saynotoursoap

I would like to clear up some confusion and misinformation regarding the mid-70's era of The Doctors, as much of what has been written about it in the history books is inaccurate.

First off, Douglas Marland did NOT create the Dancy family. The date of the first appearance for the Dancys is given as 1976, but it is not correct. Joan and Jerry debuted in December 1975. They were created by Margaret Depriest. In the storyline, Penny worked for the paramedical unit at Hope Memorial. Joan was a junkie who had overdosed during the holidays. Penny saved her, but Joan went into a coma. We did not know that she was a Dancy at first. Her name was given as Joan Peterson, and Jerry pretended to be an unrelated neighbor instead of her brother. Nola and Virginia started in July 1976, then Sarah arrived in early August, and finally Luke in mid-August. Barney did not appear until January 1977.

Virginia died in March 1978. Luke owned a supper club called Andre's that was across street from Hope Memorial (shades of Ryan's Bar on RH). The club needed electrical renovation. I think Luke tried to bribe a city inspector and then paid a shady electrician to do the rewiring. Sara Dancy and Mike Powers were having an engagement party for the club's opening. The wiring system shorted out and started a fire that raced through club. The ceiling collapsed on Tom Carroll, killing him. Virginia died later from smoke inhalation.

Margaret DePriest's work on the show was very good, I thought. It was superior to what the Pollocks had done at the end of their tenure. Ratings for The Doctors held just fine until ATWT expanded to an hour, and the Dobsons took over Guiding Light. The time changes at CBS and NBC caused the ratings for all of NBC's soaps to fall, with Days and The Doctors taking the hardest hit initially. The drop in ratings really wasn't reflective of the writing. In 1976, I vastly preferred The Doctors over Guiding Light. It should also be pointed out that under Doug Marland, ratings for The Doctors fell even further, and his tenure was not popular with the older audience, particularly when he turned Matt into an alcoholic and let Maggie have an affair with Kyle.

Wow, saynotoursoap. I've never heard a story like that. That's nuts. I guess they didn't do that again when Dorian Lopinto took over?

Yes, totally nuts, though we did not think a thing about it. In those days audiences more or less accepted such silliness as a unique convention to daytime, and of course, it was played straight. It wasn't done with a campy wink to the audience. No, when Julie Montgomery left the next time, Dorian Lopinto was just there as Sam one day.

SOE lists a number of women as playing ATWT's Susan Burke Stewart before Marie Masters. How many of these were attempts at permanent recasts and how many were stopgaps? Connie Scott was 66-67, Diana Walker (there she is again!) 1967, Jada Rowland (had she left Secret Storm?) 67-68, Leslie Perkins 1968.

As Annie Stewart, was Randall Edwards just a temporary recast?

Yes, Jada Rowland left The Secret Storm in 1966. She and Nicolas Coster were written out because the writers couldn't think of any storylines for the happily married Amy and Paul, who were sent to Cincinnati (!). Rowland moved over to As the World Turns, where her brother Jeff had previously appeared. She stayed about a year, until new writers at Secret Storm devised the amazing Belle Clemens plot. Rowland and Coster returned to play that story.

I seem to remember that there was some sort of connection between Louise Shaffer and Judith McGilligan, I want to say that they both went to the Yale School of Drama but I'm not sure. I remember connecting some dots when Judith's eps aired on SN four or five years ago, though I don't recall now.

Louise Shaffer and Judith McGilligan played sisters on The Edge of Night. From 1975-76, Louise was Serena (Travis) Faraday, a cousin to Nicole Travis Drake. Serena had a split personality (we didn't call it DID back then), whose alter ego was the truculent Josie. Judith played Josephine Travis Harper, who came to Monticello to gain custody of Serena's orphaned son Timmy. Although they were sisters, the two actresses didn't appear on the show together. McGilligan started after Shaffer left in April 1976.

Schemering has Susan Keith as Samantha Vernon in 1979. Was she a temp or a failed recast? I think I remember Julie Montgomery (listed as 76-81) saying she left and then came back because the recast didn't work out? Was that this situation?

Julie or Barbara?

Apparently Julie was later in Saturday Night Fever. I wonder if she traded war stories with Karen Gorney and Lisa Peluso.

The Samantha situation on OLTL was amusing. Julie Montgomery decided to leave in the middle of a major storyline. Samantha was with Tony Lord, who continued to carry a torch for Pat Kendall. To get rid of Montgomery (I believe she left to try Hollywood), Gordon Russell pulled the old plastic surgery chestnut. Sam and Tony had a big fight, and he admitted that he was still in love with Pat. They were in his restaurant Tony's Place. Sam was crying her eyes out, grabbed her keys, and was going to drive off. Sam's soon-to-be stepmother Dr. Pamela Shephard (engaged to Will Vernon) tried to stop her. Pam got into the car with Samantha, and they drove off. It was raining and foggy. Sam lost control of the car, and crashed head on into an oncoming vehicle. Pam was killed instantly, and Samantha's face was disfigured. They kept Sam's face swathed completely in bandages for weeks. When the wrappings came off, she was actress Susan Keith. Susan was a good actress but horribly miscast, so the writer's had Sam upset about her new face. Will searched for a plastic surgeon who could do more work on Sam. He found one. Sam underwent additional plastic surgery, and when it was over, she was Julie Montgomery again!

Although no one could fill the shoes of Ben Hendrickson as Hal Munson, I thought one of his replacements was good (James Kiberd) and one was terrible (Randy Mantooth).

