Xanthe

Thank you. Always happy to see Richard Bekins. I don't remember much about the Hardy Boys series other than (1) I had a crush on Parker Stephenson who got the part of Frank and (2) the reception we got for ABC was terrible. I don't know how I would have handled "Jamie" as Frank.

The misogyny charge was not so much about objectification of women as some of the choices she made about character. There were certainly salacious storylines under her watch, although they were perhaps a bit confusing. Serial killer the Sin Stalker was obsessed with prostitutes and then any woman who was not a virgin but never sexually assaulted any of his murder victims because he was obsessed with Lisa and intended to "marry" her until she revealed that she had been raped as a teenager and did not meet his standards for purity. MJ was changed from a college-educated police detective to a uniformed officer (who basically continued to do a detective's job) with no college degree and a secret past as a prostitute. She was devastated when her upright fiancé Adam jilted her at the altar but also still had a strong emotional attachment to her hunky former boyfriend and pimp, Chad. Donna remembered that before she had had sex with her boyfriend Michael as a teenager actually she had been hanging out with his brother John who had raped her, so there might have been a possibility that he was the biological father of her twins Marley and Victoria. When John came back from the dead he insisted that it had not been rape, she had been attracted to him because he was a badder boy than Michael. And then they spent the summer lusting after each other and setting up situations that allowed Reginald and Peter to persuade their dupe Victoria that John and Donna were having an affair. Reginald terrorized and drugged Donna and had her institutionalized, and what had been her story about how Reginald had kept her from Michael and forced her to hide in a secret room until she gave birth to the twins, given Victoria up for adoption and raised Marley as Donna's sister, became Michael's story of how Reginald had wronged him and culminated in a fight to Reginald's death where they blamed each other for Donna's miscarriage of a son without any noticeable regard for the pain and suffering of Donna and her daughters.

John Randolph also had an affair with Bernice, didn't he? It makes me wonder about his taste in women since he later married villainous Olive and of course he married Pat after defending her for murder. Did Lee's mother have any dark secrets or criminal tendencies? She must have been -- the trial ended and Wally was born in March 1971.

Do you remember why the jury acquitted Lenore? I was looking at the AWHP synopses and there isn't really a reason described, just her relief at the verdict. And I think I had assumed that the reason Lenore wasn't convicted was because Walter eventually took the blame, which clearly wasn't the case.

So today I was surprised to learn that Coldplay used a segment from Linda Dano's talk show Attitudes in their video for one of their songs and so Linda appears and speaks at the beginning and the end.

I don't think I have seen the cliffhanger comment before. Maybe it was slightly warranted because the pacing of the show had been a bit off for at least a year, but it's not as if it had always limited cliffhangers and big moments to Fridays. But it feels like De Priest is making a lot of ridiculously grand claims.

Oh, true -- just that Michael and Felicia were the farthest apart within that grouping and had less interaction with each other than they did with John and Sharlene.

Thank you, that was fun. Even though Felicia was friendly with Philece Sampler's Donna and later had an affair with John Hudson I don't think of Linda Dano together with Kale Brown much.

Lily was around somewhat regularly until the summer of 1985 when there started to be references to her being out of town a lot. The AWHP daily synopses for 1985 mention her winning a trip to Canada and I think there are also points where they say she is touring for her singing career. She drops in occasionally -- I think she came by for Felicia's wedding to Zane -- but not often. And when 227 was a hit she never came back. Lily was introduced as Thomasina's biological Aunt and Quinn needed to contact her in order to adopt Thomasina. Lily was working as a prostitute but she got out of that life and made a respectable living. I remember her working at Leo Mars' club and I think she worked on Felicia's TV show. She was friends with Henrietta as well as Felicia's set. She dated Carter's father Grant briefly but he broke up with her after she admitted her Past as a prostitute to him. She didn't really have a main story of her own, she was mostly supporting. I wonder whether the Matthews were not recognized as a core family after a certain point not just because so many characters had been written out but also because so many of the characters had taken their husbands' surnames. Susan and Julia used Shearer. Pat and her children were Randolphs. I don't recall whether Alice went by Frame in her 1984 return but Sally certainly was Frame and was using Ewing when she died.

