In 2017, 'Paste' magazine selected the 75 best TV title sequences of all time. James Charisma observed, "The title sequence of a television show sets the tone for the entire series. Whether a few iconic seconds or a complicated two-minute scene, a show’s intro tells audiences what they’re in for." Based on the main title, viewers knew the prime-time soap, 'Falcon Crest', was about the wealth and power of a California wine-growing dynasty.
Jane Wyman, in her first regular role since 1962, played the powerful baroness of her wine empire. In her world, Angela Gioberti, the mistress of the vineyard, sought to rule not only her winery but everyone in Napa Valley. "I read the pilot script for 'Falcon Crest' and all of a sudden, it just struck a bell. Angie Channing is a very heads-up lady … She's very much a 1981 kind of lady … She's an interesting, tough-as-nails businesswoman. I won't let Angie become the J.R. of the wine business. I feel I'm representing all women in business."
'TV Times' magazine pointed out California had more acres of vineyards than Germany and that the vineyard estates could almost be transplanted to the south of France. The setting of 'Falcon Crest' was a little to the north of San Francisco, in the most famous of all California's wine-growing districts. The family feud started when Angie's nephew, Chase, moved from New York to the valley to take over his late father, Jason's 100-acre share of the estate.
Angie was determined to fend off intrafamilial and outside efforts to gain control of the empire she had inherited. Lance Cumson, the son of Angie's older daughter, Julia Channing, had been groomed to take over eventually as head of the wine-making empire. In Napa Valley, 'TV Times' explained, the vines, first planted by missionaries in 1852, flourished because of the perfect climate. However those vines were destroyed during the Prohibition era (1920-1933), but the vineyards had since recovered so well that could rank with some of the best in the world.
Asked if television had changed much since 1958, Jane Wyman replied, "Technically, it's a million years ahead. We sure have it better now (in 1982). In the old days we had to do everything ourselves, including sweeping out the studio." Of TV acting, Susan Sullivan as Maggie, told TV critic Jon Anderson, "You have 3-minute scenes. You don't stretch and expand yourself. You forget techniques. When you get a good scene, you play it for all it's worth." In a play, "each scene is given its proper value because you know you've got another one coming up in 2 minutes. Television works on a whole other group of disciplines. You must be able to repeat scenes seven or eight times if something goes wrong. Some stage actors can't jump in again and again like that."
In the 1985-86 TV season, Gene Kraft designed the main title of 'Falcon Crest'. It was noted the use of Letraset Romic font from 1981-84 had been changed to ITC Benguiat Book font. The vineyards, instead of the Golden Gate Bridge opened the main title with Ana-Alicia christian names hyphenated for the first time. Like Cliff Robertson, Morgan Fairchild received billing at the end of Act 4 and before the preview of the next episode and the closing credits. For the first three episodes, names of some cast and crew members were in italic.
By June 2015, 'The Los Angeles Times' reported, "The prime-time soap opera is experiencing a resurgence like no other, particularly on network TV. Unlike the '80s glory days of such ratings-grabbing series as CBS' 'Dallas' and ABC's 'Dynasty' and the '90s revivals from Fox, 'Beverly Hills, 90210' and 'Melrose Place', Emmy voters are taking notice of this new generation of guilty pleasures."
Gareth Neame, the producer of 'Downton' made the point, "There is a huge appetite for soaps. Millions and millions of people were watching 'Dallas' in prime time back in the day. What we're able to do is to combine that basic love of serialized drama with ongoing characters and production value." 'Downton' writer Julian Fellowes credited American television for pushing TV further into serialized territory.
The serialized pace also allowed the audience to engage with characters as they grew and changed, which had always been the primary appeal of soaps. Remaining rooted in reality also helped kept 'Downton' from veering too far into soap territory. Even before ABC's 'Desperate Housewives' competed at the Emmys in the comedy category in 2005, the line started blurring.
From September to November 2016, at the Red Bull Studios New York in Chelsea, some 100 objects from the Gala Committee's work went on display in an exhibition called 'Total Proof: The Gala Committee 1995-1997.' William Grimes informed 'The New York Times' readers, "Twenty years ago (in 1996), the conceptual artist Mel Chin cold-called the offices of 'Melrose Place', Aaron Spelling’s wildly popular prime-time soap opera, with a proposition.
