DRW50

The dialogue between Madge and Bryan is beautifully written. A lot of this show seems clumsy to me but this is the type of material Marland did best. I wonder why Biff would give the name of a man that Shelley would know, instead of just a random name. Did we know anything about Louann? Wasn't Madge Sinclair the name of an old character actress?

It doesn't matter all that much how close they are - they worked together when they had to. I know they aren't very close, I just used second in command because technically that's what he was. I just hope we don't get a President who wanted his state to secede.

Speaking of Bush, it's almost certain that his second in command Rick Perry is running for President. The media will fawn over him, I'm sure, especially once they realize their preferred choices (Romney, Huntsman, "T-Paw") are going nowhere and Bachmann finishes her freak show routine. I won't be surprised if Perry gets elected. Just keep an eye out for stuff like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry#HPV_vaccine

She does. She also looks like an older Lauren Bacall. It's strange, IMDB doesn't even mention this marriage. Was Bruce Edwards related to the Virginia Dwyer character?

I guess I was thinking of the other actors looking similar to their character ages. I guess Marcia may not even have been in the radio version for more than just the Hollywood arc, for all we know. That arc sounds a little strange for this show...perhaps because so much of it is about Liz and not Althea. So did TBD's radio version stay different than the TV version?

Marcia. I hadn't noticed her until you mentioned it, and I went back and read the synopses. I guess she wasn't on the TV version. Did they think Liz took her place? I guess the family was aged by the time they were on TV (although Babby was younger wasn't she), as Patsy wasn't 16 and wasn't a tomboy on the TV version. Is it me or does Althea look about 40 in that photo? I wonder if they wanted to have Liz as the more conventionally attractive sister, since she was quieter, and the more quirky Althea had the drive. The funny thing with the Hal Holbrook article is how much he ended up looking like the Mark Twain photo (minus the facial hair) as he aged.

Thanks for reading. I didn't realize this profile had come out a year or less before their divorce. That makes it kind of odd.

This is all fascinating. You are so kind to share this information with us. The pot smoking = flashback does sound like an interesting technique. I wonder if Luke killed himself because he was gay. So Biff had to use another name because Lori would have known he was shady, or was he just doing that to implicate Josh? Did we know anything about Susan Lewis other than that she was killed?

