Love Is A Many Splendored Thing (TV Series) - Legacy

Legacy

The show's greatest legacy is not from its storytelling or cast, but from the strong focus on young, fresh faces. Few soaps had ever made attempts to aggressively focus on attractive young people, and those that did had not fared well with the traditional daytime audience, which at the time mainly consisted of stay-at-home mothers/housewives. Dark Shadows, on ABC, was another soap opera which attracted a young audience. This show was the beginning of the movement of attracting young viewers along with soap opera's traditional audience. The show pre-dated the premieres of One Life to Live (1968) and All My Children (1970), two other soap operas which also attracted young audiences. However, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing lacked the guidance of creator/executive producer Agnes Nixon (creator of those two shows). The network kept hiring new head writers and executive producers for its soap operas, creating a lack of continuity in the storytelling.

Also a legacy of the show was the music style of Eddie Layton, being more jazz and pop flavored, as opposed to the heavy symphonic/theatre organ style of more established soap operas. Eddie's style was transitional between the earlier soap opera styles, and the more contemporary light orchestral/synthesizer pop flavored music of soap operas that were later used. One of Eddie's former organ students, "Soapluvva," has established a tribute channel on YouTube in honor of both Eddie, and his fellow soap opera organist, Charles Paul.

Other actors who appeared on the series and would go on to greater fame in daytime or primetime included Beverlee McKinsey, Andrea Marcovicci, Veleka Gray, Leslie Charleson, Constance Towers, Judson Laire, Susan Browning, Vincent Baggetta, Diana Douglas, David Groh, Ron Hale, Paul Michael Glaser, Stephanie Braxton, John Karlen, and Michael Zaslow.