Xanthe

1 hour ago, j swift said:

@Xanthe The clip you reposted on the wedding attire thread is remarkable  Two weddings and a horse all in the same episode?!?  The production was very ambitious in Brooklyn back in the day.

Also, given how great they looked together, it was a shame that Sally and Jamey couldn't be paired, given their mother's animus it would have been very Romeo and Juliet.

I'm reeling a bit at the thought of Sally and Jamie but I am not sure whether I like the idea. I loved both characters but putting them together would deprive both Catlin and MJ. Maybe, possibly, if there had to be Brittany and Catlin had to stray, and Peter was being an [expletive deleted], and Stephen Yates stayed, and there was never any Lesoleil, I could have enjoyed a scenario where Catlin's infidelity drove Sally into Jamie's arms.

Thinking about how vivid and interesting the 1984 wedding costumes were (not only Henrietta/Roy and Sally/David but also Cecile/Peter), and comparing them to how blah I thought Catlin and Sally's 1985 wedding was, I am wondering what changed. Did the wardrobe department get replaced? Were they creating pizzazz for 2 weddings because they were meant to be disasters rather than romantic? Were they dressing Sally down because Catlin was not wealthy? Or did the budget get slashed in 1985 and they were pinching pennies?

There was a lot of activity in the stables in 1984 -- not only did Catlin give riding lessons to Kevin at the Corys and work for Donna, but there was also some scheme Carl had where he disguised a racehorse or something. They might not have had a horse every day but they definitely had them regularly. (Didn't Steve's Australian daughter also do a lot of riding in her day?)

40 minutes ago, j swift said:

Gotta love Quinn's crystal wedding snood

Isn't that Henrietta with the bridal snood and Quinn in snoodless pink?

I thought Sally's outfit for her aborted wedding to David Thatcher was very cute, much nicer than what she wore to marry Catlin which seemed rather generic.

3 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

Was Blaine even mentioned again after 1985?

FWIW apparently Blaine was mentioned in 1996 when Maggie was briefly presumed dead.

4 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Nancy just appeared in that one-off fantasy episode in 1993. 

Was Cecile only a fantasy or was there some reality? The AWHP gives her dates as May 19, 20, and 25. Murder on the Honeymoon Express was May 20. The synopsis for the week of May 24 sounds like Cass might have run into Real Cecile as well.

It's interesting that they had Cecile onscreen at the time since Maggie had just showed up as "Joy" right before this. I wonder if they had hoped to keep Nancy around for longer.

7 hours ago, watson71 said:

Once Jamie left Bay City in 1993, never to return again- Sandy, Blaine, and Alex Cory should have made their way back to Bay City.  Blaine and Alex Cory were never seen on the show after 1985, and a replacement Sandy made a few appearances with Maggie.

I think it could definitely have been interesting to see Sandy interacting with Iris and Amanda and Matthew. With Jamie and Larry and Catlin gone it is harder to imagine what they would have done with Blaine to keep her interesting. My mind is so cluttered up with Jamie and Dennis dating the younger generation of Lisa/Vicky/Marley/Olivia that it seems to make Blaine's presence awkward.

13 minutes ago, John said:

When did Nancy & Chris Divorce. Maybe he didnt wanna return in 93 cause she was there for those few shows

According to the AWHP, Cecile was there in May 1993 and Sandy in June & July, so there was no overlap. According to Wikipedia Nancy Frangione and Chris Rich divorced in 1996. Hard to say when they might have separated. 

Cecile was also onscreen between October 1995 and June 1996. 

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Nothing against David (RIP), but I don't think he was irreplaceable in the role. I would have preferred the scenes with Josie or Rachel over the groom role. 

