ellabelle

http://classicsodamc.tumblr.com/

Awesome! Thank you for sharing this! Is this your tumblr?

Dame Joan had dinner with John James and Jack Coleman and tweeted that she enjoyed reminiscing with her "favourite Dynasty men"...

I realize she's likely wearing a wig and that she's had substantial work done, but damn she still looks good.

Beautiful retrospective commentary from Alicia (Kendall) on AMC.

http://popwrapped.com/news/76362/interview-alicia-minshew/

I love & miss Kendall Hart-Slater to death!

Thanks for sharing! I miss all the Kane women. I know some people here really liked the AMC reboot, and I admit that it did have some good qualities, but it just wasn't AMC without the Kane family.

I will admit that Gordon Thompson was my first soap crush. I was 12. He was Mason on Santa Barbara. I had vague childhood memories of him on Dynasty. I have to remind myself that he's not nearly as young as he used to be.

John James doesn't look all that different from his stint as Jeff Martin on AMC about 8-9 years ago. He looks sunburned, but not horrible.

Yes, All My Shadows, Michael Nader hasn't aged well at all, but drugs tend to do that to a person.

ellabelle did you see the 1981 episode posted on the last page? Lots of good Erica scenes in that (with Brandon and Mark) and some classic Erica lines.

I wonder if they had Dimitri act that way to set up the Anton story (his having a long lost child). Or if they wanted people to know why Erica would cheat with Jackson. It's a shame that the show was so cavalier with Erica/Dimitri (as they also were with Travis/Erica earlier), as they could have been a strong longterm couple, at least if Nader had kept clean.

I did! I love seeing Erica pre-Bianca. It's so interesting to me!

I don't know. I'm not sure how long they had the Anton thing in the works. When Erica and Dimitri first slept together, it was established then that she was afraid of thunderstorms, so I wonder if they were laying some of the groundwork for the Kendall retcon. In late 1992, when Erica and Dimitri went to Budapest, they spent some time with Corvina (same actress, I think), and it's funny because she has a little boy who looks to be about Bianca's age, named Josef, who Dimitri offers to take fishing one morning. It's watching Dimitri with Corvina's little boy that convinces Erica to accept his engagement ring because she knows then that he'll be a wonderful father. No clue what happened to Josef, as he was not mentioned again, unless we're supposed to assume that in the course of a year and a half, he became surly medical student, Anton.

Erica didn't sleep with Jack until well after the trial ended, and frankly Jack pursued her. I think their 1994 affair says so much more about Jack and Erica than it does about Erica and Dimitri. Jack wants her, and he enjoys the chase, and he loves being able to woo her away from another man. He especially loves playing the knight in shining armor, coming to rescue her and help her when she's hurt or sick or lost or scared, but I don't know that he ultimately really loves her for the dysfunctional person that she is. Don't get me wrong - there are so many, many Jack and Erica scenes and stories that I absolutely loved. I just think that they want vastly different lives and aren't compatible in the long-term.

I absolutely believe that Erica/Dimitri would have reconciled again at some point had Michael Nader not had drug problems that forced him off the show. There's a great scene with Erica/Dimitri after Bianca's intervention, with them talking about their past and everything that happened between them. Had Jack not interrupted and asked Erica to leave with him, I think it could have led to a kiss between Dimitri and Erica. Even in early 1999, when he was toying with the possibility of something with Brooke, Dimitri admitted to her that he still had feelings for Erica, but that Erica (post Mike Roy return and Jack break up) wasn't interested in a serious relationship at the moment. He was by her side after her car accident with David, and he only backed away from her because she was furious he didn't tell her that her face was scarred. Even "dead," Dimitri loomed over Erica's relationship with David, and she constantly brought him up. She tried to reconcile with him when he came back in 2000 and was livid that he was still with Alex. If Nader had stayed clean and/or TPTB at ABC had been willing to keep him, I think we could have seen a very interesting story in 1999/2000 with Erica/David/Alex/Dimitri.

