Xanthe

Today's find: Becky Ann Baker (credited as Becky Gelke) as "Jill", giving Iris a massage.

11 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

@Xanthe Is that Eileen Heckart?

Thank you and thanks @j swift -- as soon as you gave the name I knew it was right. I knew I could count on this board. 

This actress looks extremely familiar to me but I don't know from where. This is from a September 1989 episode where Stacy goes to ask advice from a former law professor. The character is called Professor Houghton and I don't seem to find anything relevant on the AWHP. 

2 hours ago, j swift said:

The use of DNA for amniocentesis - GH still uses the old plot of a family figuring out paternity when a loved one has an accident and someone has to donate blood.  Meanwhile, amnio tests have been standard since 1982, and in California it is a free option for prenatal care. So, it is unlikely that parents wouldn't know the genetic origins of their early adult children.

In order to bother with the test you probably have to have some kind of suspicion. And even though GH is made in California it is set in New York.

I have just been watching some of the drama around Steven Frame's paternity in 1989. Before he was born Vicky started to panic and asked her OBGYN for a paternity test and the OBGYN said it was too dangerous and wouldn't be ethical for her to approve it. Vicky backed off but then after Steven's birth Jake found out that Steven's blood type was AB and suspiciously noted that his own blood type was AB. During the retcon that John could be Marley and Victoria's father a couple of years earlier,  Victoria was likewise suspicious when she found out that both she and John had the blood type AB. The thing that never seemed to be discussed is that blood type is not passed from the father to the child directly. Essentially you get one letter from each parent, and all you can do is use blood type to rule out the possibility that someone is the baby's parent. So if Vicky is AB and Steven is AB, anyone who is A, B, or AB could be Steven's father -- only someone with type O could be ruled out. I assume at this point these soap towns are crammed with people with AB blood and anyone could be anyone's father. 

I came across a commercial from 1989 for NBC SoapPhone. It was a 1-900 number ($1 for the first minute and $0.45 for each additional minute) and promised updates from different characters from different soaps. 

I was a bit confused to see Genie Francis but then I remembered she had been on Days.

Does anyone remember this? Did you ever call it? 

25 minutes ago, AMCOLTLLover said:

Elon… the smartest guy alive coming up with the smartest names/brands. I mean a simple X? Like seriously? Wow. That’s impressive… I mean I assume my intelligence is below average coz I don’t see Elon‘s bigger picture for X..

Maybe someday someone can enlighten me

I read somewhere recently that Elon wanted to rebrand PayPal as X way back when but was prevented. It reminds me of the story of the movie producer who kept asking movies to add a gratuitous giant mechanical spider until he finally got his way with Wild Wild West.  

2 hours ago, I Am A Swede said:

Why?  

Hoping to avoid his creditors?

2 hours ago, j swift said:

While watching the soaps on Friday, I was struck by the number of plot points that seem out of touch with contemporary culture.  So, I did a bit of research to see how common the following issues are in 2023

1. Sanitariums - obviously the word itself is obsolete, most are referred to as "mental health facilities".  The average stay in a mental hospital is 4–7 days, at a cost of $1,000 per day.  Drug rehabs are licensed separately from mental health centers, they are rarely locked, and they average $10,000 per stay.  Most private insurance carriers would not allow a drug rehab patient to be housed at a mental health facility because it is more expensive.  So the idea that citizens of Port Charles check themselves in, for months at a time, seems unlikely.  And don't get me started on the trope of the evil psychiatrist who either wants to use ECT, drugs, or restraints to control a patient, while in reality client's rights advocates would drum them out of a job in a second!
2. Private Detectives - according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics there were 32,000 licensed private investigators in the entire country with an average annual income of $53,000 working as of May 2023.  So, what is the likelihood that a small town like Salem would have so many of them?  This is clearly a profession that has been made redundant by technology.  Most people wouldn't think of hiring a private detective when they could just do an online search, and 90% of cases involve background searches for prior court records, which seems boring for an action oriented guy like Patch Johnson.
3. Matchmakers - another job that seems to have been replaced by technology.  Yet, a New York Times piece in 2021 suggested that the average fee for a matchmaker in New York was close to $100,000. A recent episode of DAYS utilized the concept of a matchmaker in order to justify how two enemies could've been paired up on a blind date.  However, find me a Millennial in 2023 seeking a partner who isn't on an app that requires pictures like Tindr, Hinge, or even Christian Mingle!
4. Wealthy patients at University Hospitals - Salem and Port Charles are known for their medical education, and they've both graduated many doctors and nurses.  However, beyond the fact that none of the faculty has active research grants which is the primary source of income at university settings (schools usually take 30% of every federal grant), they are appointed without application through the University, and they never discuss tenure, why would the richest families in town seek treatment at a university hospital when private facilities exist?  In Los Angeles, most wealthy women would prefer to give birth at Ceders Sinai where they have luxurious private birthing rooms over UCLA where the maternity ward is old and communal.  

