titan1978

GH had two examples in the 1990’s that felt real to me. When Lucky “died” in the fire, both Becky Herbst and Genie Francis were haunting and almost depressing to watch, Genie especially for months after. It was in character for Luke to be upset and then try to bury it, with it resurfacing whenever he saw Laura, so he avoided her. The other was Stone. Like a lot of people I have known that dealt with long-term illness with no hope of survival, the grieving was all before he died. We saw everyone process during the last four months he was alive, say goodbye, have regrets, challenge their beliefs. I have know people that went through Hospice, and also folks that died from complications from AIDS. And the way everyone acted felt real to me. The end takes so long and was often so painful that the intense part of the grief was released by the time the person passed, and the aftermath was spent more on remembering when it wasn’t the end of their life anymore. It felt real to me.

I wish we could see those episodes. I would kill to see the first 6 months of Monty/Marland as well. Didn’t Monty redo the sets as the shows were airing, like GH was getting renovated as she was phasing in new sets? I also would love to see the storm she used to get rid of the characters she wanted gone right away.

I will never forget this, or the episode where it was revealed she was alive before it. That thrill of unspoiled, soapy and dramatic television, when nobody saw those twists coming.

I also thought Reid was a breath of fresh air, and reinvigorated Luke by having someone challenge him in new ways. He was a great character. I thought Paul was on DAYS too, because he brought unabashed sex appeal into the gay storyline, and had chemistry with almost the whole show.

It is crazy. I have never really watched B&B, but from the boards I know there have been so many sets of teens and young adults introduced over the last 20 years, and none of the major players are gay? And when they do go there, with a trans character, they sideline them pretty quickly after telling the initial story. And Y&R blinked on making Adam bi or fluid, which could have lead to many years of actually interesting storylines and twists. For me, Luke and Noah had exactly one hot moment, the early scene with the towel and almost kiss while shirtless and wet. And they lived on that one moment for me while I waited and hoped that something else close to that would happen again, then finally gave up.

The problem with limited representation without creative input is that these attempts on daytime are often clumsy, neutered, and either safe or exploitative (and not in the fun way), and are always disposable. The shows rarely invest enough in these characters. ATWT really was an exception with Luke. He stayed a core character, had a couple of relationships, and I get the feeling that if Van had left the show they might have recast Luke. I wish he had better stories, but that was really a wish about every soap character at that point. As a gay person, I don’t mind a villainous portrayal. I think one of these shows would benefit with a gay vixen character to shake up old fashioned triangle tropes, and the idea of a closeted, powerful gay man killing people to keep his secrets has good bones. Just not the way OLTL did it. These shows need more representation on screen and their writer’s rooms/writing teams.

Yes! I think people overlook that while Heather injected a lot into the show, and deserves plenty of credit, without CTS’s Alison the central conflict would not have been as great. When I was a kid, Jo and Sydney were my favorite characters, but Alison and Amanda were my favorite rivals.

Laura had an incident on GH after Lucky died in the fire. She was in total grief and in a catatonic state and was almost hit by a train. If I remember she had to be pushed away, and it did seem like she was suicidal, and the characters reacted that way. Especially Stefan. That story was really hard to watch, and Genie really grieved like Laura would have. It was total.

Enough that she told someone, might have been Harding that it was a big mistake but she made lots of money doing it! According to her, she also wrote her contracts by the time she quit GL. I wonder how many other daytime stars did that?

Lucci was supposedly the highest paid ABC soap star at the end of the 1990’s, early 2000’s. I don’t know what happened once Frons took hold and really started to devalue the shows and the legacy stars. I also remember seeing something about Jackie Zeman returning to the show in like 1982, that she was returning the highest paid actor on GH.

That style she had right before she left the first time, the page boy...I would have slept with Liza too. It haunts me to this day. Dano looks great. And is a perfect example of a star that still has some sparkle and should be on a soap. I can see Jane flipping it out of her face as soon as I read this, running her hand along it to smooth it out before destroying Jenny Eckert.

