Mona Kane Croft

29 minutes ago, Forever8 said:

 

This is wonderful.  I had forgotten that Don Stewart was still playing Mike Bauer during this storyline.  Sadly, both Stewart and Peter Simon would be gone by the time Bert died.  Because of that, it seemed like the character's death was minimized.  

7 hours ago, BuckyB12 said:

Lemay continued to write AW through most, if not all of the 90-minute episodes, and Olive setting the fire that killed John happened in the first week of that expansion. I also remember her eventual slide into Crazy Town as being somewhat measured and believable.

Actually, the expansion to 90-minutes occurred in early-March, and I believe Lemay's final script aired in late-April or early-May of the same year.   So he quit rather quickly after the expansion.  But he did write Olive's decent into craziness.  

There was an amazingly respectful tribute to Guiding Light and soap operas in general on today's episode of the NPR radio show, 1-A. The segment is approximately 15-minutes long, and I would encourage any soap historians and fans to find it online and listen to it. It's ironic that the national tv networks can't show any reverence to the soap operas that sustained them for generations, but NPR took 15-minutes on national radio today to reflect on the importance of the genre. I've always loved NPR, but even more so now.

5 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I wonder why Lemay chose to rewrite his own story when he brought Iris back in 1988

I'd love to know the answer to that too.  The rewrite was completely unnecessary, and it was insulting to any viewers who had watched the original storyline play out in 1978.   An adopted child has just as much legal right to inheritance (and/or the family business) as a bio-child.   So Iris could have played the same beats regarding Cory Publishing, whether she was adopted or bio.  There was no logical reason to rewrite her conception to make her Mac's bio-child.  

14 hours ago, j swift said:

After reading the latest post from the 1975 thread, I started to think that Dr. Dave Gilchrist was kind of a jerk.  He broke confidentiality by telling Michael Randolph that his twin sister Marianne was pregnant.  Then, he told Rachel to acquiesce to Mac and tamper down her art career because she wasn't paying enough attention to her husband (later, he tried date Rachel when they divorced) .  What do others remember about good ol' Dr. Dave?

 

Also, Olive Gordon Randolph seemed to go from schemer to psycho in five minutes flat.  One minute she's blackmailing half the town and the next she is burning down cabins.  Was the turn as sudden as it reads? Was this contemporaneous with Lemay's departure as headwriter?

 

Furthermore, I don't quite get the connection to Sally. Were Ray and Olive Sally's aunt and uncle because Ray's sister was Sally's mother?  Was Ray's brother Charles also a character or was he only around for Beatrice's introduction as an overbearing mother? On the AW Homepage it mentions that Beatrice left Bay City to care for Ray's two other kids, but who was raising the boys when Ray and Olive were in town? 

 

It is ironic that Sally grew so close to Mac and Rachel, considering that Rachel was using to Beatrice to f%^& with Alice over Sally adoption, but I guess all is forgiven after a SORAS and a retconned baby.

Yes, Dave Gilchrist was kind of a jerk, but he wasn't a villain.  He was nice to Alice, and I think dated Pat briefly during one of her break-ups from John.  He was played as a romantic character with an edge, but he didn't really have any long-running romances.

Ray and Olive were Sally's biological uncle and aunt (aunt by marriage).  Olive's slide into lunacy made sense in real time, because of all the rejection she faced, and because most of her schemes didn't work.  But writing her into a corner and making her an unredeemable psycho was a huge mistake on Lemay's part.  The show was in desperate need of another permanent villainess.  AW was transitioning to 90-minutes, Rachel was almost totally reformed, and Iris would be leaving the show completely in 1980.  By the time Olive left the show, she had connections/interactions with all corners of the canvas.  So she could have caused trouble for years to come.  What a mistake, writing her off.   

Adult Sally's closeness to Mac and Rachel was nothing more than a device to give her parental figures, and connect her to the Cory family.  Since Alice and nearly all the Matthews family were gone, and Sally had become the show's young romantic lead, she had to be more connected to the other stars of the show (Mac and Rachel).  None of this would have happened, had the Matthews family still be strong, and had Alice remained in town.   

