Royal Bay/Della -- The 1964 Joan Crawford TV Pilot

[ClassyCo]

ROYAL BAY (or DELLA, as it was later retitled) was a 1964 television movie intended as a nighttime soap opera for NBC. Joan Crawford starred as Della Chappell, a wealthy recluse whose father was the founder of a town called Royal Bay. It failed to make it to a weekly series, and it was briefly released to theaters under the title DELLA.

The entire movie (running around 68-70 minutes in length) is uploaded online. It's a nice, clean print, too. Crawford had hoped to replicate the success actresses such as Lucille Ball and her buddy Barbara Stanwyck had achieved making the transition from film to TV, but ROYAL BAY died in its earliest stages. Even so, Crawford apparently declined the lead on DARK SHADOWS in 1966, probably because she didn't want to commit to the daily grind of a daytime soap opera. The role went to Joan Bennett.

But let's get back to the point. Has anyone seen the ROYAL BAY pilot? How would it have panned out as a weekly series? Would it matched the success of PEYTON PLACE?

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

Released in 1964 as a TV movie called Della, it was actually the pilot for a proposed soap called Royal Bay. The show, set in an affluent coastal town, would follow the four Stafford brothers and their lives in the titular seaside community. The pilot mainly revolved around Barney Stafford (Paul Burke) who becomes entangled in the life of reclusive town matriarch Della Chapell (Joan Crawford) during a land deal. While Crawford (who also served as a producer) featured prominently in the pilot, the plan was to have her drop in every so often as a guest star if the series had been picked up.

This is what I found out about it when we were discussing soaps that never got off the ground in another thread. I thought the show looked great. I may be wrong but I think someone said that some of the sets we reused for The Big Valley?

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yes, the ROYAL BAY/DELLA pilot has been posted a couple of times in different threads; I think it was shot, technically, in 1963, and obviously never went to series -- I think Joan Crawford was only going to appear occasionally -- like the stars of hit THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW and the failed THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW (although Missy got her first Emmy for it), only ROYAL BAY would have been more of a soap than an anthology, as the Young/Stanwyck programs were.

And, yes, those sets would become the Barkley ranch mansion interiors.

Crawford was known to bleat, "Oh, why don't they give me a series??" and Bette Davis shot eight different pilots, none of which ever sold. So the two women were quite willing to do series television, but neither of these two uber-diva dragon ladies were known for being as easy to work with as Barbara Stanwyck, so perhaps that had something to with it. And by the mid-'60s, Crawford's drinking was becoming known as affecting her on the job in a way it hadn't previously. Even on STRAIT-JACKET, shot the same year as ROYAL BAY/DELLA, Diane Baker said that Crawford's drinking on the set, or at least at the end of the workday, caused Joan to "not handle things well."

Crawford was indeed offered the role played by "my friend Joan Bennett" in DARK SHADOWS, but likely turned it down because it was a cheapy, low-stature videotaped daytime soap -- although Dan Curtis had wanted it to be a 35mm nighttime series and told ABC's Leonard Goldberg that.

The mind reels what might have happened with DARK SHADOWS had it been the primetime soap, like PEYTON PLACE, that Curtis imagined, let alone one starring Joan Crawford. Daytime television was far less competitive then, and the series might have been cancelled much more quickly, tucked away at 10pm on Friday nights, and perhaps not permitted to be as non-sexually sexually provocative as daytime TV was kinda/sorta allowed at the time... If it had not been brought down so early for those reasons, I could picture a primtetime DARK SHADOWS with La Crawford -- one which looked better, with that Halloweenish late-'60s color scheme, and a narrative more focused than the daytime show tended to be. But somehow, the flickering, rambling ambience of the actual DARK SHADOWS was probably karmically inseparable from what the show was meant to be.

Bennett disappears from DARK SHADOWS for long periods of time, so the program could have probably accommodated Crawford's absences as she toured with Pepsi and recovered from her benders. But, as some SHADOWS fans have pointed out, Crawford would likely have demanded that every handsome fellow who drove through Collins Port fall in love with her, so that might have created problems for the series.

Anyway, I, too, rather liked the look of ROYAL BAY. But it's hard to see how it could have turned into a successful ongoing project with an on-again/off-again Crawford and a daughter at the bottom of that ravine which consumed Joel Abrigore and Rita Lesley.

And, besides, I want Joan Crawford in a baroque Hammer Film, circa 1966 or '67, playing twin sisters, one good and the other evil, which never happened.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Funny, it's so easy to see that Crawford's ROYAL BAY was filmed the exact same month as Gloria Swanson's "Who is Jennifer?" episode of KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE/CRISIS, in November 1963 -- the two productions just come from the same place in the universe:

 

[ClassyCo]

Like the stars of hit THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW and the failed THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW

Crawford did a pilot for her own anthology show in 1959. It wasn't picked up.

Crawford was known to bleat, "Oh, why don't they give me a series??"

Joan had sabotaged herself out of a later-life career resurgence by backing out of CHARLOTTE, so it only makes sense that she felt a regular TV series would keep her visible to her audience. And ROYAL BAY seems like it was laying out a strong enough template for her to weasel her way into the early days of serialized primetime drama. I'm sure had the show went to series, the writers would've accommodated Crawford's business ventures and were she to be called away to do a film.

Bette Davis shot eight different pilots, none of which ever sold

Davis was a workaholic, which is proven by the trash TV pilots she did trying to get a series to go. THE DECORATOR, the 1965 pilot she did for Aaron Spelling, is a horrendous attempt at comedy. We've discussed it elsewhere, but Davis wasn't adept in comedy, so having her as the lead on a network sitcom wasn't going to work anyway. FEUD does a good little montage of the Davis' failed pilots. Some of them might've been decent, or at least intriguing with Davis at the head.

Crawford was indeed offered the role played by "my friend Joan Bennett" in DARK SHADOWS

It would be interesting to have seen Crawford's turn on DARK SHADOWS. Perhaps she would've been more inclined had the series been in primetime, and had her contract secured her the time off she needed to plug Pepsi-Cola and pitter around in B-grade shockers.

Bennett disappears from DARK SHADOWS for long periods of time

Why is that one wonders? Was she ill, or did she request a lighter work load?