Soaps With a Mission : The stars of daytime dramas join together in an airport spectacular to raise funds and consciousness in support of AIDS victims

If you’ve ever wanted the chance to tour a soap opera set, have dinner with a soap star or just get soap performers’ photos or autographs, Hollywood Helps has an event for you.

From noon to 6 p.m. today the organization, which provides financial assistance to entertainment industry members with AIDS, is staging one of the largest public gatherings ever of soap casts, at the Santa Monica Air Center in the Santa Monica Airport. Almost 60 performers from all five of the Los Angeles-based daytime serials--CBS’ “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” and “Santa Barbara” and ABC’s “General Hospital”--will be on hand to meet and greet fans.

Dubbed “Soap Star Spectacular: Flying High With the Stars,” the event uses the facility’s 40,000-square-foot Barker Hangar and its 120,000-square-foot taxiway, to make room for about 6,000 fans. Organizers are aiming for a festival feel, with musical entertainment by the stars throughout the day, booths for autograph signing, question-and-answer sessions and prop and costume displays. Most performances will feature selections from the album “With Love From the Soaps,” released earlier this year.

The set tours and celebrity dinners will be offered for auction and also, in consideration of fans with more limited budgets, for the price of a raffle ticket. Other items to be auctioned include autographed scripts, numerous costumes and props, and cast members’ personal memorabilia, soap-oriented and otherwise.

The day’s proceeds will benefit the nonprofit, West Hollywood-based Hollywood Helps, founded in 1988 to provide money--particularly for such necessities as medicine, utilities and housing--for industry members who can no longer work due to the effects of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Also benefiting is a non-entertainment group, Aid for AIDS.

“What we hope to accomplish here is threefold,” says J. Michael Herndon, director of development for Hollywood Helps and producer of “Soap Star Spectacular.”

“First, we want to generate funds that will enable us to assist people living with AIDS. Second, we want to generate an awareness of our existence to people in the industry, so that they can use or donate services. And third, we want to present, in a fun avenue, AIDS education and awareness to those who have not been exposed to it.”

The soap opera realm provided the ideal arena for such a mission, Herndon says, because of soap performers’ well-known penchant for work on behalf of charities and social causes, and their fans’ equally recognized devotion to the shows and stars. Indeed, soap viewers are coming from all over the country, and the well-read soap publications have lent their support, furnishing advertising space and donating magazine issues to be sold at the event.

“I’m glad it’s the soaps doing this,” says Susan Seaforth Hayes, who plays Julie on “Days of Our Lives.” She will be there with her husband, former “Days” co-star Bill Hayes. “The soap audience is so connected to the actors. There’s a loyalty--when you choose to support a cause, they pay attention, because you’re someone they’ve been listening to for years and years and years.”

Adds Sharon Farrell, who plays Flo on “The Young and the Restless” and will be singing at the event, “I’d been on ‘Young and Restless’ one week, and people were running to me, saying, ‘Flo! Flo! Flo!’ Soap opera stars are more approachable. Fans will say, ‘Give me a hug.’ I’m sure Barbra Streisand isn’t running around giving people hugs.”

It is that performer-fan connection that participants as well as organizers hope to tap. “The only real value fame has is to draw attention to causes,” says Gordon Thomson, an alumnus of “Dynasty” who plays Mason on “Santa Barbara.”

“The people who watch daytime television are Anybody, U.S.A., and that’s exactly the people we’re trying to reach,” Thomson says. “In this country, AIDS is still considered a gay man’s disease. But it’s creeping fairly quickly into the heterosexual population--I think the day will come when everybody will have been touched by this illness. So people will be drawn to this event, but let’s hope that a little education and enlightenment will sneak in.”

Thomson says he lost one of his best friends to AIDS a year ago. Farrell turns teary when she recalls caring for a dying friend, carrying him to the bathroom or just sitting and being there for him. Hayes has lost friends to the disease, as well as a “Days of Our Lives” costume designer.

Not surprisingly, then, “General Hospital” Executive Producer Wendy Riche notes that the event’s participants are attending out of a sense of responsibility as individuals, not just as celebrities. Her show’s Norma Connolly, who plays Aunt Ruby, serves on the board of Hollywood Helps and has been acting as a liaison between the group and the soap community, involved in planning the event and recruiting participants.

“My best friend growing up, who was a top New York agent, had AIDS,” Connolly says. “You feel so helpless in the face of it. I’m the mother of three kids, and I can’t imagine losing any of them.

For all the concern off camera, only one of the West Coast soaps, “The Young and the Restless,” has had a full-blown AIDS story line. Most of the others have presented scenes emphasizing safe sex, usually with younger characters. On “Santa Barbara,” for instance, head writer Pam Long recently used a college classroom as the soap-opera setting for a non-preachy discussion of the subject, and “General Hospital” has scripted a teen hot line that has taken calls about AIDS and sex.

The 1988-89 “Y & R” plot line, which may have been daytime’s first about heterosexual AIDS, dealt with the death of Cricket’s (Lauralee Bell) mother, Jessica (Rebecca Street), from AIDS. A current story deals with the subject of AIDS testing for the youthful triangle Victoria (Heather Tom), Ryan (Scott Reeves) and Nina (Tricia Cast).

“There’s a feeling of responsibility in doing these story lines. We have an enormous audience, not only in this country but abroad,” says William J. Bell, “Y & R” co-creator, co-executive producer and head writer, whose show lost an art director to AIDS. “So there’s a feeling of obligation to impact on these audiences, on what they do and say, with characters that people look at as their friends. We can reach people in a very special way.”