Mona Kane Croft

What are your thoughts on the following?:  

Had Vicky Wyndham left the role of Rachel anytime after 1980, do you think Robin Strasser could have successfully stepped back into the role???   Why or why not?    

And do you think TPTB at AW would have considered re-hiring Strasser as Rachel anytime after 1980??  Why or why not?   

8 hours ago, Xanthe said:

Judith Barcroft: That was the worst job that I ever had on a soap. It was terrible going back there. I had been one of the stars on ANOTHER WORLD and to come back as a pharmacist selling condoms, and nobody knew who I was, that was sort of a degrading stint. I didn't want to do that anymore.

I assume Connie Ford was the only member of the cast who had worked with Judith when she played Lenore on AW.  And if Connie wasn't in the studio that day, they probably didn't even cross paths.   Plus by 1989, none of the sets from Judith's era were still in use. So it must have been a bizarre experience for Judith.  Lenore had been an extremely important character until 1975, even though Susan Sullivan began playing the character in 1971.  

1 hour ago, Forever8 said:

How would you think Kelly would've done in the role(s)? 

Kelly would have done at least as well as Jensen.  And maybe Vicky would have retained more of her spit-fire with Kelly in the role.  Jensen essentially turned Vicky into Marley -- Jensen and the misguided writers.   

10 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

Perfect! But in my heart of hearts, I think any new, major story for Russ would have worked so much better if Sam Groom had returned to the role

I completely agree.  Vicky Wyndham and David Bailey did have chemistry, but Sam Groom was much more a leading man.  Plus, Groom had chemistry with everyone.  Seeing him and VW in a romance could have made them a 50's super-couple.  And, revisiting Rachel's relationship with the Matthews family would have been wonderful!   Just imagine what Iris would have thought about a Rachel/Russ re-match!!!??   Considering her own troubled history with Russ.   

3 hours ago, FrenchBug82 said:

Another of the show’s longtime stars, who played the ongoing nemesis of Mary‘s (Stuart, Jo) character, was unexpectedly and unceremoniously fired after more than a decade on the show.  Someone had overheard her in the make-up room the day before, reading about some natural disaster that had made headlines in the paper.  She dryly quipped, ‘Over a hundred people killed. Tsk tsk. And not one of them was a writer.’  The walls certainly had ears and someone rattled to The Powers That Be. Viewers wound up seeing her start a scene with her TV daughter on a Tuesday and an entirely new actress picking up mid-conversation on a Wednesday. (This is not a business known for its job security.)“

—Nelson Aspen, HOLLYWOOD INSIDER EXPOSED!

Nelson tells a nice story, but logistically this would have been impossible.   It would take weeks (if not months) to negotiate the hiring of an actress as popular as Louise Shaffer (was at that time) into a role. Plus, other actresses would have been at least considered, if not auditioned -- further slowing the casting process.  Nelson makes it sound as if Shaffer was hired over-night, and was on camera the following day.  

Plus, soap opera actors criticize writers all the time, and they don't tend to be fired for it unless it affects their performance or the atmosphere in the studio (George Reinholt, for example). 

IF Maree was fired, it was probably because of some lame attempt to "youth-ify" the show by recasting Stephanie with an actress considerably younger AND more popular with youthful members of the audience.   This recast most certainly took weeks to complete.   

7 minutes ago, Melroser said:

I never understood Mitch and Felicia. I think he would have been better served in a romance with Rachel. I'm sure the writers did it to stir up conflict between Rachel and Felicia, but it just never worked.

The class conflict could have been done at a couple of different times. With the Loves/McKinnons when they first started taking over the show (especially during Reginald and Mary's returns) and around the time Sharlene and Josie first arrived.

I think they started it with the latter. Josie and Matt on the phone connections line and there was conflict between Sharlene and Rachel. It's too bad that it didn't continue further. Rachel and Sharlene should have been rivals of sorts for years instead of friendly. With Rachel's history against the Frames (Janice's death, destroying Steve and Alice's happiness), Sharlene would have had reason. 

Plus, both Rachel and Sharlene had been married to Russ.  

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

Did they realise any improvement in the ratings with the audience checking out whether "Steve" and "Alice" were worthwhile? Was David Canary considered Bonanza-famous?

Another World never improved in the ratings after 1979.  Never once got above number 9, whatever shenanigans they tried: Bringing back Steve and Alice; devoting a third of the cast to crime/mob stories; firing Beverly Penberthy; the comedy of Felicia and Wallingford; the return of Iris; beautiful huge sets courtesy of Jill Ferrin Phelps; Vicky Wydham as Justine, the Lumina plot; a gorilla in the final episode.  Nothing raised the ratings. 

