Daytimers Magazine, 1981
by Michael Logan

Early in the century, stage actress Jessie Smithson toured the country on the Pantages Circuit performing in countless plays, musicals and variety shows and succeeded, somewhere along the way, to attract the amorous attentions of a traveling salesman. He ardently pursued her from town to town, from engagement to engagement, finally catching up with her in New York City during her Broadway run in "Girl of My Dreams" at the Empire Theatre. The title of the show proved more prophetic when the couple ran off one day to the legendary Little Church Around the Corner and got married between the matinee and evening performances.

Several decades later, their granddaughter–one Lisa Brown– was still carrying on the family theatrical tradition on the Great White Way, performing in such popular revivals as "Pal Joey" and "Hello, Dolly!" and the long-running hit "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Today, with Lisa enjoying a tremendous popularity as the floozy "Nola Reardon" on The Guiding Light, her biggest fan is 88-year old Jessie who not only follows the soap religiously, but has her entire apartment complex hooked as well!

"Her's is such a romantic story," glows Lisa. "She's always been a great influence on me. I remember looking at her old photos when I was younger and being so thrilled with her costumes. And she's seen just about everything I've done as an actress. I get such a sense of pride, not only from my grandmother, but from my parents and my entire family. It's such a wonderful thing!"

The pride, it appears, is mutual. Lisa's parents recently purchased a new home in her native Kansas City, Missouri. "My mother said to the neighbor ‘Do you watch "The Guiding Light'? And the lady said yes and she told her ‘Well, I'm Nola's mother!' So, this lady runs around the neighborhood telling everyone Nola's parents are moving in!' My parents get such a kick out of that! And I'm really pleased to be able to give that to them because they've given me so much."

A big draw at soap opera festivals and personal appearances around the country, she's often surprised at the vast numbers that turn up to catch a glimpse of her. What she enjoys more, however, is the opportunity to have a one on one conversation with a fan. "That way," she says, "we can talk like people should talk without that distance that is created by the star image. Not that the image isn't important. I think people need heroes . . .and villains!! I enjoy being recognized and posing for pictures. Sure, there are times when I'll be in a restaurant mid-bite and somebody will ask for an autograph, but that's rare. For me, most of the time the contact is an intimate thing. It's a very warm and loving thing that I get from people. It just makes me feel so good. I guess it would be hell if I felt otherwise."

Contrary to the feelings of other soap stars who find that fans don't make enough of a distinction between the real-life person and their on-screen counterpart, Lisa maintains that the majority of her followers do differentiate. "I play a bad person," she explains, "and I haven't gotten attacked on the street or anything. People do say ‘We just hate you! You're so bad! But that's Nola, so they do see the difference. I don't think they're confused. People get concerned about Nola. They care about her and worry about her and are relating to her struggle."

The low morals and high desires of Nola might, in less expert hands, fail to ignite such sympathy in viewers. When asked what tricks she had up her sleeve to keep her audience caring, Lisa remarks that "I think that's achieved by always examining why. Why does Nola do what she does? Why does she make those choices? Why is she so driven? Why does she feel the way she does? Why, why, why??? Helping the audience understand the psychological reason behind Nola's actions gets them underneath the situation. It turns her into a living, breathing human being. She's very confused and she lies and lies and lies. So that ‘why' is important, particularly when Nola does things like getting pregnant by Floyd and pretending it's Kelly's baby."

Interestingly enough, Lisa's getting fan mail from many people with similar real-life problems. "There seems to be a lot of young kids out there who are telling lies in order to deal with their lives. They're relating to the fact that Nola does the same thing. I get letters that say "I'm lying about this and how can I change?' or "I don't want to be like Nola, but I'm becoming like Nola."

Regarding the current controversy as to whether the soap operas are responsible for setting behavioral trends toward teens, Ms. Brown has some pretty vehement opinions.

"People set trends. Society sets trends, not the soaps. The soaps are mirroring what's happening in the world, not the other way around. The six o'clock news is doing a special series this week on how the soaps are affecting our teenagers and I get very defensive about that. What about Brooke Shields and her Calvin commercials? What about those teen models being made up to look like young adults? What about the violence on prime-time television and the pornography on the newsstands? What the media is doing isn't fair."

Recalling her own formative years, 27-year-old Lisa remembers, "It's no longer the world of innocence I grew up in. When I was growing up we didn't think about anything. Now kids are thinking about solar energy and Reagan and contraceptives! They're dealing with sexuality at age 12 and 13! Girls are getting pregnant at an early age . . .my cousin got pregnant at 18 and decided to keep the baby, very much like Nola is doing. There's an increasing awareness of the world at an increasingly younger age. But it's not the soaps. I think it's all much bigger than the soaps."

