DRW50

I believe Josh was back but trying to stay hidden because he was involved in flushing out the evil trucking scheme that was going on at this time, and had just killed poor Mindy's husband Kurt. That was part of the kind of ludicrous, but also sad, scenes where they kept putting off telling her because they wanted her to enjoy the wedding. Here's the last half of a February 1988 episode. I guess this was not long before the strike. Geez I think Will and Reva have the same hairdo! Only in the 80's.

and carried a live turkey up the steps of City Hall in New York...Yet, when Orson Welles first went to Hollywood and needed a "real lady" to play his wife in "Citizen Kane," he sent for this same Ruth Warrick - the ex-Jubilesta queen....and when the producers needed someone who wasn't a "lady," but down-to-earth enough to play the "other woman" in As the World Turns, the new CBS-T daytime drama - they, too, sent for Ruth Warrick. But you've driven along the Hudson River as far as Sing Sing Prison...time to turn off the road for Ruth's place. There it is - the Gate House, as charming a retreat as you've ever seen, complete with grounds and flowers, grass and trees, and a dog who jumps all over you. There's even a view of the Hudson flowing self-consciously by. And then...out comes a woman so beautiful that you wonder what's wrong with television. Why don't they catch the delicate coloring, the soft red hair, the womanly radiance of her? "And how do you do, Miss Jubilesta?" you gulp. As she introduces you to the family, however, her grace as a hostess comes into play. This, you recognize, is the "real lady" of "Citizen Kane." Her husband, Bob McNamara, seems like the happiest Irishman you've ever met. Then you shake hands with Jon, her thirteen-year-old son. You try not to frighten Timothy, the baby. "Such a cutie pie!" Ruth cries, referring to the baby. Then, noticing the cap on her fourteen-year-old daughter's head, she explains: "Karen's been wearing her hair under a sailor's cap ever since she saw Mary Martin in 'South Pacific.'" It's such a happy family scene, you suspect the real Ruth Warrick will turn out to be Mrs. Bob McNamara - in her favorite role as wife-and-mother. But then she ushers you into a huge studio living room, filled with antiques and fine old furniture...and, sitting before a ten-foot fireplace for a private chat, you're in for the surprise of your life. For of all things, Ruth Warrick turns out to be a philosopher. She's a real student - of life, as well as books - and much too intelligent, much too busy, to have time for off-stage pretense. She's a wife, a mother, an actress, but she's also a thinking human being. The real Ruth Warrick is like geometry: The whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. When she speaks of her acting, she refers to it as "communication." And she is much more concerned about communication in life than she is about communication on the stage. "The greatest thing in human existence is communication," Ruth claims, "and all unhappiness is the inability to communicate." She isn't referring to the means of communication. We may have the telephone, the cable, the singing telegram and the loud speaker, but there must still be someone to send the message - and someone else to receive it. All our technological progress cannot substitute for the art, the skill, "the feel," it takes to really project to another human being or to really hear with your heart that someone else is trying to say to you. Ruth was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, the daughter of Frederick Roswell Warrick, Jr., and Annie Laurie Scott. Ruth laughs, "You think that's something? Wait till you hear my aunt's name. Now hold your hat!" And then she tells you: Bonnie. "I was a big girl," Ruth recalls, "before I knew there might be anything strange about their names." If their names were Scotch, so was their character, and Ruth speaks proudly of her Scotch ancestry: "Some of their opinions may seem narrow-minded today. But, in their actions, they always came through with honor and integrity. They had courage, the unostentatious kind. And, though it made them seem a bit reserved at times, they had humility and pride - both in the same breath." It was because of them, Ruth admits, that "every time I found myself in a spot ready to