Fun in the Sun: More marvelous Midwestern moments

Continued from old thread (please fill that one up before posting here)

[quote] Alan keeps wandering down to the nude beach. He must be bored down there, since it's only a bunch of guys.

I haven't been this confused since I overheard Henry Chamberlain talking about "poppers."

Fun in the sun? St Croix? You've got to be kidding.

Chris Bernau was very handsome in those days.

That Brunette is especially beautiful.

I thought this was interesting-this is from Fred Silverman’s interview for the Television Academy Archive (I think it is from the late 90s/early 00s).

He talks about his tenure as head of CBS Daytime in the 60s, specifically about the schedule changes made to several P&G soaps; the expansion of GL and SFT to 30 minutes; and the creation of Love is a Many Splendored Thing and working with Irna, which was developed when P&G refused to expand ATWT to an hour in the 60s.

I wonder what took them so long to expand GL and SFT. Both were in the top 3 forever, with GL being #1 for two years. Not sure about SFT, but they both deserved to be expanded along with ATWT to 30 mins.

R7, are you old enough to remember 15 minute shows?

I'm 66 and have some pre-school memories of (T)GL. I wonder if they were 15 minutes. A few years later I remember Search for Tomorrow as a cue to head back to school after lunch. By then it was 30 minutes. And that show in the mid -late '60s was immensely popular.

I remember when the actress who played Marge, Stu's wife, died. We regret the passing of... Our whole house went silent.

I came to love Search's new theme music. I especially love the pipe organ version.

In hindsight, none of the shows should have been expanded to an hour. When you watch old soaps on YouTube, those 30 minute shows really moved and got a lot of stuff done. The first couple of years after soaps started expanding to an hour, were awful.

I will always wonder why they never put GL and ATWT to 30 minutes before canceling them to try to see if ratings improved.

r10 SAME

It doesn’t cost double to produce a 60 minute show vs 30. Some costs like studio space are the same amount.

But, a 60 minute show does generate double the revenue vs 30.

If the economics of keeping a show going at 60 minutes aren’t viable, then 30 minutes will be even less viable. Half the ad revenue…

Then why wouldn’t they have expanded bold and beautiful to 60 minutes since for the last 15/20 years it’s been pretty highly rated especially in the young demo.

International distribution contracts

I get what R12 is saying but there's also the fact that we're now in a streaming era and people want shorter bites. I think somehow having more viewers for a shorter episode could outweigh what the old framework was for production costs.

R13 Bell-Phillip owns B&B, and Bill Bell hated the hour-long format, saying the half-hour was the perfect production model for soaps. He would not go along with that production change for B&B. He resisted taking Y&R to an hour for as long as he could, but co-owner Columbia Pictures (now Sony) wanted to do what the network was pressing for and forced him to. They apparently even gave him some kind of ultimatum, that if he didn't want to write an hour-long Y&R, they'd find someone else who would. By the time Bell retired (got ill) soaps were already starting to lose viewers, so any kind of expansion after that point was becoming something of a non-issue, and Bradley Bell would see the wisdom in his father's direction, and go along with keeping things as they are. Plus, in B&B's case, the show's foreign market works better with the half-hour format as well.

It would have been good to have an ATWT/GL hour

Agnes Nixon was similarly resistant to expanding AMC to an hour.

In June 1975, just five months after AW expanded to an hour, ABC persuaded her to do a week's worth of hourlong AMC episodes, just prior to the debut of Ryan's Hope. At that point AMC was airing at 1 p.m., but Ryan's Hope took the 1 p.m. time slot upon its debut and AMC moved to 12:30 p.m. So, they had week of the hourlong AMC airing from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. to subtlety prep views for the new time slot.

AMC went back to 30 minutes with Ryan's Hope's debut. But that week of 60 minute episodes also convinced ABC the hour was the way to go. Also show Agnes she could do the hourlong episodes.

ABC kept pressuring Agnes that it wanted the AMC to be an hour. ABC was sold on the hourlong format.

If I recall correctly from the Ryan's Hope book, there was also some talk of expanding Ryan's Hope to an hour.

Agnes finally relented and AMC went to 60 minutes in April 1977 while Ryan's Hope stayed at 30 minutes.

ABC

R18, weren’t AMC and OLTL 45 minutes for a bit before they expanded to 60?

I think that was OLTL and GH

GH and OLTL expanded to 45 minutes each in July 1976, They then both expanded to 60 minutes in January 1978.

AMC was never 45 minutes in length.

Thanks, R21!

The All-New As the World Turns/ Guiding Light Hour!

Featuring Eileen Fulton … Lisa.

It’s THE Guiding Light.

Wiliiam Fichtner talks a bit about his time on ATWT, it starts at around 19:10…

Not just for radio!

"Marlena Delacroix" and her husband have posted a GoFundMe, apparently they were victims of some kind of scam?

That made me sad. The long time president of Erika Slezak's fan club/website even donated--

Will Marlena delacroix donate? Where is Mimi Torchin’s donation? She can afford it.

So who was the real soap culprit?

Steve Burton and another of his MLM ponzi schemes?

While they don't say this outright, from what's written at the GoFundMe page, I might guess that they may have been (stupidly) conned by some person(s) promising to clone Connie's beloved (dead) beagle. There have apparently been fraudsters out there who say they can clone your dog or cat for $50K.

Mostly its medical expenses- I believe them. I may donate

I really liked her column in Weekly, it was very good.

Poor Marlena. She was never a pretty girl. And seriously, she can’t afford $3.5 K in medical bills??? Something’s wrong here. Scam!

That stupid bitch Cuntessa is yammering on and on about Jake raping Marley on AW again. Posters loathe the Cuntessa who makes up shit and insists her made up lies are facts. Dumb bitch.

There's a new group on Facebook called Remembering As the World Turns that has a GREAT subscribers area for only about one buck a month. Tons of complete episodes from the Eighties without commercials! I'm in heaven.

From what I can gather, the episodes were collected by a guy who recently died.

R35, look for the silver lining. The rebuttal posts are quite engaging.

Eileen Fulton is dead to me.

Oh my goodness!!!

Super sad face. RIP to the great Fulton.

People talk about her as the original soap bad girl. She's the first in my memory and several others that followed seemed to be minor variations of her. An archetype for the genre.

My favorite Lisa scene ever at 4;42. Lisa on the rampage after learning of Bob's affair with Susan!

I remember an article with Eileen in which she said the audience hated Lisa, not because she was fucking the shoe salesman behind Dr. Bob's back, but because she was lying to Nancy about doing housework. I always found that funny.

Eileen was the first soap actor to hire her own publicist, and the only one to ever have a primetime spinoff. She didn’t enough credit in her later years for what she did for daytime. Lucci and Dierdre Hall owe her.

Lucci in particular. Lisa was the first to chafe at the confining parts of marriage and the first to be frustrated with the expectations of her role.

There would be no Rachel Davis or Erica Kane without Lisa.

And was she the first to demand a granny clause in her contract? Asking for a friend.

The Grandma Clause was so smart. More actors should have negotiated similar clauses and possibly no SORAS clauses.

R47 Seriously. I think on DAYS Hope is now a great grandmother and Julie is a great great grandmother or something like that. All SORAS related I think.

I blame that damn Johnny Dixon!

R48

I don’t think Hope is a great grandmother yet

Eileen told Soap Opera Digest that a lot of fans blamed Eileen and the grandmother clause for Margo’s miscarriage in the 80s, and she received hate mail as a result. But she didn’t have the clause in her contract by then.

I read up on the character of Whit McColl and it sounds like he was kind of a dick. What did Lisa see in him?

R51, she no longer had the clause in her contract, you mean. She definitely had it back when Tom’s wife Carol couldn’t have children, hence the snappy nickname Sterile Carol.

Holy shit! It looks like we've found the infamous Grant Aleksander's boner episode of GL. The fun starts at two hours and six minutes.

JFC what a freakin' god he is.

I can't say much for his choice in Speedo, but he looks great in it. Not an ounce if fat on him; muscle and lean.

And that hair! Sydney Penny, I think, said he looked like a lion when they were on AMC; she was right.

He and Kassie have some nice chemistry.

Great find!. Grant wears a Speedo nicely, although he could have worn a more better looking one. Thanks for posting that.

However, this scene is from August 1987. It's not the infamous scene we've talked about on the P&G threads for years.

The infamous boner scene where Phillip gets an erection while watching Mindy doing yoga aired in August 1983. In that scene Phillip is sitting on a sofa in the background watching Mindy in the foreground. Grant realizes he has an erection ant that it can be seen by the camera. He pulls his leg up and then leans forward to hide the hard on.

A clip from that infamous scene was including in the opening credits, although you can't see the erection. Its at the 23 second mark in the video below.

I love that shot in the opening of Mike and Ed sitting beside Bert and simultaneously giving her a kiss on the cheek.

R56 is right. That isn't THE boner episode. The boner episode was one of Krista Tesreau's earliest scenes, I think. You can CLEARLY see bulge and it isn't small or subtle at all!

But fuck, that episode at R54 is a find. Grant definitely was a god among men. (I mean, not that he's dust and dirt now, but....)

Would someone from Phillip's background have worn that kind of swimsuit in the 80s?

Not sure if this has been posted before, but it may interest my fellow Monticello fans.

[quote]Would someone from Phillip's background have worn that kind of swimsuit in the 80s?

Not sure what you mean by "background." Are you referring to Phillip's being upper class? Or Phillip being straight?

Ronn Moss was running around in a Speedo on B&B at the same time as Grant was doing it in this scene. Plenty of other soap characters were seen int Speedos on their shows in the 1980s.

Speedos were very fashionable in the 1980s. Very common for upper class men to wear them at the beach and at the pool. Both gay and straight men wore them without any hesitation.

However, once board shorts came into fashion as swimwear, Ronn Moss and others quickly switched to them. IT was after that when Speedos became more associated with gay men.

The one thing I will say is that Speedo that Grant is wearing in that scene is not especially flattering or good looking, as r55 notes. Although his bulge is very nice in them.

I have no problem with Phillip wearing a speedo, but that pattern and color was not flattering.

Ridge's speedos were black or navy blue.

I can't help but think that Phillip didn't have his share of admirers when he was at Lincoln prep

Imagine being his twinkish roommate on a Friday night after Alan canceled plans for Phillip to come home that weekend.

R62 It was exquisite! And it hurt.

[quote]Not sure what you mean by "background." Are you referring to Phillip's being upper class?

This was the 80s. Phillip was from an old-money family and spent most of his time in a boarding school off camera. I just question whether that would have been his choice of swimwear. No biggie. The producers wanted to showcase a hot guy, they did, and it clearly worked. Win win.

We also can't forget the day Ridge Forrester wore red manties on Caroline's bed.

I grew up fairly wealthy in dc suburbs. Yes speedos were worn by the affluent at coke fueled parties.