has made him the head of a household which includes - at least count - an eight-year-old daughter, a white French poodle, a Siamese cat, a monkey, a parakeet, a pigeon, and one big bowl of goldfish. As for how it all came about - that's an amazing story which could only have happened in the twentieth century, and it could only have happened to Biff McGuire. It begins, quietly enough, in a house on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut. Biff's father, William J. McGuire, is a contractor. His mother, Mildred McGuire, runs the Corner House - a home for underprivileged children and the aged. As for Biff's brothers and sister, one is in government service, one teaches school, and one "was written up in all the newspapers." (The newsworthy event happened during the Korean War, when James McGuire found a two-days-old baby in a rice field. The Marine Corps gave him permission to keep the child, but suggested that he also find himself a bride. James obliged as soon as he returned to the states.) As for Biff, the eldest - born October 25, 1926 - all he wanted was to be a farmer. "Every summer, during vacation," he recalls, "I would work on a farm. I'd help bring in the crops, trim pear trees, cut off dead limbs." And then he smiles nostalgically. "I used to like walking along behind a team of horses and talking to all the farmers." In 1944, when he went to college, it was to Massachusetts State, where he could study agriculture. In his sophomore year, however, the twentieth century caught Biff up in its wake. He quit school to enlist in the Engineer Corps. At war's end, he was in Germany without enough points to be shipped home, so he took advantage of the Army's plan to attend an overseas school. It was at Shrivenham University in England that Biff discovered he enjoyed acting and started to study dramatics seriously. That's how it happened that a young man from Connecticut, who only wanted to be a farmer, suddenly found himself acting on the London stage, touring Europe with a beautiful Broadway actress in Dusseldorf, Germany. The play in London was Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life." The European tour, under Special Services, was in "Here Comes Mr. Jordan." And the beautiful Broadway actress was GiGi Gilpin, who appeared in the same production as a CAT (Civilian Actress Technician.) By the time Biff had enough points to come home, he and GiGi had decided to make the trip together. To most soldiers, the trip home meant a return to the life they had known before the war. To Biff, however, it meant returning to a life he had never even dreamed of - and setting up a home in New York, the biggest city in the world. The sensitive young man who liked nature and the simple life had a family to support, and he meant to do it by acting - the craziest, most competitive business in the world. IT was like throwing Daniel into the lion's den, and yet... While GiGi retired from acting to have a child, Biff's career - as he says - "sort of snowballed along." Discovering that he could sing and dance as well as act, he appeared in the Broadway productions of "Dance Me a Song," "Make Mine Manhattan," and "South Pacific." He replaced Barry Nelson in "The Moon is Blue," receiving his first star billing on St. Patrick's Day, 1953. After a six months' run on Broadway, he appeared in the Chicago production, then went to London, where he co-starred with Diana Lynn. It was here, where he had first made his professional debut, that his performance earned him the coveted Plays and Players Award. Back in the United States, he appeared in the national company of "King of Hearts," in a New York City Center revival of "The Time of Your Life," and in more than one hundred and fifty TV dramatic shows. Biff is not only a regular in The Secret Storm, but has been appearing nightly in "A View From the Bridge," the Arthur Miller hit which brought Van Heflin back to Broadway. On his Sunday nights off, he usually can be seen in a dramatic show for television. And his first movie, "The Phoenix City Story," is now on view. It's a schedule which could throw an old pro, but Biff seems to be taking it in his good-natured stride. Yet...seeing him, talking to him, one can't help wondering: How does he do it? Onstage, he can be dynamic, poetic - anything the part calls for. But, offstage, he seems more the easygoing gentleman farmer than the temperamental dramatic actor. He'll sit you down, as thought he has all the time in the world, offer you an apple, and start munching one himself. You'll find yourself doing most of the talking, for Biff is a quiet man and, when he does speak, it's strictly to the point. His voice is so low, you can scarcely hear it. And what's this, you wonder - shyness as an