Xanthe

3 hours ago, Khan said:

Plus, I think Taylor Miller was unpopular with fans, and Mary Page Keller likely made it clear she wasn't coming back.

And Thomas Ian Griffith was unlikely to renew his contract since he was presumably going to follow her to California as soon as he could. But Catlin's support of Kevin had been such a key part of his relationship with Sally that it just felt ugly that when Sally died Liz took Kevin away and Catlin never thought about him again. Dealing with Sally's death properly should have enmeshed Catlin with the Matthewses and/or brought him into conflict with Liz or Alice over Kevin's upbringing. 

1 hour ago, Efulton said:

However, Margaret DePriest always wrote for short term shock value instead of long term impact.

Don't get me started. 

For AW, I would say Felicia's first husband, Zane, for sure, and probably also Julia Shearer and Sally Frame. I understood why they killed Sally in the sense that it provided closure to her romance with Catlin, but it basically choked off any story with Aunt Liz or Kevin and really the entire Matthews family until Russ popped in a few years later. But it was badly handled and Catlin just went on with his life until he was sent off with Brittany as if that were a happy ending.

Are you back from the dead if you had never been a live character, only a dead relative or connection to existing characters, but then someone decided they had an exciting storyline for you and brought you to town? If so, for AW I would nominate Reginald Love and Brittany Peterson, at least as they were handled.

Does anyone recall whether Jamie's blood type was ever specified? Was it used to determine that Steve was his father? Or that Maggie was not his daughter? Or that Steven was his son? 

I have just come across the scene in April 1989 where Jake, secretly believing that Steven is probably his son based on the fact that both of them have the blood type AB, has learned from Marley that she and Vicky (who had told Jake that she was also type AB to throw him off) are type O. In reality it is extremely rare for a type O parent to have a type AB child, but also a couple of years earlier in the question of whether John was the twins' father, they said that John and Vicky were type AB. If they could choose only one of continuity or science I would rather they had gone with science, but they ignored one and confused or oversimplified  the other. I am just trying to amuse myself by adding whether they made any of this worse by what blood type(s) they chose for Jamie.

20 hours ago, chrisml said:

In hindsight, it would have more interesting to kill off Nancy or put MJ in the story and perhaps she could have died and that would have given storyline. Maybe others who watched at the time felt/feel differently, but I think killing off Maisie and Quinn was silly, and the longterm storyline possibilities out of the storylines were largely ignored.

I disliked them killing off Maisie and Quinn but the Depriest era had already killed off Sally and Zane and written off a bunch of other characters with or without fanfare. Maisie had always been a supporting character and Quinn had been marginalized over time so it wasn't surprising that they were on the chopping block.

The only reason they had boyfriends at the time was for the storyline purpose of bringing them to the attention of the Sin Stalker. And the Sin Stalker apparently escalated from killing prostitutes to killing respectable single and not especially promiscuous middle-aged women. I don't think Quinn was even sleeping with Zack, was she?

The Sin Stalker was also terrorizing respectable young women who even thought about dating -- or in Lisa's case obsessing over her as a perfect virgin and rejecting her as spoiled when she told him she had been raped.  The Sin Stalker's pathology was really all over the place.

I would rather have seen Nancy on the canvas as a foil to Amanda in the future so I would not have wanted to kill her off. I wish they had brought her back -- she could have been recast.

On 12/22/2020 at 11:52 PM, slick jones said:

DAVID STRATHAIRN

 

THE DOCTORS         Dennis the grave robber   1981-82

SEARCH FOR TOMORROW    Dr. Robert Hand    1984-85

ANOTHER WORLD      Dave Wilcox

If you want to add a date here, Dave Wilcox was Maisie's boyfriend (which naturally provoked the Sin Stalker to kill her) so Dave was only on the show in early 1987 (AWHP DP list says Feb 2 - March 5). 

On 2/6/2024 at 2:37 PM, watson71 said:

Alfred and his wife, Vivian, appeared briefly at the start of 1987, as Neal and Adam’s parents. Alfred was portrayed by Forrest Compton who was Mike Karr on Edge of Night.  At the same time, Ann Flood, was on AW as a Cory publishing employee, Rose Livingstone, who was flirting with Mac.  She played Mike Karr’s wife, Nancy, on Edge of Night. Were TPTB testing the waters to see the audience’s reaction to the characters to see if any Edge of Night fans would notice?  By February, these characters were dropped and the Sin Stalker story was dominating AW.

I'm not sure whether Edge of Night aired in my area. I was completely unfamiliar with Forrest Compton and Ann Flood as well as Sharon Gabet.

