Clear Horizon, The

1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 2 (USA)
256 x 30 minute episodes

This CBS five-day-a-week daytime soap opera introduced young US Army Signal Corps officer, Lieutenant Roy Selby (Ed Kemmer) who had just been transferred from an Alaskan post to the Pentagon in Washington DC when he received yet another offer that would require a move to the Army’s missile and rocket launching site at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

His wife Anne (Phyllis Avery) was none too eager to leave Arlington, Virginia, but eventually complied, wearily noting that “I don’t think there’s one of us Army wives who hasn’t been bitter about where we’re stationed.”

And so Roy, Anne and their rambunctious 10-year-old son Ricky (played by Jimmy Carter – not the future POTUS – and Charles Herbert) who used such exclamations as “Hot pajamas!” found themselves at the Cape Canaveral missile base – with its unattractive housing, uncomfortable climate and interesting surroundings – and embroiled in the lives of other military types with problems on the home front.

Colonel Adams (William Roerick) had to deal with the romantic complications of his unwed daughter Lois (Denise Alexander) as she began having a fling with Roy’s long-lost younger brother, Greg Selby (Craig Curtis).

Anne’s boredom at the base eventually led her to more than a passing interest in Julian, a young civilian who had come to Cape Canaveral to write a book.

They eventually became romantically involved and Julian tracked her down at her parents’ house in New Hawn, Connecticut, when the series ended its first run in 1961.

The show returned for an abbreviated and rare (for soap operas) second try a year later, when Roy and his pal Lt. Sig Levy (Michael Fox) were caught during a “spy swap” with the Russians. They escaped, but the nervous activity at the base continued with Airman Davis being court-martialed for illegal activities actually performed by the innocent-seeming Sgt. Moseby (Rusty Lane) and his wife, Frances (Eve McVeagh).

Roy and Anne got back together after a brief parting, but the series had been cancelled by then.

Lt. Roy Selby
Ed Kemmer
Anne Shelby
Phyllis Avery
Ricky Selby 
Jimmy Carter (1)
Charles Herbert (2)
Greg Selby
Craig Curtis
Sgt. Harry Moseby
Rusty Lane
Frances Moseby
Eve McVeagh
Betty Howard
Jan Shepard
Col. Tate
Ted Knight
Lt. Sig Levy
Michael Fox
Lois Adams
Denise Alexander
Col. Theodore Adams
William Roerick
Mitchell Corbin
Richard Coogan
First Officer Mikel
John Mitchum
Captain Farrell
William Berger
Lt. Douglas Merrill
Hal England
Captain Sovine
Earl Hammond
CPO Warren
Charles Keane
Dr Malkova
Lydia Markova
Announcer
Bern Bennett