Hal had another recast, too. In the 1993-94 season, Ben Hendrickson had family issues preventing his appearance. He was replaced several times by actor John Hillner. More recently, Hillner played Dean Brewster on ATWT, but his previous appearances from 1993-94 are not documented.

In the late 80's / early 90's, it seemed that P&G tried to have permanent understudies for major roles. On Guiding Light, actress Sonia Stewart played Vanessa Chamberlin (Lewis) for a number of years any time Maeve Kinkead could not appear. Stewart looked very much like Leslie Dennison who had played Maeve Stoddard on GL.

Did you ever see Virginia Vestoff as Althea?

Yes, I saw Vestoff a few times as Althea. The history books are inaccurate. Vestoff did not replace Liz Hubbard for a year; it was closer to six months. Vestoff took over as Althea in either November or December 1969. The first scenes I saw with her were over my Christmas break from school. At some point in late spring/early summer 1970, Hubbard returned. I don't recall the actual switch back to Hubbard, but by August or September of 1970, Vestoff had been cast on Dark Shadows.

I too loved Virginia Vestoff. She was excellent as Althea, though a bit jarring because the actresses were so physically different. I do not know if she was accepted by the audience. I suspect not because Liz Hubbard was insanely popular, and Vestoff was not in the role long enough to win the audience. I do think that Vestoff would not have remained on the series even if she had succeeded. From everything that I have heard about her, she only did soaps as a way to earn extra money. Her true passion was theater. She probably would have grown weary over time with the repetitiveness of daytime drama, and she didn't have a family to support, which would have kept her there for security.

Virginia's story was very sad. She had a hard life from the beginning, losing her parents as a child. I met a friend of hers many years ago. She told me that Virginia was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and eventually underwent a radical mastectomy to save herself. The surgery was not successful for the cancer had already metastasized to other organs, as she only later discovered. She passed within a few years, in May 1982 at age 42. It was such an unfair end. She was a beautiful and remarkably talented lady.

That's all fascinating stuff, I never knew any of that.

Did fans accept Jada as Carolee? The woman before her who had created the role from a tiny recurring part was popular wasn't she?

I cannot speak for other fans, but I do believe that Jada Rowland was accepted immediately by most fans. Two things worked in her favour. First off, the storyline was well constructed. Carolee Campbell's last episode was in March 1976. The character Carolee discovered husband Steve Aldrich in the apartment of Ann Larimer after a one night stand. Carolee drove off in a rage. I will never forget this scene, because she was driving too fast and a cop pulled her over for speeding. Carolee quipped, "My husband is in the arms of his mistress breaking every law known to God, and you give ME the ticket!" Carolee ran off to New York, had a nervous breakdown, and disappeared. These events were written by Margaret DePriest. When Doug Marland became headwriter, he had Ann Larimer track Carolee down to a psychiatric hospital. Ann lied that she was Carolee's sister and gave a fake name. Carolee was catatonic, and kept her locked up in the psych ward (Marland later recycled the story almost verbatim on ATWT when Holden was in NY and developed amnesia). A year later, Carolee snapped out of her catatonia and made her way back to Madison, now played by Jada Rowland. The passage of time gave viewers a chance to forget about actress Carolee Campbell. Secondly, Jada Rowland was a superior actress to Carolee Campbell. I am not implying that Campbell was bad; she obviously had something going for her, as she was quite popular, but Rowland was more well known from over 20 years on soaps, and Rowland had a much greater range. I accepted her instantly.

I browsed this topic for the first time and wish to make some comments.

Douglas Marland did not create the Dancy family. Joan and Jerry were introduced by Margaret DePriest. Marland merely expanded the family already on the canvas. Curiously, Marland was unable to work ratings magic on The Doctors. The serial's ratings fell from a nine rating into the low sevens during the transitional year that DePriest and Marland wrote the series. For most of Marland's stint as sole writer, The Doctors fell into the high sixes. NBC wanted to expand The Doctors to an hour, and Colgate-Palmolive were game, but two trial, expanded episodes failed to attract enough viewers.

In March 1976, The Doctors aired a highly publicized 90 minute special in which Gerald Gordon, immensely popular as the mercurial Dr. Nick Bellini, raced back to Madison to save the life of Althea after she tumbled off a ladder and crashed through a plate glass window. The following year, with Marland as writer, the serial expanded to one hour for its anniversary episode, in which Jada Rowland joined the cast as Carolee. The anniversary episode also debuted the new opening title sequence of cast drawings and re-orchestrated theme music. None of it succeeded.

The Doctors continued to lose ground to The Guiding Light, making a major ratings comeback on CBS. Writers Mel and Ethel Brez continued Marland's direction, particularly with the story of teenagers Billy and Greta experimenting with sex, which resulted in Greta's pregnancy and a serious rift in the friendship between the Aldrich and Powers families. Then, Linda Grover and Elizabeth Levin, with assists from David Cherrill, wrote some wonderful material rife with familial discord, but the series was too uneven. From 1979 onward, it was all downhill except for Harding Lemay's all too brief writing tenure.

IMHO, the period of the early to mid-70's, with Eileen and Robert Mason Pollock headwriting and Allen Potter producing, was The Doctors' best. The Pollocks had a natural facility for creating campy, high melodrama and combining it effortlessly with strong characterizations. Compared to General Hospital, the doctors at Hope Memorial had larger egos, broader motives, and bigger bal*s. Steve Aldrich and Nick Bellini were both brash playboys rather than genteel, dedicated interns over at GH.

