Xanthe

What struck me, reading the book, was how remote from the studio and the day to day rehearsal and taping Lemay was. He obviously had preferences which he describes as being based on acting ability. His preferences were probably not as unbiased as he claims, but I have difficulty imagining he had enough interpersonal contact to be pretending that a personal dislike was artistic.

According to IMDB, she played a judge in the 2015 movie Spotlight.

It's me on my hobby horse again. Another of Eddie Drueding's uploads with the end of Mallorca includes the full version of the song When starting at about 2:10. Still no luck finding who wrote it or performed it. Also of course Cass calling Cecile a bitch!

I always wondered whether the name of the disco was a rewrite or an intentional misdirection. Leading up to the story the clue linking people (Willa from Catlin's past, Larry's babysitter Dale) to drugs were pens branded the Plains Motel, which subsequently turned out to be the name of the disco. I can understand why a motel would have pens. It seems odd that a disco would have had pens rather than, say, matches.

Sally was always significantly older than Nancy. Even though the characters were created around the same era, Nancy was born onscreen in 1974 while Sally was adopted (why, when it appears she had Gordon relatives who would have wanted to raise her, is unclear) about age 11 in 1975. When they aged Amanda in 1987 they had already had a 14-ish Matthew for the Mitch storyline, but Amanda didn't really get a teenage cohort like Marley and Nancy. She was friends with Julie Anne Edwards and I think they were supposed to be the same age but since Julie Anne was also working at Cory Publishing they didn't read as teens.

I know the AWHP synopses refer to Marley being in a coma after a car accident the week of October 29, but I am pretty certain she wasn't in a coma. The car accident was on Hallowe'en and on November 1st Marley is apparently fully conscious and inviting Ben to dinner. Mark Singleton was in a coma somewhere around that time though.

I don't think the character was around for very long (he wasn’t involved when Nancy, grieving Perry, started doing drugs) but I remember finding Hunt interesting and wondering if they were setting up a romance with Thomasina.

Hunter Bradshaw!

The recast I remember being most disappointed by was Justin Chambers being replaced by Kevin McClatchy as Nick on Another World. And my favorite recast was Christine Tucci replacing Sandra Ferguson as Amanda Cory.

Thanks for the heads up! The reuploads included Catlin and Sally's wedding and their theme song "When" is indeed the song that is playing in the background when they break out the portable stereo. (I tried to see if Shazam had any information about it but of course there were no results found.) I'm not really that fond of the version with vocals. I have a sentimental attachment to the piano version because I loved them as a couple and hearing the theme reminds me of me of that period of the show and my enjoyment of it. I had hoped that I could use lyrics to google more info about the song but although this clip includes some, no such luck.

That reminds me of the Futurama joke where Fry writes a script for a TV show and explains that it took him an hour to write so he assumed that would cover an hour-long show. The author was definitely ignorant and snide. I just thought it was interesting how Ford's bluntness came through so clearly in contrast to Wickwire. And this is where I realized that I had always vaguely imagined that "Snapper" Foster was also a photographer, hence the name. Also he and another ex-con had been hired by Reginald to . . . dig a tunnel from the Cory stables to the Love stables? (Mitch actually came back in 1986, the year before Amanda grew up and met Sam.)

Describing Ada as Ernie Downs' wife rather than Rachel's mother was very odd. To be fair, she seemed quite frank about considering it a paycheque and nothing more.

Absolutely. I meant really only that I think AW is richer for having included Iris . . . and I was forgetting that Iris was introduced in opposition to Alice originally, and her role as antagonist to Rachel came later. I have very little memory of Alice before Courtney's return in 1984, but my impression is for whatever reason the character was not interesting after Steve's death. Somehow that reminds me that I have a dim memory of somebody shoplifting clothes on AW, probably from the late 70s, and I thought that it was Olive, but now I am wondering if it was actually Sally in her juvenile delinquent phase.

I was surprised to see a credit for Patrick Tovatt as "Andrew Barris" in 1981 in this clip as well as one for Jean Smart as "Woman on Bus". I finished reading Eight Years in Another World. It was interesting to see Lemay's opinions and biases. When he praised Ray Liotta it made me curious to know what he thought of Richard Bekins but based on the dates I don't think they overlapped much. Lemay did admit that they didn't have any success recasting Alice. It's too bad he couldn't have figured out how to be satisfied with Jacqueline Courtney in the role. But if forced to choose between Alice and Iris I would have to go with Iris myself.

I have the set for Another World and the cover illustrations basically never look anything like the actors/characters. It always sort of amused me that the ones on the cover of Haunted by the Past sort of look a tiny bit like Sally Spencer and Ed Fry who played MJ and Adam in 1986/1987 and may or may not be intended to represent Iris and Robert? (Marianne and Chris? Pat and John? Clarice and Robert?) in the mid-70s.

I think it was a problem that both Ellen Wheeler and Anna Stuart left and there was a gap there for a while. The recast for Victoria didn't have strong material and the recast Nicole functioned more as a placeholder providing support for Michael rather than having feelings or goals of her own regarding Reginald. Peter was occupied with Brittany and when Donna returned as Philece everything was in an uproar because of the Sin Stalker. IMO there was no reason why the momentum could not have been maintained if Vicky and Nicole had been given strong stories to play during Donna's hiatus instead of making them secondary to Michael and Reginald. But that also presumes that there would have been a better story for Donna than the Sin Stalker and Donna's uncontrollable lust for John that Donna as Philece was given.

