SoapDope

I recently went back re-watched Peyton Place and the 1985 reunion film. I would have loved to see Barbara Parkins on Dallas. Imagine her going toe to toe in scenes with Larry Hagman.

I think they should have introduced the illegitimate child via Barbara Eden's character. Wink Wink ! Bringing back some of those characters from the late 70/early 80's in the later years of the show sounds fun. Willie (Greg Evigan) shows back up and torments Lucy in a game of cat and mouse after spending time in the pen. Garnett shows up and tells Ray she gave birth to his child after leaving Dallas. During Lucy's second marriage to Mitch, she returns home suspecting he has been having an affair and pulling away from her. Mitch starts seeing Dr. Elby to work things out in therapy to deal with his demons from the past and the side of himself he is hiding. He has also re-connected with an old college flame that has opened up this can of worms. Lucy follows him to the racquet club and see's the old flame is Kit Mainwaring. Katherine continues to want to get even with the Ewings and decides to enlist the help of Alan Beam. Liz Craig marries Jeremy Wendell and she helps him with his fight against the Ewings. Rita the unwed mother that J.R. sent packing returns with a rich husband who wants to crush the Ewings. She meets with Sue Ellen and threatens to tell everyone in the Dallas press how she tried to buy her baby on the black market back in 1978.

LOL......I felt the same way too about when Karen would freak out over Meg. Val's book might effect Meg, Meg is kidnapped, Greg wants Meg back when he married Abby etc.....then when they did the 1997 reunion....Surprise.....Karen drones on Mac about Meg wanting to know who her real parents are and how it will effect her if they are not honest with her.

🤣

When I look at that clip of J.R. visiting Val....I always cringe that the series set designer had the stairs too close to the front door and had that weird step down into the living room and kitchen. In 1997 when they did the reunion movie "Back To The Cul-De-Sac...the set designers finally corrected the mistakes that should have been done in the series by moving the stairs back about 3 to 4 extra feet enlarging the foyer ( including having enough space for a grandfather clock) and took out the step down having everything on a even level. It made the Ewing home much more spacious and inviting especially during the anniversary party for Karen & Mac.

I remember Bell saying that too in an interview. Espy shocked me at how funny he is. He always seemed so serious in the roles he played. The same for Gary Frank from Family.....he was so serious as Willie Lawrence then he would pop up on The Love Boat, Family Feud, variety shows etc... being totally unlike the character he played.

I agree. He seems more happy go lucky than I thought he would be.The entire week is uploaded on that youtube channel and he is laughing, joking and cutting up. Here is the entire week:

William Gray Espy & Janice Lynde on Tattletales circa 1975:

Thanks for the discussion link. I'm blown away how good those episodes look after years of looking at blurry beat up copies. I remember reading that article about 10 years ago that Sam was left the masters by his late uncle David to put back in circulation. Years went by and it seemed the project died. Now they are be released in quick succession. I see Ricky in that pic of Sam. I think his other 3 children look more like their mother Kris Harmon Nelson's side of the family. At one point Kris brother Mark Harmon and wife Pam Dawber were raising him.

I'm not sure if this is the right board to post this topic. I recently saw Amazon prime has been uploading remastered/restored episodes of the classic 1952-1966 TV series Ozzie & Harriet. For years all that was available were a certain amount of blurry public domain episodes that were scratched and beat up. The last time the show was syndiacted was back in the 1980's when Harriet Nelson hosted the show on the Disney channel. Even those episodes were edited and kind of rough/ not in the best of shape. The Amazon episodes look incredible remastered from the original 35mm negatives. Currently the first 10 seasons are uploaded and they plan to release seasons 11 & 12 in May. I hope seasons 13 & 14 will follow shortly after. Season 14 is the only season that was filmed in color. I can't wait to see those restored. Ricky Nelson became a one of the first teen idols with his music performances on the show. Several actors made appearances on the show before they went on to series of their own. Linda Evans (before she was blonde) appeared in several episodes.

I agree. Greg should have been the town lawyer. It seems like Bell just had the frame of mind " I'm just going to scrap this mess and start over again" It's kind of sad. Most soaps kept their main families on for the duration (Hughes, Hortons, Bauers, Frames, Matthews etc...), but Y&R scrapped theirs and its was like the first 10 years of the show never existed. If you find long term fans of Y&R this day and time....most have only been watching since the 80's or 90's, but there are very few you will find that were watching the show in the 70's. My Mom watched from day 1 in 1973.

I always wondered what Krista Teserau would have been like as recast Patty ? I liked her as Mindy on GL. Christopher Holder came on Y&R as Kevin in January 82. I wonder why they did not try him as a recast Greg ? Maybe if they had done that, they could have written Nikki claiming her ex husband Greg was her baby's father while pregnant by Victor. Nikki tried her best to hold onto him when their marriage hit the rocks and this would keep him tied to her in some way. Liz and the other Fosters/Brooks could have been involved as well. Maybe have Greg in love with Peggy and Nikki was screwing all that up. Lorie and Peggy would have confrontations galore with Nikki. The Bancrofts were short lived anyway.

