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Ellen Holly 1971 interview, photos


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I can see the rationale but I think Mimi King is pushing it unless you want to do some Buchanan celebration for a few days. Actually, Echo is pushing it too. We've seen a lot of random people show up, but unfortunately too few of them have had storylines that made sense - I did like the Chuck Wilson dynasty a few years ago though, I thought that was a brilliant little touch. I'd welcome Tina back any day, however, she's in a league of her own. I see no reason why Andrea Evans can't be around with those kids and let John Loprieno be on recurring. That's not going to wreck the budget, nor is Michael Storm doing recurring to support a Wolek kid.

I think if Light was willing you could play the sort of David and Dorian tease with Karen and Larry if she were to pop in and out from time to time. She can't commit to domesticity, but he is the only one for her.

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Thank you for posting this, Ellen Holly sounds like a fascinating woman, and she's gorgeous in those photos. I've never really watched OLTL and I must say I'm pretty unfamiliar with its history(same goes for the other ABC soaps) aside from knowing that Robin Strasser and Erika Slezak being the stars of the show. In fact I've seen more OLTL discussion here at SON than anywhere else. And as a Navajo myself I can totally relate to her feelings of being "a stranger in my own land". I wonder why she wasn't in more soaps after her OLTL stint--her age by then a factor too? Her IMDB shows she was on GL but as a judge but of course I was too young/didn't know then to know who she was, how was that received?

If I may ask, what did Slezak say to make Holly angry?

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There was a quote from ES in a SOD spread commemorating OLTL's 20th/25th anniversary (I remember reading it in the 25th anniversary issue but it may have been a reprint from the 20th, at any rate, it was in response to where Rauch had taken the show whether this was at his height or the dawn of the Gottlieb era). It said something to the effect that OLTL used to be a show about all types of people and now there were no more black people, no more Jewish people, no more poor people in Llanview, they were all WASPy "haves" now. EH mistook the quote as cavalier, and that was not ES's intention. She was bemoaning the show's loss of diversity.

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Thanks, and I can see how that could be misinterpreted. While I have not seen much of Slezak's own work I understand her significance to the show and to daytime(she's won the most Emmys hasn't she?) so I was wondering what she said. Plus I always love hearing abouth those soapy behind the scenes feuds ^_^

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Holly also held a bit of a grudge from, she alleged, Slezak complaining to the brass when Viki was Carla's maid of honor at her wedding to Jack Scott. Slezak's complaint was that Viki and Carla were not that close. I think EH was misdirecting her anger and oversensitive about both bits, but to be fair she had also been subject to a lot of disdainful and absent-minded treatment by the show PTB for years. In many ways it seems Ed and Carla went from being groundbreaking to becoming the original tokens. There isn't a feud between Slezak and Holly, however, that I know of. Slezak also said when she responded to the issue that she had lobbied to get more for Holly to do on the show.

Holly and Robin Strasser apparently remain close; a couple years ago, SOD claimed Holly was writing a thriller screenplay to feature Robin. A noble idea and I admire her creativity but I can't see that selling. She is however a brilliant writer.

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ABCD would never green light the return of Ellen Holly, not even for a cameo visit. Even if none of the admin. from the period when she was there remains, the daytime suits there will ever forgive her for the book she wrote. She violated the cardinal rule of the industry. No matter how bad you get kicked in the head, you never tell. This is why when Al Freeman made a brief return in 2000 as Ed Hall, with he and Carla's grandson Jared, she wasn't at all mentioned. Holly burned her bridges with them.

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I don't know - Robin Strasser blasted the network for ages on her hotline, where she occasionally comes off like a street person, bless her heart, and they still hired her back. She's never exactly been a quiet mouse; she is candid and ballsy, and occasionally nutty. I adore her though; anyway, that's not the point.

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Thanks Vee, I was going to get into the stuff about the wedding. She also felt that ES didn't have any significant NY theatre credits to merit her rise on the show and she remained a great fan of Gillian Spencer's work as Viki and Niki which she praises higher than Joanne Woodward in TTFOE. I guess some people just don't click, I don't know. Maybe there was something about ES that just rubbed EH the wrong way, one of those things where you just have to be around the person the sort of hours they were in order to really understand.

Linda Gottlieb invited EH back for the 25th anniversary, it was EH who declined (and yes, this was pre-book). I don't know if she was asked back during the Jared Hall non-s/l or not. I would guess that FV and RC have much more respect for EH and Carla than Paul Rauch did and they would welcome her back if they found a way to incorporate the character. I also think they might be "polite" enough to run it by ES if they've done their homework and read the book. I'm sure ES could care less and she'd take the opportunity to have a brief chat in the hall, let bygones be bygones.

Learning more about Robin's own upbringing with her stepfather and all I imagine she and Ellen had some interesting conversations. It would be nice if they could get with a young fresh out of college film crew and throw togther a little indie project. Of course I have in fact seen Robin in a thriller, a horror really, The Bride/The House That Cried Murder.

I really miss her Hotline. :wub:

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I get the feeling from everything I've read, that Holly can be a bit "difficult"--and if she doesn't like someone, then she doesn't like someone. But as Vee pointed out, she has good reason to be the way she is, and more than a little defensive and quick to see snubs even if they aren't there--often they genuinedly were (and from reading articles this was true pre OLTL of course was well--after all it was her article about being near un hirable as an actress that led to Agnes Nixon's story idea--).

How I wish we could see some footage of Gillian as Vicki/Nicki (it's often forgotten that Erika never played Nicki till the mid 80s). Has anyone ever read ANYTHING or seen a picture of Joanne Dorian in the role, for under a year I think, between Gillian and Erika? I know the actress was actually married to Michael Zaslow from '65-'71.

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I've seen one or two pictures of JD from around that time, one on that OLTL site we've referenced in the past that has pics of all the recasts, the site that has 1994 bandwith and can only handle but so many hits a day. ^_^ You can see the Gillian Spencer resemblance for which she was apparently cast. She also looked a bit like a young Geraldine Page, those large round cheekbones. JD is Christian Slater's godmother, MZ was his godfather, by way of their friendship with his mother, Mary-Jo Slater who used to cast One Life.

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Erika did a brief bit as Niki in the late, late '70s - in Joe and I think Vinnie Wolek's remembrances/nightmares of Niki, during, I believe, the Marco/Karen story, when someone (Marco?) tried to make Llanview believe Viki was cracking up again. It's all on YouTube. Then she didn't get into DID again until the '80s and the Rauch era, AFAIK.

The earliest episode I have ever seen is from, I think, 1969. It's B&W and it's the Meredith/Tom Edwards storyline, with Victor holding court in the very same Llanfair drawing room. There's also Sadie, Anna Wolek, Jim and a very young and geeky Cathy Craig - no Viki, no Joe, no Carla.

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The funny thing about Gillian, is if I saw that famous pic of her face pressed to Joe Riley's that is always used, I would NEVER have guessed that was Daisy Cortland! I wonder why she left--I know even as Daisy she only did a few solid years, I think? So maybe she's just an actress who didn't liek staying with one role too long (I can't blame her, despite the security)--and of course it wasn't too long after that she started to dable in writing.

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