Doug Williams and Julie Olson
Encyclopedia
Supercouple
A supercouple or super couple is a popular or financially wealthy pairing that intrigues and fascinates the public in an intense or even obsessive fashion...
from the American daytime drama Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...
. Doug and Julie are considered to be the first supercouple in daytime television history. Doug is portrayed by Bill Hayes and Julie
Julie Olson Williams
Julie Williams is a fictional character on the NBC daytime drama, Days of our Lives, a long running serial about working class life in the ficitonal town of Salem. The character of Julie was introduced as a 16-year-old when the show premiered in 1965, with 22-year-old Charla Doherty being the...
is portrayed by Susan Seaforth Hayes
Susan Seaforth Hayes
Susan Seaforth Hayes is an American dramatic actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Julie Williams on the long-running NBC drama Days of our Lives, and her intermittent portrayal of JoAnna Manning on the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless...
. The actors are married in real life and also still recur in their roles that made them famous on NBC's Days of our Lives.
Cultural impact
Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth began to develop a romance outside of their characters' storyline. It was "at first publicized by the soapmill as 'just friends,' but slowly it developed into a full-scale love affair." On a weekend, the two secretly married. Only a few friends of the couple knew about the event. When the press got knowledge of this, it "set off a commotion among fans, who wrote endless letters to the show asking that the couple also be allowed to get married in the story. If they could get married in real life, so the argument went, they certainly should be able to get together on screen."The writers of Days of our Lives refused popular demand, and prolonged the anticipation of the two marrying onscreen. In the book All My Afternoons by Annie Gilbert, the event is described:
Nothing was ever such a guarantee of good ratings as star-crossedStar-crossed"Star-crossed" or "star-crossed lovers" is a phrase describing a pair of lovers whose relationship is often thwarted by outside forces. The term encompasses other meanings, but originally means the pairing is being "thwarted by a malign star" or that the stars are working against the relationship...
lovers everyone knew belonged together. But finally the producers set the date for the marriage and Days put on one of the most extravagant weddings imaginable on the screen. It was such a soap opera media event that the local L.A. press (Days, along with General HospitalGeneral HospitalGeneral Hospital is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production and the third longest running drama in television in American history after Guiding Light and As the World Turns....
and The Young and the RestlessThe Young and the RestlessThe Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin...
, which is produced in Los AngelesLos Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
) was invited to the studio to watch.
In the episode featuring Doug and Julie's honeymoon, Susan Seaforth managed to get by the censors one of the most suggestive lines imaginable for daytime television in the 1970s. When Doug (Bill Hayes) asked her what she'd like for breakfast, she listed a few of the usual choices like juice and coffee, topped off with a leering request for "big pink sausage." It may have been an ad lib
Ad libitum
Ad libitum is Latin for "at one's pleasure"; it is often shortened to "ad lib" or "ad-lib"...
, but it worked as provocative just the same.
Doug and Julie were the first soap opera characters to grace the cover of TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
calls them one of the great soap opera supercouples.