Xanthe

3 hours ago, ScottyBman said:

Donna and Felicia bonding over lost daughters.

 

That's the one. Thank you! For a man taking the moral high ground, Michael was awfully cavalier about bringing up Iris when he had made his own decision not to tell Donna that he and Iris had had a relationship and Donna had been upset when she found out.

4 hours ago, DRW50 said:

They sort of hinted as Reuben/Josie too.

There was a point where it seemed like they were going to have Olivia as the spoiler in Matt and Josie's relationship while Josie was in NYC with Reuben, but then they had Olivia focus on Sam while Evan was pursuing Amanda. I don't know how much Sandra Ferguson's issues with RKK changed the way that played out -- maybe they always intended Olivia to pivot to Sam -- but then I was surprised to learn that Alison Hossack, whose Olivia seemed very young to me, is in fact a couple of years older than Sandra Ferguson.

On 9/3/2023 at 12:38 AM, DRW50 said:

The most successful character since Reuben (they could have done a lot more with Reuben)

I found Clayton Prince charismatic as Reuben and he was a good friend to Josie, worked with Zack and Cass and Frankie, and had a little romance with Kasi Lemmons as Tess. So they did try, but maybe the real problem was they didn't do enough to connect him and Ronnie and Tess to the rest of the canvas. Ronnie was dating Zack but although she worked at the hospital and singing in the club she didn't seem close to anyone else. Tess was really only connected to Reuben I think (even though she was supposed to be rich so could have intersected with the Cory or Love families).

Mid-1980s ad for Alberto V05 shampoo with an unconvincingly-dubbed Kristen Marie (Cheryl).

 

14 minutes ago, beebs said:

She was EP of "Working The Engels" on NBC with her sister Katie, but otherwise I'm not familiar with other projects she's been involved in.

Thanks! I remember that show with Andrea Martin and watched at least some of it at the tlme. The name Ford is of course kind of ...tainted... in Toronto and it never would have occurred to me to connect the EPs of a Canadian-produced series to Constance Ford.

On 9/3/2023 at 12:14 AM, beebs said:

The only real good one I have was making friends by way of karaoke with Constance Ford's niece, who works as a TV sitcom writer here in Toronto.

Oh, interesting. Do you know what shows she has worked on?

7 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

There was a swing set on the playground in Lassiter, PA that Vicky & Jake would go to, as a special place where they would go when things were awful. And in an incredibly stupid move the show had them move it to Bay City. 

Did Vicky and Jake actually transport the swing set as part of a storyline, or did the writers just dispense with having them travel to PA and start showing the swing set as conveniently local? 

Geography is one of the things that can get flexible when they aren't careful. The Frame farm springs to mind. And as far as Vicky's past goes, I was watching a scene where Felicia confides in Donna that she is looking for a daughter she had thought died at birth, and Donna commiserates with her and throws in a comment that Victoria was never adopted but was raised by Bridget. The original version of the story was that Bridget was employed by Grace and Philip Carson who adopted Victoria as a baby and then died when she was young so Bridget raised her. Maybe Victoria was too young to remember the Carsons and that's why they never got mentioned but they did exist. 

31 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Hmm, without people of color till the Marshalls & the Burells, right? 

I think Billy Cooper and Dana Kramer were around in the 90s after the Edwardses and Lawrences left -- oh, and of course Darryl Beckett was the person Jamie hired instead of Kelsey, provoking her sexual discrimination lawsuit. But all are categorized as "minor" on the AWHP. 

I was just thinking it would have been an idea for some of the new black characters to be related to or recasts of existing characters with connections in Bay City. Thomasina could have had half siblings. There could have been other Binghams or Morgans or even Todds. Grant Perry could have grown up! 

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

 

The standout material is Zack's speech about Quinn and the murders (I wonder if we even see her funeral oncamera - I don't know if the 8th is around). I was glad to see Thomasina at least got a few words in her final episode. The decision to kill off Quinn will always feel like a stupid mistake to me - she would have fit right into the show all the way to the end. 

Thanks for this. At the time I really resented the fact that Quinn was thrust into this brief romance with Zack only to be murdered. It didn't feel like the Edwardses were entitled to represent the grief of the Harding family but they were the only black family left. 