"What if a task force of artists supplied free artworks and props for the show’s apartment-complex set, with coded cultural messages on pressing topics like reproductive rights, American foreign policy, alcoholism and sexual politics? Deborah Siegel, the show’s set decorator, listened to this absurd offer and had an instant reaction, 'I thought it sounded really interesting so I met with him.'
"This was the beginning of a conceptual artist’s dream, an ongoing intervention into the very heart of American mass culture. In late 1995, Mr. Chin and a team of 100 mostly unknown artists, called the Gala Committee, began a two-year experiment, placing objects on the set of 'Melrose Place'. They took their cues from scripts provided in advance and in some instances worked with the writers to modify plot lines and develop characters."
As pointed out, "Viewers of 'Melrose Place' saw a version of 'Total Proof: The Gala Committee 1995-1997' in April 1997, in a television episode featuring an actual exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, 'Uncommon Sense', which included many of the works produced for the set. In it, Heather Locklear, as the hard-charging advertising executive Amanda Woodward, has just taken on the museum as a client and brings her love interest, Kyle McBride (Rob Estes), to the opening for a stimulating evening of art talk.
"Much of it takes place in front of a Ross Bleckner-like painting that alludes to the American bombing of Baghdad. That work was ordered by Carol Mendelsohn, the show’s head writer. This fictional opening, filmed two weeks before the museum’s opening, was one of the great meta moments in television history. Mr. Chin is by now a well-known figure, a skilled organizer of socially provocative works that can last for years.
"The 'Melrose Place' idea began when Mr. Chin was shuttling back and forth between the University of Georgia, where he held a temporary professorship, and the California Institute of the Arts, where he was conducting a workshop. Mr. Chin had never heard of 'Melrose Place', 'I was not watching much television at the time.' But if he was not watching, he was thinking, prompted by Julie Lazar, the director of experimental programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Tom Finkelpearl, a guest curator and now New York’s commissioner of cultural affairs, who approached him to take part in 'Uncommon Sense'.
"Mr. Chin recalled that while on a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, he looked out the window and thought 'Los Angeles is in the air.' The city existed in the trillions of electronic impulses its residents sent through the atmosphere and around the world, transmitting social content and cultural symbols. 'Our world is transformed by covert information, political messages,' Mr. Chin said. 'How would that work if it was art?'
"Back home, Mr. Chin watched as his wife, Helen Nagge, flipped the remote and stopped on an arresting image. 'I saw this large blond face filling the screen, with blue eyes,' he said. It was Ms. Locklear. 'When she moved, there was a painting behind her, and I said, 'That's the gallery'.' Mr. Chin began assembling his troops. The name GALA fused the abbreviations for Georgia and Los Angeles, but eventually the committee absorbed dozens of artists around the country.
"Mr. Flood wondered aloud whether the project amounted to a sellout. Mr. Chin told him, 'We're not selling anything, we're getting in.' Frank South, an executive producer for the show, and Ms. Mendelsohn decided not to mention the project to Mr. Spelling or the network brass. Eventually, word leaked out. In 1997, 'The New Yorker' ran a Talk of the Town article, 'Agitprop', timed to the opening of 'Uncommon Sense'. Mr. South said, 'I was busted.'
"Mr. Spelling, tickled at the idea of seeing 'Melrose Place' in the museum world, took the news well. 'Just don’t do anything to hurt the show,' he told his charges. In early 1996, with the series in its fourth season, the artwork began to arrive, first in a trickle, then in a flood. As a safe-sex message, committee members designed 'Safety Sheets' for the manipulative, womanizing Dr. Peter Burns: bedsheets in an all-over pattern of cylindrical shapes that, on close inspection, turned out to be unrolled condoms.
"When Alison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith) became pregnant, the GALA Committee made her a quilt appliquéd with the chemical symbol for the abortion pill RU-486. 'One of the things we wanted to do was to respond to the fact that in network TV, no matter how strong you are, you cannot have an abortion,' said media scholar, Constance Penley, of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'You either have the baby, or you fall down the stairs. We wanted to put reproductive choice back on network TV.'
