Hillary B. Smith has played Nora Hannon Gannon Buchanan (yes, they had a lot of fun with this) on One Life to Live and General Hospital (and, before that, she was Margo Montgomery Hughes on As the World Turns). Before she hit Port Charles, Nora was part of Llanview’s (and daytime’s) few interfaith couples.
So, who do you get to perform a wedding ceremony between a Jewish woman and a… Texan man? You get a rabbi played by Camryn Manheim. And Little Richard (naturally). How did that happen? And how did it go? Hillary B. Smith tells all in the new book, Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments.
The Who
It was an honest relationship. You saw them at their worst, and you still saw them as a team. It was an enviable relationship. Everyone wanted a relationship like that. Bob Woods (Bo) tells the story of women going up to his wife, Loyita, and saying, “Oh, you’re so lucky, I wish I was married to Bo Buchanan.” And she says, “So do I.”
The wedding was interfaith and that was very unique, because Nora was the only Jewish character on television at that time, and she’s still the only Jewish woman on daytime.
The When
We had one day on set for it — it was going to be a long day — and we had Little Richard planned. We got there early in the morning, and we were getting everything else out of the way first. We got up there to rehearse, and Little Richard turned around and said, “Oh, by the way,” — this is about at 5 o’clock in the afternoon — “I have to be somewhere at seven.” And everyone sort of stared at him and said, “Are you kidding?” We weren’t even in hair and make-up or anything like that yet. We were like, “What?”
And so they had to quickly tape all of his scenes. I mean all of them, everything that he said, everything that he did, they had to tape. They held up cue cards and one of them said, “Hey, Bo and Nora,” and then, in parentheses (To The Crowd), “We can’t let these people get away.” And so he said, “Hey, Bo and Nora! To the crowd! We can’t let these people get away!” He read everything on the cue card.
The How
Nora and Bo try to walk out of their wedding. They decide, “Let’s not get married.” But Little Richard stops them and, because it’s Little Richard, they go, “Oh, okay. Now we have to get married.”
He was so rushed and so nervous about getting to his next gig he couldn’t remember the words to his own songs. It was very funny. But he was a delight, he was fun, we had a blast. So he did his part, and he left, and then we did the ceremony without him, and just looked at the stage manager and pretended he was Little Richard.
What does Smith think was the secret to Bo and Nora’s popularity? Find out all that and more in Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments.
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