That opening at r56 reminds of how cool.I thought it was with old Henry waving at the balloon.

A few days late but Eileen's obit finally made the NYT.

Has Christopher Goutman released a statement about Eileen’s death?

Why did Goutman dislike Eileen? I know she would complain about not having a storyline, but she did that in the 80s to Marland, too.

R68, thanks; it says it's in the print version tomorrow. I'll buy one for my scrapbook. (seriously).

End of an era. We were lucky to have Eileen and ATWT for as long as we did.

I'd forgotten about The Willows storyline.

It's included in these "Top" 7 stories of Lisa's.

Goutman claimed that EF kept plugging up the studio toilet. He was sick of paying plumbers to come in and undo the damage so he kept her home to plug up her own toilet.

Who knew Rosie and Linda Dano were old friends…

Everyone loves Linda.

On the Locher Room's FB page today - Scott Bryce is on next week:

[quote] In this special Interview, Scott will look back at his remarkable journey as an actor—and share, for the first time, his personal health story. Last October, Scott was diagnosed with Stage 3 stomach and esophageal cancer. Thankfully, it was caught just in time. He’ll talk about the moment that changed everything, the fight that followed, and the gratitude he feels today.

Oh no! Mary “Stewart” died from stomach cancer. I hope Scott’s alright.

Can they really cure stomach cancer now?

Does Scott Bryce talk much about his father?

Cliff Nelson for those who celebrate.

Viewership data is not readily available for peacock the same it is for broadcast tv.

Peee cock!

Where is Christopher Goutman’s statement about Eileen Fulton’s passing??? Surely he can come up with something to say.

Fuck Christopher Goutman, what about Susan Dey?

Time to let go off the 50 year old “jokes” r84

Fuck off, R85. This is DL where there are certain traditions. Susan Dey is one of them.

Hilarious every time. You’ll die off soon enough.

Gregg Marx at last week's opening of the Hollywood Museum's exhibit on The Marx Brothers. He just turned 70 in April. (The woman is Groucho's granddaughter, Jade Marx.)

Tom and Margo were only sexy when HBS and Gregg were in the roles.

Gregg looks great.

I wanted him inside me quite deeply in the 80s. I would have gladly been the center of a JWS/Gregg sandwich.

Memorable bare chest

Why did Marx leave the role of Tom? It’s not like he did much of anything else after.

R92 good question. He really didn't do much.

Maybe HBS drove him crazy.

We've discussed this several times before.

Gregg did not like living in New York. He was from California. That's where his family was. He wanted to go back home.

So, his contract expired. He returned to California. Show said they would give him 9 months to think it over and then wanted Tom back on the canvas.

Nine months later, show contacted him. Gregg said he was happy in California and not interested in returning to New York. So, show recast the part with Scott Holmes as Tom.

Was he fed up with the grind pf daytime? I am surprised DAYS didn’t offer him his old job back.

That might have been the only time period I taped DAYS.

[quote]Was he fed up with the grind pf daytime? I am surprised DAYS didn’t offer him his old job back.

By 1987, David Banning's mother Julie had been written out of Day following a contract dispute with Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes.

Likewise, his step father's daughter, Hope, had also been written out, Bo and Hope sailing off to great adventures off camera.

So, there were not any immediate family connections on the canvas in 1987. But there were obviously extended family connections in the form of his great grandparents Tom and Alice Horton and his one time best friend, cousin Mike Horton (being played by Michael T. Weiss at that point).

Mmmmm, Greg Marxx and Michael T. Weiss. I would have love to have seen that action.

Gregg said in an interview somewhere several decades after his ATWT run that he wasn't comfortable playing a heartthrob and having to hide in the closet. Said he wished there was so way he could have been out to his fans, but that wasn't a reality for soaps in the 1980s.

Apparently he was so closeted, even his ATWT co-workers didn't know it. HBS has made comments about Gregg only coming out to her after he left the show.

However, I suspect his fellow gay co-stars like Ben Hendrickson and JWS likely knew.

Gregg and JWS... my mind goes places

R99, hasn't Weiss made similar comments about coming out? Or maybe I'm confusing the two. Imagine those two in a real life relationship. Gay royalty would have been crowned.

Maybe that's why he went back to California...

R100 Other parts of me go places, too......

Throw Grant Aleksander in there and it's a real party!

Grant played gay in a very brief scene in this movie...

Harvey Fierstein posted a picture with John Bolger on his FB page.

When did Fierstein join La Congrégation Nôtre-Dame?

Mother Superior?

Johnnie Bolger makes me moist - down there.

Happy Heavenly birthday to DL fave - Geraldine Court! She is missed.

I just realized that almost all of Genie Francis’ love interests on daytime were rumored to be gay or gay-Tony Geary; Kin Shriner; Michael T Weiss; Jean LeClerc…..

Anna Banana Stuart was bosom buddies with Geri Court. I wonder if they did the carpet munching? Anna is in a lavendar marriage.

Who's the porny looking blonde with the horse teeth in this episode?

r108

When were Genie and Michael T Weiss a thing? on DOOL? I thought Diana was only with Roman on DOOL

When Genie first came to DAYS, they paired her character Diana with Mike Horton, their characters went to college together. They scrapped that quickly and paired Diana with John.

During her 18 months on Y&R, Genie played opposite four guys. There was Genevieve's estranged husband, Colin Atkiknson (Tristan Rogers); the duo hated each other so there was nothing romantic about their interaction. There was also Tucker McCall (Stephen Nichols). He was the guy her character had a history with when they were both teenagers. They also paired her with Aunt Jack (Peter Bergman) and Victor Newman (Eric Braeden). I don;'t recall any of them really clicking. I think Francis was one of the first to be let go after Maria Bell was canned and Jill Faren Phelps and Josh Griffith came in as EP/HW in 2012.

Lenore Kasdorf was indeed beautiful. When she was on “Santa Barbara”, NBC had a big ad campaign promoting stars who were on it from other shows. But I watched SB for a while and she was completely underused on it.

Lenore’s SB character was derailed by the backstage drama between the Dobsons, NBC and Anne Howard Bailey. As was Pamela-there was a lot of back and forth over the casting of that character.

Was Lenore invited back ever to GL? I am surprised Marland didn’t create a role for her on ATWT. Or did she just not want to live in New York again.

Genie Francis was also paired with Stephen nichols who has somehow “never managed to find the right lady”either. Same for Peter Bergman although I realize he’s married to a woman; still some gay rumors persist.

Still, Jon lindstrom, Eric Bergman, and drake hogestyn dont fit the mold.

I’m not entirely sure thats a large percentage given the make up of daytime actors in the 90s as a whole.

r116

wikipedia says that SM has been married to a woman since 1984

I completely forgot about Genie’s unremarkable time at Y&R, and her removal by the Ayatollah Farren Phelps.

SM somehow equals Stephen Nicholls?

Let’s just say I live in West Hollywood and can’t be swayed on that one.

Is Genie ever really happy about anything? It seems like she’s always bitching about something.

Hunger will do that.

Okay, back to P&G topics.

Was the Scott Bryce Locher Room thing on already?

R122, I think it is on Thursday.

R115, Lenore Kasdorf said GL did ask her back to wrap up Rita’s story but her agent declined without ever mentioning it to her. She said she would’ve liked to have done it, as she loved the character. She also said it was would’ve been difficult to swing as she would’ve had to move back to NY, figure out schooling for her daughter, etc.

She also said that the experience on SB was ultimately disappointing — the original story had Caroline in a romance with a boxer and the actor playing the boxer wasn’t strong (I’m paraphrasing) and she was shocked to be playing a mother to a daughter who was a grown woman.

[quote]Genie Francis was also paired with Stephen nichols who has somehow “never managed to find the right lady”either.

His heart belongs to Dr. Stinkface.

Marx had/has a big career in voice overs. He won the DT Emmy for playing Tom in 1987.

He singled out Hillary in his speech, thanking her.

Marx has also done the cabaret circuit. Apparently he was quite the fixture in Palm Springs.

When ABC fired Kale Brown from OLTL following JFP's jump to GH as EP, the network was looking to recast the role of Sam Rappaport.

HBS, who was then in a romantic triangle with Bo and Sam, suggested the network contact Gregg Marx about playing Sam, saying they always had good chemistry.

No idea if ABC did contact Gregg, but ultimately Larry Lau was cast as NuSam.

My dogs name is Groucho.

To go from Gregg Marx to....Scott Holmes. Quite a leap.

Greg Marx to… my dog Groucho.

[quote]Greg Marx

His name is spelled Gregg. Two Gs at the end.

R110 Are you talking about the blonde who enters the scene at the 6 minute mark whom other characters then address as "Mary"?

That's Kelly Wood who played "Mary Ellison" later becoming "Mary Hughes" (Don's wife).

GGroucho

Coincidentally I’ve seen nlg at lunch and she stopped to pet my dog.

R133 was she ATWT's version of Clarice from AW?

Marx told Soap Opera Update he got a message on his answering machine: "Thomas Christopher Hughes, you simply MUST come to New York and play with me...."

He passed but said he was tempted.

R133 Yes, thanks for filling in the blanks.

Morgan Englund's daughter (and thus Cloris Leachman's granddaughter) is apparently a big dance music celebrity......I had no idea.

R127 That would more correctly be, "IS a fixture in Palm Springs."

He's considered a local there now. Last year he participated in the fundraising event for the Revolution Stage Company in Palm Springs called "Our Name Is Barbara." This was billed as a concert where local singers in the Palm Springs area came together to raise money for the non-profit, live entertainment venue. (It's my understanding that he shares a home in nearby Indian Wells with a local realtor.)

Photo from the event:

R139 he looks great there.

A nepo baby! No way! What are the odds?

Scott Bryce's Locher Room was last night - have not watched yet but apparently it was very raw and a very surprising visitor stopped by (someone who has been off the grid for a while).....off to watch now.

The Cuntessa is in trouble again. She’s posting private info about a former AW actress allegedly in hospice care. It’s none of her damn business. She exposed Drake Hogestyn’s palliative care also. I’m surprised she wasn’t holding Eileen Fulton’s hand at the end.

R142, was it Meg Ryan? lol.

Marlena de la Croix isn’t all there anymore. The beagle scam is a bit much. And her GoFundMe isn’t succeeding. I thought the soap community would hit her goal in no time, but a SPW writer told me she’s not well-liked.

I posted on one her recent columns to kindly correct two mistakes she made.

1) Nancy Grahn did not win two prior Emmys as Lead Actress for SB. She won for Supporting for SB and GH. Marlena edited her post from SB to GH but left Lead Actress in.

2) Lisa Grimaldi was married 8 times, not 6. She edited this also.

She then deleted my post.

I mean, sure, edit it, but say THANK YOU.

r145 I've been a Marlena de La Croix fan since her days at Soap Weekly. But I agree, she isn't all there any more. And she hasn't been for over a decade.

