robbwolff

I wasn't watching Guiding Light regularly when Locke Walls was on, but I think the woman in the song "Aubrey" had been inspired by Alexandra. I came across a blog post from 2013 that referenced the story and included YouTube clips, which are no longer available. According to the blog post, Locke died in Alex's arms.

Locke Walls was featured for about six months in 1985. The role was played by Jeremy Slate, who had played Chuck Wilson on One Life to Live. I vaguely recall the storyline somehow featuring the song "Aubrey" by Bread.

@P.J. The Tynans weren't around very long. I think they showed up in December 1982 when L. Virginia Browne and Gene Palumbo were head writers. Helen was a nurse at Cedars. And Clay was her teenage son. Helen was recurring, while Clay was a contract character. Clay was definitely not in Vanessa's orbit. I recollect that he was part of the scene with the newly SORAS-ed Rick and Phillip. Clay may have been involved with the story involving Bert, Phillip, and Rick befriending Martin Bruhner, a terminally ill patient at Cedars. I know Phillip was an orderly and Mr. Bruhner was tutoring Rick, but I seem to recall that Clay was involved in this storyline, too. Perhaps he was an orderly, too. That happened during the period when the Cullitons and Gary Tomlin were interim head writers. Clay disappeared around May 1983 when Richard Culliton and Pamela Long's work started airing. Helen lasted a bit longer.

Thanks for the details, Paul. I started watching Guiding Light in April 1982 when Texas moved to its morning timeslot. I was quickly entranced by Jane's performance and was so disappointed when Carrie was written out in July 1982. And, Donna, all three alters were shown.

As I recollect, Jane Elliot had an 18-month contract at Guiding Light. There were still about six months of story planned when Allen Potter fired Jane.

Peggy Sloane was the head writer who paired Rachel and Carl. I believe Carolyn Culliton was writing for All My Children during that period. Rachel and Carl were already married by the time Culliton's work as head writer began airing in November 1994.

I believe the rooftop scene was in early January 1995. As I recollect, the fire was raging on Fifth Street and it started raining at the end of Buzz’s monologue. Douglas Anderson was head writer at the time. Here’s a snippet from the scene:

Yes, the gorilla keeper was referenced on air as Sam Ratcliffe. Cass mentions his name as he and Felicia are walking to the gorilla pit on the June 23rd episode. I watched the episode recently and remember the scene as they were talking about Wallingford. Richard and Carolyn are mentioned by name in the same scene.

Ryder was later a dean and program director at the recently closed University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

As P.J. said, Alan-Michael did think that Eleni was pregnant with his child. The child, Marina, was later aged and in a major case of ick factor, Alan-Michael and Marina hooked up around 2006-07. What were Wheeler and Kreizman thinking with such trash? And getting back to another post. Eve Guthrie was pregnant in 1995? I wasn't watching regularly at that point and didn't realize she was pregnant.

I believe Reed played Lloyd for only around 13 weeks -- from March/April to June 1986.

According to Carolyn Culliton, Paul Rader was a novelist Gail Kobe discovered and decided to hire. With no daytime experience, he ended up writing the show longer than any other head writer. Kobe picked up a copy of his 1969 novel, Professor Wilmess Must Die, in an airport and decided to hire him as head writer. Jeff Ryder said that Kobe's decision to hire Rader was unexpected and that he wasn't impressed with Rader's story projections. Gerald Flesher worked in advertising and was hired as the show's story editor. Gary Tomlin suspects that Flesher was writing the show during the 1981 writers' strike. Long wrote Texas longer than the last eight weeks. Rader was credited as head writer during some of her run, possibly because of contractual reasons. Long states that the fire at the Marshall Ranch was her work but apparently Rader was credited as the head writer. Rader did join Long's writing team writing outlines but didn't last because he didn't know how to write outlines. He quickly left the show. One of Long's plans was to restore Billy Joe to his bad boy ways.

The book very briefly touches on Maggie when she was written out in September 1981. I think there's one sentence that says that a dark storyline had been planned and that Maggie may have been a prostitute or madam. The stuff about Paul Rader's stint as head writer is quite interesting

Just finished the Texas book and figured I’d share my impressions. As a fan of Texas from the first episode to the last, it was a joy to revisit the show and the characters and storylines that entertained me in my late teens. I’m especially appreciative of the interviews with Pam Long, Joyce Corrington, Philip Clark, and John McCafferty. The book reminded me of my crush on Clark, and the wonderful friendships of Iris & Vivien and Ruby & Lurlene. It also reminded me of how incredible McCafferty was in his performances as Billy Joe. I really loved learning about the friendship of Pam Long & Gail Kobe. And I loved the fond memories it brought back: laughing as Ruby and Lurlene tried to dispose of Beau's body, terrified for Lurlene as Bubba attacked her, the nail-biting scenes of the Marshall Ranch burning to the ground. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this book as engrossing as the recent Ryan’s Hope book. Overall, I felt like I didn’t learn much new and kept wanting more. For instance, I wanted to know more about the Corrington’s plans for Reunion. Did they reuse any of Reunion’s bible for Texas? I would like to know more about Pam Long’s plans for the show, including the introduction of a Hispanic family. Besides the Phillip-Beth storyline, did Long reuse any of her other planned Texas stories on Guiding Light? I was also baffled by a few things. Why is there no mention of Entertainment Tonight announcing the cancellation of Texas around April 1982? I clearly remember how devastated I felt when I heard the news and the elation the next night when Entertainment Tonight reported that the show would continue. (I can’t recall if NBC had changed its mind or if was Entertainment Tonight’s mistake in reporting the cancellation.) And sorry if this seems nitpicky, but as a writer/editor, I have to say that the book would have benefitted from close proofreading and some fact-checking. There are so many typos that I found distracting. Ginny is referenced as Jenny. Names are misspelled. Punctuation is missing. Another character is referred to by the wrong name on multiple occasions. The hospital is incorrectly referred to as Gold Coast Hospital. It was Gulfcoast Hospital, a nod to Houston being close to the Gulf of Mexico. And I was so freaking proud to see @antmunoz in the acknowledgments!!

