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Where the Heart Is 1969-1973


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http://cinema.library.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/Pwe...&PAGE=First

Go there, and type in any soap title you want. They have quite a few episodes of most soaps. A good bit of 50s stuff from the CBS soaps, lots of 90s stuff, some 80s stuff, and of course, the 1971 and 1973 material. The thing is, some of the stuff is unavailable for viewing while for other stuff, you can watch it whenever you want to. Something that fascinates me other than the 1971 and 1973 stuff is that they have most (if not all) episodes of GH from 1963 to 1970 in their archives. It looks like pretty much every single one. For what reason would all of those episodes still exist but nothing else from ABC (besides "Dark Shadows") from that time?

I think it's just so unfair that this chunk of television history, something that so many soap fans would *love* to see, is there. There's so little that we have from that period, and it's even more unfair considering that this was such a glorious time for the genre. Those episodes (as many as ten episodes for soaps that ran through both years) are so extremely important and I hope that they are being protected and repaired regularly if their quality starts to decrease. I would search for the Museum of TV and Radio's archives, but you have to register with their site and all of that, and I don't feel like it right now LOL

Edited by All My Shadows
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Oh wow, that's extremely helpful! Thank you thank you. I never had a good handle on who wrote what in the late 80s. I never would have guessed Broderick (and Victor Miller was co-head with her I think?) was behind the Cobbler Island story. (and the other bad stories going on at the same time...which I don't recall, but I remember at the time being so frustrated with AMC).

I knew in the back of my mind DePriest wrote the Melanie/David romance so I should have been able to place her. That pairing was awful. But from what you listed she wrote alot of good stuff, and some of the best stuff like early Tad/Dixie.

I've always brushed off DePriest as completely useless as a HW based mostly on her 2nd stint at AW, the fact that she headwrote for Sunset Beach, and what I thought she had written for AMC. My opinion has definitely shifted.

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I believe Jill Farren Phelps (who obviously liked DePriest since she hired her at AW) was a consultant for ABC Daytime for about a year before she was given OLTL, and at the time it came out that she was just one of many consultants ABC had lined up that could easily take over as EP or HW at one of the shows at a moment's notice. Since ABC was apparently bringing on anyone and everyone they could I guess DePriest seemed valuable to them since she had worked on all 3 shows.

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Hey Eric. The David/Melanie story was a very lame attempt to recreate the magic of Cliff and Nina. David was Jeremy's son; Melanie was Palmer's niece (Dix's younger sis). Palmer and Jeremy had been adversaries over Natalie at that point, so that fueled the plot. They even lifted elements from the Cliff/Nina story, such as Palmer's ambiguous incestuous interest in Melanie (though that was much more potent with Nina) and his bringing one of David's old lovers to town to try and break them up. I'm a little hazy on this, but I think Palmer was in cahoots with David's unstable mom Marissa (played the late, wonderful Nancy Addison Altman, one of the first "friends of Behr" brought over from the recently cancelled Ryan's Hope, where Behr had been EP) to break them up. I'm a little hazy over this, but I think that Marissa pretended to be kidnapped by soldiers or fortune or something (which I think led to the introduction of Trevor), which somehow propelled David and Melanie to go on the run. None of it made a lick of sense. When Agnes took over, she made them less sacchariny, took away Palmer as a source of conflict, and added conflict through the Ceara and Trask characters. With all of this, they were never terribly interesting. Eventually, in 1991 I think, they married and were rarely heard from again.

Forgot to add too that during the DePriest era at AMC, there were rumors that Gloria Monty was ghost-consulting. Apparently she had been spotted at the AMC studios on several occasions in 89, and the rumor was that she was consulting behind the scenes to whip the show into shape. Not sure how true that was, but I remember SOD running a little blurb about that rumor.

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Loyal--that was shortly before Monty returned for her not well received new era at GH right?

David MElanie does sound a mess... I guess the next young love story was the much more successful (and where I started watching) Hayley/Brian one? It's interesting, really since the start AMC always seemed to try to have a young star crossed love story startign with Tara/Phil/Chuck--but many haven't been as successful, althoug Nina/Cliff were prob the benchmark. I'm not even sure if lately AMC has *tried* to have any... When Agnes Nixon returned in 1999 as writer she created Scott/Becka/Greenlee, with Greenlee obviously int eh Erica roll. The thing is I think Nixon made a (rare) mistake--heroines like Tara simply don't work on soaps with modern audiences, and Becka was SOOO amazingly boring I don't know anyone who liked her.

E

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Yes, Eric. If Monty was ghost-consulting at AMC, and that's a big if, it would've been 89. I doubt she stayed on when Agnes took over in January 1990. Monty returned to GH in 1991, I think. It was just around the time that Emily McLaughlin (Jessie Brewer) passed away. Her second run there is pretty much considered a disaster.

Yep, the next young star-crossed lovers were Hayley and Brian, which began in 1991. I liked them together and thought they had a lot of chemistry. They were certainly a step up from David and Melanie. Becca was very boring, but I never found the actress, Abigail Spencer, very interesting. Also, the writing failed the character, something the actress couldn't overcome. At this time, I'm not sure how much of the show Agnes was really writing besides the Bianca coming out story. I tend to think that Passanante (and Elizabeth Page for a while too) was essentially writing the rest of the show. I think you can still do a successful sweet star-crossed romance with all the great soapy elements like meddling parents. It's just that the writing and the acting have to be there. These types of stories that worked on AMC (Cliff/Nina, Jesse/Angie, Greg/Jenny, etc) were the result of a perfect marriage between the actors and the material. In today's climate, it would be tough for a "marriage" like that to succeed.

