saynotoursoap

Does anyone know when she actually started? I beleive they are at least a month in advance now so if it was March, she wouldn't have started until mid-April. but it could have been faster or slower back then.

It was much faster. In those days episodes generally aired within a week or two of taping. The CBS house soaps were the fastest, with only two or three days between taping and air. Based on scripts I have from the era, ABC soaps usually had five to ten episodes between tape and air. Keep in mind this is a generalization. At times there were situations which temporarily affected schedules. For example, the 1973 Watergate hearings preempted soaps so often that many were taping over a month ahead of schedule. In the 60s, various strikes reduced the lead time to only one day, and some taped soaps were close to going live.

I read that Erika's first broadcast show was March 26, 1971, though this is not verified. Please do not post it on wikipedia or IMDB. However, regardless of the exact date, it is likely she was airing before April 1st.

Was he an actor on OLTL? Who did he play?

David Snell played Jack Lawson, a former college football star who wooed Julie Siegel into setting up housekeeping with him, much to Dave and Eileen's chagrin. Jack wanted easy sex instead of the marriage Julie proposed. Jack, who worked as a reporter for The Banner, two-timed Julie, and after they broke up, he made a play for Cathy Craig, Julie's friend. The guilt and betrayal Julie suffered from the relationship with Jack led to serious problems in her marriage to Mark Toland, which later affected most of the cast when Toland was murdered. David Snell left One Life and was replaced for a short time by Jack Ryland before the character vanished off the canvas in 1973.

Thank you for the article. I love behind the scenes articles with accompanying photos featuring forgotten sets such as Julie and Jack's funky 70s flat and Dave Siegel's office.

I don't think she passed away. I always got the impression the show's main struggles started in the early 70s when they couldn't figure out how to move on as viewers tired of social issues.

Personally, I do not feel One Life to Live struggled with writing in its early years. Considering the controversial nature of the drama and a lower station clearance, it actually performed quite well. It started off with a mid-5 rating and rose into the 6's for its second and third year. I never felt the audience rejected a tendency toward social issues on it or AMC, which actually continued the social aspect longer than OLTL. Both soaps always managed to incoroprate topical issues in an entertaining manner. If anything, it was a victim of that timeslot, which was quite competitive. OLTL went up against Edge of Night in an era which was considered Edge's best (it finished number 2 in the yearly Nielsens). Not surprisingly, when CBS moved Edge back an hour in 1972, OLTL's ratings rose into the 7's against a dying Secret Storm, and dropped again only after CBS selected its monster hit Match Game to be One Life's new competition. Many people believe that All My Children was an out of the box hit, but it was not. It debuted with lower ratings than OLTL and experienced much slower growth. The difference was that when it did take off, it was meteoric and flew much higher. Part of that was due to its own timeslot. For its first five years, AMC was broadcast at I eastern/ 12 central, which meant it faced zero network competition. The lunch hour scheduling also proved useful as it gave them a larger audience pool than a morning or afternoon soap. I really feel compelled to applaud ABC of the 70s for their patience with new programs. The network easily could have dumped both soaps when they were not instant hits. ABC could have fired Gordon Russell when he did not follow AMC's successful formula. Instead, he was allowed to experiment and create a very unique vision for OLTL which was far more adult and daring than anything seen on other soaps. I remember when Kathy Breech was playing kittenish Karen. Larry left Llanview for a medical convention or something, and Lana dropped by to visit. She wanted to know how Karen would amuse herself in Larry's absence. Karen laughed and showed her friend a stash of marijuana, and they got stoned. On any other soap, this would have been a plot point to foreshadow Karen's impending addiction to drugs, but not under Russell. It was nothing more than simple, recreational use and was written to illustrate something about Karen's character rather than to set up a specific story. This is what I loved about Gordon Russell's writing and the vision of his One Life to Live.

