Nola Madison
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Nola Madison | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Edge of Night character | |||||||||||
_-_The_Edge_of_Night.png) Kim Hunter as Nola Madison in March 1980 | |||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Kim Hunter | ||||||||||
| First appearance | June 1979 | ||||||||||
| Last appearance | March 14, 1980 | ||||||||||
| Created by | Henry Slesar | ||||||||||
| Introduced by | Erwin Nicholson | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Nola Madison is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera The Edge of Night. The role was played by actress Kim Hunter from June 1979 to March 1980.
Casting and development
The Edge of Night's casting director, Ruth Levine, happened to meet film actress Kim Hunter at a cocktail party just as head writer Henry Slesar had devised a storyline about "an aging movie star who drinks too much and has a messed-up love life."[1] Hunter, known for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire,[2] and later winning both an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for the 1951 film adaptation,[3][4] initially declined the short term role of Nola Madison.[1] Eventually she signed a six-month contract.[1][5] Hunter first appeared as Nola in June 1979,[6][7] with the understanding that the character would be written out by December 1979.[1] Slesar later came up with an extended storyline in which Nola would play a witch in a horror film, and a side plot in which she would disguise herself as an old woman and drug some of the other characters.[1] Hunter agreed to stay with the series for three more months.[1]
Hunter said in 1999 that the offer to do a soap opera was a "peculiar suggestion" at the time, but she found the character "interesting".[5] Richard Simms of Soaps She Knows wrote that The Edge of Night could "attract actors who might otherwise not have considered joining a soap" because many plots in the series "revolved around short-term evil-doers who would eventually be brought to justice by the core characters".[8] Though lamenting that the fast pace of soap opera production allowed for less rehearsal than she was used to, Hunter said, "The characters are fascinating and are allowed to grow and progress, which doesn't happen very often on nighttime TV."[1] Hunter said that the live to tape, five episode per week pace was "exhausting", but that the job was an "extraordinary experience" that she did not regret.[5] Her last appearance was on March 14, 1980.[6][7][9]
Description
J. Bernard Jones of Daytime Confidential explained that "Head writer Henry Slesar shrewdly wrote Nola as a combination of Stella Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire and Norma Desmond [from Sunset Boulevard]: drunk, neurotic, jealous, egotistical, vengeful, lonely, sad, murderous, tragic and ultimately broken."[9]