The Best of Everything (TV series)

The Best of Everything was a daytime soap opera on ABC that ran from March 30, 1970, to September 25, 1970. It was an adaptation of Rona Jaffe’s 1958 novel and the 1959 film, not a spin-off of any existing TV series. The story followed four young secretaries—Linda, April, Kim, and Barbara—working at a high-pressure publishing firm. They were harassed by their ruthless head editor, Amanda Key, and supported by the kind Violet Jordan. Despite its short run, the show featured several plotlines, including Kim being violently attacked by a mysterious villain called Squirrel, and Barbara struggling with depression after her marriage ended.

The series premiered at 12:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Central), replacing the game show *The Generation Gap* and airing alongside ABC’s *A World Apart*. It faced stiff competition from NBC’s *The Hollywood Squares* and other programming, not from *Jeopardy!*, which had ended its original run in 1962. Like CBS’s *Where the Heart Is*, it failed to gain traction. ABC canceled it after the then-standard minimum of six months, a fate similar to NBC’s *Hidden Faces* the previous year. These failures later led networks to expand existing 30-minute serials to an hour, reducing the risk of new shows taking too long to find an audience.

The series was created and executive produced by James Lipton, with Jacqueline Babbin as producer. It was packaged by 20th Century Fox Television in association with ABC and videotaped at ABC-TV Studio 17 in New York City. The opening and closing credits showed seagulls flying over New York Harbor. Nashville singer Connie Eaton recorded a vocal version of the instrumental theme, singing lyrics written by Lipton on an episode near the end of the run. The single was released in 1970 on the Chart label.

The cast included Geraldine Fitzgerald as Violet Jordan, Gale Sondergaard as Amanda Key, Patty McCormack as Linda Warren, Julie Mannix and later Susan Sullivan as April Morrison, Katherine Glass as Kim Jordan, Rochelle Oliver as Barbara Lamont, Ginnie Curtis as Gwenn Mitchell, Gregory Rozakis as Kim Trent (the victim), Victor Arnold as Ed Peronne, Barry Ford as Ken Lamont, Stephen Grover as Johnny Lamont, M’el Dowd as Kate Farrow, Ted LePlat as Randy Wilson, Diane Kagan as Anne Carter, James Davidson as Dexter Key, and Bonnie Bee Buzzard as Joanna Key.