The legendary Susan Lucci moderated a tribute to her iconic character Erica Kane, as well as several of daytime's recently cancelled soap operas, including All My Children, One Life to Live, As The World Turns and Guiding Light. To help her along, she invited OLTL's leading lady Erika Slezak and her former AMC scene partner Cameron Mathison on stage. While it was nice to see the soaps we've lost honored, it would have been cool if their had been video montages from those sudsers! Watch the tribute below.
 

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Daytime vet Brian Gaskill recently held an event for a good cause.  This past May, he was named the director of Garden State Players’ (a non-profit theater company in New Jersey) inaugural summer theater camp.  Celebrating his new spoken word poetry album, Make It Real, Gaskill held an intimate reading at Keyport’s luxe Trinty Resturant, a staple of the quaint Bayshore town.  Proceeds from this night of poetry went to help fund the company’s production of  Footloose.  The musical’s profits will then go towards benefitting a local children’s hospital.  
 
I chatted with the Models, Inc., All My Children, Port Charles, Guiding Light, As The World Turns and The Bold and the Beautiful alum before he took the stage to perform the material in front of an audience for the first time. Gaskill shared the details of his new gig, as well as what he thinks about the current state of television, and the fan efforts to resurrect daytime soaps.
 
Daytime Confidential:  How did you become involved with Garden State Players?
 
Brian Gaskill:  Lauren [Raad], who runs it, is somebody I went to high school with.  She was actually a freshman when I was a senior at the performing arts school at Red Bank. I had started posting stuff on Facebook of these pamphlets that I made up in trying to pursue teaching.  ‘Cause I’ve done it at Red Bank Regional, and other places; I’ve had other workshops at places. When she saw this thing in this organized fashion, and I started to put it up there, she said, “Hey why don’t you come back home to New Jersey and teach for the summer?  We want to start a school for the theater company,” and I was just excited about it.  I wasn’t sure I was going to come at first, but then I decided that [I could] continue [to] do what I’m doing, and could pursue my career, but also broaden my life.  In the sense that when I’m waiting for other jobs, I don’t want to be a waiter, who’s you know, it’s okay to do that, but I’m 42 and I have other things to offer the world, and I love working with kids. I just always wanted to make it [teaching] a part of my life.  Even when I just did it—showing up and helping places, being there for kids, especially for high school—it is something that I’ve always been drawn to.  So, it’s just being part of an artistic community, and starting with her company at the ground floor and helping build it up to do more.  Right now they’re doing Footloose, but then in the future to do more original productions, and make it a real theater company, and help be a part of it. 
 
DC:  You grew up around here, right?
 
BG:  I did.  I grew up in Neptune and Ocean Grove, and I was bussed to Red Bank.  READ MORE

Former As The World Turns, Guiding Light and One Life to Live stars turned out in support of the Love Out Loud 2012 Aids Walk fundraiser in New York City on May 17.  Visit Love Out Loud for more information on how you can support the cause. See more photos after the jump. READ MORE

The broadcast networks rolled out their new fall schedules and debuted the trailers they hope will get viewers excited about their upcoming new shows. Once again, a large number of current and former daytime stars appeared on the red carpet. Supernatural’s Jensen Ackels (ex-Eric Brady, Days of Our Lives) and Jared Padalecki (pictured above)  appeared at The CW’s upfront presentation, along with a number of familiar faces to daytime viewers.

Another World alum Anne Heche (ex-Vicky, Another World) is returning to primetime this fall in the new NBC series Save Me, but she isn’t the only one. Former Passions star Justin Harltey, who starred in The CW’s Smallville, is returning to the netlet in the new medical drama Emily Owen, M.D.. Check out more photos of current and former daytime stars, as well as primetime soap stars, after the jump!

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 Jesus take the wheel. A 43-year-old man has been sentenced to 12 years in the pokey for breaking into the home of one of daytime's most beloved heroines! According to New York Daily News, career criminal William Pelzer was sent up the river Friday in New York, for having allegedly broken into the Chelsea apartment of Ellen Parker. 

Parker portrayed Guiding Light's Mauren Bauer from 1986–93. She turned up for several appearances as Mo's ghost after the character was shockingly killed off by then-executive producer Jill Farren Phelps. From the article:

He’d only been out of prison for three months and was on parole when he woke up the soap star in the middle of the night last August. She started screaming, and he fled, carrying nothing. READ MORE