Xanthe

Today by chance a Twitter thread about Baywatch came across my feed and I glimpsed Kim Morgan Greene (original Nicole Love) at 0:35. Apparently it was an uncredited role as Girl with Injured Foot. I liked Kim Morgan Greene as Nicole and never felt the recasts captured the privileged party girl aspect of the character.

Robin Strasser's Rachel never overlapped with David Bailey's Russ. Did the actors have some other connection?

Don't forget about Darlene Love as Judy. Based on Stickney's description, it might not even be a performance in the story, just the kind of singing a person might do going about one's day. I can think of the odd time characters sang Xmas carols, or Adam singing to himself getting ready for a date with MJ.

Because we have been talking about Robin Strasser, I started reading Llanview in the Afternoon (which is pretty interesting even though I never watched OLTL). In it, Timothy Stickney made a comment that really surprised me: "I knew every black character on daytime had to sing at some point" because although I can think of a couple of AW characters who had (or wanted) singing careers (Leo Mars, Lily Mason) I can't remember any tendency for Quinn or Roy or whoever to sing. Did the Burrell family sing?

I picked 1983 because Texas had ended and that was when they introduced Donna.

I remember reading an interview, probably in the 80s, with an actress who described how her personal moral code led her to refuse to play some storyline in which her character would have transgressed. I don't think it was a hot-button issue like abortion -- it might have been as run-of-the-mill for soaps as adultery? I have not been able to track down any more specific details regarding who, what, or when but maybe someone else knows what I am thinking of.

I have not seen enough of Robin Strasser to really know, but my impression is that if they had cast her as Rachel it would probably have ultimately broken up Mac and Rachel which would either have completely obliterated Mac or pushed him into other relationships until Doug Watson's death. I would also guess that Robin Strasser's Rachel would have filled some of the same space as Donna, so depending on timing either they would not have created Donna in the form she took or they would not have wanted to take Rachel in that direction with Donna already on the canvas. Also I would guess that they would have dropped Rachel's sculpting career and put her into more business-related storylines. Would Robin's Rachel have had an affair with Sandy in 1982? Left Mac for Mitch in 1986? Only imagine if they had recast *Iris* with Robin Strasser in 1983.

Today I learned that it was Judith Barcroft, the original Lenore, who sold Matthew condoms when he was thinking about losing his virginity to Josie (and dispensed such portentous advice about what a big decision it was apparently scared him into several months of abstinence mixed with confusingly flirting with Lisa). Barcroft also mentioned that she and George Reinholt had to help out with the writing because everyone was so busy with Somerset!?! https://www.welovesoaps.net/2010/02/catching-up-with-judith-barcroft-part-1.html The only problem I come close to having with Felicia and Lucas is Michael and Donna already went to the well of First Love and Father of My Secret Baby Must Be Best Love, and although that kind of thing has its place it doesn't do to apply it everywhere. But other than that I did really like them together. I just would have preferred Zane had remained for longer.

Oh, I think you're right. The AWHP synopses for 1982 say "Brian advised Steve to bankrupt Blackhawk and incorporate a new company, Frame Construction. [...] Rachel quietly gave her commission to Quinn to help finance Steve's new business despite Ada's objections."

Of course. By "it" I was thinking "Steve Frame's net worth", not any specific company.

Surely whatever the financial status of Frame Construction in 1977 it was reset by the resurrection of Edward Black/Steve Frame in 1981 and Jamie could have been quite comfortable after Steve died again in 1983?

Did you like Mitch and Felicia together? I thought the relationship between Mitch and Rachel made some kind of sense in a last gasp of the 70s kind of way, and I believed that they could be drawn together as fellow artists. But when he returned I didn't feel anything between him and Rachel and the chief reason to pair him with Felicia seemed to be because they wanted to eliminate Zane as too far outside the "core families" and that meant Mitch was an adult human male who needed a mate to keep him from breaking up Rachel and Mac. Maybe it was partly because Margaret DePriest didn't know how to represent artistic types -- she was the one who changed Jamie from a writer/publisher to a doctor.

I don't know, the actress could be employed on the West Coast while the ex-husband languished in Westchester, couldn't she?

