Y&R’s Jeanne Cooper Honored By Son

Corbin Bernsen (Father Todd, Y&R), the son of the late Jeanne Cooper (ex-Katherine), has paid tribute to his mother in a film he directed, wrote and stars in — Beyond The Heavens. The movie comes out on DVD today, which is ironically Cooper’s birthday.

Beyond The Heavens is a family film that explores issues of faith, religion and science. The story’s told through the eyes of Oliver (Nathan Gamble), a very smart 12-year-old living in the shadow of his parents’ first son, who went missing years earlier. Bernsen (who plays Oliver’s dad) says the film attempts to show that faith has answers that science may not.

“A lot of this movie was inspired by my Mom,” Bernsen tells Soaps In Depth. “She was a vessel of truth and there was no B.S. about her.” The filmmaker adds that he didn’t know two years ago when he was working on this project that Cooper would pass away when she did. He says, however, he had an instinct to create an expression of lessons that he learned from her.

Bernsen was able to show the film to his mother before she died in May. “Her reaction wasn’t one I expected,” he says. Cooper didn’t throw out words like “brilliant” and “genius” like her son thought she might, but rather, he recalls, she simply looked at him with a knowing smile on her face, and nodded. “She knew I ‘got it,'” he says. “May she rest in peace with the knowledge that her work, her wisdom and her words, her lessons to a young son live on.”

The film’s cast includes many familiar faces including Lawrence Pressman (whose late wife was Lanna Saunders, ex-Marie, DAYS), Bruce Davison (X-Men) and Dendrie Taylor, whom veteran B&B fans may recall as Sarah, the mid-wife who helped deliver Amber and Rick’s (sadly, stillborn) child back in 1999.

To order your copy of Beyond The Heavens go to: http://hometheaterfilms.com/