Don't know if someone post it already but:

Talk about powerful, eerie, and ahead of it's time. Soaps would never do anything so gritty nowadays.

The whole Erica rape story was riveting to me, and it's still riveting now. I was 14 when that storyline started, and even now at 36 there are some scenes I can't watch in one sitting because I find it too disturbing - I have to pause it and walk away for a while. It was soapy, thrilling, tragic, and scary all at the same time, and you could see these characters hurtling toward the edge of a cliff, but you couldn't do anything to stop it. Erica, Dimitri, Kendall, Mona and Bianca were so incredibly watchable from early 1993 through spring 1994.

As much as I loved that storyline, there were a few things that I wish the writers had done to flesh it out more and provide a better motivation for the characters. First, Kendall knew exactly how old Erica was when she was born, so it didn't make sense to me that she hated Erica for "throwing her away." Erica was clearly too young to raise a child. I could understand Kendall hating that she was deprived of a life of fame and glory and wealth because Erica went on to be THE Erica Kane without her, but it just was strange that she hated Erica for a decision Mona made. Mona even told Kendall that SHE made the choice to put her up for adoption, not Erica, but Erica was the one who bore the brunt of Kendall's wrath. Second, again because Kendall knew how old Erica was, even if she wanted to believe that her father was not a filthy rapist, even if she wanted to believe his lie that the sex was consensual, no one disputed Erica's age. It was her BIRTHDAY PARTY - Richard Fields knew how old she was. Erica told Kendall it happened on her 14th birthday. It should have been obvious to Kendall that Erica was too young to consent and this was -at a bare minimum - a statutory rape case. I thought it would have made Kendall more sympathetic if Richard Fields had insisted that Erica claimed to be older, that she pretended to be 16 or 17 even, and Kendall had clung to that belief because she didn't want to believe the truth.

The other thing I wish the writers had done was explained Dimitri's motivation a bit better. He really pushed Erica to accept Kendall as her daughter and for them to have a relationship. I've always assumed that he did so because of his own experience with Edmund, and he thought it would be better in the long run if they accepted each other as family as quickly as possible. The problem was that he came off as pushy and arrogant and frankly stupid because he had no parenting experience but was telling Erica how to parent her own kids. I also wish that his motivation for helping Kendall find Richard Fields had been flushed out a little bit better. Dimitri was a control freak, and I think he agreed to help Kendall because he figured she'd search with or without his help, and if he helped her, he could at least exert some control over the situation. I think he also naively believed that she really would find closure and would drop the whole thing. Unfortunately I don't think the writers did a great job of having him explain his actions, and it turned some fans against the Erica/Dimitri pairing as a result.

Hmmm... I know Joel Fabiani played Adam's lawyer Barry Shire in the late 90s/2000s. Larry Pine also played Barry Shire in the mid to late 90s.

I don't remember who Adam's lawyer was before that. As far as lawyers go... when was Adam NOT in trouble?

Totally, I was in a roundabout way referencing the whole scale thing she talks about in her book. Have you ever seen photos of their Manhattan apartment? I read that it was art deco in style, but this was some years ago. Don't even know if they still have the same place.

I've seen photos of their house in Garden City and their house in the Hamptons, along with photos of wherever they lived in the city before buying the house in Garden City. I heard they had a place in Manhattan, but I don't know anything about it.

I think Agnes is such a giant in the genre that it's hard to think of her aging and eventually dying. She seemed larger than life for so long.

She had a nice little run doing Ford commercials, she even had one with Liza. Kind of an unexpected product/personality pairing, you'd expect to see her with a sleek luxury brand or some sort of tongue-in-cheek glam campaign for a cheaper model. When have we ever seen her dressed like she is in this advert? I remember reading that Susan drove a Ford Explorer thanks to her work on these ads. She must like big trucks like she likes big houses... last thing I saw her driving was a Range Rover. Years ago she said her dream car is a black Ferrari. Wonder if she ever got one.

