Susan Hunter

Allison was unaware that she had married one of twin brothers. Her hus­band in fact was a victim of a rare disease, and had left Allison rather than burden her with his care in the last months of his life, and it had been his twin brother, Jason Tate, who in­stead of telling Allison the truth, simply substituted himself in a relationship he coveted. In order to keep Allison from suspecting the truth he addicted her to drugs

Was this the first (non supernatural related) evil twin storyline in daytime?

Thanks Tom. Did Carol Roux do anything else after leaving Somerset? She sounds somewhat unstable.

I would love to read anything that you have to share Tom.

Can you provide any insight on how the show began? Was it PG's idea to do a spin-off or were they approached by NBC? How long was the spin-off in the works? Based on the first year, it seems as though they were just trying to do an hour version of Another World without calling it an hour and setting it 50 miles up the road. Were Sam and Lahoma that popular as to build an entire show around them? Was anyone else considered?

Did the Roy Winsor keep Slesar's mystery theme or did he go back to melodrama?

When it's all said and done, I think the show and the fans were incredibly lucky to have two actresses make such a lasting impression and leave their unique mark on one of daytime's greatest characters. Strasser and Wyndham each brought something to this character, I don't think you can go wrong with either performance.

I read an interview where Wyndham says she had reservations about taking that Rachel part because she had just finished playing Charlotte on GL, a very Rachelesque character, but Lemay and Rauch convinced her to take it.

Its funny but I never felt Wyndham was right for the part

Wyndham was the only Rachel that I have ever known. I watched a Strasser episode at the Paley Center many moons ago, something about Liz seeing Rachel and Steve having lunch at a private club. It was definitely Stasser's part, there was no doubt about that, and you're right, she was anything but one dimensional. However, Wyndham did a pretty good job before the character transformation in the few scenes that I've seen her in. Somewhere on Youtube there is a scene of Wyndham fighting with Irene Dailey's Liz about Alice's House and she throws in a line about Alice never giving Steven any children. It was brutal and so very good.

From what I have read and heard, Wyndham was very much like Susan Sullivan - very ambitious.

If you can, would you elaborate more on this. Did VW not plan to stay with the show long? Thanks!!

I never understood the issues Lemay and Rauch had with Strasser, as I thought she only returned until they could find a replacement. You'd think she was some burden they were stuck with.

Margie Impert was before their time wasn't she?

From Lemay's book, it was Rauch who asked Strasser to come back because Impert wasn't working out and I believe they needed a strong Rachel to finish out a story while they were looking for a suitable recast. The only thing Lemay says in his book is that Strasser (I'm paraphrasing from memory) was great at playing the villain, but he wasn't convinced that she could play what he had planned for his version of Rachel.

Who knows if he was right or not. I believe Strasser played a "good girl" on AMC, but the character didn't work out.

Did Rauch work with Strasser at OLTL?

I have a new respect for Victoria Wyndham, after discovering that Reinholt and Courtney were hostile to her.

And NBC never had ratings on that level for their other new soaps, did they? Not for long anyway.

It appears that, based on the ratings that Tom posted, 'Return to Peyton Place' was higher rated than 'Somerset', yet 'RTPP' was cancelled after 21 months and 'Somerset' last another 2 seasons.

Forgot to say that, as from the fall of 1975, Somerset had the hour long Another World as its lead in, but of course the ties between the shows had long been cut. Cannot help but think renewing those ties would have helped. Instead of firing all those actors, they could easily have moved them over to Somerset. Certainly Reinholt would have made the ratings go up as he did on OLTL.

That is actually a great idea and I'm surprised that PG didn't think of it. Steve and Alice moving to 'Somerset' may have been a boost to that show.

This is all wonderful. Thank you for posting this.

Awful to hear that about Carol Roux, but I guess given the time period I shouldn't be too shocked.

Do you know if the plan all along was to drop the ties to Bay City after the show was established or was that a Slesar thing after he decided to take the show in a new direction?

The ratings are also interesting because while the show never broke into the top ten, it seems to have maintained a stable audience for its entire run with a few spikes here and there. It premiered at 5.7 and was cancelled at 5.2, not exactly a huge drop. It came on at 4:00 eastern time where I lived, so I'm wondering if NBC just gave that time back to local affiliates and that's why it was cancelled.

The whole concept of VW's Rachel seeming in a different class than CF's Ada is fascinating. I wish we could see some of their early work together. By the time of the stuff which is more commonly available (a few late 70's episodes) I totally bought them as mother and daughter.

I believe that Constance Ford also had some issues with VW in the beginning as well, but they worked it out pretty quickly. Poor VW, it sounds like she walked into a hornet's nest on that set.

