Xanthe

1 hour ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Well, except that Liz never really liked Jim and Mary.  And living in their middle-class house would have been beneath her, and probably the last place Liz would have ever wanted to live.  But other than that, yeah.   

In the AWHP synopses for 1982 there is just a mention that Liz, Susan, and Julia decided to move into the house with Sally. There is no mention of whether there was any financial motivation although Liz had apparently invested in Jamie's movie and been let down by a romantic interest in Milo the producer. Sally had recently split with Denny who had extracted money from her. Julia might have been living with the movie people but I suppose Susan must have been staying with Liz. 

19 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

If I'm not mistaken, David Thatcher had a huge fight with someone in the Matthews living room (I think the fight was with Sally).  Anyway -- I believe these scenes were the final scenes that showed the entire Matthews living room set.  The scenes included the front door, foyer, and staircase, also the entire living room from the side window to the front windows, and back around to the hallway toward the kitchen (kitchen not shown) and the entire fireplace.   Does anyone remember seeing the entire set, including the fireplace later than the episode I am describing?   Even when Jacquie Courtney returned in 1984-85 and stayed for about a year, I don't think the camera ever went far enough left to show the fireplace.   I may be wrong, but can anyone verify it?   Thanks . . .

I haven't found anything specific that answers your question but is the Matthews house that Liz and Sally and Julia and Alice were in in 1984 supposed to be Jim and Mary's house, or is it Liz's house and if so was it the same house from 1964 to 1984 or had she moved?

On 3/16/2024 at 6:35 PM, j swift said:

Also, Kristen Vigard and the others in little boxes, makes it look like they weren't available for the shoot and had to be photoshopped in later, which is unusual because it is a drawing.

Not that the scale and positions of the people outside the boxes look as if they were all naturally in the same room with each other anyway. Those heads at the top are much larger than those below.

On 3/17/2024 at 8:27 AM, Contessa Donatella said:

In the 2000s Televest did a series of B&W "poster" ads for ATWT & GL.

They probably aren't intended to be consumed as the whole set at once. I don't quite like the way the red lettering is sometimes the character name and sometimes a word or phrase, but that might be because I was confused about the relevance of whipped cream to Henry. I guess it's related to Coop's theme of dessert menu somehow?

22 hours ago, DRW50 said:

A very fun Cecile and Donna scene in this. Carl and Donna too. Anna Stuart really was divine to watch when not weighed down by Michael and sanctimonious writing.

David Oliver was so lovely.

1983 through parts of 1984 was a good revival period for the show. I'm sorry it all went aground again.

 

Thank you. I wish there were more -- I would love to see all the parts of Donna encouraging Cecile to comfort Peter and the reveal of Kevin Thatcher. 

Carl was chilling.  

I do wish though that the David Thatcher murder had been more personal or more organized crime related. Emily's motive of general opposition to the baby ring was confusing and possibly misplaced. I wonder how early the story was decided. I see Alexandra Neil as Emily Benson didn't appear until June 5, weeks after David's murder.

22 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Changing the location in the scripts was obviously last minute and made the entire plot even more laughable than it was to begin with.    

Indeed.

On 3/11/2024 at 6:43 PM, Khan said:

Didn't Mac become possessed by the spirit of some old captain or something after he had accidentally inhaled the dust?

I know Mac became confused and had dementia-like symptoms (forgetting things from the recent past, thinking the present is the way it was when he was much younger) as well as paranoia, but I don't recall anything like being possessed by someone else. That kind of thing annoys me unless the universe has been built to permit it from day one so I would be surprised to have forgotten about it. 

On 3/11/2024 at 6:46 PM, AbcNbc247 said:

I know he fired Liz though. 

About 14 minutes in Liz flashes back to Mac firing her the previous day. Later in this episode he hires her back.