I used to send notes correcting mistakes in her column routinely. Sometimes she corrected the mistake. Sometime she ignored the note and left the mistake in. As a result, I just quite writing her with corrections.

My biggest pet peeve is the fact she has twice abandoned her column for over a year and then returned without explanation or apology for her absence. That's not the way you get a maintain a loyal following.

Sorry the GoFundMe isn't getting much traction. But not really surprised either.

Finn Carter surprised Scott Bryce on The Locher Room.

Scott’s found God and he’s a big supporter of MAGA Byrne.

Then I'll pass

My ex Michael Swan is a huge MAGGOT.

R146 agree, she's actually a terrible writer with poor grammar.

I don't know if it can be said Scott "found God" but he is grateful that he survived. He didn't come off as holy roller ish to me, more oh shit I survived all this, thank you God.

One of MAGA Byrne’s former costars and besties posted about 9/11 on Insta recently.

MAGA came for her on Insta with the fire of a thousand suns, saying Bestie knew not of what she spoke, because only MAGA lost or had loved ones injured that day.

Bestie had lost someone that day, and MAGA knew this.

Bestie finally responded, but said MAGA could’ve called or PM’d her. She’s been to Bestie’s house many times in two decades.

Bestie says MAGA waited until Liz Hubbard died to come out as her true self. Liz’s son repeatedly “likes” MAGA’s post. It’s weird.

Suffice to say, they’re no longer friends.

The Locher Room with Nancy St Alban gets good after 30 minutes.

She loathes Ellen Wheeler for firing her right after she had a baby and bought a house. Said Ellen called her at home during her new baby fog and asked if she’d be ok if Michelle went to California. Poor Nancy thought she was going on remote. Said she’d love to run into Ellen today and let her have it, as she tried to go with grace at the time.

She told Alan that when she was in high school school, she tested for Josie on AW. She said the actress who got the part did lots of things afterwards, but she couldn’t recall her name. Alan, of course, has no idea who that is or who played her, but comes up with Amy Carlson.

Given Nancy’s age, it was obviously Alexandra Wilson, who did do a lot of prime time after AW.

She looks great for 55!

My favorite Josie was Amy Carlson but she turned into a typecast for Staten Island trash.

I never got over how Josie became a hooker just like her mama.

R152, why the secrecy if this person posted publicly? Just tell us who it is.

“Bestie” is a friend of mine also, although I do not know Martha.

All posts have been deleted. She just wants to leave it in the (recent) past.

Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t name her.

Bestie said "fiddle dee dee....."

The 1991 Dark Shadows is now on Prime, I guess.

Featuring Joanna Going (former AW actress) and yes, Ellen Wheeler.

Michael T Weiss (ex-DAYS), Roy Thinnes (OLTL), Barbara Blackburn (RH) too.

Marlena DeLaC was losing it a decade ago on SON when she became a member. I suspect dementia. One could remind her about old articles she'd written and she would be dumbfounded. As often happens the memories of old times come back more readily than the recent ones. If she ever needs my financial contributions for her care I will gladly contribute

Sorry to those who are in another struggle about disclosing Beverly Pemberthy's status. Pemberthy was always a class act. Loved her as Pat. She was a fixture of my AW when I started watching, as John's long suffering wife who finally said enough was enough. She was the decent character who drew me in. I didn't know she was a recast.

I don't like knowing that her privacy has been invaded but I would gladly send her gifts to make her life better. .

Beverly P's gay nephew should weigh in here again.

Im not the nephew but I’m 178 pounds.

Nancy St. Alban was lucky to have played Michelle for so long. After the wonderfully complex and edgy Joy Lenz they brought in someone who was only suitable for commercials. No edge whatsover.

Lisa Grady was THE ingenue on Another World for 18 months, then Jamie impregnated Vicky and she was gone shortly thereafter, never to be seem or heard from again.

R165 I thought it was Going’s choice to leave. Wasn’t that around the time she started to do movies?

It was , r166-it was odd to me how the character went from being constantly front burner, to back burner, to never heard from again.

Shouldn’t psychic Lisa have seen that coming? JAMIE, YOU IN DANGER!

R164 Exactly. This was a time GL had a ton of hot young future stars on. Matt Bomer was one. Then they hire the dud Nancy after Joy?

During the interview with Scott Bryce, Alan asked Finn Carter if she would do her own interview with him and she said YES. What a wild one that could be!

Nancy was a dud but at least she didn’t join a cult!

Michelle Forbes talks briefly about her time on GL starting at 20:00. She essentially says it was a good training ground.

Michelle was a great addition to HOMICIDE. I thought she knocked it out of the park on THE KILLING. And her guest-spot as Jo’s mom on GREY’S ANATOMY a few years back was raw, real acting on a show where acting is often on autopilot.

Ding dong the witch is banned! Cuntessadumbassatellall finally got the boot from SON! Everyone is cheering. That cunt drove everyone nuts. Buh bye bitch.

what was the final straw r174?

She revealed that a former AW actor was in hospice care, just like she broke the news about Drake Hogestyn.

R175 The dumb bitch did herself in by continuing to post nonsense, going off topic and posting personal medical information about soap actors. We was warned many times to knock it off but the dumb cunt didn’t learn from past mistakes and was permanently banned, to the delight of everyone there.

I'm just amazed that it took nearly six years to finally ban her.

I’ve actually met her. I was a manager in an upscale department store in Atlanta. She applied for a store credit card and was declined. She went batshit crazy on one of my associates, so I had to step in. I immediately recognized her (from her photos on, of all places, LinkedIn); the purple hair helped, and we had her name on the credit app. She angrily left the store. I’m sorry to say she was not in good physical or mental health.

[quote] to the delight of everyone there.

One in particular. Lol

I promise, we'll get back on topic, but you have to understand: this shit had been going on for nearly six years. We're entitled to a little schadenfreude.

CREDIT CARDS ARE NOT FREE MONEY.

I guess the Contessa didn’t know that.

She is indeed batshit crazy. Linda Dano, the nicest person in the world, blocked her on social media because Donna claws and claws at you persistently and won’t leave you alone if you show her one ounce of attention.

Is that story about the AW bench true?

Batshit crazy Donna kept bragging about how she lead the fight to save AW (it was cancelled) and how she lead the fundraising to get a memorial bench in Central Park. She also constantly posted the exact location of said bench. At least 3 of her haters brought their dogs to the bench and let their dogs shit on the AW bench. Donna went crazy over it. She had a meltdown.

For an AW expert she sure didn't know Gwen Parrish

They better not shit on MY bench or I’ll snap my dishrag in their cunts!

When I’m with you, you take me away …to another bench…

You made me laugh r188

Someone should check on Linda Dano. She might’ve heard the news, jumped for joy, and broken a hip.

Midwestern Town Question: Did Veleka Gray play a character named April on ATWT before she played Lyla? I’ve got an old soap annual from 1980 that says she did, but perhaps they got her character’s name wrong? I’m guessing that’s the case. And why was Veleka out after 13 weeks?

I thought I heard Veleka Gray didn’t get along with Don Hastings? She was a lot more age appropriate for Lyla than Sward.

She was only like 7 years older than Margaret Colin and Scott Bryce.

Generally not a Hinsey fan but I think she has a point here about summer storylines - she mentions the Bauer BBQ:

The Scott Bryce Locher Room was excellent and for the same reasons the Hubbard one was excellent - Scott B had control of the floor, so to speak (he had a LOT to say) and Locher wisely just stayed out of the way and kept questions to a minimum.

Hinsey wonders what was UP with Speedos on soaps.

She’d understand if I wore one.

R195, do you have a link to that?

A friend told me that Steve Bond was told to stop wearing Speedos on GH as they were revealing too much.

Did the earthquake correspond to Donna being banned at SON?

What earthquake?

Do you mean the sound and tremors caused by her falling off the AW Bench two days ago?

I could hear and feel it all the way upstate.

The remaining soaps are boring, pretty bad, and I’m a little shocked they maintain ratings. Every time I’ve tried to tune in nothing captures my attention.

Yeah but who was MAGA Martha’s bestie? I wanna know!

Me too, R201.

One last thought on the Donna situation: it's quite clear that she's an un-person to SON leadership. They haven't deleted her posts, but any and all commentary about her (particularly on the Another World thread, which she treated as a personal playground) is being struck.

Very well, moving forward. Just wanted to state that (since it's clear that at least a couple SON folks visit here).

I swear, I am not trying to be a prisspot hall monitor, but now that everyone's had their say and enjoyed a nice serving of schadenfreude, I implore other posters to cease the mention of that woman by name (or anyone else from SON, for that matter).

Some of you may be more recent DL posters and haven't ever seen issues play out here, but in past years, soap threads were entirely banned (as in, closed moments after they were started) because other boards and/or other people were mentioned by name - especially if posters from other sites "brigaded" us here and swarmed the threads.

I'm not suggesting this because I'm clutching my pearls over the topic, and I am not defending anyone - I don't know who you're talking about well, but I have seen her on social media and she always did strike me as being a few fries short of a Happy Meal - but we would all like to continue these discussions here, so cool it, please and thank you.

What happened to Melina Kanakaredes? Her career was red hot then she quit CSI and her career has been sparse since. Was she difficult? Did she pull a Sherry Stringfield and want a normal life?

You got it, R204.

Agreed r204. But it wasn't her that caused the soap threads, indeed the whole soap subforum, to be banned. That was caused by an invasion of crazed straight soap frauen who had issues with gay soap gossip.

I remember reminding one of them that this was a gay site and was told "not for long!" That's one example.

The woman in question had many issues but she was never homophobic.

Melina did recurring on THE RESIDENT about 7 years ago. She obviously took a step back, probably by choice since she quit CSI, and now has lost momentum. 15 years is a long time. She’s 58, but she’d be great on a CHICAGO or a L&O.

Melina, like Sherry S, was everywhere and then nowhere.

I always thought Elvera Roussel was so pretty, and simply loved her name.

She put on weight and with that hair Miss Piggy was an easy nickname

Melina was so cute on GL

I loved that era of GL, when Bridget and Eleni were both a breath of fresh air.

Melina was gorgeous. I think something happened at CSI and she pissed off some powerful people. It reminds me that Tammy Blanchard was also red hot winning a Primetime Emmy, being nominated for Tonys then her career just slowly withered. She’s so talented. Those GL women who get famous seem to fuck it up. I did she Brittany Snow in a Netflix series and boy is she not shy about sexuality! She also played a porn star in the hit horror movie X a few years ago.

Tammy was brilliant but also apparently a bit cuckoo.

R214 You're right, Brittany Snow and Hayden Whatsersnatch also had issues along the way. Poor Hayden really went off the deep end, apparently. Including that massive mountain of muscle she was formerly married to and had a kid with.

I was sure Tammy was destined for greatness especiall after playing Judy Garland.

