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September 19, 2008
Joyce Becker's Soap Opera Festival
Emily participated in Joyce Becker’s Soap Opera Festival at King’s Island in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 28. She was in good company with fellow “Young and the Restless” stars Christian LeBlanc, Greg Rikaart, and Daniel Goddard.They spent time answering questions and signing autographs for fans.
Since the late 1970s, Becker has periodically brought her Soap Opera Festival to Cincinnati, playing hostess as audience members ask questions of daytime stars.
“The [actors] are like rock stars to them,” she says. “These are characters that are constant in their lives.”
Becker was a New York movie magazine reporter when her editors decided to switch their focus to soap operas. She experienced some culture shock leaving the glamorous world of Hollywood, but soon found that she enjoyed the down-to-earth quality of daytime stars and admired the actors’ connection with their fans.
One of her first assignments was overseeing a contest offering a flight to New York and opportunity to meet a soap actor. She was astonished by the huge amount of entries. “I’d thought that soap operas were watched only by ladies pushing a broom, or by my grandmother,” she says.
The contest winner, an Arkansas farmwife, suggested that Becker could make money by bringing the stars to the people, instead of the other way around. Becker and her husband liked the idea, and put on their first show in 1977 in New Haven, Conn. Hundreds of fans turned out, and the couple have gone on to do many succesful shows across the nation.View pictures from this year's festival.
Source: VisitKingsIsland.com
