titan1978

Almost perfect. It there was a way to work in always looking for a third then we have an exact match.

They don’t look alike to me either and yet, I do see the boyfriend twins thing pretty clearly. Maybe it’s the vibe they both bring to the story? Because it does seem like the same kind of guy x2 here.

I really need Chase to hit some kind of rock bottom when this all shakes out. Just one time in their relationship I want to see him on his knees begging for forgiveness. I fear with her half assed schemes and part in the accident, it’s all just laying the groundwork for any potential affair to be partly blamed on her. They already had the story, the affair was well set up and Chase has been an idiot about Willow. Now it’s feeling increasingly like a house of cards that is going to blow up and then he is going to fall into Willow’s bed because of all Brook Lynn’s lies.

It was part of his issues with Conboy as time went on and why he ended up moving his family from Chicago to be where the show was produced!

Thanks for posting. I love that stuff is still being discovered. Makes he hold out hope for more of 1978, especially Alan/Monica and David Hamilton.

That was kind of a good era for her as far as her look on the show. IIRC when they kicked off the full Laura/Stefan romance storyline she got a clothing upgrade, including some new publicity photos. She broke up with Luke, got bangs, had lost some weight, got some more expensive looking clothes and was feeling herself! I think they both suffer from similar issues, which is the show does a terrible job dressing women that are not rail thin. Honestly the wardrobe is just not great right now at all for anybody, and AS has her personal reasons for wanting modest attire. I think Laura has actually looked better in the last year or so than she did during most of the period of time Spencer was played by NAC.

I bet Slezak made sure to quick rehearse her changes with scene partners too. The whole thing reminds me of Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie throwing everyone off balance when she just does what she wants.

It’s only really noticeable to me when she lays in bed with a shirtless Chase in a full Dickens pajama set and it’s covered up by the largest robes I have ever seen on a soap.

Not saying the lines as written was pretty much fully supported by Monty if you were good at keeping the intention of the scenes and the story going forward while making things work in character or making moments have that spontaneous feeling she liked. But Monty wasn’t live to tape, and that kind of thing could have been very disorienting for some actors, and self indulgent. It sometimes looked self indulgent when Tony Geary did it, and that was when they were making a more modern product with editing and post production. I wish there was more of her Diana available to really get a feel for her performance and the original version of the character. On Maurice’s YouTube show, Genie Francis told a story about her and Leslie Charleson doing one of those scenes and Leslie went up on her lines and then went blank, and it was kind of traumatic for GF who basically had the fear of god put into her about making a mistake. Doing it on essentially live television must have been very stressful. Something the New York actors probably had more comfort with to be honest.

+1 to both, although I am less annoyed by Chase when he has his shirt off.

Oh no doubt. The guy had no problem pushing the envelope at OLTL. Even after they jettisoned the gay storyline, they still sexed it up with straight characters. Now he actively makes pablum for the niche masses that still watch soaps. At least the characters get to have natural conflict again after years of everyone being genial all the time.

He used that shower set for many sexy scenes at OLTL. Ron also writes men as sex objects more into shows as HW, so he played a part in that on both shows with Frank.

She just got a big job too, she’s a producer on the Romy and Michelle sequel with the director that she worked with on High School Musical. She is active on instagram in GH cast/show/fan circles and posts her own memories from time to time. So is Vanessa Marcil as well. These folks love the show and their relationships from it.

There are some parts you just cannot recast. I could see Patrick possibly working out with the right actor. But without Robin there to sell it, it’s pointless. The current Emma never shared a scene with any of them, so using her to anchor him would be a mistake. I also believe they were GH’s last true supercouple (although they tried very hard with Dante/Lulu). The fact that Carly has been successfully recast multiple times is an outlier on soaps in general, and on GH especially unusual. Robin is one of the characters that just should not be recast. GH has a lot of them tbh! I find it odd that soap fans are so upset Robin isn’t there that they would rather have a recast than Kimberly. What’s the point of that? So Robin can pop in and drink coffee at Bobbie’s and talk to Anna about Emma? They often argue it takes them out of the story that Robin isn’t there with what is happening with Anna for example. So having a fake Robin would not? That’s just strange to me. We already suffered through the mess of Kimberly not being a full time cast member and Patrick being there. They alternated between ignoring Patrick or breaking them up. Sometimes it is just best to move forward.

Nobody else would be as dedicated!

Reading that article again, I find real frankness in soap actor interviews before they get to the 80’s and get more guarded. Craig Huebing is pretty straightforward and matter of fact about the whole thing, including his profession and the number of shows he had already been on.

