Susan Hunter

Thanks you! I meant Steve Hardy. Tom Hardy is Aubrey's son by Tom Baldwin? Is that right?

Did Dr. Steve have any biological children and how is he connected to the Webbers?

But wasn't all of NBC tanking during this time (1980-1981)?

If I remember correctly, NBC was definitely in a transitional phase.

'The Doctors' had earlier switched time slots to make room for the 90 minute 'AW', and if I'm not mistaken it went up against YR, Ryan's Hope, and/or local news and some affiliates time-shifted it to late morning.

'Days' was in that period where they were switching headwriters every year. I believe this was the infamous Nina Laemle season.

'AW' was post-Lemay and I believe doing that whole Harry Must Die and St. Croix story, which was entirely different from what the show had been for the previous 8 years. Also, something else a lot of people forget is that 'AW' was NBC's 3:00 est show. It was going up against an increasingly popular 'GH', transitioning out of the 90 minute format and introducing the 'Texas' characters, and it lost Beverlee McKinsey. I also think I read that Wyndham, Watson and McKinsey had some kind of a wonky work schedule during the 90 minute season where they weren't always on together or at different times or something, which may have affected ratings.

Paul Raven, that TV Guide cover from July 8-14... Is the article that accompanied the cover photo still intact? I'm just curious what it said.

My favorite blurb is about Walter Curtin pulling out the scarf and crying into it every time he was alone and away from Lenore.

I loved that also. I guess getting rid of Walter Curtin was one of Lemay's first controversial decisions. The character and actor were both very popular, but he didn't understand how the character could be redeemed. A daytime writer would never be able to get away with that now. You can't get rid of popular characters no matter how irredeemable they are. And he used Walter's death to reenergize Lenore, then years later used Walter's secret as a way to write out the Lenore character, how good is that?

I don't think he changed characters immediately because Irna Phillips was consulting. He admits that there was much that he didn't understand about soaps, the structure and the never-ending story aspect of daytime and Ms.Phillips taught him how to do that. He played out Robert Cenedella's stories and jumped off from there. He admits that he hated 'plot' believing that the best drama comes from within characters, so the changes he made were just getting rid of soap cliches. It is a shame that Lemay and Dwyer couldn't meet each other half way. One of my favorite blurbs in his book is about Pat Randolph being poisoned by her housekeeper and she was having awful pains and wouldn't talk to her doctor brother and/or her nurse sister about it. He thought that was silly and got rid of stuff like that.

Does every soap need that, though, and to what end?

It depends. I think Another World would have benefited from having a core middle class family with roots to the show's beginning in later years to keep it grounded and develop new stories from. I think Mary was the heart of the family and her presence would have been an interesting contrast to playboy Mac and spoiled Iris and all of their New York friends.

I know very little about Dwyer. There is not a lot of info about her and Harding Lemay's account of the woman is one side of the story. However, Hollywood,etc. is filled with actors who claim to be protecting their character's integrity when in fact they're just afraid or don't have the acting chops to try new things. I just go back to Frances Reid who played a very similar character to Virginia Dwyer. Whether she agreed or disagreed with the writing, it appears that Reid just went for the ride and allowed writers to take her character to many different places. Again, it is a one-sided story, but it seems like Lemay only wanted to give the character more layers, not send her down some crazy path.

According to Lemay, she would change the dialogue and other actors would miss their cues. I love the blurb in his book about meeting her (Virginia Dwyer) for lunch and that she was the antithesis of Mary in real life. I gather her greatest sin in Lemay's eyes was not wanting to play what he had planned for the character. I get the impression from his book that she was going to be like Aunt Liz. So I'm not really sure what Aunt Liz was going to be, unless she was going to be her old snobby self.

Since we've only really heard one side of the story, I guess we'll never know the entire truth, however I choose to believe Lemay when he says that he was more than willing to write stories for the Alice, Steve and Mary characters, but the egos of JC, GH, and VD got in the way. I think I read that George Reinholt was acting out in other inappropriate ways that lead to his dismissal, but I'm not sure.

From his side of the story it seems like all he wanted was the actors to memorize their lines, play the scenes as written, and not rely on a bunch of acting crutches that they'd developed over the years. Connie Ford, Beverly Penberthy, Michael Ryan, et. al. seemed to adjust just fine and Lemay says that he even adjusted his writing style to fit their acting styles. I'm not sure why the fired three couldn't make it work, but he was sort of vindicated when George Reinholt turned into a disaster on OLTL and Jacquie Courtney played Pat Ashley exactly the same way she played Alice.

I've changed my opinion on this over the years, because I think that Harding Lemay is the best daytime writer ever, but I think he and Rauch should have given into Dwyer's ego. When Mary died, so did that middle class, middle America sense of home and family that every soap needs, imo. That always comforting and supportive force was gone. Ada was great, but she was always focused on Rachel. Liz couldn't fill the bill and neither could Rose Perinni or crazy Beatrice Gordon. So AW didn't have that Alice Horton type of character to balance out all of the New York sophisticates who found it chic to hang out in, of all places, Bay City, IL. Even when Days was at it's wildest, you could always count on Alice Horton to hold things down. AW didn't have that post Mary.