Lisa doesn't deny, however, the awesome power of the daytime dramas and their influence on millions. Is she concerned about the effect her trampy character may have on viewers? "You can't be. I realize that people are connecting with what I am doing on TV, but you can't think about that effect while you're working. I only think about that connection when I meet people and I hear and see that connection. But you can't worry about it . .if Lillian Hellman worried about what people would think of "The Children's Hour" it would never have happened. It almost never did! And "Cat on the Hot Tin Roof", when first produced was banned in places."

Lisa Brown must wonder how different life and career might be today if she had been cast in the role of Morgan Richards, the character for whom she first auditioned on "The Guiding Light". As it happened, the writers and producers on the soap thought her totally wrong for the part, but were so knocked out by her screen test that within a month she was indeed on the show, in the newly-created part of Nola.

Realistically, though, there's always a little sour with the sweet. Is she ever unhappy with the thrust her storyline takes? "Oh, sure," Lisa admits, "I've certainly been unhappy with certain choices the writers make, but it's usually because Lisa would make a difference choice that Nola would and I'm being paid to play Nola. My job as an actor is to act, not to make judgments or write the scene."

As thrilled as she is with her blossoming television career, Lisa is the first to admit that nothing compares with the highs or live theater. Her first professional job was as a dancer in a bus and truck tour of the musical "Seesaw", in which she met and worked with Tommy Tune. A few years later she auditioned for an off-Broadway musical he was choreographing and directing called "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas". By the time the show moved on to become the biggest hit on Broadway, Lisa's role as the youngest lady of the evening was bringing her plenty of industry attention. Although she misses that wonderful electric charge that only theater can give an actor, she still experiences it vicariously by being a voracious theater-goer.

"I see lots of shows," she says, "but sometimes I feel like a plumber going into somebody else's bathroom to wash his hands and notices that the pipes are leaking. I'll go to see a show and go crazy because something isn't working right!"

She recalls how, as a relative stage newcomer, she'd toured the US in "Hello, Dolly!" With Pearl Bailey and learned a thing or two about the power of audience contact. "You've got to learn to work with the audience. Pearl was amazingly good at that. If the audience was a tough one and cold to her at the beginning, she would never fail to have them, eating out of the palm of her hand by the end of the show."

"In television," she adds, "you don't get the physicality of the theater nor the sense of space. But we do get feedback during the tapings from the staff and stage crew. They become your audience. Elizabeth Ashley made this wonderful comment about show people. We're all, she says, really just blue-collar workers. We report for work every day, actors do their job, the crew does its job. The only real difference between us is this thing called fame and star which gets added on top of the actor's work.”

"Daytime is a very difficult job," Lisa continues pensively. "It's like being a student and it's always exam week. Always lines to learn. Always trying to bring some good to all this work you do daily." While eternally grateful for the job, she advises that an occasional break away from it all can be very valuable in the long run. "It's good to get away from a part every once in awhile, even for as long as a month or two, and go out and do other work. It can be another acting job or just something like painting your apartment. It's a rest for the character, for the writer, and the actor. The actor gets a chance to go out and sharpen something else. Then when you do come back to work, you find that you've changed. You're more alive and it makes your performance better. And that's nothing but good for the soap opera, too."

Recollecting that early period of adjustment when she first joined the cast of "The Guiding Light", Lisa smiles at how horribly nervous she was. "I remember my first entrance into a scene. I had to carry a tray into somebody's room and all I could think of was please don't let them see how badly this tray is shaking!"

With virtually no camera technique to give her moral support, she got through those crucial early weeks like a true theater trouper. "Having been an understudy in lots of shows, I've learned how to work under pressure. You can't help it when you learn eight different parts at once or go on as a last-minute replacement. You just go and do it, and pray you don't bump into any furniture or kill another actor or something!"

Lisa is the first to admit that after working so hard in her profession, she's earned the success that's coming her way. "I've worked hard for a long time, you now. I certainly didn't just breeze into New York City and begin work on "The Guiding Light." Instead, there was an endless array of odd jobs, acting classes, walk-on roles, and traumatic auditions. She remembers her roots, though, participating in Manhattan's Playwrights's Horizon where she frequently appears in readings of new plays by known and unknown writers. And she still takes those acting classes, getting a chance in her scene study group to tackle roles as far away from Nola as possible.

Like Nola Reardon, Lisa Brown has dreams and, at least for the latter, they seem to be happily coming true. Her biggest dream?

"To be on Johnny Carson!"