It would have been much better than inventing half brothers for Laura!

Thanks for posting @Paul Raven Fascinating to look at the turmoil going on just a few months before first Marland arrived, then Monty. They brought in a lot of new characters over the course of 1976-1978! Except for Leslie as Monica, none of these folks are there anymore by early 1981 when they killed Diana. Had ABC or whoever pushed Valerie Starrett out waited a few months, things might have been very different. Marland and Monty wrote for Diana as if she was still a major player. With Starrett still there she might have had more impact in those stories and stayed. For longterm fans, was Starrett and Diana a favorite? Reading about her she seems very put upon and victimized. The infamous hurricane!

I honestly cannot remember if they slept together or not. But as you said, it was a violation of Ava either way and they played her side out when it was all revealed. As far as OLTL, I agree it was awful in its own class. They had been trying to make a romance out of Todd and Marty since both of their first runs on the show. Considering their history it was always just a gross idea. As far as Susan goes, who knows? Maybe she just wanted to work. Maybe they told her it would play out differently than it did? I would like to think she was always as appalled as Roger Howarth was by the notion.

They went out of their way to be careful with Laura when Ryan was impersonating Kevin, so allowing it to happen with Lulu really stood out for me as how little they care about what they do to her. Ryan faked being sick, busy, anything to do more than just kiss Laura. And even that they limited until they “broke up”. At the time I thought maybe Valentini had learned his lesson after what happened with Todd and Marty when she had amnesia. But I guess not enough to stop it before it started.

I think the problem is when they started to become too homogenized by both copying each other and then later adding playing safe to that. I can handle almost any soap nonsense if it is told well. That mentality of it’s just a soap and or those fans will accept anything is why we have some of the problems they all face right now. Too many shallow psychos of the current sweeps period stories, baby switches, back from the dead, actors from other soaps back on the same show as different characters or invading another shows through soap stunt casting. It has hurt more than it has helped. In like five years GH has dipped into the long lost relative or child well too many times. Off the top of my head we have Laura with Martin/Cyrus, Esme, Cody, Trina’s paternity, Nathan/Cassius, Willow/Nelle, Gio, Sasha, Peter August, etc. It’s just too much.

I can see the logic in the criticism when it came to ABC shows. AMC, OLTL, and Ryan’s Hope all had deeper characters that were fully explored. The GH folks suffered a lot of romantic woes and tragedy in the earlier days, but whenever I see older scenes or read recaps they just are not as rich or complex compared to Nixon’s early characters, or Lemay’s erudite and sophisticated Another World. Even the Dobsons dug deeper at Guiding Light, and they were foundational at GH from scripts to later Head Writers. I think the characters/casts could have done it well though, especially with Steve, Jessie, Lee Baldwin, and Phil Brewer. I will be honest and say I always found Rachel Ames kind of mannered and not quite as strong as the others. Early Y&R suffers from that pretty people more than talented actors criticism. But Bell’s DAYS was full of very talented actors who could have played anything.

I have been thinking the same thing. They were pushing it hard too. The only other thing I can think derailed them was losing Maxie, and they only wanted the story in the first place to put Maxie and Lulu against each other.

As a feminist, I do sometimes find catfights regressive. But damn when they hit they really hit lol! And those ladies set a bar so high nobody has come close to it. I put them above anything I saw on Dynasty, the patron saint show of women slapping each other.

Something else occurring to me when discussing the Monty-fication of daytime is John Black. I loved Drake, and I enjoyed his stories BITD. But John Black just always stood out to me like a sore thumb when they tried to bring him down to earth. Roman was in larger than life stories, but at his core he was a regular guy. Same with Marlena. And Bo and Hope, (although I love Hope, she is not the most successful soap opera lady cop though). But John’s entire creation and evolution depended on one larger than life story or idea after another, and I think it limited his success at times. I always bought Drake in a romance, that’s not what I mean. Stefano also didn’t work for me as just the head of a criminal empire after his run in the 90’s. John was a lot like Robert Scorpio in that sense. I used to wonder what Labine would have done had Robert and Anna agreed when Riche was trying to get them to stay. I think keeping them would have changed the trajectory of a lot of Riche’s efforts to ground the show in a more realistic tone and away from the super cops era. Sean Donnelly suffered, and without the Ryan story I think Felicia would have too. I remember thinking as the material got more complex and deeper how impressed I was with the cast of GH. It was and remains my favorite soap. But I had no idea these folks were capable of the kind of storytelling they accomplished when Labine took over.