I was hoping that the Lisanti book would get into this, but it hasn't in what I've read thus far. I recall someone on here insisting that the Corringtons were the ones who created Kevin, Reena, Striker, and Victoria but that doesn't seem to be the case. According to the Another World Homepage, Kevin began appearing on October 23. So the character of Kevin had been created, cast, and started taping before Flame is the Love aired on NBC. What I've found interesting is that Joyce Corrington clearly was not a fan of Jim Poyner. She described him (and the other young actors) as not being "especially skilled." I have yet to see anything critical about Dana Kimmell, who was truly in over her head as Dawn. The Corringtons seemingly added Dawn after Silverman dictated that there be more younger characters. He also insisted that there be no Mexicans on the show (the Dekkers were supposed to be a Mexican family).

No. It was not Charleston. Joyce Corrington was very specific with the details. She said the movie was The Flame is Love, which was based on a Barbara Cartland novel. A Google search shows The Flame is Love starred Linda Purl and Timothy Dalton. It aired on October 15, 1979. The movie was a failure against Monday Night Football and led to Fred Silverman scrapping Reunion. Another tidbit that was shared was that NBC approached the Corringtons about writing one of its existing soaps. They countered with Reunion.

I definitely recommend it. From what she describes of Reunion, it seems like they were two completely different shows. Reunion was about a young woman who spent the Civil War in England and then returned home to New Orleans. Rauch claimed in an interview that he developed Reunion along with the Corringtons in 1978. Joyce disputes that, saying Reunion was her and Bill's idea and that it was their idea to bring Rauch into the project. She paints Rauch as being quite a liar.

I was referring to the start of the development of Texas, not Reunion. According to Joyce, Reunion was already in preproduction when Fred Silverman nixed the project after an NBC historical romance movie bombed in the ratings. That means that Reunion was scrapped sometime after mid-October 1979 when that movie aired. The Corringtons were then instructed to develop an idea for a new show and encouraged to do something similar to Dallas. They then began developing the bible for Texas and were told "early on" that Iris was to be the main character. If she's remembering correctly, then Beverlee was on board by around February/March 1980 as Joyce describes a story meeting in St. Croix while Another World was on the island filming the climax to the Rachel/Mac/Mitch/Janice story. She claims that the story meeting happened after Beverlee had agreed to be on the new show. The book even features a couple of Joyce's photos from that meeting, which happened on a sailboat.

I just got the book yesterday and am enjoying it so far. According to Joyce Corrington, the show was developed from the start with Iris as the lead character, a decision that was dictated to them. Rauch did not approach Beverlee McKinsey about Texas until after the bible was created. Corrington has no recollection of the plan to feature Russ and Pat in the new show, though Daytime TV reported on that in early 1980. (That article also mentioned that a possible title was Another World: Houston, which I haven't seen mentioned yet in this book. Corrington does mention other possible titles: Heartland and Gone to Texas). As for the writing team, from my read, the Corringtons hired their team from Search for Tomorrow. The reason the team started writing Another World was because the decision had been made to introduce the Texas characters on Another World in the weeks leading up to the new show's premiere. The whole Texas production team, including the writers, were most definitely credited on Another World. I clearly remember the credits in the summer of 1980 being organized into two chunks: Bay City and Texas. This video from July 1980 shows this. And Mulchaey definitely appears in those credits.

I thought the plan was to introduce Annie's ex Jake. He could have been the one in a triangle with Josh and Annie rather than Rick. I vaguely recall that Kin Shriner was rumored to be under consideration for the role of Jake.

It's true that Edge didn't have many murder trials in its latter years, but it did feature a trial in its last few months as Raven went on trial for murder.

I was a big fan of "Somewhere in the Night" and bought Billy Chinook's CD back then. Didn't he record Guiding Light's theme song "Hold onto Love" with Roberta Flack? I forgot that Billy used to live in Asbury Park, NJ, where my family vacationed back in the late 60s/early 70s. Sadly, Billy took his life in 2007.

@Mona Kane Croft This was before the cancellation. In her book, Zimmer says that the plan was to start 2008 "with a new look for the show." She says that Wheeler's idea was to change the title to The New Guiding Light and that everything that came before would have been erased.

I can't recall if this was discussed here, but does anyone know what Wheeler's plans were for reinventing the show as The New Guiding Light? Zimmer's memoir briefly discusses that scenario.

I thought that Tom Reardon was their fishing guide. And the fishing trip with Annie Sims happened in 1963, not the 1950s. There were frequent mentions of the event happening "20 years ago."