I wonder a bit what the timeline was like. As early as May 9, Perry gave Nancy an Egyptian ring that was supposed to have belonged to his grandmother. That was also during the period when they had no head writer. Then in August after Sam Hall and Gillian Spencer became head writers suddenly Daphne and Carl were looking for Egyptian artifacts and Chris and Nancy and Donna all had some or ought to know where their fathers' artifacts were. Then in October Ada gave Nancy permission to go to Algeria with Daphne and Daphne just took her to Egypt instead. By October there was both an Egyptian character (Fayez) and a Native American (Hawk) involved in the search for the Egyptian artifacts. Chris, Hawk, Nancy, Daphne, Fayez and Carl all had scenes in "Egypt" and then somehow they realized that what they were searching for was on a reservation in Arizona. 

Carl and Daphne must have returned to Bay City because when he murdered Daphne he paralyzed Kathleen and Cass was arrested for Daphne's murder, and I don't think either of them had gone to Egypt or Arizona. Carl, Chris, Nancy, Marley, and Jake all went to Arizona in November chasing the Egyptian treasure or to follow someone who had gone to Arizona chasing the treasure.

The Achille Lauro hijacking was October 7-10 so they must have been very close to going on location when they had to rewrite and replan. 

46 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

You are probably correct about this.  And the production likely was assisted by the Arizona Tourism Board, although I don't personally remember.  

For what it's worth, the credits to this episode mention only the hotel, no government assistance. 

2 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I think Nancy and Chris actually did go to Egypt, but that was all shot in the studio. 

Yes. That was where Nancy got the jar of tomb dust that killed Grant Todd, a Cory maid, and nearly killed Mac. 

I see in the AWHP synopses that Steve went to Finland on business just before Jim died, without Alice (who could not get away from nursing obligations). I tried to see if anything looked like an obvious last-minute substitution for a location shoot in Finland but nothing jumped out at me. Steve and Rachel had only recently been to San Diego but I have a hard time imagining Mitch kidnapping Matthew to Finland.

If I recall correctly in 1985 they allegedly planned to go on location to Egypt and then changed their minds because of political unrest or something, so after establishing a lot of Egyptian details in the story they went on location to Arizona with weird Egyptian baggage. 

4 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

I'm not asking anyone to continue this scene.  But have you ever imagined how early, fairly believable characters might interact with later characters who were more over the top? And could it be presented as real and believable, without resorting to cheap humor?  For example: Marianne Randolph Halloway and Cass Winthrop?  Mary Matthews and Felicia Gallant?  John Randolph and Wallingford?   

I honestly feel like this is a false dichotomy. Cass and Felicia were around for such a long time and although they had many moments of high comedy which I know you don't like, they also had serious relationships and heartfelt emotions and tragedies. Wallingford wasn't around for as long but he too was such a good and concerned friend that I have no difficulty imagining him interacting in a human way with so-called believable characters. The key would be the writing and the nature of the relationship. Why are these people in each other's orbit and how do they feel about it? 

Probably the only time I felt warm toward early John Hudson (pre-Lemay and Sharlene) was when Wallingford talked seriously with him. 

11 minutes ago, j swift said:

Thank you for this bit of grace, good to know that I was not alone in my ignorance.

But, it was Donna, Peter, then Nicole, correct?

Kathleen and MJ changed order. When Kathleen first arrived MJ was the eldest, but when they added the prostitution retcon they made Kathleen the eldest. 

4 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

When I was watching AW in the 1970s, I sort of assumed Russ was the middle child. No reason for this except Beverly Penberthy played Pat as so mature, I thought Pat was the oldest.  So the birth order is vague -- unless somebody can find it mentioned in a script.  

According to the synopses on the AWHP from 1964, it is clear that the order then was defined as Pat, Alice, Russ.

Pat was in college and there was a lot of time devoted to planning her 21st birthday party.

Alice was graduating from high school (as valedictorian) and planning to attend art school.

Russ was flunking his sophomore year of high school and wanted to drop out rather than go to summer school.

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1964.html

By 1967 Russ was accepted into the internship program at the hospital and Alice mentioned in passing to Lenore that she had just turned 20. 

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1967.html

34 minutes ago, j swift said:

I would hazard to guess that they needed a medical professional for the Dawn storyline, and it was just kismet that Jamie was proposed to return. 

