In mid-summer 1969 he was hired to be the lead in an NBC daytime soap opera to be called Bright Promise (1969). The plot was about how students at the fictional Bancroft College were being trained to be the "bright promise" leaders of the future. Writers/producers Doris Hursley and Frank Hursley developed the show, a co-production of Bing Crosby Productions and Paramount Television (under the name Fandor Productions), with assistance from Cox Broadcasting. The Hursleys, who had previously created the iconic soap opera General Hospital (1963), brought aboard producer/director Gloria Monty. Andrews was to play university president Thomas Boswell, the central character around whom other characters and story lines would be spun. The show premiered in 1969 and shared facilities at the NBC studios in Burbank, CA, with the popular soap Il tempo della nostra vita (1965), and Andrews--who was a trained opera singer--actually got to use his singing skills on the show (something he was seldom allowed to do in his film career). In 1971, after the show had been on for about a year, Andrews was reading the "Los Angeles Times'" entertainment section, called "Calendar", and learned that he had been fired from the show by the network. His character was written out and he was replaced two weeks later by Anne Jeffreys. NBC also fired the show's producer, Dick Dunn, and brought in one of its own people, Jerry Layton, to replace him. The series itself was canceled the next year, replaced by Return to Peyton Place (1972)--like Andrews, the show's cast and crew found out they were out of work by reading about it in the L.A. Times' Calendar section. Ironically, in 1974 Return to Peyton Place (1972) was also canceled and its cast and crew found out about it the same way--by reading about it in the "Times". The series was replaced by a game show..