I think Melina's show PROVIDENCE still airs on one of those repeat stations.

R216 I have seen Providence on one of those mesothelioma stations!

[quote] mesothelioma stations!

That's it! I think it also shows Murder She Wrote and In The Heat of the Night.

I agree about Tammy. I thought she’d be huge. But an Emmy and two Tony noms ain’t nothin’. She did a Ryan Murphy series last year so maybe she can join his ensemble for future projects.

Her career is like a B-list Amy Adams, who was an Oscar nominee in big movies every year. Now she’s at that “age” that Hollywood doesn’t like and she’s in dreck that goes straight to Netflix.

R217 is that what meTV is short for? Mesothelioma?

There's quite a few of them r220 all showing the same commercials and all the old ladies love them.

When my cousin died and we had to move my auntie (she won't admit her real age but close to 100) to an assisted living apartment she hated the cable it provided and wanted "her channels" back. So I stripped some coaxel and stuck it in her window. Now she gets all the old shows on those mesothelioma channels again.

It would be a great medium for old soaps. Her place has wifi included so every once in a while I put the FIRESTICK in her TV and we watch old episodes of soaps of YouTube.

Not me! This GL girl didn’t lose it.

Brittany Snow had issues?

Hayden! Damn those famous GL girls really burned hot then flamed out.

Janney was great on GL but nothing she did there made me think she could do the great work she did on West Wing or as a movie actress.

R224 I did. She was hysterical. It’s insane GL didn’t do more with her.

Brittany Snow was just in the raunchy The Hunting Wives on Netflix. She was so good and looks 21.

No, r207, the woman in question is not homophobic. She is, in fact, a very out lesbian.

Man, I thought Tammy Blanchard would be huge, too. Yes, she’s kooky that’s why I thought she’d be huge in addition to being insanely talented. She had “it”. I wonder why her theater work dried up?

Allison Janney could get the EGOT.

I would have guessed that Beth Ehlers would become a big star.

And Lisa Brown, for sure.

Beth Ehlers? I don’t think so.

Texas debuted 45 years ago today -- August 4, 1980.

Just started reading this thread today, and it’s funny that Tammy Blanchard and her career is being discussed here. I heard her “Suddenly Seymour” on Sirius the other day and was wondering why she didn’t become a big star. I didn’t even recognize her on that recent show where she played Aaron Hernandez’s mother, but she was good.

Tammy is phenomenal. It’s a shame she didn’t become huge. She had all the ingredients. You’d think the critical acclaim she received for playing Judy Garland winning an Emmy and her Tony noms would have catapulted her to superstardom.

Melina definitely pissed someone off in contract negotiations.

Hayden Panettiere, wowzer, had a major public meltdown. The rumors were off the charts.

Brittany Snow is doing fine. She gets steady work.

Allison Janney has cemented her status as an A list great actress.

Sherry Stringfield- we’ve discussed. Ruined a red hot career multiple times.

The girl who played Marah who also had a big theater career likewise started red hot then faded.

Nia Long- Roger Ebert was so big on her he said he was certain she would win an OSCAR! She started pretty hot then faded. She’s playing MJ’s mother in some movie coming up so maybe Ebert will get his prediction come to pass.

Joy Lenz- had a huge hit TV show, seemed destined for more, then faded.

Michelle Forbes has seen steady work, but as we saw with her Emmy nominated turn in the Killing and her popular character on True Blood, she was capable of more.

There are others I am forgetting but it does seem the GL gals who make it big, and they’ve had some huge stars, fade out unexpectedly.

Fun fact: Allison Janney and Tammy Blanchard both won Emmys in 2001.

Angela Basset was on GL. She’s doing quite well. Though likewise she was on fire, her career cooled, then had a late in life resurgence.

The one who really could have been a bigger star is, of course, Kim Zimmer.

But to accomplish that, she needed to leave soaps after THE DOCTORS and be a starving artist until landing a few more movies.

Did ATWT have the most actresses who REALLY became movie stars after they left? Meg, Marisa, Julianne, Parker…

Didn’t Betty Rea cast those four, when she was doing double duty on ATWT and GL in the 80s?

R237 I think so, yes.

So much of the good part of soaps from the 70s to 90s was due to writers/producers/casting agents having a direct pipeline to amazing stage talent on and off Broadway.

Hayden was driven insane by Jonathan Jackson because she wouldn’t join his cult, and I’m just the dame to prove it!!!

Who was Angela Bassett on GL? I remember her from SFT. I got that talented bitch right outta there. Olympia Dukakis and Sheryl Lee Ralph too!

I read Joy Lenz's book....well, more just sort of flipped through it (she only mentions GL briefly) but she's another one that had a rise to fame and then fell like a rock. And that cult stuff.....whew.

I think Vince Liebhart was the casting director at ATWT by the time Parker Posey started on the show.

He was, r242, but if I remember correctly-Parker and Sherri Stringfield were college roommates, and Parker had a GL audition before ATWT-I thought I read that somewhere. She was wrong for the GL role, but perfect for the role of Hal Munson’s Kentucky born niece.

If Angela Bassett, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Olympia Dukakis, plus Morgan Fairchild, Susan Sarandon, Jill Clayburgh, Lee Grant, Connie Ford, Don Knotts, Joel Higgins, Irene Cara, Robby Benson, Kathleen Beller, Ken Kercheval, et al, all came from SEARCH, it might have produced the largest number of “stars” in various genres (film, tv, music) of any soap.

I take credit for getting rid of all of them. You’re welcome.

According to Parker’s book, ATWT graciously released her early so she could do a film. That started it all for her.

I think GL and ATWT had the most stars. On YouTube Spauldingfield did a collage of actors who were on GL. It's A LOT. It shows Angela Bassett was a nurse who interacted with Lillian a lot. Mira Sorvino was on briefly.

Calista Flockhart played a nanny for Josh.

I can't remember whether he was with Harley, Annie or Tangie but it was somewhere between Reva Stint I and Reva Stint II if I remember right.

Somebody pull out James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams and Ruby Dee!

R248 Get these black bitches out of my face!

Did someone say Mary Stuart??!?!?!?!????

P&G show killer is back.

RIP Y&R…

Ken Corday has dome a lot of stupid things at Days of our Lives, but the one smart thing he has done is keep JFP away from Salem.

Kale Browne as NuPaul?

Y&R thread is here, folks:

Well, it looks like ATWT also had actresses who burned hot then flamed out- Meg, Marisa, and Parker all burned hot then faded out. Only Julianne stayed hot. Damn P&G had a curse on the females who made it big.

R248 AND Cicely Tyson! All replaced each other on GL. They weren’t even mentioned in the Spauldingfield YouTube video of huge GL stars. Either were Jobeth Willams or Christopher Walken.

Every actress over 40 is scared to death. And that’s most of them!

Audra and Sally just became leading ladies!

Marisa and Parker have had comebacks. Meg couldn’t because of…y’know.

Other ATWT stars who got big (to differing degrees) include Steven Weber, Billy Magnussen, Jennifer Landon, Jesse Soffer, Vanessa Rey, Annie Parisse, Jennifer Ferrin, Richard Thomas, Margaret Colin.

Julianne is the Queen, though.

As for SFT, don’t forget Jane Krakowski, always working and often nominated.

Jesse Soffer started on GL with Brittany Snow and played Tammy Blanchard’s little brother. Steven Weber also appeared on GL. Parker was only just in White Lotus. She didn’t have much for a long time. Marisa should have been much bigger.

R244 mentioning her has me wondering -is Kathleen Beller the only surviving Liza? Louan Gideon, Sherry Mathis, Denise Nickerson and Meg Bennett are all gone.

Meg actually started on GL. Did you know that? She was a part of the teen scene. She was cut and went to ATWT.

Jobeth Williams was another GL casualty! Burned white hot then..

Jobeth should’ve gotten an Oscar nod for Poltergeist

I think it’s a P&G thing since it didn’t just happen to GL actresses who hit it big. 🤣

This is fun.

JoBeth and Tammy starred together in Sybil. Small world.

Kathleen Beller and possibly Hope Busby are the last living Lizas.

Has the old witch Donna Bridges visited her precious Another World bench lately? It’s in rough shape. Dog shit piling up on it daily.

Going was cast as Victoria Winters in the prime time Dark Shadows.

They merged the characters of Vicky and Maggie Evans, really beefing up Vicky's part (or perhaps more accurately demphasizing Maggie's).

A series on Hula or Netflix or Prime on the life of Irna Phillips could be interesting. She was something else! I’d call it Guiding Light because that was her first and she was the GL for soaps. I’d definitely cast an actress from one of her signature soaps.

And yes, Kim Zimmer should have had a big career. She’s the best crier ever and she’s funny. She could have been a good character actress. Such a waste. She’s better than half of Hollywood.

R247 Calista Flockhart played Marah’s loyal babysitter. Marah disappeared when Calista was babysitting and they thought Sonni kidnapped her.

R267 Oh, so even earlier than I thought. Thanks!

Got around to watching Finn Carter on The Locher Room. She looked…uhhh…really rough. Anyway one interesting morsel from that was the finalists who screentested for Sierra were her, Elizabeth Dennehy, Marissa Chibas and Julianne Moore. I never knew Moore had initially tested for Sierra. Wow.

I guess once casting saw Julianne they probably earmarked her for Frannie.

Had no idea Elizabeth Dennehy was auditioning for P&G shows so much earlier than when she landed Blake at GL. She did a good solid job as Blake.....I wonder if turning Blake into "Chrissy" was a retcon after Dennehy started/was cast? She certainly looked nothing like Maureen Garrett or Michael Zaslow.

Finn didn’t have much of a career, but she’ll always have TREMORS. Does she do the autograph convention circuit?

She does the lot lizard circuit.

Poor Finn never had a chance with Liz Hubbard.

[quote] Kelley Menighan, come see me for a gas grill!

This made me 😄

Victoria and Maggie were merged, so to speak, in the DARK SHADOWS film with Johnny Depp.

In the prime time series, Vicky and Josette were “merged,” as it always should’ve been. Maggie was a character on the show, albeit a psychic and Roger’s lover.

[quote] Got around to watching Finn Carter on The Locher Room. She looked…uhhh…really rough.

She looka like a man.

Did the car and credit card belong to Mary Beth Evans, professional soap recast/role thief and apple pie baron?

"Poor Finn never had a chance with Liz Hubbard."

Really? I thought they were terrific together. I don't understand those who complain that Finn was too neurotic, too nervous, too jumpy. She was playing a very young character who'd lived through a revolution and been thrown out of her country. Sierra was supposed to be damaged, and that's how Finn played her.

Perhaps Finn can play Liz in the Fox News original TV movie, MARTHA BYRNE’S IN THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE, with Michael Swan as Mike McMahon.

[quote]I wonder if turning Blake into "Chrissy" was a retcon after Dennehy started/was cast? She certainly looked nothing like Maureen Garrett or Michael Zaslow.