Alfred and Vivian just dropped in and out so it didn't seem like there was any long-term plan for them. They didn't even come to Adam and MJ's aborted wedding. Rose seemed like she might have more to do -- she turned out to be Sara Montaigne's mother -- but nothing materialized. 

43 minutes ago, watson71 said:

There were a few specific scenes that gave away Dr. Alan Glaser was the Sin Stalker. There were a few times in his psychiatric sessions with Donna that he would be rubbing his neck as she spoke to him.  
 

Remember the early May, 1987, episodes around AWs 23rd anniversary, where all of Bay City was at the Cory mansion celebrating Mac’s birthday in a thunderstorm. TPTB even got Ada in on the action trying to rescue Nancy as the Sin Stalker tried to kill her in an upstairs bedroom.

 

Thanks. I see Denise Alexander has her special credit at the end of the roll by this time.

It seems so strange that Mac would have invited Reginald to this event, especially with Vince and Mary. Maybe it was explained in the story that they had invited Peggy and Peter but Peggy brought Reginald instead? I seem to recall Peter was also a suspect, so it would be important not to give him an alibi by having him in the room.

22 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Yep.

Chris disappeared at the start of the big purge, earlier in 1986.

Along with Sally, Liz, Neal, Carter & Thomasina, followed by Zane, Larry, Clarice, and Dee a couple of months later. 

1 minute ago, Melroser said:

The fact that they purposely led the audience to believe the stalker was someone different at different time helped. Chris Chapin.

I think you're mixing up Nancy's boyfriends -- Chris Chapin was gone by the time the Sin Stalker started murdering prostitutes. Nancy had started dating Greg Houston (played by Christopher Cousins, dark haired) in June 1986 right around the time Chris left, and then in December she met Tony Carlisle (played by John H Brennan, blond haired). The murders had started by November but I don't know exactly when they jumped from "MJ is surprisingly invested in the murders of prostitutes, it's like she thinks they're human or something" to "there's a serial killer in town and even nice girls like Cheryl had better be careful".

I know Greg was killed by the Sin Stalker. I think both Greg and Tony were probably suspects. Definitely not Chris Chapin.

8 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

Cali Timmons Pierson

Loved Cali as Paulina. (BTW it's spelled Timmins -- the city of Timmins, Ontario was named after her grandfather.)

16 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

It is irritating when new headwriters come to a show and don't bother to research past characters/stories. 

They are always actors and backstage staff who have been around for years that could be consulted.

And if they do reference the past quite often things are changed and go against what has previously happened.

When you think of the sheer amount of information that must have been generated about soap characters and settings production should be keeping records for reference. New writers shouldn't have to rely on actors and crew to fill in those gaps. If they ignore known history or don't bother to look it up I blame the writer but if the show didn't capture a specific piece of info that's on production. 

12 hours ago, China Jones said:

I swear I remember a conversation where Iris mentioned that Mac had gone to Dartmouth!

New Iris or old Iris?

Possibly defensible if we argue that Dartmouth was where he did his undergrad and Northwestern where he went for graduate school? 

Of course even though Adam attended Mac's funeral no one ever suggested asking his father and Mac's  brother Alfred for details of Mac's early life that I recall.

3 hours ago, Vee said:

 

Direct link to Erin Reed if you don't xit (xeet? Have xited?)

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/debunked-misleading-nyt-anti-trans

32 minutes ago, robbwolff said:

I just watched the scene. It's absurd that Rachel had no idea that Mac had gone to Northwestern University for graduate school.

I thought from some of the other dialogue around that time that the issue was that Mac had told her that he had gone to Northwestern but evidence had come up that he had not. I will see if I can find it but I remember Matthew being upset (Matt Crane did some nice work around his grief after Mac's death).

Just now, Donna L. Bridges said:

They seemed to deal with Mac's "others" one at a time!

And I am not even looking for actual real dates to tie the timeline to -- I just want a sequence of events that remains in the same order even if some events get squished closely together as the retcons pile up. 

11 hours ago, Franko said:

Speaking of Carmen Duncan, I was just thinking about how well she and Victoria Wyndham played this scene.

 

I feel very confused about Mac's timeline and where his various business dealings and love children fit in. I suppose "after the war" can cover a long period but the AWHP suggests that Mac's first marriage was dissolved in the 1930s which seems like it would put Iris' birth before WWII. I know time in soaps is elastic and this scene is before the arrival of Paulina whose story obviously involves much later shenanigans. It's also kind of too bad that they didn't think to bring Sandy back in some form trying to resolve the mystery of Mac's past. I'm not sure whether Iris ever acknowledged Sandy's existence. She had gone to Texas before he surfaced and he had moved away before the Chief turned up. 

