Ryan's Hope

In late 1974, ABC Daytime approached Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer, the head writers of CBS' Love of Life, about creating a new soap opera similar to General Hospital. Labine and Mayer added a large Irish-American family — the Ryans — to what ABC was calling City Hospital. Another of the show's working titles was A Rage to Love, but that was soon changed.[2]

Patriarch Johnny Ryan (Bernard Barrow) owned a bar, Ryan's, across from fictional Riverside Hospital in New York City. His wife, Maeve (Helen Gallagher), assisted him in his duties, as did their children: Frank, the seldom-seen Kathleen, Patrick, Mary, and Siobhan (the younger daughter being introduced in the series in 1978, having spent the first three years of the series away from New York City). The Ryans and the wealthy Coleridges were the original core families of the show. The soap took the then-unusual approach of situating itself in an actual community—the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. Maeve's parish sat in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, on 178th St. References were often made to Central Park (Delia's Crystal Palace restaurant), Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn (mob-owned fishing boats), and other localities to provide a sense of place. "We wanted to show how New York has communities," Labine said.[3]

Labine and Mayer also served as the executive producers of the show at this point, with George Lefferts as the producer. Lefferts was soon replaced by Robert Costello, who remained with the show until 1978. Nancy Ford co-wrote the first episode with Labine and Mayer.

The original cast consisted of Nancy Addison Altman, Bernard Barrow, Faith Catlin, Justin Deas, Michael Fairman, John Gabriel, Helen Gallagher, Michael Levin, Malcolm Groome, Rosalinda Guerra, Justin Dees, Ron Hale, Michael Hawkins, Earl Hindman, Ilene Kristen, Frank Latimore, Kate Mulgrew, Hannibal Penney, Jr., and Diana van der Vlis.[4]

The premise of the show for its first two years involved the blue-collar, immigrant, Catholic Ryans and the three of their five upwardly mobile adult children still residing in New York: Frank, lawyer and aspiring local politician; Pat, physician at local Riverside Hospital; and Mary, aspiring journalist. The show contrasted the cultures of tradition-minded parents with their more liberated, 1970s culture-drenched children. Older morals about lifetime marriages, church-proscribed divorce, and chastity outside of wedlock were constantly being tested by "New-World," "New-Era" urban values. Frank's political campaign for city council was challenged by a chain of events surrounding his paying off the Coleridge son who knew of the affair Frank was having with Jillian Coleridge, while Frank was married to needy, frantic Delia. The political-scandal angle was soon reiterated with Frank's short tenure in the state senate. Delia became involved with all three of Johnny Ryan's sons: Frank, Pat, and Dakota. The quasi-incestuous focus was echoed in coming years by Frank's involvement with both Coleridge sisters, Jillian and Faith, and with Faith's involvement with Ryan brothers Pat and Frank, and again with Jillian's involvement with half-brothers Frank and Dakota, and by gangster Michael Pavel's involvement with New York publisher/Frank's ex-fiancée Rae Woodward (Louise Shaffer) and her teen daughter, Kim (Kelli Maroney). Mary became irresistibly attracted to a reporter exposing Frank's blackmailing scandal, the fiery Jack Fenelli, and eventually moved in with him without benefit of marriage.

These extramarital and premarital affairs, the attendant children out of wedlock, the career-oriented women, the assertion of abortion rights: the clash of generational values in the Ryan clan was interesting to viewers (akin in some respects to the "Archie-Meathead" conflicts in the famed primetime show All in the Family), and there developed a passionate following for Kate Mulgrew's portrayal of Mary Ryan. Mary's career and personal goals were given neurotic counterpoint in Delia's machinations with Mary's brothers.

After two years of growth and success, Ryan's Hope began encountering challenges. Michael Hawkins left the role of Frank Ryan in 1976, and subsequent replacements included Andrew Robinson (1976–1978), Daniel Hugh Kelly (1978–1981), Geoffrey Pierson (1983–1985), and John Sanderford (1985–1989). In late 1977, Kate Mulgrew announced she would be leaving in January 1978. Following Mulgrew's departure, three different actresses, Mary Carney, Kathleen Tolan, and Nicolette Goulet, played Mary. It was Goulet who was in the role when story writers Labine and Mayer decided to kill off the character in December 1979. The writers initially wanted to kill off Mary when Mulgrew announced her decision to leave but ABC refused to allow the popular character to be killed off. Mary's sister, Siobhan, was brought to town to become romantically involved with a man, Joe Novak, who turned out to be a mobster, a storyline that offed Mary in a grisly bludgeoning murder when she and Jack were investigating the mafia ties of the fiancé. Malcolm Groome chose to leave the role of Dr. Pat Ryan in 1978 and was replaced with John Blazo (1978–1979), Robert Finoccoli (1979), and Patrick James Clarke (1982–1983).

