DRW50

Another episode. This surrounds the time that Ricky, Sam, and Mandy were thrown out of the place they were living in. Mandy was very close to Mark at this time, as you'll see.

They really do resemble each other. Some are hoping this means Daniella will be back too but I don't see that happening. I think the main thing with her is they weren't using cliches with her or trying to feed you reasons to pity her. It really has become such a tired cliche in recent years - Zsa Zsa's early days probably being the most blatant example (the "fun" thieving from the market, the predictable tearful backstory, the bitterness but she's a sweetie underneath, blah blah).

Mandy is a thief!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG8APegSeFI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

This episode has Mandy and Sam in the cafe, then they have some fun while in a fancy clothes shop. You also get to see Ian as MC Hammer and Jules being mugged by Baby Spice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QzkGUiB1cE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6klTeJwjYE&feature=related

One of the best, if not the best, Emily/Barbara scene, at about 30 minutes into this episode. Melanie and Colleen really go for it.

Thanks for posting these. I wish the Kathy stuff was still around.

Thanks for sharing all this with us. I never knew Graham Jarvis or Madeline Sherwood were on GL. This has already been talked about a bit but can you tell us more about Olivia Cole's story?

Mandy was a brilliant character, although the characters she had the strongest ties to are all gone. She did all sorts of terrible things, yet she still somehow managed to pull off a little girl lost type of vibe. Her mother was a mess and her stepfather tried to rape her, more than once. Mandy befriended Kathy, and Kathy tried to help her, but when Mandy didn't think she was being treated well enough, she went around convincing people that Kathy treated her like a slave and that Kathy hated her because she reminded Kathy of Kathy's badly screwed up, dead daughter, Donna. I still remember those scenes - they were just fantastically acidic. Mark Fowler took pity on Mandy and let her stay in his flat, but then she started wearing his dead wife's clothes and made a pass at him. When he turned her down, she lashed out at him too. I can't remember if she knew he had HIV. She took Sharon's beloved dog Roly out for a walk and stupidly let it go, causing the dog to be run over. She fell in love with Aidan, the naive/sweet/dumb football player Arthur wanted to make into a star. She began encouraging him to party and get drunk all the time, and he ended up ruining his leg, and football career. He fell into drugs and they both squatted in empty homes and on the streets. He was going to kill himself on Christmas Day, 1993, but the BBC stepped in, and instead Mandy stopped him, and he moved back to Ireland. Pauline took pity on Mandy and let her stay for one night. Mandy took whatever money she could find, and her last scene was hitching a ride on a truck out of town.

Anne also reminds me of Celeste Holm. Wendy looks kind of old there, perhaps because of the angle. I really would love to see 50's ATWT, especially the Edith story, as it was very daring for its time and was presented as a love story, not as Edith being a homewrecker. If Irna had had her way, Edith and Jim would have lived happily.

June 1957 TV Radio Mirror

That story with Gina and the attempt at an induced abortion sounds pretty shocking. I have to wonder why LOL kept going back to stories which their audience had previously rejected (hadn't they lost ratings in the late 60's/early 70's when they tried to do relevant or shocking types of stories). What did you think of Woody Brown? Were there any younger actors in the last few years of the show you felt had a lot of potential?