I've been reading Eight Years In Another World, and Lemay's attitude was not of respect for the genre -- at least not as Irna Phillips defined it. He mentions bringing in plots from classic literature and drama and trying to cast actors who could bring depth and subtlety to the performance. He abhorred what he presented as Phillips' view that a character was either a Saint or a Sinner and must behave accordingly (even Walter Curtin whose sins must all be whitewashed to preserve him as a Saint). But he also learned to structure plots to work within the serial framework. It wouldn't necessarily be wrong for a producer to take aspects from other TV genres to enliven the soap/serial . . . it's all in the implementation.

If Scott had been a triplet, he would probably have done more to expand the Hudsons than the Loves. But it's hard to imagine what Scott as a triplet could have brought to the story that Victoria had not already done or that he as Mary and Reginald's adopted son was not already doing. If they had wanted to expand the Love family then I think maintaining Peter and Nicole as viable would have been better. They could have married [other people! not each other!] and had children (or possibly better have acquired older stepchildren or inlaws who could drive story). I could possibly have enjoyed a storyline in which Reginald convinced Donna that Scott was a triplet only to have it revealed later that it was a lie. (That would have been better than the nonsense that John Hudson holding twin infants in a photo was evidence that he was Marley and Victoria's father.)

Donna was closer to 17 when the twins were born. The math only comes close to working out if Marley & Victoria's ages are frozen at 18, which they sort of handled by casting Anne Heche (although Vicky's storyline with Jamie skewed slightly older). Otherwise Donna was already 35 and the twins 18 two years earlier in 1985. I don't really have a problem with actors playing older or younger than their age if the performance is good and casting not based entirely on appearance. Beverlee McKinsey being too old to be Douglass Watson's daughter can't make me dislike her Iris or his Mac. I loathed Brittany but not because Sharon Gabet was 10 years older than Thomas Ian Griffith. (Taylor Miller is about the same age as Gabet and Sampler, incidentally.) Agree. But she could convey Donna's emotions within that framework very effectively. I wonder whether they could have created a triangle between Michael, Nicole (as played by Philece), and David Forsyth (as John or some other character) without doing the unpleasant rape/not rape retcon.

They made Reginald too much of a cartoon and made his crimes too unforgivable. He supposedly loved Mary but his motivation for lying to her was not to protect her from anything, just to keep her from leaving him. His only interest in his children was in Protecting the Family Name. He tried to get Victoria on his side primarily to "pwn" Michael. He killed Zane and Sally just as a way to write the characters out. Ironically, his McGuffin was called "the trump" (and it didn't really drive that much story, although it did somehow bring Mitch onto the canvas and also cross over with Cecile). Kathleen didn't really start out as a damsel. She was initially presented as Cass' equal in a lot of ways, as a professional woman (whose career had somehow been derailed). In the early 80s I thought AW was good at incorporating various careers but in 1985 that all started to go off the rails. Sally removed as art director for Brava and made into the Lesoleil spokesmodel. I feel like I don't remember Kathleen being blind (although her and Cass' theme was If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful) or kidnapped (Cass was kidnapped by Cecile) . . . Rachel was both, possibly more than once.

Every single one of these couples starts in 1985 or later. It's ridiculous. ETA: Whoops, not quite true, they included Rachel and Mac who obviously go back to the 70s.

Replying to myself not because I have found the answer but it is very difficult and disappointing to try to google for information about a song titled "When". I thought if I could find the dancing scene I might figure out other avenues to research. I remembered there was a scene where Catlin and Sally danced on a terrace in Mallorca and I hoped that that would be it -- but it turns out that wasn't it, the music for that dance was Two Lovers by Julio Iglesias. If it wasn't then, I think it must have been the first dance at their wedding (the bigamous one with MPK, not the legal one to Taylor Miller before Sally died) which I have not been able to find. I have seen a clip of their vows, but not the reception. I think I find this especially maddening because I don't have any trouble finding other contemporaneous themes from the same time -- "Friends and Lovers" for Kim and Shane on Days of Our Lives gives results just on the title and I didn't even remember what Kelly Capwell and Joe Perkins had as their theme but I searched their names and easily came up with "If Ever You're In My Arms Again". That said, I know that Catlin and Sally were not at the same level of fame, and if the song itself was not otherwise a hit then why would there be any reference to it on the internet after so much time? Any suggestions for how else to tackle this appreciated. On another topic, I did learn something new in my hopeless searching: apparently Taylor Miller appeared in a movie Thomas Ian Griffith wrote and starred in, Excessive Force.

I don't know about "Lieutenant" but ran across this 1985 credit for *Dr* Edwards.

I'm trying to find more information about the music that was used as Catlin and Sally's theme in 1984. Who wrote it and who sang it? It's the piano music playing behind the scene below. Based on the information on the AWHP, I believe its title was "When". And I believe (but have not been able to find) that there is a scene with Catlin and Sally dancing to the full version with vocals. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/music.html

The special "bitch" exemption was when Cecile left Cass in Mallorca to marry the king of Tanquir in 1984. The kidnapping was from Cass & Kathleen's wedding in 1986. Calling Cecile a bitch in 1984 was meaningful because up until then Cass had been singing her praises to Kathleen. In 1986 he was already over Cecile.