How to Survive a Marriage is an American soap opera which aired on the NBC television network from January 7, 1974 to April 18, 1975. The serial was created by Anne Howard Bailey, with much input from then-NBC Vice President Lin Bolen. The show's working title was From This Moment and was an in-house NBC production. A total of 332 episodes were produced (255 in its first season, and 77 in its final season). Synopsis Larry and his wife Christine (nicknamed "Chris," played by Jennifer Harmon) soon divorced and while battling for custody of their daughter Lori, Chris entered the workforce. On Valentine's Day 1975, Chris and Larry remarried, and she then battled alcoholism. Initially, the show featured veteran soap actress Rosemary Prinz in the role of Dr. Julie Franklin, a staunch feminist who counseled her friends on the joys of being an independent woman, only to decide that her life was truly complete by marrying a man. Prinz only agreed to stay on the show for a short time (as she had with All My Children several years earlier), and earned top billing, a three-day work week, and supposedly $1,000 an episode, which was a big salary for a soap actress to earn in the 1970s. After six months Julie left town to marry Dr. Tony DeAngelo. Another major story centered on Fran Bachman (Fran Brill) coping with sudden widowhood. Brill received over a thousand letters of condolence from viewers. Ratings and cancellation The show did not profit from the large lead-in that the high-rated Another World provided, mostly due to its many attempts to be socially relevant, which usually took the place of traditional storytelling to which American soap viewers at the time were acclimated. How to Survive a Marriage ran a distant third in the 3:30 p.m. timeslot, behind Match Game on CBS (then daytime TV's highest-rated program) and One Life to Live on ABC; a move to 1:30 p.m. on January 6, 1975 after the cancellation of the original version of the famed game Jeopardy! (it was done to enable Another World to expand to an hour) only brought worse ratings, as it faced two longtime favorites on the competing networks, CBS' As the World Turns which was expanded to an hour (11 months later) and ABC's Let's Make a Deal. Despite NBC's high hopes for How to Survive a Marriage it would only last on