Xanthe

Thanks for the clarification, @Efulton. I was thinking of Cecile's involvement with Tanquir and that she was definitely comic before she ran off and married the King. I was dimly aware that Tanquir had existed in the P&G soap universe -- wasn't it also a feature of some storyline on GL as well? -- but I didn't think that Cecile had had anything to do with it prior to Majorca.

Tanquir first came up when Cecile abandoned Cass in Majorca, and of course during the time she subsequently kidnapped him and prevented him from marrying Kathleen. But Cecile indulged in a lot of high comedy before she disappeared from Bay City in 1984 when she was investigating Royal Dunning's murder. I particularly remember the time she and Felicia dressed up as nuns and then told the police it was for a production of The Sound of Music. Oh, and when she went to talk to some witness with Wallingford and hilariously kept overlooking the fact that the witness' corpse was stuffed into his refrigerator. I think there might have been some comedy when she was conspiring with Alma Rudder to drive Blaine crazy in 1983 as well.

My friend and I used to laugh about this exact misuse in some romance novel, where the plot was that some man was allegedly unaware that he was impotent and therefore unable to father a child. I agree but Donna was supposed to be trapped in an archaic attitude where the family had to behave with (or at least outwardly present) strict propriety. In that context talking as if illegitimacy mattered would be on point. Shana was played by Susan Keith, wasn't she? Was the character similar to Cecile?

It's hard to say, of course. I think the synopsis said "loved" which seemed to imply an actual romance. And Nicole wasn't around yet, so my mentioning her was more about really not wanting it to be Donna! Mac and Mrs Love could have met jet-setting anywhere in the world. I doubt she went to Europe only to pretend to be pregnant. Regarding the word illegitimate, it does feel strange to me to use that term for a baby whose mother is married but to someone other than the baby's father. Babies born in wedlock are treated as "legitimate" regardless of who their father really is. It made me think it should be applied only to Donna if the affair was before the Love parents marriage, or to Marley as Donna's child. But they probably weren't being strictly accurate and felt they could make Peter or Nicole part of a scandal. I feel extremely resistant to the idea that Donna could have been Mac's daughter and Iris's sister.

I ran across a synopsis of the week of February 28th 1983 that mentions Donna taking an interest in Mac's past admiration of her mother. Obviously it never came to anything (and I am glad it didn't) but I am slightly curious about what they might have been planning. If they were thinking he could have been the father of one of the Love children I think I would have preferred it to be Nicole.

About 9 minutes in Donna has a flashback to her youth and the unnamed boy who would eventually turn out to have been Michael. I know later closer to Michael’s introduction they used younger actors to portray young Michael and Donna but here Anna Stuart plays young Donna and Michael is just the back of some guy's head. I really adore Anna Stuart in the later scene with Marley (about 13 minutes in) where she is so uncharacteristically soft and happy. Normally we see the snobbish Donna whose life was blighted and who was terrorized into thinking she needed to make sure Marley didn't fall into the same trap. It would have been better if Reginald had never returned from the dead. He was more frightening as a spectre from the past.

I forget what precisely became of Smiley's but it was essentially replaced by Mary's Place and Maisie went into partnership with Ada and Vince.

I had that exact thought but I couldn't find any credit for her on AW on IMDB or on the AWHP so I was doubtful. The resemblance is there in face and I think voice though.

Perry's grand reopening of Smiley's was in July 1984. I found this -- it's Maisie's first day (as well as Peter's!) and there is some kind of criminal intrigue involving a man who apparently frequents Smiley's. Around 15 minutes in a woman who works at the museum (I guess she must be "Mary Lou" -- not sure who plays her) gives a vivid description of the greasy spoon Smiley's. And about 24 minutes in we meet Smiley's and Maisie. And then in 1983 Alma worked there as "Nell" and lived in Happy's Motel before her murder.

