TimWil

Thanks for the heads-up, DRW50.

I agree. She would have made a decent Liza. I could absolutely have pictured her back in the early 80s torturing Jenny and accusing Jesse of rape. I simply couldn't with Jamie Luner. I thought Mary Beth Evans would have also made a good Liza.

I agree about Anthony-that just didn't ring true to me. Nice to see him, though.

DRW50, I really wish you'd watch last night's episode. It was camptastic. I know you're not a fan of the Carters but Linda is really proving herself to be a viable friend for Sharon-the first one since Michelle which actually seems believable to me. Mick and Ian? That's another story.

On tonight's WLIW broadcast (July 2005) Dot said to Johnny and Tina that Jim had "two grown children" and Jim didn't correct her. HUH? Weren't Carol, April, Suzy, Derek and Max established years previously? And Jack was a retcon?

Jennifer Harmon has become the busiest understudy in Broadway history, I believe. I had a friend who worked with her in a revival of Blithe Spirit in the late 1980s-she was Judith Ivey's understudy in that.

Ah, yes, that was it, amybrickwallace, thanks!

I sometimes wondered if the character that George Gaynes played in Tootsie wasn't based at least a bit on Stewart. I know, Mike Bauer wasn't a doctor but still.

Tonight's episode had some sweet moments. I really do like Mick, Linda and Nancy. The little boy playing Heather's son George was adorable.

Thanks so much for the article about Geri, DRW50! I don't think I ever read one about her before. Her remarks really do sound like her. She was one deep thinker, that one! So wonderful.

Did you know her real last name was Oldenboom? Good old Dutch name!

Uhhhh-hubba, hubba. He was sexy back in the day.

I agree, Sally should never have been killed off. She was a true young heroine of the show.

Benz was intended to be a long term cast member as Sally but she was very bland. She had no real appeal. I was very surprised that Mary Page Keller, who I knew well from RH, was playing the role but I liked her so much I never found her radically different hair color/facial features jarring. I never ever accepted Kelley Menighan (Hensley) as Emily on ATWT because her look was so radically different from Melanie Smith's.

It sure does seem to be sputtering and stopping at times. This week was a good example of that. Michael French (David) leaving was a big loss.

That is so funny, thanks for posting, Bright Eyes.

Damn, Ms. Fulton really did have the BEST work done, I've always felt that. She looked fabulous.

You're welcome, guys. I had a bit of a cry after posting that. I loved her very much.

Geri told me a wonderful story about William Shatner from when they were on the road with Barefoot In The Park. She kept her distance from him socially because he seemed rather shallow and uninteresting. He'd asked her out to dinner a few times within hours of meeting her and she'd refused. One day she was sitting outside a rehearsal room studying her script and she heard beautiful piano music coming from inside the room. The music stopped and Shatner walked out of the room. Geri was impressed that he could play such lovely music. Maybe she was wrong about him? He asked her out to lunch and she said OK. After lunch they went back to rehearsal but nobody else was back there yet. She asked Shatner to play him something on the piano. He said he couldn't play the piano. It was then that Geri noticed the record player in the corner along with an album of Debussy classics. Heh.

Tonight's hour-long episode was dreary. It seemed very Newmanesque.

As with the other threads I thought I'd share my brushes with various performers from this particular show, including my friendship with the very special Geraldine Court:

In 1974 I was in a production of Macbeth at Lincoln Center starring Christopher Walken. Peter Burnell (Mike Powers #4) played Malcolm. He was a very nice guy. I was sad to learn he died of an AIDS-related illness in 1987.

In 1975 I played John Adams II (as a teenager) in the PBS miniseries The Adams Chronicles. The actor playing my older brother was David Elliott (not to be confused with David James Elliott). He was a cool, dark haired dude with a real swagger to him. I wasn't surprised to see him on The Doctors as Billy Aldrich. He was perfect as a troubled teen/stud in training. He left the show to do Jaws 2 where he played the cocky son of the mayor. According to imdb he now works in film production in LA and elsewhere constructing sets. I might look him up someday.

He was replaced on the show by Shawn Campbell, who I used to see from time to time at auditions. He had longish blond hair and always wore flares/bell bottoms with silk shirts unbuttoned to below his chest. He never impressed me. He was a stereotype of a former child actor who had hit his mid teens and was trying too hard to be cool. I remember one particular audition when soap veteran Ariane Munker showed up and they peered at the rest of us like we were peasants. I heard he was fired from The Doctors because he got caught smoking weed in the halls of 30 Rock, where the show taped.

Shawn Campbell was replaced by, of course, Alec Baldwin. I'd see him many, many times on the Long Island Railroad (Babylon line) commuter train studying his script. He was stunningly handsome, needless to say.