showing me a collection of stills of many of the stars I not only remember, but also adored. There were marvelous photos of Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn and of course, Greta Garbo. On a wall, she had a framed letter from Errol Flynn and did that ever help to make the years slip backward. I knew that Constance Ford had started her career as a Conover model but I didn't know that she was only twelve years old at the time. Born and raised in the Mosholu Parkway section of the Bronx, New York, Constance Ford had one childhood dream. She always wanted to be an actress. Her modeling days were just the start of that dream. By the time she was eighteen she realized that she couldn't continue modeling. The two careers were time consuming. So, she made her choice and fortunately for all of us, acting won out. She won a screen test by a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent man, who asked her to put a scene together for the audition. She was sent to Betty Cashman (coach and teacher) for that purpose and even though the screen test didn't work out, Constance went into stock work, then became an understudy, then to a role on the road and finally to Broadway in the hit play, Death of a Salesman. Her first daytime serial was Woman With a Past, which didn't hold up too long, but then Hollywood beckoned to her and she went into films. In a span of three years, she did twelve films of which she named just a few. A Summer Place, Rome Adventure and All Fall Down are just three in that group. She said, "I'm still terribly proud of All Fall Down even though the critics didn't give it much hoopla. It was one of Warren Beatty's first and a good film." In the beginning of her career she studied at the Actor's Studio; then with Herbert Berghof; then with Robert Lewis. Now, she has her own studio and teaches there. Then she told me she was once on Edge of Night in the role of Eve Morris and that Ed Kemmer (Somerset) was her lover on that show. Ed's wife, Fran Sharon, is on Edge now as Cookie Christopher. It's a small world. Then we asked Constance how she liked New York. "I love the city but I'm afraid of it in the sense that I'm afraid to walk out at night. Also, financially, things are almost out of reach and the hostility quotient is high. I wouldn't live in this apartment if it wasn't so well protected. I have a home out of the city which I rent for the summer because I love the water and I love sailing. I also love to swim and play tennis. That really keeps me in physical shape." When we asked about the star's hobbies, she had a quick reply; "living." Then we discussed her most recent appearance in Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the Papermill Playhouse. Constance told me, "It was really fun. I'd forgotten what it was like to work before a live audience. You know, you get so used to working before cameras. When you work on stage, you're close to the audience. They can feel that you love them and you can feel that they love you. It just makes you feel so great and it's so gratifying. "As to my future? Well, I like to act and I act where it's at. I love doing the soap because it's like doing a long movie. I can feel the role grow and progress. But, I'd also like to do a good play and a good film." It was at this time that Constance turned on her stereo and gave me the headphones to put on. Wow! Dionne Warwick and her latest on headphones. What a concert! It was just sensational. I even found myself doing a little dance step or two and then it really became fantastic to believe that I was dancing around in the living room of Constance Ford. But, it was true and what a morning it was. It was truly one that will go down in my memory book forever.

September 1972 Weekday TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdd3WjVrImo

I didn't bring it up mostly because this type of thing happens so much with politicians that I didn't think it would really affect views of Christie. To me he is an opportunist and a blowhard and unfortunately this is what gets attention in today's media and today's politics.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Thanks. Sid Owen charity video. I should warn there are a few disturbing images.

Who was Gina Gaspero? I've never heard of her. I guess this Bambi story is the one that inspired the soap magazine interview title with Ann McCarthy, the title I always thought was a bit tasteless - Ann McCarthy - Can She Take a Beating?

She looks even worse when they glam her up, or their idea of glam anyway. When she was on Doctor Who about 5 years ago she fit the role better and looked OK. That stupid pout and pose and Farrah hair on the daughter gets on my last nerve. I wonder if someone at Corrie is a big Marcy Rylan fan. The only thing I will say is that I wish the soaps spent less time on ads and more on better quality...but then, at least this shows us ITV still cares. I just wish they cared more about the show beyond the stunts.

Michelle Collins is a skeleton with a Farrah wig. The more hyped the ad, the drabber the characters.

Thank you for all your hard work. A lot of the early 70's stuff we know on LOL is from your recaps. If you ever have any more that's even better. You probably already know this but there are some GH scenes from 1977/1978 that were put up on Youtube recently, and they go along with your recaps from that time - it was so strange seeing a bit of the Laura/Lana story, after reading about it in your recaps. I'm trying to remember when you posted those, as I wanted to go through them again to brush up on a few of the stories.

Is it the jail scene? I think that's Jane Elliot, as Carrie.

I have a photo of Bonnie as Vanessa in a Daytime TV Library on this show - I will post when I find it again. I did a double take when I saw her here, as I thought it was Peggy McCay. I guess this wasn't too long after she took over as Van and they were easing her in. In the other photo she looked more like herself. I didn't ever know what happened to Carol, and didn't know much about her at all. At first I thought she was Paul's daughter (who also disappeared, didn't she). TV Radio Mirror had at least a few of these stories a year, up to about 1960. I don't have any others for LOL at the moment but do have some for a few of the other soaps, if you're interested.