Bell first did the Chris & Snapper furniture story in 1974 ? Why did he think that was worth repeating ? It reminds me how Bewitched recycled stories they had done with Darrin # 1 in the 60's and repeated with Darrin # 2 in the early 70's......LOL

Sounds like good ideas. I wonder if Bell just lost interest in Chris with Trish Stewart's departure ? Stewart has no acting credits after 1981 except the 1984 Y&R appearance. Bell and Co. should have lured her back. What if Bell did divorce Snapper & Chris or kill Snapper off and have Chris marry Jack Abbott ? Stu & John would have had good some scenes over that. I bet Robert Colbert was livid that a show he was the main part of for 10 years, pretty much replaced him. I also wonder why Bell never tried Peggy with Brock or even Lucas. Peggy Prentiss is a soap name if I ever heard one......LOL

I remember reading that if Bell saw something he did not like and would call Conboy in the control booth and blast him. I think I also read that when Hasselhoff auditioned, Bell could see the audition and asked him turn around, walk etc....he must have had a live feed at some point. I think Hasselhoff was miscast......LOL

I understand that when starting out, but Snapper had 9 years to at least be making a comfortable living by the end of his run. He was not really better off in 1982 as he was in 1973. Bell did seem to keep Snapper & Chris frozen in time. I think he made the mistake of marrying them too quickly in the shows run and then would toss out storylines that were not that great. Their storyline was pretty much boring past 1975.

Snapper was a piece of crap in a lot of ways. No wonder Stuart despised him. He would rather Chris live in squalor and keep his pride intatct, than to put his wife and child before himself. Hasselhoff even joked that when he was on Y&R " I was the jerk who refused to buy his wife new furniture". In real life Snapper being a doctor, would have had plenty of money rolling in and could afford to buy the big house, the Mercedes etc.... but on Y&R he was still living hand to mouth in a low income apartment. In what world was Bill Bell living in where doctors were struggling to make ends meet ? Also, how many women tried to come between him and Chris over the years ?.......Sally,Casey, Jane etc... Chris really should have married Greg. Then again there was Greg a struggling lawyer living in a rinky dink apartment with tacky Nikki as a wife.......LOL

LOL.....The Stevens family leaving quickly is hilarious. I think Wes Kenney insisted that hey be axed when he came aboard after Conboy. As bad as it sounds, I would love to see scenes of that horrible/stupid Chris storyline. Wasn't Dr. Jane Lewis played by Mark Harmon's sister Kelly " Tic Tac spokeswoman" Harmon ? Kelly had once been married to John DeLorean and her and Mark's oldest sister Kris Harmon was married to Ricky Nelson. She played herself on the family Ozzie & Harriet show in the 60's.

The Peggy/Greg storyline sounds Craptastic......LOL.......It was when I had to watch Cricket do it in the early 90's. I was a kid during the early 80's and remember bits and pieces of ths show then. The Leslie/Lorie/Lance/Lucas was still dragging on and then Nikki moved onto Victor. Another bad early 80's storyline that is often mentioned is when Chris Brooks Foster bought new furniture with Stuart's credit card and Snapper was pissed. I guess Chris wanted her home to represent the 80's Dynasty me decade with Colonial Williamsburg reproductions she picked up at the local Ethan Allen, while Snapper preferred bargain basement goods from the local Goodwill.

The 1980-82 period was a different era for the show. There were a lot of with characters and stories being brought in and then dropped. I also noticed to freshen things up there was an influx of blonde men at this time in the 80's after all the predominate darked haired guys of the 70's. I think Bell should have brought back Brad Elliot to give Leslie a happy ending. She wound up being all alone in the end, the way she was in the beginning of the show. I think Brad was Leslie's true love anyway. Nikki and Greg's marriage was kind of all over the place. I wonder after Bell paired them, he quickly became bored and wanted them to seperate quickly ? They married in 1979 and divorced by 1981 and quickly moved her into Victor's orbit. Bell also never knew what to do with Peggy. He gave her blips of storyline, then she just hung around. I wonder what he was toying with when he had Victor give her the bedroom eye in 1981 ?

I remember years ago seeing a photo of Jeanne Cooper (Kay) standing/posing behind a seated Trish Stewart (Chris) in what looked like the Chancellor living room. I haven't seen it since. Did Chris and Kay have scenes when the Fosters moved into the mansion ? I know Bell had his writing quirks, but I think Kay and Jennifer should have interacted in some capacity. Kay was isolated from the Brooks family. Peggy for some reason has always facinated me. She never had much storyline it seems, but Pamela Peters is so charming in the work I have seen of hers. I saw her in an old episode of Emergency recently and she was cute as an angry daughter of one of the feuding neighbors. She shared scenes with Randolph Mantooth who would become a soap vet in the 80's. The episode aired in October 1973, so she was alread doing Y&R then. Speaking of Mantooth, I watched his Archive Of American Television interview and he said he loved doing the soap Loving, but HATED General Hospital. He didn't name names, but said the cast was cliquish towards him. He also mentioned the female producer, but not by name ( was it Monty when he was on ?) and said he was wanting off the show and she said " We have a wonderful up coming storyline for you your going to love " and he gave her the " That's nice, but I have another obligation and it's nothing personal, just business". He severely pissed her off and he said if her eyes had been lasers, he would be cut to bits.....LOL I think he had secretly negotiated to get back on Loving to get off GH.

Thanks alerting us to 60's/1970's SFT. I remember reading that Linda Bove was on the show in Soap Digest years ago. After watching that scene with her, I want to see the rest of the storyline. Did her character Melissa marry Matt ?

Tom Hallick commercial 1975. The actress looks familiar. Who is she ?

This has been posted several times over the years, but I will post it again......LOL