JarrodMFiresofLove

Yes those were Hogan Sheffer creations, and not very good ones. I thought the whole relationship Margo had with Doc Reese was strange. It didn't make much sense. Some of the black females fared better. I enjoyed Bonnie McKechnie. She was originally a Doug Marland creation, now grown up and brought back to the show by Sheffer. Napiera Groves did a good job as teenaged Bonnie who created a lot of drama for everyone in her orbit.

Interesting comments. I was looking on YouTube today and there are only just a few short clips...scenes with Peter Boynton playing cards; and scenes with Lisby Larson in a fur coat.

I see Hatch worked as a fashion model...he definitely was eye candy in the 80s and should have been utilized more on ATWT. He only lasted a year at AMC. He had a two-year role on AW in the mid-90s.

Yeah Tucker could have been a long-term character if the writers/producers had done right by him. Heather Dalton didn't last a long time either. As you say, she had some relatives introduced...and I think they put her with Roy Franklin (played by Count Stovall). But Heather and Roy were eventually phased out by Marland.

I found some photos taken at a party to celebrate Eileen Fulton's return to ATWT in 1984. It was held at Chippendale's of all places. In this one photo there are four young actors from the show, but I think the guy on the left is misidentified. The other three are Kim Johnston Ulrich (Diana), Tracy Kolis (Juliette), Christan LeBlanc (Kirk). But I don't think the guy on the far left is Eddie Earl Hatch (Tucker) who is African American and does not look like this. Any guesses who he might really be? https://www.gettyimages.com.au/license/456522986

Thanks for the spoiler. I must have missed Cal's exit. I remember very little about him. The article/interview with Backus is great. Love how he details working with Marland. Thank you for sharing the link!

Thank for the reply. I do remember Russ Elliot now, that was part of how Betsy was reintroduced (now played by Lindsay Frost). I still don't remember Emmett or the others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_As_the_World_Turns#1980–1989 I just looked at the wiki page for the history of the show in the early 80s. First, there are a lot of errors on wiki, because it says the Dobsons were in charge of Whit's murder mystery when clearly we know it was Tom King & Millee Taggart. The Dobsons were already gone by this point launching "Santa Barbara." Also the wiki page says Marland wrote from 85 to 90, when in fact I believe Marland wrote till his death in 93, and his cowriters carried his bible forward into 94/95. The wiki page does say Tucker Foster was the first regular black character in the cast, which I found interesting, introduced as Steve's friend. Wiki also says Cal Randolph was an undercover FBI agent who turned out to be baby Jill's real father, but he ended up letting Frank & Maggie raise her. I am assuming Cal just left town around the time Frank & Maggie did, with Marland unwilling to continue any of that. Also, I should mention that on wiki it says Jay and Kirk were a few months apart. Was that ever said in the early introduction of the McColls? Because that means they retconned this when Dorothy turned out to be Whit's killer and Kirk's mother, because there's no way she would have been able to have two boys just months apart.

I think it was done in a flashback when they revealed her as the culprit. We were supposed to believe Jay was the killer with Steve being framed for it. Dorothy the housekeeper was not even a suspect. I think they devised all that retroactively when they decided to pin the murder on her and needed a motive. There was no real tension between Whit and Dorothy before his death. ***** There are 35 contract players listed at the end of this August 1984 episode. Five of them I don't remember much, if anything, about them. I am guessing they didn't catch on and were soon junked by King/Taggart or Marland when he took over. So who was: TUCKER FOSTER (played by Eddie Earl Hatch) RUSS ELLIOT (played by Richard Backus...I think Backus ended up becoming a scriptwriter for the show.) EMMETT (no last name given, played by John DeVries) KENT BRADFORD (played by Ernie Townsend) CAL RANDOLPH (played by Luke Reilly)

Frank could've been a fashion model he was so hot. They didn't really put him front and center, because all the Andropolous stories revolved around Steve, then Nick, then finally Frank. How were Frank and Maggie written out? I am assuming it was when Marland took over or else right before Marland came aboard.

Yes, he was very sexy. Frank and Steve were cousins. But I think there's a homoerotic vibe going on between the actors, which I never picked up on as a kid watching this.