I know AW had a lot of turnover of characters and families generally when new headwriters came in, but even though the original Matthews family was pretty well wiped out at least they had little flare-ups now and again and even a representative in Josie right to the finale. Plus of course they were ultimately supplanted by the Cory family which had a strong presence throughout once they took root. However they kept obliterating black families and then starting from scratch over and over again. 

In the (justifiably) otherwise derided Jacker era, it was kind of exciting to have an assortment of black characters who weren't all in one family. After Henrietta and Roy disappeared we had only Quinn and Thomasina (and Lily, briefly) and they brought in Carter and Grant Todd as the only romantic options for them for a year or two. Then all of the Todds were written out and the Edwardses brought in. And after Quinn died they had a few Lawrences, and then they didn't really have a black family again until the Burrells I think. 

Thanks as well (and @Donna L. Bridges) for validating Peggy Pope for me. She was so memorable in 9 to 5 that I thought it must be her as soon as I saw her face and heard her voice.

It's so weird to be watching episodes with John telling Rachel he warned Jamie it was a bad idea to date Kelsey knowing that eventually John will marry her himself. 

Is this Peggy Pope as Concetta Ramsay, a hospital employee Ryan is trying to butter up in order to access hospital records? Episode appears to be from October 1992.

33 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Look at this, will you! The Daily Mail printed a picture of Susan Keith & James Kiberd & wrongly labeled it as Nancy Frangione & Chris Rich! Irritating! 

 

The NY Post used the same photo, cropped to just Susan Keith, on their article about Nancy Frangione. Still not corrected. I did always think that Nancy looked similar enough to Susan that the recast was not jarring from that perspective, but really.

Variety has posted an obituary.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/nancy-frangione-dead-all-my-children-another-world-1235703064/

I really enjoyed Nancy as Cecile, especially her agreeing to "help" Donna by helping Peter get over Sally. The Variety obituary seems to stop after Cecile caught Sandy, perhaps because of Nancy's marriage to Chris Rich, but of course there was a while when Cass was seeing Cecile behind Felicia's back, and then Cecile telling Cass she couldn't really choose between him and Peter. I don't think she was quite as frank with Peter.

Looking for more information I learned that Chris Rich and his current wife appeared on the Polish version of Real Housewives and also that he had a stroke a few years ago but seems to have made a pretty good recovery.

https://www.neuroskills.com/about/mediacenter/cns-videos/chris-rich-part-2-introduction/

19 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Yeah, I saw that AI chat gave the reply & it was on both wikiwand & imdb but I didn't post it till I saw a Funeral Home had it. Because all 3 of those can be flaky. 

The funeral home version is extremely scanty and without any biographical information to speak of so I wouldn't like to rely on it. I did come across a Facebook post that said the source was her high school alumni though.

6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Well it wasn't just daytime actors of course.

I've been reading through old TV Guides and Raymond Burr's fantasy backstory is dredged up again - the dead wives and child.

Paul Lynde talks about the girl that got away. Poor Cesar Romero was jilted and that turned him off marriage. And Dick Sargent is interviewed at his house about his bachelor pad that apparently he was sharing with his partner at the time

I suspect there are a lot of demographic issues at play that combine with the enforcement of heteronormativity that determine which stars and which publications are providing this slant. TV Guide presumably expects at least 50% of their audience to be female. But I probably haven't read enough magazines targeted at men to verify -- would Playboy (? or suggest another better example) also include that type of coverage? 

On 8/20/2023 at 3:43 PM, Soaplovers said:

I'm intrigued with the Chris character only because she was randomly introduced during the strike.. and I wondered if she was a planned character pre-strike or if the scab writers needed to fill up time so they created the Chris character. 

John's trauma from Vietnam was a key piece of his opening up to Sharlene. Since the Depriest era had only really used Vietnam as an explanation for John's absence, and focused his emotional problems on his lust for Donna rather than the war, it makes sense that Chris, whose emotional problems were related to Vietnam, was introduced both to open up Vietnam as a part of John's history and also as an obstacle to delay the John/Sharlene romance.