The Pollocks also developed a very effective formula of presenting one villainous member of the medical staff. The first was Dr. Dan Allison, who developed a pathological jealousy of Steve. When Steve accidently knocked up Carolee, and she spurned him to spare herself the indignity of his marrying her out of necessity rather than love, she married Dan instead. What she didn't know was that Dan had been diagnosed with terminal heart disease. Dan overheard Carolee confess that she loved Steve, would never love any man but Steve. Dan plotted in many eloquent monologues his intent to commit suicide and frame Steve for the crime so that even in death, Dan would triumph over Steve.

No sooner had that story concluded, Althea went on vacation and met the suave English psychiatrist Dr. John Morrison, played to sleazy, manipulative perfection by Patrick Horgan. This was 1972, and Althea was on the outs with Nick at this point. John quickly wormed his way into her life. When it looked like she and Nick were drifting back to each other, John married her and then feigned paralysis to keep her loyal. Nick was being pursued by an unstable nurse named Cathy Ryker. Cathy sought psychiatric treatment from John. He deftly used therapy sessions to manipulate Cathy's emotions, leading her to believe that she could have every thing she wanted if she seduced Nick and became pregnant with his child to trap him into marriage. Cathy did just that, but the plan backfired. The baby died in uteruo. That and John's subtle goading drove Cathy insane. She kidnapped infant Stephie Aldrich from the Hope Memorial, and disguised, rented a room in a residential hotel under the name Mrs. Norman. Cathy thought she was living with Nick's son. The hotel's nosy manager wondered why Mrs. Norman's baby bore an uncanny resemblance to photos of the kidnapped Aldrich baby he saw on tv, and when he discovered that Mrs. Norman's baby son didn't have any junk between his legs, he called the cops. The police and Nick descended upon the hotel. Cathy snatched Stephie and crawled out on the narrow window ledge 14 stories above the street. The sequence went on for episodes and episodes as Nick and Steve tried desperately to talk Cathy down. Reluctantly, John Morrison was called in. He lied and schemed effortlessly to get Stephie away from her. When Cathy saw Stephie in Steve's arms, she snapped back to reality. John gently took Cathy's arm. In the same reassuring tones, he told her that everything would work out, just as they discussed in their sessions. A horrified Cathy screamed, "Oh, yes, you got what you wanted...Althea. Everything worked out perfectly for you, Dr. Morrison, but not for me!" Cathy pulled away from his grasp, lost her footing, and plunged off the ledge, her screams echoing as she fell to her death on the streets far below.

Remember, this happened in February 1973. On the CBS soaps, married couples were still sleeping in double beds, organ music punctuated the scenes, and most characters sat around kitchen or living room tables sipping coffee discussing rather than doing. The Doctors was tense, exciting, and addictive.

So all the Fields/Hilyers were written out after this story weren't they? The stuff where Liz tricked Elly to her death is something I was fascinated by from the first time I read about it on Mark Faulkner's site.

The Hillyers were more or less written out after this story. Orin left in June 1973. He married Angela Morgan, who was played by the lovely English actress Valerie French. Valerie was the real life wife of Thayer David from Dark Shadows. Edge always had wonderful Shakespearean actors, so no matter how improbable the plot line, you believed it because the actors were so good. People say that contemporary soaps are so much more far-fetched, but I don't know if it is necessarily true. I believe the reason stories don't succeed as well today is because the actors are so inexperienced. After Orin left, Liz and Jim remained for another year or so but were supernumeraries. Jim's role as a psychiatrist kept him involved in plots such as Jake Berman's scheme to arrange his own murder and frame Adam, and Martha Marceau's problems with the illegal adoption of Jennifer Simms. Liz didn't fare as well. She had the baby Elly tried to eliminate and then receded into the background. Actress Alberta Grant took a leave of absence in the fall of 1974, with Liz going to Italy to visit Orin and Angela. Alan Feinstein, who played Jim, was offered a pilot for the fall 1975 primetime season. Alan didn't renew his contract with Edge, so Jim left Monticello, and Liz simply never came back either. Viewers were cheated in not knowing whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Fields reconciled, since they were on the outs when Jim moved to Canada.

The Elly Jo plot line was super. Certain plot points like the hypnosis and so forth were out in the ether, but the performances of Lester Rawlins, Dorothy Lyman, and Hugh Reilly were so good you could easily overlook how improbable it was. Edge also had an advantage in that P&G gave them enough money to do expensive location shoots which were extremely rare in those days. The sequence with Elly Jo jumping out of Liz's car would have been off screen or done in the studio on another soap, but on Edge you saw the real deal. I would always beg off school when I knew an Edge storyline was climaxing because it was a given that the finale wouldn't be a letdown from the buildup. Elly's jump in slow motion was very exciting even though it was obviously a male stuntman in drag. Her death scene was grisly too. She lay dead on the side of the road, her face caked with blood and smear marks from contact with the pavement. Her eyes were open and blood oozed from her nose and mouth. Kids today can't appreciate how shocking this was in 1973!

Saynotoursoap, do you what stories or characters Pat Falken Smith was responsible for?