However, I'd never trust a doctor who was dumb enough to get into a 'who's the daddy' plot. 

Dawn was a year away when Dr Jamie showed up. In the interim Brittany needed a doctor for her baby and Amanda needed someone to give her birth control advice. But Chris Chapin could have handled both of those things if it hadn't been necessary to replace all strays with a Love, McKinnon, or Cory-adjacent character. 

On 3/7/2024 at 10:07 PM, j swift said:

Although wasn't she a nurse's assistant (I don't recall if she graduated) and then a magazine editor, and there weren't that many stables in Bay City for Catlin to do his work, so his expectations were kind of accurate. 

Sometimes it felt like Bay City was nothing but stables, but I take your point. I believe Sally had a half-formed theory that Mac would be able to hire him for something somehow. After all, she had been made Art Director without any obvious education or training.

I scanned through the AWHP synopses for 1982 to see how that happened and they seem to go from Sally refusing to go back to college, to marrying Denny and losing money to whatever scheme he had going on, to divorcing Denny. Out of nowhere she is working with Cass and meeting Peter and being promoted to Art Director.

Note that I am all for Sally giving up nursing to go into publishing but I am still livid that Jamie left publishing to become a doctor. 

5 minutes ago, j swift said:

Aunt Liz, Russ, Steve, Jim, Alice, Robert, Lenore, Iris, and then who are the couple on the right?

Could they be Janice with Tim McGowan?

5 hours ago, j swift said:

It is ironic that they played up the class differences between Sally and Peter (or at least, Donna and Catlin mentioned it), because given Sally connections to Steve and Mac, she had access to more wealth than the Love family.

I don't think Donna's perception of class was (at least originally) supposed to be based on wealth as such. The Loves were presented as wealthy and privileged but there was never any industry or trade that explained where their wealth had come from. When Reginald was originally cast they chose a British (*Welsh) actor which sort of feeds into the aristocratic air. Donna would probably have looked down on the Frames because their recent origins were so low. I think Lemay was interested in those types of class difference but a lot of writing regimes didn't do much to portray class.

I remember Catlin and Sally having a conversation during one of their secret meetings while he was in hiding after escaping from jail where she talked about how it would be nice after he was cleared if they could buy a house and he was overwhelmed by how much it would cost and she said that it was reasonable to think that they would be able to have enough money. It was definitely presented as she had a good job and he would be able to get a job and it would be within their reach, not "my father was very rich so I don't have to worry". Later when Taylor Miller was in the role they really leaned into the idea that Sally was too middle-class to understand lower-class Catlin's feelings. I think they went to marriage counselling after she left him because of Brittany's pregnancy.

7 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I know that Iris and her anger over Alice's relationship with Elliot/bond with Dennis was used to help reunite Alice and Steve. Did Iris and Alice, or Alice and Dennis, ever have any major interaction after that story ended? I wonder if the show ever thought of the story potential of pairing Dennis and Sally.

Adult Dennis was in Bay City from June 1978 until he left for Texas in 1980. At that time he was mostly getting involved with Cecile and Elena and Sally was in her delinquent phase. To the extent that Peter and Donna Love replaced Dennis and Iris, I can see that if the Carringtons had stayed they might have played out a similar story for Sally with them. Although Donna being Marley's mother added a little something to that plot that Iris would not have provided. Later, when Dennis came back and was involved with Marley and Olivia, Sally was already dead.

8 hours ago, Contessa Donatella said:

What day was the first 90 minute show? Isn't this week the anniversary of it? March 5, 1979? Or today? 

Edit: March 5, 1979

Yes. March 5 was the Monday and according to the daily synopses on the AWHP the announcer mentioned the upcoming change on the Friday March 2 episode.

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1979d.html

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

I know we have talked a lot about Hugh Marlowe as Jim Matthews and touched on his Hollywood career, but I did not realize until I caught the end of All About Eve on TCM tonight that he played Lloyd, Karen (Celeste Holm)'s husband.

