About this Blog

Still debating with your friends whether Laura should be with Scotty or Luke? Still rocking out to Danny Romalotti? Or maybe do you spend countless hours scouring youtube for Guiding Light clips from 1989? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then this blog is for you!

But before I get into my hopes for this blog, I thought I’d give you all a proper welcome. My name is Liz and when it comes to classic soaps, I have mad street cred. There was a particularly scary point in the summer of 1990 when, at the tender age of 14, I was watching five shows daily. While I dabbled in them all, I was only really hardcore about two: One Life to Live and Guiding Light. Both shows featured terrific actors, stellar production values and challenging plotlines. It was television Nirvana!

A few months ago, one of my favorite websites, We Love Soaps, took on the awesome task of ranking the greatest 100 actresses ever to appear on soaps. Given that we soap fans take our shows very seriously, the list was naturally controversial. As I followed along, I had a couple of small quibbles but was secure in the knowledge that of course my all time favorite actress would be ranked number one. It wasn’t even a question. And then it happened. We Love Soaps ranked the incomparable and peerless Beverlee McKinsey at a perplexing four. FOUR! The horror!

As I read the comments it was mentioned frequently that hitting fourth place after having been off the television for nearly 20 years was quite the feat (the actresses who ranked 1-3 were still on their shows at the time of the list). It was also mentioned that many fans today never have had the opportunity to see Beverlee McKinsey in action. That was just not acceptable. I’ve been hard at work (with lots of help mind you) creating the Beverlee McKinsey Archive and while it is still a work in progress, I believe it is shaping up to be an effective testament to her brilliance.

As I worked at assembling the Archive, a friend asked me whether I’d be doing a blog as well. I thought that was a brilliant idea! Surely I couldn’t be the only one out there who has a fondness for classic soaps.

And so Divas and Scoundrels was created as a way of paying homage to the shows, stars and behind the scenes craftspeople who made daytime great. It is also a place for classic soap opera fans to gather and share memories, clips and anything else related to the heyday of daytime television. In my mind, that heyday took place from 1974 to 1991. But if you can make an argument for other years, I could be swayed.

You can expect this blog to be a love letter to a genre that at its best is a fantastic vehicle for complicated storytelling and at its worst is campy delightfulness. I have lots of fun things planned for this blog and I hope that all of you classic soap fans out there will chime in on what you love and what you hate. Comments, gripes and observations are always welcome so long as everyone stays respectful of one another.

Thanks for stopping by!!

PS Oh yeah, and that person stalking youtube for 1989 clips of Guiding Light? That would be me :-)