Pat wrote the latter part of the Vicky Lucas Hathaway story. Michael Hathaway was in love with his stepmother Mary, who was much younger than Michael's dad Julian. Vicky was determined to get her hooks into Michael. She knew that Michael's Achilles heel was his turbulent relationship with Julian. Michael's mother had died giving birth to him. As a result, Julian was somewhat cold and indifferent to his son. Vicky managed to get Michael into the sack and conveniently became pregnant, because she knew Michael would never reject a child the way Julian had. Vicky was delusional. She thought Michael would grow to love her in time, but he didn't. When he confessed that he carried a torch for Mary, he Vicky had a terrible argument. Their car skidded on an icy road and crashed. This was around Christmas vacation 1970. Vicky lost the baby, but determined to hang on to Michael, she feigned paralysis. Michael and Mary were racked with guilt over the turn of events. Mary was pregnant with Julian's child at the time. Vicky, ensconced in the Hathaway home as a "bedridden invalid" tormented Mary. Vicky had a dinner bell which she rang continuously, and had Mary running all over the house waiting on her hand and foot. No one knew that Vicky was faking paralysis. One day Mary caught Vicky standing. She was going to reveal Vicky's schemes to Julian and Michael. They got into a fight on the staircase, and Mary fell down the stairs. Robyn Millan decided to the leave the series, and Pat wrote her out by shipping her off to a sanitarium. Pat also finished off the Ellie Jardin story that I discussed in another post. Pat and Paul Avila Mayer created the Jardin sisters Margaret and Loretta, as well as John Rainey, Liz Rainey, and Adrienne Harris. Pat laid the groundwork for the Jardin incest story and the triangles between Christine/John/Adrienne and Julian/Liz/Michael, but Labine & Mayer mostly executed all of that in 1972.

(in fact how old is Margaret DePriest? I know she wrote for Sunset Beach and I felt she was the best writer for that campy show--is she still alive? She musta been relatively young when she created Heart Is, I wonder how she got the job as I don't think she had had any major runs on other soaps before)

Eric,

DePriest was probably in her early 30's when she created Where the Heart Is. How she got the job is a hoary old story. She had been an actress on The Edge of Night when Lou Scofield was headwriter following the departure of creator Irving Vendig. Lou Scofield's wife was dying, and he and DePreist had an affair. Voila, instant soap creator with virtually no experience -with the pen, that is. WTHI was a so-so soap in the beginning. It was Pat Falken Smith, and later Labine and Mayer, who turned it into something truly marvelous. The plots moved lickity-split, the dialogue was literate and witty. WTHI was a precursor to Santa Barbara and the campy soaps of the 1990's, but with a better ensemble of actors and a genuine pathos sprinkled into the outrageous proceedings.

I wonder whatever happened to that young boy on the show? Can't remember his name or his character's name. Can someone fill me in? He had dark hair, and was thin.

You are thinking of young Peter Jardin, played by Michael Bersell. Mike also played the infamous "Bobby Martin" on AMC, who supposedly went to the attic for skis and never returned. The story is apocryphal. Bobby went away to summer camp and never returned.

On Where the Heart Is, Peter was the son of Ellie Jardin, who cared for an amnesiac Steve Prescott in late 1970/ early 1971. Peter became Steve and wife Kate(Hathaway)Prescott's young ward after Ellie was killed by Arthur Saxton's thugs, sent to murder Steve once and for all.

Orphaned Peter precipitated one of the most outrageous plot lines on Where the Heart Is. His maiden aunts Margaret and Loretta showed up in Northcross. Margaret was a neurotic bully who was determined to lure Peter away from the Prescotts. She badgered the timid Loretta, herself a weak willed alcoholic. Peter had been mute ever since his father Robert's sudden death a few years earlier, and Margaret constantly reminded Loretta about Robert's death. You see, Loretta had drunkenly run over Robert and killed him whilst drunk driving. What Loretta did not know was that Margaret had a thing for her own brother! She had begged him to leave Ellie and stay with the family. Robert was disgusted and planned to get far away from them. It was actually Margaret who mowed Robert down with the sedan, and then she shoved a drunken Loretta behind the wheel to make it look like an accident. Peter, who had witnessed it all, finally found his voice and screamed the truth. Margaret chased him across an icy pond, fell through the ice, and drowned.

All was right with the world for Peter until February 1973. He went to clean the family's garage, when a dropped match ignited some rags and a canister of gasoline. The garage went up in flames, and 15 year old Peter burned to death in the conflagration. By the way, all of this was written by Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer. They recycled part of the Jardin story on Ryan's Hope when Delia ran over Barry Ryan and left a drunken Faith in the driver's seat, and also the killing of a child when Jill's beach house exploded with baby Edmond inside.

Thank you for clearing that up for me. While I am more of an SFT fan from what I have seen on the net, Edge is still a great show in my opinion and I'm sorry no other soaps ever came up with doing mysteries like that. I know of its popularity, it just struck me as odd especially the Time Magazine article which was actually pretty harsh towards all the P&G, Edge's criticism being the harshest.

I remember the article vaguely. The author raved about Days of our Lives and its daring plot lines. Along with Edge, I believe ATWT was slagged off, too. The author didn't appear to like the old fashioned soaps. Edge was a conservative soap, despite the criminal angle. The article was written in 1975, a dark time for Edge as it transitioned from CBS to ABC with a mob storyline. Mob plot lines were unpopular on Edge, and for the casual viewer/Time journalist, a random episode may not have made sense.

One had to watch Edge regularly to appreciate it, for the complexity of plot made it special. Edge's best plot lines were the psychological ones in which average people were pushed to murder. I wrote about this on another board recently. No one seemed interested. I will repost it here.