I wonder if anyone ever considered returning to class-conflict with a middle-class family as the core?  Obviously not.   

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks for letting me know. I will, sadly, never be seeing any of this material, so when I read about the high production values Rauch insisted  on, I had assumed they did not have Chromakey. That isn't fair of me, as I know it was an industry standard at that time. I just associate it with, frankly, Julia Hoffman screaming to Barnabas that the parallel time room is changing. 

Actually this episode is on Youtube.  I watched it a couple of years ago.  I don't know the original episode date, or how you would search for this particular episode, but it's there somewhere, if you're interested.   

6 minutes ago, FrenchBug82 said:

From the way she told the story I think it was actually the first time she met Mary Stuart which makes it even more ... special.
She started by saying she was terrified of Mary Stuart when she started (and later said she was terrified of her all throughout lol).

Then the anecdote: Maree mentioned that the CBS studio was very cold so she liked to wear big fluffly slippers. Their dressing rooms were upstairs and the set downstairs so there would be a lot of climbing the stairs up and down to go to rehearsals and blocking etc.
So she did the trip with curlers still in her hair and her big slippers and when Mary Stuart saw her (and again this seems to be the first time they had met, or shortly after they met), she said: "So THIS is our sex symbol?".
And from Maree's delivery, Stuart didn't say it in a cheeky teasing way but in a condescending manner. I think Maree's face when mimicking Stuart telling her that says everything that needs to be said about the way it was intended.

Thank you for sharing!   Maree has told this story before.  It seems to be the only story she is willing to share about Mary.   Nobody else from SFT will share even that much.   Most of the time, when asked about Mary -- members of the cast respond with vague comments such as "Oh, dear Mary," or "Sweet Mary, what a joy."   Nothing specific whatsoever.    I have heard genuinely positive comments about Mary from members of the Guiding Light cast, but nothing more than vague comments from anyone connected with Search for Tomorrow.    

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

That reminds me - I saw this tweeted today. Even just the tweet looks awful (especially that Chromakey). I don't know, I haven't seen this story, maybe I am not being fair.  I just don't know why they thought the remaining fans who knew Alice and Steve would want to see strangers. 

 

Believe it or not, the Chromokey scenes were one of the few things AW got right about Steve's return.   Since the days when Agnes Nixon created Steve, he always had a house in St Croix.  And between 1968 and 1975, Steve went to St Croix several times with Alice, and at least one time when he was married to Rachel.  Each time, the beach beyond the terrace was shown with Chromakey.  And when Mary Matthews died on this same St Croix terrace in 1975, it was done with the Chromakey horizon.    Corrine Jacker got almost nothing accurate about Steve and Alice's history, but somebody in the studio (probably Paul Rauch) must have told her about Steve and Alice's romantic times at the old place in St Croix, and the Chromakey beach.  So I can't complain about that.   

11 minutes ago, FrenchBug82 said:

Loved Maree's anecdote on Mary Stuart. I don't know if she intended it that way but it said a lot.

Can you tell us about Maree's anecdote about Mary?   Maree is notoriously tight-lipped about Mary, so I'm excited to know what she shared.   

1 hour ago, Bill Bauer said:

Wasn't Hugh Marlow the one who was always flubbing up his lines? He probably blamed it on Dwyer. Sorry, but Hugh Marlow had no room to criticize someone else's acting skills. 

Hugh Marlowe was by far my favorite Jim Matthews.  But Marlowe was a film actor who was obviously unprepared for the rigor of daytime television.  He stammered and flubbed through his lines to the point of embarrassment at times.  And his acting did not improve after Dwyer was fired.  His blaming Virginia Dwyer for his problems remember lines was ridiculous.   Still Marlowe had a great fatherly/grandfatherly presence on Another World, and I did enjoy him as Jim.   

Marlowe was sort of the "Jonathan Frid" of Another World.  A very good actor who simply had a problem remembering his lines.     And it was no ones fault other than his own.   