actor? But then, because you find yourself expanding and warming to the conversation, you suddenly realize that it isn't shyness, at all. It's gentleness. Here is a man so simple, so natural, that he sees you as - not just another busy human being - but a part of nature , too. If he speaks softly, gently, and offers you an apple - how else is he to make one of God's creatures feel at home? The notion may be startling, particularly in the twentieth century, but the reason for Biff's success is not just looks, not just talent - it's spiritual. He has the grace of quiet, a serenity "within" which can bring even the outside world into harmony. Above all, he has the strength of simplicity. "Show business," they say, "is no business." It's crazy, it's nerve-wracking, it's tough. But Biff doesn't know what they are talking about. "I love acting," he says and, somehow, that takes care of the whole problem for him. In his dressing room at the Morosco Theater, while waiting to go on in the Arthur Miller play, he usually studies the script for the next day's episode of The Secret Storm or for next Sunday night's dramatic show on TV. He can take on any number of assignments because, as he explains: "I enjoy doing them. There are no blocks, so I'm a fast study." Living in New York also represents no problems, because he loves the place. Unlike so many city folk who have fled to the suburbs in a mad quest for the simple life, Biff manages to live it right in the heart of Manhattan. "I have woods in Central Park," he points out. Every day the weather's fine, he and his eight-year-old daughter, Gigi (Biff actually spells her name with two small "g's," to distinguish her from her mother), go walking there. "There's so much here - libraries and museums. It's a wonderful opportunity for the child. As for fresh air, you can get that anymore. In the country ,many children spend much of their time indoors, anyway." When Biff walks down the busy streets of Manhattan, strangers stop him - as friendly as neighbors back home in Connecticut. Only now they don't ask about Biff's family, they ask about The Secret Storm. They want to know: "Why did you do that today?" Or: "What's going to happen next week?" Biff even manages to have the animals that mean so much to him - thanks to a spacious six-room apartment. It's a regular Noah's Ark, but the population is constantly changing. That's because Gigi attends the Ethical Culture School, where children are permitted to borrow pets on a "lending-library" basis. She keeps bringing home owls, rabbits, snakes. "I'm waiting for the doorbell to ring," Biff says, "and have my daughter walk in with an elephant one day." At one time or another - and sometimes, all at once - the McGuires have lived with a turtles, polliwogs, white mice, a marmoset, a monkey, a parakeet, a pigeon which fell out of a nest, and goldfish. Two permanent members of the household, however, are Ballerina, a white French poodle who recently had three puppies, and Teek-ki, a SIamese cat. Luckily, the two young ladies in Biff's household - GiGi and Gigi - share hies enthusiasm for pets and help take care of them. Little Gigi, in fact, is torn between wanting to be a veterinarian or a ballerina when she grows up. But then, if she grows up to be anything like mother GiGi, she'll probably manage both. Mrs. McGuire - in addition to being a wife, mother, and part-time caretaker of the zoo - is still part of the theater. She coaches actors, concentrating on those who are preparing for roles in television. "She has a wonderful feeling for actors," Biff explains proudly. "She can help them get to the heart of a situation." Then, as he tells how much GiGi has helped him, it becomes obvious that this is one of the happiest marriages in show business. When you ask him about it, he tells you - as simply as ever - "I'm in love. And she's in love with me." Love, it seems, is not only the secret for a successful marriage, but for a successful life, as well. For Biff, it's the answer to everything. He loves acting, he loves the city he lives in, he loves his home. IT keeps him happy, and it keeps him free of the disease of ambition. AN excellent cartoonist, he doesn't sell his drawings - he just sends them to his friends as gifts. "To cheer them up," he says. And though he speaks of getting a bigger apartment one day, it's only so he can have more room for his pets. "Some day, I'd like to get a little farm," he admits, but I won't give up acting." One can't imagine him ever giving it up - not only because he loves it, but because he has no need to retire. Unlike so many who have to wait till their sixties to take it easy and live the simple life, Biff is doing it right now, while he's still young - and very much in love.