As I recall from reading the soap mags at the time, Blake Lindsey was introduced during the 1988 writers strike as a PR person working with Spaulding. Her background was vague; she was just there to handle some PR crisis Spaulding was having. Could have easily been written out once that story arc was over.

When strike was over, Pam Long decided to keep the character around and create a back story for her.

Also in summer of 1988, Chris Bernau got too sick to continue working. GL contacted Michael Zaslow about filling in for Bernau. Zaslow said it would be too perverse having him play Alan, but that he would be happy to return to the show as Roger.

When strike was over, Pam Long also had to figure out a way to get Roger back on the canvas.

That's how Blake Lindsey came to be Christine Blake Thorpe Lindsey.

^Christina Blake Thorpe Lindsey

Dennehy, with her curly blonde hair and sharp facial features, looked so much like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction it was downright creepy.

Before Blake was revealed as Christina, did Ed or Rick run into her? I can’t remember. I know she hadn’t been on the show in years, but Christina was like a daughter to Ed.

Parker Posey auditioned for Julie Camaletti on GL but it went to another actress. They wanted prettier. Parker would’ve slayed on GL.

I never did care for Julie as a character.

Parker would’ve been a great Reardon.

Julianne's first soap, I think, was EDGE OF NIGHT.

R287 yes, so says the Wikipedia article on Julianne (seriously).

Marcia Cross started on EDGE too, then OLTL, then KNOTS LANDING, then MELROSE PLACE, then EVERWOOD, then DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES.

She’s an unacknowledged SOAP QUEEN! What can we get her on next?

Aww, I sort of liked Capitol. I don’t remember a whole lot about it other than there being some cute guys, Marj Dusay being evil, and one of my favorite soap heroines, Sloane Denning! The show ended with her facing a firing squad!

Anyhoo, back to P&G.

Daniel Lochran, the Aussie who I think played a sheik orca prince on Capitol and then a young businessman on AW was the most beautiful looking man I’d ever seen.

Who, R291? There is nobody by that name on IMDb.

Was Julianne Moore on “As the World Turns” before Marland got there?

Apparently, the actor's name is Peter Lochran. He played architect Daniel Gabrielle for about six months in 1985, according to the Another World Home Page.

I remember Peter Lochran. As terrible at acting as Ronn Moss but truly beautiful.

Of course, the king of beautiful soap men remains Robert Tyler aka Barry Kaufman. Mostly known for LOVING but was on World 🌎 Turns for a spell.

R293 I think perhaps for a few weeks or months. But Marland’s early show bible outlined cutting a number of characters in Frannie’s orbit to send her into a new storyline.

Wasn’t Marland not officially credited until the fall of 1985, but his stories started sooner?

Julianne Moore started in April 1985, according to the site linked below.

Doug Marland's first scripts began airing in November 1985, according to Wikipedia.

Seriously.

Yes, sorry, it was Peter Lochran. And he was so pretty, goddammit.

R297 I think so. Susie Bednow Horgan was writing the show before that, I think, and it's not uncommon for a new HW to have the ability to give some notes to the existing one to bring a story to X or Y point, but I've heard the same, that Doug was already changing things before he officially was credited as HW.

R297, I think Marland was there before he was there officially.

I would imagine it was his idea to marry Bob and Kim, which Frannie came home from.

Bob and Kim had a good, long run, but I didn’t think they were going to be a FOREVER thing.

Bob couldn’t keep it in his pants and all of Kim’s men were dead to her except John.

I thought Susan honestly had a shot, and I never ruled out Lisa. But ATWT never went there again.

In his younger days, Dr. Bob could get it.

Imagjne Susan married to Bob. Vinegary old Nancy would have made her life hell.

On that other site, lots of talk about Pat Matthews Randolph as played by the lovely Beverley Pemberthy. When I first started watching AW she was my favorite character, the pretty housewife who, over time, realizes she's had enough with her philandering, chauvinistic husband John.

I wish they had kept both characters. Not that I would have wanted them back together. She was cool with Phillip but i believe she could have been better with Brian after he dumped Iris.

I was too busy fucking about with Lenore's scarf to notice much about Pat and John.....

Lemay loved her

Pat loved my yummy, if a tad poisonous, Shirley Temples

When Bob Hughes was married to Miranda Marlowe, his vinegary mother was off the canvas because Helen Wagner hated Mary-Ellis Bunim. Can you imagine the hard candy sucking looks that Nancy would have given the drug dealing Miranda? I wish Nancy was around during that time!

Vinegary Nancy would’ve loved Bob’s stepdaughters Emily and Alison. Nancy liked some young tramps to lead back to the straight and narrow. She certainly raised Katie Peretti more than Lyla ever did!

Did Racel ever get together with John Randolph? I know they became friends.

Charita Bauer seemed to be a great actress but I don’t hear of any big stories involving her in the 70s and early 80s. She just seemed to be involved in other’s storylines.

I think Bert's last hurrah was when it turned out Bill Bauer was alive.

Was Robert Gentry’s return to the role of Ed Bauer a flop? I think he was only back a year or two and then Peter Simon came back.

He was great on AMC, and even though it was an awesome storyline when Ross raped Natalie, they couldn’t really keep him around after that.

How quickly we forget about Bert’s good leg. Her bad leg was her last storyline.

Sabrina Hughes should have bern a wild party girl, not a mouse. She could have led Andy and Paul into juvenile delinquency, or do a Nola Reardon and trap Seth Snyder with a pregnancy scare.

Kim and Barbara would gasp , and fret, and twist their elaborate necklaces by Monet in despair.

Then Nancy would have grabbed her tramp granddaughter by the shoulders and forced her to act worthy of the Hughes name.

R316 Yes! The Sabrina story on the front end was so good but once Sabrina was in Oakdale Marland didn't seem to have a good idea on how to differentiate her from Frannie. And I guess Meg was already the Nola of Oakdale.

Robert Gentry was barely back on GL, less than a year. I only remember him being involved in the Michelle/Jesse story. That said, I would’ve accepted him back if he’d been fully integrated into the show. If I’m forgetting his involvement in other stories, I apologize, but he was just kind of a “blink and you’ll miss him” character. I wonder if he had scenes with Holly and if there was any spark.

I never saw Gentry in his original run as Ed, but his 97-98 run was really awkward.

He seemed incredibly stiff and uncomfortable in all his scenes. I kept thinking, "Just relax. Ed was never so ill at ease before."

I was never sure if Gentry was playing Ed as stiff and uncomfortable or if Gentry's own personal stiffness and uncomfortableness was coming through his portrayal.

Either way, as much as I wanted Gentry to work as Ed, it just didn't click.

What r319 said.

I used to see Robert gentry in the steam room at the sports connection in West Hollywood.

He may have been stiff but not uncomfortable.

Ed obviously had feelings for Jesse Blue. Or Jack Blue. Or Kelly Nelson. He didn’t install Kelly in that “garage apartment” for anything other than easy access.

R321 Do tell

The next few posts will be from me....came across an old Soap Digest Tumblr account and am sharing a few images......

Darling!

Robert Tyler, formerly on ATWT, when he was on Loving.

So gorgeous.

Gordon Thomson was known to visit steam rooms in Weho. Wonder if he ever hooked up with Robert Gentry.

Yes. I saw all 3 Mason capwells at the same place.

Did you put on a nun's habit and call yourself Mary DuVall?

But who’s the bestie? Huh? Huh?

R328 Did a giant letter C for Cock fall on you in the hallways?

I thought Lane Davies and Nancy Lee Grahn hate fucked when they were on Santa Barbara.

Why did Terry Lester leave ATWT? The Royce/Neal story felt like it was ended quickly.

R332 I think that story was cut a lot shorter than it was supposed to have originally been once Marland died.

those LAST LOOKS shot on the last editorial page of DIGEST were FUN

My favorite was Irene Dailey as Aunt Liz holding a glass up to a door with a horrified look on her face.

Did I hear someone mention Aunt Liz?

Best friends forever.

That stupid C-word Contessa, Donna Bridges, keeps polluting soap boards. The dumb C.

Lily and the Bug. Best friends. Who would have thought.

I thought "Pristine" was an even better fan-given name for Cricket/Christine. Ah, memories of those wild 'n' wacky soap boards...

As far MAGA as Martha has gone, does that mean Lauralee has also gone MAGA?

Bill Jr. and Brad are both big Democratic donors. Brad's wife Colleen was Obama's ambassador to Hungary.

Are Lauralee and Martha friends from back in the 80s, when they both played plain virgins who drove men to fight over their maidenheads? Advantage Martha in that scenario-she had Jon Hensley and Brian Bloom at their prime, while Lauralee was saddled with a bunch of homosexuals.

Lauralee is just kind, not MAGA. She's more like equal-opportunity. She even likes cray-cray Thom Bierdz and bozo Dougie Davidson. FTR, her very bestest friend from soaps is the very liberal Tricia Cast.

It was kind of humorous that Holden and Dusty would have fought over mousy Lily.

Holden and Dusty should have had a circle jerk in the barn, with Seth joining in......

When the Family Feud revival premiered in '88, they should have had a soaps week with a team of town princesses: Lauralee, Joanna Johnson, Martha, whoever GL's "good girl" at the time was, and representing DOOL, Judi Evans!

I miss Aunt Lez Matthews! Irene Daily could eat a mean snatch!

Irene Daily got yelled at by Jack Nicholson.

R344 Chelsea?

That Marler girl?

Reardon

Laura Lee may be kind I guess; she’s also maga.

R350 Says who

Another dumdum who thinks this is me applying for a masters degree and this is my dissertation.

Im not doing paralegal work for you. I’ve seen plenty of references from… none of your business. Google your own shit.

R350, are you the one from that other soap thread who demanded pictures of KKL's son's porn?

R352 you got nothing

I'd be suspicious of anyone who is chummy with Byrne

Yes, Chelsea would have been the GL good girl at that time.

Or that boring wet washcloth version of Dinah - before Wendy rebooted the part.

R356 Paige Turco, who went on to a decent career, was indeed boring as Dinah. This was a time Betty Rae was doing not doing a great job casting GL, but was doing a great job with ATWT.

I appreciate when casting attempts to make relatives resemble each other but too often it's at the expense of having a more dynamic talent.

R357 Betty Rae liked to imbibe. She was hit or miss in her later years.

When Jennifer Gatti’s Dinah appeared she was a carny with a heart of gold. I thought she did a nice job with the role. With the casting of Paige Turco Dinah sort of evolved into milquetoast who was maybe trying to emulate the deranged Vanessa.

Betty Rae hit the jackpot with Rick Hearst.

When Rick Hearst was on DAYS as Julie’s grandson he seemed so bland. My opinion immediately changed of him when he showed up as Alan Michael on GL.

Rick Hearst has hairy legs.