We were talking about the character of Elly Jo Jamison, played by Dorothy Lyman. Every one knows Dorothy as Opal Gardner from AMC and Naomi on Mama's Family. Well, Elly Jo was a similar southern tart but with murder on her mind. Just imagine the Opal or Naomi characters going psycho. Elly Jo arrived in Monticello to care for the filthy rich Orin Hillyer. She was the niece of his late wives Julie and Laura. Elly secretly had a chip on her shoulder. Nothing in her life had ever worked out, and she saw Orin's millions as her chance to get everything she wanted. She plotted to kill him and his pregnant daughter Liz, to become next in line as the Hillyer heir. Lenny, the Hillyer chauffeur, caught on to Elly's machinations when she talked in her sleep after they rolled in the hay. He called Elly Jo on it.

The following dialogue is verbatim from a March 1973 episode. You can just imagine Lyman saying the lines, which mixed film noir with wry humour.

Elly Jo awoke and begged for coffee. Lenny shook his head. "I don't see how you can have coffee first thing. Don't you feel like brushing your teeth?"

"Coffee's as good for cleaning gums as toothpaste. Hey bring me a cup, won't you Lenny." Elly rubbed her eyes and tried to wake up.

"You're sure used to being waited on, huh? Better get unused to it, baby. Pretty soon, you won't have any more servants."

"C'mon, Lenny. Honey, I just can't get the engine revving without my coffee..."

Lenny acquiesced. He moved to a hot plate and retrieved a steaming pot of java. "All right. But I got a news bulletin for you. This is the last cup of Joe I'm pouring for you -ever. Just like last night was the last time me and you will be together... ever.

"Honey, don't talk like that. Lenny, please!

Lenny fetched her a cup. She sipped it and then recoiled with a grimace.

"You sure this isn't the stuff you use to clean old man Hillyer's carburetor?" Elly deadpanned.

"If you don't like it, don't drink it."

"Right now I would chug from a fountain pen if it was hot."

Lenny told her she could do as she pleased, only she shouldn't take all morning doing it because he had things to do - like call a rich lady friend about a job. Elly Jo begged him not to. She reminded him that he promised he wouldn't leave her. Lenny snorted. She only imagined his promise, just like she imagined that her dear friend Mrs. Fields (Orin's daughter Liz) was in a terrible car wreck. Elly denied his insinuations, but Lenny persisted. He urged her to level with him. After all, he didn't have any merit badges for good behavior either.

"You better cut it out, Lenny Small!" Elly snarled. "You better quit saying I'd do anything deliberately to hurt Mrs. Fields...even for that inheritance."

Lenny chuckled and took her by the shoulders. "Cornpone, I believe you'd slit that woman's throat for those Hillyer millions. If you really had a chance at them...which I doubt."

Elly Jo looked at him with deadly seriousness. "Well that's one thing you don't HAVE to doubt! I got a chance at them all right. I've got more than a chance. There's nobody standing between me and those C notes but that snooty-nosed little pris."

Lenny looked satisfied at her outburst. He knew her "friendship" with Liz had been an act all along. "Well, well, well. So you don't even like the woman any more..."

"Like her? I hate her! She's kicking me out. Kicking me out after I did so much for that family, for her daddy, and everyone else in that stinking house. Why shouldn't I hate her? If she had that accident yesterday, the one she was supposed to have, you think I would have cried at her funeral? You're darned right I would. I woulda bawled like a baby. and I don't mean maybe - but only because it wouldn't look right to do anything else."

"Only now there isn't going to be any funeral," Lenny reminded her.

Elly Jo glared at him grimly. "Oh, there's still gonna be a funeral all right. I don't know when or how, but people like Mrs. Elizabeth Fields...they just ask for rotten things to happen to them. And you mark my words -something WILL ."

Later in the episode Elly Jo went to see Orin to tell him she was planning to move out. Orin had gotten up out his wheelchair to demonstrate being able to walk a few steps. He fell into Angela's arms as a pretext for getting close to her. Elly sauntered into the library and caught them smooching.

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," she gaped.

Orin said that he didn't hear Elly enter the room, and Angela suggested he sit back down in his wheelchair, lest he tire himself.

"Yes, I think I've completed my calisthenics for this morning," Orin smiled weakly.

"Is that what they're calling it in Monticello," Elly replied. "Back home, we call it something else, and it's not so polite."

Elly went on to hint that she would be leaving soon, which captured Angela's attention. "Yeah, I thought you'd find that real interesting," Elly told her dryly. She went on to say that she figured Orin didn't need a paid companion any more...at least not HER kind of paid companion, she said sarcastically with an eye to Miss Morgan.

Angela commented about a surfeit of lodging in Monticello and offered to help Elly find a new apartment. "I knew I could count on you for that kind of help," Elly retorted. Angela said she would be delighted give Elly Jo a lift to Monticello. "I figured you'd want to help with that, too," Elly cracked.

The characters were on Edge were super. They were not over-the top, but Slesar colored them with enough humor that the proceedings didn't seem dry and predictable. Elly Jo sauntered around the mansion with a big goofy grin on her face and a charming southern drawl. You almost had to giggle when she was around, but at the same time, it made her even more sinister because you knew she was capable of doing anything -and probably would.

Here are the last few months of "The Secret Storm" as they were chronicled by Bryna Laub in her newsletter. Surprisingly, she did not mention Stace and Mark's mother's death.

Not surprising, really. Jesse died April 2, 1973, ten months before The Secret Storm's final episode. The brothers had moved on at the end.

It is a mistaken impression based on two issues of magazines. Edge was held in very high regard through most of the 60's and 70's. It was almost always consistently at the top of the reader's poll in Daytime TV magazine. If you're referring to the poll Steve Frame's partner posted recently, that was a fluke. Especially during the Stephanie Martin and Keith Whitney stories, Edge was ranked in polls as one of the top 5 soaps. All of the critical articles written about it, praised it for its crisp direction and superb acting. Edge was the best directed soap opera of the 70's, and watching broadcasts of it today, knowing they originally aired lived, makes one appreciate it more.