Those are some of the issues that were specific to the storytelling on July 21, 2023.  What are the other plot points that you've noticed that don't seem modern or up to date?

Editor's note: 1953 was chosen because that was the year that private detective licenses were first available nation-wide.

Other than Dark Shadows, have there been any period soaps? Everything I can think of is usually set as contemporary but when you layer on writers' generational unconscious bias (grandmothers are like this, teenagers are like that, except of course they are thinking of their own experiences of 20 or 30 years ago) plus conventions of the genre that may not have aged well you get these types of anachronistic issues. 

In early 1989, after Jamie had left her for Vicky, Lisa decided to try video dating and had a date with a guy called Girard. The actor is credited as Graham Winston but I believe it is Graham Winton who later played Caleb Snyder on As the World Turns.

 

Sometimes I wonder whether if Joanna Going had stayed or if Lisa had been recast they could have done something effective with the Jamie/Lisa/Vicky triangle over the long term. Before she left, Lisa got very friendly with Matt while he was confused about whether he and Josie were ready to have sex and both that and her departure were a bit unsatisfying. But Laurence Lau's Jamie could be very pompous and shouty so a long-term triangle might not have worked well without a Jamie recast. Around the same time as Lisa's video date, Jamie and Nicole had lunch and reminisced about what messes they had been back in the day and now they were fine stodgy successes in relationships with volatile messes like Vicky and Cass. While it was nice of them to acknowledge their pasts (there had been some earlier scenes between Nicole and a pregnant Vicky where Nicole behaved as if she had never been acquainted with Jamie at all and I don't think she acknowledged anything with Stacy after Stacy showed up either), it was a bit sad to think how much more interesting these characters could be. 

On 7/19/2023 at 9:55 PM, adrnyc said:

Wow - it's great to read people enjoying those late 80s-early 90s years! That was AW to me. Anne Heche's Vicky (and Marley,) Carmen Duncan's Iris, VW, RKK, prime Cass/Frankie and Felicia, John and Sharlene, CRAZY Taylor...those were the days!

The recovery post-Depriest had a lot of positives, but Stacy and Derek make me want to throw things and Amanda and Nicole are very limited. I do like the way a lot of people are more interconnected -- during Depriest it often felt like groups of people were off in their own little bubbles and the only thing that tied all of the groups together was fearing the Sin Stalker or hating Reginald. But Sharlene interacts with Josie, John, Jason, and also Rachel and Iris. Josie and Matt have peripheral friends as well as their families. Cass has Nicole and Felicia and Caroline and Zach, and so on.  

I recently watched the scenes where Dawn was diagnosed with AIDS and it was staggering to me that they had Jamie in the middle of the hospital informing Scott and Chad of the diagnosis *before* they all go in to tell Dawn. I know we're more conscious of privacy nowadays but holy cow. 

John H Brennan (Tony Carlisle) in a commercial for his Canadian series Bordertown.

 

Katie Rich (Dee) in a Wrigley's ad.