1 hour ago, TVFAN1144 said:

I don’t remember a lot about Mary Mathews. But it doesn’t seem like she was a real strong dominant matriarch like a Nancy Hugh’s or Alice Horton

Actually, Mary was a strong  archetypal  soap matriarch in the mold of Nancy Hughes and Alice Horton -- from the beginning of the show, and up through the Cenedela years.  The reason Mary is less remembered is Harding Lemay did not appreciate the matriarchal role on AW and began to diminish the character almost immediately upon his arrival at AW.  First Lemay attempted to change Mary's motherly supportive nature into that of a meddling busy-body.  When that didn't work, he brought back Aunt Liz and gave her all the traits he wanted his version of Mary to have, and then Mary's screen-time became minimal.  She was often explained as out of town, or sneaking away to care for Missy and Ricky (without Liz knowing).  As someone mentioned in an earlier post, many of Mary's scenes were, at the last minute, given to Ada or Liz, or occasionally even Helen Moore. It became ridiculous, especially for fans of the character, like myself.   Lemay did not like writing for happy families, and despite all their personal problems, the Matthews family had always been fundamentally happy and loving (similar to ATWT's Hughes, DOOL's Hortons, and AMC's Martins).  Lemay preferred writing the family as fundamentally flawed by making their mother (Mary) a thorn in everyone's side.  Unsuccessful at that, he minimized then killed-off Mary, which threw-off the balance of the show for the final 25 years of its run.   

8 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

Believe me, as a viewer who had waited YEARS for Rachel to get her a$$ kicked, watching Alice finally lunge at her and throw copper pots at her as Rachel fled from the house was enormously, deliciously satisfying. To me, it was one of the most memorable episodes in the show's history.

Totally agree.  This was absolutely one of the most memorable scenes in AW's entire history.    One of a handful I was lucky enough to view during the original airing.    And yes, it was time for Alice to finally, finally, FINALLY kick Rachel's home-wrecking a$$. . .   And Jacquie Courtney handled it with aplomb.   

Will he finally get somebody from SFT to talk openly about Mary Stuart?   

1 hour ago, Xanthe said:

The point of the kidnapping was that she needed to get pregnant to provide her husband with an heir. I think both the king and his people were supposed to believe the baby was the king's so she couldn't very well flaunt Cass all over Tanquir. It probably also saved money on sets and cast not having to have the royal palace. She managed on a shoestring with Ving Rhames and Walt Willey. 

I can't imagine Mary Matthews and Lenore Curtain in the same universe as this garbage.    My opinion only.     

2 hours ago, Xanthe said:

When was Tanquir first described as a tropical island nation? I don't remember any particulars of its geography or economy. I wonder if they confused the island on which Cecile held Cass captive with the nation.

What was the GL Quint/Nola version of Tanquir like? 

Do we know whether it was the same HW constantly peddling Tanquir from soap to soap, or various writers pulling it out of the P&G grab bag? 

I believe Tanquir was first described as a tropical island on AW, when the location was used in one of Cecile's capers (maybe 1984-ish?).   Previous to that it had been a Middle-Eastern stand-in for Saudi Arabia on both AW and Texas.  

I don't remember Quint and Nola's version of Tanquir, because I wasn't watching GL at that time. In fact, this is the first time I've ever heard Tanquir was used on GL.

No, it was not one head-writer going from show to show using Tanquir.   William and Joyce Corrington were the head-writers of Texas when the location was first used on AW in the lead-up to Texas, so that was their creation.   On GL, Doug Marland and Pam Long wrote for Quint and Nola, so either Marland or Long was responsible for Tanquir on GL.  And I don't know who was writing AW, when Tanquir was part of Cecile's plot -- but it was not Marland, Long, or the Corringtons.   

Tanquir was originally used during a plot for the lead-up to the spin-off, Texas.  It was a Middle-Eastern oil rich country in the desert -- sort of a fictionalized version of Saudi Arabia.  After Texas premiered, the plot continued for a few months with characters in Houston interacting with characters in Tanquir.  A few years later, the name Tanguir was used again on AW -- this time to describe a tropical island nation, nothing like the original version of Tanquir.  It was used mostly for laughs, rather than a serious plot.   It seems lazy writers just used a name they remembered from the past (Tanquir), but really created an entirely new fictional location.  Too bad they weren't creative enough to think of a new name.   

Do they have many AW episodes pre-1979 on the Youtube channel?   

2 hours ago, watson71 said:

Harding Lemay fleshed out Felicia's past as Fanny Grady starting in Fall 1988 when Felicia was hypnotized by magician Oliver Twist played by Dick Cavett.  This continued into 1989 as Felicia was stalked by a stranger who later turned out to be Derek Dane, who it was later revealed killed Felicia's stepfather, Noah Grady in self defense.  Felicia believed that she was the one who had originally killed Noah.  Lemay detested murder mysteries and court trials, so I wonder if his story outline contained the "Who Killed Jason Frame?" storyline with Felicia as the suspect on trial.  Whether he penned this or Donna Swajeski changed it, the murder mystery and subsequent trial was one of Another World's best umbrella storylines because the entire cast was involved - tying Iris is the Chief of Bennett Publishing, Sharlene's prostitution past, the father of Vicky's baby, and Evan was Janice Frame's son all together.  AW was must see TV and on the top of its game in the Spring of 1989.

