Xanthe

The other advantage Mary Page Keller had was that they cast her eventual future husband as her new love interest and their chemistry came across to the viewer. Maybe they could have worked some other casting magic with another pair of actors in those roles but it felt very special at the time even before they were known to be together IRL. @Stevel I don't mean to be talking past you, Sally was one of my favourite characters, especially in the Mary Page Keller era. What do you remember about her (and if you know of any good videos available do share! I am always looking for Sally stuff from 1983-1984)?

I have a soft spot for the absolutely shocking behaviour of Julie Phillips' Sally and I did enjoy Jennifer Runyon's Sally as well, but I think Mary Page Keller's Sally (whom I loved) also benefited from having a storyline that kept moving and having impact. Maybe my perspective is biased because I was not watching as consistently during Jennifer Runyon's tenure. If she had had the storyline with Donna splitting up her and Peter I think she could have done well with it. I thought the movement from getting engaged to Peter to Donna digging up the info with Kevin to getting engaged to David to falling in love with Catlin was compelling and the integration of Donna and Cecile's stories into that whole flow was great. It's a great shame that all of that was essentially wiped out even really before Sally died with Taylor Miller as the Lesoleil spokesmodel and Brittany.

On AW Brittany had her baby in June 1986 and her husband Peter became abusive when he realised that the baby was Catlin's. Sharon Gabet has mentioned being pregnant in real life during the abuse storyline and when she left the show in January 1987. Was Alice Barrett Mitchell pregnant IRL when Frankie miscarried in June 1991? Her daughter Julia was born in late January 1992.

Laura Malone was pregnant when Blaine and Sandy had their son Alex on Another World in 1984. Laura was given a hard time about losing her baby weight and was replaced by Judy Dewey after her return from mat leave.

I was looking at the updates on the AWHP to the auditions page and I was surprised to read that Thomas Ian Griffith had originally been signed to a 9 month contract as Catlin in 1984. That struck me as very unusual. In the end he stayed for about 3 years even though Mary Page Keller had left when her contract was up in the spring of 1985. I had always imagined that he must have signed a 3-year contract or else he would have left much sooner. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/audition.html Is there a precedent for signing new young actors for less than a year at first and then extending the contract to something rounder? I know the show could terminate contracts early at specific points but I thought they preferred to lock the actors in.

Felicia on Another World, March 6, 1989.

I can see both sides of the way Iris ended -- that is, everything you laid out was a choice that may have been a logical step, but there could have been different choices along the way that led to a different outcome that would have kept Iris on the canvas or at least not removed her forever. That said, your point regarding Dennis reminds me that when Iris was originally introduced, she was a very neglectful mother -- Dennis had a heart condition and she was divorced or separated from Eliot Carrington who had custody of their son and hired Alice as a private nurse. I'm not sure how to square that psychologically with the later Texas story where Dennis was the child of her True Love Alex Wheeler and her more possessive attitude toward him. Maybe I can rationalize it based on the elimination of Dennis' illness combined with the death of Alex?

The brain transplant was Celeste's (Sally Fields) improv solution to prevent her daughter's character from being written out of their show -- she was sacrificing herself -- in of course a live broadcast. The back from the dead character was played by Jeffrey (Kevin Kline). I don't recall whether they supposedly wrote anything creative to bring his character back from the dead within the show. The movie was produced by Aaron Spelling.

Thanks! Larry's separation from Clarice didn't really seem to drive much story for them. And neither he nor Catlin really did much to deserve being taken back by Clarice and Sally. Especially with Sally, where it seemed clear that she reconciled with Catlin in order to hastily wrap things up in a tidy bow before they killed her off. At least though Catlin and Sally had scenes discussing their reconciliation. I think Larry just moved back in with Clarice one day and then they started to fade out.

Larry and Clarice were dropped during Margaret dePriest's first HW stint, where she wanted to focus on Corys, Loves, and McKinnons. With Blaine and Sandy gone and Clarice's closeness with Ada and Mac forgotten, they were discarded. I know after the undercover drug thing Larry left the force to work as a PI with Catlin. I think but am not sure that he didn't go back, making it easy for dePriest to slot Adam Cory in as a police detective for MJ. I did like Adam, but it did feel like that was a mess.

Former Canadiens star goaltender (and later lawyer and MP) Ken Dryden has died. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/ken-dryden-obit-1.7627028

I remember Larry with the sleeves of his blazer pushed up. I didn't watch Miami Vice so would not have noticed any other similarities.