 

Jumping around a bit in the late 80s. It's a bit hard to watch some of Vicky's scenes where she is acting out because of her custody conflict with Jamie and she is driving recklessly with Evan, especially when I also bounce to her coma in 1987.

Are Rick and Julie Anne AW's first interracial couple? I was just watching a scene where Rick is confiding in Lisa of all people that he is struggling a bit for some reason and thinking how odd that he wouldn't think to talk to his partner Courtney. Maybe he does at some point.

30 minutes ago, Vee said:

Twitter is almost completely impossible to access or navigate for a non-user at present; only direct links to specific tweets work and you can't navigate a person's feed, read replies or view a hashtag at all at present.

If it helps, nitter.net allows searching by userid so that you can see their tweets.

https://nitter.net/search?f=users&q=bbcdoctorwho

10 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Thank you. 

I was just listening to Patti Lupone on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and it reminded me that Robert Lupone played Mac's nephew (and Adam's brother) Neal.

5 hours ago, antmunoz said:

Carole Shelley, Tony winner and nominee, and the original Madame Morrible in WICKED, was an Iris temp.  To me, she’s a bigger star than many on your list  

 

I didn't know it at the time, but I must have seen Carole Shelley as Dotty Otley in Noises Off in 1985. Paul Hecht (AW's Nikolai Pirenko) was Lloyd Dallas in the same production.

3 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Good idea! Thanks for passing that on. 

As it is the AW list has grown. It is so big now!

ANOTHER WORLD: David Ackroyd, Christine Andreas, Christine Baranski, Doris Belack, Amy Carlson, Gabrielle Carteris, Justin Chambers, Jordan Charney, Spencer Treat Clark, Alicia Coppola, Nicolas Coster, Marcia Cross, Charles Durning, Kathyrn Erbe, Giancarlo Esposito, Faith Ford, Morgan Freeman, John Getz, Joanna Going, Thomas Ian Griffith, Sam Groom, Kelsey Grammer, Michael Gross (1981), Jackee Harry, Melissa Joan Hart, Anne Heche, Barry Jenner, Mary Page Kellar, Christopher Knight, Kathleen Layman, Audra Lindley, Ray Liotta, Lindsay Lohan, Dorothy Lyman, William H. Macy, Nancy Marchand, Christopher Marquette, Rue McClanahan, Julian McMahon, Joe Morton, Chris Noth, Jodi Lynn O'Keefe, Luke Perry, James Pickens, Jr., Brad Pitt, Nicolas Pryor, Ving Rhames, Christopher Rich, Eric Roberts, Jennifer Runyon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Saxon, Ted Shackelford, Helen Slater, Jean Smart,  Susan Sullivan, Dolph Sweet, Ann Wedgeworth, Paul Wesley, Billy Dee Williams

What about:

Donna Murphy (DA Morgan Graves)

Edward Hibbert (print shop guy who created a modified birth certificate for Sharlene to give to Josie)

Frances Conroy (Mary Lou)

Billy Porter (singer Billy Rush)

Scott Bakula (Quintin Mills)

Gary Sandy (Michael Thayer)

Wanda de Jesus (Gomez)

John Spencer (Frank Julian)

Janine Turner (Trish Kirkland)

On 7/13/2023 at 3:19 PM, Donna L. Bridges said:

This is a list of actors who appeared on AW who later went on to have success in primetime or film or the theatre. Do you know of anyone not on this list, who should be? Thanks.

ANOTHER WORLD: Christine Baranski, Amy Carlson, Marcia Cross, Charles Durning, Kathyrn Erbe, Faith Ford, Morgan Freeman, Kelsey Grammer, Michael Gross (1981), Jackee Harry, Melissa Joan Hart, Anne Heche, Audra Lindley, Ray Liotta, Lindsay Lohan, Nancy Marchand, Rue McClanahan, Julian McMahon, Chris Noth, Luke Perry, James Pickens, Jr., Brad Pitt, Nicolas Pryor, Eric Roberts, Kyra Sedgwick, John Saxon, Ted Shackelford, Susan Sullivan, Dolph Sweet, Ann Wedgeworth, Billy Dee Williams

You should cross-reference with the AWHP. In addition to the Actor Guide, under Miscellaneous there is a section for "Celebrity Appearances" which includes a lot of people who had roles large and small before they were stars.