"One of the sneakier placements — the committee referred to them as 'product insertion manifestations' — came from the Cal Arts workshop. When Michael Mancini, a character played by Thomas Calabro, visits a hot-sheet motel, he sees the clerk reading 'Libidinal Economy', a work by the French poststructuralist Jean-François Lyotard.
"'Total Proof', organized by Max Wolf with Candice Strongwater, takes its title from an altered photograph of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, with the damage reworked by the artists to mimic the shape of an Absolut vodka bottle. The work was initially deemed too disturbing to appear on the show, but somehow it ended up, in plain sight, on a wall at D&D Advertising, Amanda’s company.
"As the television project gathered steam, the producers turned to the committee to help invent the character of Samantha Reilly, an artist who, after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, heads out to Los Angeles and moves into the Melrose Place complex. Ms. Mendelsohn was flown out to Kansas City to brainstorm with 10 women on the committee who became known as the Sisters of Sam.
"'We thought, she could be a Cindy Sherman, or a Kiki Smith, or a Barbara Kruger,' said Ms. Penley, who envisioned a feminist conceptualist. But the producers demanded paintings in the David Hockney mode, with bright pastels. 'They said, 'Because the camera loves those colors',' Mr. Chin recalled. Hijacking the concept, the Gala Committee turned out a series of cheery-toned paintings on the theme of violence and death in Los Angeles.
"The Gala Committee called it a day after the museum episode, but the series continued until May 1999. In a half-serious statement for a sale of many of the artworks at Sotheby’s, Mr. Chin summed up the great intervention as the catalyst for 'a profoundly radical transformation of worldwide art, entertainment, communication and government.' The reality was somewhat less dramatic. 'We were exhausted, basically,' Mr. Chin said. 'It was very stressful, producing on deadline. The potentiality and the pictorial reality had been enlarged, so we decided to stop there. It was time to release it to the world. And think of the reruns.'"
The serialized pace also allowed the audience to engage with characters as they grew and changed, which had always been the primary appeal of soaps. Remaining rooted in reality also helped kept 'Downton' from veering too far into soap territory. Even before ABC's 'Desperate Housewives' competed at the Emmys in the comedy category in 2005, the line started blurring.
From September to November 2016, at the Red Bull Studios New York in Chelsea, some 100 objects from the Gala Committee's work went on display in an exhibition called 'Total Proof: The Gala Committee 1995-1997.' William Grimes informed 'The New York Times' readers, "Twenty years ago (in 1996), the conceptual artist Mel Chin cold-called the offices of 'Melrose Place', Aaron Spelling’s wildly popular prime-time soap opera, with a proposition.
"What if a task force of artists supplied free artworks and props for the show’s apartment-complex set, with coded cultural messages on pressing topics like reproductive rights, American foreign policy, alcoholism and sexual politics? Deborah Siegel, the show’s set decorator, listened to this absurd offer and had an instant reaction, 'I thought it sounded really interesting so I met with him.'
"This was the beginning of a conceptual artist’s dream, an ongoing intervention into the very heart of American mass culture. In late 1995, Mr. Chin and a team of 100 mostly unknown artists, called the Gala Committee, began a two-year experiment, placing objects on the set of 'Melrose Place'. They took their cues from scripts provided in advance and in some instances worked with the writers to modify plot lines and develop characters."
As pointed out, "Viewers of 'Melrose Place' saw a version of 'Total Proof: The Gala Committee 1995-1997' in April 1997, in a television episode featuring an actual exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, 'Uncommon Sense', which included many of the works produced for the set. In it, Heather Locklear, as the hard-charging advertising executive Amanda Woodward, has just taken on the museum as a client and brings her love interest, Kyle McBride (Rob Estes), to the opening for a stimulating evening of art talk.
"Much of it takes place in front of a Ross Bleckner-like painting that alludes to the American bombing of Baghdad. That work was ordered by Carol Mendelsohn, the show’s head writer. This fictional opening, filmed two weeks before the museum’s opening, was one of the great meta moments in television history. Mr. Chin is by now a well-known figure, a skilled organizer of socially provocative works that can last for years.
"The 'Melrose Place' idea began when Mr. Chin was shuttling back and forth between the University of Georgia, where he held a temporary professorship, and the California Institute of the Arts, where he was conducting a workshop. Mr. Chin had never heard of 'Melrose Place', 'I was not watching much television at the time.' But if he was not watching, he was thinking, prompted by Julie Lazar, the director of experimental programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Tom Finkelpearl, a guest curator and now New York’s commissioner of cultural affairs, who approached him to take part in 'Uncommon Sense'.