On 8/20/2023 at 6:17 PM, DRW50 said:

The Chris character did seem very overwrought, which made the weaving in and out of how much we were meant to see her as sincere or a psycho more confusing. I think the actress wasn't a good fit.

Chris was overwrought, and I was confused about why initially she said that her brother was MIA in Vietnam and then it turned out that it wasn't her brother it was her husband. I couldn't tell whether there was supposed to be a real deep psychological reason why she lied or if they just decided to raise the stakes of the story and figured it could be made to work. I actually liked Mary Layne but either the rôle or her portrayal was too intense to be sustained for long. 

54 minutes ago, j swift said:

Every time we come back to this discussion, there's always a lot more speculation about men than women.  Sure, the usual actresses are mentioned, but it is a small percentage compared to the men that are discussed.  Obviously, some of that is because this topic is dominated by male posters. 

However, practically, I wonder if it was "easier" for women in the 1970s and 1980s to stay closeted?  I would hypothesize that unmarried women were considered more common because it was easy to imagine that a lead actress wouldn't have the time for a husband and children.  I mean, one never reads a profile of Joanna Johnson or Maureen Garrett where they asked about dating. 

Just food for thought...

Could there also have been an assumption that the audience was mostly female and would be interested in the love lives of the male stars in a way that they would not be for the female stars?  

11 minutes ago, Jdee43 said:

Hugh Marlowe was awful in the 1980/81 episodes uploaded to AOL, obviously reading off cue cards and probably not in good health. I recently saw him in the 1951 western Rawhide, and he was good. Seeing him in 1981, time was not kind to him.

The discipline of soaps is of course significantly different from film or stage or even a weekly series. The amount of material to memorize would be huge, with less rehearsal. I'm not surprised to hear of actors relying on the prompter under those conditions. So it's not necessarily a decline over time but an unwillingness or inability to really work at the pace a soap requires and try not to make it obvious that you are relying on crutches to keep up. 

52 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

And then many shows with stars highlighted in the opening crawl: In the Another World opening Victoria Wyndham was at the top of the crawl after Jacquie Courtney and George Reinholt left.

For most of the period from the mid-1980s the credits led with Victoria Wyndham, Douglass Watson, and Constance Ford with the rest of the permanent cast in order of seniority, followed by any credited non contract performers. Denise Alexander was an exception as she had an "and" credit at the very end of the list regardless of seniority.

I don't know if there was any period when Ford was not on contract that would justify her coming third from a seniority perspective or if they specifically gave Wyndham and Watson top billing as leads even though Ford had been with the show longer. But for example in September 1987 Stephen Schnetzer was credited between Anne Heche and Robert Kelker Kelly since he had only just returned while a year earlier he had been between Petronia Paley and Linda Dano.

ETA: It looks like Denise Alexander did not have her special credit from day 1 -- here she is credited as Marissa Love between Kristen Marie (Cheryl) and Tara Wilson (Julie).

https://youtu.be/De1nT-qZ61w

8 hours ago, DRW50 said:

 

Thanks. Am I supposed to recognize the man Felicia is fantasizing about or is he a generic stand in for Handsome Lover?

Laurie Michaels with the child in the hospital is a different character from Laurie Miller who was the mother of the Kirkland substitute. I was confusing myself wondering why the boy was so old.

I like Grayson McCouch but Morgan's circumstances just seem to wind up glum.

I have a very badly overexposed promo from 1989 with Jamie/Vicky/Jake dancing. I like the part where a duplicate Vicky spins off -- I wish the duplicate had had the Marley wig, but other than that it's pretty fun.

Anne Heche's hair was fantastic and the Marley wig always looked terrible in contrast. I wonder if it would have been better if they had gone with a darker shade of hair instead of the pale straw, especially since they also always dressed Marley in pale pastels in this era.

Is there a better-quality version of this promo anywhere online? I haven't turned up anything searching.

I believe there were other versions with other couples with the same music. Not sure if they did it for AW only or other NBC soaps as well.

13 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

So for Cass' first five or so years on the show there was no mention of a brother.