In the fall of 1977 I was one of the leads in a play called The Dream Watcher. It was performed at the Seattle Repertory Theater and was slated to come to Broadway but never did due to the fact that it just didn't work. Geraldine Court played my character's chain-smoking, materialistic mother going on and on about wanting "a kitchen island." I was thrilled that Geraldine had been cast. Dr. Ann Larimer was one of my favorite soap characters. It must have been the storyline of her locking up Carolee in that sanitarium that did it for me. Anyway, after rehearsals and performances Geri, Peter Bartlett (who went on to play Nigel on OLTL and is now in Cinderella on Broadway) and I would go to a diner called Dick's (yes, really) and she would have us in hysterics over her stories about The Doctors, which she had only just left. To answer an earlier question in this thread the reason she left the show was because she had no faith in the new co-headwriters Mel and Ethel Brez, who she called "Methel." She was good friends with Douglas Marland and he told her he'd get her on every show he worked on in the future and she was OK with that. She really wanted to do theater, film and primetime TV, both as an actress and writer. In the early/mid 1960s she had been in a national tour of Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park with Myrna Loy playing her mother-in-law and William Shatner playing her husband! OK, here are my two favorite stories of hers: there was the one about her character catching the dreaded Obonda fever on a connecting flight-someone apparently coughed into a tissue on a plane bound from Nairobi, carelessly left it under the seat and it ended up infecting all the passengers on the subsequent flight, including Ann. For some reason this left her incapable of having a child. The other story I loved was the one in which she, Elizabeth Hubbard, David O'Brien, James Pritchett and Lydia Bruce had to stifle sobs of laughter when they had to all stand behind a hospital glass window partition and look down with grave concern at poor little tot Stephie who was under observation. The child actress who played her kept whimpering "Little Stephie's not feeling too good," most likely parroting the exact words her real life mother had used when explaining the scene! Geri said the director had to yell "CUT!" several times because the actors were all in hysterics over this kid. Geri said she loved her time on The Doctors because she had became really good friends with Marland, Robert Anton (costume designer), David O'Brien and Glenn Corbett. She met Anna "Banana" Stuart on The Doctors and they stayed extremely close friends from then on. I remember her saying Armand Assante had terrible body odor issues, most likely because he'd roll into work after a night of carousing. She totally adored O'Brien and Corbett and was really devastated when they both passed away in the 1980s.

Geri was such a special lady. Highly intelligent, intellectually curious, deeply spiritual and politically progressive. She was also one of the funniest people I'll ever hope to meet. I'm so grateful to have known her. I miss her tremendously.

I do, denzo30! I was fortunate to have those experiences. I've forgotten so much from those child actor days but I remember the exact moment, angle, etc. when I met Constance Ford. She impressed me so much.

I really liked Susan Harney as Alice. She had a contemporary look that seemed right to me. She may have been a shade young for the role. I just believed her completely as a young widow and mother trying to bring up her kid. My ex Brian was very fond of her.

Back to Sally/Julia-in June 1983 we were treated to the sight of Mary Page Keller replacing Dawn Benz as Sally and both Jonna Lee and Faith Ford replacing Kyra Sedgwick as Julia. The way they revealed these replacements all three times was exactly like this-the camera would start on the ground and pan up to them and the announcer would say "The role of ------ is now being played by -----." And each time this happened the girls were wearing those flat, princess style shoes that seemed to come back into fashion that year! It must have been an inside joke at the studio to have these reveals shot in that manner. I think when Taylor Miller replaced Mary Page Keller she was walking into a kitchen and placing down shopping bags, looking flustered, as the announcer told us who was now playing Sally!

Hah, Mitch re Jessie's mom Calla (who called her sister Lillian "Lily"-get it? Calla lilies?)-I believe she actually had herpes.

Thanks for this, robbwolff!

Thanks, robbwolff! I forgot about Ty Evans' big entrance as Alan-Michael. The mind boggles at how Douglas Marland would have written for that young fellow if he'd still been with the show.

Ah, OK, I stand corrected. Didn't the late Jo Henderson play the first Kate Cleary? She went on fo play Wilma on AMC, to confuse things further.

Back to GL: do any YouTube videos of Lacey Bauer exist? I remember they hired a young girl who was actually a competitve gymnast for the role. She had zero acting experience and boy, did it show. She was meant to be a little vixen after Alan-Michael, right? She and Samantha Marler were to go to battle over him? I think she was supposed to be an Olympic hopeful in gymnastics but they dropped that right away.

I wonder if Marland tried to get him on Loving. He tried to get Geraldine Court on it when it was first called Love Without End but Ann Williams got the role of June Slater. Geri didn't want to play a battered wife, anyway.

I think Morgan and Kelly were regarded by incoming executive producer Gail Kobe and headwriter Pam Long as being "yesterday's news" and too closely identified with another production regime. Their love story was one of the central components of Marland's tenure. I wasn't surprised at all that Cooke was let go, she never clicked with the audience. Kelly was paired with Claire for a bit but it didn't work out. How long was it before

Shipp went to work for Marland at ATWT?

I just watched Moonstruck again and wow, wouldn't Anita Gillette have made a terrific Bea Reardon? She would have been strong, funny, even sexy. She was totally wasted as Loretta Shea on AW and the Cleary mother on SFT.

The new opening for Big Brother 16 reminds me a lot of Marienhof's. I wish they did it exactly like that, show's though, camera zooming through the house and stopping at each house guest. One holding an apple, another doing yoga, etc.