Other characters not related to the Ryans were also recast. After Ilene Kristen left in January 1979, the role of Delia Reid was played by Robyn Millan (1979), Randall Edwards (1979–1982), and Robin Mattson (1984); Kristen returned to the show in the role from 1982 to 1983 (when she was fired due to weight gain) and 1986–1989. After Faith Catlin was dropped from the show as Faith Coleridge in May 1976, she was replaced with Nancy Barrett (1976), Catherine Hicks (1976–1978), and Karen Morris-Gowdy (1978–1983, 1989). Richard Muenz originated the role of Joe Novak in 1979, but was replaced by Roscoe Born (1981–1983, 1988), Michael Hennessy (1983–1984), and Walt Willey (1986–1987, with Joe initially under the guise of "Erik Brenner").

Of the major characters not related to the core characters, Louise Shaffer's Rae Woodard had significant impact in storylines, seducing both Roger Coleridge and Frank Ryan who she became engaged to, manipulating a breakup between him and Jillian, whom she despised. After Frank broke off her engagement, Rae plotted to destroy his political career, but eventually, she was exposed. After her illegitimate daughter Kimberly (Kelli Maroney) was introduced, Rae became the focus of many storylines, including having an affair with the much younger Michael Pavel, whom she had hired as her personal assistant, after breaking him and Kimberly up. His murder by the mob ended this triangle and led to Kim's departure and Rae's brief stay on the backburner of the storyline. When the wealthy Kirkland family was written in to glamourize the show, Rae returned to being a lead character. After the Kirklands were written out, Rae became the instigator behind the Charlotte Greer storyline. When Shaffer's contract was not renewed, she appeared on a recurring basis until she joined All My Children to play Goldie Kane. She was later hired by Search for Tomorrow to replace Maree Cheatham where she was reunited with former Ryan's Hope lovers, Michael Corbett (Michael Pavel) and Peter Haskell (Hollis Kirkland).

Among the other characters not related to the Ryans who passed through was the Irish-born Tom Desmond (Thomas MacGreevy), who briefly dated Mulgrew's Mary, then married Faith Coleridge in order to stay in the country. After attempting to kill her due to a brain tumor that caused him to become insanely jealous of her and Pat, Tom was briefly tempted by the innocent Poppy Lincoln (Alexandra Neil, then known as Diane Thompson Neil), who helped him deal with his brief blindness and happened to look almost exactly like his late girlfriend Teresa Donahue (also played by Ms. Neil, who went on to appear on practically every New York-based soap in the next two decades). Desmond managed to last two years before being killed off but other characters were introduced and written out extremely fast.

Several things occurred behind the camera as well. The original producer, show business veteran George Lefferts was replaced early in the run and replaced by more experienced producer Robert Costello. In 1979, Labine and Mayer sold the show to ABC due to skyrocketing production costs. The storylines following the sale to ABC, took a turn for the surreal. There were take-offs of King Kong, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Jaws, Manhattan, The Godfather, and The French Lieutenant's Woman. These were not the type of plots the show had previously been known for. Subsequent interviews with the head writer Claire Labine, however, reveal that the network was not the driving force behind the surrealism: "Everyone always cites Prince Albert the ape story as a mistake. But I'd do that again. I loved those scenes. It was a story about alienation."[5] Just as the King Kong-style plot captured Labine's imagination, so was the Raiders of the Lost Ark-inspired plot concerning a queen mummy inspired by Labine's vacation in Egypt at the time. None were considered plausible-- "the Raiders story... appears neither comfortable nor realistic," not told within a soap's context of real life, just as the King Kong and Jaws plots "were universally criticized."[6]

At the beginning of 1982, ABC fired Labine and Mayer and replaced them with Mary Ryan Munisteri. During Munisteri's tenure as head writer, the focus began to move to the newly arrived wealthy Kirkland clan, which was headed by Hollis Kirkland III (Peter Haskell). It soon turned out that he was the father of Rae Woodard's daughter, Kimberly Harris (Kelli Maroney). As more and more Kirklands began to show up (including Christine Jones as Hollis' wife Catsy; with Mary Page Keller and later Ariane Munker as his daughter Amanda), less attention was paid to the Ryans and Coleridges. Various cast members at this time dubbed the show Kirkland's Hope.

