CHAMPAGNE & TEARS AT ANOTHER WORLD FINALE
THE cast and crew of “Another World” taped the final episode of the long-running soap opera yesterday – ringing down the curtain after 35 years.
The end of “Another World” also means the end of the line for another showbiz veteran, the NBC studios on Avenue M in Midwood, Brooklyn, where the show had been taped since it debuted in 1964 – and where other TV shows and even silent films were made.
After the final take of the final episode – which airs June 25 – veteran cast member Victoria Windham told the cast and crew: “Every single day I pray that something bigger is out there for all of us.
“I love you all,” said a weepy Windham, who spent 27 years on the show, playing Rachel Cory Hutchins, the matriarch of fictional Bay City.
She ended the show’s last scene by reminiscing over old photographs and then turning out the lights.
“We are still all very shaken,” Windham told The Post after a champagne- and tear-filled cast party.
She said she had no lines in her very first scene almost three decades ago – in which she appeared in a swimsuit on a beach.
“As an actor you’re very happy to get a gig, but who knew it would last this long?” Windham said.
“I never really paid attention to the years. It lasted long enough to raise my two kids.
“My character has been able to reflect the changes women had to go through from the ’70s through the ’90s. We handled all the big issues.”
The once-popular show was doomed by declining ratings.
In the last episode, Bay City sweethearts Cass and Lila finally marry – but the cast and crew walked around the flower-decked wedding set toting boxes of Kleenex to soak up the buckets of tears.
“The thing that separates us from the rest is our heart,” star Linda Dano told her comrades in soap in a final toast after the taping.
“God bless you. You are all stars. Drink!”
Dano spent 17 years on “Another World,” playing romance novelist Felicia Gallant.
“It’s really the people in here, this dusty old building that has made this home for me,” Dano told The Post.
She said that in her final scene she looked up at the ceiling and visualized the faces “of all the crazy, lunatic actors that I had the great pleasure of knowing and working with.”
With the end of the soap, which is produced by Proctor & Gamble, NBC is shutting down the historic studios plunked down in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood.
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