Or never even asked!

Thanks for sharing! The quote from Denise I posted was about her GH contract though, not her DAYS one. She said in the same interview that she and DAYS were taking a break from negotiating when GH swooped in. She also said how much she loved the people at DAYS at that time, ABC just made the proverbial offer you can’t refuse. Really seems like that was a tight cast and production company when Betty and Bill were there.

I know I read about someone, maybe Tracey Bregman, who said their rate was pretty much the same, it just wasn’t guaranteed. They could use her or not, but unlike her contract days, she only gets paid for actual use. I highly doubt SSH and BH are making starting wages, but maybe not the same episode $ that Alfonso was making when she left, or Deidre Hall. But who knows? I remember when DAYS went to the Gary Tomlin production model, especially in the first year or so, and it became so obvious that stories and characters would be dropped for a bit because they didn’t want to work them over their guarantees. They worked that out for the most part while he was still there, but at first it was a little jarring. From what I read around here, it wrecks havoc with Ron Carlivati though. I wonder if ABC had let Kimberly McCullough direct at GH if she would have stayed longer like Flannery?

I love it when the shows mess up things like this. The contract favors the production, but sometimes the talent gets to win one. I can’t imagine him signing a contract that didn’t allow him to do stage work. I wonder if they even had to specify this in the old days, when the show was taped live and a half hour. All those New York soaps had actors working on the show and the stage all the time, and they had the time to do it because of the schedule back then.

One of the few exceptions is Knots Landing- it really takes that show almost 3 full seasons to hit it’s stride, with strong runs for several seasons, then a couple seasons lull, then it picked back up again during the first season of the Sumner Group stuff, the show had kind of reinvented itself. Then it kind of fell apart. I think Melrose was one of those burned too bright kind of shows. They burned through so much good story and really chewed characters up in their plot machine in those super long seasons. It was appointment television for me in my teen years. Way more than 90210. I really wish we had gotten a season with Alison really on top of her game and giving Amanda a run for her money. I think it could have been fun after she had been gone for her to return and wreck a little professional havoc on Amanda. And let it bring out the best and worst in each other like it always did, but with the dynamics a little more tilted towards an Alison that had her life together to really rattle Amanda.

Modern shows build the costs for repeat airings into the license request and fees. As the music industry changed with downloads and streaming, the artists and labels got a lot harder to deal with and way more expensive to use music for anything. I know the band Pink Floyd just flat out refuses to grant those licenses now, cost is not their concern. WKRP’s re-release by SHOUT a few years ago really went to bat to try to get all the original music. They got about 90% of it cleared, the exceptions were either refusals (Pink Floyd), or just way too expensive. Once upon a time those artists loved the exposure of soaps. Now it’s just a cold hard cash thing.

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if Corday gave that special credit to Dee and Wayne as a courtesy, not out of any demand on their parts. Some of these credits might have been a respect thing. Although vanity is not uncommon in stars. The talent can negotiate perks into their contracts. Many prime time actors negotiated things like keeping their wardrobe each season and even jewelry in some cases. I can only imagine the perks in the stars of a show like Dynasty’s contracts. Or Sex in the City. @JAS0N47 has a wonderful site dedicated to DAYS, and he has so many interesting contract histories and episode counts posted there.

They were and still are a thing. An example from the We Love Soaps interview with Denise Alexander- “Denise Alexander: I had been working a long time. I had a very strong contract and the network was cutting back on a lot of people and guarantees where you were going to get paid even if you didn't do the episodes. They were letting people go but they offered me a raise. Because I had been kind of a big noise in the field, and had a great agent who was very trend setting in how he negotiated for his clients, I had a three show guarantee. They could not book me for four shows more than half a dozen times a year. They had some storylines coming up and didn't want those restrictions.” They often (well, who knows in the current soap climate) used to work people outside their guarantees. Especially newer actors that proved popular, because the show could get away with it. Only the elite performers like Denise and some others mentioned already had clauses to keep the shows from working them too much for their liking.