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/misc4.html

The list is not necessarily complete or current, depending on when fame struck the person or whether their stature is truly "celebrity". You should scan the actor guide as well.

On 7/12/2023 at 9:30 PM, Efulton said:

I can't imagine any Another World fans are going to this so they can see the guy who played Dustin Trent for 2 months.

I have conflated Dustin Trent and Drew Marston in my mind for years now and I have been somewhat surprised to discover that they are actually two distinct people.

I guess Drew Marston was mostly during the strike -- if I recall correctly he had faked his death in order to incriminate Mac and there was a whole lot of fuss about whether Mac would be charged given that there was no corpse. Was that part of Iris' plan? 

Dustin seems not to have been working with Iris and had his own agenda where somehow fortuitously he met Amanda through a prostitution ring pretending to be a video dating service and she turned out to be a double of his wife Julia that Evan had had an affair with. What are the odds! (No greater I suppose than that of the resemblance between Rachel, whom Carl had been obsessed  with since at least 1985, and Justine, whom Carl had had an affair with at least 15 years before that based on Ryan's age.) But it was Drew, wasn't it, and not Dustin, who managed to get a picture that looked like he and Amanda were having an affair and that was published in the newspaper in order to humiliate Amanda as part of Iris' plan?

It took me a minute to recognize Kathryn Erbe offering advice about safe sex to Josie (This is around the same time that Matthew bought condoms from Judith Barcroft). The first thought that came into my head was that whoever it was looked like Susan Dey.

On 7/6/2023 at 12:30 PM, Michael said:

Seems like it's doing impressive numbers and getting good press thus far, and I'd love to see an adequate Twitter replacement take over. But functionality-wise... I use Twitter for way different things than I use Instagram for. I don't necessarily want my soap discussion friends to be following my Instagram, or for all my family and friends who follow me on Insta to be seeing my soap discussions or whatever (not even that I CARE about them seeing it, it just seems weird to be serving that stuff to them). I dunno, having them all linked doesn't make it very appealing for me.

Absolutely. I prefer to keep my various kinds of nonsense separate and even though none of it is shameful I wouldn't want to be self-conscious about who is seeing what or who might react to what if Threads insists on showing you to your Facebook friends and vice versa.

45 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

My favorite soap, #AnotherWorld, my favorite actor, Stephen Schnetzer, playing Cass Winthrop but in drag as Krystal 'with a K' Lake, being caught by Tony the Tuna. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DliA4gOrUNo

So nice to see Julie Osburn as Kathleen with Kathleen Layman as MJ. They may be my favourite pair of sisters of all time.

2 hours ago, denzo30 said:

Yes, that was the point I was trying to make that the audience in 99 may not have even know Bev.  She had left the show 20 years earlier.  For us long time fans, that would have been great to see her but ideally Carmen would have been the choice I think the network would have wanted. 

I know that some people disliked it, but they used Sam Groom, who had previously played Russ, as the officiant at Cass and Lila's wedding. If they could not think of a way to use Iris well they might have been able to come up with a way for Beverlee and/or Carmen to play some other part that would deliver fan service and acknowledge the performers. (On the other hand although I had liked both John Aprea and Alice Barrett and I don't object in theory to actors playing different roles I wasn't thrilled with Alexander Nikos or Anne O'Donnell, so maybe it would not have worked.)

10 hours ago, Darn said:

It definitely is.

Thanks. According to the ibdb it looks like he would have been in NY doing Me and My Girl in 1989.

I don't see him listed in the Actor Guide on the AWHP, but I am pretty confident that this is Edward Hibbert here (March 31, 1989).