DRW50

1969 Who's Who in Daytime TV (Eileen looks like some of the more experimental artwork from Marvel at this time):

I was trying to remember when that story started. I wonder if something was planned but dropped. Poor Pat - she always gave her best even in the smallest scenes. I know many felt that she was a spare part but I feel like characters like Ellen are what make soaps unique, these figures of history and wisdom and warmth, yet also with an occasional edge. She's someone I didn't appreciate until I was older and she was already gone.

From the June 3, 1980 Digest.

Do you know anything about Sounds of the City, a black-oriented soap which ran on the Mutual Black Network from spring 1974 to spring 1975?

Yes.

Dumping the Matthews family (although that also went on after Lemay left), focusing on characters who left after a few years, bringing in the Frame siblings who were seen as mostly too unsympathetic or toxic for some to invest in. I don't know if this was a popular opinion or not. I do wonder sometimes as the show seemed to have little structure by the end of the 70s, and if Vicky Wyndham or Doug Watson had decided to leave I don't know what would have happened. Sometimes those fans reminded me of Aunt Liz or Rachel when they used to tear into the Frames - something Lemay captured very well in his brief 1988 return.

Some longtime AW fans insisted that Lemay/Rauch destroyed AW...while that's probably hyperbole I have often seen their point.

I guess Ohio big business and government must be relieved that Wisconsin took any attention away from them. Their bill also includes firefighters and cops in their anti-union legislation, and it seems to say that striking will get you put in prison? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02states.html?_r=2&hp

Yeah it's so sad to me when people say the show has the best teens ever now or the best college students ever. I'm usually like, "Was 2007 that long ago?" To me the show continues to have some shockingly bad new characters/actors.

I wonder if Lemay knew how to structure a soap or not - at AW he brought other playwrights in as breakdown writers and seemed to restructure the soap to his tastes. This worked with AW because it had a strong past for viewers which he could still use, but L&F didn't.

Those are great ads, so unique and they also make you care about the story. Love the one of Barbara looking nuts. There's a color one of Dusty from around this time, some sort of smoldering type of shot. It's interesting they would market him that way when Marland wrote him just the opposite (much to Bloom's annoyance). Speaking of Marland, this is one of my favorite endings to any soap episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxyqPyM5qVI&feature=related Do you have any idea of where specifically the strike material began, and what the scabs created? I know Marland didn't write Dusty's exit (although I thought it was fine). He also apparently did not write the part where Sierra was presumed dead when Craig returned - someone said he was very angry about that. Did he write all the stuff with Lillith? I guess he had mentioned her years before she showed up didn't she? I just wonder because so much about Lillith was un-Marland, at least ATWT Marland. Did the scabs change Laura from obsessing over Tom to obsessing over Bob?

I miss Zak.

He's in the one 70s episode available on Youtube. I can't embed but you can just go in and search As the World Turns 1978. He's in the first part. I remember Schemering saying that the "recycling" of an alcoholism story and a story about a hooker helped the ratings fall. I guess that must have been Kevin. I think he had a lot of baggage with Susan over drinking and it ultimately led to his death.

jam I don't know if you saw the earlier ATWT Daytime Library scans I put up but I was going to ask if there are any specific actors you'd like me to post that I haven't yet. If so let me know.

What did you think of Vicky Dawson?

She seems like a very believable daughter to Ellen and David and also very pretty but not generic (I hate the outfit they stuck her in). I kind of wonder sometimes where ATWT might have gone if they hadn't recast Betsy/Dee/Annie so many times. I know Jacquie Schultz and Meg Ryan were both popular but it seems like the characters were not defined.

Sure. I wasn't posting as much as I thought you'd probably already seen quite a few and I wasn't sure if others were reading, but I will post some soon.

From the July 1950 Radio TV Mirror. Right to Happiness When the courts awarded custody of her son, Skippy, to her divorced husband, Dwight Kramer, Carolyn Kramer would have lost hope if she and her fiance, Miles Nelson, were not certain that Dwight won the suit with evidence faked by his lawyer, Arnold Kirk. Miles, who is running for governor, promises to go after this evidence, which consists of some dictaphone records, as soon as his campaign ends. But while he is away on a tour, Carolyn learns of Dwight's plan to move to Chicago with Skippy, and makes a desperate attempt to get the records herself. She is caught by Kirk, who cleverly uses the incident to blacken her character still further.

From the March 1976 TV Dawn to Dusk.

From the September 2, 1980 Digest.

From the July 1973 Afternoon TV.

From the July 1973 Afternoon TV.