Making the Scene at ‘Young & Restless’

Daytime drama is TV you either love or loathe. Admit it, some of you: When you hear your neighbor is a soap watcher, you feel a tiny snicker coming on. So I’d better explain: It’s my wife’s fault I got hooked on “Guiding Light.”

Neither of us can figure out how to program our antiquated VCR to tape her beloved “The Price Is Right” without just leaving the TV on all day. And “GL,” as die-hard fans call it, is the program that precedes it.

The only way to enjoy any soap is to overlook the screwy. When the lawyer gets right in the witness’s face at a trial--something no judge in America would permit--you have to pretend it didn’t happen. When you learn as a latecomer that your favorite character was already married once before to her fiance--and at one point to his brother, and to their father, you just have to tell yourself life takes those funny little bounces.

I still find it hard to accept that Blake Marler had twins by separate men. But my wife insists it’s medically possible. What makes it so deliciously intriguing is that soaps make such pregnancies seem routine. At least the twins’ biological dads aren’t father and son. (Would that make your twin brother your uncle?)

Which brings me to a dinner my wife and I recently attended at Cal State Fullerton. In a silent auction, I won two backstage passes to a taping of “The Young & the Restless.” Now I don’t happen to watch that show much. But it’s the soap genre, and I thought it would be fun. Besides, “Y&R;” is the No. 1 rated soap in America. Ratings show that about 80,000 households of you in Orange County watch it daily.

The taping was Wednesday at CBS Television City in Los Angeles. To my delight, Cyndi Nightengale, a colleague of mine from sports, agreed to go with me. Cyndi has been watching “Y&R;” from Day One, 24 years ago. She not only knows which characters are couples, she knows which ones want to be together, or who pines for whom.

Our host was Raymond Thompson, the “Y&R;” lighting director the past 16 years. It was Thompson who contributed

the passes to Cal State Fullerton. He’s a graduate of its theater department (class of ‘76) who switched from actor to the technical end early in his career. Thompson said he found that he could be just as creative with lighting as with acting. (Hey, no lights, no show, right?)

We first arrived in the middle of a huge kissing scene between Malcolm Winters (actor Shemar Moore) and Dr. Olivia Barber Hastings (Tonya Lee Williams). No surprise; in soaps, there is lots of kissing. This scene went on and on because their conversation preceding it had to be repeated quite a bit. One goof was Moore’s, a couple were Williams’.

“An American wouldn’t have to do this so many times,” Moore teased her. (Williams is Canadian.)

Once when the actors got it right, it was a cameraman who was a little slow. Moore did not seem to mind.

“It’s in my contract that I do each kissing scene five times,” Moore mused to the numerous people on the set.

“Yeah, you should see my contract,” Williams shot back at him.

To choreograph all this, the stage was busy with camera, lights, sound and set crews. One fellow appeared to me to be overseeing all those kisses. Turns out I was wrong; he was the stage manager. The real kiss doctor was the director, working in front of a set of TV screens in one of three tiny rooms off the sound stage.

That’s the grand central of the operation. The director, the lights boss, the mixer, the music man, the producer and a myriad of assistants were all back there in close quarters, making sure that set of kisses had enough kick to make the TV viewers swoon. Plus the rest of the scene, of course.

For you ardent soap fans, here are a few inside facts I picked up:

* The actors do flub their lines. Repeatedly. Also, even the best have trouble making scenes work. At one point Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow) was supposed to walk across the room while his father, Victor (Eric Braeden), was talking to him. “Walk across to what?” he blurted out. Someone brought in a business report for him to pick up.

* The sets are much, much smaller than they appear on TV, but efficiently put together back to back. A single hour of the drama might take you all around Genoa City (the fictional “Y&R;” setting) without ever leaving its single sound stage.

* If you’ve ever wondered where the microphone is that picks up their voices, it’s about half an inch just out of sight above your TV screen.

* These people work hard, both the actors and those behind the camera. Sets were being moved as fast as a scene was wrapped. Actors not in front of the camera were either in makeup or rehearsing lines for their next scenes. Braeden, the show’s primary star, graciously chatted with us, then excused himself for lunch. No two-hour lunches here. A minute later I saw him carrying a plastic plate with some kind of broccoli dish back to the set. He gulped bites between takes.

* “Y&R;” spends $12,000 a week on new clothes for the actors. (The costume designer told us.)

* “Dry blocking” means rehearsing a scene without the cameras. There is lots of dry blocking.

* There are few pre-production meetings. “No time,” Thompson explained. “We’ve done this so long, we work mostly by smoke signals.”

* Actors really can cry on cue. We saw Jennifer Gareis (who plays Grace Turner) run through the same scene four times without shedding a tear. But when the camera rolled for real, she reached down deep in her acting soul and came up with wet eyes.

OK, it wasn’t “Guiding Light.” But maybe I’ll check out whether Grace gets Nick away from Sharon, who is actually the birth mother to the girl Grace is raising (but doesn’t know it).

Wrap-Up: I asked Thompson why he thought “The Young & the Restless” had been No. 1 for so long.

“Good story lines,” he said. “Also, our actors represent a broad range of ages. Some shows have only young actors.”

But Thompson couldn’t help adding with a smile: “Also, I’d like to think it’s the lighting.”

*

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823, by fax at (714) 966-7711 or by e-mail at jerry.hicks@latimes.com.