Thanks. So there wasn't much build up to Whit's death. It happens pretty fast. No wonder Robert Horton seems stressed in his scenes, knowing he's quickly being killed off. All of the main suspects were red herrings. If I remember correctly the housekeeper (Dorothy) did it; she turned out to be Kirk's mother and had a long-standing affair with Whit. Her motive for the killing was weak and nothing foreshadowed that. It was a very rushed murder mystery and probably solved within a month or two. The housekeeper exited as soon as she was revealed as the culprit, carted off to the loony bin. Except for Brian who stayed on a few more years, all the McColls were written off by 1985. I don't think the family really gelled with audiences. They were shoved on screen, dominated the airwaves and took away screen time from the other long-standing families. I think they were created to give LIsa a new makeshift family but when Eileen left and they had to recast her role it sort of defeated the main purpose of them being there. But at least it gave us Lucinda who was originally brought on as a business foe for Whit. I wouldn't be surprised if the original idea was for Lucinda to be the one who had an affair with Whit years ago and he spurned her, which is why she was out for revenge. And for Whit to be Lily's father. Of course Marland went in a whole other direction with Lucinda and Lily.

Interesting throwback. Jay was very good looking. So was Mark Pinter back then and Robert Horton wasn't bad for an older guy. There was a homoerotic vibe going on in Steve and Frank's scenes at the hospital. I liked the sign outside the hospital that said Oakdale Memorial. A bit unrealistic most of the doctors are at the party. And only Jeff Ward is working. I always thought Robert Lipton was great as Jeff.This must be near the end of his run. In the credits I noticed Liz Hubbard's name all the way down at the bottom. This must have been right after she joined the show. There were too many McColls. Not enough Stewarts. Loved seeing David and Ellen dancing.The guy Kim was dancing with (Raymond Speer played by Donald May) didn't last long.The writers soon axed him and put her with Bob. So Raymond was Kim's last guy before settling in with Bob for the long haul. The actress with the strange last name who plays Maggie Crawford was very good. Can't remember what happened to baby Jill. Marland reused the name later when Linc Lafferty had a girlfriend named Jill. The black characters are very marginally used though of course the two pop singers are black and get plenty of screen time. I didn't mind this Frannie but Julianne Moore who soon replaced her was really the best one. The actress who played Diana became more known for her later role on Passions. The short cameo with Phyllis Diller was cute. Back in the days when these shows had big budgets and could bring all kinds of special guests in like this. I think Hilary Bailey was my favorite Margo though I did like Colin and Dolan a lot too. Hilary Bailey and Scott Bryce were so believable as brother and sister. Gunnar was listed in the credits but did not appear. John was married to Karen at this time. I see Shannon had not been introduced yet but I think she comes on the show soon after this. Lisa is not in the credits. I thought Betsy Von Furstenberg stayed in the role up till Eileen Fulton returned but I guess she did not and there was a bit of a gap. Does anyone know what month Whit died? The episode where he was killed was Eileen Fulton's first episode back on the show.

Great comment. Do you think that was down to Marland's scripting? He was a sensitive writer and probably went out of his way to get those moments right on screen for the characters.

I guess I can buy that.

I've had time to reflect on the episode I watched yesterday, from the 31st of August 2010...the one about Nancy's death. I supposed the budget was low at that point and they wanted to use Larry Bryggman at the end, which I assume was not cheap. But it would have been nice if part of the episode had depicted the funeral with people like Nancy's daughter Penny and Nancy's best friend Ellen Stewart present. Also if I had been writing it, I would have brought Tom's daughter Lien back for the funeral. I think that would have brought things a bit more full circle in terms of the legacy characters. One thing that seemed off in the flashbacks was they had Tom remember talking with his grandmother after Dan died. But then in another flashback which seemed to be from Nancy's last year on the show, she tells Katie about how she still speaks to Chris all the time. As if Chris was still her husband in spirit and Dan meant nothing. I did not have a problem with the emphasis on Katie during parts of the episode. I think like Ellen, Lisa and Kim, another person that Nancy had become close to over the years was Katie. This show always was good at multigenerational relationships so it's kind of nice to see how Nancy's death impacts a younger character like Katie. Also I think we're supposed to believe that Katie becomes the new Nancy later on regardless of the show going off the air. She is the soulmate of this Chris the way Nancy was the soulmate of the other Chris. So it works for me. I do think it was a blessing in disguise that Helen Wagner passed before the end of the series with enough time for them to do this special episode near the end. A blessing because it gave us all those great flashbacks of the Hughes family over the years. The writers did not have to contrive an anniversary or some other hokey event to do this because Nancy's death just naturally lent itself to reflection of this kind. And probably if they had done something else with flashbacks we would not have seen Don Laughlin on the show again. I don't think he had appeared since Chris' death in 1985. Nancy never had flashbacks of him because Marland was eager to move her forward and put her into a new marriage with Dan. So right near the end, we do get to see Nancy and Chris in various flashbacks and though it's not the final episode of the program, it still helps give closure near the end. Another thing that struck me about this telecast is how well defined Nancy was as a character, probably because Irna Phillips had established her so clearly in the beginning and Helen Wagner never wavered in her portrayal. We don't really get cornerstone characters like this now on soaps. During the scene with Kim and the others in Tom's office, it is mentioned that Nancy was not one-dimensional. And the beauty of this character was she didn't need to have a second personality or occasional lapses in judgment to be multi-dimensional. She could be a woman with virtually no evil in her and still be a well-rounded character. That makes her a very special part of As the World Turns. Also I think the character is an important one because she really was a port in the storm to all these other ones. Lisa often turned to her for advice, so did Kim, Bob and Tom...as well as Nancy's other relatives and friends. One of my favorite storylines was one Doug Marland did where Nancy was volunteering and helping a young black girl to read. Again it was a multigenerational use of the character, this time across racial and class boundaries, and it gave Nancy so much more added meaning within the framework of the show.