Dana was on the Tonight Show in the late 1980s. I cannot remember if it was during China Beach or when she made that film noir/ sex mystery with Doug Savant and Erika Slezak's husband. She was on Carson promoting something, and he asked her about her soap career. She commented about how soaps teach good actors bad habits such as overly dramatic pauses, stammering, and inserting "ahs" and "uhs" into the dialogue. Her attitude was disheartening to me, and one star (Jeanne Cooper, I believe) ripped her a new one in the press. She was young and just coming into acclaim for her Colleen McMurphy role, which in her defense was probably more challenging an assignment than Love or Life or World Turns. However, I felt she was being too harsh, as her experience is not the only one. I have far more respect for someone like Larry Hagman who always applauded his soap career as being an excellent training ground. It is all about attitude. Perhaps hers has mellowed through the years as she understands the business better.

You are not crazy at all. I found Ron very attractive, too. He performed a scene on Ryan's Hope with his shirt off, and as I recall, he had a nice physique.

At least Dana has one positive memory of the series. I like her, but in the past, she has been fairly critical of soaps.

Did Vic kidnap Laura? I don't remember that. Granted, I was heavily into NBC at that time and did not watch Love Is regularly. My memory of it is that it was similar to what happened to Valene on Knots Landing when she lost her mind and wandered off to Schula, Tennessee. On LIAMST, Laura was pregnant. Her husband Mark had an affair with Jean Garrison, and Mark went on trial for murdering her ex-husband Steve Hurley. Mark and Jean's affair was exposed at the trial. Laura had developed a paranoia about Jean attempting to seduce Mark, and when she discovered that it was true, she miscarried the baby. The subsequent mental anguish resulted in a fugue state in which Laura developed amnesia and wandered off. Vic Vallaro played a seaman type who exploited Laura's memory loss to convince her to run off with him. I don't recall if he technically kidnaped her or not, but she eventually got her memory back. This was about a year before Donna left, maybe the autumn of 1969. After that, she and Mark moved toward a tentative reconciliation so that they could adopt Iris's baby. This is discussed in one of the episodes I have online. When Iris's vision was restored, Mark and Laura took a second honeymoon to Europe. David Birney left the series, and Michael Hawkins assumed the role when they returned in the summer of 1970. Laura developed a pathological obssession with Billy and kidnaped him. I have an episode of this online, too. Laura decided to return to San Francisco, but crashed her car. A few weeks later, in September 1970. Donna Mills left and was replaced by Veleka Gray. Regardless of who played Laura, the crux of her character was always her desire to be a wife and mother, but something always threw a spanner in the works.

This is a very interesting article, more detailed than one typically finds with stories from that era. Donna mentions Vic Vallaro, an actor/director and coach. Vallaro later appeared with Donna on Love Is a Many Splendoerd Thing. They remained together for many years, but he had a serious drug problem, and she ultimately left him when he refused to get help. He had a son he had virtually abandoned, and when Vallaro died, the son was not even mentioned as a survivor in the obituary. It was quite sad. It was nice that the author mentioned her part as Rocket on The Secret Storm, too. People seemed to enjoy the episode I uploaded.

This is a wonderful article. One of my aunts harbored nothing but derision for soap opera and could never understand my love of The Doctors, yet she was mad for Young Doctor Malone. Twenty years after it left the air, she continued to share her memories of Dr. Stefan Koda and complex villain Lionel Steele. Young Dr. Malone has always fascinated me. It is one of the few network serials I do not have in my collection, so I appreciate anything I can find on it. This article is particularly gratifying because IMDB incorrectly attributes the part of Stefan Koda to the Michael Ingram who played Vinnie Wolek on One Life to Live in the 80s. Thus far, I have been unable to convince anyone at the site that the two soap actors are different men who coincidentally share the same name. Obviously Michael Ingram from Young Doctor Malone was born circa 1920. Thanks for sharing.

Some of this may be repititous, but I wanted to say:

Gordon Russell wrote A Flame in the Wind. I was not aware that Ralph Eiilis (who was a former actor) had worked on that show, so I appeciate the news. I also had not known that either men had worked on The Doctors. This may have been when the show was an anthology show with self-contained episodes or when the show had five-episode arcs in serilized form.

The pairing of Sam Hall and Henvy Slezar should have been wonderful, but I don't think that there was much colaboration between them.

I apologize, danfling and other readers. Gordon Russell and Ralph Ellis were co-headwriters of The Nurses, not The Doctors. That was a mistake.

