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.