emanating from the tribe. At 43, Lee is still fertile fantasy material. But he is not as I remembered him. In fact, if a third party hadn't introduced us, I might have walked right on by. Funny how people age, while memories of them don't. It was hard for me to make the connection - this man was newspaperman Joe Riley on One Life to Life, not private eye Dave Thorne on Surfside Six. I suppose I might have felt relieved because this meant I would be free of debilitating symptoms of adolescent lovesickness. But I didn't. I was disappointed that I was unable to recapture that silly, crazy, lovely once-familiar feeling. I'd seen him on One Life to Live and therefore knew otherwise, but I'd gone to meet Lee expecting him to look as he did back in his Hollywood days, and my pajama party days, anyway. Don't get the wrong idea. Lee happens to be more stunning now than ever. Like fine wines, most men seem to improve with age, and Lee is living proof. The years had not changed his basic feelings about marriage one iota, however. To my surprise, I discovered that Lee is still what is referred to as an eligible bachelor, although he isn't all that eligible because he's not too keen on the institution. When I asked Lee if he thought he might get married one day, he tried to dismiss the subject with a joke. "Why should I get married, when I walk with a stoop naturally," he cracked. Lee then noticed my no compendre expression and explained, "You know, the burdens of marriage..." Lee was a bit evasive. "marriage in whose eyes? The church? The state? Who's gonna tell me? I think committment is a very personal thing. I'm too much of a free thinker to be told how I should make my commitments." A little research turned up these remarks, made 11 years ago to a TV Radio Mirror reporter: "I like women and I date a lot - but casually. I don't like to be tied down." Then a little further on in the story, "Sure, I'd like to be married someday. I'm no nut who wants to live alone forever. Lots of times, I think I'd like to get married right now." Still further on, Lee used a subject-changing tactic that he was to use 11 years later with me. "Besides, the community property laws in this state (California) scare the devil out of me!" he joked. Eleven years ago, Lee might have called himself marriage shy, a term which sounds like an infectious disease. And with the aid of hindsight, it seems he felt compelled to sound amenable to the idea of marriage - in the future, mind you. Today he calls himself a free-thinker and doesn't feel the necessity to reassure the whole world that, yes, don't worry, he'll get married one day. Interesting. I happen to think Lee would still be described as marriage shy were it not for the fact that kids today, by refusing to have their disdain for the statistically not very successful institution dubbed a hang-up, have vindicated the older hold-outs from other generations. Lee was simply ahead of his time. For a free-thinker, however, he has some mighty old-fashioned ideas about permissiveness in the media. "I think all this sex that is bombarding us is revolting and terribly damaging," he proclaimed. "I think we fantasize enough, we don't have to be encouraged to do it more. And I'll tell you that when I take a lady to the movies or to the theatre I don't like to see nudity because I would like to be able to stimulate my mate myself. I don't want her stimulated by someone she sees on screen or on stage. Then I'm just a plaything. I think all this permissiveness brings sex down to a very cheap level. People will soon start thinking of sex as just a commonplace function and it will lose a lot of its beauty. "And I'd never act in a play or film that involves nudity. No way. I've been offered about eight things over the last few years that I've refused to do for that reason. I'd take my shirt off, but I won't take my pants off. I know everyone seems to be doing it these days, but that's exactly what I object to. If some people want to see even real hard-core pornography, let them. However, there has to be some freedom of choice. What I object to is being bombarded with this everywhere I turn. When I'm getting into a cab with a lady, I dont't want her to have to see a bus go by with a half-naked lady on the side advertising soda pop. This permissiveness in the media seems to be everywhere we turn." These do not sound like the words of a free-thinker, do they? But on second thought, Lee's attitude isn't exactly calculated to win him friends in the entertainment industry. And that industry is supposedly based on giving the public what it wants, so Lee's opinion on this matter would seem to be a minority one. Sounds like free thinking to me, after all. Lee always says what he feels, even if that means putting himself in a less than glorious light. By this point in the interview, I already knew that. And yet, when he said, "I see myself as a puppet, not as an actor. An actor is someone like Paul Scofield, or George C. Scott," I had to object. But while I played the adoring fan to Lee's humble hero, it became apparent that no amount of protests on my part would convince this fine actor, who had starred on the London stage for many years and in over 25 films in Europe, that he was anything but a tool, albeit a finely honed one, but just a tool nonetheless. "I'm simply a yeoman," said Lee, refusing to boast. "And the secret of my success? I had the ability to hang on a little bit longer than some people." And the secret of Lee's happiness is his ability to derive satisfaction from whatever he does. But the important word here is "does." Lee is a doer. "I don't read, watch television or go to movies," he insisted. "There's time for that when I'm dying off. Right now I don't want to live my life vicariously. And I never want to become involved in one thing to the exclusion of everything else. I love to act, but believe me when I say I'm enjoying talking to you just as much as I would enjoy doing a scene from a fine play." Before I could swoon, Lee then ticked off a list of activities he would also equally enjoy engaging in - sculpting, playing polo, flying his own plane and collecting antiques, to name a few. Lee's ability to enjoy a wide variety of endeavors, in fact, is really the very reason he is an actor today. It was while working for the BBC as a technical designer after he'd completed his studies in fine arts at the Ontario College of Art that Lee literally stumbled into an acting career. As a favor, he'd gone to pick up a check for one of the actors at his agent's office. The next day, the agent called and suggested he try out for a part in Death of a Salesman. Lee had never studied acting and had never even thought about becoming an actor, but it wasn't necessary for the agent to say, "Try it, you'll like it," to convince Lee to audition. It was a new experience, and Lee liked new experiences. So, he tried it and he liked it and the rest is, as they say, history. - Rose Linder