Her husband is really into fast cars, I think. There were a bunch of paparazzi pics of them a few years ago in Italy looking at sports cars at a dealership. As far as scale goes, she's said many times before that she likes everything big in scale, and he prefers small, which she says explains why they chose each other - he's a good foot taller than she is. Apparently it was an issue when they did a huge remodel of their house a while back because she wanted everything from furniture to art to be really big, and he likes smaller, more detailed pieces.

Finn Wittrock, who played Tad's long lost son, Damon, has a role in Jolie's new film, "Unbroken," where he plays a soldier lost at sea. Wittrock has had a bit of a breakout year, including a much talked about role on American Horror Story: Asylum. Buzzfeed has a great interview with him that includes an AMC mention: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarettwieselman/finn-wittrock-one-of-the-years-most-talked-about-new-stars#.wwmZ1e7XA

I admittedly was not fond of the "Tad has a son with Hillary" retcon, and I thought the whole Colby/Damon/Liza affair was very mishandled, but I like Wittrock, and I'm glad to see he's doing well in Hollywood.

Ross was also special as he was a Chandler-Cortlandt.

Right, and that alone would have provided so much fodder for drama. Adam would have likely had some issues with Ross being named Palmer's heir, especially if he'd come back to town as Ross Cortlandt instead of Ross Chandler. Ross would have remembered JR as a baby, so him interacting with an adult JR would have been so layered and interesting.

The only problem I see with it would have been the possibility of an Erica/Ross romance - would Erica really have a romantic relationship with a man who'd admitted to raping a woman before? Given the way that rape affected Erica and her family, I have a hard time with that, and it's something that would have had to be handled very carefully.

I really wish D&D had respected AMC's history and brought back Ross instead of creating Caleb and made Erica's lookalike Jane either Connie, Julie or Silver's unknown daughter instead of some random woman who idolized Erica.

I think enough time had passed after the Natalie rape story that Ross could have come back. Natalie was long-dead after all. They could have still made the mountain man thing work by saying that after he was released from jail, Ross retreated to the wilderness and lived alone, trying to put Pine Valley behind him, but that he stayed in contact with Palmer via letters. They could have then played with the history there - Erica falling for Ross while working with him, even though she'd been married to Adam and had considered Palmer a father figure.

Julie wouldn't have been believable as Jane, given the supposed age difference between Julie and Erica, but I would have loved it if Connie had been Jane. I loved the idea of someone taking over Erica's life and thinking it was all glamour and fun. I loved watching Jane swill beer, roll her eyes, and literally jerk David Hayward off a barstool. I just thought the whole explanation for who Jane was and how she pulled it all off was really under-developed. I did ultimately love the ladies of Oak Haven scenes, but I'd have much preferred the Jane storyline to drag out until the show's end. The storyline ended far too abruptly and too neatly for my taste.

wow so many connected characters could've returned. Didn't Erica have a niece as well?

Thanks SFK - it sounds like Michael was in that same age range then with Bianca, JR, Molly, Matthew/Sean, Jamie and Amanda. It's strange to me that he was never brought back. He could have gone to high school with JR and Bianca. Can you imagine how much Adam and Palmer would have hated it if JR and Michael had been friends?

Cassadine, Erica's brother Mark fathered Julie (played by Lauren Holly). I think her biological mother was a prostitute? She was adopted as a teenager by Ross and Ellen Chandler. Ellen and Mark later married and are still together off-camera, living in Asia. From the episodes I've seen, Julie was very much accepted by Erica as part of her family. Lauren Holly became a big enough star that I doubt AMC could have wooed her back, but I think they could have recast that role at some point.

It's odd then that they brought Bobby back but not Michael. You'd think at some point they'd have brought him back, especially since Bobby and Nina returned. What year was Michael born?

How long was Michael on the show? Was he killed off, or did he just leave with Nina?

Didn't Susan Lucci host SNL once and they did a whole skit on the emmy thing?

Yes, I believe it was in 1990? She was the first daytime actor or actress to host the show. The opening skit was all about the Emmy and how EVERYONE at SNL had Emmys, and they had so many of them that they used them for free weights, door stops, etc. There was a lot of soap spoofing in that episode too. Phil Hartman played a character who I guess was supposed to be sort of Jack Montgomery in a very melodramatic skit about lost luggage.