3 minutes ago, te. said:

Definitively an imitation. I also think if you enjoyed the spooks of DS you'd enjoy SP. How they do away with characters is kind of insane though; but I've only watched the first two arcs.

Okay, I'll find the eps and watch a few more.  Maybe I'll get hooked. Thank you!

18 minutes ago, te. said:

I know no one is interested but I just randomly saw that the channel has started adding the episodes of the second (and last!) arc of Desmond Hall:

 

Thank you.  Ive watched only a couple of episodes of this series, but was a huge fan of Dark Shadows.  Would you say Strange Paradise is as good as DS?  Or is it just a lesser imitation?   Serious question.  I'd love to hear how people feel about Strange Paradise, before I invest the time watching it.  Thanks!  

Somewhere in a box, I have the original bible for "Another World: Somerset" (later retitled, Somerset).  The original is in the P&G archives in Cincinnati.  The archivist made a copy for me, when I visited around 1996.  If my memory is correct, the working title for the show was "Between Two Worlds."  And I recall the character Robert Delany was supposed to be murdered during the early weeks of the show. Of course, the character ultimately survived and later crossed-over permanently to the mother show, Another World.

I never realized Vola was such a problem.  I talked to her on the phone a few times years ago, and she seemed rather normal.  What kind of difficulty did she cause?

16 minutes ago, Lust4Life76 said:

Re: [S.W.S.N.B.N.]...

  Why do I remember her being in the soap opera news 10 years ago? I show on IMDB.com she was a writer for "Days of our Lives", but I always felt she had a connection to "One Life to Live" too? 

If you are talking about who I think you're talking about -- yes, she definitely wrote at least one episode of DOOL, because I saw her name in the credits.   I am not aware that she had any connection to OLTL, although she may have been a fan.  She told me her favorite soap was Another World, and she really knew the history of that show!  We had a couple of conversations about AW, and how she learned to speak English by watching the show.   

2 hours ago, watson71 said:

 

 

According to the Another World Homepage Ada appears on February 28, 1967.  She is introduced as Liz Matthews hairdresser.  Her brother Sam lives with her as well.  Rachel appears on March 8, 1967.   Were they living at their house on Bowman Street at this time?

I don't think so.  I believe she moved into Ernie Downs's house, when they got married (1969 or 70).  After Ernie died, she married Gil, and then Charlie -- but stayed in the house she had shared with Ernie.   So she and Rachel lived somewhere else when they got to Bay City in 1967.   

Does anyone remember where Ada and Rachel lived, before Ada married Ernie Downs and moved into his house?

Who were some of the longest running characters on Love of Life?  I'll post the obvious ones: Van, Sarah Dale, Bruce, and Rick Latimer.  Most fans don't realize Rick was on the show as long as he was -- way over 10-years.  I have no idea which characters would come next I'm terms of longevity. Maybe Meg, although she was missing from the canvas for many years before her return.  Love of Life (like Search for Tomorrow) had a very fluid cast over the years, with relatively few long-term legacy characters.   This trait was both good and bad, for both Love of Life and Search for Tomorrow.  

15 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Slick Jones fantastic  Love of Life cast list is filling in a lot of blanks re characters and their role in the story.

 

From 1973

ep # 5559

Tape date Feb 3 1973

Air date Feb 13 1973

Producer Freyda Rothstein

Writer Christopher Bell w/ Peggy O'Shea

 

Cast

Kate

Van

Rick

Lloyd

Vivian

Sarah

Bobby

Extras

 

Sets

Potting Shed (Sarah's gardening business)

Hospital corridor

Phillip's living room

Phone limbo area

 

Vinnie and Lloyd discuss baby Rebekah's meningitis. Vinnie is annoyed Dan will be assisting in surgery but LLoyd thinks it's a good thing as might bring Dan and Kate closer due to their mutual concern over the baby.

