SoapDope

Jerome & Bridget Dobson writing for GL in the 1970's.

10 minutes ago, Sapounopera said:

I also like the Ritournelle. More than any intro that followed it. It's the show's logo that had no personality and creativity. 

I like the theme beautiful tune, but the graphics have a melancholy vibe. Does anyone know who created that opening graphic ? It reminds me of when I was a kid and there would be a nature graphic for Station ID or when there would be technical difficulty and they would show a graphic place card of trees, a stream etc...

28 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Wait. Hold on. Are Rita Bauer & Rita Stapleton the same person? Who is Rita Bauer? 

Rita Stapleton Bauer. 

6 minutes ago, Khan said:

I agree.  I also thought the inherent class conflicts in the beginning (between the Perkinses and Andrades and the Capwells and Lockridges) were a smart way to build a new soap, but I probably would have concentrated just on two: the blue-collar, Hispanic Andrades and the rich, eccentric Lockridges.

Rita Stapleton Bauer is so fascinating to me.  As I said years ago, Rita basically was a decent person, but with one major flaw: the truth just wasn't in her, lol.  Like with OLTL's Tina, though, I never thought she lied with the intent of hurting people.  Rather, she lied, but she lied for the right reasons.

That's a very good summary of her character. 

Dobson is credited as creating one of soaps first antiheroine in Rita Bauer on GL. Rita was such a diverse complicated character.

34 minutes ago, Khan said:

To this day, I don't exactly know who bumped off Mary Robeson, or whether she really was Laura's long-lost mother.

A really bad rewrite of history. In season 1 Laura talks about how her Mom died when she was 12 and she had to be the one to take care of everyone. In another episode they show a flashback to her at her Mom's casket. When her Dad appears later in the season he thanks her for being there for him when she died and gives her money to bail Richard out of financial trouble. 

8 minutes ago, Khan said:

You'd be lit, too, if you have to play those scenes, lol.

Facts Of Life became one of those shows that NBC forgot to cancel after it ran out of steam. A network Exec in 1988 " You mean it's still on" ? 

7 minutes ago, Khan said:

For some reason, it reminds me of when Charlotte Rae (aka "Mrs. Garrett") sang part of "The Facts of Life"'s theme song during that show's first season.

Charlotte sounded like she was half lit......then again she always acted half lit. " Blaaaaaaaaaaaaair !"

53 minutes ago, Khan said:

I still would love to know which fool at P&G or CBS approved that opening.  The music is okay (although, a little sleepy), but those visuals are just too muddy-looking.

It is muddy looking. I guess they thought with the out of focus look it fit in with the 70's obsession with gritty dark film making. There also was an obsession with nature themes. They could have at least changed the leaves to fit the seasons. That one for Fall, Snow on branches for Winter, Buds for Spring, Green leaves for Summer. 

1 minute ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Well, I have also seen YT comments where people as children were frightened of Beverlee McKinsey, so there's no accounting for children's taste!!! 

11 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

My ears are bleeding! 

Someone in the comments on youtube said when they were a little kid and heard that end theme they would run under the dining room table screaming because it scared them.

Here is an audio recording of the original 1975 closing with the voice chant.

10 hours ago, Khan said:

And the episodes always have the most mawkish-sounding titles, too.  Like, "A Marigold for Margie."  (In that one, she's a botanist in her early '20's, who has contracted a rare blood disease that will prevent her from fulfilling her lifelong dream of visiting Africa and studying the plant life there.)

 So true. I remember seeing a Marcus Welby called " The Girl From Rainbow Beach" where a soon to be bride discovers during her blood test for marriage that she has leprosy. This episode was done in 1970. Her fiancée played by Don Galloway dumps her in the end.

Most of time the girl in these stories will try to commit suicide after getting a grim diagnosis. It seems like Jessica Walter played those roles a lot. 

57 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

In honor of Bridget Dobson, it’s “that thing with the dead leaves!” they would try to write compelling material around! 

Any excuse to hear the “Ritoutnelle” theme is a good one IMHO though! 
 

 

In the early days of that theme, they had a female soprano moaning along with it. They said after about a year they dropped it because viewers complained it was creepy. Charles Paul the music directors wife was the female singer. Imagine the conversation from the big wigs telling Paul his wife's voice was creeping people out.

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

Sigh.  The '60's.  When a girl on TV couldn't experience anything in life - a new job, an engagement or wedding, a pregnancy, anything - without dying at the same time.

She's graduating from college/nursing school - and she's dying!

She's getting engaged to her college sweetheart - and she's dying!

She's going to have the baby she's always dreamed of - and she's dying!

She's winning the Nobel Prize for discovering the cure for cancer - and guess what? She's dying (and it's from a cancer that her cure can't cure)!

She's always!  [!@#$%^&*]!  DYING!

LOL....that's true. Women were written as victims and helpless. Surprisingly Jennifer has the surgery and everything is OK . They plan to get married and move to another country for Peter's work. 

Gentry is very good in his role as Peter refusing to leave Jennifer's side and puts his career plans on the line. He also wears a lot of late 60's cool threads.

I recently was watching a season 1 episode of Medical Center from 1969 titled " Moment Of Decision". In the episode Tyne Daly (back when she was young with long hair) played Jennifer the daughter of Dr. Lochner(played by Tyne's real life father James Daly). Jennifer comes home for a visit and reveals she is engaged to be married to her boyfriend Peter. Peter is played by Robert Gentry (ex Ed). Jennifer also reveals she has a brain aneurysm and has to have surgery.

