Review of The Edge of Night

'The Edge of Night' was an event around our house; my mother tried to have her housework done in order to see it where with most other soaps she just worked with them on in the background. My father liked it too; he carried the mail and was home by mid-afternoon. Apparently this was the only soap, at least of that era, with a significant male viewership Both of my late parentes were really big-time fans of the late John Larkin and never accepted the later Karrs as much; as a kid I guess I was more flexible, and besides, Forrest Compton was a known quantity as he had been "The Colonel" on "Gomer Pyle". Walter Grezea was superb as Police Chief Marceau; the supporting cast was really good, especially Ann Flood as Nancy and Donald May as Mike's colleague Adam Drake. This show had better plot lines than the other soaps because of its legal setting, with things like blackmail, loansharking and drugs (even back then) that would not likely have been on other soaps of the era. Even as a kid knowing nothing of the background, I saw that Mike Karr was really a daytime Perry Mason, but that just made the show better. In fact, because it moved so much more slowly since it was on for a half hour a day, the trials could be much more realistic and the real criminal didn't always have to break down on the stand and admit why they were the one who had done it; also Karr, unlike Mason, sometimes lost his cases. Three plot lines stick out in my mind; the Karr's in-laws the Capieces (Mike Karr and Phillip Capiece were married to sisters, Nancy and "Cookie", getting involved with a criminal named Calvin who wound up robbing their wall safe (first time that I'd ever seen one); the evil Jonah Lockwood, who I could tell, even as a kid, was based on Charles Manson, and finally (after I was a young adult), even the riff on "The Fugitive" where a wrongfully-convicted man escaped from the train taking him to prison. (Got to admit that a ripoff that flagrant took real brass!) This show, and "As the World Turns", were the last live soaps, so live that one day I can remember the announcer stumbling through his words and saying, "And now ... The Urge of Night!"