Yes if we were going by character counts instead of actor counts, I think Tom would probably be first since that character was on the show so many years and as a young man he was always put in frontburner storylines. By the time Scott Holmes took over in '87, he'd already been prominently featured for about twenty years. I am sure that during the Justin Deas era, he was on four days a week. And if we add up all the actors who played Paul (going back to child star Danny Pintauro), I'd say he ranks high on the list too.

I've been thinking about when I stopped watching As the World Turns. I was born in the 70s and I remember growing up it was always on in our living room during the summertime when I was home from school. With the advent of the VCR we taped it each day starting in 1985. So from 1985 forward I seldom missed it. Even in college I happened to catch it between classes. So if you count those early years when I was in grade school and watching it in the summers and holidays, I probably viewed it consistently from 1982 up till 2008. That's a long time. So why give up on a show after it had been such a huge part of your life? Well I think the show really started to fall apart in 2008. Letting key cast members go (Martha Byrne, Scott Bryce), cutting corners with the budget and putting cheap newbies front and center, poor writing, none of it helped. They also were using some of the new production model ideas that Ellen Wheeler was doing on Guiding Light. There was more filming outdoors with the younger cast, with some of the camera work seeming less professional. I could have overlooked that if the performances and stories were still strong...but they weren't. The last newer couple I liked was Gwen and Will. But then Jennifer Landon won some back-to-back Emmys and she suddenly became a favorite of Goutman and Passanante and it started feeling like she was on all the time. When they had her do that silly dual role (as Cleo I think the character's name was) in 2007 it was a real test of my patience. At that point she had a double frontburner storyline. I was relieved when she announced she was quitting in 2008, because as good as she was, she didn't deserve all that screen time at the expense of the vets. By then I was having trouble with the Lily recast; I didn't like how Lucinda was being written. I felt Holden had lost direction; Emily was all over the map reshaped to fit each new contrived story they threw at her; Carly and Jack were starting to feel played out; none of Passanante's new creations were very exciting. Julie PInson's character Janet was not gradually added in and overnight she was shoved down viewers' throats. It was just too much. Even when I heard the show had been canceled in late December 2009, I didn't even come back to watch the last nine months of the series. I just felt alienated from it all. I didn't even feel compelled to see the last broadcast and to this day I still have not seen how it ended. I have watched episodes from the Marland years on YouTube and while his writing had problems, it was just far superior to almost everything else other writers did that I'd rather remember the show during its heyday. The last episode I remember loving, and I mean really loving, was the special Doll House episode they did in December 2007. Other people might have disliked it, but I enjoyed seeing almost the entire cast being featured, with them all dressed in those spectacular clothes, and I loved how they used Nancy in the middle of it, how they used Barbara near the end of it; and how it was framed by Lucinda taking her granddaughter past a window where they saw the doll house. It felt like theater or like one of those old live anthology TV programs. The whole thing was innovative and fun. But I never felt like ATWT was ever classic again after that time and by the summer of 2008 I had finished with the show entirely. I bought the Soap Classics DVD which included that episode because it's one I wanted to have.

I thought about Hensley but he took some time off during the later part of Marland's tenure. Can't remember how long that absence was but yes I'm sure his total count is up there. I included Hubbard in my earlier post. Helen Wagner probably did have a lot of screen time in the early years but at one point Irna Phillips was going to fire her, so I don't think Irna always used her. And she was taken off contract for a few years in the early 80s. Marland certainly used her. But she never had a storyline again after Dan's death in 1996. So her last ten plus years her appearances were significantly reduced. Marland propped up a lot of characters (he was close friends with many of the cast members). So it wasn't just Lily and Josh. But I agree with the earlier comment that Lily became an "avatar" for all the under-18 stories. She was like Shirley Temple and Molly Ringwald rolled into one during those early years. The poor little rich girl experiencing growing pains.