Absolutely agree that they decide to make sweeping changes because they want to fix the show. I think there are two main reasons why they don't go back to what was successful in the past: one, they look at other shows that are currently successful because they know that the external environment (more women working outside the home, VCRs, etc) has changed; and two, they have their own ideas and I daresay limitations as to what inspires them. I don't know enough about AMC to know whether Le Soleil as a glamorous spa was something that Gillian Spencer might have conceived of because it fit with Pine Valley so that when she came to work on AW she used that basis. There has been a fair amount of discussion in here about how Michael Malone pulled things from his 13 Bourbon Street bible, and Margaret de Priest's penchant for international supervillains and serial killers, and the similarities between Agnes Nixon's early Rachel and Erica Kane. AW also tried the route of hiring a playwright to replicate the Lemay magic with Corinne Jacker. ETA: Even though I was using the present tense I was thinking about the 1980s when I mentioned VCRs etc.

Spencer absolutely crammed Le Soleil with retconned and new links to Bay City. Their headquarters were the Chapin Estate where new doctor Chris Chapin's family had lived. Chris Chapin's father had been connected to Carl Hutchins and Donna's father in something to do with an Egyptian treasure. Chapin Sr had had an affair with Daphne Grimaldi who was searching the estate for something to do with the Egyptian treasure. Her current lover, Michaud Christophe, had brought Le Soleil to Bay City in order to reunite Felicia with her old lover (and his father) Edward Gérard, a famous movie star who had been out of the public eye for years. He hired Cass in some sort of executive position and started a search for an American spokesmodel for the company. Kathleen had a makeover (as part of what Le Soleil called a "visualization"). Michaud was instantly smitten with Sally (because she was glowing with love for Catlin) and hired her as the Le Soleil Woman. Daphne took Nancy to Egypt which then led to Chris, Nancy, Marley, and Jake in Arizona in pursuit of the treasure, tormented by Carl. Carl murdered Daphne and Cass was wanted for the crime. Carl also caused Kathleen's paralysis. Catlin was jealous of Michaud's interest (and then when Michaud was written out, Le Soleil's architect Daniel's interest) in Sally. Rachel and Mac were tangentially affected because of Nancy's involvement (not to mention Mac's near death encounter with a jar of Egyptian tomb dust) but also because Mac's nephew Neal was an undercover FBI (?) agent working the Egyptian theft case. Donna felt entitled to some benefit from the Egyptian treasure because Carl had stolen her family's money and Victoria actually stole some jewels from the hoard. It may have been intended to be long term, but it was dispensed with pretty quickly in the end and wasn't really missed.

No, I am not familiar with those boards. What did they think? Was Taylor Miller's Sally similar to Nina? I didn't think she was a bad actress but the story didn't do Sally any favours. They didn't address any issues with regard to Kevin -- and I am sure that it would have been too soon for him to find out she was his real mother, they needed Kevin to be older to make the most impact with those repercussions, but that element should have been there waiting to go off. And it felt like they wanted to make Sally seem unreasonable for breaking up with Catlin after he cheated on her with Brittany and then insisting on marriage counselling before they reconciled. I mean I don't think either of them learned anything from the marriage counselling, in the end I think their problems were resolved by giving in to passion followed quickly by her death.

Huh. My first thought was "roguish" sounded more like Charles Grant as Evan, which reminded me that a few months ago I had found that clipping from late 1985 that mentioned that AW had been talking to him then. They didn't have anyone playing Jamie then but I thought they intended to create a new character for him rather than recast Jamie.

I wonder what that might have been like. Larry Lau was not was I was looking for in Jamie. Would DePaiva's Jamie have been more sensitive?

I'd be very surprised if Facebook was any help in this situation. I used to try to report accounts on Facebook where the account was set up to appear to be a celebrity and would add replies as if they were personally interested in other commenters. But of course there was no way to report someone for impersonating a celebrity unless you could link it to the celebrity's real account, and even if you reported it as fraud or spam Facebook would eventually shrug and say it wasn't against their TOS. I wanted to read the Sarah Wynn-Williams book that Facebook tried to suppress but after a few chapters of her floundering around incompetently I couldn't bear any more and returned it to the library.