It's not that David Bailey should be considered irreplaceable, I was just thinking about where Sam Groom would have the most resonance taking into consideration his past with both the audience and the cast. If Sam Groom had previously worked with Victoria Wyndham or any other actor still in the cast I think it would have been easier to have him cameo as Russ in the finale. Or if they had had him for more time and it had been a meaningful storyline for Josie that could also have worked. Of course if it had been a real storyline they could have recast Russ altogether.

Thinking about very brief replacements, I have to admit that I found the brief run of Stephen Bogardus as Sandy Cory a bit jarring. I know he was there because it seemed important for Maggie's father to be present, but as I recall he was just a conventional corporate and stern father without any hint of the louche Sandy.

7 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Sam Groom also returned, but not as Russ Matthews, because of course let's not actually honor history.

David Bailey had been the only Russ Matthews since 1973. it was his Russ that married Sharlene and many years later learned he was Josie's father. Sam Groom's Russ was married to Rachel but he left in 1971 and never worked with Victoria Wyndham or Irene Dailey. Under the circumstances I think giving him a different minor role that was nostalgic only from a meta-perspective was a reasonable choice.

1 hour ago, j swift said:

Was that the story about a secret room in the hospital where Mrs Love was killed?  Which made very little sense given the history that Reg had built a hospital room in his cellar for Donna to give birth, and knew the evil Dr Dunning, who could have more logically killed his wife.

Was there a hospital room for Elizabeth? I know for the Mary reveal Cass and Adam found evidence that Mary McKinnon had been in a secret hospital room that Reginald had bizarrely kept untouched since Mary's accident. I don't remember the Elizabeth murder. 

The cellar room was a bedroom where Donna had to hide for months to conceal her pregnancy. She did give birth there but it wasn't a hospital room (at least not in 1984 when she hid Catlin in it).

I'm not sure that I would rely on a black market baby doctor to commit a murder for me. They seem like different specialties. 

19 hours ago, j swift said:

Mary was around long enough that we could have gotten one or two scenes about what was broken in the McKinnon's relationship and what attracted her to Reginald. 

Did Mary ever recover her memory? I thought they avoided dealing with any of that by keeping her in a state of amnesia. 

On 9/6/2021 at 6:21 PM, j swift said:

Christine Tucci was an odd choice of casting.  She looked like Rachel's daughter, given her dark wavy locks, but her Amanda lacked agency and was stuck playing second fiddle to Vicky.  Amanda was a wealthy, self confident woman, and writing her as a third wheel in a triangle did nothing for the character

Christine Tucci was a much better actor than Sandra Ferguson and much more convincing as an intelligent professional woman. I never thought of Vicky/Grant/Amanda as a love triangle because it was so much about Grant's need for power and control. And as such Amanda wasn't losing to Vicky (or later, Lorna), she was another woman Grant was abusing. I didn't need Amanda to be a romantic heroine.

12 minutes ago, FrenchBug82 said:

Probably an unpopular opinion but while I disliked the Heaven Can Wait story a lot, I initially liked RKK as Bobby Reno. Not in any way shape form enough to justify to fire anyone to get him, let alone Alice B., but I liked the rough but sensitive blue-collar thing he had going. A bit cliche but it worked (problematic as he is, RKK can act) and he and JB had decent chemistry. It helped too that I disliked Jake/Vicky.
It is when it turned into the ridiculous Shane mess that they completely and utterly lost me. I don't know if I ever knew or forget but why did they completely change the story and who he was? That possibly can't have been the intended story all along since the Ryan-as-a-ghost story does not make sense if Bobby wasn't intended to be Bobby at the beginning.
So what happened? What possessed them to do that?

Was making him Shane the mechanism to introduce Lila? 

8 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

That was a huge rumor, especially as the show was winding down. I don't know if it was true, especially given the violent, on-screen demise that Frankie suffered. Then again, it's a soap...so who really knows?

I don't mind a return from the dead if they can make the case for how it was faked and why. But in the case of a violent onscreen death it's hard to swallow. 