For a time, she felt herself hopelessly typed. Yet these are the very qualities which now make Augusta Dabney so believable, so right, as Tracey, wife and helpmate to Dr. Jerry Malone, on the NBC-TV dramatic serial, Young Doctor Malone. A woman full of dreams for her family, tempered with down-to-earth wisdom and a down-to-earth sense of humor. All the things the "typical American wife" recognizes as her most precious assets. At home, as Mrs. Kevin McCarthy, Augusta Dabney is the wife of an actor well known to TV, movies and stage. Kevin is a black-haired six-footer, with dark-lashed Irish blue eyes. "The one in the family who really looks like an actor," she says. The three children - "they all resemble their father" - are James Kevin, thirteen, known as "Flip"; Lillah, nine; and Mary, six-and-a-half going on seven. In addition, there is the five-year-old black poodle who answers to the name of "Daisy" and goes wherever the family goes. And "Midnight," the kitten, who is everybody's pet. And an all-around mother's helper and housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Sanders, of whom Augusta says, "A marvelous woman who has eight children of her own." The McCarthys live in a tall but not too large house, on the side of a hill skirting the Hudson River. In a section near New York City which abounds with such hills, and on a dead-end road where the kids can run up and down without dodging traffic. "In a community where most mothers stay home, and fathers work regular hours and are at home weekends. Kevin may be doing a movie or a TV play on the West Coast - he was out there for a recent Twilight Zone play. I am busy at the NBC studio several days a week. "Our youngest, Mary, got the idea that all mothers follow that pattern. Talking about one of her friends, she asked, 'Why doesn't her mother work, too?' It has sometimes been hard to explain to our children why actors' lives are different. To explain that i work because I have been an actress so long, it is part of me. And because I like it." Ever since the kids appeared on a Young Doctor Malone show during the Yuletide holidays last year - for a Christmas party scene in the hospital, along with children of other members of the cast and crew - they understand better this work their parents do. The experience left Lillah excited, but Flip, the realist, was unimpressed. Waiting round on the set while all the preparations progressed - the lights, the cameras, the many details involved in putting a show on the air - he got restless. "Gee, Mom, is this what you do all day?" he demanded. "This is boring!" Kevin is serious about acting, gay by nature, expansive and indulgent with the children. Lillah has his seriousness, Mary his humor, Flip some of his love of music. Kevin sings, has studied voice. Flip plays the trumpet. Lillah plays piano. In warm weather, they all swim to a little old pool near their house, back in the woods. Augusta is community-minded, is working for a new pool and recreation area, because that's important for all the children in the neighborhood. "The school fight is over - we worked for that and won," she reports. "I believe in getting involved in a few things that seem terribly important to you." Last year, she ran for the office of committee woman on a local colatition ticket, lost out to a long-time male resident of the community but enjoyed the experience, believes firmly that "things get done by those who will organize them and work for them." She met Kevin when both were in the play, "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," starring Raymond Massey. In Washington, prior to the Broadway opening, the young people in the cast just naturally gravitated toward one another, went out in groups between rehearsals and performances. She and Kevin were thrown together, fell in love, and got married in September, 1941. On her parents' anniversary, in the same church where they were married - Grace Church in New York. "They came East for the wedding," Augusta recalls, "from Berkeley, California. They hadn't approved of my marrying an actor - I'm sure they were still thinking of starving in a garret and all the rest of it - but the circumstances made it a sentimental, and happier, occasion for them." Augusta's family tradition approved doctors and lawyers. Her father was a doctor. Women were wives and mothers, not actresses. But, inadvertently, they had started this younger of their two daughters on an acting career. At twelve, she was enrolled in Mrs. Howell's Shakespeare classes, where the readings and dramatic productions were presented against the backdrop of the high-vaulted, balconied living room of that talented lady's San Francisco home. There was romance, adventure, drama, comedy - the essence of theater itself - spread out to feast upon. It nourished her through high school and the University of California, where she majored in English and Speech and got deeply involved in little-theater production. "By the time you are a freshman in college and you're willing to miss a sorority rush because on that day there are tryouts for plays, this must mean you have found what you want," she says. "So, when it came time to have that 'one more year at school somewhere,' after college, my father let me go to New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. "When the year was up, I got a job with the Barter Theater, at Abingdon, Virginia, for the summer. There was no salary, just my upkeep. But, to me, it was a way to live without needing more money from home, and a chance to go on acting. Looking back now, I realize how ruthless young people can be. How thoughtless. I simply announced that I had a job and wasn't coming back." Two weeks after the Barter summer season ended, she was in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." They were casting extras and she was picked out of a line of hopeful young girls. The show played a year on Broadway When it went on the road, she had the part of Ann Rutledge herself. World War II broke out a few months after she and Kevin were married, and he went into the Army. When he was cast in the Army Air Force play, "Winged Victory," she didn't travel with him, as some other wives were able to do at least part of the time. She was in New York, in a Lonsdale play. In fact, she became involved in a whole string of plays - about ten of them. She played the title role in "Dear Ruth" in 1945. She was in daytime radio serials - The Second Mrs. Burton, The Brighter Day. In nighttime TV dramas from the time television got started - Studio One, Kraft TV Theater, Television Playhouse, Robert Montgomery Presents, The U.S. Steel Hour. Her first movie was with John Beal. In the summer of 1957, she had a part in the touring company of "Janus," in which Kevin co-starred. Last fall, she played the mother in "The Diary of Anne Frank," in Florida, a successful and thrilling experience. She has done an episode for the Brenner series for TV and one for John Newland's Alcoa Presents. When the call came to talk about becoming Tracey in Young Doctor Malone, Augusta had planned to bring her little girls into the city and take them to the park. So they were with her when she went to the office of producer Carol Irwin. "I was asked if I would be interested in doing a TV serial. If I would like to do this particular part. Maybe that 'typical american wife' stamp I once thought was a drawback had something to do with it. What I could bring to the character was, in some ways, a part of my own personality." She loved the role from the first. It could be played with a light touch at times - "not all agony and ears, and our director, James Young, have a lovely sense of humor." She and William Prince, who plays Jerry Malone, believe that marriage and child-reading have many lighter moments, along with the problems, and they try to play their scenes this way. There was a time when she and Kevin went out to restaurants and theaters, and he was the one most recognized. But recently, at a Broadway play, Augusta was amazed at the number of women in the audience who knew her a s Tracey Malone and came up to talk to her. "It was fun to be recognized by a night theater audience. I'm more used to that in supermarkets. "I was hurrying through my marketing one morning, my hair not fixed," she recalls. "In fact, I was rather casually put together, hoping to go unnoticed. A woman who heard me speak to my little girl asked, 'Aren't you Dr. Malone's wife?' She looked at me again. 'It's the voice, more than the way you look,' she said. I laughed. I'm sure Tracey Malone would never have gone outside her own front door looking as Augusta Dabney McCarthy did that day!" Tracey Malone, of course, might have done that very thing. The "typical American wife" - whose job for her family comes first - cannot always take the time to put her best looks forward. She's too busy putting first things first. Just like Augusta herself.