"Mr. Chin recalled that while on a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, he looked out the window and thought 'Los Angeles is in the air.' The city existed in the trillions of electronic impulses its residents sent through the atmosphere and around the world, transmitting social content and cultural symbols. 'Our world is transformed by covert information, political messages,' Mr. Chin said. 'How would that work if it was art?'
"Back home, Mr. Chin watched as his wife, Helen Nagge, flipped the remote and stopped on an arresting image. 'I saw this large blond face filling the screen, with blue eyes,' he said. It was Ms. Locklear. 'When she moved, there was a painting behind her, and I said, 'That's the gallery'.' Mr. Chin began assembling his troops. The name GALA fused the abbreviations for Georgia and Los Angeles, but eventually the committee absorbed dozens of artists around the country.
"Mr. Flood wondered aloud whether the project amounted to a sellout. Mr. Chin told him, 'We're not selling anything, we're getting in.' Frank South, an executive producer for the show, and Ms. Mendelsohn decided not to mention the project to Mr. Spelling or the network brass. Eventually, word leaked out. In 1997, 'The New Yorker' ran a Talk of the Town article, 'Agitprop', timed to the opening of 'Uncommon Sense'. Mr. South said, 'I was busted.'
"Mr. Spelling, tickled at the idea of seeing 'Melrose Place' in the museum world, took the news well. 'Just don’t do anything to hurt the show,' he told his charges. In early 1996, with the series in its fourth season, the artwork began to arrive, first in a trickle, then in a flood. As a safe-sex message, committee members designed 'Safety Sheets' for the manipulative, womanizing Dr. Peter Burns: bedsheets in an all-over pattern of cylindrical shapes that, on close inspection, turned out to be unrolled condoms.
"When Alison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith) became pregnant, the GALA Committee made her a quilt appliquéd with the chemical symbol for the abortion pill RU-486. 'One of the things we wanted to do was to respond to the fact that in network TV, no matter how strong you are, you cannot have an abortion,' said media scholar, Constance Penley, of the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'You either have the baby, or you fall down the stairs. We wanted to put reproductive choice back on network TV.'
"One of the sneakier placements — the committee referred to them as 'product insertion manifestations' — came from the Cal Arts workshop. When Michael Mancini, a character played by Thomas Calabro, visits a hot-sheet motel, he sees the clerk reading 'Libidinal Economy', a work by the French poststructuralist Jean-François Lyotard.
"'Total Proof', organized by Max Wolf with Candice Strongwater, takes its title from an altered photograph of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, with the damage reworked by the artists to mimic the shape of an Absolut vodka bottle. The work was initially deemed too disturbing to appear on the show, but somehow it ended up, in plain sight, on a wall at D&D Advertising, Amanda’s company.
"As the television project gathered steam, the producers turned to the committee to help invent the character of Samantha Reilly, an artist who, after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, heads out to Los Angeles and moves into the Melrose Place complex. Ms. Mendelsohn was flown out to Kansas City to brainstorm with 10 women on the committee who became known as the Sisters of Sam.
"'We thought, she could be a Cindy Sherman, or a Kiki Smith, or a Barbara Kruger,' said Ms. Penley, who envisioned a feminist conceptualist. But the producers demanded paintings in the David Hockney mode, with bright pastels. 'They said, 'Because the camera loves those colors',' Mr. Chin recalled. Hijacking the concept, the Gala Committee turned out a series of cheery-toned paintings on the theme of violence and death in Los Angeles.
"The Gala Committee called it a day after the museum episode, but the series continued until May 1999. In a half-serious statement for a sale of many of the artworks at Sotheby’s, Mr. Chin summed up the great intervention as the catalyst for 'a profoundly radical transformation of worldwide art, entertainment, communication and government.' The reality was somewhat less dramatic. 'We were exhausted, basically,' Mr. Chin said. 'It was very stressful, producing on deadline. The potentiality and the pictorial reality had been enlarged, so we decided to stop there. It was time to release it to the world. And think of the reruns.'"