 

Van expresses concern about Stacey to Sarah and Bobby. She wants Bobby's assurance that Stacey is no longer delving into ESP experiments and believing she can contact the dead.

FYI -- There is a cast mistake in the post above: Vivian Carlson (listed in the cast list), and Vinnie Phillips (mentioned in the synopsis) are not the same character.  Vivian was a long-running character, and I believe Bruce's former mother-in-law.  Vinnie (Lavinia) Phillips was the mother of Dr Dan Phillips and wife of Lloyd Phillips. Vinnie and Lloyd were recurring characters who appeared occasionally while Dan Phillips was on the show.  Vinnie and Lloyd never lived in Rosehill, their home was in Boston.  Vivian is not mentioned in the synopsis, although she is listed in the cast list.  And Vinnie is not in the cast list, but is in the synopsis.    

2 hours ago, Efulton said:

That’s because Harding Lemay wasn’t writing Liz Matthews.  His writing for Irene Dailey was the version of Mary Matthews that Virginia Dwyer refused to play.

You are absolutely right about that.  I was about to reply to my own post with something similar.  Lemay's Liz was just a little more meddling and a little more unstable than Mary Matthews.  But I can't imagine Mary behaving like Liz did.  Mary had no motivation for that sort of behavior.  Mary was a fundamentally happy woman, while Liz was fundamentally unhappy.  So it made sense for Liz to be a meddling trouble-maker.  I completely understand why Virginia Dwyer resisted Lemay's attempts to turn Mary into a neurotic meddler.   But maybe she should have cooperated.  Had Dwyer out-lasted Lemay, the Matthews family almost certainly would never have been minimized as they were by later writers.   

9 hours ago, SoapDope said:

Yes. She was screaming her lungs out and shut Missy down when she tried to be the peace maker. There is also some great audio when Bill is tearing into Liz about her mistreatment of Missy.

I loved Irene Dailey as Liz, but I think Harding Lemay toned-down the character too much, when he reintroduced Liz in 1974.  Dailey maintained very little of Lindley's volatility, and became even more mellow, as the years went by.  Lindley's Liz was really more of a villainess, and not just a meddling relative (as Lemay wrote her for Dailey).  And sadly, nearly all the post-Lemay writers mellowed Liz even more -- turning her into little more than comic relief.  That showed how little they really understood the character and her history.   

10 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

Palmer/Nina was an example of emotional incest...something that exists more than we realize.

 

 

It has been suggested that Agnes Nixon created Palmer and Nina's relationship as a more extreme version of OLTL's Victor and Vicky.  But I have never seen that confirmed by Nixon herself.  Of course Palmer and Nina were created nearly fifteen years before the Victor/Vicky relationship on OLTL was re-written as truly incestuous -- and that was done by Michael Malone, not by Agnes Nixon.   

10 hours ago, Xanthe said:

I finished The Odyssey and The Idiocy and there were no AW cast or crew mentioned (unless disguised by pseudonyms). However if you are interested in Nicolas Coster's early career and his boat it might be worth looking at. 

 

Now reading Sometimes You Have to Lie and was surprised to learn that Constance Ford was in a relationship with Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy)when she was cast on AW. No backstage insight into the show here either but brief mentions of how Connie kept Louise on a more even keel until they broke up.

I understand that Connie Ford and Nancy Wickwire (AW's Liz Matthews from 1969-71) were involved for several years.  

On 1/21/2021 at 2:07 PM, AbcNbc247 said:

 

A lot of his work is available on Kindle. I've thinking about maybe buying one of his plays from there too.

I purchased several of Lemay's published plays about a decade ago.  They are wonderful and character-driven, just like Another World, during his tenure there.  Although I didn't recognize any plots or characters shared on AW from his plays, there are similarities -- slightly dysfunctional families, resentments, returning family members with an ax to grind, meddling relatives, and lots of subtext in the dialogue.  While reading his plays, it is easy to imagine which actor from AW could be cast in each role, and hear their voices as you read.   