Carl T Evans wasn’t bad, though. Yes, Rick elevated AM but Carl was hot, a decent actor, and had chemistry with Sherry Stringfield.

Carl is my favorite AM but Rick is a very close second and probably the better all-around actor. Over the years there has been many a time when I've thought "I wish it was Rick Hearst" when a recast was announced.

Carl and Sherry had extreme chemistry. Off the charts. He was never more sexy than when he was paired with her. Carl was so fucking fine.

Carl makes me moist - down there!

I think Cricket was SOD's most overexposed heroine one year and then Lily got it the next. This was around 87, 88, 89

i would gladly have been Carl and Rick’s “Slut of Springfield”.

The guy in between was also attractive but had absolutely no charisma. I believe there were some bad rumors about his personal life. Domestic abuse?

I can’t believe Alan Locher hasn’t been able to get Sherry on his show. She was going to be on one but SHOCKER quit right before.

I think Cricket and Lily were almost show eaters at the same time. But the Cricket/Phillip/Nina story maybe peaked a season earlier (1986) while the revelation of Lily's parentage was summer 1987.

I could be wrong but I think that's correct.

I think Cricket and Lily were the most dominant in the storyline in 1988/89. That’s when everyone in Oakdale was fretting over Lily. At the same time, Cricket had four boyfriends (including her brother) and Terry Lester quit because Jack Abbott was pushed aside for Cricket.

Laura Lee Bell is not a P&G character This ends now or the thread dies.

When Lily came back to town after running away I was bored with her. Especially once Pinched Sphincter Syndrome Lily took over.

[quote] This ends now or the thread dies.

r374 You have to inspire posters in just the right way, dear.

Like, "I'll kick you with my GOOD leg!"

How about a kick in the cunt?

R377 Those are just fine, dear!

I have a list if you're in the mood....start with Rita, would you?

Diva von Dish wrote about Lily being over-exposed:

"Momma, it's me, Margo. I'm calling from Greece. I'm alone, and I'm pregnant with Hal's child -- not my husband, Tom's. I'm afraid. But tell me...how is Lily? Is she feeling loved? Is she getting enough attention? How is she feeling? Are people putting too much pressure on her? Is she being lied to? I'm worried about her."

Thankfully that Stapleton woman never came to Bay City. I can just imagine her setting her sights on Russ. And after his series of disastrous marriages he would be weak.

Lily found out she was adopted in summer (June?) 1987. She ran off with Holdend, found out that he knew about Iva and Josh. she came home, got kidnapped by JameszStenbeck (I never liked how that ran together, Lucinda quipped to Ambrose).

She slowly opened herself up to Lucinda and Iva and the Snyders. She was living with Dusty, but continued to lust after Holden who took up with Emily.

Cricket seemed to be the center of Nina's pregnancy story. She dated Danny and Chase. Then, she was date-raped by Derek Stuart. Around this time, she found out her mother was dying of AIDS. They sang You and Me Against the World when the mother (Rebecca) was dying. Cricket sat in the courtroom every day during Derek's trial.

IRL she would have come in, testified, and then left. But they had her SITTING at the D.A.'s table! Derek was found guilty and lept to his death rather than go to jail and have done to him what he did to Cricket.

It was hard to say who had it more difficult. but money's on Cricket. Though thinking your parents were cousins and you were conceived in rape must suck.

How would Nancy Hughes handle a tramp like Rita Stapleton infiltrating her family and marrying one of her GOOD sons.

R381 Lily ran away with Dusty.....you might be right that she went to Holden first but once she learned he knew, she and Dusty ran off to Montana, I think it was.

Kelly Bishop, of Chorus Line fame and later to be Emily Gilmore, was the owner of the diner where Lily and Dusty worked. (I just recently read her memoir.....she has about 10 words to say about her various soap roles and most of them are "I did it for the money.")

R381, you're right. She did run away with Dusy; then, Holden came along, Dusty went home and there was the whole "Lily will hate Holden when she finds out that Holden knew."

There was a great Kelly Bishop moment where she and her husband (the soap writer, he molested Reva and was on her 1990 DT Emmy winning reel) came to Oakdale,. and Kelly's character says she wanted to meet "Lily's mother" and Lucinda greets her cordially and Kelly's charcter (Grace, right?) says: "Oh, I mean her REAL mother" and, of course, the look on Liz's face is PRICELESS.

I think Claire Bloom was another one who wrote in her memoir oh, it was for the money.

God forbid, they should ever rave about having worked for DOUGLAS FUCKING MARLAND and had the best time.

Tho maybe Claire came on after Doug.

But Julianne Moore talked about Kathryn Hays the last time she was on the view.

Claire came on right after Doug died-but weren’t they still using his story projection?

sounds right

ironically, Lynn Milgrim took over for Bloom; she was Judge Myra Fielding who presided over Kim's murder trial

Cicely Tyson spoke about her time on GL on Kelly and Ryan show the DAY before she died.

Michelle Forbes, in one of the vids upthread, said when she got GL she thought she’d get to wear pretty clothes and gossip because it was a soap. She admitted she was dead wrong about that because her time on GL saw her in heavy material, dark material, dealing with all kinds of heavy topics. She seems like a great person.

I think Dusty was the one to pop Lily's cherry when they were "on the run."

I mean, choosing between Brian Bloom and Jon Hensley is a Sophie's Choice if there ever was one!

Dusty took Lily’s virginity the night she found out Holden had known all along, after they came back from Wyoming.

That happened during that inexplicably long night when Steinbeck presumably died in the house explosion at Ruxton Hills. It was like two and a half weeks long to tell all the events of that night. James dying again, Lucinda telling Lily that Holden knew all along, Lily running to Dusty, Holden crashing his car and finding Emily and having sec with her…

R341 Yes, it started in the mid-80s, but back then, it had more to do with a crush she had on Brian Bloom. Lauralee watched ATWT and became a huge fangirl of the couple, living vicariously through "Lily." She even got to visit the set to meet them. She told Daddy Bell that's what she wanted, and he told her to wait a bit. By the next May sweeps (1986), he introduced Thom Bierdz as Phillip, who had a similar look to Bloom back then. And yes, LLB admits to developing a crush on Bierdz as well.

If only Brian Bloom would show his dong like Bierdz has.

Bloom at least showed his ass on “Oz”

Bloom and Meloni.....*chef's kiss*.

Years ago, I bought the As the World Turns DVD sets that were offered after the show was canceled. I just watched the 30th anniversary episode from 1986. Don McLaughlin was really old. Was this his last appearance as Chris?

Does anybody remember Nancy warbling a solo at the end of the song “Always”? Yeesh.

Who was Rick Ryan? Barbara’s brother?

If you think Nancy’s singing is bad there, r395, watch the credits of the 1987 Christmas Episode, when the cast is singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas “ over the credits.

Rick Ryan was Barbara’s brother. He hated Bob and was friends with John in the early 70s. He fled the country after it came out that he was responsible for taking Sabrina and having her adopted in England.

Chris might have been on once or twice after the 30th

McLaughlin keeps talking over Henderson Forsythe’s (David Stewart) speaker call on the 30th. His hearing must have been bad.

But the funniest part of the scene is how they are all so amazed at the fact that they can do a speakerphone call. They act as though it’s some sort of magic.

That’s included on the DVD set, I think, R396. I remember Scott Holmes singing in this oddly high fluttery voice in that episode.

I thought the anniversary *was* McLaughlin's final appearance but I could be wrong.

ATWT Christmas 1987 credits, with the cast singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” begins at 4:37.

Anyone remember that massive bitch Diane Ballard? She had Alan Spaulding shaking in his boots. My grandmother was dead by then but her sister Sylvia was still alive. Cool old lady. Every once in a while the old girl would leave a voice message on my answering machine about THAT WITCH DIANE BALLARD.

Great story. Her murder and all it encompassed was brilliant.

The Diane Ballard murder story is my earliest memory of watching GL.

Sofia Landon Grier (I think I have that spelling right) was fantastic as Diane Ballard.

There's an old episode of her that the Dobsons wrote, I believe. Diane tells another secretary at Spaulding about how her dad went to jail for insider trading or some white collar crime, and how that just ruined the family.

We all have things in our best that define us. That was Diane's.

Diane went out in a blaze of glory; will never forget her yelling at Alan: "I have the TAPES! From MORENO!"

Just effing brilliant.

Tapes were a big thing back in the day on soaps; Iris secretly recorded Elliot on AW: India had the Andy Ferris tape.

Sofia popped up on ATWT in a small role; she subbed for Anna Stuart as Donna when Vicky was pretending to be Marley and vice versa at Jake's attempted murder trial.

It's too bad she didn't get a long term role somewhere. TGL was a background noise show for me but like r403 I took notice with that storyline.

Sofia was a writer and wrote on several soaps.

I thought she subbed as AW's Donna a few times too (not just on ATWT). Or was it GL's Vanessa? Can't remember.

It does get a little confusing. Anna Stuart filled in for Maeve Kinkead as Vanessa on GL (in 1981, if I recall right). Then, in 1990-91 and 1993 , Sofia Landon Geier filled in for Anna as Donna on AW. But Maeve never filled in as either Diane or Donna.

Diane's last scene with Alan is just so, so good. It starts at 2:36.

[quote]Sofia Landon Grier

Sofia Landon G[bold]e[/bold]ier

Oh deier.

Anna Stuart could have made for a compelling Angie Perrini on AW. She’d have good chemistry with Kathleen “The Flasher” Widdoes.

It looks like she's getting ready to flash Young Brian at Eileen's little soiree.

R399 here. I was wrong, it’s the 1985 Christmas episode on the “As the World Turns” DVDs. Great episode. I loved those Christmas Eve with the Hughes family episodes. Kim was still being stalked. The audience did not yet know about Lily’s true maternity.

Does anybody remember who Marsha Talbot would have been in cahoots with? She is talking to somebody seated on a couch about Doug but we never see who it is. She was completely insane. As was Doug. That must have been such a great reveal pre-Internet spoilers though I did hear that TV Guide spoiled the Lucinda/John marriage a week ahead of time.

I remember reading in Soap Opera Weekly, when I believe Christopher Schemering was doing a “This Week in Soap History” column when the magazine premiered, that the CBS main switchboard was overwhelmed with calls from fans , after Kim walked into Douglas’ shrine of her and he was revealed to be her stalker.

The same thing happened when James took off his hood and said, “Hello Barbara.”

Decades later, I still can’t believe they replaced stud Gregg Marx with dweeb Scott Holmes.

R398, I made that speaker call from David happen.

ME!

They gave Chet, the manager at Diana's, a line once where Lucinda tells him to make Sierra and Tonio's party (to celebrate their marriage) something spectacular, befitting their union.

"I look forward to that challenge," Chet quipped.

I loved the Hughes home set. In later years of the show, nobody seemed to have living rooms anymore. There was a Thanksgiving episode around 2000 when people were upset that Carly had been invite to the Hughes home and the scenes had all the actors wedged into a kitchen.

