First Love

Overview

First Love is an American soap opera which ran on NBC Daytime from July 5, 1954 to December 30, 1955. The series aired at 4:15 p.m. EST, between Golden Windows and Concerning Miss Marlowe. Although the show had a strong fan following, at the time NBC had little use for developing any of their daytime shows and canceled First Love after a year and a half. Many cast members such as Patricia Barry, Val Dufour and Rosemary Prinz went on to become long-running daytime stars. Created by Adrian Samish and written by Manya Starr, the series centered around jet engineer Zach James and his difficult marriage to Laurie James. Due to being neglected as a child, Zach was obsessed with building a name for himself. Laurie tried to understand him but was unable to help him deal with his problems, as he went on trial for the murder of an aviatrix he may have been having an affair with. The show became known chiefly for a major blooper early in its run. A Friday cliffhanger involved Zach seeing his friend Chris crash his plane. Zach ran to tell Chris' wife Amy, "Chris cracked up the plane." In his rush, Dufour blurted out, "Chris crapped", then abruptly added, "...on the plane." Patricia Barry began to giggle. When the camera cut to a "bereaved" Prinz, she was shaking with laughter. Supposedly NBC nearly fired all three actors, but changed their minds after fans wrote in praising them for the scene. In 2003 Prinz denied such a scene ever made it to the air.

Roughly 53h 45m to watch every episode. This is an estimate: 215 episodes at the typical episode runtime of 15 minutes.

Series cast and crew

• R

  Rosemary Prinz
  215 episodes

• 

  Frankie Thomas
  215 episodes

• 

  Paul McGrath
  215 episodes

• V

  Val Dufour
  215 episodes

• 

  Tod Andrews
  215 episodes

• M

  Mel Ruick
  215 episodes

• 

  Howard Smith
  215 episodes

• P

  Peggy Allenby
  215 episodes

Network

NBC

Seasons and episodes

• Season 11954 · 214 episodes
• Season 21 episode