Love of Life: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Love of Life was an American soap opera which aired on CBS from September 24, 1951 until February 1, 1980.

Format

Unlike other soap operas, Love of Life was not split up into segments dictated by commercial breaks. The only way a sponsor could purchase time for Love of Life was to buy time either before or after the show.

In 1958 the show moved from 15 minutes to 25 minutes, a departure from the norm in a world where most soap operas were expanding to a half-hour. The last five minutes in the timeslot were dedicated to the CBS News.

While the show drifted from this focus in the later years, the original story was a morality play of good versus evil, illustrated by the interactions between two sisters, Vanessa and Meg Dale. Vanessa (often referred to as "Van" for short) was "the good girl." She stood up for what was right in life and in her community. Meg was the schemer and all-around "bad" girl. While Van disapproved of Meg's actions, she still loved her and taught the audience the value of forgiveness.

Eventually, Meg was phased out and the show changed locales (first set in the fictional town of Barrowsville, it moved to Rosehill, where it would remain for the rest of the show's run).

During this time, the actress who played Van quit the show and was replaced. Subsequently, the actress who replaced her was replaced herself. The second recast, Audrey Peters, played Van for the rest of the run, from 1959 until 1980.

In the 1960s, most of the drama was focused on Van and her new marriage to Bruce Sterling (played by Ron Tomme). As ratings began to slide in the 1970s, Meg and her son Ben were brought back to the show (Ben, now an adult, was most notably played by Christopher Reeve).

However, the grittier storylines (in which it was implied that Ben was sodomized while in prison) did not please the viewers, and the ratings sank lower. Partly, this was due to its fringe timeslot: since the beginning, Love of Life had aired in the very late morning, and few soaps have had success airing before noon.

In October 1979, the show was taken off the air altogether for emergency retooling. Love of Life was brought back in early 1980 and ended its run abruptly in February, with a cliffhanger: after testifying in a trial, heroine Betsy Crawford collapsed as she was leaving the stand. No one knew what happened to her as the show was not picked up by another network.