terrible program, kind of like a soap opera filler. Real-life soap opera. I can see no benefit except seeing myself on TV. . . . I was magnificent on the screen, very expressive and human, but they cut out the very purpose of doing it.”

Hurst, who had watched the show among her co-workers at her law office, was complaining too: “We went down there thinking we would expand on our theory of extended family, how we have holidays together now and all that kind of thing, and we barely got in a word edgewise on that. . . . They didn’t tell us that they were going to hone in on the sexual experiences at the exclusion of everything else that’s gone on in your relationship.”

Weren’t they a bit naive expecting anything different? “Probably,” said Hurst. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say naive. But I certainly didn’t expect them to devote the show to all that.”

“I’m sorry they feel that way,” said Laughlin. “God, we just try to tell the story in an entertaining fashion. We don’t want to be compared with ‘Love Connection’ and ‘Studs.’ They cater to different values. What we try to do is come up with a story and present it in a dramatic way.”

Laughlin will be glad to learn that Orleans and Hurst are not that upset. They did, after all, get their 15 minutes of fame.

“For the fun element, I’m satisfied,” Hurst said after the broadcast. “Just going on television, calling all our people back in New York, telling them to watch, putting some excitement in a day.”

Added Orleans: “I got some teasing from my students about the personal ego trip.”

Could this lead to any professional problems?

“I hope not,” he said. “This is more than 20 years ago I’m talking about it. There’s no faculty lounges anymore.”