I wonder if the demands Dorothy Lyman allegedly made explains why she wasn't even asked to reprise Opal when the character was brought back in 1989 - despite winning two Emmys (the first in the supporting category, the second in the lead category).

No idea. It may be that they did offer it to her but she was working elsewhere and declined. Or maybe they wanted to take the role in another direction? From the clips I've seen of DL's Opal, it's a much harsher, tackier Opal than Jill Larson's version.

I've wondered if Susan's very gracious and "on" on-air personality is in part overcompensation for these unsavory bits of Erica-like behavior that leak to the masses. Like her dropping f-bombs on Bloopers and Practical Jokes, or pounding the table when Robin Strasser won the Emmy. Maybe not so much these specific incidents, but just to make the divide between character and actress as clear as possible.

From looking at multiple sources over the years, my assumption (I've never met the woman) is that she definitely has Erica-like aspects of her personality, but she's very conscious about appearances and does her best to rein it in and put forth a good front for the public. I work in PR, and I just have a hard time believing that she's a horrible, awful person IRL and the 'nice' front is totally an act - I think we'd have heard SOMETHING about that by now if it were true, especially now that AMC is gone. I don't think anyone is capable of consistently hiding bitchy behavior for more than 40 years. I don't doubt she didn't get along with various people or that there were times when she got angry or frustrated on set, but even going back into the early 70s, stories talked about how low-drama she was behind the scenes. I assume that's why the few stories we DO have (like the yogurt-throwing) get told over and over again - because they were isolated events.

The whole f-bomb thing on Bloopers & Practical Jokes... my colleagues generally consider me a very nice person, but if I get really upset, I'm apt to drop a few f-bombs of my own. That said, if anyone has a clip of that, I'd LOVE to see it!

it did say that Susan burst into tears when Dorothy was announced as Best Actress.

Yeah, that's more or less what the unauthorized bio of her said too. I think she put on as much of a gracious front about losing the Emmy as she could manage, but damn it, she REALLY wanted to win. I don't know that I really blame her for that either. I would want to win too, and I assume it would be really demoralizing to think that you're recognized as the face of daytime television, and you're doing your best work, and year after year, it's just not good enough.

Whaaa???

According to Susan's unauthorized bio that was published in the late 80s: They were in direct competition for the Best Actress Emmy in 1983. Both were quoted very graciously saying that the other deserved to win, and Lyman didn't even attend the ceremony that year because she was flying out to LA to be on Mama's Family. Susan was apparently a favorite to win, but Dorothy Lyman won instead. The ceremony was not televised that year, and she apparently got very emotional and left and then refused to talk to the press. Ruth Warrick spoke up on her behalf and basically said that everyone was just shocked, and they didn't understand why Susan didn't win, and that Dorothy Lyman's role was not a serious role, it was really just an outrageous caricature - which possibly could have offended Lyman. Susan reportedly later called Dorothy and congratulated her and was very gracious, but the whole thing got blown up in the soap press and the tabloids as a huge rivalry.

David Kroll, who played a minor character on the show is quoted in that book as saying that SL set the tone on the show behind the scenes, and because she was undemanding, everyone else was too, but that when Lyman went into negotiations after winning the Emmy, she had a lot of demands, and the response from TPTB was that SL was the star, and she didn't ask for any of this stuff, so forget it. Apparently Lyman felt winning the Emmy entitled her to more perks and/or $ than anyone else had, and ABC refused so Lyman ended up leaving the show.

To be honest though, I can't see SL on Mama's Family. I don't think she'd play "hick" very well.

I love seeing the actors interact with each other when they don't have to. I mean, I understand going to PR events for the network or something, but I think it's nice to see that some lasting friendships came out of AMC.

And Linda isn't here for a lengthy commentary about the #1AA SuperCouple made by Agnes Nixon with Emmy winning actors. Pity.