Danfling, you are correct regarding Hall and Slesar. Henry Slesar accepted the writing position at OLTL because ABC promised him that he would be promoted to sole headwriter. They reneged, of course, and he left the series. Slesar told me that he could not collaborate with other writers. It was a personal idiosyncracy. He almost did not accept the position as headwriter for Edge of Night in 1968 because P&G wanted him to have a co-headwriter due to his inexperience as a serial writer. It was our good fortune that P&G ultimately conceded.

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What happened during Russell's tenure on The Doctors?

I do not know. It was before my time, which contrary to popular belief does exist!

Did Gordon and Hall get along? I think they were at Dark Shadows together too, although some of the DS writing was almost anti-soap.

I believe so, yes. Otherwise I'm sure Gordon would not have hired him to work at OLTL. In all the contact I have had with soap performers and personnel, I have never heard a single negative thing about Russell. By all accounts he was a beloved headwriter. Even crusty old Phil Carey cited him as the show's best headwriter.

Interestingly, Ralph Ellis had been Gordon's writing partner at one point. They did Flame in the Wind together, as well as co-headwriting The Doctors.

ABC decided to move Gordon Russell over to General Hospital. Pat Falken Smith and Gloria Monty hated one another, and Smith wanted out of her contract. ABC was willing to let her go only if they could replace her with a suitable headwriter. Russell was selected, and he agreed to leave One Life to Live, but before the move could occur, Russell was diagnosed with cancer. In the end, he wrote for neither GH nor OLTL and, sadly, died shortly thereafter.

I loved Gordon Russell, in my opinion, a far superior writer to his partner Sam Hall. Perhaps Hall was a superb writer, too, but he harbored such contempt for soap opera it no doubt affected his work. Russell might have despised soap opera, as well, but if he did, it did not affect his skills as a storyteller.

Smith stayed with GH until September 1981. Gloria Monty made nasty comments after the WGA strike, and Smith struck back in the press calling her a Nazi gestapo and some other choice names. ABC relented and let PFS out of her contract. She went back to Days and whipped that ailing soap back into shape immediately.

Didn't Ivan also try to poison Karen via her IV drip and then Jenny accidentally knocks over the IV, esentially saving her sister ??? I remember my mother telling me they would never kill off Karen - she's too popular ! LOL

Also, I know there was talk that Ivan was Edwina's father...was that just rumored or was that ever addressed in the story ???

Yes. Ivan performed surgery on Karen, but could not go through with killing her. However, after the surgery when Karen slipped in and out of consciousness, she started mumbling about Ivan's murder attempts. Ivan forced Faith to steal a drug from Larry that would kill Karen and evaporate from her system before autopsy. Ivan injected the drug into her I.V., but as you recall, the plan went awry. Ivan and Faith skipped Llanview when the jig was up.

There was proof of Edwina's parentage, and Richard Abbott considered publishing it in The Banner, but ultimately, he decided against it.

They always kept Karen with that double life, and yearning for some type of respectability she could never have. That's what soaps don't know how to do today. Everything is black and white. Today Karen would own a hotel and go around looking down on people.

Exactly. There was a brief glimpse of Karen's attempt at respectability in this episode with her conservative gray suit. Ina mentioned Karen's real estate class. This was another plot point. Karen had spent her life living off men, either as a prostitute or a housewife. Part of her healing process was to get a respectable job and learn how to make an honest living.

In the summer of 1980 she graduates from real estate school, takes the exam, and earns her license. Larry is impressed with the changes in her, and they slowly begin to reconcile. At the same time, Mario becomes engaged to Edwina. They are two wounded, conflicted individuals who get each other in a way that others cannot. Mario has attempted to completely suppress his life as Marco Dane, but the guilt eats away at him. He begins having psychotic episodes that summer in which he totally forgets his identity as Mario and becomes Marco again with a vengeance. There was an episode where he and Edwina are in bed making love, and he becomes violent and despicable, scaring the life out of her. Eventually back in his Mario persona, he decides to cancel his wedding to Edwina and confides to Karen that he must confess his true identity to everyone. Marco is haunting him, and confessing his sins is the only way to stop him for good.