R16, you know your stuff.

CBS telling Bill that Y&R was going to an hour with or without him was one of the rare instances in which the network had the last word with him.

There was talk of a third show in the 1990s, but it never came to pass.

I forget, who do we blame for Another World expanding to an hour? NBC? Proctor & Gamble? Paul Rauch? Harding Lemay? Some combination of the above?

According to his book, Harding Lemay pushed to have AW expand to 60 minutes every day because he has so much story he wanted to tell.

For the 10th anniversary in May 1974, show did an hour-long episode where Steve and Alice married. That did well in the ratings. Days also did an hour-long episode in November 1974 that likewise did well in the ratings.,

That convinced NBC to give it the green light. AW expanded to an hour in January 1975. Days followed suit in April 1975. ATWT went to 60 minutes in December 1975.

After that, GH and OLTL expanded to 45 minutes in July 1976. AMC went to 60 minutes in April 1977. GL went to 60 minutes in November 1977.

Then OLTL and GH expanded from 45 minutes to an hour in January 1978.

AW went to 90 minutes in March 1979. That apparently was Paul Rauch's idea.

Y&R hit an hour in February 1980.

Then AW contracted back to 60 minutes in August 1980 with the launch of Texas, which was the first soap ever to debut at 60 minutes

From the clip above at r6, CBS was pushing P&G to expand ATWT to an hour in the mid 60s, and P&G resisted.

NBC finally had three successful soaps by the early 70s-DAYS, AW and The Doctors-which is probably why they went along with the expansion, I would imagine. AW and DAYS were both peaking in 1974.

I remember reading in Robert LaGuardia’s book that Fred Silverman insisted on expanding OLTL and GH to an hour, despite the protests of the production team-newly arrived GH headwriter Doug Marland asked him, “why would you take a sickly 45 minutes and make it 15 minutes longer?”

Considering how many women joined the workforce in the 70s, and how college students started to watch soaps in earnest at that time, it seems odd that there was such a push to expand these shows-if people are watching on their lunch break, a 30 minute show makes more sense.

R422 didn’t ratings generally trend downward for most shows after they expanded?

60 minute shows dont cost double what 30 minute shows cost.

Of course they want any show to fill up as much sir time as possible until they hit diminishing returns.

All the shows seemed to see ratings increase after the expansion to 60 minutes. Another World certainly did. So did Days. That's why other shows kept following suit.

Has AW self named expert Donna Bridges weighed in yet? The banned from SON Cuntessadumbassatella always spread so many lies about AW. She is not missed over at SONz

When I was growing up, I certainly watched the NBC daytime line-up in the early 1970s. I was rooting for Doug and Julie every step of the way. Wanted Steve and Carolee to get together despite Dan Allison framing Steve for his murder. And I certainly was there watching Walter cry into the scarf every night while Lenore was in prison awaiting trial and Rachel doing her best to break up Steve and Alice.

That said, by the mid 1974 or so, I was busy with other things at school, in scouts, playing with friends, etc. I no longer made a bee-line to come home to watch soaps after school. I watched when I happened to be home, but not regularly.

But when in late 1974 when it was announced that Another World was expanding to 60 minutes, I was intrigued. I made a point of being home to watch that first hour-long episode on January 6, 1975. Was amazed they pulled it off. Then watched the next day to see if they could do it again. And watched the next episode, still stunned they were giving us an hour of show each day.

During this time, they moved Mac Cory front and center, playing up his relationship with Iris. Meanwhile, they also put Rachel in Mac's orbit, while moving her out of Steve Frame's orbit. This was quite curious. I wondered where they were going to go with this, figuring this was just a temporary thing.

Meanwhile, Iris was up to various antics including being engaged to Russ Matthews. Steve and Alice were seemingly happy. Pat and John Randolph seemed to be hitting a rough patch in their perfect marriage. This new whacky character of Clarice showed up with her, "Hiya, Iris." greeting. Needless to say I was hooked.

That's a long-winded way of saying, I was a lapsed viewer who tuned in to see what the hour-long show was like who then hung around for the compelling story being told.

I suspect that was the reason for the ratings rise in each show when it went to an hour -- lapsed viewers watching to see what a hour-long show would be like and then sticking around for good storytelling.

I watched Another World in the early 70s, until this new show called Price is Right started airing at 3 p.m. on CBS. My first cousin and I watched Price is Right at her house every afternoon. We loved that show! Talked about it all the time. We would make guesses on all the games, ever write down our guess for the price of the showcase items.

It was only when CBS moved Price is Right to 10:30 a.m. in summer 1975 that I returned to watching Another World.

Ironically, Sofia Landon Geier subbed for Anna in one of the episodes in which (storywise) Vicky showed up in court as Marley had bolted, and then, when Marley learned that Vicky was going to be called as a witness, she (Marley) dressed up as Vicky and made a dramatic entrance from the back of the courtroom and then, testified.

Heche playing Marley playing Vicky was something to behold.

Heche was amazing.

here's the scene; it's MARLEY pretending to be Vicky because VICKY was pretending to be Marley.

Cripes. I can't even get my brother to say hello to me at the holidays.

it's fascinating to watch Marley try to be who people thought Vicky was

and to give it all a Twighlight Zone dish on the side, yeah, that's Diane Ballard playing Donna Love

^

forgot the clip

When shows were only 45 minutes, what show was only 15 minutes to round out the hour

OLT and GH were 45 minutes each circa 1977 (maybe 78 ?)

they ran back to back so it was a 90 minute block of programming. I think OLTL ran 2 to 2:45 and GH 2:45 to 3:30?

Or maybe it was OLTL 2:30 to 3:15 and GH 3:15 to 4 pm ET.

When they each became an hour, I remember not getting home in time to most of OLTL.

it was 2:30 to 3:15 for OLTL and 3:15 to 4 for GH

yeah, I remember being glad that OLTL went ot an hour, GH, too, but it meant that I only saw about 15 minutes of OLTL for a while.

I prefer the hour format but the 90 minute format for AW was a dog. It didn't have to be though. More Iris, Rachel, Mac together could have pulled it off. And Rauch's tenencies to sexually harass didn't help. Bringing back Courtenay would have helped, more Pat, and Maeve Kinkead too. Bekins was brilliant as Jamie. And Frangione was the best Cecile ever.

If Felicia and Cass had been added during the 90minute fiasco they might.have pulled it off .

But there was so much filler, like "Today on Another World" cool music but...

And the Holloways were an awful addition. But I did like First Aid Kit.

R436 That’s too much soap in one week. 90 minutes is excessive.

90 minutes a day was a bad idea. Maybe every once in a while but every day? Ugh.

And the thing was, logistically, it basically broke the show into two - Rachel and Iris were seldom together because both had guarantees within the new time slots, so they could only be shown together in a scene 2 or 3 times a month, if that, and the momentum of their feud was stopped in its tracks.

I guess spinning off a portion into Texas made sense in terms of going back to an hour, but it should have never happened.

there was a TV Guide article about the 90 minute format.

It was never going to work but if any show could have done it it was AW;

the show was on fire; gnreat supporting cast; Rachel/Mac/Iris was one of the best dynamcis on soaps.

I agree with poster who wrote bring back Alice/Jacquie; more Pat, more Angie...

Rauch was only as good as his head writer.

As more and more old 30-minute shows have popped up on YouTube, the Paley Center, and The Doctors on Retro TV, you can see why the 30-minute soap was the superior format. I like the way they were structured. The usual format was one scene equals one act, or one scene followed by a tag of a second scene to take you into a commercial and come back and play that scene out. Stuff got done in those 30 minutes, and usually, one episode was one complete day in soap time.

It took them a while, but they finally figured out how to do the hour correctly. I remember when Bill Bell was still writing Y&R. Sometimes, he would do a scene in the teaser and not pick it up again until Act 3.

one thing I occasionally see the hour shows do is not introduce a character into act 4 or even later.

the set up of the same people throughout the whole show we see in the prologue gets monotonous

I don’t know if other soaps did this, but I remember back in the day on AMC, if you didn’t see your favorite characters in the first opening scenes before the photo album opening credits, you likely wouldn’t see them on the episode. I knew if I didn’t see Kate Collins before the photo album, I’d be disappointed that she wasn’t in that day!

I wish she’d done another soap when she left AMC. She would have been good on ATWT, even though I’d quit really watching in by 1992 when she left AMC. I know she had a bit part on GL before AMC. I think she played Philip’s secretary and he banged her on his desk. I’ve never seen that clip but I’d love to!

Kate experienced the pendulousness?

No wonder she always had that smile on her face! 😎

In the 80s, As the World Turns would usually do about three scenes pre-credits, back to them after the ad, then start new scenes after the second ad break.

In retrospect, a 90 minute soap is a bad idea. But in 1979, nobody had ever tried it, so nobody knew if it would work.

In 1975, there were plenty of skeptics who said a 60 minute soap would never work and were proven wrong.

The point is, you don't know until you try. The biggest mistake NBC made was sticking with the 90 minutes for almost a year and a half. But the network tried to save face, only cutting AW back to 60 minutes when Texas launched. But then, it was egomaniac Fred Silverman running the network at that time.

AW was NOT in great shape in 1979. Harding Lemay was suffering from burnout, writing three or four of the show's scripts every week, plus plotting the show. And he'd already proven he couldn't handle 90 minutes a day when NBC aired the short lived Lovers and Friends, which Lemay created. Network pulled it after just four months. NBC retooled it and brought it back seven months later with no Lemay involvement.

Storywise, the quality of the storytelling on AW had definitely gone down in 1978. Yes, the Sven storyline had us on the edge of our seat but much of the rest of the show was dragging. By the time the show added boring Vince Frame, it was scrapping the bottom of the barrel as far as the Frame family went. Iris's society friends were boring. And Lemay was not comfortable writing Jamie and Dennis as 18 year olds.

Also, Lemay was still insisting on running one long scene per act rather than breaking it up into 2 or 3 scenes per act as ABC made standard about that time. That multiple scenes per act made the show move faster and feel more modern.

So, in retrospect, its obvious that AW was the wrong show to try the 90 minute format. I would say that if any show could have successfully done 90 minutes in 1979, it would have been AMC or GH, both of which were on fire at that point.

^ Iris's socialite friends HAD BECOME boring by that point.

I wonder if Marland’s ATWT could have worked as a 90 minute show. There were so many characters in Oakdale at the time, and he loved to have characters talking about what was happening in Oakdale, even if it wasn’t their story.

Lemay was just overworked. He didn’t like having a writing staff, so writing 7 1/2 hours of TV per week must have been brutal.

Lemay always had one or two writers doing scripts. Just not a full staff of writers. Part of that was because he wasn't quite satisfied with anyone else's writing. He felt it was easier to write the scripts himself than edit someone else's work into what he wanted.