throw in the cards. I'd think of them - and then I couldn't." A good inheritance for an actress...except, of course, that the Scott sisters would never approve of any of any "well-brought-up lady" being an actress. "They were a little on the Southern side," Ruth says, "my mother especially. It was all right to sing, however. That was a ladylike art." Mrs. Warrick was quite a singer herself. In fact, she had once been asked to sing on the famed Chautauqua Circuit. "Naturally, she turned it down. It was something ladies just didn't do - on the stage...Even today when she learned that her granddaughter loved music, she said: 'How nice for Karen to have music for a hobby.' Hobby??" Ruth repeats. "It's my daughter's whole life!" In Ruth's own case, the "hobby" started at five, when her father took her to see "Blossom Time." It was love at first sight. She knew then she had to be either a great actress or a great singer. It didn't matter which, just so she could stand up there on the stage - and it wasn't till later that she learned the verb she wanted. The verb she wanted was "communicate." It meant to share with thousands of people, in a hushed auditorium, the feelings you could no longer contain within you. Hushed auditoriums, however, are not always available to young girls in St. Joseph, Missouri. But Ruth had to express herself...so, until the day she could get to New York, she decided she would be a great writer. She majored in English, won prizes for a number of essays and short stories, and directed several theatrical sketches at school. One of those sketches was about Greta Garbo, and Ruth had written it herself. She had chosen as her idol a supreme artist of communication...and, naturally there was no girl in Ruth's school who could impersonate the great star to the director's satisfaction. It ended up with Ruth having to play Garbo herself. That did it! Communicating with a sheet of blank white paper in the typewriter was nothing compared to to communicating with a live audience. In spite of her mother's objections, she knew she just had to go on the stage. "My father was all for it," Ruth recalls. "He loved the theater. Every time he went to New York on business, he used to send me the music from the latest shows, and clippings about my favorite stars." Although she was determined to go on the stage, she still hasn't made up her mind whether to be a singer or an actress. "Today," Ruth explains, "they expect you to be both. In those days, however, you had to be one for the other." During her senior year in high school, the family moved to Kansas City, where Ruth became active with the Center Theater, a local repertory group. The following year, at the University of Kansas City, she played leads in a number of school productions. She also continued with her singing. She appeared in college productions of Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as on the local radio station. Then, one day, she just made up her mind. She decided to be an actress rather than a singer. "I knew my voice wasn't great enough," Ruth admits. Besides, she had discovered an exciting new way to make her acting more expressive - more communicative. Today, thanks to the popularity of such Actors' Studio graduates as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Eva Marie Saint, there is a lot of talk about "The Method." (The actor prepares for his role, not only by studying the script, but by figuring out the character's life before the curtain goes up. Then, when he is on stage, he can be that person, living the part, rather than acting it. Students at the Actors' Studio are asked to do exercises: Eva Marie Saint had to be a weeping willow tree. Marlon Brando had to live the part of a wax statue melting in the sun.) But, long before Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg had popularized "The Method," Ruth had devised one of her own. "The important thing about acting," she says, "isn't so much knowing how to read a line as knowing who the character is. That's why I started using what I knew as a writer to help my performances on the stage. I would write out the complete story of the character I was to play...background, history, habits - everything." Reminded that this is like "The Method," she says: "I worked it out all by myself. Besides," she laughs, "I agree with Orson Welles. He never said you had to make like a tea kettle in order to make like a person." But she might never have met Orson Welles...if Fate hadn't taken a hand in her affairs. Kansas City decided to have a "Jubilesta" - a fall festival to attract visitors to its city. "A man I had worked with at the Center Theater," Ruth recalls, "happened to be directing the Jubilesta. He called me up and asked me to come down. He thought I could be Miss Jubilesta. I said no. I could just see my family if I ever tried out to be a beauty queen. 