Also, although the series was based on the radio version of Perry Mason and shared some Mason elements, it was more like Columbo. In the early days, Edge was not a mystery soap. The villain was always known to the audience. When Henry Slesar became headwriter, the series began to exploit the mystery angle; however, Slesar moved the series away from the predictability of yearly murder trials and 11th hour confessions.

I will look through my memorabilia and add my own material when I can to show you how much Edge was appreciated.

I was wondering, often looking back at old articles from the early daytime magazines it was seems that Edge of Night was held in low regard in comparison to the other soaps. A recently posted poll from 1970 had EON at the bottom of the list of favorite soaps, and the famous 1976 Time Magazine article on soaps deemed it "old fashioned". It just strikes me as funny because it seems to have a cult following today and is fondly remembered. Was it the predictable Perry Mason formula that caused it be viewed this way back then?

Carl, All My Children's Kitty and Kelly weren't the first twins on soaps. Many soaps had done this story before AMC.

Also, the character played by Dorothy Lyman on The Edge of Night (Elly Jo Jamison)was not a hippie. I think you may be confusing this part with Lyman's role on A World Apart a year earlier (1971). Edge did have counterculture elements in 1971 when the character of Keith Whitney pretended to be a hippie named Jonah Lockwood. The show's ingenue Laurie Ann Karr became involved in campus activities at the local university and hooked up with two pot smokers Tango and Max. Laurie started dating Jonah Lockwood and moved into an apartment with Tango. Tango discovered Jonah's true identity and attempted to blackmail him. He laced her drink with LSD, and when she was high, he shoved her out of a highrise window, pretending she was a Diane Linkletter.

Elly Jo was a demure girl from the country who moved to Monticello as a nursemaid for the wealthy Orin Hillyer. Elly Jo was the niece of Orin's late wife. She was also a scheming fortune hunter who planned to murder Orin and his daughter and inherit the Hillyer fortune. Dorothy's character on A World Apart was a campus radical. I think her name on that series was Julie, but I can't be sure without checking.

Thank you so much Brent! I have wanted to hear more about Joel Crothers's Secret Storm role for years, as that's what he left Dark Shadows for. Do you remember any of that?

This all sounds fascinating. Was Secret Storm the first soap to do an identical twin story? For some reason I always thought All My Children was, with Kitty/Kelly.

Were a lot of the soaps doing stories about hippies and bad counterculture types at this time? This was around the time Edge of Night had Dorothy Lyman as an evil hippie who tried to kill the show's young ingenue, wasn't it? The one with the rich widowed father.

That story about Amy and Irene sounds chilling.

You may have already seen this, but this is the first part of a Love of Life episode from around the time you may have been watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qblvMGB6Snc

I posted this in the other thread but in case anyone didn't see it in there, this is a Secret Storm from 1966:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7A5Sc0Pnc&feature=related

Carl, Keith Charles did not play Nick Davis on All My Children. You are confusing him with Lawrence Keith, though both are fine actors and should have been on We Love Soaps' top actors list, but do not even get me started on that rant.

I do not recall a big difference in the transition from live to tape with The Secret Storm, because soaps at that time were live tape. Although they were recorded on tape, they were performed as if live because editing was near impossible. One thing I did note in the transition to color was the greyness of the sets. All of the sets had been painted and designed of course without thought to color. Winsor said that CBS pressured him to use more of his budget to improve the look of the series, and this created a good bit of conflict because he preferred to spend his money on getting the best possible performers and writers.

I apologize for usurping Brent's territory (the question was directed at him), but I feel that the tone of The Secret Storm remained fairly dark and brooding throughout its run. Although it flirted with relevance, it did so in such a way that it remained rather ominous. For example, as I described in another post, the storyline of Mark Reddin leaving the priesthoood for Laurie was a socially relevant storyline; however, much of the setting was on his family's ranch. Mark had a younger brother Stace who looked like he walked out of a William Inge play. Stace wore denim and had a cowboy hat. He was a bit of a [!@#$%^&*]-kicker and deliberately tried to take Laurie away from his brother. It was presented as quite lurid and sexual. Stace was sweaty and swaggered and attacked Laurie in the barn. He and Mark fought. When their mother Jesse, the warm, wonderful Frances Sternhagen tried to break up the quarrel. She was flung onto a pitchfork, was impaled, and died. The accident was gruesome and unsettling. Any other serial attempting the same story in 1973 would not have presented the story this way.

Jon

That's fascinating, that Joan took publicity photos for the show with other actors. I knew she had taken some on her own. I really wish that was available. I think that the idea became so shocking that Joan would fill in for her daughter that people never bothered to find out whether Joan had actually done a good job in the part. So Joan with Keith Charles? Wow, I'd love to see that. He went on to play Nick Davis for years and years on All My Children.

I love the story about Belle's daughter. It sounds chilling. Back then soaps seemed to be much more willing to kill off child characters, don't you think?

I was wondering -- do you remember when the show moved from black and white to color, and also, did you feel like, in those later years, the show became more "socially relevant," as some soaps did, or if it stayed in its own format?

Jada Rowland sounds great. I remember reading about some of the backstage stories of Secret Storm, when the crew would try to shock her when she was live on air. One time she had a scene in a bathroom and they had put her shoes in the toilet. She also talked about when a llama chased Gloria Monty around the studio. And one time when there was a kitchen scene and the entire shelf on the refrigerator crashed, and they had to carry on.

