Normally you just see a quick flash in Kennedy specials taking us back to November 22, 1963.
And here is the longer version with the soap opera as I describe below.
It’s a famous story. As the World Turns was on when Walter Cronkite (then the voice of security and authority in America) broke in with the news that President Kennedy had been shot. In my own family, I can tell you that my cousin was at my grandmother’s watching our stories when the announcement came on. She still remembers the exact moment. Read We Love Soaps’s version.
A lot of times the Kennedy specials will show the last 20 seconds or so before the cut in with Nancy and Papa Hughes. Unusually this clip shows more of the surrounding episode.
We open on Nancy Hughes and her son Bob Hughes (he would go on to be the coolest guy in Oakdale for 50 years) open the scene while Nancy is working on knitting a sweater for Bob’s young son Tom (later part of the supercouple ToMargo). Bob tells Nancy that he’s invited his ex-wife Lisa (the greatest soap vixen of all time and his mother’s son) and Tom over for Thanksgiving. I never saw Bob and Lisa while they were romantically together, but I must admit I spent the entire time Bob and Kim were married wishing Lisa and Bob would get back together.
At 10:00 into the clip Cronkite breaks in with an audio announcement that Kennedy was shot and to hold in. They didn’t tell the actors the news and had them go on with the scene.
Grandpa Hughes was a key character in the show. He was the one that led the Hughes Memorial Day picnic, the Hughes version of the Bauer BBQ. He was also a point of contention in the early set up. Chris had been the oldest son and had been expected to return to the farm at least part time after college. Instead he joined a prestigious practice with the future Judge Lowell here in Oakdale. Nancy had pushed him to do so and really thought herself better than the farm, although not better than the family.
At 13:00 they break in again. A few more details.
They come back to a conversation between Bob and David Stewart (David was part of Ellen and David a great model for a soap couple). They are talking about Bob’s sister Penny and trying to get I guess her significant other back into medicine.
At 17:00 they break in a final time starting the roughly 55 hours of continues news coverage and on the fifth day America went back to work.
Conkrite takes us through the days after in Four Days in November.
Robansuefarm is the handle of one of Manny and Guiding Light‘s biggest fans following in her family’s footsteps of Guiding Light fandom since 1939. This blog is an effort to make it easy to find Guiding Light and especially Manny online. Check back here for her blog, find fanfic previews and fake WSPR newscasts on her YouTube, find podcasts that look back to old shows and audios of her fanfics on Blog Talk Radio, and finally follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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