If Mary was there too then it would have been 2003.

Amy, I think it was one of the disastrous Kane - Montgomery Thanksgivings. I'm guessing somewhere from 2003 - 2006.

Yogurt-throwing incident? That story I haven't heard. Would you please fill me in?

It was back in the early 70s. Erica had a scene where she was pissed at her mother and was moving out of Mona's house. She was supposed to carry some suitcases down the stairs and out the front door, but they were huge heavy suitcases, and Susan couldn't easily maneuver with them, and the door wasn't really wide enough for her to walk straight through it with both suitcases. Susan says that she went to the prop master and asked for smaller, soft-sided suitcases that wouldn't be so heavy. In the unauthorized bio about her, Francis Heflin is quoted as saying that Susan asked director Henry Kaplan about getting smaller suitcases, and he told her no, that she'd manage, which Fra said was ridiculous.

At the time, everyone met with Henry Kaplan after the dress rehearsal, and he would give them rather harsh critiques of their acting. Susan didn't really get his sarcasm, and over time, she wrote that she would feel physically ill over these meetings with him where she was basically yelled at in front of her colleagues. Kaplan was pissed that she swapped out the suitcases and yelled at her and berated her in front of everyone and wouldn't let her get a word in edgewise. She was apparently eating yogurt for lunch during this meeting, and she got angry enough that she had to storm off and try to compose herself before they started taping. According to Susan, she went into an empty control room and threw the carton of yogurt, getting it all over herself and the room. Felicia Behr came in to check on her and told her to go clean up and she'd take care of the room, and Fra Heflin helped Susan clean up her hair and clothes (they shared a dressing room).

According to the unauthorized bio on Susan that was written in the mid to late 80s, Fra said Susan was eating the yogurt in their dressing room with her after the critique from Kaplan in which he'd told her she'd do the scene his way with the giant-ass suitcases that didn't fit through the door. According to Fra, Susan stormed out with the yogurt. Felicia Behr picked up the story from there and said that Susan went into the control room and tried to explain herself to Henry Kaplan, but she was overly emotional and kept getting angrier and angrier the more they talked until she threw the yogurt across the room, hitting pretty much everyone and everything EXCEPT Kaplan. Behr helped clean her up and calm her down, she used smaller suitcases in the scene, and apparently she and Henry Kaplan got on much better after that, believe it or not. The unauthorized bio describes the yogurt incident as being part of the studio folklore and the authors said that multiple people told them about it during the writing of the book.

She also threw a hairbrush at Felicia Behr once in the 70s after Kaplan upset her. Behr had followed her to her dressing room to talk to her, and Susan slammed the door, turned and threw a brush in that general directly, fortunately hitting the door and not Behr who had just had the door slammed in her face. Susan related that same story in her book, but left Felicia out of it, saying she threw the brush at the mirror.

According to her autobiography, Susan realized she was being unprofessional and got over it and realized she wasn't doing anyone any good by throwing a fit at work. According to the 80s bio, she once lit into an actor on set for being unprepared, and she apparently cursed him out in front of a bunch of the cast and crew, per Dack Rambo, although its hard for me to blame her too much for being mad about someone who didn't know his lines and was wasting everyone's time. The actor who originally played Chuck Tyler, Jack Stauffer, had been friends with Susan and Helmut and related a story in the unauthorized bio about witnessing a knock down, drag out fight in which Helmut deliberately provoked Susan until she went full on Erica Kane on him, yelling at throwing stuff - and said Helmut thought it was funny.

So my assumption is that she has a temper that is perhaps a bit Erica-like but does her best to hold it in at work or in public. Those really are the only incidents that I've read about in all the soap magazines I've read, TV interviews I've seen, etc. You'd think if there were more, someone would have come forward by now. I really would LOVE it if more former cast and crew would write about their time on AMC because I'm sure there are wonderful stories to be told. Susan wrote in her book about a time in the 70s when Ruth Warrick and two cameramen streaked across the studio floor together in front of the cast, just for the hell of it. I want to read about all those backstage antics and drama!