Did you notice any transition from live to live on tape or to tape at that time?

Brent, you and I are fairly the same age, and I cannot express how delightful it is to read your shared recollections. I seldom post regarding The Secret Storm as few remember the serial or seem at all interested in it. I apologize in advance, as my response will ramble a bit.

To answer your question, the younger blonde with Belle and Charlie was Belle's younger sister Karen Clemons. Actress Beverly Hayes portrayed Karen. Jeffrey Lynn, who played Charlie, briefly replaced Forrest Compton as Mike Karr on The Edge of Night a few years later when Compton fell ill.

Your descriptions of Secret Storm were exacting. Storm was indeed a dark, moody serial, with an upper crust flavor contrasting the middle class environs of most serials from the 60's era. You mentioned the smart clothing of the women and the superb diction of the actors. These are elements woefully missing from today's serial drama. In many ways, Storm's settings and costumes reminded me of the ladies melodramas of the 40's. There was an elegance and intelligence in the proceedings one did not necessarily find on other programs, which were more "homey" in my estimation. In those days, a viewer never would have tuned into The Secret Storm and thought it was As the World Turns or The Guiding Light. Each serial drama was unique in tone and presentation.

As you reminded us, The Secret Storm was deadly serious. It was true drama. I believe it possessed the best confrontations on daytime television. Characters were constantly at odds with another, as well as their own emotions, and whereas many characters on other programs suffered quietly, nobly, the emotions on Secret Storm bubbled to the surface daily.

The success of Storm was due to its creator/owner Roy Winsor. I interviewed Winsor back in the 80's shortly before his death, and he spoke so eloquently of The Secret Storm. He had a clearly defined concept of what the program was, and as long as the writers and directors didn't stray from that concept, the program thrived. We see this today. So many fine programs have gone to pot when networks and sponsors gain control and destroy the creative vision.

Interestingly, Belle had been slated to die originally. She was a short run character, but Marla Adams played the part so beautifully, icily, that Belle was saved and the part expanded. Someone else mentioned the transition to color. Personally, I didn't care for it. There were a few serials (Storm, Edge, and Dark Shadows) which worked best in my opinion due to their dark tone. The transition to color really signaled the beginning of the end for The Secret Storm. According to Winsor, CBS became more demanding in 1968. The network wanted color and fancier sets and a brighter look for the show. The loss of Winsor and director Gloria Monty cannot be underestimated. Storm had always been a realistic serial. It was about people and emotions. Beginning with Winsor's departure, the stories became sillier: evil twins, spouses returning from the dead, impostors, amnesia, paralysis, mobsters, etc. The more lurid the writing, the worse the ratings became. I recall my grandmother being quite upset with the artificial insemination plot between Amy, Kevin, and Brian Neeves. She felt it damaged the integrity of Amy's character. She stopped watching altogether when an argument between Father Mark Reddin and his sleazy brother Stace resulted in their mother Jesse being impaled on a pitchfork and dying in the barn.

Joan Crawford: at least one episode does exist. I know a collector who has a copy, and I have seen it. Joan was clearly nervous and out of her element in live drama; however, she was professional and not the embarrassing drunk as has been described in books and films.

Jon

I think the problem "Search" had was throwing away, or unable to keep, its strong younger set including Susan Scanell, Craig Augustine, Jay Avocone, and Cynthia Gibbs.

From the beginning, Search had a tougher road to hoe than most due to the fact that it was essentially a story of one character. It was not a "family soap" like ATWT, GL, or AW. Mary Stuart had enough talent and charisma to hold it all together until the early 1980's, but at this point, the soap seriously needed a strong family structure for Jo. Too many writers had killed off most of Jo's family over the years, and even her last marriage, to Martin Tourneur, had ended in divorce.

Regardless of its lack of strong family, Search was doomed when it moved from CBS to NBC. Nothing could have saved it. When Search followed The Young and Restless on CBS throughout the 70's and early 80's, Search consistently lost part of Y&R's lead in audience. How TPTB ever thought having the two soaps go up against one another on opposite networks could have saved Search for Tomorrow beggars belief.

Thanks for posting this, and mentioning the Youtube account. Someone had mentioned that earlier this year but I'd forgotten. I was very impressed by how raw those clips seemed. Jennifer's madness and gunning Eunice down seems so stark. And the scene where she believes John has cheated on her is amazing, especially her work when she called the lodge.

Do you think it was a mistake to kill off Eunice?

I also read about a serial killer story in 1986, which killed off Stephanie. Who else was killed? Do you think that was a good idea? I guess that was just about the end of the show anyway wasn't it?

Search was excellent soap opera during this period, and the storyline with Jennifer was super. There was another actress who played Jennifer first. She was not nearly so good as Fairchild. Fairchild made Jennifer a spectacular character. Jennifer's madness evolved slowly. She wasn't one of those overnight psychos we have on soaps today. Jennifer loved husband Scott Phillips madly. He was an alcoholic who mistreated her. They had an argument, and Jennifer fell through the plate glass patio door in July 1975. She miscarried their child and was left with a grotesque scar running the length of her cheek. Jennifer turned to John Wyatt, seducing him away from Eunice. When John made attempts at reconciliation with his wife, Jennifer and her best friend Stephanie invented a "mad rapist" who was supposedly terrorizing Jennifer's apartment building, forcing John to spend the night on Jennifer's sofa. When this scheme fell through, she faked a suicide by taking an overdose of pills, but the plan went awry. Jennifer nearly died. When she finally came out of it, she was in a deep psychosis, hearing John's voice echoing in her head, urging her to hurt Eunice so she and John could be together forever. Jennifer finally murdered Eunice in November 1976.