Also, at that point, the script writers were the employees of the HW. Shows paid a flat fee for all writing services to the HWs who then hired the script writers and paid the script writers out of that money. So, the more scripts Lemay wrote, the more money he pocketed.

The concept of the script writers being employees of the show didn't come along until the 1990s and 2000s.

For a long time, one of Lemay's brothers was writing scripts.

Doug Marland got his start writing scripts for Lemay in 1974. Two years later, Marland was HW of the Doctors.

Tom King was writing scripts for Lemay in 1978 and 1979 and promoted to HW of AW when Lemay was fired. Harry Must Die was Tom King's creation.

[quote] Harry Must Die was Tom King's creation.

So was Mitch Blake. So were Kirk Laverty and June Laverty (Geraldine Court). So were the Halloways.

Cecile, however was most likely Harding Lemay's creation. Susan Keith joined the show as Cecile in June 1979, just a month after Lemay's final script. So, she would have been in Lemay's long term story projections.

Lemay left such a mark on AW that no one could follow him, which is why the show struggled until he came back in '88. For years, I would have told anyone that Lemay was the best writer to ever do daytime. However, with some age and hindsight, I realize that is not the case. Lemay was good with a few asterisks after the good, but far from great. His style was so imprinted on AW that the show had trouble modernizing. The show maintained that talky, staged feeling long after he was fired and long after other shows had moved on to quick cuts and shorter scenes. The 90-minute show just highlighted everything that was wrong with the show. On top of that, VW and BM negotiated contracts where they were only on together one day a week. Why would someone let that happen? I guess tacking on another 30 minutes to AW was cheaper than building a new show from scratch.

In some ways, I would bracket Lemay and Claire Labine together. I think they were great at really defining characters, little by little sort of chiseling them out of the air, and giving them shading.

The fact that both had that great focus on characters, especially Lemay's driving motto of "why?" in a story, outweighed their weaknesses in actual plotting/pacing.

Marland was great at plotting in a way that did not seem too melodramatic or where things were racheted up just for a big splash....or to say it another way, if there was a big OMFG!!!! moment, he played the repercussions afterward for months (sometimes years). He wasn't bad at character shadings either. He had his weaknesses (his casts were too big at times and some stories dragged on too long).

Why did Victoria Wyndham and Beverlee only want to appear together once per week. That’s so odd, they seemed to like each other.

No disrespect to R450 but I'm not sure that VW and BM **asked** to only be scheduled together once a week. I think with the 90 minute schedule, because those two were the top two in terms of paychecks they had to anchor their own days - for example one would do M/W and the other T/TH - so I think purely from economics that the show could only **afford** to have them appear together on one day a week.

Wait.....OK, I found my Lemay Kindle book. Here's what he said:

[quote] The situation was compounded by contractual agreements with Vicky Wyndham and Beverlee McKinsey, limiting their usage to no more than three performances a week, which weakened continuity of action. It was practically impossible to keep Iris, Rachel, and Mac in dominant focus unless all three actors were available whenever story demands required them. A solution of sorts was reached by using Rachel three days in one week and Iris the other two, with Mac taking up the slack, and to reverse the emphasis the following week. Miss McKinsey’s contract further complicated the problem by guaranteeing three performances a week and limiting her to the same number. Vicky Wyndham could be used four times in one week if she appeared only twice during the previous one, but there was no such flexibility with Miss McKinsey, consequently Iris was seen usually on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Rachel on Tuesday and Thursday, with an extra appearance on one of three days if she could be logically worked into the script. A certain predictability resulted from this purely logistical necessity. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, secondary stories were more heavily emphasized than they would have been had our two female principals been available.

I wonder if anybody at Guiding Light or One Life to Live and General Hospital was paying attention and made sure to make the Tuesday and Thursday episodes just as attention-grabbing as Monday and Friday ones.

Well, somebody at GL and OLTL was paying attention to what AW was doing.

AW expanded to 90 minutes on March 5, 1979.

GL counterprogrammed that by having Roger rape Holly on March 5, 1979.

OLTL counterprogrammed by having Karen on the witness stand on March 5-6, 1979

They won.

There were so many commercials during the 90-minute AW that I saw ample bits of OLTL and GL during them -- including Karen's testimony, which was much more riveting than John Randolph trying to save Alice Frame from a fire. I don't know why I was home from school, though. Maybe it was spring break?

Looks like AW’s 90 minute expansion no effect on the ratings at first, then the ratings started slipping.

In contrast, GL started rising immediately, hitting 1st place at one point in the late spring/early summer.

Did the Dobsons choose to go from GL to ATWT? You would think P&G would have wanted them on Another World. Although ATWT had dropped in the ratings in 1979, it hadn’t plummeted the way Another World did.

[quote]Why did Victoria Wyndham and Beverlee only want to appear together once per week. That’s so odd, they seemed to like each other.

R453 explained the situation.

[quote]Looks like AW’s 90 minute expansion no effect on the ratings at first, then the ratings started slipping.

90 minutes aside, I think AW may have been able to hold on if they had not been moved out of their 3:00 PM EST time. NBC should have just left it's Days, Doctors, AW schedule alone.

After reading the Texas book, it's clear that NBC had delusions of grandeur with the launch of Texas. It was going to be NBC's answer to Dallas. They expected to get numbers equal to Dalls. They planned to launch it as a daytime drama but move it to primetime once it took off.

Since Texas was going to be so super successful, they programmed it opposite GH, the hottest show in daytime at that point. NBC's Texas was going to quickly knock GH off its throne, especially since they hired Kin Shriner away for $1 million.

On top of Kin Shriner, they also had Beverlee McKinsey starring.

With the Southern setting, the top AW star as the star and a top GH star on board, how could this show possibly fail???.

What was on CBS opposite it?

You are so right. What in the hell was NBC thinking? I read the Texas book and read all that NBC was putting into that show, and thought none of that showed up on screen. I was 9 when Texas premiered, and even I knew that Iris had been lobotomized.

Guiding Light in my area r461

Guiding Light, next on most of these CBS stations.

Well putting it against GL and GH was not smart. Why would P&G allow their shows to air opposite each other?

[quote]Why would P&G allow their shows to air opposite each other?

For a long time, P&G would not allow its shows to air opposite each other. But that was in the days of 30 minute soaps.

Once 60 minute soaps became popular, there just wasn't enough real estate available in the daytime schedule for P&G to demand none of its shows air opposite one another.

So, when GL expanded to one hour in Nov. 1977, it began airing from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. on CBS, with the last half of the show airing opposite AW on NBC.

And in 1979, when AW expanded to 90 minutes, it ran 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., airing entirely opposite GL in the 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. slot. .

Then in February 1980, when Y&R expanded to an hour, GL began moving in the 3-4 p.m. time slot., still airing opposite AW and then Texas after it debuted.

GL for the win.

Well, this is funny. For some reason, Lucinda Walsh’s adopted daughter Bianca popped into my head but I couldn’t remember much about her other than Elizabeth’s ad-libbed line, “My little daughter from across the sea” to her. Granted, I wasn’t watching as much in the 90s but it did seem like they never did much with her other than right at the beginning. Found this article. I think the writer doesn’t understand a lot about soaps, but she sure did a deep dive on the character.

Jobeth Williams was brought up in several threads recently. I know she did a few years on Guiding Light. Anyone watch when she was on? The few clips I’ve seen show she is a very good, natural actress. The scenes were short and kinda boring. Did she have any juicy storylines? She’s such a great actress.

I saw this on the Retro TV Listing FB page - it pops up in my feed every so often.

A little show in the bottom right corner caught my eye....I keep forgetting this ATWT spinoff existed!

I was around then and was aware of Lisa on ATWT, she was the one who made everyone gasp. But I remember my mother and grandparents hating Our Private World and wanting Lisa back in Oakdale.

She was a hussy, that Lisa!

When were Lisa’s prime bitch years? 1960-63? When she came back to “As the World Turns” after “Our Private World”, had she grown up or was she a troublemaker through the 60s?

By the time I watched, Lisa was just a busybody who wore fur coats.

I'm surprised that Our Private World wasn't saved somewhere. I can't really tell by the one episode I've seen, but I'm assuming it was filmed like Peyton Place, which would lead me to believe that they are stored somewhere.

I remember reading an interview with Fulton on 1983 when she left because she claimed Lisa had become too boring to play. Most likely it was a contract dispute as Fulton was back the following year.

Mary-Ellis Bunim wanted it written into Fulton’s contract that when she plugged up the shitter, Fulton had to pay the plumbing costs. Fulton balked at the idea and sat out for a year.

Eileen claimed that she returned in 1984 because she found out the show was planning to have Lisa murdered. She called the show and asked if she could come back, and according to her, they changed the storyline and had Whit McColl murdered instead.

Was Jason Kincaid a temporary recast before Gregg Marx took over? What a weird choice for Tom, he was so prissy.

Lisa with the platinum blonde hair was absolutely stunning in the early 1960s. I was very young playing with my Lincoln Logs pre K, and I remember how she lit up the screen in B&W and it would have been live then.

Everyone in the house stopped what they were doing to see what she was up to. She was a bad girl but there was some understanding of her circumstances. And she was so charismatic. People either loved her or loved to hate her. And so many saw the grey area of a flawed human who made bad choices.

In later years Rachel on AW was seen the same way.

Was Fulton the first actor to get special billing on a soap, or was that Beverlee McKinsey? I just remember watching the credits one day and I saw and Eileen Fulton as Lisa...

I don't think Beverlee was the absolute first though she was the first to have the "Starring" and the name announcement in the show opening.

I think? Or was that Rosemary Prinz when she did AMC for 6 months?

Fulton never fully lost her NC accent despite Lisa being from Illinois.

I remember "and Eileen Fulton as Lisa"

then EON had "and Kim Hunter as Nola"

didn't Kim Zimmer eventually get the "and" credit?

Would anybody really have cared if Betsy von Furstenberg’s Lisa was killed off?

Betsy von Furstenberg’s nostrils were downright sinister.

R479 Didn’t Donald May receive special billing as Adam Drake on Edge? I don’t think he was the first but it would have been before McKinsey on Texas.

He did r485

AW listed the cast in seniority order, but moved Victoria Wyndham and Doug Watson to the top when they became the stars. I'm going to assume they replaced Courtney and Reinholt.

ATWT listed the cast in seniority order until the 90s then they switched to alphabetical, but kept Don Hastings at the top and the "and Eileen Fulton"

Edge was except Flood and Compton were the top two.

I think GL listed their cast in alpha order.

GL did list their cast in alphabetical order. I don't remember there ever being an "and" credit for KZ.

I asked them for credit but was refused.

Did Bert get “moist down there” when she saw Kelly Nelson parading around in her kitchen in his Speedo?

It was the outdoor patio, but I'm sure Bert was moister than Laurel Falls when she saw Kelly in his Speedo......