Bo and Nora Forever Soulmates MESSAGE BOARD FAN FICTION VIDEOS & PICTURES FAVE SCENES ARTICLES HBS and NORA BIO RSW and BO BIO CHAT ROOM FAVE LINKS BO and NORA HOME PAGE E-MAIL US

Behind The Scenes ...........RED, HOT and INDIGO   Soap Opera Digest April 27, 1999   A Blaze At The Club Nearly Roasts Nora and Lindsay On ONE LIFE TO LIVE   Anyone walking by the Manhattan ABC studios where ONE LIFE TO LOVE tapes must have thought something was terribly wrong: An ambulance had pulled up and two EMT's were wheeling a gurney through the front door. What happened? Who got hurt? Is it a news story?   The answers: nothing, no one and no. The ambulance, gurney and technicians were required to be on the set for safety purposes when a fire snuffed out Club Indigo last week. In the story, a depressed RJ, who didn't know Nora and Lindsay were "chatting" in the bathroom(and were locked in, thanks to a tricky door), left a small fire to burn as he exited the financially strapped club. By the time Nora and Lindsay discovered something was very wrong outside the ladies' room, it was too late ---- they were trapped.   As the gurney and the ambulance were arriving, both Catherine Hickland(Lindsay) and Hillary B. Smith(Nora) were in the hair and makeup room fretting over their extended smoky scenes. "I have never worked with pyrotechnics," confessed Hickland, clutching her rolled-up script. "I'm concerned about heat and smoke. I don't know if I'm allergic, but I sure will find out today!"   Smith was having her nerves soothed by a shoulder massage. She had requested that an oxygen tank be on hand in case she couldn't breathe from the smoke inhalation. "When I was on AS THE WORLD TURNS[as Margo]," recalls Smith, 'we didn't call it 'special effects.' We called it 'special defects.' We had some accidents ----my stunt double was burned, and so was Scott DeFreitas[Andy]. There's an apprehension about fire sequences. You just don't mess around."   OLTL took the scenes very seriously, and hired 40 year veteran Albert Griswold as special effects coordinator. "Safety is above everything else," he stressed. "You have to plan out every fire very carefully." After constructing the walls of the bathroom out of fireproof wallboard, then painting them with fireproof paint, Griswold added a layer of chemicals to anything that he actually did want to catch fire. The rest of the flames were controlled by propane fireboards. "You turn them on and off at will," he explained, "like a big barbecue."   Wardrobe and hair, particularly in Smith's case, required special attention. Although she and Robert S. Woods(Bo, who would rescue Nora) had stunt doubles, any object close to the fire had to be specially treated. According to Hairstylist Laurie Fillippi, "Wardrobe had to match[Bo and Nora's] outfits to the stunt doubles and fireproof them. We got a wig and cut and fireproofed it to match Nora's hair. But we can't use hairspray, which can be flammable."     There was another no-no. "You can't wear stockings when you're working in fire --- the nylon will burn," Smith pointed out. "They have to gel your skin ---- any exposed skin gets gelled. The intricacies that go into fire sequences are really incredible." Using stunt doubles is a prudent safety measure, but Griswold kept his eye on Timothy D. Stickney(RJ) in early rehearsals to see if he could use the actor to make the scene more realistic. " I trust very few actors to do anything 'athletic,' "chuckled Griswold, "but I was studying [Stickney] and spoke with the assistant director, and we agreed he could do it."   "It," as it turned out, was setting the actual blaze. In the scene, RJ burned a check that Asa gave him and tossed it onto some rags. When they caught fire, he almost put it out, but then decided to let nature take it's course, and threw a drink on the pile. The fire shot up, and RJ departed. Only it wasn't a drink. "It was highly volatile accelerator he threw on," revealed Griswold. "This is the real stuff. It was either that or have him throw water and then it would had to have been shot a different way." Griswold conferred with Stickney, who didn't mind performing the effect. "So I let him do it under very controlled circumstances. It was excellent."   In the end, no oxygen was required for Smith, and Hickland did not swell up "like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow man," as she feared. No burns, no smoke inhalation, no flaming wigs. The only casualty was Club Indigo. And thankfully, the ambulance took off without a patient.