I was recently watching the scenes where Cass meets Kathleen in New Orleans after realizing she was alive. Kathleen blamed him for not having tracked her down after the accident and he never pointed out that he had been a prisoner of his evil double Rex for months. On the whole though Kathleen's return from the dead was pretty successful.

Was Mitch the earliest back from the dead character on AW? Was his resurrection planned all along?

Some characters are introduced as dead with the intention of revealing them as alive as part of that storyline. For example, Brittany,  or John Hudson. In other cases the character was introduced as dead but the idea that they could be alive seems to be retconned in for a new storyline, e.g. Mary and Reginald. 

The classic back from the dead storyline is more like Kathleen or Sharlene where a living character was killed off and when the same actor is willing to come back they go for it. I feel like those are more likely to be successful than the ones like Steve Frame when they also recast, but maybe I don't have a statistically significant sample on which to judge. 

20 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

Eddie Drueding has been a godsend to the AW community for decades, and his remarkable site is a valuable resource.

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/

Hear, hear! He has been curating the Another World Video Library since before YouTube existed, as well as documenting all kinds of show history. Julie Poll mentions him in the acknowledgements of her 35th anniversary book. 

On 9/2/2021 at 5:31 PM, Marissa Gallant said:

Recycled plots: 1984, Sophia had an affair, fell off a boat, got amnesia and an inscrupulous man took her away from her children. 1986-Another World, Marissa LaSalle is actually Mary McKinnon who had an affair, got amnesia and an inscrupulous man took her away from her children. 

Wasn't Mary McKinnon's "death" also from falling off a boat? 

On 8/26/2021 at 8:14 PM, vetsoapfan said:

None of these actors had any actual, lasting significance to the show. What a waste.

I'd be very interested in hearing which actors people would most like to see interviewed. Assuming that it would be with a competent interviewer, who would you choose and what would you most want to hear about? (Stipulation: actors must be currently living.)

1 hour ago, FrenchBug82 said:

In his defense, he does a lot of these so it is inevitable he may invite people that we don't necessarily care as much as we do others.

If he had an opportunity to interview, say, Victoria Windham and he went with those instead, then, sure, that would be bad judgement.
But if he is looking for people to interview and those three happened to say yes because he knows them, it is better than no interview at all. Why not? 

He's had Linda Dano,  Steve Schnetzer, Alicia Coppola, Amy Carlson, Alice Barrett, Anna Stuart, and Kale Browne off the top of my head -- all worthwhile IMO. 

17 hours ago, danfling said:

Here is some terrible news:   the multi-talented Micki Grant (Peggy) has passed away.

Peggy was before my time. But Harding Lemay mentions a fight he had with Irna Phillips over a scene in which a secretary comes across an incriminating letter in Walter Curtin's papers. I suppose the secretary was Peggy? 

Looking Micki Grant up, I learned she (among other accomplishments) wrote Pink Shoelaces.

5 minutes ago, Neil Johnson said:

I think it was Harding Lemay who fleshed out Felicia's past, although it had been begun under previous head-writers and continued under Swajeski.  Lemay always used the past of his major characters.  Sometimes that past already existed -- Pat Randolph, Rachel, John Hudson, and Lenore Curtain Delany, for example.  And other times, Lemay created a history -- Steven Frame, Mac Cory, Sharlene Frame, and Iris, for example.  Nearly all of Lemay's major characters (whether Lemay created the characters or inherited them) had an achilles heel or a shameful secret from their past that drove them and influenced all their decisions.  That was just the way Lemay wrote.   So no one should be surprised he added to Felicia's history and made it important to her life in the present.

I wasn't sure exactly which HW was the target of the Culliton shade. And of course flesh doesn't have to be in the form of tragedy, which I thought was part of Culliton's point. I haven't followed the Cullitons to other shows so I don't know how this has played out in practice, but it sounded like Culliton saying that his intention is to respect the history of existing families and characters and not go wild introducing too many new ones. He didn't comment on anything to do with recasts for example where playing to the strengths of a new actor might shift things though.