September 1960 TV Radio Mirror

February 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

May 1949 Radio TV Mirror.

Another bizarre character change.

Yeah I thought people were initially excited under Wheeler because Holly had the Sebastian story (before it turned into a disaster).

I had the same reaction when I saw a photo of her on Young Doctor Malone. At that time Virginia Dwyer was playing her mother, but I wonder if she was still in the role when Augusta Dabney took over. Augusta and Kathleen as mother/daughter is a bit If you're interested in Pat Barry I posted an article on her in a thread on NBC soaps of the early/mid-50's. Something else that I noticed in the 1979 episodes was how much that Eileen character looked like Susan Keith. In one of her romantic scenes with Ray Liotta, I initially thought, "Wow, Cecile really was a great big whore, two-timing Jamie and Dennis," and then I realized it was another actress. I liked the girl who played Sally then. She kind of looks like Jo Joyner (Tanya from Eastenders), but she has a very natural quality. Liz and Jim were a great double act. It's a shame that Jim just basically vanished from the show, without any real sendoff, when the actor passed away.

The next time someone tells you how liberal the New York Times is, tell them that the NYT is now enabling hate groups that spread ugly lies about the Holocaust. http://gay.americablog.com/2011/08/nyt-gives-credence-to-holocaust.html

I was hoping to hear more about that too. I'm sure it was a bad time but I wish we had more knowledge, as more and more of the actors from those years are passing away.

I was watching some of the little I could see of Maeve Kinkead as Angie Perrini, and I wanted to ask, for anyone who's seen more of her run (or who was watching at the time), how was Toni Kalem in the role? And was Angie supposed to be so strange and childlike? By the time of the fall 1979 episodes, when Angie was pregnant, she was talking in some wide-eyed fashion, she had her hair styled like a child (sort of strewn on top of her head, with one or two buns). It was odd. There was a scene where she showed Willis the new baby mobile she'd gotten for their unborn child and said if the baby likes it it he will do this (looks happy) and if the baby doesn't like it he will do THIS (angrily punches at the mobile). It's also strange imagining Maeve and Kathleen Widdoes as mother and daughter, for some reason. I guess because I know them from elsewhere.

Did she say anything about her reasons for not wanting Josh/Reva to be together in the show's last years? I hadn't heard anything about Peter Simon and Ellen Parker. I wonder what that was..

Ste exists solely to make us weep for Brendan. Why does Ste make Brendan so angry? Why can't Ste understand Brendan? Brendan can't be a perfect father like Ste, he's had it so hard...why doesn't Ste get this? When Brendan hits Ste, it's out of love. It's dark, and sexy, and hot, and maybe they will live happily ever after. If not, who cares, since Ste is the equivalent of a punching bag who occasionally forgets his place. The real key to the horrible writing for Brendan is everyone around him. Ste is pointless. Cheryl is a braying jackass, no more or less. Pete, who is in a wheelchair for life, was removed from the story after the show turned it around to where Brendan was the victim for getting into a car accident/suicide attempt that almost killed Pete. Brendan's ex-wife, who appeared not even a year ago saying she knew and had accepted Brendan's homosexuality, suddenly acts shocked and bigoted. It's Brendan and the straw people. This show is so hollowed out that I can't even blame them for destroying everyone around Brendan to give Emmett Scanlan good material. He gets attention, he gets awards, and the ratings have increased in recent months. Great. But please please stop writing "Stendan" as a love story, and Brendan as a poor little angel. Just write Ste out. He's already gone anyway.

It sounds like Ellen is working at DC Comics now.

Those kinds of errors are shocking in the age of Google and Wikipedia. I love Beverlee McKinsey but I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more blunt talk about her. I'm sure she must have been a very tough lady. I am glad you're posting more often. And thanks (thanks to Vee too) about the book. I don't know why but I always feel some need to defend Ellen Wheeler when she is bashed too much, but I'm going to refrain, since now I'm getting those flashbacks of Jonathan yelling all his lines. I also wanted to say I hope all the old stuff I posted isn't deterring anyone from commenting on more recent things. I've been watching some 50's episodes lately and was posting the 50's stuff I had available.

I remember how much talk that got at the time, even ending in rumors about her and the guy who played Cyrus. Did she say anything about the supposed conflicts between Gina Tognoni/Stephanie Gaschet over Pelphrey, or the rumors of discord between Grant Aleksander and his leading ladies that the actresses denied in the soap press? I wonder if Kim and Beth ever got into it over being the only ones to have an opening credits sequence for a while in 2005 or 2006 or whenever.