Xanthe

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.

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). 20230904_233357.mp4

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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/

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.

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?

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. 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.

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?

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.

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

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. 20230807_153639.mp4 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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

I can tell that that is supposed to be one of the features of Derek (in addition to walking around shirtless) but I think I am not convinced that Stacy needs his protection. There are minor incidents like "Stacy fell down in the snow for no reason and is unconscious! Never fear, he-man Derek will save her!" There aren't really organic stakes. In fact Derek seems to need more protection than Stacy does what with his crimes and fighting. Maybe it's also because his protection is split between Stacy and Felicia, and on the one hand his lurking around and sending cryptic notes and presents seemed unnecessarily overdramatic, and on the other I don't really like that he killed Noah. If Stacy were with Jamie instead I don't know that there is anyone I can think of to pair Derek with. Evan flirting with Vicky is kind of fun and I would be totally fine if he got over Amanda, but I can't picture Amanda (or even the version of Amanda that the writing occasionally hints at that Sandra Ferguson isn't playing) with Derek. With Sally and Catlin I bought into the whole idea that Sally was in turmoil over Kevin and David and Catlin was both good with Kevin and distractingly attractive to her in contrast to David. I believed in the stakes and when Catlin confessed to David's murder they were at their highest.