2 minutes ago, Efulton said:

Donna Swajeski had a storyline that moved Kathleen into Grant’s orbit.  However, Julie had already extended her contract once and wanted to get back to her life in the west coast.  

Only imagine if TPTB had been able to come up with a sweetheart deal such as Jensen Buchanan or Sandra Ferguson got that could have persuaded her to change her mind, though.

I don't remember the timing, but wasn't there a whole storyline where Grant was Kathleen's secret source (with some kind of code name) and it would have put someone in danger if/when Carl found out?

This is an interview from last year (pre-pandemic) with Stephen Schnetzer. Nothing about AW, but a little about his stage work (since he was doing a play in MA) and his personal life.

4 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

True.

Everyone's obsession with Cheryl's virginity was a little much, even for me lol

Not to mention the Sin Stalker in general and specifically Lisa's (horror shock) *not* being a virgin. And the retcon that John had raped Donna before she ever slept with Michael (but he was justified because Michael was a prim straight arrow and both he and Donna were tempestuous sexual beings!). And that MJ had been lured into prostitution because the johns told her they loved her (!).

2 minutes ago, watson71 said:

Thanks for the link to Julie Osburn's website.  When you click on the "More" tab and select CV her resume appears.  She does have Another World under her acting credits, but even more interesting is that she wrote teleplays for both Another World and Guiding Light.  I wonder if she used a pseudonym since I don't remember seeing her names in the credits as a writer.

Thanks for the correction! I was looking at the "About Julie" tab where she lists some highlights that don't mention AW. Glad to know that she has not completely scrubbed AW from her CV.

The AW homepage doesn't mention any writing credits for her either.

Kathleen was a great character and I would have loved to have her stay in Bay City longer. However she wasn't a great fit with the DePriest era IMO which tended to be unnecessarily sexist and weird about women's sexuality.

I was just watching some scenes from when MJ confessed to Mary that she had been a prostitute and that was why Adam had cancelled the wedding. I remember SOD at the time praising MJ for taking responsibility for her actions, but nobody seemed to think that Chad needed to face up to his role in any of it.

10 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

He's had both Linda and Stephen on his show, and it would be great if he could find Julie Osburn (who is on Twitter) and Nancy Frangione.

Julie Osburn has a website on which she does not mention anything about Another World, so she might not have any interest.

She does mention a historical novel she has written but I have not been able to find it available anywhere so far.

On 8/17/2021 at 5:30 PM, AbcNbc247 said:

I’m so glad I was able to buy those books when I did.

They’re so hard to find now, and when you finally do, they’re really expensive 

If you're prepared to wait to see if a better price comes up, you can create saved searches to get an email notification when there's a listing on abebooks.com. But there's no guarantee.

1 hour ago, amybrickwallace said:

That's why I think I've enjoyed the chats with the writers and producers even more than the actors. It's fascinating to hear how stories just come together.

It's a broader perspective in relation to the show for sure. 

One thing that Richard Culliton mentioned was that he appreciated coming in to write when the characters had been well-defined. He also mentioned how much he had enjoyed writing Felicia/ Cass/ Wallingford/ Kathleen/ Cecile and that he had thought it wrong to retcon a tragic past for Felicia. If he considers Lorna to be a mistake I would disagree, but stuff like Derek Dane and Noah Grady I could take or leave alone. 

In the Locher Room interview, Richard Culliton joked about how the Love family was just standing pointlessly around (debatable) until he and Gary Tomlin "turned Donna into a slut". Certainly she had a sexual relationship with Catlin while he was her stableboy which was a very effective leadup to the reveal about her relationship with Michael and her pregnancy. That did remind me though that when I have been watching clips of early Perry, Donna's adoration of him has been so obvious that I wondered whether they had originally planned for some type of Donna/Perry affair before changing direction.