It's hard to be 100% sure at this point since most episodes are not available. I don't see daily detailed synopses in 1982 and 1983 on the AWHP so I'm assuming Eddie and Mike have not reviewed scripts. It's not impossible that there was something in there that would cover the possibility of a younger brother but it's just as likely that Cass and Stacey said they had no siblings or only older sisters and Morgan was a later retcon. I'm reasonably sure that the explanation for Cass' estrangement from the family came after Morgan's arrival and possibly didn't even reference Stacey.

I liked Grayson McCouch as Morgan but I'm not sure the character was ultimately used well. 

Thinking of sibling retcons, there was a point before he married Marley where Jake for example talked about having a brother but that was dropped and when they did introduce Kevin Anderson it was as a hitherto unsuspected half brother. I think they had considered bringing in Jake's brother earlier in order to have a replacement when Tom Eplin and Ellen left but for whatever reason they didn't, maybe because they had Scott in the hunky young man spot instead.

On 8/4/2023 at 6:23 PM, Donna L. Bridges said:

When is this with regard to Jake raping Marley? What year are we?

The Chief was mentioned before Iris arrived in October 1988 and Mac learned it was Iris in May 1989 not long before the Cory anniversary.

Charles Grant as Evan showed up in August 1988 and left in October 1990. 

Derek was around from the beginning of 1989 to mid 1990.

The Red Swan started up after the reveal of Mac's death in June 1989 and carried on to some degree until about a year later when Paulina surfaces.

Olivia arrived in April 1989, found out Josie was her sister in August, and started posing for Sam in September.

Jake was shot in October 1990 and was in a coma for months afterward.

@slick jones, I see you have "unknown year" for Earle Hyman as Judge Hill on AW -- I find him presiding over Derek's bail hearing in September 1989. At the same hearing Victor Slezak is credited as simply "D.A." 

18 hours ago, chrisml said:

I think Derek and Stacy could have worked if there had been a game plan, but as with most of Swajeski's writing, the endgame was never thought out. Even if Stacy and Derek hadn't worked out, he could have moved into someone else's orbit. The show just seemed interested in aping the Beauty and the Beast t.v. show without having a purpose for Derek's character. I enjoyed it while it was going on, but it's a bit infuriating in retrospect that it ended up being a waste  of time.

Was it in the Valentine for Singles that Stacy talked about wanting to have a baby again? I don't know if that would have been part of the plan for Stacey and Derek. More likely it was simply shorthand for Stacey wanting a romantic relationship. But it's always hard to know whether plans exist and then get derailed because of audience response or other backstage reasons.

1 hour ago, j swift said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Stacey had dated Jamie prior to her marriage to Mark, during his drug using/screenwriter days.  Unfortunately, she came back during the dud-Jamie days, so I could see why her eye would wonder underground.

Was Jamie still using drugs then? I thought that was when he was with Cecile and that she was with Sandy by this time.

Stacey (Terry Davis) came to town after Cass and did some legal work for Jamie (Richard Bekins) regarding his writing.  They started dating but then Mark Singleton showed up and it was revealed that Stacey had had an affair with the married Mark who was running for senate. Mark's wife Janet was willing to put up with the affair and stay in the marriage as long as Mark stayed in politics. Stacey went back to Mark. Richard Bekins left town. Nicole (Kim Morgan Greene) arrived addicted to cocaine. Jamie (now Stephen Yates) returned and pretended to be romantically involved with Stacey in order to protect her from death threats; at the same time he was trying to help Nicole with her drug addiction. Nicole fell in love with Jamie but he got back together with Stacey who then went back to Mark again because she was pregnant with Mark's baby. So Jamie took up with Nicole and eventually Stacey and Mark left town and Jamie and Nicole fizzled out.

I'm not saying that Laurence Lau and Hilary Edson would have been a scintillating couple, but maybe they could have made something work. I thought perhaps he seemed slightly less pompous with her.

I would have preferred it if instead of killing off Megan and Mark Singleton they had either let Stacey show up with Megan, or, if they really needed her to be unencumbered, have it so that Mark had custody. That could have created conflict in her attitude when Jamie was fighting Vicky for custody. Or, if they had to kill off Megan, I wish that they had let Stacey show up with Megan still alive in Mark's custody and then have her get the news of their deaths. That would have allowed us to really get a handle on her grief which I never quite thought we got.