Of course Karen panics. She and Larry have reconciled and are beginning to put the shattered pieces of their marriage back together. Karen knows that if Mario confesses his identity, Larry will realize that Karen knew all along, and it will destroy everything they have fought to rebuild. As unlikely as the storyline is, and it is just as convoluted as anything on today, you believed in it and went along with the craziness of it because it was all rooted in a psychology that you could understand. To me, that is what is missing today, where everything is plot driven, and character motivation is dictated by story rather than allowing a nutty plot to evolve from character.

I for one had not seen it so thank you. it was rather good even though Viki wasn't on it. I'm so glad Robert Woods dropped the accent. It was pretty thick in this episode.

I totally agree regarding Bo. Personally, I was never wild about the Buchanan family, but they were more tolerable when they stopped trying to be daytime's version of the Cartwrights.

Viki was not appearing at all during this time because Erika Slezak was on maternity leave, and the character had been written out of the story. This episode aired approximately two-to-three weeks before she returned.

Ivan Kipling was a marvelous character creation, one of the most unusual in soap history, but then, many of Gordon Russell’s characters were unusual by serial standards. In the late 70s, OLTL seemed the most adult of all the daytime soaps. Y&R had the reputation for being the sexiest soap, but it was “safe” romantic fantasy type drama. OLTL’s sexuality was baser, and often cloaked in negative expressions of guilt and repression.

Ivan was such a character. He had been raised in a strict, religious home that exceeded fanaticism. On the surface, he appeared a fine, respectable surgeon: competent, intelligent, a humanitarian. Underneath, he was a sexual sadist. He attempted to force his beautiful young wife Faith into bizarre fetishes, which left her cold and frigid. Ivan threatened to divorce her. He went out and rented a seedy apartment on the bad side of Llanview. There, he hired prostitutes to fulfill his perverted fantasies, which became increasingly violent. This was going out every day to over ten million homes and was actually quite provocative drama for the late 70s.

You see a snippet of that in the episode on You Tube which aired (probably) Wednesday, March 12^th or Thursday, March 13, 1980. What you do not see is Karen informing Faith Kipling about Ivan’s S&M activities with Llanview hookers. Karen gave Faith the address to his secret apartment, where Faith went and caught him. This is what has caused her disappearance from Ina’s boarding house. In the following episodes, Claudette Rio lures Karen to a warehouse, where Karen believes she is meeting Claudette. In actuality, Ivan awaits her with a scarf wrapped around his wrists. He attacks Karen, attempting to strangle her for revealing his secret, and in the struggle, she falls down a staircase. The fall leaves her paralyzed, but she is found and rushed to Llanview Hospital. Ivan offers to perform life-saving surgery on her, while Faith begs Mario to stop the surgery, since she knows Ivan intends to botch it and finish Karen off once and for all.

Yes, these were good days, but they would not last, and the writers remaining after Gordon Russell really never followed through with Ivan’s character. There were so many possibilities largely ignored.

Thank you, CarlD. This was another fine article from your archives, which are always a joy to read. I had not seen it.

I loved After Dark magazine

In my opinion many here are too sensitive and twisting Potter's comments to make them more ridculing than they really are. I did not view his comments as "dissing" or "putting down" As the World Turns. He merely compared the two stylistically, and having seen both programs at the time the article was written, I agree with him fully. The pacing, writing, and tone of the two programs could not have been more disparate. This is not always a bad thing, as there is an audience for both styles. I wish there was another soap in the classic World Turns style on the air today, but in 1970, soaps such The Doctors were the ones getting the attention. It was an amusing, literate, well-produced, and finely acted soap, more contemporary than the P&G soaps which were conservative, humorless, and at many times dull and repetitive. In my opinion, The Doctors and Days were the best soaps on the air in 1970. The only P&G soap I would rank in the top three under them was Edge of Night, itself stylistically night and day from its sister P&G soaps. Potter spoke the truth, and I admire him for it. He was an excellent producer and was afforded the pride he earned. The first Emmy win was deserved.

If any one should be chastised for nasty comments, it is Ellen Barrett and her criticism of The Forsyte Saga. It was not drivel, and she seems obsessed with cue cards. She ran poor Phil Brown off Search for Tomorrow because she was an absolute tyrant about actors being word-perfect with their scripts. He's the sweetest guy in the world, and could not stand her. She is a real piece of work, and I do not think she helped any of the programs for which she was associated. JMHO.