'But it's not that,' my friend insisted. It's not a gag. It's a job. Thirty-five dollars a week, and all the clothes you can wear." Ruth was chosen Miss Jubilesta, and toured the Midwest, inviting people to the Jubilesta and recording interviews which were later broadcast on the radio station in Kansas City. But she ended up where she wanted to be - in New York City...with "all the clothes she could wear," a return-trip ticket she was determined not to use, and thirty-five dollars she had saved from her job. The train ticket was part of her prize as Miss Jubilesta. It was also the one thing which made her family change their attitude about acting. They couldn't very well stop her from going to New York when she had a ticket. Ruth's one regret was leaving the University of Kansas City...but the president, a friend of the family, told her: "Ruth, if you were like the majority of my students, I would hesitate and try to dissuade you from leaving. I H have a feeling, however, that you are one of those persons who wont't stop their education just because they're leaving school." She hasn't. To this day, she confesses to "running a temperature just walking through the door of a library. I am transported, any time I find a new subject - a new field to explore." And Ruth, with her goal of being a well-rounded person, has explored most of them. But, before she was finished with her job for Kansas City, she had one last assignment as Miss Jubilesta. She had to walk up the steps of New York's City Hall carrying "a live and kicking thirty-five-pound turkey" and present it to Mayor LaGuardia. "It was the hardest job I ever did," says Ruth. In retrospect, however, it seemed easy compared with the job of breaking into radio. "You just stand in the halls," she recalls, "and you wait. It's the test of fire. You hear the statistics. They tell you you haven't a chance. It only makes you more determined. It isn't because you think you're better than the others, it's because you're you. And so, you keep standing in the halls." (This was one of the times when Ruth was tempted to "throw in the cards." But Scotch determination kept her fro m returning home.) "And then, one day," Ruth continues, "someone gives you two lines to do - maybe because he thinks you're attractive. You do the two lines. You don't goof. And it goes on from there. You become a member of the union. And you find that, once someone uses you, you've passed the test. They all start using you." Ruth appeared in network radio on Joyce Jordan and Grand Central Station, then moved on to Aunt Jenny for her first real success. She acted in a Broadway play that ran two nights...and now the scene changes to Hollywood, where Orson Welles - in most ungentlemanly fashion - kept insisting he couldn't find any "real ladies." ("That's where my mother comes in," Ruth says, thanking her for the training.) Ruth was sent for, and went to Hollywood to test for the role of the wife in "Citizen Kane." "It was a wonderful break," she recalls, "and I was terribly nervous. But you should have seen Orson! He had been on the lot two years without making a single picture. This was his first day of shooting, so all the big brass came down to watch on the sidelines. I was trying so hard to keep him from being nervous that I forgot about myself and settled down." As it turned out, she settled down with the coveted role and a seven-year contract at RKO. During the next ten years, she appeared in more than thirty motion pictures. In 1952, Ruth returned to New York to do a play, but it closed in Philadelphia. Then she turned to live television, which excited her. She finds it much closer to the stage than to motion pictures. And as for communication - television is the great est opportunity in the history of the world! She starred