I was trying to figure out whether he had intended to make it a part of the original story somehow, but he left the show and didn't see it through. Or else he thought Iris needed a big reason to come back after so long and needed the biological relationship to justify her investment in Cory affairs.

I did not realise that Iris' mother Sylvie was in Bay City as long as she was. Based on the timeline it appears that Harding Lemay introduced the character almost immediately after Amanda's birth and the sudden revelation that Mac was not Iris' father. Then Sylvie persisted under Tom King throughout the Kirk Laverty story and eventually confessed (falsely) to his murder, and at some point it was revealed that she had served time for murdering her rapist, Iris' father, and Iris had been born in prison. When Iris returned in 1988 and provided Mac with the evidence that he was indeed her father, was Mac meant to be surprised that he was really her father, or was he supposed to have known all along and just been lying to her? I suppose the fact that Mac was Iris' biological father wouldn't have prevented Sylvie from being raped or from murdering the rapist. I think what shocked me was the AWHP describing the rape/murder as having occurred when Sylvie was a "young adult", which makes Mac's involvement with her sound kind of skeevy. Maybe the retcon eliminated the rape and murder altogether if it wasn't part of Lemay's story? ETA: Apparently today is the anniversary of the day Mac told Rachel he was Iris' father after all.

Since obviously AW struggled to recast Alice with someone suitable with the constraints they were working with at the time, as a thought experiment, assuming that time and space and money are not constrained, is there any actress past or present, living or dead, big screen, small screen, or stage, who would have been close to an ideal Alice? (Assume that she is willing to bleach her hair, and if that is not sufficient, go to any lengths to change anything about her physical appearance, in order to perform the role.)

The way people have often watched soaps, at least with the advent of the VCR, has been to pick and choose which storylines to follow and which to dip in and out of. The real streaming innovation for serials might be to enable that type of "choose your own path" with temptations to interest the viewer in following side paths. Maybe that idea is better suited to offering vintage and antique soap experiences rather than producing new content though.

Oh, thank you, that's very interesting. Do you know why Olive Stacey left and how long it was before the replacement (Anne Sargent) appeared? I tried to do some searching and came up with nothing. Neither the wikipedia page for the show nor the IMDB has any comment I could see.

I searched without success to see if I could find the 1998 return of Sandra Ferguson as Amanda, but if they didn't hype up Anna Stuart of all people I would be surprised and horrified if they had done it for Sandra Ferguson. I associate it a little bit with the slips you get in your program when the understudy is going on for someone. My guess is the likelihood is that they didn't make any announcement in radio serials, but for television they felt there was an immediate need to make sure the audience knew it was a familiar character with an unfamiliar face and dispensed with exposition. But I have no idea who the first recast was and how it was handled.

Stephen Schnetzer used Stephen St Paul in a couple of early credits (Paul is his middle name). Sandra Ferguson who played the first adult Amanda on AW got married and became Sandra Reinhardt. Then I think she went back to Ferguson, and after she remarried she became Sandra Robinson and eventually Sandra Dee Robinson.

Thinking about recasts, when I was paying attention they typically would make a voiceover announcement of the new actor's name at their first entrance depending on how recently the previous actor had been in the part or if it was just temporary. Is that still the convention? I wonder when soaps started following it.

The physical resemblance often doesn't go beyond hair colour, especially for women. One of the weakest recasts I can think of relied heavily on physical resemblance: Judy Dewey as Blaine. Dark-haired Mary Page Keller was a popular recast in the same era after a series of blonde Sallys.

Cliffhangers were a feature of movie serials before daytime existed. Nighttime could have recognized them as essential to the serial form without going through daytime.

I keep turning this over and over in my mind trying to understand the point of younger Iris. Was it just a cluster of fans of Kate Collins? Did they want Iris to have sexier romantic adventures? Did they have any thoughts about her relationships to Rachel and/or Dennis?

Don't forget the short-lived Moment of Truth, which starred Douglass Watson. It apparently aired on NBC in 1965 as well but it was made and set in Canada and aired on the CBC. There was a racy made-for-cable serial in the early 80s called Loving Friends and Perfect Couples that Cali Timmins (AW's original Paulina) and Lisa Howard (later on Days as April) were in.