Due to falling ratings, Labine and Mayer were asked back at the beginning of 1983. In addition, at the same time, original cast members Malcolm Groome and Ilene Kristen returned to their roles as Pat Ryan and Delia Reid. In the spring, Kate Mulgrew briefly returned to the role of Mary Ryan when the character was brought back as a ghost who communicates with her widowed beloved Jack and, while professing that she still loves him, urges him to move on with his life. Then, in the summer, classic film actress Gloria DeHaven was hired to play the role of Bess Shelby, a middle-aged woman living out a sad existence in a Washington trailer park until she realizes her long-lost daughter is Jillian Coleridge, who was in the middle of a run for political office. Hungry for money, her teenage daughter Maggie (Cali Timmins) takes the first bus to New York to find Jillian, eventually causing Bess to head east as well. Ratings rose slightly with these developments; however, it was not enough. At the end of 1983, Labine and Mayer were let go again and replaced with General Hospital scribe Pat Falken Smith (with James E. Reilly joining as a staff writer). Smith, along with executive producer Joseph Hardy, once again shifted the focus from the Ryan and Coleridge families. Numerous fan favorite actors, including Ilene Kristen, Louise Shaffer, and Karen Morris-Gowdy were fired or left on their own accord, Kristen's character was recast briefly in 1984, played by Robin Mattson. The primary focus of the series during the Hardy-Smith era was on Greenberg's Deli, with Cali Timmins' Maggie Shelby and Scott Holmes' Dave Greenberg becoming two of the main characters.

In 1985, Smith was replaced with Millee Taggart and Tom King. The show began a shift back to its roots during this time. The show, which had been airing at 12:30 Eastern US/11:30 Central since 1977, had just been moved to the Noon Eastern US/11c time slot, beginning October 8, 1984.[7] It appears that many of the cast members felt as though this was a very political move by ABC: since the daytime drama series Loving took over the former 12:30/11:30c Ryan's Hope slot, it allowed creator Agnes Nixon to use her clout with the network (from her lucrative soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live) to get Loving a prime slot. This resulted in her new show commencing a block of back-to-back Nixon shows. Others felt that moving Ryan's Hope out of the 12:30 slot spared it competition from CBS's highly rated The Young and the Restless in the noon timeslot; however, the show went up against the NBC game show Super Password, and both shows would remain in the noon timeslot until their runs ended.[2]

During the 1980s, there were numerous cast changes. Some of the more notable ones included the additions of Michael Palance, Grant Show, Daniel Pilon, Gerit Quealy, Leslie Easterbrook, Tichina Arnold, Gloria DeHaven, Jimmy Wlcek, Maria Pitillo, Rosemary Prinz, Catherine Larson, and Christopher Durham. Durham arrived in October 1985 as Dakota Smith, who was brought to the Ryan family's attention following Johnny's admission of a tryst he'd had with a woman who stepped in as his caretaker while he was ill, and away from Maeve, in the 1950s. The long-ago weekend of intimacy produced Dakota, who arrived in New York to find out that Johnny was his father. Dakota soon became a rebel on the local scene, engaging in dirty dealings and becoming at odds with Frank, especially after he entered into a romance with Jill, Frank's beloved. Long-term fans were displeased with the storyline involving Johnny's infidelity, and ultimately, Dakota was written out, with Johnny disowning him over his criminal activities. Soap veteran Rosemary Prinz took over the role of Sister Mary Joel, a recurring part played by several actresses since the show's early days (including film actresses Sylvia Sidney and Nancy Coleman), and in a shocking twist, was revealed to be Jack's real mother. Diana Van Der Vlis, who had been part of the show's first year as Seneca's first wife, Nell, returned in a different role, as Sherry Rowan, the widow of the murdered Richard. When Seneca came back, he was shocked by Sherry's resemblance to Nell, and impulsively asked her to marry him. In the final episode, the two were seen together at Jack and Leigh's wedding.

When Ryan's Hope premiered on July 7, 1975, ABC scheduled it at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/12 Noon Central, a timeslot previously occupied by All My Children (pushing that soap ahead to the 12:30 p.m./11:30 a.m. slot).[7] The network reasoned that Ryan's Hope stood its best chances of gaining an audience by programming it in the 1:00/Noon slot that was free of soap competition on the other networks and by having ABC's number-one soap as a lead-in. The show's audience grew from a 5.7 rating in 1975 (a rating is "the percentage of TV homes in the US that is tuned in" [9]) to a 7.3 in 1976. This placed Ryan's Hope in second place on the ABC roster, with All My Children at an 8.2 rating, ahead of General Hospital at a 7.1 rating and One Life to Live at a 6.8 rating. RH replaced the game show Split Second, which ended one week before the serial's premiere, following a week of special hour-long episodes of All My Children, from June 30 to July 4 at 12:30 p.m. (11:30 Central).