in Robert Montgomery Presents, Studio One, Lux Theater. And then she took over the role of Janet in the popular daytime drama, The Guiding Light. She had had recognition as a motion-picture star, but never anything like this! When she left the show, strangers stopped her in the street to scold her: What did she mean, leaving The guiding Light? All she meant was...she was having a baby. For a woman, it is the ultimate communication with life. She never meant to return to acting again... Ruth can tell you exactly how she met Bob McNamara, a television executive: "A girl friend of mine, whose husband works in the same company as Bob, used to use him as a bachelor to 'fill in' at her dinner parties." Ruth pauses, and you gather that she was asked to one of those dinner parties. "She was quite chagrined when I took him off her list." She must also have been surprised, for no two persons could be more unlike. Ruth has a strong sense of duty, so that her Scotch conscience must be a battleground of conflicting loyalties - to husband, to children, to self, to career. Bob, on the other hand, prides himself on being "the real ham in the family." He is also one of the few living soft-shoe dancers left, and likes to demonstrate this at parties. In fact, he likes nothing better than a party, and the McNamara's throw one frequently. (Particularly on St. Patrick's Day. That's the big night at Bob's house, not New Year's Eve). A friend, thinking of Dale Carnegie's popular book, once suggested that there ought to be a special book for Bob called "How TO Stop Living and Start Worrying." But the nurse who came from the hospital with Ruth, to help with the baby, paid Bob a much kinder tribute. All the time that she lived in the house, it never occurred to her that Karen and Jon - the two older children - are not Bob McNamara's own. She never knew that they were Ruth's children by her former marriage to Eric Rolf. Ruth herself finds - and she passes it along to other girls: "A man who can laugh and have fun makes a much better husband than the serious type. He doesn't look for his lighter moments elsewhere. He has his fun right at home." And they do have fun. The most prominent spot in the living room is taken up by a set of rums, for Bob has organized McNamara's Band - which is ready to play your favorite request number at any time of night or day, even if you don't request it. Bob plays the drums, Karen the clarinet, Jon the trombone, and Ruth a bad but "enthusiastic" piano. There's trouble brewing, though. Baby Tim not only inherits his father's "ham" - he wants to take over the playing of the drums. He was fifteen months old when Ruth received the offer to play the role of Edith Hughes in As the World Turns. It seems so simple. The baby was old enough to spare her a few times a week. And yet, Ruth admits, she went through agonies of indecision, before she finally took the role. "I make myself suffer. No one else fights me. I keep asking myself: 'Do I have a right to be an actress?' And then I get sick. It was the doctor who advised me to go back to work. 'You're no good to your family this way,' he pointed out." And Bob, who's quite a communicator in his own right, simply said to her: "Hey, why don't you relax?" But she had never relaxed in her life. Here she was, still a young woman, and she wan't doing anything with her life. She remembered her grandfather - on the Scotch side. He went bankrupt at sixty-three, but he started up again. What's more, he ran a successful business until he was eighty-three. That was when Ruth got out of bed, grabbed the phone, and said: "I'll take the part." She realized, "I'm no good as a mother, unless I'm a whole person." For those who must communicate, there's no stopping place. For those who are blessed with searching minds and feeling hearts, life is always a continual striving rather than a permanent achievement. That's Ruth Warrick McNamara's strength! Sh e has not settled for being any one of her parts but for being all of them. Today, she is truly a complete person. What's more, if you want to know what "communication" really means, watch her on As The World Turns. Story-wise, she must know that Edith Hughes is neither heroine nor saint. But Ruth doesn't play her as a villainess, either. Ruth plays her like a human being...a complete human being.

