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Santa Barbara was an American soap opera which ran on NBC for 2137 episodes from July 30, 1984 to January 15, 1993. The show, which won many Emmy awards, was famous for its comedic style and offbeat writing. One character was killed by having a giant neon letter "C" land on her while she was standing on a building's roof.
When a major earthquake hit Santa Barbara, core character Danny Andrade slept through the entire thing. Minx Lockridge was unfazed, saying that the 1984 Santa Barbara earthquake was nothing like 1925. She was later knocked into an empty sarcophagus. Luckily, her grandchildren were around to let her out and she escaped with merely a bruised hubris.
The show covered the exciting, eventful lives of the wealthy Capwell family of Santa Barbara, California. Around the Capwells there are several other families, from the rival Lockridge family to the more modest Andrade and Perkins families, whose lives know the same torments.
The series began on an uneven foot, but creators and executive producers Jerome Dobson and Bridget Dobson proceeded to kill off most of the show's worst actors via natural disaster and a serial killer storyline. By concentrating on such popular characters as Mason Capwell, Eden Capwell, Gina Blake, Augusta and Lionel Lockridge, Cruz Castillo and Julia Wainwright, the program managed to achieve critical acclaim as well as slowly but surely rising ratings. But in 1988 the Dobsons were locked out of NBC studios after repeated attempts to fire the headwriter. They sued, and were eventually allowed to return to the program, but the magic was gone. Ratings never recovered, even as the show won 3 Daytime Emmys in a row for Best Daytime Drama. The first of those wins involved a mini-melodrama of it's own as the extremely controversial Jill Farren Phelps (who had replaced Mary-Ellis Bunim as executive producer) tried to claim an award for episodes that she'd had no hand in producing. Bridget Dobson, whose work garnered the award, raced onstage and captured the trophy a few seconds before Phelps could reach the podium.
Phelps left the series in the early 90's to be replaced by John Conboy and finally Paul Rauch (ironically all 3 would later produce longrunning daytime series Guiding Light). Eden, Cruz, and most of the Lockridges had been written out while new characters played by stars from other shows such as Kim Zimmer, Jack Wagner and Sydney Penny took up most of the airtime. Ratings continued to collapse as more and more affiliates cancelled the program. The final episode aired in January 1993. The final shot consisted of Paul Rauch standing in front of the camera, smashing a cigar under his shoe, and walking away. Many fans were outraged at such a crass, vulgar finale for a show in which they had invested nearly a decade of love and loyalty.
It has also run in several other countries across the world. In France, it ran from October 14, 1985 to June 24, 1994 on TF1 (1044 episodes) and from December 19, 2000 to June 1, 2001 on TF6 (106 episodes).
Santa Barbara even had fans in the White House. In the late 80's, when Augusta Lockridge (Louise Sorel) was blinded following a brain tumor, Ronald Reagan sent Sorel a letter saying he and Nancy were praying for her and hoped she recovered.
Cast
Production
Creators - Bridget Dobson
- Jerome Dobson
Producers
Screenwriters - Bridget Dobson
- Jerome Dobson
- Charles Pratt Jr.
- Robert Guza Jr.
- Patrick Mulcahey
- Gary Tomlin
- Pamela K. Long
Directors - Rick Bennewitz
- Michael Gliona
- Nicholas Stamos
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