I doubt Lemay created the Derrick Dane character (Dane was too cartoonish for Lemay, in my opinion).  But Lemay probably had the skeleton of that storyline, and all the others you mentioned in the plot projection he left behind.  Jason's Frame's death and Felicia's subsequent trial was probably precipitated by Chris Robinson's desire to leave AW and go back to California. And we don't know at what point Robinson expressed his wish to leave the show -- while Lemay was still there, or when Swajeski was head-writer.  I do know Lemay did not like murder trials, but he did write several murders during his first stint as AW's head-writer -- nearly all without trials, however.  

5 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

On the other hand, Patti mentions a new physician, Dr. Walton, to Ted, and that character is listed as debuting in 1960.

Tracking down exact dates for vintage soaps can be challenging, but I am so glad to see a "new" episode like this pop up, even if its timeframe is murky. 

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

This is probably the Dr Walton that later married Janet Bergman, and was the father of Liza and Gary.  

9 hours ago, Chris 2 said:

I have to be honest: I’m shocked. I can’t imagine that the ratings for the second cycle of the early shows on Retro are that different than the first cycle. And I thought they’d just continue to monetize the shows that have already been digitized. This goes beyond just a business decision, I suspect. Some with budget - whether its at Retro or at SFM - really loves these old shows.

I'm pretty sure it is RetroTV, and not SFM, that is digitizing the episodes.  I find that odd, because when Retro finally stops airing the show, SFM won't own the digitized copies.  So any other station that decides to air (or stream) The Doctors in the future will need to digitize all the episodes all over again.  Strange decision, I think.

And regarding ratings, apparently RetroTV doesn't really care about ratings.  Retro doesn't participate in the Nielsen Ratings system, and they don't measure their ratings in any way.  So they do not set their advertising rates based on ratings.  I do not know what they use to set their ad rates -- but I'd speculate, whatever the market will pay.  Retro seems to be desperate to find enough cheap old shows to fill their broadcast schedule, and they will take almost anything -- regardless whether the shows influence ratings.  I do believe Retro has gained a lot of publicity from airing The Doctors, both online chatter and in the soap press.  So Retro might actually value that publicity more than they value actual ratings (which they don't even measure).   

17 hours ago, Xanthe said:

It's a broader perspective in relation to the show for sure. 

One thing that Richard Culliton mentioned was that he appreciated coming in to write when the characters had been well-defined. He also mentioned how much he had enjoyed writing Felicia/ Cass/ Wallingford/ Kathleen/ Cecile and that he had thought it wrong to retcon a tragic past for Felicia. If he considers Lorna to be a mistake I would disagree, but stuff like Derek Dane and Noah Grady I could take or leave alone. 

 

I think it was Harding Lemay who fleshed out Felicia's past, although it had been begun under previous head-writers and continued under Swajeski.  Lemay always used the past of his major characters.  Sometimes that past already existed -- Pat Randolph, Rachel, John Hudson, and Lenore Curtain Delany, for example.  And other times, Lemay created a history -- Steven Frame, Mac Cory, Sharlene Frame, and Iris, for example.  Nearly all of Lemay's major characters (whether Lemay created the characters or inherited them) had an achilles heel or a shameful secret from their past that drove them and influenced all their decisions.  That was just the way Lemay wrote.   So no one should be surprised he added to Felicia's history and made it important to her life in the present.

5 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Interesting that Irna's final 3 shows-Another World, Splendored Thing and World Apart all saw her depart within a year. 

Don't forget, Irna also created Days of our Lives after Another World.  Not sure how long she wrote for DOOL, but not more than a couple of years.  DOOL didn't become popular until Bill Bell took over as head-writer.    

1 hour ago, victoria foxton said:

I don't think AW knew what to do with Nancy. Which was a shame. Since was an interesting character. She had bits of Ada and Rachel in her personality. While still being very much her own person. Plus a legacy to boot. I wish AW hadn't killed Perry. Or written Chris out. I think those decisions ended up hurting Nancy. And the Sin Stalker constant failed murder attempts got boring after awhile.

You are right, but I can't imagine soap opera writers not knowing what to do with Rachel's two sisters!  Neither Nancy nor Pam ever returned to the show (Nancy just a couple of guest appearances).   Even in later years, when AW was struggling to keep the 50-ish Rachel relevant, the writers did not think to bring back one (or both) of her sisters?  Or Rachel's trouble-making father, Gerald Davis?  And what about Sam and Lahoma??   The idiots in charge seemed to have completely forgotten Rachel's working-class roots, and her relatives who could (and should have) come out of the woodwork to get a little of that Cory money.