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

September 1956 TV Radio Mirror

They do make a striking couple. I wish more were out there. I guess you've seen this. It's a fun little clip and seems very different for that time.

Do you think they should have recast Andi's brother or stayed with the first actor?

I was going to ask if you remember Leslie Bauer? I've only seen her in some clips from the mid-60s, and I like her, she has a lot of energy and strength which offsets the typical ingenue role. The Dobsons seemed to kill her off and Mike never really looked back. I wonder if she'd lost a lot of her appeal as a character. I know the actress said she wasn't happy with the writing for the character and was considering leaving, but was still surprised and sad when she was let go.

I didn't know Kyle was such a heavy part - offcamera - in the Alan/Reva story. I wonder if they should have brought him back, with a recast, when Chris Bernau had to leave. She never really said specific reasons but I always thought she was annoyed at Alex being reduced to obsessing over Nick and being a shrew. Is that Sally scene online? She gets on my nerves in every clip I see of her but that's an awful way to die.

her professional career as a dancer and, when Holiday Hotel left the air, she got a chance to dance with a group of American girls in Cannes, on the French Riviera. Johnny's work took him out to the Pacific Coast. They both got back to New York at about the same time. From out of nowhere, he suddenly phoned. "I have to catch Bea Lillie's show tonight. Would you like to go with me" he asked. She was surprised into saying, "But why are you asking me?" And he was surprised into answering, "Frankly, because I just got back from California and couldn't think of anyone else who might like to go." His honesty made her say yes. They began to go out together, became good friends, with no thought of anything more serious developing. At least, not on her part. He was sent to England to cover the Coronation of Elizabeth, for NBC. When he got back, he proposed to her. But why me? she thought. He never seemed to be that interested. Because I had to go that many miles away to realize I was in love with you," he answered the question almost before she could ask it. Even then, she didn't say yest to him for a while. Marriage was important, and she had to be sure. The wedding was on February 10, 1955. Jay was born on August 12, 1957. Blond like his mother, with mischievous eyes and with dimples like his daddy's. "The day Jay was born," says Audrey, "happened to be the same day that John quit a good agency job to go into business for himself. That took real courage. But I was with him completely. Our work jibes well. He works with actors and show-business people, is sympathetic to the demands an actress has to meet. I understand many of the problems connected with his business." Her own family background was as one of five children brought up in the quiet town of Maplewood, New Jersey. Her father is a dentist. ";I am the only black sheep who went into show business. My older sister is married and lives in Lima, Peru. I'm the next oldest. My brother is married. And I have younger twin sisters." Along with her older sister, Audrey was sent to dancing school at four, as so many little girls are sent to learn the social graces, with no thought of anything more far-reaching in mind. Sister didn't like dancing class. Audrey took to it right away. But when they put her in ballet class, and her unaccustomed little feet rebelled at toe practice, she clung to the bar, crying her heart out. "Get down if it's hurting you," her mother urged. "You don't have to get on your toes - you don't have to dance at all," she pointed out. "It does hurt, but I love it," the child kept insisting, the tears still flowing, persisting until she grew used to it. During high school, when the other kids wore congregating at the local soda fountain, Audrey was over at the dancing school, working with any class that happened to be in session, helping to teach in some of them. Dancing was more fun than anything else, she had decided. So much so that, when her classmates began to talk about clothes and what they would major in, she suddenly realized she didn't ant to go. Her parents were taken aback. All sensible girls went to college, got married, had children, and lived in the small towns where they had grown up. Their daughter wanted to go to New York and become a professional dancer. "My father is really a sweet person," Audrey says. "He told me I could have a year of study, provided I would live at home and commute. None of this living by myself in a hotel in the big city, or even sharing an apartment with other girls. He wanted me home when I wasn't working. There was one other stipulation: If, after a year, I had no job, I was to make plans for college, like the rest of the girls my age." At the time, all she wanted was classical ballet. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina - until she reminded herself that a ballet troupe spends most of the time on tour. Her parents would never agree to that. By late summer, the year was almost up, so she started to think about a job. The gates just opened for her, as they have seemed to ever since. She was lucky at her first audition, a musical stage revue. "A flop show on Broadway, but I Thought it was the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most fascinating production I had ever seen. Every time I walked through the stage door, I would think And they pay me for this! Before the show was brought into New York, there was the usual road tour. Her parents came to the train to see her off. "I was supposed to be a pro, trying so hard to act grown up - and my father was asking the stage manager to look after me! I was teased plenty, after that. But everyone was really nice and said they did look out for me." There always seemed to be a job when she wanted it. When her friends came home from Christmas holidays, she might be glad to have time off - but, when they went back, she could always return to work. When her family went to the shore for summer for summer