So which actors probably had the most appearances between 1956 and 2010? My guess is these people: Don Hastings (Never took time off from the show like Eileen Fulton did; front burner in the 60s and 70s; Marland gave him big stories in the 80s and early 90s. A bit of a slow period in the mid to late 90s, but Sheffer used him, most memorably in the Dr. Dekker story, and in the show's final years he was still a major presence with screen time.) Eileen Fulton (Despite a few departures, which were usually not more than a year or two, she drove the main storylines in the 60s and 70s. And she was still featured a lot in the 80s and 90s. Though she was still on contract she seemed more like a glorified recurring cast member in the last years of the show.) Kathryn Hays (Front burner in the 70s and 80s, still used often in the 90s and 2000s. If Kim hadn't married Bob, she might not have lasted.) Patricia Bruder (She once told an interviewer that Ellen was on the front burner for the first 15 years; from the mid-70s on she was more of a supporting player but still had frequent appearances; Marland didn't know what to do with her especially after he killed David off but he still put her in group scenes. After Marland's death the subsequent writing teams seldom used her and by 1995 she was gone, though she made a brief reappearance in '98. Ellen was totally forgotten in the 2000s, never mentioned anymore by Emily or Susan. But from 1960 to 1995 she made a substantial contribution to the show and I think she was probably in a large number of episodes.) Colleen Zenk (Never without a storyline from her arrival in 1978 to 2010. Her maternity leaves were usually short. Marland and Sheffer both used her as a lead antagonist in multiple storylines. She never had a replacement for illness.) Martha Byrne (Despite a two-or-three-year gap when Heather Rattray took over in the early 90s, she always had a lot of story; and later played a dual role for several years.) Elizabeth Hubbard (They wrote her out in the late 90s for awhile but she was soon back on the show again. Sheffer did not write for her, that was her only slow period. Marland wrote constantly for her.) Scott Holmes (Major storylines from 1987 to 2000. Sheffer did not write much for him but in the later part of the 2000s Passanante did feature him more often.)

Yes, I just watched this on YouTube (thank you victoria foxton) and the stuff with Chris was kind of an emotional downer. Goutman definitely should have brought Martha back as Lily at the end. It would have been nice to see her and Liz Hubbard acting together on screen again.

I was trying to figure out why I stopped watching but I think it had to do with Martha's exit and I couldn't get used to the new Lily. Also a lot of the veteran actors were not used enough and when they appeared they were typically in the background. And some of the new couples front and center were ones I couldn't warm up to. Also I loved Scott Bryce as Craig and was disappointed when they let him go (in 2008).

So I have a question since I stopped watching the show after Martha Byrne left. Was Nancy's death filmed as a special episode? Did it pre-empt an episode that had already been filmed? I am reading things that there is a lost episode, and I am guessing it's because they pulled something to make room for Nancy's death. Did the Hughes family have a funeral for her? How was it written in? Thanks in advance for any clarification.

I think if someone went back and looked through all those episodes they could figure out the amount of screen time per episode. We know that when Eileen Fulton appears in an episode by Hogan Sheffer, she's lucky if she gets two scenes. But episodes with Carly and Jack see them in anywhere from 5 to 10 scenes. So not only does CarJack appear the most, they usually have the most screen time in the episodes on which they appear. By comparison, a lot of time Katie was used as comic relief in quick scenes that were basically filler between the other main plots. So she was not really dominating the episodes in which she appeared.

Ellen Dolan is in the wrong spot. She should be right above Colleen Zenk. And if you add Martha Byrne's total for Lily and her total for Rose, she would come in third.

Thanks for the link. I spotted some errors. Trent Dawson's character is listed as Holden instead of Henry. Also Ellen Dolan's total count from 97-10 is in the wrong spot; a few beneath her have more episodes. Is there a way for the original poster of the thread to fix it? I was shocked at Eileen Fulton barely appearing in the final year. She was averaging about one episode a month. She must have really fallen out of favor with Goutman and the writers. Her total count from 97-10 is in the 500 range but I think a lot of that came from her last big storyline (where Lisa married Eduardo Grimaldi) in the late 90s. She was very vocal about Hogan Sheffer not writing for her and I don't think Passanante wrote for her either. So the last decade Lisa was pretty much sidelined.