In 1976, ABC joined the other networks in planning to expand its soaps to an hour-long format. Labine and Mayer declined to expand Ryan's Hope, which was moved to 12:30 p.m. Eastern/11:30 a.m Central in January 1977, in order to allow All My Children to shift to hour-long episodes on a permanent basis, after the 1975 trial run mentioned above.[7] The time change put it in competition with another soap for the first time, CBS' durable Search for Tomorrow. The ratings slipped a bit (7.0 in the 1977–78 season) against a 7.5 rating for Search for Tomorrow; ultimately, Ryan's Hope never exceeded its peak 1976 achievement. By 1978, all the other ABC-developed soaps had stronger ratings than RH. In 1979, All My Children was the number one daytime soap on TV, with a 9.0 rating, supplanted in 1980 by General Hospital with a 9.9 rating. While ABC otherwise flourished, Ryan's Hope struggled with its recasting and surreal storylines, and saw its ratings again at 7.0.

In June 1980, daytime television's most-popular game show at the time, Family Feud (original Richard Dawson version), moved into the lead-in 12 noon/11 Central position, but Ryan's Hope retained little if any of that audience.

In 1981, CBS moved its ascendant The Young and the Restless to the same slot Ryan's Hope occupied, 12:30 Eastern/11:30 Central. The CBS soap garnered a 7.4 rating to a 6.9 for Ryan's Hope. By the following year, CBS earned an 8.0 for the timeslot while Ryan's Hope slid to a 5.6. ABC fared better against the second half of The Young and the Restless, as All My Children had ratings of 9.4 for 1982–83. The ratings continued to decline for Ryan's Hope, and ABC realized it could not perform apace its other soaps. Ryan's Hope was moved to 12 noon Eastern/11:00 a.m. Central on October 8, 1984, under the belief that if it had built an audience before in a soap-free timeslot, in its first 18 months, perhaps it could do so again (in the Eastern Time Zone, at least).

However, the ratings for Ryan's Hope never stopped eroding; for one thing, CBS affiliates in the Central Time Zone usually ran Y&R at 11 a.m. local time, with its first half hour against RH. ABC continued to air the show for another four years, even though after 1984 it never had a rating higher than 3.4, about a third of what the top-rated soaps were earning. Another exacerbating factor was that although the noon timeslot relieved Ryan's Hope of soap competition in Eastern Time Zone markets, many ABC affiliates there were intent on airing 12 p.m. newscasts or other programming. They did not run Ryan's Hope, often relegating it to independent stations within their markets, which further diminished the number of households tuned in, due to those stations' typically lower public profile. In markets where the show did air at its normal time, it also went up against the aforementioned Super Password (which was also not aired by NBC affiliates in some areas). ABC finally canceled the show in October 1988, with the final episode airing on Friday, January 13, 1989; it was temporarily replaced by reruns of Growing Pains and later Perfect Strangers, and the 1990–91 season saw the arrival of ABC's last daytime game show to date, a revival of Match Game, but like Ryan's Hope, it also suffered from the noon timeslot. When that show ended its run on July 12, 1991, The Home Show expanded to 90 minutes; ABC returned the noon timeslot to its affiliates in August 1992. Loving was then fed to affiliates at 12 noon/11 a.m. CT/PT or 12:30/11:30 CT/PT, giving affiliates in the Central and Pacific time zones the option to air local news at 11:30 a.m.

Given the fact that the show, despite having a loyal, devoted (some would say a cult) following, never performed up to ABC's expectations, Ryan's Hope's run of 13+1⁄2 years was lengthy for its time, especially before the proliferation of options on cable television that would eventually erode the audience for all daytime serials beginning in the 1990s and continuing to this day.

Many primetime stars got their start on Ryan's Hope, including Tichina Arnold, Catherine Hicks, Yasmine Bleeth, Grant Show, Earl Hindman, Nell Carter, Corbin Bernsen, Marg Helgenberger, Ana Alicia, Christian Slater (who is Michael Hawkins' son in real life), Dominic Chianese, and Kate Mulgrew.

• Ryan's Hope at AllMovie
• Ryan's Hope at IMDb