^#smrgSAHAF Eight Years in Another World : the Inside Story of a Soap Opera - 1981

Bleak and funny and true, it is a remarkable sequel to Harding Lemay's first book. His readers will be impatient for the next chapters of his uniquely Ameri- can odyssey.
Marian Seldes
Author of Bright Lights

For eight years, Harding Lemay wrote tele- vision's most popular soap opera, "Another World." This is his story.

Lemay-playwright, former publishing executive, and author of an acclaimed autobiogra- phy, Inside, Looking Out-was broke when he took the telephone call from Procter and Gamble suggesting he become headwriter for "An- other World." He held soap opera in contempt but, badly needing money, swallowed his pride and immersed himself in the Bay City lives of the Frames and Matthewses. He struggled to rid the show of courtroom and hospital clichés and base it on well-drawn characters (and won an Emmy Award), found himself in stubborn conflict with equally stubborn actors and producers, and, by the end, became as lost in "An- other World" as its most helpless fans. Eight Years in Another World is a glimpse behind the camera; for millions of viewers, it gives an inside account of the show at its peak. It is above all the compelling story of a man driven from contempt to pride-and then to despera- tion, as his mesmerizing imaginary world threatened to overwhelm the real one.

Harding Lemay was born, the fifth of thirteen children, in 1922 in northern New York State. He ran away from home at seventeen to be- come an actor, and later abandoned that un- promising career for a life among books, first as a clerk in the New York Public Library and then in book publishing. He left an executive position in a prestigious publishing firm in 1967 to devote himself full-time to writing. In 1971, his personal memoir, Inside, Looking Out, was published and was nominated for the National Book Award in biography. He won an Emmy in 1975 for writing the daytime serial "Another World." He resigned as head- writer of that serial in 1979 and is once again devoting himself to teaching and writing. Mr. Lemay and his wife live in New York City, as do their two grown children.