Brandon's Buzz

Elton John — “Little Jeannie” (from Greatest Hits 1970-2002) —

Even casual visitors to this site figure out fairly quickly that I am a massive soap fan, and for that, we can happily blame my maternal grandmother, who quite literally arranged her entire life around CBS’ forty-year-old classic serial The Young and the Restless. (Don’t think I’m kidding about that, either: she owned a catfish restaurant in the Texas Panhandle when I was a kid, and she opened the doors at 12 noon everyday, for the sole reason that her favorite soap came on at 11am and she could watch it while doing all her prep work for the day to come.) Her favorite character: the indomitable Katherine Chancellor, the alcoholic rich-bitch busybody played with inviolable grace and grit for nearly the entirety of Restless‘ run by the legendary Jeanne Cooper.

Cooper passed away yesterday morning at the age of 84, following a couple of years of steadily declining health and a brutal month battling a nasty infection that required multiple hospitalizations, and while the news was not exactly a great surprise — particularly if you’ve been following her son Corbin Bernsen’s regular Facebook and Twitter posts, which have kept her fans up to date on Jeanne’s condition — the loss is a staggering one for the increasingly insular world of daytime television. (Ironically, Cooper’s final Restless appearance — which was taped six weeks ago or so, just prior to her penultimate hospital stay — aired just last Friday, and fittingly, her bittersweet closing scenes were with Jess Walton, whose character, Jill Fenmore, has been the bane of Katherine’s existence since Nixon was in the White House.)

It seems silly to sit here and type a sentence like: I regarded, in a funny and wholly real way, Mrs. Chancellor as something of a surrogate grandmother. Although, it’s quite true that Katherine — and Cooper — managed to outlive both of my own biological grandmothers, and it’s equally true that Cooper could forever be counted on to shoot it straight, in the great matriarchal tradition, packing her hard-won sage wisdom into every syllable of her dialogue, no matter how soapily inane it may have been. (Indeed, if you allowed her dishy, divine memoir — Not Young, Still Restless — pass you by last summer, it’s just out in paperback, and you should run not walk to the closest bookstore: the tome loaded with fabulous stories about her experiences as a contract actress during Hollywood’s golden age, as well as tales about her triumphs and tragedies as an Emmy-winning soap queen. When she spills some delicious tea about the time her daffy co-star Kate Linder — who has portrayed Katherine’s hapless housekeeper for more than three decades — supposedly tried to get Cooper fired and usurp her onscreen position as lady of the manor, you’ll be rolling off the sofa in fits of laughter.) Fare thee well, madam; my daily visit to Genoa City isn’t gonna be the same without you, gal.