I believe the writer to whom Potter referred was Ira Avery. I do not have my program research here at my disposal, so I must rely on my memory, which can fail me at times. Rick Edelstein assisted Rita Lakin with the headwriting. She left to concentrate on prime-time. Edelstein continued on TD for a time. I think he was replaced by Ira Avery, who had written Love Is a Many Splendored Thing with wife Jane. Fred Silverman replaced them in mid-1969 with Ann Marcus, and some time afterward, Ira replaced Edelstein at The Doctors.

From my synopses dated the week of March 4, 1991:

Curtis informed Clay of his intent to leave Corinth and join the Marines. Trucker convinced himself that Trisha blames him for their baby's death, Trisha fell in love with an abandoned baby at the hospital. Ava confronted Paul about Carly's teenage pregnancy, and he admitted to being the father. When Paul argued he was too young for the responsibility of fatherhood, Ava rejected his excuse for abandoning Carly and insisted she no longer loves him.

If you find the date, I would be interested in knowing when Albers left. I know IMDb lists him as Curtis until 1991, but I'm almost positive he was gone by the time Cabot 'died' in February 1991. I followed the synopses into February thinking Curtis might have been written off after a two-year contract, but couldn't find any mention of him. After the immigration plot, Rocky / Rio dovetail into an 'exciting' storyline where Rocky cheats on her paper, is called in front of the college board, and then fights off the advances of one of her professors.

Stan Albers played Curtis March 1989 to March 1991.

Wow. For some reason I always thought that was how Amanda was first introduced and Lucille wanted her that way. I guess I got that all wrong.

When Amanda first appeared, she was married to Gordon Middleton, but controlled by Lucille who did attempt to curtail Amanda's independence. The breakdown story occurred in the summer of 1981, I believe. If my memory does not fail me tonight, Amanda went bonkers after her Uncle Chet was revealed to be Eve McFarren's stalker and killed by police. Amanda reverted to childhood because she was unable to cope with an endless stream of grief.

I liked Phoebe Dorin, but NO ONE ELSE seemed to like her. I realized that no performer actually was the character, and the character sometimes had to change. Phoebe Dorin and Rosemary Prinz later were on How to Survive a Marriage together (Peter Brandon was also on the show.). I image that they laughed about this, but I have no way of knowing how they treated one another.

Personally I liked Phoebe Dorin as Penny and did not think only one actress could play the part. There were several Bobs and Dons. There was no reason why Penny could not be successfully recast. However, CBS was in a panic in the early 70s when ABC and NBC began to present serious ratings challenges. Anytime a new performer takes over a core role, there will be protests. CBS and P&G overreacted in my opinion. Had Dorin been given half a chance, she probably would have won over the audience in time.

Are the Dobsons the ones who had Amanda acting like a child and playing with dolls?

No, Marland wrote Amanda's regression to childhood. He loved writing weak, neurotic women, though Amanda's breakdown was utilized to exit the character during Kathleen Cullen's maternity leave.

The Saint was incredible. Absolutely I have fond memories of it, but it is all tinged with unimaginable sadness. My birthday is coming up soon, and at this time, I always remember those who were lost. There were eleven of us who formed a close knit group of friends. When I was coming out, these men lit my path. Of the eleven, only two of us survive. Perhaps it is not appropriate to discuss here, but it is a cautionary tale that should be told. The world has changed in many ways, yet in many ways it has not. I should not be here now, but by some grace I am. Take care of yourselves, gentlemen.

I think Tim may have been dead longer than Mark Toland.

Mark was murdered in May 1975. Tim died after a fall down the stairs at Llanview Hopsital in March 1976.

I wonder if they may have said that Mark Toland was involved in the Natalie/Jessica switch. Obviously TLJ wasn't going to appear, but Julie was Mark's wife for several years.

I don't see how considering Mark had been dead for a decade in real life time when Nat/Jess were born. Mark died before Kevin and Joey were born.

Then again, when did violation of established history ever stop anyone at OLTL?