Here's a creepy thing I had forgotten about the Sin Stalker: Dr Glaser had apparently been obsessed with Lisa for years because her mother had been one of his patients and most of what they talked about in therapy was Lisa's virginity for some reason. So Dr Glaser had been patiently waiting for Lisa and somehow ensured that she would move to Bay City to be with her aunt in 1987 so that he could marry her as soon as he had murdered enough filthy sluts to be worthy of her. And probably he had also killed Lisa's parents.

https://youtu.be/bAAA7t2PRno?si=5rna4EMMl6O1VSem

1 hour ago, j swift said:

They really softened Wallingford's character, transitioning him from a mysterious figure to an endearing buddy. It's amusing how soap operas of that era often portrayed certain characters as asexual, even though they were clearly gay coded. I mean, Wallingford, essentially a window dresser who idolized Felicia, the town's most flamboyant drag queen, was never portrayed as seeking intimacy or bemoaning the absence of a partner.

That isn't strictly true -- I had refreshed my memory about some of these details when we discussed how Harding Lemay might or might not have written for Wally if Brent Collins had still been alive. Wallingford was always a supporting player but he definitely had more hints of romance in his life than, say, Bridget.

He had been engaged to a woman in the past but never married.

He dated a woman called Jeannie at one point. I am not sure whether it is Jeannie who came to Wallingford's memorial in Tops (at about 33 minutes in):

In early 1985 when Zane came on the scene, Wallingford started to gear up to approach Felicia romantically but silently backed off when he realized that she was romantically interested in Zane.

24 minutes ago, Sapounopera said:

At least soaps were still trying to keep up with the times. It is an upgrade from the two previous openings. Of course I would never have changed the late 70s intro and music. So classy and sophisticated. The other day I was watching the 1981 episode that was posted a few days ago and the 1981 intro felt so out of place with the elegant vibe of the show. 

I wish that when they had done the 1987 update they had tried to integrate the rainbow circle of interlocking rings and that typeface. I really didn't care for that torn paper effect in the cursive Another World. The thing I didn't mind about the later versions of that opening was how strongly the colours popped in the little vignettes and that most of the clips were from scenes within the show rather than staged poses. I did enjoy being reminded of John and Sharlene in the barn, for example.

3 hours ago, j swift said:

I tried to do Abel and Leo, but there aren't enough thumbnails.  Cass versus Rex would've been given away by the air dates.  And, Justine versus Rachel is way too obvious.

Somehow this reminded me that when Kathleen first arrived, Cass was paying her to show up places in a blonde wig and pretend to be Cecile in order to draw out someone who might know something that would help him find Cecile again. Of course Julie Osburn is perceptibly taller than Nancy Frangione so other than the blonde wig I'm not sure how realistic the impersonation was supposed to be.

6 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Hmm, so do we know why they changed it? His name is Krystal (with a K) 

I think Cass was impulsively putting a more glamorous flair on the name and persona. I can't remember whether he made a direct association with Krystle Carrington of Dynasty fame, but I know the K made me think of her (although of course Krystal Lake did not style herself like Linda Evans). The difference in spelling might also have served to try to make it less obvious that the name was copied from a nearby town.

2 minutes ago, j swift said:

Didn't Sally give birth to Kevin in Boston?  I hope the Shearers didn't use that nefarious Royal Dunning to adopt Julia.

Julia (like Sally) was not an infant when she was adopted, so I trust Dr Dunning was not required for any part of the procedure.

Sally was supposed to be in Boston for boarding school between Cathy Greene and Julie Philips and she had a lot of SORASing to fit in in about 7 months. I have always imagined that Kevin must instead have been born between Julie Philips and Jennifer Runyon which was a gap of about 6 months in real world time. According to the AWHP during that period Sally was supposed to have left for Chicago (to study nursing). Being in Chicago seems to fit better with the proximity to Dr Dunning and David Thatcher as well. I know that the Thatchers and/or Royal Dunning were said to be located in relatively nearby Crystal Lake and that was the inspiration for Cass' drag name.