37 minutes ago, slick jones said:

Petronia Paley is on page 28. Apparently I didn't type her name because it was in all caps in the picture I posted, so I fixed that.  I'm going to update her profile (I was only doing soap roles at the time). If you peek in here tomorrow she'll be updated when I'm done going through all of the sites I use for info.

Thanks Slick. I thought I had scrolled around on the page more (I definitely saw Paul Raven's post) and tried character names but I must not have been very thorough. Appreciate it.

I mentioned it over in Soap Hoppers as well -- I caught some of Solomon Northup's Odyssey on TCM this morning and noticed that Petronia Paley was playing Solomon's wife Anne and John Saxon (AW's Edward Gerard, who was the one who renamed Fanny Grady as Felicia Gallant) playing Epps (the character portrayed by Michael Fassbender in the movie 12 Years a Slave).

I don't know what I am doing wrong. I have been searching for Petronia Paley's Hoppers entry and am just not finding it. The index on page 1 says 28 but for some reason nothing I do brings it up.

The reason I was looking for it is because TCM was showing Solomon Northup's Odyssey (a 1984 American Playhouse episode based on the same source as the 2013 movie 12 Years a Slave) and I noticed Petronia Paley as Northup's wife Anne as well as John Saxon as Epps.

2 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

I guess we don't know that for sure. But I read somewhere, a few years ago, that it was done without computer assistance.  It don't remember where I read it, but the author briefly explained how it was done.  I didn't understand his explanation, so I can't recount it here.  But I believe it was some kind of stop-camera animation.  I doubt there is any way now to find the article (or interview, or whatever it was) that I read.  Sorry about that.   

Just to be clear -- I'm talking about the color version of the "circle of rings" that expanded in front of a black background, with the title Another World within the circle.  I believe this was the show's second opening graphic and lasted until around 1980-81, I believe.   

Thank you, that is helpful. I did understand you meant the coloured rings, but when I started hunting to see if I could find any info I was struck by how similarly kaleidoscopic the effect of the original opening was and started to speculate about whether they used the same technique for both and whether the change was prompted simply because they knew they would be switching to colour or because they had new technology at their disposal.

The AWHP gives the starting date for the circle of rings opening as January 19, 1966 and the transition to colour on June 20 the same year. September 7, 1981 was the debut of the "block letter" opening.

Did any other shows (or movies) have similar openings that would provide insight into how it was done, I wonder?

28 minutes ago, watson71 said:

I almost wonder if they designed the 60 and 70s opening with a kaleidoscope toy and somehow filmed it to capture the interlocking rings and the title.

How dynamic was the original opening that ran until January 1966? Based on the description on the AWHP it sounds like it was at least partially animated, and perhaps a bit similar to the rings since there is a circle that expands into a sort of latticework background.  

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

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/open5.html

8 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

The most amazing thing to me is, the original expanding "circle of rings" opening (the one used throughout most of the 1960s and 70s) was created without the assistance of computer technology.  To me, it it almost impossible to imagine how that opening was put together.  Would that be called "analog" animation?  

I am not an expert, but do we know that the opening didn't use computer technology? The pattern is very regular and 2 dimensional so I don't think it would have been impossible for the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_animation

On 1/21/2024 at 6:34 PM, Sapounopera said:

Replacing the previous music theme with... this 

Aw, I have a soft spot for this theme. I'm not crazy about the arrangement which is maybe verging on the bombastic, but I enjoy the melody. I like the earlier theme as well and prefer the logo with the rainbow of rings to the opeming blocks that become profiles. 

On 1/24/2024 at 5:24 PM, Paul Raven said:

AW tried several times with Robert Kelker Kelly formerly Sam as Bobby/Shane, John Aprea Lucas/Nikos and Alice Barrett Frankie/Anne.

It's not in the same category because Reginald was not created for John Considine (in fact he was an emergency replacement for the actor they originally hired) but the actor did play Vic Hastings in the 70s before returning in the 80s as Reginald. 

And of course Beverlee McKinsey played Emma for a few days before being cast as Iris.

On Another World in addition to Rachel/Justine:

Cass' evil doppelgänger Rex Allingham 

Amanda was supposedly the double of the dead wife of Dustin Trent (although fortunately Sandra Ferguson didn't have to act the part of the wife except for a brief video clip) in 1989. And I’m not sure if it was really a physical double, but in 1999 Amanda was also somehow at least spiritually a vessel for Amalie, the beloved of Jordan Stark who similarly possessed David Halliday.

Anne O'Donnell and Alexander Nikos were the doubles of dead characters Frankie Frame and Lucas.

Didn't Larry Welch force Hope to marry him on Days of Our Lives even though she was in love with Bo?