Ha I love that Hughes owned up to that--because it was 100% true. I had hooked my mom on AMC by this point, but she worked out of the country for a bit over a year and it was during the time Alex was written off and Anna took over full time and I tried explaining it all to her, but she just insisted it was the same character (she had no knowledge of Anna from GH or anything, of course.)
You're right about Rauch's positives. And his instincts proved right ratings wise (it always interested me how with AW he seemed to want to create the most literate/theatrical soap, and then for OLTL he went high camp, but again this was in the 1980s/Dynasty era.) Honestly, I haven't watched enough of that era to probably fairly comment but have watched dozens and dozens of episodes over the years... I think the secret ingredient was HW Peggy O'Shea. From what I can tell, when Rauch took over, the Corringtons had recently been hired as HWs. He ousted them pretty quickly and by December 1984 Sam Hall and Peggy O'Shea returned as HWs. Sam Hall was out by June 85 (I can't remember if he discussed this in his last long interview and if he left or was fired) and until June 1987 O'Shea wrote solo, and the soap, despite all the ways it had strayed from its original target, was pretty great. This seems to be the Rauch period everyone loves. I know nothing about O'Shea (who died at 91 in 2014--too bad we don't have an interview,) except that she headed Capitol briefly between her OLTL stints and her writing goes back to the original primetime Peyton Place and Alfred Hitchcok Presents. I'm gonna guess that she just retired in '87--she was 65 or so. Then S. Michael Schnessel was promoted to HW and it was he and Rauch who seemed to really drive into the camp/craziness. He lasted until mid 1990 but the ratings were already slipping and whether he quit or what (there's zero info on him, but another writer told me he was very sick, and probably soon passed away, from complications to HIV) but Rauch seemed completely lost with Laiman and Carlson as to how to regroup the soap for the 1980s (wasn't this when they had a rap storyline, etc?) It's interesting to me that ABC Daytime were so quick to see the writing on the wall and to go out on a limb and hire Gottlieb. ABC Daytime was still so important to the network I guess since not too long after they would have let a show just run on fumes for years before trying to do anything to turn it around (although Gottlieb's ratings never caused OLTL to be near the top again, the show did become, of course, deservedly a highly respected show.)
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EricMontreal22 ·