This must have been right after Gentry left GL. When Dr. Lochner & Dr. Gannon (Chad Everett) keep explaining all the medical stuff to him, I kept thinking " You should know this, your a doctor ".....LOL

I've seen bits and pieces of Gentry's first run as Ed. I wish some circa 1967-69 color episodes would surface to see more of his later run. That 1968 CBS promo where he and Bill get into a shoving match makes me want to see more, plus they do the heart transplant storyline. 

I saw this photo of Actor Arthur Peterson as John Rutledge on Ebay.

Wow, we were just discussing her. R.I.P. 

8 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Was that anything to do with Marland? He had written for Ed for quite a while before the switch.

I think it came from the higher ups - same as the decision to fire Adam, Barbara and Steve.

Ostensibly it was due to Hulswit balding and weight gain, but didn't he say something in a Locher Room interview that he was a strong union supporter and clashed with producers on some issues?

 

I have not watched that interview with him yet. I will have to go back and check it out when I have time. I would also guess with Rita gone, they wanted to re-invent Ed with different actor and pair him with Maureen.

5 minutes ago, Khan said:

Wait, you've never heard about his star-making role in the movie "Disorderlies"?

Sad to say I saw that film when it first came out. But in my defense I was only about 10 or 11 at the time. 

3 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

As shown with the decision to hire Richard van Vleet when Peter Simon left in 1984. I'm half-surprised they brought Simon back.

I forgot about Van Vleet replacing Simon for a period of time. I couldn't imagine someone like Tony Geary being considered " A Find" by the mid 80's. He was lucky he hit pay dirt at the end of the 70's. If it wasn't for the Luke & Laura hoopla (which he has pissed and moaned about for decades and resented), he would be forgotten by now, let alone brought back to GH in the 90's. 

13 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I imagine P&G and their wanting to get glossier were another factor. I wonder if Peter's work at Search was what helped him - what I've seen of his ATWT role was extremely dull.

He was very dull from what I saw of him on ATWT. If you really look back at all the soaps during the 70's, most of those actors would not be considered or hired by the mid 1980's. By then soaps wanted to fill their casts with pretty people whether they could act or not. 

Another jarring recast was the sudden firing of Mart Hulswit and the hiring or Peter Simon. I guess Marland brought him over from his stint on ATWT. I grew up with Simon in the role for the most part, but prefer Hulswit. I read that his weight gain was part of the reason he was let go and Marland thought he was fuddy duddy.

2 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks @Soapsuds . Sad to think how many more episodes of that era we might have gotten if P&G hadn't stopped releasing DVDs.

I know the narrative reasons, but I wonder how viewers at the time felt about Jackie and Elizabeth trading off the same three men. 

They also exchanged hairdos. Jackie went short and blonde and Elizabeth went long and brunette.

Just now, kalbir said:

This makes no sense to me. One would think P&G would be happy that one of their shows was CBS's highest-rated soap.

That was what Bridget Dobson said in an interview I read online. I was puzzled by that too. It's like they were competing against themselves. She said P&G thought of ATWT as the tentpole show or something like that. 

Here is a sample of the interview:

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I don't think Janet is bad at all - she seems very quiet and intelligent to me when she isn't in the high drama moments (admittedly I have not seen any of the period where she is a leading lady). I think they probably kept her on as long as they did because Rita needed the support, and maybe because of her ties to Ross. She only lasted about a year without Rita, didn't she?

I didn't think Lainie was on that long. I thought she was on for a year or two and then written out, aside from a guest appearance when Jackie went to stay with her. 

Katie was probably kept on because viewers liked her - Denise Pence mentioned Katie and Floyd being the first comic relief characters GL had.

I usually skip most Eve scenes anyway, but youtube commenters rip her apart calling her mush mouth, stupid etc...they also bring up her bad hair do's and dye jobs. 

I like Katie OK.....Floyd I can only handle in small doses. The Lainie character was kind of a nothing burger. Maybe if they hired a spitfire actress, the character could have become a major character like Justin and Ross and drove story. 

Selby Flats sounds similar to Yucca Flat where all the nuclear testing was done....LOL

Going back to the late 70's again....why was Janet Grey( Eve) kept on the show as long as she was ? Everyone in the youtube comments complain at how awful she was as an actress. They also kept Katie around for years even though she never had story. Lainie Marler other than being paralyzed and crushing on Ed never really had story and was on for about 3 years. 

Allen & Elizabeth Spaulding were like earlier versions of Victor & Julia Newman on Y&R. I wonder if Bell (who said he watched all the soaps to see what they had going) was influenced by that. He was going to have the Newman come in 1979, but waited till the hour expansion in 1980. The Spaulding arrived for the hour expansion on GL in 1977. 

Thanks for the pics. I always liked Gary & Val's & Laura & Richards houses and interiors best during the series. Gary & Val's is like a California version of a colonial. Richard & Laura's looks like Faux Tudor. I never could figure out the style of Karen & Mac's house. I guess just a suburban two story. I never really liked Abby & the Ward's houses. Kenny & Ginger looked like they couldn't afford furniture and spent what little money they had on stereo equipment and bean bags......LOL