I don't know. In the video below I know Blaine is arrested but I haven't found a mugshot scene. The AWHP has a section on trials that might give you some date ranges worth looking into. The Character Guide will also normally have a section for Legal Troubles for the character that will mention arrests. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/trials3.html

The other advantage Mary Page Keller had was that they cast her eventual future husband as her new love interest and their chemistry came across to the viewer. Maybe they could have worked some other casting magic with another pair of actors in those roles but it felt very special at the time even before they were known to be together IRL. @Stevel I don't mean to be talking past you, Sally was one of my favourite characters, especially in the Mary Page Keller era. What do you remember about her (and if you know of any good videos available do share! I am always looking for Sally stuff from 1983-1984)?

I have a soft spot for the absolutely shocking behaviour of Julie Phillips' Sally and I did enjoy Jennifer Runyon's Sally as well, but I think Mary Page Keller's Sally (whom I loved) also benefited from having a storyline that kept moving and having impact. Maybe my perspective is biased because I was not watching as consistently during Jennifer Runyon's tenure. If she had had the storyline with Donna splitting up her and Peter I think she could have done well with it. I thought the movement from getting engaged to Peter to Donna digging up the info with Kevin to getting engaged to David to falling in love with Catlin was compelling and the integration of Donna and Cecile's stories into that whole flow was great. It's a great shame that all of that was essentially wiped out even really before Sally died with Taylor Miller as the Lesoleil spokesmodel and Brittany.

On AW Brittany had her baby in June 1986 and her husband Peter became abusive when he realised that the baby was Catlin's. Sharon Gabet has mentioned being pregnant in real life during the abuse storyline and when she left the show in January 1987. Was Alice Barrett Mitchell pregnant IRL when Frankie miscarried in June 1991? Her daughter Julia was born in late January 1992.

Laura Malone was pregnant when Blaine and Sandy had their son Alex on Another World in 1984. Laura was given a hard time about losing her baby weight and was replaced by Judy Dewey after her return from mat leave.

I was looking at the updates on the AWHP to the auditions page and I was surprised to read that Thomas Ian Griffith had originally been signed to a 9 month contract as Catlin in 1984. That struck me as very unusual. In the end he stayed for about 3 years even though Mary Page Keller had left when her contract was up in the spring of 1985. I had always imagined that he must have signed a 3-year contract or else he would have left much sooner. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/audition.html Is there a precedent for signing new young actors for less than a year at first and then extending the contract to something rounder? I know the show could terminate contracts early at specific points but I thought they preferred to lock the actors in.

Felicia on Another World, March 6, 1989.

I can see both sides of the way Iris ended -- that is, everything you laid out was a choice that may have been a logical step, but there could have been different choices along the way that led to a different outcome that would have kept Iris on the canvas or at least not removed her forever. That said, your point regarding Dennis reminds me that when Iris was originally introduced, she was a very neglectful mother -- Dennis had a heart condition and she was divorced or separated from Eliot Carrington who had custody of their son and hired Alice as a private nurse. I'm not sure how to square that psychologically with the later Texas story where Dennis was the child of her True Love Alex Wheeler and her more possessive attitude toward him. Maybe I can rationalize it based on the elimination of Dennis' illness combined with the death of Alex?

The brain transplant was Celeste's (Sally Fields) improv solution to prevent her daughter's character from being written out of their show -- she was sacrificing herself -- in of course a live broadcast. The back from the dead character was played by Jeffrey (Kevin Kline). I don't recall whether they supposedly wrote anything creative to bring his character back from the dead within the show. The movie was produced by Aaron Spelling.

Thanks! Larry's separation from Clarice didn't really seem to drive much story for them. And neither he nor Catlin really did much to deserve being taken back by Clarice and Sally. Especially with Sally, where it seemed clear that she reconciled with Catlin in order to hastily wrap things up in a tidy bow before they killed her off. At least though Catlin and Sally had scenes discussing their reconciliation. I think Larry just moved back in with Clarice one day and then they started to fade out.