vacations, she could go along - but there was always a job for her in the fall. "I got spoiled by it, didn't realize how hard it could be for me if I weren't so lucky." She has danced in six Broadway shows, including "High Button Shoes" and "Barefoot Boy With Cheek." She had offers for screen tests and turned them down because she thought of herself as a dancer, not an actress. Until one day she tore some cartilage in her knee, and it suddenly dawned on her that she wasn't equipped to do anything but dance. Doctors had said she needed an operation and might have a permanent limp. She worked with the knee and overcame any tendency to limp, but firmly resolved to study acting and combine it with dancing. She began to take instruction from drama coach Alice B. Young, decided this, too, was fun. After that, she studied with Sanford Meisner for four years and alternated between dance and drama. She was one of the Toastettes while Ed Sullivan was still featuring them to open and close his show. Just before the group broke up, she left to be standby for Gena Rowlands, who played the part of the young girl in the Broadway play, "The Middle of the Night." Gena never missed a performance - until two weeks after Audrey had left the show, because she was pregnant with Jay. To date, her most frightening experience was on filmed television, in her first TV part of any importance. She was supposed to be a nurse in a hospital, busy, capable, sure of herself. "At rehearsal, I worked with a doll wrapped in a blanket to look like a real infant. Nobody told me that, on camera, a live baby would be substituted. We got read to film - and in walks a real nurse, terribly efficient and sure of herself, and hands me a two-weeks-old baby. I wasn't used to young babies then, had never held one so tiny. I was afraid to breathe. The laws to protect babies and small children in show business are necessarily strict, so a stop watch would click every few seconds and the bright, hot lights would go out. I stood there, afraid to take a step for fear of tripping over a cable or some other object in the dimness. Audrey now admits, "I felt a little the same way when I first held my own small son." When Jay was born, Audrey dropped out of everything for a while, except to fill some previous commitments to do filmed commercials. She had already played parts on many nighttime dramas and, after a while, she began to do some again. Her credits include The Verdict Is Yours, The U.S. Steel Hour, Studio One, The Jackie Gleason Show, Schlitz Playhouse. One morning, she was down on the front walk with Jay, planning to take him to the park later. "I kept saying to myself that I was in a slump and I missed working at least part of the time. When I went upstairs, I called my agent to inquire if there was any job activity. He said there was nothing much, but later he called and told me about a change in the cast of Love of Life. I phoned personally, said I was Audrey Peters and I would like to meet them. The woman on the phone must have confused me at first with an agent by the same name, whose mail and messages often get mixed with mine. She thought I wanted to send girls over to read. But they evidently looked me up and found I was an actress blonde like Vanessa, and invited me to come over that afternoon. "I read that day, I went back, the next day, to read again. The director of the show, Larry Auerbach, was on vacation. When he returned, I met him and he asked me to be at a camera audition. I expected to find at least five or six other girls. Instead, there was just one other actress. To be so close! I thought. But I didn't dare hope too much. By this time, I wanted it very much." They thanked her for coming, they thanked the other girl. The audition was over. She went home, wondering. At five-thirty the next morning, she woke up, still wondering. Why am I so nervous? she thought. I didn't get the part, so forget it. It happens every day in this business. Johnny left for the office after breakfast. The telephone rang at nine-thirty. She ran to answer. It was her mother-in-law, usually a welcome call - but, this morning, Audrey cut the conversation short to keep the line open. Finally, she got under the shower - and the phone rang again. She raced out, dripping, to answer it. "You have the part," a voice rang in her ear. "You're Vanessa. Could you come over later and discuss a few things?" "Do you mind if I bring my baby?" she had to ask. "I planned to take care of him myself today." So Jay went along, captivating everyone with a quick smile, thrilled to be taken "visiting" - but not as thrilled as his mother was! The little boy provided unexpected excitement on the morning of Audrey's first broadcast of Love of Life. She had to leave the apartment early, for rehearsal. She had laid out the clothes she would wear, putting them in the living room so Johnny's early-morning rest wouldn't be disturbed by drawers being opened and shut, and the closet door wouldn't squeak even a tiny bit. She wasn't going to let her professional life interfere one iota with her home life and the comfort of her menfolk. Suddenly there was a loud scream from the baby's room. For the first time in his little life, he had fallen out of bed. "My poor husband was wakened suddenly. We looked over and found he was unhurt. But I left him still pacifying a frightened little boy. I was too worried about Jay to be nervous about the show. When I got off the air, the director said, 'Now you can run home to your baby.' I didn't relax a minute until we had guards put on Jay's crib" Since then, the two roles Audrey plays - actress and home-keeping mother - have run into no conflicts. Jay is happy with the woman who cares for him during the day. The studio is less than ten minutes by cab from the comfortable apartment where they live. "Johnny wants me to do the thing I love to do" says Audrey. "Being in a daytime show is wonderful. Especially this one, which seems to me to be so truthful, so interesting. With a fine professional cast and crew, and excellent production and direction. "The way I feel about it now, I would like to be Vanessa until she's a grandmother!"