Killing off Eunice was a grave mistake. What happened was that under Bernie Sofronski, Search had adopted a demographically tiered structure where stories were focused on the veterans, the middle-aged characters, and the young couples. Mary Ellis Bunim wanted the demographics tiered lowered. She thought the best way to reinvent Search for the 70's was to kill off Jo. Jo was shot in May 1976, and for a good while, it appeared she might die. Bunim urged writer Ann Marcus to use Mary Stuart less and less. Bunim's attempts to kill Jo were thwarted, so she killed off Ann Williams' Eunice instead. It was pretty much an act of revenge. The next year, she did away with John Cunningham's Dr. Wade Collins, destroying a witty interesting couple in Wade and Janet. Bunim was allegedly a bitch. Someone else mentioned Harding Lemay. He quit Guiding Light as a Emmy winning dialogue writer for Doug Marland to take over Search for Tomorrow. Bunim bullied him to have one of the female characters brutally raped. Lemay refused, so after the WGA strike of 1981, Bunim replaced him with Don Chastain, an actor who played Max Taper on the show. Chastain ran the series into the ground. Having Stu's faithful wife Ellie suddenly run off with the cook at the Hartford House was typical of Bunim's contempt for the veterans and the soap's rich history.

HAHAH I shoulda checked the first page of this thread

Pamela K. Long & Addie Walsh (July 1986 – December 1986)

Technically Walsh was the headwriter. Pam Long was the Executive Story Consultant.

Chris, in addition to local syndication airings, Peyton Place aired on the USA Network weekday mornings in 1983-84. I still have videotapes of those episodes. However, for the most part, it has gone unaired for years and years, which is sad because it is such a well-written series. Everything about the series exudes class, and it remains so until late 1968.

BTW, Chris. I have uploaded an episode of Love is a Many Splendored Thing on my Youtube channel. Did you not see it?

Eric, I WOULD upload Return to Peyton Place, as well as the syndicated version of Valley of the Dolls from 1994. Unfortunately, copyright issues prevent me from doing so at this time. As I wrote before, I intentionally did not advertise the RTPP promo. I hoped it would slip by unnoticed. Perhaps this will change. I simply do not want to deal with legal hassles and risk my account being canceled. If I am forced out by Youtube, I will not create another account. I do not have the time, so I am cautious about what I do place online. Also, I am not supposed to have those RTPP episodes. I obtained them through rather dubious means, and I would like to protect my source, as future rarities are forthcoming.

I do want to let everyone know I appreciate the support and interest I get. I am so pleased to share these things with all of you who truly appreciate vintage serials. I love reading your posts. You all are the best.

They've only released the first season of Peyton Place on DVD, right? I tried to get it on Netflix and there was a long wait, then suddenly they became unavailable.

Peyton Place did not have "seasons". Like daytime soaps, it was telecast all year with no reruns, ever. Technically, the freshman year ran through the first week of September 1965. Shout has released two DVDs so far. The second ends in April 1965. The series' first year should be complete with 2 additional DVDs -if they are ever released. Shout is negotiating the rights, but the studio feels sales were not good enough with the initial release (though Shout was happy with the response).

So you do have episodes from the daytime series? I didn't know any existed! How were the recasts on the series? How was the show overall? Did it stack up well as a continuation of the original series?

I have five episodes of Return to Peyton Place. To the best of my knowledge, the series was not wiped. At one point in the 1970's, it was to have been syndicated to Australia's Nine Network along with DOOL, GH, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, and Where the Heart Is. It should be sitting in a vault somewhere, but I would not hold my breath on its dvd release any time soon; the studio was not thrilled with sales of the primetime version.

As for the daytime version, I consider it a fairly good alternative, but only if it is not compared to the ABC series. The best way to approach Return to Peyton Place is to think of it as an alternate reality, sort of like the difference between the various versions of Dark Shadows. In other words, RTPP is not really a continuation of the primetime series. In the daytime version, characters who died, moved away, disappeared, or left never to return were suddenly back. Plot points from the ABC version were ignored. There were too many inconsistencies for RTPP to be a plausible continuation.

I loved the nighttime Peyton Place. Along with Knots Landing, it was one my favourite soaps ever. PP enjoyed a level of quality and intelligence in writing, acting, and directing that RTPP could not possibly achieve. RTPP is excellent as a daytime soap, but alas, it is just that -a soap with soapy twists. I could not see the primetime version having Allison become hooked on drugs and then accused of murdering her new husband, who was in fact his identical twin brother. Nor would Constance have cheated on Eliot and become pregnant with Michael Rossi's child. This is the stuff soap operas are made of, not Emmy-worthy nighttime dramas.

On the positive side, RTPP was a lavish production with superb sets and music. The studio had saved Martin Peyton's mansion set, which was a nice touch. As for recasts, I personally feel they were all justified and improved the series, particularly Susan Brown as Constance (though I could be prejudiced as I adore Ms. Brown's work). The biggest problem with casting was Allison and Betty. I preferred Pamela Shoop over Kathy Glass, and Lynn Loring was ok as Betty, but the soap would have been better with stronger performers in those roles. Robin Strasser would have made a fantastic Betty, but she was too busy deferring to hubby Larry Luckinbill. I cannot even think of an appropriate actress for Allison. Mia Farrow possesses such an ethereal quality; she is quite unique and irreplaceable. The producers should have learned that lesson from the nighttime series!