DRW50

Was this after he left GL? Don seemed to be accepted so immediately when he took over as Mike, even though Gary Pillar must have been pretty popular in the role. I guess he had such a warm presence. One of those old soap magazines has him at a party in one of those white jumpsuits Elvis would have worn, super-tight. I miss the days when just about anyone would go out in that type of thing

I have an interview with him somewhere. Apparently Terry the first time left because of money.

This debt ceiling drama seems to amount to Republicans kick the can down the road, Democrats say, "Why are you kicking that can?" and running after it. Republicans then kick the can again. And again. And again. So far it seems like we're just going to get more and more cuts. To Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and who knows what else. Have a decade of constant cuts done anything to help this country? I am at the point where I don't even know if I'm going to vote in 2012.

She looks younger in some other photos but she definitely doesn't look 17. Of course it's a better fit than a lot of what soaps started doing in the early 90's, where 30 year olds were passed off as teens. One of those old soap magazines was at a goodbye party thrown for A World Apart and they mentioned that Augusta Dabney had told them Susan was going to be a big star, and they said Augusta was never wrong in these predictions. I guess she wasn't!

August 1957 TV Radio Mirrow. I didn't feel like typing up the non-photo pages, but, since the scans aren't exactly great, if there's anything you can't read, I will type that part up.

Bert was a real hell-raiser for years - I think she calmed down by the mid-50's. Here's the December 1950 Radio TV Mirror synopses. Sorry for the poor quality.

If there are any you're particularly interested in, let me know and I can try to find other synopses for them.

In 2007, after Josh and Cassie were married and Josh became a minister, they had a story where Will, the baby Richard and Cassie had at one time planned to adopt, who turned out to be the heir to the throne (his father was Prince Alonzo, the Chippendales type they had take over SC), returned to Cassie's life. He had had problems, and Cassie wanted to help him, blah blah. Edmund worked with him initially to try to cause problems. He was a bad seed, doing things like pushing his father Alonzo into some power grid (this was an episode set entirely in the bowels of the Beacon or somewhere - one of those "new look" previews I guess), hurting Cassie's son RJ, and when he thought Edmund was a threat to Cassie, he pushed Edmund off the balcony at Josh's ordination or whatever the term is. Of course, like a soap story out of 1954, he was shipped off to some camp or clinic where he would be made all better and never be mentioned again. The kid annoyed me. Bad line readings, and every time they wanted to show how "evil" he was, they would just do a close-up of him randomly staring at something. He could have been thinking of Pokemon. I don't know, maybe he wasn't that bad, but it annoyed me at the time.

I think if GL was so willing to "go there" with trashy incest stories, they should have had some story where Edmund hated and resented Richard in part because he was in love with him. Cole and DAM had a lot of inappropriate chemistry. Even GL seemed to regret making Edmund quite so evil, as they gave him one of those convenient brain tumors. I liked Edmund with Lorelei (hated him with regular Beth, as she was so fake and prim and cold and he wasn't able to balance that out like Ben Warren did) and I liked him with Cassie. They just failed because they kept using him as a B-villain or an irritant when he should have been a lead. I will say that I did like his scenes with Beth when he came back around the time of or right after her pregnancy. I loved the way he kept pushing her buttons. I got hooked on the show again briefly at that time. Unfortunately when that annoying child pushed him off the balcony I lost interest again.

Wow. I had no idea. Great work. I wonder if she has any memories of her time on the show.

I think Joshua's version has, or had, more potential than Charlie's, but they spent too much time just having him staring at people or glaring. If this is about Ben, and not just about Phil, then the story has better potential, but I just think this is the wrong character. I really was hoping they would avoid cliche and make Ben straight. Phil would struggle with a straight son who isn't his ideal, because he can't say Ben never had a chance.

Sherilyn does a pretty good job. There's also less of the smugness. That clip reminds me of how that plotline always annoyed me. One of my relatives still laughs years later about therapy by the poolside, in a teeny bikini.