I wonder if some of them, especially New York soaps, did that to secure talent while waiting for the right role, or because they might be unhappy and wanted to be ready to go when they could fire someone?

As did Genie Francis after her kids were born, Wendy Riche agreed to it and that also pissed off some people at GH. When JFP refused to let Genie take off the summer she turned 40, without giving her 120 days notice in writing (which were the network included terms of her contract), she revealed she had the same ability in her contract to quit as long as she gave the show 120 days notice. So that’s what she did. The sticking point for her was that they do not require Tony to give the notice, they just let him go, and Riche had been allowing her to do it for the prior couple of years. And she said that JFP was taken by surprise again that she actually followed through and resigned. ABC really has treated her like crap several times over the years, and let Tony do what he wanted. I loved Luke, but not as much as I love Laura, or them as a unit. Didn’t Deidre also want Wayne to return as part of her agreeing to come back? And I remember reading she was incredibly well compensated. Dano’s deal was pretty remarkable considering she was not a huge ABC star, and Another World had not been the top rated show that it once was during her tenure there. She must have had an incredible Q rating back then. Louise Sorel also said that Corday was very generous in her contracts in the 1990’s. Although I remember that she had a run in early on DAYS where they tried to replace her and still had to pay her so they ended up bringing her back. Kim Zimmer was very public about GL in its last years trying to renegotiate her contract before it was due to expire for lower money, and she refused them. She said they could make that offer when her contract negotiations were due, but not with over a year left on her current contract. And people blamed her for actors being fired. But I agree with her- those were the agreed terms!

Did Blake have something to do with that? I recall reading something along those lines, like either the scabs or Long when she came back from the strike decided to reveal Blake as Holly and Roger’s child, which was not the original plan.

Fulton was smart to get that clause when she did!

My absolute favorite part was BM warning JFP she might have to quit and Jill telling her she can’t quit because she has a contract. And Bev telling her “you better read it.” If such a thing existed, it was after Bell was long gone. He would never let an actor dictate how the story would be told. And by all accounts, none of the actors did that lasted a long time. I have also heard that Susan and Erika had those clauses. And that Jensen one has been a legend for a long time! I think I even read it in a soap mag! I didn’t watch much of AW, but what I did I liked her but not so much I would have given her that. That’s interesting. I can imagine they used all their clout at that time after experiencing the show going from 30 minutes to an hour and how much longer their day had gotten by that point. Also from GH- Denise Alexander being killed off was due to her wanting time off and the show didn’t want to give it to her during a contract negotiation. They even threw more money her way, and it pissed the network negotiator off that she was declining more money for a vacation before her new contract started. Nobody was happy and they killed her as punishment. Her arrival at GH was due to a lapsed contract at DAYS, because Bill Bell was focused on launching Y&R and wasn’t sure what the story was for Susan just yet, and ABC found out she was off contract and offered her a much more significant contract guarantee, which is why she left.

After the recent post about the cast member leaving Y&R (see the spoilers page for that), and after reading just how many people don’t understand how soap contracts work (the comments on that performer’s post on social media about said firing), I got to thinking how much these boards taught me about soap contracts over the years. 13 week cycles, outs, vacation clauses, etc...we know a lot about them around here. The majority of them benefit the show/network totally, although some elite performers over the years have clauses that give them their own week cycles to quit before their contracts expire, and even a couple that had penalties if the show didn’t keep them for their entire contract length, or pay them the full amount for early termination! I thought this might be a fun place to compile all the contract information we have learned over the years about these shows, especially the odd ones. Maybe correct some myths, conjecture on what we have “heard” over the years! The current standard for newer performers seems to be 2 to 3 years with standard 13-week cycles. Not too long ago, that was almost always 4 to 5 years for newbies. GH-Tony Geary, by the time he left, had almost 6 months off a year put in to his contract instead of more money. He had been adding more time off for over a decade by the time he left. I have read that the infamous clause allowing him to rewrite his dialog was not actually in his contracts though.