Soap Comes to Squeaky-Clean Seal Beach

SEAL BEACH —  This is not a soap opera town, but it plays one on TV.

NBC’s upcoming daytime drama, “Sunset Beach,” which shoots on location here, is all trysts and tricks in a hip small town. The show, which premieres Jan. 6 and runs every weekday, is expected to bring a flood of curious tourists here in search of the real “Sunset Beach” (Motto: “This is the land romance built”) or the real lifeguard Michael (“Nowhere in the world is safer than in this man’s arms,” NBC proclaims).

But city leaders say that this is a family town without the back-lit shenanigans featured in the series by executive producer Aaron Spelling (“Beverly Hills 90210,” “Melrose Place,” “The Love Boat”). Make no mistake, they say, the show is fiction; it simply tapes its seaside scenes here.

Here, the city requires most new bars to close at 10 p.m. on the three-block Main Street. Here, at the annual Christmas parade, City Council members climb aboard the city’s original 1929 fire engine and pull the bell, clang, clang, clang! Here, the first 40 customers at Cinnamon Productions bakery are regulars who order the same thing every morning and read the weekly Seal Beach Sun newspaper (Recent headline: “Rabies clinic set for dogs only”.)

Click to TV land.

There, in fictional Sunset Beach, Meg’s jilted fiance is trying to win her back, even though he slept with her maid of honor just days before their wedding. There, sexy poor-little-rich-girl Annie pursues her rich British neighbor. There, troubled runaway Tiffany trusts no one but her dog Spike.

“The show is far from the reality,” said Seal Beach Councilwoman Marilyn Bruce Hastings, “but it’ll be fun to watch.”

That is not to say that Seal Beach is short in the beautiful people department.

Take “Sunset Beach” character Mark Wolper, a handsome, young all-American waiter, who is looking for, guess what, true love.

“Boy, that’s me,” joked Randy Farah, 40, owner of Main Street Ice Cream, one of the show’s shooting locations.

A look at Seal Beach history hints at further mayhem.

Seal Beach was incorporated in 1915 with 250 people. The city’s saloons thumbed their noses at Prohibition. Downtown’s bathhouse offered a spring-loaded dance floor. Tourists hit the gambling parlors and the fun zone’s giant roller coaster.

The nature of the city started to change after the Depression and World War II. Families began to move here to escape the city.

Every so often, Seal Beach still dabbles in a little mischief. In the ‘80s, someone hosted a bikini contest atop Dolphin Market. In the mid-’70s, streakers interrupted the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“Oh, sure, there’s been that,” said Phil Burdick, 55, a 30-year resident. “I might have even been one of them. In the ‘70s, everyone streaked, didn’t they? But I’ve never known it to be wild here.”

Producers for “Sunset Beach” decided to shoot here because of the city’s picturesque Main Street and wooden pier. Down the road, producers ruled out the real-life community of Sunset Beach (no relation to the TV show except the name) because it doesn’t have a pier.

“We really kind of fell in love with Seal Beach,” said Hope Harmel Smith, the show’s supervising producer. “The location just provided us with real beautiful vistas and gave us that real Southern California look.”

She isn’t sure whether the show’s closing credits will acknowledge Seal Beach; NBC’s press kit does so. But either way, Smith said, fans will find out where the show is shot.

“It looks like paradise,” she said. “We’ll be getting calls, ‘Where was that shot? We want to go there.’ ”

So far, the show has paid the city about $30,000 in shooting fees, including overtime salaries for police officers, said Dan Dorsey, assistant to the city manager. The show plans to shoot in Seal Beach several times a month when it’s not taping interior scenes at NBC studios in Burbank.

The fees won’t make much of a difference in the city’s $12.1-million operating budget, Dorsey said. But city officials expect an indirect tourism boost.

They say fans will want to see the “Sunset Beach” hangout, Java Web, a cyber coffeehouse, which is shot at Main Street Ice Cream. Or the opening shot of “Sunset Beach,” which shows a sweeping helicopter view of the city’s west beaches. Or the “Sunset Beach” inn, which is really City Hall, where the drab seal fountain was temporarily replaced with a perky cherub one for TV. Or they’ll want to visit Elaine’s Waffle Shop, which in real life is the Old Town Cafe.

But Dennis Kaiser, executive editor of the Sun, doesn’t expect soap opera fans to mob Seal Beach.

He points out that Cecil B. DeMille’s original version of “The Ten Commandments” uses Seal Beach’s shore for the parting of the Red Sea.

But no one comes to Seal Beach looking for Moses.