May 26, 1992 Digest, and November 2, 1993 Update. I don't know much about this Staige character. I still wonder why they didn't hold onto Howarth. I wonder if they had any other Loving fan meets before the show was taken off.

I didn't mind San Cristobel for the first year or so. They just stayed too long. The initial story of intrigue and Reva unlocking herp ast worked and I thought Richard/Cassie worked too. It just made no sense to move Cassie over to SC. The best thing about the story was often DAM's ass.

A temp recast for Y&R's Skip (Todd Curtis). What is his name? Tim Donohue?

Another 1982 clip that gives us a rare look at Pat Randolph. I've usually just seen Jacquie Courtney as being a bit old school soap actressy so it's weird to see how animated (even overanimated) she is in her scenes about moving in to Llanfair. She really really wants to move into Llanfair, people! I hesitated a bit when Viki talked about her childhood memories. I still kind of wish they hadn't done that retcon. Lots of other great scenes too, with Viki/Dorian/Clint, Viki/Clint, and Viki and Becky Lee. I wish they had brought Becky Lee back (I'm not talking about that racist con artist fiasco). She has such a calm presence. The show seems to have effortlessly integrated so many "country" type characters. I don't think they ever got credit for that. I always love the old clips where we get to see when Clint was much much looser. I couldn't believe he was sitting around talking on the phone with his left arm craned over his neck and listening from his right ear. It's not exactly a drunken sex orgy, don't get me wrong, but it just seems so casual in a way Clint wasn't later on.

You're right. I didn't even remember until I started watching the episode. I always think of him as Billy Walker. I guess he also looked different here because he wasn't surrounded by very tall actors. The first episode was a lot better than I thought it would be. Not fantastic by any means, but solid. I especially enjoyed the Hart mother, even if yanking off that towel was inappropriate. Who would have thought that an entrance like that would lead the man running down the hall to become one of the show's longest-running characters? I was surprised at the twist involving Duncan Hart. I was sure that the mother's friend was sleeping with the father (Farrington), and then what do you know, she's sleeping with Duncan! The other Hart sister, the one who wasn't a lesbian, got on my nerves. Was she around when most of the family was killed off? So what was the conflict between the Hart patriarch and his parents?

I guess it helped that EON always had high turnover. The show's willingness to hire people and move on meant a lot of fascinating roles. Ann Williams was on soaps for years but I think her Edge role, as Margo, which probably only ran a year or a year and a half, was her favorite. Kim Hunter is so fabulous as Nola. There are so many great scenes, even little moments easily overlooked. Here's one where Paige walks in and is horrified to find Nola off the wagon again.

I wouldn't expect anything more from McFadden than what you've seen. He tends to just sort of rasp through the days, and then he has some very good moments in pauses. The problem with gay bad boys on soaps is that it always becomes "They just want to be loved! Poor them!" And there's no real way to do that with Ben because I don't think the actor is suited to that type of complex material and there isn't any type of family bond that would make for any type of good contrast. You're just basically going to get Phil drinking and angrily whispering and shouting, and Shirley hovering. I also don't know if this will work with Ben because Santer conditioned viewers to see Ben as a bad joke, and as Phil's greatest burden. That is all he will ever be to many viewers. If he isn't doing drag balls by Christmas a lot of people will just say, "Bored now."

Peter Reckell and Steve Bond were considered for Det. Cutter on GL.

I think it's the wrong time to do this story and it's with the wrong character, a character many viewers can never take seriously, but oh well. It might be good.

This is from the July 1950 TV Radio Mirror. Initially I was just going to post the Right to Happiness section, but I decided to post the whole thing because I love the image of each radio soap having that little picture beside it. It's such a nice way to "see" the story, even if it's just one stock photo. It reminds us how much radio soaps were about imagination.

I found the first part. Let's see if I can find the rest...

From the June 2, 1987 Digest.