Although I haven't found any characters even remotely similar to Iris, Rachel, or Mac; there is some vague similarity to conflicts within the Matthews and Frame families.  

6 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

The Pollocks created Mona. I think Robert Cenedella brought her back.

Having watched the reruns on RetroTV for the past few years, Mona is not nearly as difficult or as villainous as I remember her from watching in the 1970s.  She really was much tamer and much less snobby than I remember.  

10 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

 

That would be great. Nic wrote some beautiful words of tribute on FB about GR after the latter passed in 2013.

I didn't know that.  Nic seems to be a very positive person.  

23 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

Nic also said on FB a few years back that he and John Considine were the pranksters of AW. He said they got into trouble with Paul Rauch so much it was like being called into the principal's office.

I had forgotten that, but yes!   Plus, I recall Nic has called Doug Watson a true gentleman a couple of times.   

But if Nic doesn't discuss George Reinholt and the atmosphere in the studio in 1975, I'm going to be disappointed.  Steve Frame and Robert Delany were best friends, and worked together at Frame Enterprises.  Nic probably had more scenes with Reinholt than even Jacquie Courtney.  So when Reinholt was fired, I'm confident Nic had opinions about it.   I just hope he shares those opinions, whatever they are.    

Nic Coster (Robert Delany on AW) announced on Facebook a couple of days ago, that his memoir will be released very soon -- within weeks, I believe.  In an earlier FB post, a few months ago, he did promise a couple of chapters about his experiences on Another World.   He doesn't talk about AW much on FB.  But he has commented he loved working with Susan Sullivan, did not enjoy working with Beverly McKenzie, and liked Harding Lemay's writing.  He has never commented (on FB) about the actor firings of 1975, the atmosphere in the studio, or George Reinholt (with whom he shared many scenes).   I hope we get lots details in his book.   

3 hours ago, Bill Bauer said:

Just my opinion but I thought Hugh Marlowe was a horrible actor. He delivered his lines like he was a sports broadcaster or something. He was monotone and, as others have pointed out, always flubbed his lines. I didn't necessarily dislike him, I just found him kind of grating. I think they should have gotten rid of Jim instead of Mary (although I don't think they should have gotten rid of either). 

I have mixed feelings about Hugh Marlowe.  He was well cast and lovable as Jim, but he really struggled with his lines.  He stammered and huffed, often to the point of embarrassment.  And his difficulties certainly had NOTHING to do with Virginia Dwyer. He seemed lazy, and tried to phone-in his performances, but he was not skilled enough to do it well.   Beverly Penberthy was quote as saying the actor who played her father (she did not use Marlowe's name) was a former movie actor who only took the job on AW because he had a late-in-life child, and needed the money -- and that he did not try very hard on the show.   

Virginia Dwyer played the matriarch of the entire show, and performed in that role extremely well.  Lemay just didn't like her, because he wanted Mary Matthews to be more troubled, and create difficulty for her family.  Dwyer resisted that change in character, so Lemay just brought back Aunt Liz, and wrote Liz the way he wanted to write for Mary.  After he saw that the recast Liz was successful, he killed-off Mary.  Can you imagine Mary Matthews suddenly behaving like Aunt Liz??? That's what Lemay wanted.   

5 minutes ago, Dr Neil Curtis said:

I love Denise! I wonder has Days ever tried to get her back as Susan Martin? 

There is speculation about that.  During DOOL's 50th anniversary, a few years ago, they mentioned the Martin family several times, and even built a large set and said it was the old Martin house.  So the long-term fans assumed Denise/Susan was coming back for a visit -- otherwise, why even mention the Martins, right?  But nothing ever came of it.  So the speculation is that Denise may have been invited to return, but declined the invitation.  Who knows.  The Martin house remained on the show for 3 or 4 years, and became a boarding house (or B&B, I'm not sure). A few different characters owned it, including Doug and Julie, for a time.   I don't believe the set is still in use, but I could be wrong,.