Five Things That Happened On May 8 In Soap History

In 1987, Days of Our Lives introduced Joseph Campanella as Jack Deveraux’s (Matthew Ashford, l.) adoptive father, Harper Deveraux. Harper was a powerful, wealthy and ambitious state senator whose marriage to Anjelica Deveraux crumbled when she became pregnant and Harper (who was sterile) knew this meant she had been unfaithful. A serial assailant dubbed the Riverfront Knifer was on the loose and terrorizing the women of Salem and Harper was ultimately revealed to be the criminal.

In 1992, Ridge Forrester (Ronn Moss) and Taylor Hayes (Hunter Tylo) wed for the first time on Bold and Beautiful. Brooke Logan, who at the time was pregnant with daughter Bridget and was certain that Ridge was the father (this was later proved not to be true) tried to stop the ceremony, but arrived too late. 

In 2008, Noelle Beck took over the role of As the World Turns’s Lily Walsh Snyder after longtime portrayer Martha Byrne left the show due to a contract dispute. Beck, who was best known to soap fans for her tenure as heroine Trisha Alden on Loving, stayed with the show through to its cancellation in 2010.

In 2009, Snoop Dogg guest-starred on One Life to Live and shared scenes with Robert S. Woods (Bo). In the storyline, Snoop (also known as Calvin Broadus, his given name) was delighted to reunite with Bo, who had given him his first big break back when Bo was a producer of OLTL's soap within a soap, Fraternity Row. The beloved rapper would later pop back into Llanview, and also contributed the theme song to the 2013 online reboot of OLTL.

In 2013, Maura West debuted on General Hospital as Ava Jerome. GH was her third soap, following her Daytime Emmy-winning run on As the World Turns as Carly Tenney Snyder and a briefer turn on Young and Restless as Diane Jenkins. West recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2023 that sharing scenes in her very first GH script with Anthony Geary (Luke Spencer) was "one of the thrills of my career. To start my journey on General Hospital with Tony Geary and Jane Elliot [Tracy] — I mean, what actor could have a better gift than to arrive and they say, ‘Welcome, here, work with these giants of the industry!’ ” It was soon revealed that Ava shared a past with Franco, played by Roger Howarth, who she had worked with when he played Paul on ATWT. "Those were really fun days,” she enthused “I got to sort of be reunited with Roger Howarth under completely different circumstances, on a different show, different characters, different everything. I loved that.”