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I have a good tape library of when Agnes returned as headwriter. Becca came on (as did Greens) when it was still written as Agnes Nixon headwriter solely. Soon after it was Nixon and Elizabeth Page. Then soon it was Nixon, Liz Page and Jean Passanante, in that order. And then by September, I think it was just Agnes and Passanante.

I still do fault Agnes for Becca as one of her misfires...--But I agree the actor has to be there too (and I'm not sur--maybe Page, a talented lady, was writing to Agnes' stories too, though, besides Bianca's, some cute sidestories, like Marian being jealous of the Queen's tea and trying to wheedle her way in seemed classic Agnes)

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You're right, Eric. The Marian stuff seemed like classic Agnes, as did Opal's re-opening of the Glamorama, complete with Ethel's (from the old Glamorama) niece, the Palmer/Vanessa marriage, and the attempt to create a star-crossed couple with Becca and Scott. The stuff that came a bit later, such as Marian locking Adam in the safe room, the whole Alex/Anna thing (I know Finola was foisted on them by Angela Shapiro), and the way the Dillon family was written out seemed very Passanante-ish, though I could be wrong about that. I think it was at THAT point that Agnes was writing solely for Bianca and Erica, and maybe the Brooke/Elliot (aka Josh) stuff, which tanked badly, leaving Passanante to do the rest. And through all of this, there was the whole Rae Cummings search for her husband Daniel and then for her daughter, and the reveal that Rae was Myrtle's daughter. McTavish has taken credit for all of that. Supposedly the "Linda Dano Does the ABC Soaps" that eventually culminated in Skye being revealed as her daughter was all her idea, or so she has claimed in the press.

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I actually really liked the Brooke/Eliot stuff though I know I'm in the HUGE minority. Although it was a big bomb, it did really feel like Agnes writing to me (maybe not an example of her at her best, but...) Wow that Linda Dano thing was a mess.

(The Alex/Anna thign was almost as confusing as Proteus later on, though I did grow to love Finola, she never really played two roles well. But Dog Boy was solely Passanate I think...) Still you wonder what Agnes was thinkign when Libidizone is going on and we're still gettign amazing Bianca scenes--liek did she just try her best to ignore the rest of the show? lol

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I'm in that minority too. I think the idea of bringing Josh back was great, but I don't think they should have even hinted at a romance between Brooke & Eliot for a long time. I think the audience would actually have gone for the pairing had it gradually evolved and felt like it was their choice and not TPTB's.

Either that or they could have done the Brooke/Eliot pairing off the bat but not hinted at Eliot being Josh until quite some time later when the couple had a solid fan base and support.

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I don't think a Brooke/Elliot pairing would've worked no matter how they progressed with it. It was just too gimmicky and contrived. Despite the plastic surgery gimmick, David Beecroft, who played Elliot, was taller and older than Stan Albers, who'd originally played Josh/Elliot. Plus, I don't think that Julia Barr and Beecroft had chemistry. Barr commented, after the pairing tanked, that she thinks that the writers got the idea for the romance after looking at all those clips they trotted out a bit earlier in 2000 for the show's 30th anniversary, and that they really didn't think things through. I think one of the problems with Barr throughout the 90s was that she had no chemistry with any guy they tried to pair her with. None of the three actors who played Pierce. Same with Roscoe Born, David Forsyth, Walt Willey, and Michael Nader. Her real chemistry had been with Richard Shoberg, John Callahan, and David Canary, and with Mark LaMura and Michael Knight to a lesser extent. Shoberg was off the show by the mid-90s and Callahan was moved into supercouple territory with LaRue (and was only reunited with Barr during Culliton's HW stint to serve as a plot device to keep Edmund and Maria apart). Canary always seemed viable, but I think a Brooke/Adam redux would've been disastrous for Canary, since the feeling probably is that Canary needs to be paired with a demographically desirable woman to keep him active storywise. Barr's a really good actress. She had chemistry with a lot of the women on the show and with men as friends, but in terms of romantic chem, that factor was lacking with her. I still miss her, though, and her not getting even a one-day exit story to explain her absence was totally insulting to her and the fans.

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I sorta garee with both points. I did liek the actor who played Eliot (then again I liked a coupel fo the Pierce's too) but maybe not with Brooke--still his community center, the fact he was a priest, etc, were all interestiung elements that the show was missing--even though Agnes Nixon would have to list it as a failure on her part you could still see she played a part--if that makes sense

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LOL, not to move off-topic from AMC... but does anybody know if they have episodes posted of Where the Heart Is?

If not, does anybody have use of a time machine that could transport me to the early 1970s where I could switch over from the Watergate hearings to catch Love of Life, WTHI, Love is a Many Splendored Thing (Donna Mills as a crazy ex-nun? Sign me up!), Search and early Y&R? :lol:

Edited by Cat
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