The story of the Plains Motel drug ring, Larry's investigation, and Nancy's drug addiction was somewhat lacking in execution. For one thing I am not sure they really told the story of Nancy's estrangement from her friend group, and I guess on the Love side they were too busy dealing with Marley's illness and the arrival of Victoria to spend time on grieving Perry very much. Larry was emotionally invested in the drug investigation because of his kids' baby-sitter Dale, and because he was undercover he couldn't confide in Clarice and also started to feel protective of the main drug criminal's wife, which led to his separation from Clarice. It was never clear to me whether Larry had actually been unfaithful to Clarice -- during the undercover storyline I didn't detect any adultery, but in the aftermath both Larry and Clarice seemed to behave as though he had. Catlin and Brittany also got involved in the investigation, partly because of the murder of her cousin Willa Grover but also because Catlin was concerned about Larry's behaviour. It was also never clear to me whether the "Plains Motel" name was something that was included in Willa's story and then when they decided to do the drug storyline they used the Plains Motel name for the disco to pull it all together, or if they had always intended to call the disco "Plains Motel" after misleading the audience into thinking it was an actual motel. A lot of this was during the period with no headwriter so in the absence of other evidence I am inclined to think that it might not have been that tightly-plotted.

Anna Stuart audtioned for it as well IIRC. And I think the writer who created the character supposedly had Jacqueline Susann in mind. Early Felicia was definitely much harder and colder than the character eventually grew to be. I completely understand what you're getting at, I was just trying to think through why I had never pictured her as being Alexis-like.

This is fascinating to me because I would never have thought to categorize Felicia in this way because she was dramatic and flamboyant with a creative slant. She did not control a publishing empire although she did own/manage a series of restaurants and eventually a bookstore. But those were more about her being social than being powerful. Maybe she is more aligned with Lisa on ATWT than Alexis?

There's also this [same?] story from Coster's memoir.

Donna Love on Another World can't have been very old when Vicky's son Steven was born. She should have been about 35 when Vicky showed up at 18 and it was less than 4 years later in real time. I hate to estimate characters' ages too much because although there was no SORAS in this specific timeline, adults' ages tend to be compressed so no one gets too old. The youngest grandparents will presumably be based on compound SORASing.

On the six degrees of separation front, Wesley Addy was married to Celeste Holm whose character's husband in All About Eve was played by Hugh Marlowe who definitely played Jim Matthews. On the name similarity front, Wesley Ann Pfenning did play Alice Matthews.

Thanks -- I clearly got mixed up.

I thought Judith Barcroft was still in the rôle when Walter Curtin died.

Thanks! Susan Sullivan mentions how much she enjoyed doing a scene where she got to destroy a set -- does anyone remember that scene and what it was about? I know what you mean. Lemay created Mac Cory and in 1989 even though the cast had been completely reset two or three times since Lemay had left, Mac and Rachel represented a core of stability -- which is why it made sense to build the anniversary and the return of so many characters around the retconned idea that Cory Publishing was 25 years old. I can imagine an alternate universe where they had decided instead to make the show's 25th anniversary party the 25th birthday of Marley and Victoria -- but that would not have had ties to older cast members before 1983.

Apparently Nick did have to donate bone marrow to Michael, but based on the dates it sounds like that must have happened quite early after he arrived. Really it sounds like a justification for the character to be around at all which would not have been necessary for Cory. They could have manufactured a reason for Cory to interact with Michael just as easily.

I came across this post about fur on Another World and marvelled at how many occasions Lisa was described as being dressed in fur until I looked more closely and realised that the poster had mistaken Philece Sampler as Donna for Joanna Going in most if not absolutely all cases. https://furglamor.com/2008/10/23/furs-on-tv-another-world/?amp=1

Is there anything Nick Hudson did that Cory could not have done? With Blaine as Maggie's stepmother and Larry as Cory's stepfather they were not real cousins. I hardly remember Nick interacting with Michael and Donna very much but maybe that's more about the casting than what actually happened in the storyline. I remember thinking that Justin Chambers was very good and then *poof* he was gone.

Aside the Willis issue, to some degree they were also scrambling because of Douglass Watson's death. Granted I find it a bit hard to figure out whether they really had a lot of Mac story they had to put aside because everything to do with the Janice-based grudge applied to Rachel more directly. Maybe Mac only had speeches and the Frame pieces of the story remained intact. Robert Delaney being kind to Iris was also a bizarre out-of-character moment.