That is really juicy and the first time I've ever seen this. I can't believe Reinholt called out Wyndham like that. My gosh.

It's always very interesting to me how long this whole back and forth went on. I have a Daytime TV Stars where Reinholt responds to comments from Lemay (I don't have the issue where Lemay made the comments) and he basically goes on refuting accusations that he and Courtney were unpleasant towards Victoria Wyndham.

I remember reading on a message board years ago that Reinholt, Strasser and Courtney weren't always nice to other actors on the set. I have never seen that confirmed or denied anywhere. But what was the beef with Wyndham? Steve and Alice were still the stars of the show.

Carl, thank you so much for posting all of these articles. Great reading!

When there was an exciting event at the end of one episode (for example, a Friday cliffhanger), Winsor generally started the next episode with characters discussing what had happened "yesterday".

Oh that's neat. Thank you for sharing.

Winsor kept things moving very fast, with lots of humor and fun dialogue, and made the choice to have every episode represent an entire day in the lives of the characters (i.e., he didn't have one storyline day run over ten episodes).

That is interesting. I didn't realize he did that. I don't mind soap days that last forever, but like the idea of one episode/one soap day, but how did Friday cliffhangers work? I just wish they would go back to longer scenes. I was watching LIAMST on Youtube. There was only one scene per act, but the show really moved. Each scene had a beginning, middle and end. By the end of the show you felt like a lot had been accomplished

DH: But you know what? Dee and I were smart to never address him as actors but as characters. I remember when John Aniston yelled at him during the Emmy Awards complaining about how these snot-nosed kids were thwarting him after he outsmarted the CIA, etc.. Aniston was like, “Victor is smarter than that — something needs to change.” James’s response? “It will.” Well, literally the next day, a rewrite came in and Victor ended up in a coma after a heart attack! James was very passionate about the show. This is a testament to James’s power at NBC — the network was furious because John is Jennifer Aniston’s father, but all he said was, “You keep him happy. He’s off my show.” And as we know, James won that battle. But when James went to Passions, Victor miraculously came out of his coma. When it came to James, if he saw you out of character, you were done.

This makes me wonder what did Matthew Ashford do? Jack's story was pretty good with The Spectator and his adventures with Billie and Kate and you got the feeling that he was setting up a quad between Jack, Jennifer, Austin and either Kate or Billie. Then all of a sudden it just ended.

If I recall correctly, Ben was a very sexual character. When played by Christopher Reeves he was more pretty than macho, but he was definitely a character driven by his libido. It would have been very interesting to see what rape would have done to the character.

"Guiding Light, #1 in '82"

Did it happen? I know the show got very close to #1 or may have even beaten GH, but I can't remember which year.

And yet, as graphic as it was, they stopped short of actually raping Ben. I don't know WHAT to make of THAT decision.

Even though he wasn't raped, that was a pretty edgy story for the mid-70s. I can't think of anything done in the last 10 years on daytime that would be anywhere close to that.

During its heyday, AW was la creme de la creme of daytime drama. The years written by Agnes Nixon and Harding Lemay were superb. They should do a DVD release on all the existing material of the original Alice/Steven/Rachel saga: the best triangle in soap opera history.

I would buy it.

Thank you for posting that. At this point does Heather know that little PJ is Steven Lars? I am assuming so because it appears as if she's gaslighting Diana. Also, how did her obsession with Luke start? Did Luke help her do something shady with PJ/Steven Lars and Diana?

From that clip he seems really unrepentant about what he did to Laura. It must have taken some masterful writing to totally change his character and for the audience to buy it. Wasn't Luke the mayor of PC at one time?

I'm thinking that Roger Thorpe was the only major character rapist, who wasn't turned into a hero.

Thanks for posting those clips. So I guess there is definitely no mistaking what happened. That is definitely one of those storylines that could never work today because of the online community.

Today, Jessie would just call her a dirty whore and Laura would develop a funny alter personality.

That was hilarious.

Paul Raven, on saynotoursoap's youtube channel he has a promo for 'A World Apart' with some actress talking about the new 'faster-paced and provocative' stories. So based on that promo, I get the impression that they were probably forced out.

My biggest problem with Gloria Monty was Luke raping Laura and then Monty telling us it was a seduction, not a rape. It was a very violent rape, and GM saying that was so offensive I've never been able to get past it..

I never saw those particular episodes. What happened after the rape? Did Laura actually say that she was raped? How did the story play out from then on? At some point they turned Scotty into a villain, but how?

I have always been a casual viewer of GH, never really invested, but I loved the Stefan/Laura story and when Bobbie slept with the guy who played Lucy Ewing's husband on Dallas who had made a bet with either Lucy or Katherine that he couldn't break up Bobbie's marriage. Was Faith Roscoe on during this time? I liked that character.