September 1959 TV Radio Mirror

May 1974 TV Radio Mirror. Posting this mostly because it's such a striking photo of Liz Hubbard.

That's fascinating.

They look like they're in Hell. Which sums up The View.

The blonde was Debbie Simon, who got on my nerves, although that might have been because of the whole "take off her glasses and she's hot!" cliche. Janice was Holden's girlfriend, who became nuts when she realized he still wanted Lily, and she poisoned Lily, tried to muscle Kim out of Patterns, etc. I always loved her last scenes, where she sucker punched Andy, maced Kim, etc. Kim had to end up tackling her to the ground.

See what happens when we mention Edwina? She shows up in a new clip! In a pantsuit that looks like what Fran's mother on the Nanny might wear for a classy evening out. Look at all those extras at the Yacht Club. Holden talking about custody of Aaron enrages me even almost 20 years later. Who was Janice calling? I don't remember. The hasty writeout of Scott is mentioned here. ATWT had such a tough year in 1993, behind the scenes. I can't imagine.

Some of an ATWT episode from, I guess, June or July 1993? This brings right back just what a chore it was for me at the time to sit through episodes with sour-faced Rosanna and the tedious Lily/Holden sniffing. And Judson Mills is hilariously awful in these scenes, especially the big closeup of his "duh" face when he has a flashback. But this also has Janice, and I just adored Janice. Also some nice moments with Lucinda/Kirk, and with Bob and Kim too.

Leslie Denniston was very attractive but I never really understood why men like Fletcher or Kyle, who seemed to prefer livelier women, would want her. Maeve seemed very wan. So Kyle just left town alone? It never made sense to me that he didn't return when Ben was back, especially since the show never killed Kyle off, and Malloy was on ATWT around that time, hamming it up as a mad scientist. I wonder if there was more of a believability with Simon and Dolan than Parker and Simon. I liked Maureen and Ed together but mostly I just loved Maureen. I wonder if that hurt the character in the eyes of the JFPs of the world, or random focus groups - if people who casually watched just said, "Why does he have that dumpy wife." I wish JFP had tried more to move Maureen in her own right as a character instead of just discarding her.

Yeah - it's so OTT, although it does work here. I believe this was the Reva/Kyla "theme", and also may have played when Reva tried to kill herself, which wasn't really suitable. I've probably already asked you this before, but did you think that Maureen lost a lot of personality when Ellen Dolan left? I read a Digest from early 1987 that criticized GL for having Maureen decide being a hospital administrator was too much for her/bad for her marriage, and that she instead wanted to be a full time homemaker.

This is one of the most beautiful location shoots I can remember. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te-9cnXCDak&feature=related

I don't think that second scene was a suicide attempt. She was disoriented and wandering around without thinking. I'd like to see what Long's vision of the Cain story would have been, although honestly I think it was just such huge burnout for the Reva character, too much in too few years.

Some good quality ATWT up from late July 1985. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=902yKkWBgyA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL Who was that guy looking at Lily? Was that the stable guy who harassed her? Shannon looks a lot better here than she did with some later hair and makeup styles. This is more of the aftermath of Dusty's accident than I've seen on Youtube before. Kevin is such an odd character...I think Weber was miscast in the role.

August 1975 Afternoon TV.

They did something strange with her neck and head in that photo. I love the sweater though.

That's nice. Those old Afternoon TVs are probably the best soap magazines. Do you know anything about the dying ballerina story I posted a few pages ago?