Lily had been a prostitute and when she told Grant about her past he decided he couldn't date her. Even that sounds more dramatic than it played out. Lily worked for Felicia at Tallboys and/or the Northwoods Inn as a hostess, and I believe she co-hosted Felicia's TV show with her as well. Lily got Grant a job at Tallboys, a step up from Smiley's, and he was working at the Northwoods Inn when he inhaled the tomb dust that killed him. Smiley's was originally pretty seedy. It featured heavily in the Alma Rudder murder mystery. Then Perry took it over and fixed it up and made it popular with the teen set. Maisie rented out a room at Smiley's and first Catlin and later Jake lived there.

Jamie talking about his "male ego" makes my heart go pitter-pat. John Hutton's Peter Love was I think too alpha to even consider that type of chatter. One of the things I loved about AW of this era was that scenes could have idle chitchat that made the characters seem real -- not everything was important to plot mechanics. You need both and I thought AW handled the balance very well.

Richard Bekins was Jamie until early 1983 so only he could have dated Julie Phillips, Jennifer Runyon, or Dawn Benz's Sally. Only Stephen Yates overlapped with Mary Page Keller. I'm really all about Stephen Yates and Kathleen Layman. I love him here about 20 minutes in.

I absolutely cannot condone murdering Joey Perrini. Not that it makes a difference in the way retcons work, but did Sally at the time succeed in seducing Joey onscreen? I have a vivid recollection of her drugging him and staging a scenario where Eileen caught them apparently in flagrante in the back of a van, but I have been scanning the AWHP synopses for 1979 and 1980 and I don't find any description of Joey and Sally actually having sex even though the character guide does list them as lovers. David Thatcher made a good murder victim as a villainous outsider nobody cared about who had already murdered Uncle Kevin. My enjoyment of Kevin boiled down to Sally's clear love for him and a comment that Mary Page Keller made about how much the child actor looked like her as a child. And if he had remained on the canvas he could have been SORASed and interacted with Maggie (and Cory and Jeanne and whoever else) and been integrated with the Matthewses, come to terms with his parentage, and so on. (But I would also have moved Brittany out of Catlin's orbit sooner so that her baby was Zane's or Peter's or Mitch's or Michaud's or whoever's.)

Mary Page Keller's Sally was definitely portrayed as having put her wayward past behind her. If she had been the version that Julie Philips or Jennifer Runyon portrayed Donna's resistance to her might have been more than snobbery. However I remember there was at least one little nod to Sally's past during Majorca when Sally had to hotwire a car or something and when Catlin commented on it she said that Phil had taught her how to do it. When I found out that Gary Tomlin who was headwriter in 1984 had been playing Morgan Simpson around the same time that Sally was mixed up with Phil Higley that cast that reference in a bit of a new light for me. I don't think Taylor Miller's Sally behaved as though she had any past whatsoever. She became a pristine princess whom all the Lesoleil boys adored and whose middle class life was so far removed from Catlin's rodeo past that they started to seem fundamentally incompatible. Of course even Catlin's past had been sort of sanitized in 1985 by turning his sort of shady drifter past into a little true love marriage and tragic [presumed] death of his young wife and child.

Just double-checked the AWHP. Steve was last onscreen in March 1975 and Sally first appeared in April. Alice got Steve's long-distance approval to adopt orphaned Sally before he died but he was dead by May. So Sally never met Steve really [before he returned from beyond the grave when she was an adult and she sulked that he was all about protecting Diana's virginity and didn't care what sin Sally was living in] and was not raised with Jamie as her brother. That part doesn't bother me. But I did like their quasi-sibling relationship in 1983/1984 and it does seem a pity to blow that up to replace it with a romance, especially given that Catlin and Sally were so successful pre-Brittany. It's only my hatred of Brittany and Lesoleil that made me entertain the hypothesis.

Whose baby is Aunt Liz holding in the September 6 1984 episode? Is it Stacey Winthrop and Mark Singleton's daughter?

Didn't Alice adopt Sally after Steve's death?

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?)

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.

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

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.